Emperor and Clown

by Dave Duncan

  Shortly after the coach passed by the sinister Red Palace on its hill, and long before the interesting architecture stopped, he had become bored with silence.

  "I brought some thali tiles, ladies," he remarked. "If either of you cares to play?"

  "It is not one of my favorite games," Inos said, thinking of the Oasis of Tall Cranes with inexplicable nostalgia.

  He sighed odiously. "Well, perhaps some other day. We have many days to pass. Many weeks."

  "Weeks?" Kade said, looking up innocently. "Days? Oh, I hardly think so. Master Rap," she continued without raising her voice, "it is a trifle chilly in here. Would you be so kind as to provide a little warmth?"

  There was no reply, but the windows silently misted over.

  Kade removed her lap robe. "Thank you. That is much better."

  Master Odlepare had turned milk white. His mouth hung open.

  "A faun?" He gurgled. Coachmen were often fauns, but the worthy secretary should have realized that a team of eight could not normally be driven from the perch, with no postilion.

  "A faun," Kade remarked calmly. "You were the duke's secretary, were you not? I have here a copy of the accounts submitted with the latest tax remittance from Kinvale, and some of the figures strike me as a trifle odd. Did you have any part in preparing this?"

  He gurgled again, nodding.

  "Assuming," Kade said, "that further building activity is curtailed or even discontinued, how many retainers do you estimate could be struck from the estate workforce?"

  Stifling an unbearable desire to snigger, Inos turned to the window and wiped a small viewing area clear. Kade had run Kinvale before, periodically, when Ekka had been sick or bearing children. If Master Odlepare had expected the new imperial protector to be as addle-headed as she normally pretended, then he was in for a harrowing awakening.

  The carriage picked up speed, the snow became thicker. The coachman never stopped to change horses. Shortly before lunchtime, he slowed to turn off the highway. Inos took another peek through a fogged-up, rain-washed window and recognized the gates of Kinvale.

  7

  Kinvale was strange and eerie. No guests graced its lofty halls, no orchestras played for afternoon tea or evening banquets. Much of the furniture huddled under dustcovers, and the grates were dark.

  Rap and the goblin bedded down the horses and then were seen no more. The servants and the duke's daughters greeted Kade with cries of joy and great relief that the long suspense was over. The imperor could not possibly have found a guardian more welcome, nor more efficient. She took charge easily, calming fears and issuing polite requests that sent men and women running to obey.

  Inos wandered the damp and empty rooms like a ghost, the last of the great army of unmarried ladies of quality who had come there over the years to find matches suited to their station. Had her father taken Sagorn's advice and consulted the magic casement, she would never have been one of them. She had a heart-stopping vision of herself holding a brownish, wide-nosed baby with unruly hair . . .

  No, that would not have happened, but with his daughter at his side, surely Holindarn would have recognized his own failing health and taken proper steps to groom her and ensure her succession? Perhaps not. She had been a wayward, ignorant child in those days. Foronod and the other jotnar might still have balked at a juvenile female ruler. They would certainly have vetoed Rap as consort.

  "Might have been" was a useless exercise.

  What would the people say now? Was Foronod still alive? The bishop? Mother Unonini?

  On the following morning, Inos summoned a carriage and went into Kinford to shop. Hubban clothes would be useless in Krasnegar; none of them would be warm enough and many would be thought indecent. She bought wools and furs, in simple, practical styles.

  That afternoon she began to pack a trunk, but for the rest of the day, and for the two following days, she had little to do except pace the echoing corridors in an agony of apprehension.

  How dare he desert her like this? A few times she went into the steamy, pungent stables and yelled, "Rap! Come here at once! I need you." She tried it in some others places, also, but it never worked.

  The servants began to look at her oddly.

  On the third day Kade emerged from her bookkeeping waving a guest list she had prepared for spring. Six months of mourning were plenty, she said brightly, and the duke might benefit from genteel company. Nonsense! Kade wanted company for Kade, but Inos saw that Kinvale would soon be its cheerful self again, and her heart fluttered with fears for its own strength of purpose.

  Then she wondered if Rap had planned this ordeal to test her nerve. That thought stiffened her will as nothing else could have done — doubting her, was he? How dare he!

  The third evening arrived with no sign that Rap still existed, or Little Chicken, either. A full moon rose in the twilight, huge and orange and ominous in the northeastern sky. Inos shut the drapes on it. She joined Kade in a private supper made horrible by their nervous efforts to cheer each other up.

  But Inos did not doubt that he would come. Whatever else he was — and she had an extensive list of his shortcomings on the tip of her tongue at the moment — Master Rap was a man of his word.

  She retired to her room and dressed for Krasnegar, in a long wool gown of cypress green. She could expect to find the town cool even indoors, but her thick dress and thicker underwear felt unbearably hot in Kinvale. She rang for a footman to rope up her baggage. Then she was ready.

  Carrying a fur coat and thick mitts, and sweltering even in the unheated dankness of the deserted mansion, she went down to the library to wait. There was a cheerful fire burning there, and he could find her when he was ready.

  As she opened the door, she heard voices.

  The library was a big room, gracious and comfortable — usually. Tonight it was filled with shadow and a strange sense of something uncanny that prickled the back of her neck. White-shrouded furniture made eerie humped shapes like ghosts of bison. At the far end, by the light of the fire and a single jumping candleflame. Rap lounged at his ease in a big armchair. Facing him in another was the goblin.

  Automatically Inos turned to leave. Then she remembered her father saying that no one could eavesdrop on a sorcerer. She decided she had been summoned, so she stood and listened, her hand still on the handle.

  ". . . as queen," Rap said. "That will be tonight. I'd like a couple of days to see her settled."

  A couple of days?

  The goblin grunted and mumbled something at his big fists, which were clenched together on his knees.

  "No," Rap answered. "You can stay here and wait, if you like. Or come with us. It makes no difference. Just a couple of days, and then I'll be ready to keep my promise."

  Inos's hands began to shake.

  Little Chicken sat back and stared stonily at Rap. "You tell me now? Tell me what the big secret is? What you wouldn't say?"

  "I'll tell you after we get to Raven Totem. We'll have time, won't we? You'll need a few days to invite the neighbors to the barbecue." Rap chuckled at his own black humor, and shivers ran all over Inos.

  "No!"

  "No what, Death Bird?"

  "Don't want to be Death Bird. Don't want your promise anymore."

  Inos thought a silent prayer to the Gods — all the Gods!

  "You must become Death Bird!"

  "Don't want to kill you."

  "You must!" Rap sighed. "I suppose I do have to tell you. Remember the witch and the warlock used foresight on you? They saw your future. You have a destiny, and now I can see it, too. It's mind-boggling! There's no escaping a destiny like that one."

  "Tell!"

  "The imp with the fancy helmet? Yggingi. He did what no imp had ever done — he attacked your people in force. He marched through the taiga, looting and burning. The Impire has never done that before, Little Chicken, never! The legions go where there's loot to pay for their upkeep, and the north never had anything worth looting."

  His co
mpanion laughed, a heavy, brutal noise. "Goblins got mad?"

  "Did they ever!" Rap chuckled softly. "But it was a turning point. The Impire won't forget. This time they'll settle for holding the pass at Pondague and be happy with that. There will be peace, then — for a while. But the legions never forget a slight. They will be back!"

  "Goblins don't forget either. Be ready for them!"

  Rap rose and turned to stand with his back to the fire. He did not look at Inos, but of course he must know she was there. He was telling this to her, also. His face was shadowed, but it wouldn't show anything, anyway.

  "Yes, the goblins will be ready for them. The goblins may even move first — I haven't bothered to check exactly. But the goblins have got to start preparing soon, Little Chicken, my friend!"

  There was a thoughtful silence, then the harsh goblin voice said, "Prepare how?"

  "You're going to need all the men you can get. Warfare is a wasteful business."

  Grunt! from Little Chicken.

  "The goblins will have to change their ways, and soon, so that those boys can live and grow up to bear arms. They'll have to practice archery, and discipline, and marching. Above all, the tribes must be unified."

  There was a longer silence, then, before Rap went on, his voice hypnotic in the shadows. "The goblins need a leader, and that is the destiny that waits for you, Death Bird. You are the first goblin in years, perhaps the first in all history, to see the world beyond the taiga. No goblin has ever traveled as you have. Imps and jotnar and fairies and anthropophagi — you know them, and their ways. You've watched the legions training, you've seen their weapons."

  "Others have been fighting."

  "Throwing spears from behind trees. We're talking invasion over the pass now. We're talking a goblin kingdom."

  "Won't work," Little Chicken said flatly. "No tattoos! If paint tattoos on me, Sorcerer, won't work, either. Are like sailors, goblins . . . don't like sorcery. Magic tattoos fake!"

  "This is what I'm trying to tell you! You must earn your tattoos. Any man who wants to change old ways to new ways and make men follow him in new ways — that man has first got to show that he's mastered the old ways, so that people will listen. Not just goblins. That's true of all races, everywhere. So you must take me back to Raven Totem as a prisoner. You must win back your honor and earn your tattoos by putting me to death. You've got to make a good show — a fabulous show, one people will talk about for years, a fabled torturing."

  Inos fought down dizzying surges of nausea. She wanted to run, she wanted to scream, and she dared not move at all. She forced herself to listen, rooted by the sheer cold-blooded horror.

  "I promised you a good show," Rap added quietly. "And I'll keep my word. Days and days. They'll follow you then! You'll be chief of Raven Totem in a year. After that you can start preparing. You'll have to go slowly, and it'll take a long, long time. But one day you'll lead your nation over the pass and carry the war to the Impire."

  "Wanting that?" the goblin demanded, and Inos was wondering the same.

  "No, I don't, but I have no say in the matter. It's your destiny, and the way the world works. It's as unchangeable as past history. The Gods decide such things, not me."

  The goblin squirmed in his chair. "Won't! Don't want to kill you, Rap."

  "I thought I was Flat Nose?"

  "Use any Evil-begotten name you want!" Little Chicken barked, unexpectedly switching from goblin dialect to impish with a Nordland accent. "You're my friend now! I like you, Rap, admire you . . . Love you, I suppose! I can see where our ways were wrong. They're bad — not just for the victim, but for the whole goblin culture. I wish it could be stopped. I've given up torture, and there is absolutely no way I'd do those things to a friend! Never!"

  Inos released an audible gasp of relief and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Her legs wobbled. The men had not heard her cry out.

  "You must do it!" Rap insisted. Who could resist a sorcerer? "It is your destiny!"

  The goblin snarled something Inos missed, which was probably a nautical obscenity.

  "The Gods have given you a destiny, and I gave you my promise!"

  "God of Pus! Rot my destiny! I give you back your promise . . . don't even talk about it. You're making me ill!"

  Suddenly Rap laughed, and Inos marveled that his laughter sounded so familiar to her. She would have recognized it anywhere, but she could not remember the last time she had heard Rap laugh.

  "You big dumb green monster!" he said. "For weeks and weeks I tore my heart out to get one kind word out of you. Now you defy the Gods Themselves for my sake?"

  "For weeks and weeks," the goblin responded, "I could barely keep my thumbs out of your eyeballs! The only thing keeping me sane was the thought of all the lovely things I was going to do with your tripes eventually . . . but I've reconsidered, and decided to leave them where they are. For a nongoblin, you're quite likable trash, Rap."

  "You don't want to be king of the goblins?"

  Pause . . . "Not on those terms."

  "This is awful!" Rap said. "The innocent savage has been perverted by the vices of civilization. But here . . . if I'm Rap now, then this must be Flat Nose."

  The newcomer merged silently from the shadows behind the goblin's chair, although Inos was certain there had been no one there a moment earlier. Even so, she had more warning than Little Chicken, who sniffed suspiciously, looked over his shoulder, and then hurtled from his chair in a leap that carried him to the far side of the fireplace. He yelled, "Arrk!" as he went.

  There were two Raps present. The new one was a little shorter and slighter than the old, garbed in soiled buckskins. His filthy face was marred by a patchy beard. Inos could guess what he smelled like for she had met that Rap near Pondague in the spring. He stopped at the edge of the fire rug and just stood, wearing the same faint good-natured, vacant smile that she saw every day now on Angilki.

  "Sorcery!" the goblin hissed.

  "Yes," Rap said, studying the apparition. "It's not a real person — only the Gods can make those. But it's close enough for what you need. It will bleed, and writhe, and near the end it will start to scream. The only words it knows are 'Thank you.'"

  "Evil sorcery!" Little Chicken advanced a step or two and poked the simulacrum with a stubby finger. He peered into its unworried eyes.

  "Not evil from my point of view," Rap said. "Nor yours. There's no person in there, Death Bird. It will seem to suffer and die, but there's no mind, no soul. It'll last a long time."

  "I told you — I don't approve of torture anymore. Beside, it would be cheating!" He sounded tempted, though.

  "This is how you can put an end to the custom! You still remember all those wonderful ideas you had?"

  "Yes," Little Chicken admitted. "And I learned some really innovative stuff from Kalkor." He sounded almost wistful.

  "Then use them! A historic torment! It's necessary for your destiny. It's this or me, and I'd be grateful if you chose this one. And besides . . . it would probably be safer. I might get angry."

  Rap held out a hand. Little Chicken hesitated, then chuckled and took it. Inos was not quick enough to make out exactly what happened next, but Rap flew over the goblin's shoulder and landed on his back with an impact that shook the house. Little Chicken went down hard on top of him. Inos heard a few brief grunts and thumps, a small table went over loudly, and then it was the goblin who went spinning through the air, arching up from the floor like an arrow, passing completely over an armchair. He came down heavily, fortunately breaking his fall on the surrogate Rap, which had been standing immobile through all this, smiling emptily. Goblin and counterfeit crashed in a heap, and a muffled voice from underneath said, "Thank you!"

  The real Rap stood up, panting and straightening his clothes. "Want some more, Stalwart?"

  "Not fair!" a growl from the floor said. "Used magic!"

  "So did you — well, you used occult muscle, anyway. Now you've started breaking up my double there already. Get up an
d let me fix his leg."

  Something knotted in Inos's throat. This nonsense was probably a masculine way of dealing with emotion, but why could Rap laugh with Little Chicken when he could not laugh with her?

  The goblin guffawed and switched back to goblin dialect. "Was last chance for exercise." He bounced nimbly to his feet. "Start throwing my brothers around like that, will scream Sorcery! and use me for wall hangings . . . much as the little green savages deserve it. And you have no idea how I'm going to miss that good impish beer!"

  "That explains it, then," Rap said absently, peering down at the prostrate simulacrum. "I couldn't understand why your destiny was completely mundane, but it is. It seemed odd . . . I suppose it makes sense. You'll have to hide your strength. Men might hesitate to follow a superhuman into battle."

  He reached down a hand and helped the false Rap to its feet, where it stood in dutiful silence. The real men faced each other, amid a pause that swiftly became too long for comfort.

  "Full moon," Rap said softly. "Good traveling in the northlands."

  "Summon neighbors," Little Chicken agreed, but he still seemed indecisive.

  Again Rap held out a hand, then changed the gesture to a hug. The two men embraced.

  "Gods bless, Flat Nose."

  "The Good go with you," Rap said softly. "Buckskins? Grease? Phew! All right — I'll put you at the door to Raven Totem."

  Goblin and counterfeit faded and were gone.

  The casement's third prophecy would be fulfilled.

  Rap turned to the fire and leaned an arm along the mantel. For a moment he seemed to slump, but whether it was from relief or despair, Inos could not tell. Then he straightened and looked around for her. He bowed.

  "Good evening, your Majesty."

  Keep it formal.

  She strolled forward and tossed her heavy coat on a chair. The air bore a lingering stench of rancid bear grease. "Good evening, Court Sorcerer. And where have you been these last few days?"

  "Running in the woods with a goblin." Rap's face was between her and the light on the mantelpiece, and unreadable.