by Dave Duncan
He hauled on the reins and slammed to a halt with his feet only fingerlengths above the floor. Ugh! — he had almost lost his insides. He let himself down until his boots were on the floor, somewhat surprised that it was not paved with flattened predecessors. Then he reeled through the doorway, clearing a landing place for the next fugitive. He gave himself a large jolt of calming spell, bringing his heart out of its hysterics and buttressing his quivering knees. He was standing at the start of a very long, very narrow tunnel. Extremely long — he could barely detect an end to it, and he had no idea how far away that end was.
He flashed a light to tell Raspnex he was ready.
He hoped his reflexes would prove fast enough. He could barely see the glimmer of fire at the top of the shaft, and the shielding blocked his farsight.
Seconds passed, then something blocked the light overhead and Ylo was there. Rap caught him in time, but he impacted harder than Rap intended, grunting as the weight of the breastplate descended on his shoulders. He toppled forward, enveloped in a flurry of wolfskin. Rap steadied him and pulled him out of the shaft.
Grinning, the signifer fumbled to adjust his cloak and hood. “That was invigorating!” he said with approval. Obviously the warlock had applied a calming spell. “Where in the Name of Evil am I?” Eerie echoes crawled away into the distance.
“Sorry!” Rap said, and created light. “Now get out of the way!”
Ylo squeezed past him, leaving him ready for the next arrival. The tunnel would be single file, barely wide enough for a dwarf’s shoulders and a tight fit for a troll — and Rap snatched old Count Ionfeu out of we air. This game required strict attention.
One by one the mundanes appeared, only seconds apart. Soon Ylo had vanished into the distance at the head of the line. They were all quite relaxed, chattering about the interesting experience. Little Maya was awake and laughing, demanding that her father do that again. Lord Umpily was not quite as heavy as he looked, Countess Eigaze even heavier. Sagorn made a very undignified arrival in his voluminous robe, but he was too engrossed in events to care.
And then came Raspnex, smirking evilly. “You didn’t miss any, I see.”
Flashes at the top of the shaft showed that the battle was raging more fiercely than ever, so obviously the four votaries were being left behind to cover the warlock’s departure. Dwarves hated to part with anything, and Raspnex’s ruthless sacrifice of his forces showed how desperate the situation was.
The mundanes’ voices were becoming louder and shriller as the calming spells wore off.
“Quiet!” the warlock roared, and the deep bellow rolled away along the tunnel, leaving a twittering silence. “I’ll shift you in fours. Move out of the way as soon as you arrive!”
Ylo, Ionfeu, Eigaze, and Eshiala all vanished from the head of the line. The tunnel curved. Rap noted, and was heavily shielded. It must lie far belowground.
“Is this new?” he asked quietly. “Dwarf work?”
“Dwarf work, certainly, but not new.”
“Then Zinixo —”
“But it doesn’t end where he thinks it does,” Raspnex chortled. “It changed course recently.”
Shandie and his daughter disappeared, Umpily and Hardgraa, also.
The witch of the west must have approved this alteration to her palace. It could have been done any time in the years since Zinixo had been driven out, but the devious thinking was not trollish. Dwarves made good accomplices in a jailbreak. Rap decided.
Then power enveloped him. With Sagorn, Acopulo, and Raspnex himself, he was translated to the far end of the tunnel, and a rocky, underground chamber.
Here was troll work — massive stone walls and a high corbeled ceiling. Under a ghostly blue light of no visible source, the fugitives were standing around the walls, shocked now into silence. A flight of stone stairs spiraled up to the roof in the center of the chamber. It seemed to have no purpose whatsoever, but Rap detected a break in the shielding there and guessed that the next move was going to be tricky. The paving was wet, the air chill. Water was dripping somewhere.
A woman in dark, heavy work clothes had joined the group. She was taller than anyone present except Sagorn, and the white-gold hair bound on the crown of her head made her seem even taller. As impish women tended to stoutness in middle age, jotunn women were inclined to become scraggy. This one was neither old nor young. Her bare shins and feet showed that she was a sailor; her rawboned form was powerful, almost masculine, and yet she was still handsome enough to catch a man’s eye. She would be capable of blacking it, too.
She had identified him, the royal faun. She nodded respectfully. He returned the nod, noting the shimmer of the loyalty spell on her. He wondered if she knew how her fellow votaries were being so callously squandered this night.
“Jarga,” Raspnex said, half to her and half as an introduction to Rap. “Everything well?”
Her grim features softened in affection. “Well, master.”
“Test it once more.”
Without a word, Jarga elbowed Hardgraa aside like a cotton drape and marched over to the stairs. Her head vanished before it reached the roof. The rest of her followed, with her big, horny feet being the last to go. Several of the mundanes moaned.
Rap was impressed, though. “Beautiful work, again!” he said to Raspnex. There had been hardly a shimmer in the ambience. “Yours?”
The dwarf shook his big head. “Grunth herself.” He sighed. “Grimrix would have done it even better. I’m going to miss that kid.”
Faint tremors of power were filtering down through the gap in the shielding, so at least one of the struggles was still in progress. Almost certainly Grimrix would have been overcome by now, so he would be fighting on the other side, as fanatically loyal to Zinixo as he had been to Raspnex. Perhaps he was already using his might against the defenders at the palace. And when that fell, the Covin would gain four sorcerers more.
A moment later, Jarga reappeared down the magic staircase. “All clear,” she said aloud. There was a sprinkle of fresh snow on her broad shoulders.
“Come on then, all of you,” the dwarf rumbled. He looked weary. They all did.
Jarga ascended again, with the dwarf rolling after her. Rap waved the others on. Again Ylo led the mundanes, so perhaps he regarded himself as the most expendable. He vanished systematically, from wolf’s head to sandals. Hardgraa followed him.
Sagorn stepped closer to Rap. “Have you any idea where we are, your Majesty?” he inquired. His pale face bore a livid hue in the spooky light.
“Under Cenmere, I think.”
The jotunn gulped.
“After you, Doctor,” Rap said, and brought up the rear.
* * *
At the top of the stairs, he emerged on the snow-covered deck of a barge — anchored, but rolling slightly under his boots. Waves slapped, ropes creaked. Although his eyes could see nothing at all, he sensed that he was a long way offshore. The two sorcerers were helping the mundanes climb overboard. Even as Rap arrived, the imperor clambered over the rail and then turned around to accept his daughter. Beyond him, Ylo, Hardgraa, Lady Eigaze, and Ionfeu were similarly suspended on nothing but a layer of snow. A couple of buckets hung near them, and farsight also detected some recently replaced ropes and snowy furled sails overhead. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Rap began to make out the fabric of the shielded vessel tied alongside.
Very clever! Who would ever suspect a dwarf of escaping by boat? And once it was cast off, it could drift away unseen over the great freshwater sea. When the fugitives went belowdecks, even they would be undetectable to sorcery. Unless the use of the magic stairs had been noted, Raspnex had achieved the impossible.
Rap headed for the rail, but he declined Jarga’s offer of assistance. “I’m not all faun,” he said. “Count me as crew.”
Despite the knee-deep snow, she was still barefoot. “Not much need for crew, King, but thanks.”
Rap paused, taking a last scan before guiding his companions to t
he companionway. His farsight was too weak to inspect the city in detail, although he could tell where it was. The ambience was another matter. Once he had been able to sense power in use at the ends of the world. His range was pitifully limited now, yet there was enough power still crackling around the roof of the Red Palace to illuminate some detail for him. The roof-garden fire had spread to two of the towers. Badly outmatched, the defenders had retreated to some inner layer of shielding. Under the attackers’ blows, the ambience shook like a tablecloth in the hands of a spring-cleaning housewife.
Nothing to the south…
Then, as he started to walk across the deck, the south erupted. Fury blazed in the ambience. He staggered at the mental din, the pain. He sensed buildings collapsing like soap bubbles — several blocks of buildings, men crushed, burning, terror, death…
Much death!
Raspnex swung around with a cry. “Grimrix!”
There could be no doubt what that conflagration had signified. The young votary had refused to let himself be turned. He had stayed loyal to the death.
Burning deck:
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck.
Shone round him o’er the dead…
There came a burst of thunder sound;
The boy, — Oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds, that far around,
With fragments strewed the sea.
Felicia Hemans, Casablanca
TWO
Newer world
1
In Krasnegar, in midwinter, daylight was a brief something that happened sometimes. When it did appear, it came at noon, long after the day’s work had begun, but often it was so muffled by the weather that no one noticed it at all. Jotunn faces grew as pale as the ash-blond hair around them — or on them — and the imps pined. Jotnar and imps alike bore lanterns everywhere they went, mingling whale oil reek with the peat smoke of the fires. Shadows jumped and danced, but no one who took fright at shadows had any business living in Krasnegar.
The great hall of the castle was normally a very shadowy place, lit mainly by one or more of the huge hearths along the kitchen end, but it could shine brightly enough on special occasions, such as royal birthdays. Now the darkness had been driven away. Pages were lighting candles and lamps; crystal and silverware sparkled on the high table. A whole sheep sizzled on a spit. In an hour or so, Prince Gath and Princess Kadie would be entertaining their friends at a formal dinner. “To celebrate the beginning of their fifteenth year” was how Kadie had described the event on the invitations. That had sounded more grown-up than “fourteenth birthday.”
She had confessed to her mother that a grand ball would have been more appropriate, but her men friends were mostly poor dancers. Inos could have told her that boys of that age were strongly resistant to dancing with girls taller than themselves, but she had merely agreed that a dinner was probably better. The boys would be in favor of a dance next year — Kadie probably had it planned already.
All morning she had been organizing, ordering, rearranging. Mostly the servants had ignored her and gone about their business with practiced efficiency. Now Inos had come to inspect the table.
Rotund Master Ylinyli loomed discreetly in the background, smiling quietly through a coal-black mustache that would have impressed a walrus. The major-domo would be recalling a similar fourteenth birthday dinner held here some twenty years ago — recalling how thrilled the guests had been to be treated like gentry, served by footmen, and how he had eaten too much and so made a terrible fool of himself.
“Very nice,” Inos said, “but what are those for?”
“They’re wineglasses, Mama.”
“I think I knew that, actually. You plan to drink lime punch out of my best crystal?”
“But, Mama!”
“No wine, Kadie.”
Kadie’s face was stricken with intimations of disaster. “But I promised them!”
“That was not wise.”
Two sets of green eyes locked, in rebellion and tyranny respectively. Tyranny won.
“Beer?” Kadie asked disconsolately.
“No beer, either.”
“Not even to drink my… our… health? A toast…”
“Fruit punch.” If her daughter only knew it, Inos thought, a punch made from the carefully preserved supply of fruit that kept Krasnegarians healthy during the winter would cost considerably more than wine.
Kadie flounced around to hide her annoyance, swirling the train on her gown and almost overbalancing. The gown was the day’s gift from her parents, but the royal jewel box had been looted without permission. Again. Ylinyli caught the queen’s eyes and smirked knowingly into his mustache — the wineglasses would be removed.
“That is your present to Gath?” Inos said, pointing to a baggy parcel. “Shouldn’t you hide it until later?”
Kadie squirmed slightly. “It’s no use hiding it from him! No use even wrapping it, even. He probably knows already. I thought I ’d give it to him before the guests arrive.”
“As you please, dear.” Of course Gath would know what a parcel contained an hour or two before he unwrapped it, but that was not what was bothering Kadie.
“Well, it was expensive,” she explained, “and I wouldn’t want any of them to feel that their offerings were, er, inferior by comparison.”
“Very tactful of you,” Inos said.
The gift in question was a tattered copy of The Kidnapped Princess of Kerith, a torrid romance of great age, illustrated with faded hand-tinted woodcuts. Kadie had discovered it in a shabby little junk shop near the harbor, and coveted it greatly. Only by proclaiming it her birthday gift to Gath had she managed to wheedle enough money out of her mother to buy it.
She had undoubtedly read it from cover to cover several times already, and Gath would be fortunate if he managed to hang on to it for the rest of the week. He had very little interest in books anyway. This one was obviously a present from Kadie to Kadie. Her friends would know that, which was why she wanted it safely out of sight before they arrived.
And at some private time, later, their mother might — or might not — explain how enormously valuable that antique volume would be back in the Impire, and how Gath could trade it to some impish ship’s captain for many times what it had cost his sister. Kadie would be aghast. Sometimes Inos let her sense of humor overrule her better judgment, and that was the only reason she had agreed to the charade in the first place.
She wished Rap was around to share the joke. She wished Rap was around for many, many reasons. She wished she was not so worried about him.
“Do you know what Gath’s giving me?” her daughter asked offhandedly.
“No, dear.”
“He’s very secretive!” Kadie complained, failing to hide her disappointment. If her mother did not know, then Gath must have financed the gift out of his allowance. Gath was invariably broke, proverbially hopeless with money. “Well, this is very nice,” she remarked cheerfully, admiring the table. “Real flowers would be even better, of course. If only Papa were here!…”
“Whatever do you mean?” Inos said icily. Gath’s premonition was common knowledge, but official doctrine in Krasnegar was that the king was not a sorcerer, and Ylinyli had notoriously sharp ears.
“Oh… nothing. I must go and redo my fingernails. Do you think the ruby earrings would be better?”
“Those are lovely, dear, and here’s your chance to give Gath his present.”
Winter pale, gangly as a tent pole, Gath was advancing along the hall, keeping his hands behind him. Inos looked him over approvingly. He had inherited, or copied, his father’s dislike of formal dress, but today he had donned his best blue doublet and beige hose without even arguing — her babies were growing up! He had also inherited his father’s unruly hair, although it was jotunnish fair instead of faunish brown. His efforts to tame it had produced something that resembled a lodged ba
rley field. He was wearing his usual contented smile.
Kadie registered that he was holding something behind his back. She stiffened like a bird dog.
“I have a present for you, Gath,” she said brightly, and hastened to fetch the misshapen bundle.
“That’s very kind of you! Thank you!” He sniggered. “Funny old pictures, aren’t they?”
Kadie shot her mother a what-did-I-tell-you look and waited expectantly, holding out the parcel.
“You really didn’t need to wrap it up.” Gath was making no move to take it.
“It is customary!” his sister snapped.
“Aren’t you going to accept it, dear?” Inos prompted.
He beamed, obviously very pleased with himself and much more interested in whatever he was planning than in the book. “Don’t want to drop it. I’d need both hands. But it’s very nice. Kadie, I decided that since you were giving me my present now, I’d give you yours.”
His sister hastily laid the parcel back on the table, unable to conceal her impatience. “Well, I’m not a seer, so you’ll have to let me look at it before I can thank you.”
“I just wanted to explain,” Gath said slowly, “how I couldn’t wrap it, because I couldn’t think of a way to hide its shape. You’d guess what it was right away.” His grin was pure torture now.
Kadie glared. “At least that would make two of us!”
He nodded. Unable to think up any more delays, he dramatically produced a slim, shiny sword, laying the blade across his forearm, proffering the hilt to her. “Happy birthday!”
Kadie somehow managed to squeal and gasp at the same time. “Oh, Gath! It’s gorgeous!”
A flourish of steel flashed in the candlelight, and it was Inos’ turn to squeal. “Careful!”
“It’s all right. Mother!” Kadie said scornfully. “A real rapier! Oh!, Gath! Where did you get it?” She threw her spare arm around him and kissed him — to everyone’s astonishment.