by Dave Duncan
His heart twisted. "You agree? This is what you want?"
"Oh, yes!" She choked back a sob. "Good-bye, Rap!"
Then she was gone, and he could relax again.
Almost. He kept having visions of Inos plunging into the flames to rescue him — crazy, impulsive Inos. And then he would remember Rasha's fearful solitary immolation, and her final despairing howl to Azak: Love!
A sorcerer could marry, but only a mundane. A mage might love a genius, or an adept another adept. Four words was the limit. Only mortals with his freakish control over power would not be destroyed by five.
But two people and five words of power plus love . . .
He put the terrible recipe out of his mind and rode on.
He decided to visit Death Bird on his way by. As he had foreseen, the goblin was chief of Raven Totem now. He'd challenged his father and won the hunters' vote that resulted. Then he'd disappointed everyone by letting the old man live instead of making an entertainment of him. It had been the first step in his revolution, and in his way Little Chicken was doing as well as Inos.
After that . . .
Rap didn't know what came after that. Endless wandering? More little good deeds here and there — minuscule, futile attempts to make the cruel world a little kinder? He had kept his promise to return to Krasnegar. Now he could see how that promise had been a lantern in the dark all the past year. There was no light ahead now.
Sharing more words with Inos had reduced his pain somewhat, but it was still there, and his craving for her was more intense than ever. How long before he went as mad as Kalkor or Bright Water?
He was a fool. He'd been a fool to heal the imperor. He'd been a fool to spare Zinixo in the Rotunda. And he'd been a paramount fool to make Inos a sorceress, for now only a single word separated them, and she was in great danger. Anywhere, anytime — a moment's distraction and he might find himself at her side, whispering.
So where could he go, what could he do? Power? Even if his words had been weakened, with five of them he was still a supersorcerer. He could do anything he wanted. Riches? Women? He could have all the women in the world, in unlimited numbers, make Andor look like an ascetic. The only one he wanted was out of reach.
He would never be in danger from any mundane peril, nor from sorcery, either, for the Four had obviously decided to leave him well alone. He had many empty centuries to look forward to, until he grew older than Bright Water.
Before noon he was riding through a narrow valley, following a dry streambed, with sere brown slopes rising gently on either hand to the drab hills. Horse and dog were thirsty, and he was hungry. He decided to take a break, conjure up some water and a meal.
Before he could act on that resolution, he felt an eerie awareness, an imminent sense of the numinous. He reined in Firedragon with a mental command and glanced around uneasily. Premonition burned hotter, the ambience began to writhe and shimmer, and finally blazed.
A God stood athwart his path, brighter than the sun.
Rap cursed silently. Stiff from riding, he slid from his saddle and sank to his knees before the towering figure. He bent his head in submission. He had already closed down his occult senses, for the power lashing the ambience was more than mortal mind could stand. Even his mundane eyes could not bear to look at that coruscating glory, although its light cast no shadows, nor brightened the hills.
Firedragon wandered off to graze.
"You must go back!" The voice was male, and thunderous.
"I do not wish to go back," Rap said, staring at the yellow grass.
"You are defying the Gods?"
Yes he was, so there was no point in saying anything.
"You are a fool!"
Yes again.
"You love her!"
"I do."
"And she loves you!"
Undoubtedly. And undoubtedly this was the God Who had appeared to Inos once, long ago, on that eventful day that ended their childhood.
"You are defying Us and spurning the destiny We chose for you both. Go back!"
Rap said, "No."
Risking a tiny glimmer of farsight, he saw the God put Their fists on Their hips in an oddly trivial gesture. A wave of divine fury washed the valley. Strange that the very grass did not burst into flame!
"You are a stubborn fool! You know the formula! You know why the casement could not prophesy for you? You know why the sorcerers could not foresee you?"
"I do." And he knew now what Bright Water had guessed from the inexplicable blocking.
"So you know why a God is always described as 'They'?"
"I do."
"We have promised you this, and you are defying Us!"
To be a sorcerer was bad enough. To be a God would be infinitely worse. Rap set his teeth and said nothing.
Apparently They decided that blustering was not going to work, for suddenly the God became soft, and feminine. The sunlike glare became suffused with pearl, the strident call to duty yielded to the appeal of love. They moved closer, until Their toes were within Rap's field of mundane vision. They made his eyes hurt, but he had never seen anything lovelier.
"Oh, Rap, Rap!" the voice said, gentle now, and coaxing. They sounded like his mother, and he felt tears of sudden anger start. "Is this fair to Inos?"
"She agreed. It is what she wants also."
"Maybe she agrees now, to humor you. How will she feel when she is old, when her beauty is gone and age begins to gnaw at her flesh? How will you feel when your manly strength fails you and your eyes water and your back aches? Will you both start patching yourselves with sorcery, like Bright Water, to load a few more years onto your brief span? Repent, Rap! Go back to Inos, Rap, so you can put on immortality together!"
Rap said, "No."
"Five words, Rap! Five words destroy, but when two people who love each other are armed with the strength of five words shared — those make a God. Few are the mortals given this chance."
Again he said nothing. There was evil in every good, and good in every evil. Bright Water had guessed, and tried to help him in her muddled way; tried to bribe a future God so she would have a friend at her weighing.
Suddenly there were more Gods, uncounted Gods, male and female both, blazing beauty all around, filling the dusty little valley with glory, so that the air rang with music and purity and love. The very sunlight seemed drab by contrast.
"Join us, Rap!" They chorused. "Your coming was ordained at the birth of the world. For centuries we have waited on you. Now the time is ripe, the prophecy fulfilled — be one with Inos and join us in glory for eternity!"
Rap said, "No!"
A great wail filled the whole world. "You can be any of Us, Rap. God of Love, God of War, God of Healing. Any of Us will step aside for you. Or be a new God. God of Horses, Rap?"
Rap said, "No."
Anger shook the hills, bringing maleness, stern and deadly, so that the company of Gods assumed a presence like a horde of armed warriors all around him, vast and mighty in Their wrath. Pearly glow became metallic glint, song became fanfare and beat of drum.
"We all must seek to aid the Good, Rap! Think of how a God can aid the Good, and how much They can accomplish; set that beside the trivial powers of a sorcerer. If you and Inos dedicate your whole mortal lives to serving mankind, you can hope to achieve nothing compared to what a God can achieve throughout eternity. Repent, and come!"
"What a God can achieve?" Rap yelled, wishing he could bear to look upon Them so he could pull faces. "Healing babies, relieving famines, stopping wars? Oh, very worthy! But who made the babies sick in the first place? Who blighted the crops and started the wars? When prayers are answered You expect thanks. When things go wrong anyway, that is because we mortals are wicked. You have the game stacked so You can score in both goals, can't you? The nice things are Your blessings, and the bad things are our sins. What do You do the rest of the time, when You're not answering prayers? You go around making trouble, and I don't know whether it's just for Your own am
usement or to humble us so You can —"
"silence!"
He waited for the lightning, but instead he felt a great loneliness and weariness.
"We love you, Rap. We have been waiting for you. Your troubles are over now. Join with Inos and come to us and never again will you —"
Rap said, "No!"
He felt terror . . .
"Gods are not mocked, Rap! Fear what judgment will come upon you if you deny Us now!"
Rap said, "No! I will not go back to Inos. Slay me if You choose, but I am not going back. I do not wish to be more than human. I shall live and die a mortal, and Inos also."
He felt fury — and then sudden despair.
"No more time!" one of the Gods cried. "Look, Rap! Look at what Inosolan is doing!"
Rap sought out Krasnegar with farsight. He saw the castle as a great shielded blank, except for the chamber of puissance at the very top. He saw the steep little town all spread out below it, with every corner visible to him. He saw the people like ants, scurrying up the streets and alleys, and then he heard the great bell booming, summoning them to the castle.
Inos! What was she planning?
"Hurry, Rap! Go back and stop her before it is too late!"
She would kill herself! For a moment his resolution wavered, and he felt the rising surge of joy and triumph from the Gods assembled.
No! "I won't!" he said.
For a moment he really thought They were going to slay him. He fell forward to the ground as Their rage roared and buzzed around him; but then it slowly sharpened to a howling dirge of farewell, fading away in echoes of eternal sorrow for his folly.
So much for immortality.
He was alone in the valley, lying on the grass. Firedragon was peaceably munching. Fleabag had lain down to lick his paws, and the Gods had gone.
And Inos, crazy Inos! . . . She would kill herself. It was impossible!
He staggered to his feet, and just for a moment he hesitated. He could move himself to the castle yard. He could run in through the gate; he could flash instantly to the Great Hall.
He could stop her.
No!
It was her decision. This was why she had demanded two more words. She had guessed why a God was called "They."
Two people and five words, plus love . . . She felt as he did. But what she planned was humanly impossible! To tell a word of power to one person was an agonizing experience. To tell it to more than one was unbearable — he recalled how he had been unable to share a word with Rasha when Azak had been close enough to hear.
Then why had the Gods been worried?
No! He would not interfere.
The world shimmered around him and seemed to darken. He cried out with a rending sense of loss. Inos!
She was doing it! She would kill herself.
Frantically he ran to his horse and scrambled into the saddle. He turned Firedragon's head to the north and dug in his heels. And even as he did so, the world shimmered again, and shrank, and darkened about him. He groped for the ambience and it had gone.
Inos knew four of the five words he knew — and she was destroying them.
8
A mundane could not travel as a sorcerer did, and his return took many hours.
Long before dark he saw the storm clouds gathering; snow began to fall at sunset, out of a lurid, blood-soaked sky. He wondered if the Gods were about to level punishment for his defiance. He rode on without a pause, into the fury of an arctic storm.
Inos had done what she planned. Four of his words of power were gone, and he was thrown back to where he had been before he became an adept.
He still had farsight, a poor mockery of a sorcerer's vision, but enough to follow the trail through the hills and lead him on to Krasnegar, even in driving snow and dense dark. That morning the world had been spread before him, all Pandemia; now his range was less than a league, a tiny patch of grass and scrub surrounded by nothing. He could not see what was happening in the town, and that was torture. He knew Inos had survived the destruction of three words, because he had felt them all go, but had she managed to survive the fourth? Even if she lived, what might such torment have done to her mind?
He still had his mastery for animals, and he used it to coax every possible hoofbeat out of poor old Firedragon. The stallion was game and stout-hearted. His breath froze around his nostrils, his hooves thumped the hard earth, and he strained his utmost for his friend Rap. The younger, stronger Evil could have done no more.
Somewhere on that long mad ride, Fleabag was lost. Probably the dog had just fallen from exhaustion, for Rap would have seen a wild pack pull him down. If so, he would recover. He would follow later if he chose, or else head south to the forest and survive in wolfish ways.
Rap had no idea how far he must travel, but he knew he must catch the night ebb tide or die before dawn. He drove his mount as he had never believed he could treat a horse, but his plight was desperate. Now he had no power to keep himself warm, or shorten his journey, or deflect hunger and fatigue. He was not dressed for the climate; he had brought no food.
Mostly he rode almost prone, leaning his face against his horse's lathered neck, with one hand wrapped in his mane for warmth and the other covering his exposed ear. Every few minutes he would change sides. This was an ordeal to test a goblin, and it would have quickly killed a purebred faun. He especially cursed his inadequate boots, fearing he would lose his toes.
Caked with snow, man and horse pressed onward.
He was so battered and weary that he failed to register the shore cottages when they came within his range. At first his dulled wits tried to interpret them as strange rock formations. Then he recognized the sea beyond and saw that the flood was well underway. He was too late to cross the causeway before morning.
He let Firedragon slow to a walk and headed numbly for shelter. The workers would have fled to town when they saw the storm coming, and there would be nothing there to sustain him. Then his farsight detected a fire, and a man dozing beside it. Furthermore, there were horses in one of the new stables.
At the cottage door, Rap fell from the saddle and just lay. He could not rise, but the man inside had heard the hooves even over the noise of the wind. The door swung open in a blaze of firelight, and he came shuffling out to help. He dragged Rap inside and swathed him in a blanket by the hearth.
Rap's head spun giddily with the aftereffects of cold. His heart pumped nausea through every vein, and pain besides. He shivered so hard he could barely sip at the steaming mug the old hostler thrust into his hand.
Hononin took Firedragon to the stable to rub him down and bed him with the other horses. One of those others was Evil, but he was well tethered, and Firedragon himself was much too weary to make trouble.
Shadows leaped over the rough stone walls and the dirt floor. The wind howled around the slates, and blew puffs of eye-watering smoke into the little cottage. In the distance surf pounded the shingle.
Then the old man returned to kneel at Rap's feet and rub his toes with horny hands in exquisite torture. By then Rap was just able to speak.
"How is she?" he croaked.
"Don't know," the hostler said in his usual grumpy fashion. "I been here since afternoon. But she wasn't in good shape when I left." He took the mug from Rap's shaking hand and refilled it with more soup from the pot on the hob.
"She said you'd be coming," he muttered. "Called me in while the bell was still ringing. Said you might be coming soon." He shook his head wonderingly. "She's got quite a way to her, for such a slip of a girl. She looks at a man with those green eyes! Suddenly whatever else he wants to do just don't seem important any more. After, I wondered if she'd just gone crazy. Decided I'd better come see, anyhows. There was only one road you could come, and I figured you'd need a change of mount at the least."
"You're a good m-m-man. Master Hononin!" Rap said through his insanely chattering teeth. "How long t-t-till the t-tide?" His farsight showed the causeway, but the ink-dark sea ran sw
iftly over it, driven by the rising wind.
"Near to noon. You've got lots of time to sleep. I ought to go check again on that old plug you were riding."
"He's d-d-done me p-p-proud!" Rap agreed, his words almost lost in the clattering of ivory.
" 'Stonishingly like a stallion we've got up in the castle."
"That's j-just your imagination. How's that big black to ride?"
"Murder. Just brought him along for the outing. Think you could handle him?"
"Likely. Tell me about Inos."
"Well, she's queen now. You know that?" The old man peered sourly at Rap with rheumy eyes. "Met a fellow once, couple a' years ago, near enough. Came to my door one morning. Looked just like you, 'cept he had goblin tattoos around his eyes. Was running with a goblin, too."
"We fauns get around," Rap said uneasily. The explanations he was going to need!
Hononin grunted. "Sailors last summer . . .brought some odd tales of goings-on in Hub. Seems there was a faun sorcerer —"
"I'm not a sorcerer!" Rap sniggered. Joy! The burden had gone. "I am not a sorcerer!" He grinned at the old man and caught a faint answering smile.
"You don't dress well for the climate, you know that? Meet many other travelers in the forest?"
"I'll tell you everything tomorrow, I swear!" Rap mumbled. "Tell me about Inos!"
The old man left off torturing Rap's feet and threw more driftwood on the fire. "Today . . . No, yesterday. It's morning now. She had the great bell rung, so everyone went running up to the castle to see . . ."
It had happened much as Rap had feared. Typically, Inos must have acted at once, as soon as he had departed. Having summoned as many of her subjects as she could assemble in one place — not in the Great Hall, though, but out in the bailey which was larger — she had climbed on the wall by the armory steps and had shouted out her words of power for all to hear. She had fainted after the third and been rushed indoors by the housekeeper and the seneschal. But she had rallied before the people could disperse and had insisted on going out to them again and destroying her fourth word, as well. No one knew what gibberish she had been trying to say. Krasnegarians in general had no knowledge of the words of power, and if any of those present had any inkling, they had not explained to the others. She was assumed to have had a brainstorm.