Emperor and Clown

by Dave Duncan

  And then Kalkor tried a straight rapier thrust as if wielding a pike and Rap fended with a downward counter as Sergeant Thosolin had taught him. It was an error — the thane dodged and Rap could not stop his stroke before he had buried his blade in the turf. He hurled himself flat beside it as a murderous return slice hissed above him. But while he was there, Kalkor's foot slipped on the slick grass; he staggered and stepped too close, so Rap swung a fist and caught the back of the jotunn's knee.

  Kalkor went down also.

  Then Rap could leap up with a yell of triumph and jerk his ax free.

  For a brief instant that seemed to last an hour, the men's eyes met — Rap swinging the great ax high overhead with what he suddenly knew to be the last of his mundane strength . . . Kalkor on his knees and facing death, his face a mask of horror and shock as he tried to twist out of the way. Then Rap had both feet planted and his ax descending.

  Glory! Gathmor! With a wordless scream he brought the dread blade down, giving it every scrap of muscle he had left, but Kalkor reached into the clouds and hauled down the lightning.

  3

  "Cheat! Yellow cheating coward!" Rap could barely hear his own howls through the ringing in his ears. He danced on the puddles in his fury.

  That had been very close, though. He had healed his hands, but his ax was still glowing red; charred grass steamed and hissed around it. Half the spectators were still trying to find out what had happened, and most of the rest were on their knees in the mud, madly praying. The bone-chilling downpour roared unceasing.

  "Rotten cheating sneak! Man to man?"

  But Kalkor could not answer. Kalkor was dead, cooked. He stank of roast pork. What had happened, anyway? It had all been so sudden! Rap reached back with hindsight — and that was a trick he hadn't known he had — and saw himself ablaze in violet fire . . . No wonder the crowd was wailing! He had felt the ripple of sorcery coming and thrown a shield around himself. Then he had blazed like a God within the lightning, but he did not understand why then it had left him and melted his ax and struck the thane who had summoned it — that cowardly turd, who had used sorcery after swearing not to . . .

  Very close! In hindsight, it looked as if Kalkor would have escaped by a hairsbreadth and Rap's ax would have buried itself in the ground and left him to Kalkor's nonexistent mercy . . .

  So who had killed Kalkor? — Rap, or the Gods, or Kalkor himself? Rap didn't know. What mattered was that Kalkor had died thinking the faun had beaten him.

  Well, good!

  Gathmor would have approved.

  Gathmor was avenged.

  Hollow victory, which didn't bring Gathmor back.

  Kalkor had been the one to use sorcery, not Rap. Would the wardens accept that, though? It might not have seemed like that.

  The two old jotnar in their red robes and horned helmets were creeping forward, drenched and timorous, coming to inspect the outcome. Rap turned on his heel and walked away.

  Now what? Of course he might just try to disappear from Hub, but he didn't think he could evade the wardens if they really wanted to catch him. The mysterious destiny of the white flame was waiting for him, wasn't it? He still felt a premonition. He tried a tiny sliver of foresight and recoiled at once. Yes, it was still there, implacable and very imminent. Shudder!

  He thought about running away, and his premonition hardly eased at all, so flight would merely delay it a little. It seemed to be inevitable. Besides, he had a belated wedding present to give Inos. He headed for the royal enclosure.

  The two old jotnar shouted after him, wanting him to do ritual butchery on the corpse, and he ignored them.

  He certainly wasn't going to turn up in front of Inos with just a furry skin around him and even furrier faun legs showing below it. He detested his legs. As a child he had hated his squashy nose and his impossible hair, which the others had all laughed at. He had grown used to those eventually, but then his legs had sprouted like hayfields and given him something much worse to dislike. He wished that when the Gods had stirred up his mixed heritage, They had given him jotunn legs.

  Still, sorcerers could solve such problems. He did not even need to retrieve the garments he had left in the tent, nor hunt out a private place to change. As he walked through the rain he clothed himself in a whole new outfit. He made good practical garments, of comfortable soft leather, like the work clothes Factor Foronod wore in the field. He made them in a plain, serviceable brown. They were sorcerous, not magical, and therefore permanent. The difference was quite obvious to him now.

  Splashing along in his new boots, then, he brooded. Kalkor's death had solved nothing. It had not brought Gathmor back, and it left Krasnegar without a monarch. It had certainly not soothed Rap's jotunn temper. Left to itself, that terrible anger might last for days. If anything, it was worse than before, because now there was no relief in sight, no one to strike at. He could feel it rampaging inside him, seeking a victim to destroy. It might not matter very much, because he was going to die very soon.

  Why? He didn't want to die in burning agony! He didn't want to die at all, and knowing it was coming made it even worse.

  The cordon of legionaries opened a gap for him grudgingly. Today's canopy was much larger than the previous day's, and most of the royal party had managed to huddle in below it, leaving their guards out in the rain with the servants. Were they frightened of catching colds?

  Rap stalked up the bank to the smarmy little regent on his stupid wooden throne. He used the smallest bow he thought would not be an open insult.

  That had been noticed — he detected the hidden smiles and frowns from the various political factions represented. The Imperial court would always be a creel of lobsters, all slithering and biting to get on top. He despised them, these wealthy parasites in their embroidered cloaks and fancy gowns, in their elaborate ruffles and padded tights. He had not thought much of them yesterday, and today he could read them like posters with his sorcerer's insight. The contempt was mutual; he could see their curled lips and cocked eyebrows as they scorned the yokel sorcerer, their little shared glances of nervous mirth.

  In the open at the very back of the crowd Little Chicken was smirking as he thought of all the barbarous things he was going to do to Rap. Dream away, little green monster! Poor wee goblin, doomed to be cheated of his victim! When Rap had left him in the shed, he had been busy crushing firewood with his bare hands to see how much strength he had given away. Well, he would get it all back soon.

  Near him the burly old Nordland ambassador was trying to seem impassive, but his satisfaction was perfectly clear to a sorcerer. Obviously he hadn't enjoyed having Kalkor sniffing around his private peeing tree. No mourning there, Kalkor. No mourning anywhere.

  The big chunky djinn stood swathed in his despicable curse, and rigid with fear and guilt. He was hiding them well beneath an arrogant sneer, but not well enough. He had tried to kill Rap most foully, and now his victim was a sorcerer. Bladder feeling a little tight, Sultan? Bowels a little shaky? The giant was not unlike the dwarf, Zinixo. Why must such distrustful men always assume that others were as vindictive as themselves? Did he think Rap would now make Inos a widow? Yes, he did, because that's what he would do in Rap's place. Murdering savage! How could Inos have ever . . . but that was her business.

  "A most fortuitous bolt of lightning, Master Rap," the regent said. "I understand from the ambassador that you are now entitled to style yourself 'Thane Slayer!'"

  Oh, he was a nasty one! He made Rap's skin creep. He had no magic, though. Seen through the ambience, he looked just the same as he did in the mundane world, except that farsight penetrated such trivia as clothes, and hence showed that despite his impish features he was part merman, with his hair and eyebrows dyed black to disguise the fact. His twisted ambition was a deformity of the soul.

  "Call me whatever you wish, Highness." Reluctantly Rap turned face and mind to Inos, and met a smile like a summer dawn. Her cypress velvet cloak was spangled with a million fine diamo
nds of moisture. He toyed briefly with the thought of making them real diamonds. Well, at least Little Chicken wasn't the only one pleased to see him survive the Reckoning. But why must she show it so blatantly? Even the mundanes were reading the look on her face.

  Inos, no! Stop that!

  Her aunt stood nearby, beaming proudly at her sorcerous protégé as if he were all her own invention. Well, he didn't mind her.

  "I think we shall now adjourn this court to the Rotunda," the regent announced. The thought was making him uneasy, most likely because he had been sadly humiliated there last night, but he was hiding his feelings behind his usual pomp. "We shall require the wardens to certify that the thane died by an act of the Gods and not by sorcery."

  And he had the impudence to smirk at Rap as he said it!

  "It was sorcery!" Rap said grimly.

  The merman mongrel paled, and the courtiers around him all recoiled a step. His frowzy, sourpuss wife uttered a wail. Even the little boy lurched back.

  Rap took a harder look at the little boy.

  What in the name of all the Gods was wrong with him?

  None of Rap's business! He had never really wanted to be a sorcerer. Or had he? He had stolen a word from Sagorn and then groveled to get another from Little Chicken. He had schemed as hard as he could to become a sorcerer — whom was he trying to fool?

  The old man in the background, wrapped in his rug like a parcel and wedged into a chair — he must be the old imperor. Rap had heard good things of him, poor man. His light burned very low now; and yet there was still light there. Yesterday, as a mage. Rap had been sorely puzzled by the old man's affliction. Today, his stronger sorcerer wisdom found the trouble at once. He shuddered as he sensed the pulsing black spider-thing inside the old man's skull. That did not belong there! Could he remove it without destroying the surrounding brain? Very likely he could, but that was not his business, either. He couldn't go around curing all the ills in the world. Imperors were off limits anyway.

  The lumbering machinery of Imperial politics was still grinding along the muddy track of mundane thought. "Then you may have violated the Protocol, Sorcerer," the regent was saying. "The thane was an ambassador at large from Nordland, and Nordland may take the view that . . ." He droned on, talking policy and right of succession and other drivel.

  The sycophantic courtiers standing around him all nodded in sad agreement, sneering at the poor rustic who knew no better, taking comfort from thoughts of the guardian wardens.

  Was that what the white agony meant? — that Rap was to be judged by the Four and put to death by them? No, Lith'rian and Bright Water would surely have recognized their own hands in that mysteriously cryptic future. That couldn't be it.

  So why did the Evil-take-them wardens have to meddle at all? Why must they come after him, when they had left Kalkor alone for so long? Where was the justice in ignoring the atrocities of an odious cur like Kalkor and then punishing the one who had ended his career? Rap's temper was bubbling higher, pressing hard against the limits of his control.

  Again he looked at the little boy, who was staring at him with hollow eyes and chalky face, shivering in his thin hose and doublet. The kid's little backside was a monstrosity of welts and bruises, and there was something like a cowl over his personality, a web, a mist . . .

  Horrible!

  "So we shall require you to attend," the regent concluded imperiously. "Also our council, and Sultan Azak, and —"

  "That won't be necessary!" Rap snarled. He isolated Azak's form in the ambience, a dully mundane giant wearing only the sheen of sorcery on his skin. Rap took hold of it and ripped — it came away like a film of soap bubble and he discarded it.

  He flipped back to mundane senses. "I have cured the sultan's problem for him, your Highness. If you will just grant him safe conduct back to his home, then he and his wife can depart." He smiled at Inos. "A wedding present for you!"

  Inos gasped and looked up at Azak. Azak stared at Rap and then looked down at Inos. Princess Kadolan uttered a shriek of alarm and put both hands to her mouth in obvious consternation.

  Error?

  Azak held out a clenched hand to his wife. Inos shot Rap a look of horror and then gingerly touched a delicate finger to the massive red fist. Of course nothing happened — did they think Rap could wield lightning against Kalkor and then not know when he had canceled out a clumsy spell like that curse?

  Azak took Inos in his arms and tried to kiss her.

  Her instant repugnance sent a burst of fury through Rap, and he hurled them apart, so that they both went reeling back.

  Inos! Why was she looking at him like that?

  Oh, Gods! He wasn't leaking anything now, not a whisper.

  She really did love him? She didn't want big Barbarian Muscles after all?

  Inos, oh, Inos! A mongrel wagon driver? You're crazy, Inos!

  Then why had she . . .

  He thought of madcap Inos putting her horse over ditches, of Inos scrambling up cliffs after birds' eggs and getting herself so horribly trapped that he and Krath had almost had to stand on their heads to haul her up to safety, of Inos charging recklessly into brawls on the waterfront to break them up and nearly being broken up herself in the process . . . Inos the headstrong . . . Inos who never stopped to think . . . Inos the impetuous . . .

  He pushed the memories away. She had married that man of her own free will. It was too late!

  And her feelings now were quite obvious to everyone. The djinn was black with fury, breathing hard, fists clenched.

  "Oh, you cured his problem, did you. Sorcerer?" the regent said. "It seems to us as if your assistance was not entirely welcome."

  The odious courtiers burst into raucous laughter at such wit.

  Rap grappled with a rage that threatened to choke him.

  And lost.

  Fury!

  His anger headed for the lecherous Azak and then swung away, for Inos's sake. It hovered briefly over the crazily impulsive Inos herself and retreated even more quickly. It peered longingly at the looming vulture nests of the wardens' palaces in the distance and shrank back in baffled impotence.

  And so it returned to the easiest victim, the smirking little regent on his wooden throne.

  Teach him to make Jokes about Inos!

  Rap reached out with sorcery and cured the imperor.

  4

  For a few moments nobody noticed. The old man opened his eyes and blinked at the shadowed crowd under the canopy, at the noisy torrents of water gushing off it near him and the gloomy rain beyond. Rap sent a surge of strength into the emaciated body — the mind was already burning up bright and clear.

  The regent had risen, so the honored few with chairs were rising also. Flunkies were dashing off into the downpour to summon coaches; soldiers were running to alert the hussars.

  Ythbane glanced around the crowd, selecting the favored ones who would be allowed to attend the meeting with the Four.

  Then a lady squealed. Courtiers looked where she was looking and backed away in haste, pushing those at the edges out from cover. An aisle opened between the old man and the regent.

  Ythbane made a fast recovery. "Your Imperial Majesty! You feel better today? You delight us! Medics!"

  "Consul?" The voice was strong. "Would you explain what we are doing here? Is this some sort of nature festival?"

  The regent — or possibly ex-regent — staggered. Then he turned to stare at Rap, and all the other eyes came around to Rap, also.

  Rap allowed himself a satisfied smirk, and let it grow wider as he saw the horror and confusion spreading over those well-fed, pampered faces. This felt better than anything that had happened since he healed Inos's burns.

  It felt much better than killing Kalkor.

  "And who is that young man?" The imperor was alert enough to see that he must be important.

  Ythbane was beyond speech, and some anonymous courtier answered for him. "He is a sorcerer, your Majesty."

  "Ah." He seemed
to understand instantly. "What day is this?"

  Someone told him, but Rap's attention was distracted by Inos's aunt, who came pushing through the crowd to him, shoving roughly, making up in determination what she lacked in size. Her kindly face was ashen with worry.

  "Master Rap! Is this your doing?"

  "It is, ma'am!" He wanted to laugh aloud at the consternation he had created. Pompous parasites! The look on the regent's face . . .

  The princess wailed. "But isn't that a violation of the Protocol, using magic on the imperor?"

  "And if it is?" Rap demanded, his anger flaring again.

  She cringed back, a frightened little old lady.

  "Rap!" Inos had arrived also, looking even more worried than her aunt. "You didn't!"

  "I certainly did!" He lowered his voice. "And I don't care! They're going to burn me for killing Kalkor, so now they can burn me in a good cause. You don't prefer that horrid little merman regent do you?" He had gotten loud again. Oh, well . . .

  "Rap! You idiot!"

  "Who are you calling an idiot?"

  Inos stamped her foot, but wet turf was not satisfying for foot stamping. "You, of course, you idiot! Blundering nitwit! Numbskull! Clown!"

  "Oh? And who are you to criticize? Who went and jumped into marriage with a man who gives her gooseflesh when he —"

  Rap bit his tongue. The big djinn was following his wife through the crowd, dodging his fancy hat around the water-loaded bulges of the awning. He had heard and he was not very pleased. Other people were listening, also, and they looked both scared and amused at the same time.

  They could surely see the anger in Inos's scorching glare, well matching her angry words. What they would not see was the underlying fear, which was much stronger, although it was not fear for herself. At the moment she was only concerned about Rap. She was far more worried about him violating the stupid Protocol than she was about the way he'd cured her husband's curse and made her marriage possible — and yet she really didn't want to be married to the djinn at all, since even the thought of kissing him nauseated her. So at the same time as she was shouting names at Rap, her face was sending him different messages altogether. It was very confusing, even for a sorcerer. It could be mind-smashing wonderful if there was any future to it.