by Dave Duncan
Rap's stomach heaved at the memory. "He did. Yggingi drew his sword and threatened me. He ignored Little Chicken, I suppose because he knew that goblins aren't dangerous." Little Chicken had taken the proconsul from behind, body-slammed him, applied a brutal headlock, and then slowly sawn through his neck with the stone dagger. Even while that had been happening, though, Yggingi had been trying to reach his fallen sword and Rap had kicked it out of the way. So he had been an accomplice.
After a couple of hard gulps, he added, "But I don't know if he was defending me then, or avenging all the goblins Yggingi killed. He won't run errands."
Thinal nodded, frowning at the sand. "He wasn't gentle with Darad. That hurt—I know! All this because you wouldn't torture him?"
"Yes. Darad has goblin tattoos—"
"Don't tell me!" Thinal pulled a face.
"But he must know! Little Chicken's waiting for some signal or other, from the Gods. When he gets that, then he's released from bondage and free to kill me, as slowly and painfully as he can."
"They're a gruesome pack." Thinal picked his nose for a while in silence. "I ought to know, Rap . . . but I don't. Darad wasn't interested in the slave thing."
"He enjoyed the alternative?"
Thinal shuddered. "Yes. Gods! I still dream about what he did to that boy. Trouble with Darad, he's been banged on the head so often a lot of his details are fuzzy to me. To him, too." He pondered a while longer. "I think . . . it may be something like saving your life. Yeah! Never let the goblin save your life."
Rap started to laugh. The little thief looked at him in surprise, realized what he had said, and grinned ruefully, again showing his irregular teeth.
The conversation was cut off by a yell from Little Chicken. Faun and imp ran across to where he was sitting in the sand at the base of a tree, cursing intently. He had badly scraped his belly and one thigh, and seemed also to have twisted an ankle when he landed. His opinions on palm trees were fortunately being expressed in dialect so broad as to be unintelligible even to Rap.
Thinal walked along to another tree nearby and flowed up it like a squirrel. In seconds he had reached the top and was twisting off coconuts. Little Chicken's tirade died away and he glared up disbelievingly at the despicably weedy imp. Then he glared even harder at Rap's smirk.
Burglars had their uses.
4
In the more than eighty years since Sagorn had visited Faerie, Thinal's memories of the event had become vague. He was fairly sure that Milflor lay somewhere on this eastern coast, but he had no idea whether the castaways were right to head north.
The jungle contained nothing any of them recognized as edible, but they chewed coconut and drank the milk until they were nauseated, longing for fresh water. Even under the palms there was little shade, and already the sun was brutal.
The goblin had an old pair of moccasins that old Hononin had found for him two days before, but he limped and he had lost his smug air of unworried superiority. Maybe his twisted ankle was more painful than he would admit, or he was suffering from the tropical climate, or the unfamiliar surroundings frightened him—or all three. He was no longer the skilled woodsman who had shielded Rap in the taiga.
Rap limped, also, being pinched by his borrowed boots. Faun half-breeds were not as heat resistant as he would have hoped.
Thinal was in worse shape than either of the other two. Andor's silver-buckled shoes would have been too large for his brother even when new and they had been split apart by Darad's enormous feet. Thinal soon threw them away and struggled along barefoot over the sand, his skinny legs laboring harder than they had done in a hundred years.
The headland seemed to withdraw as they advanced. It was hours before the beach had turned to face south and Rap began to notice the jungle narrowing. His farsight told him there was only more sand beyond the cape, but farsight's range was limited. At last the jungle faded away and there were only palms left. Soon his eyes could see through them, to another wide bay, as vast and deserted as the first. He had not known there was so much sand in the world.
On the point itself, sand gave way to rock. Rap and the goblin sank down and leaned back against boulders. Thinal was trailing, several hundred paces back, already looking boiled and mashed, as Rap's mother would have said.
"We should leave him!"
Rap smiled, for that had been a credible attempt at impish, although spoken with a heavy goblin accent. "We mustn't!"
"Why? Him . . . he . . . worse trash than me."
"Because he might give up and call Darad."
Little Chicken scowled, then nodded understanding. Darad's arm would still be bleeding from the bites of Rap's dog, his back burned raw, and his eye bruised by the goblin's finger. Even in a good mood, the giant would not be a welcome companion. Mad, he would be literal murder.
Thinal arrived and sank wearily to the ground. He slumped back against a palm, and yelped when it scraped him.
Rap let him rest for a while before he spoke. "There are mountains."
Thinal twisted around to stare at the peaks now visible over the jungle. "So?"
"You can't recall seeing those from Milflor?"
"No." Thinal wiped his brow with a bony arm and brooded in sulky silence.
So Milflor was some way off yet. North or south? There seemed to be no way of telling. Rap's feet hurt already and the thought of retracing all those steps was unbearable. He decided to continue north. If the coast swung westward, then he would know they had made the wrong choice.
Offshore lay a reef, and from the headland he could hear the surf quite clearly and see pillars of spray walking along it as the waves advanced. Faerie would be a glorious place, he thought, with proper water and food and shelter. For a moment he let himself sink into a fantasy of this beach and those warm waves and a picnic with . . . with a beautiful girl. God of Lovers!—how she would enjoy this place!
His head lolled sideways. He jerked it upright. "Come on, then!" He rose.
Thinal had also been dozing. He snarled. "What's the piddling hurry?"
"I have to find Inos."
Thinal patted the sand. "Siddown, Rap. Listen. I know you won't trow this, but you're potty. She's in the hands of a sorceress, and an all-fired, real, four-word sorceress at that! She's somewhere on the far side of Pandemia—east or north, an' you don't know. An' you find her, if you ever, she'll be a grannie, and you'll be older'n Sagorn. Come on, Rap! Lay off!"
"I am going to find Inos!"
Thinal stared up at him balefully. "I know you're stubborn—but that's screwball! You don't know what you're saying."
"Coming?" Rap said. "Or will you stay here and starve?"
For a moment it seemed that Thinal was not coming. Then Little Chicken rose and stretched.
"You try better now, imp," he said, spooning out his words with care. "More later I carry you."
Glaring, Thinal heaved himself to his feet and began hobbling over the sand.
They headed north. They had hours of daylight left yet.
Waves marched in to die upon the beach—wave after wave after wave . . .
Behind the veil:
When you and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble cast.
Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§47, 1879)
TWO
This day's madness
1
Sunlight gleaming along marble wakened Inos. For a moment she stared up blankly at gauzy draperies, striving to separate out their soft reality from bitter dreams of the tent she had shared with Kade in the long weeks of trek through the forest. Then awareness returned with a rush—death and sorcery; betrayal and bereavement.
But reality was not all sorrow. It was an unfamiliar silken nightgown soft on her skin; it was gossamer sheets and a bed that could have held a family of peasants and their livestock, also; it was hig
h-arched windows imprisoning cutouts of peacock-blue sky. Also, it was morning; she must have slept the clock around. She had vague memories of being awake in darkness, memories of fear and grief, and she repressed those quickly. Had there been a tray of food beside the bed? She raised herself on an elbow and peered. There was no food there now, if there ever had been, but there was a small bronze gong.
Palace life might be very enjoyable, but her kingdom had been stolen from her, and she must see about getting it back.
Besides, she had never been more hungry in her life. Parting the draperies, she reached out and tapped the gong quietly, with a knuckle.
The reaction was immediate and almost embarrassing. A lanky woman swathed in black swept in through the doorway, hastened across the soft rugs, and sank to her knees; abasing herself as if Inos were a God.
"Good morning," Inos said cheerfully. "This is tomorrow, isn't it? Who are you?"
The woman raised herself to sit on her heels. She was old, her face deeply scored, and a tiny wisp of white hair peeking from below her head covering of snowy white. Her gnarled brown fingers glittered with gems, so she was no minor flunky. She might be a housekeeper, except she bore no keys.
"I am Zana, may it please your Majesty."
Majesty? Oh, Father!
"What are the chances of something to eat?" Inos inquired hastily. "And possibly even some hot water?"
About once an hour for weeks and weeks, she had been promising herself a hot bath at the earliest possible opportunity. She might have offered half her kingdom for one, had soap and towels been included. Inos had crossed the frozen wastes on a flood of imaginary hot water, but her wildest longings had never come close to envisioning the long-delayed consummation of her dream as it now appeared.
She was conducted deferentially along a corridor to a meadow-size bathroom containing a gigantic green marble tub. A team of black-draped maidens stood ready to assist, and before Inos could explain that she was quite capable of attending to herself, they were applying soap and oil, scents, powders, and ointments. Even music! Kinvale had never approached this.
Holy writ might claim that there was evil in every good, but Inos could find no evil in that bathtub except that she was too hungry to stay in it for another month. Robed at last in cool flowing garments of ivory silk, with her hair encased in lace and her feet in golden sandals, she was led along bright, airy corridors toward a promise of breakfast. Her way wound past high-arched windows offering vistas of a great city tumbling away in layers down a steep hillside. The shiny blue bay beyond was speckled with sails. Krasnegar was a fleabite compared to this place, and its palace a chicken coop . . .
Crazy—given the choice, she would take that shabby little arctic rock pile every time!
Then she came to a garden, enclosed by shrubbery, high walls, and an air of secrecy. Branches overhead cast hard black shadows, dappling grass so smooth that it must in truth be a green velvet tablecloth, and the flowers could only be silk, or possibly enameled gold. The sky was a fierce blue, the sun deadly, and the swiftly swooping birds were colored like nothing Inos had ever imagined.
And talking of birds . . . in a grotesquely domed gazebo of fretted marble, Aunt Kade sat like a caged dove, calmly nibbling sliced peaches.
Gold lace lay over her snowy hair, but otherwise she, too, was enveloped in white. Inos recalled far-off days of helping Ido in the palace laundry, when sometimes they had draped themselves in sheets to play at being wraiths of evil.
Then Kade looked up. Relief flashed in her faded blue eyes and she made as if to stand.
"Don't!" Inos said hurriedly and stooped to give her a kiss. They held each other for a moment—dear Aunt Kade, who ought not be bouncing around the world in such sinister adventuring, who should be settling in comfortably at Kinvale, good for another thirty years of fruitless knitting and conspiratorial matchmaking.
"You look very . . . austere," Inos said, tactfully not mentioning wraiths. "I haven't felt like this since the masquerade ball."
"I'm sure you would win a prize now, dear." Aunt Kade's inevitable good cheer was still present, and only a very close scrutiny suggested that it might be a little forced. Her pink cheeks were perhaps not quite so pink as usual.
"Best of Breed anyway." Inos released her. "This is a very pleasant dungeon, is it not?"
"Most genteel!" Kade in turn was carefully inspecting her niece for signs of wear. "Like something out of a fairy tale."
"Angilki would turn green."
"He would raze Kinvale to the ground and start over. I take it that you slept well, my dear?"
Mutual scrutiny completed, Inos settled on a chair as it was moved for her by one of the tall young servants. "I must have. I don't remember a thing." No need to dwell on tears in the night. "And you?"
"Very well. I looked in on you a couple of times, but you were out cold as ice floes." Just for a moment there was a hint there of an old lady who had been worried about someone. Then it had gone. "This melon is delicious. The coffee is stronger than we are used to, but there are fruits and pastries; and this fish, while unfamiliar . . ."
Inos glanced at Zana. "All of it," she said firmly.
The garden was shaded by trees she could not identify, and enclosed by marble trellises. The dome of the sky was an incredible cobalt, the flowers much too brilliant to be genuine. Then, just to confirm the unreality, a thing like a jeweled insect floated for a moment above the table before Inos's startled eyes. She had barely time to decide that it was a tiny bird before it had vanished in a flash of rainbow. She began her survey again, looking around, trying to adjust to this unworldly setting, trying to believe that this was all real and that she had not somehow been transmuted into a hand-tinted lithograph in a romance.
Unfamiliar delicacies were laid before her on dishes of translucent china, and she attacked them with zeal. They were all just as delicious as they looked. Yet her mind kept chewing away at her troubles. Father dead. Rap dead. Andor an imposter. An army of occupation in Krasnegar, and another about to invade. Her claim to the throne rejected by the leading citizens. And what could she possibly do about it all, stuck here at the other end of the world?
The black-clothed maidens had floated away. Zana hovered discreetly in the distance.
"We certainly cannot complain about the hospitality," Aunt Kade remarked. Her eyes flickered a warning.
"Yes, I think I could learn to tolerate this," Inos muttered between mouthfuls, decoding: Complaints may be overheard.
She ate swiftly, and in thoughtful silence. Again she wished she had listened more carefully to Master Poraganu droning away her childhood. She could recall nothing of Zark, and all she knew about djinns was summed up in one piece of folklore she had overheard in Kinvale: As honest as a djinn.
But how, exactly, was that comment meant to be taken? Every race had its stereotypes, however unfair those might be in particular cases. A dirty child would be called a filthy little gnome, or a man as strong as a troll. Usually such remarks were meant to be taken literally—mean as a dwarf—but some were ironic. An imp's secret was common knowledge. Gentle as a drunken jotunn? And another she had learned at Kinvale: Tell it to a faun. What did Honest as a djinn really mean?
Well, Inos could hardly ask her aunt that now. "Have you . . . have you spoken with the sultana?"
"No, dear. But I expect she will be informed that you are awake now."
Again there was a curious rhythm in the words. Ladies at Kinvale soon learned how to pass silent messages under meaningless conversation, especially warnings. Aunt Kade was repeating her caution that a sorceress could inform herself. Talk could always be overheard—anywhere, at any time. Inos munched for a while in silence. But a sorceress could probably read thoughts, also.
"Imagine me sleeping round the clock! I wonder what they're doing in Kras—"
Oh, that had been stupid! She smiled apologetically at her aunt. Today in Krasnegar there would be a royal funeral. For a moment, blue eyes and green eye
s communed in silence—it had been a release. His pain was over. All things include both the Evil and the Good. Inos had been able to say good-bye, and that was what mattered. That was why she and Kade had endured the terrible journey through the forest. Funerals were not very important. At the last weighing his soul would have prospered, the balance gone to join the Good. King Holindarn would have left no wraith of evil to haunt the world.
And Inos had given him a promise.
She attempted a smile. "Politically, I mean, of course. I wonder what is happening politically in Krasnegar now?"
Kade fumbled with a snowy linen napkin. "The Powers alone know! If Doctor Sagorn was correct, then the imps will all run away before the jotnar arrive. They may be back across the causeway already." She did not look pleased at the prospect, but the fact that she would even admit to having thought about it showed that she was concerned.
If the Imperial troops had gone, then Krasnegar's own imps and jotnar might well be at one another's throats by now. The jotnar would likely win hands down, given a fair fight, but the fight would not be fair, for the legionaries were imps, and they would surely tip the scales before leaving. And when the jotnar of Nordland eventually arrived to put Thane Kalkor on her father's throne—her throne!—then the tip would go the other way.
Or the imp half of the population might have fled with the Imperial forces, a tragic band of refugees. Or the imps might have driven the jotunn half out into the snow. Families sundered, friends become enemies . . . or . . . or . . .
Inos realized that she had stopped eating. Her hands could not keep the food moving, because her teeth had clenched. "I promised Father I would do what I could! I must go back!"
"I am sure that Sultana Rasha will be willing to advise us," Kade said solemnly, "and possibly even assist us."
Us? Me!
Inos thought back to the strange scenes of yesterday. "I'm not sure I like the thought of being utterly dependent on the sympathy of a former scarlet woman."