Magic Casement

1

Even to Krasnegar, spring came eventually. The hills were white and uninhabited yet, and the causeway still poulticed with crumpled ice floes and drifts, but brave men had trodden a footpath across it already, and a few more weeks would see the horses and cattle staggering back to the mainland.

There was no moon. Pale auroras danced in the sky like giant ghosts as Rap and Little Chicken emerged from one of the shore cottages, yawning and shivering in the dregs of sleep. A man could barely see his feet in that uncertain glimmer.

Rap took a few deep breaths of the frigid air, welcoming the familiar salty tang of the sea and the distant crackling of the tide wrestling ice. Then he turned to his companion. He had made this offer at the end of the forest, but he would try once more.

“I release you, Little Chicken. You have paid any debt you owe me many times over. Go back to your people.”

“I am your trash,” said the stubborn whisper from the darkness. “I look after you.”

“You can’t help me here! I am in grave danger, but you cannot help, and you will be in danger, also. Go, with my gratitude.”

“I look after you. Later I kill you.”

So the Gods had still not given the signal. Rap shrugged unseen. “You may have to be quick, if you want to be the first. Come on, then.”

He began to run. When they reached the causeway itself, though, he was forced down to a walk, steering entirely with his farsight, and at times Little Chicken had to hold his shoulder to stay with him in a heavy, dense dark-like blankets. They were halfway across before Rap remembered bears. This was a bad time for them, but now he had so much trust in his farsight that he was certain none lurked in the vicinity.

It had been a bad winter. Below the ice there had been much damage to the stonework, although no one else could have known.

Somewhere behind them in the moors, the imp army was camped. Rap had stayed a couple of days ahead of it all the way, and the journey had been far, far worse than his trip south. While the cold had been less severe, the snow had been deeper and stickier, the winds stronger. Worse yet, Rap and Little Chicken had traveled as heralds of disaster, croaking ravens prophesying war. The imps had burned every goblin village within reach of the road. Had the warnings not flown ahead of them, they would undoubtedly have massacred the inhabitants, also. The people of the first village had died, all of them, from patriarch to newborn. Inos' journey back to her homeland had been marked by pillars of smoke, by women and children fleeing out into the wasteland, by precious foodstocks pillaged, by unprovoked and unnecessary rampage. The leader of the imps, the one with the fancy helmet, was certainly an utter madman. What he sought to gain, Rap could not guess, nor why Inos had allowed it. He could only assume that she had been powerless to stop the destruction.

The wagon road to Pondague had been sealed behind her, for in future the goblins would brook no travel on it. No force less than a full army could traverse the taiga now. No more would trains amble north in summer with supplies. Krasnegar would suffer and its way of life become harder even than before. Madness!

Only once had Rap and Little Chicken departed from the trail. They had made a wide detour around Raven Totem, sending the words of warning by goblin messengers, running double shifts to catch the army again on the far side.

And now he was home. Rap emerged from the travail of the causeway onto the dock road, dark and deserted, swept clean by the wind. He swung up the bar on the gate. Those gates would stop white bears, but not impish legionaries. Once inside he began to trot again, out of old habit, with Little Chicken and Fleabag at his heels. Dawn would come in an hour or so. Soon the town would be stirring. He headed for the nearest stairway.

What did the imp army want of Krasnegar? Did it come to put Inos on her throne and defend her against the jotnar, or did it come to loot? Would it treat the town as it had treated the goblin villages? Certainly it could not be stopped short of the castle itself, and there would not be enough food in the castle to withstand a siege. Indeed, a former factor’s clerk could guess that there would not be even enough food in the city for an additional two thousand hungry men. The crops and the grain ships were months away yet, the wagon road impassable.

Rap scanned each corner and branching carefully. In Krasnegar the law said that horse thieves were to be hanged.

He had planned to bring the horses back. He had expected to return with a grateful Inos, heir presumptive or already queen. Most of all, he had been mesmerized by Andor.

Andor! Rap could not think of Andor without baring his teeth. What that sorcerer had done to Rap was bad enough, but he had also used his power on Inos, and that was unforgivable. She would have been as helpless to resist Andor as Fleabag was to refuse Rap himself.

An early riser emerged from a doorway two corners ahead. Rap took cover in a doorway and waited, puffing gently, hearing Little Chicken doing the same beside him, and Fleabag’s noisy pant.

“You run good, forest boy,” Rap whispered. Little Chicken grunted quietly, but angrily. Rap smiled into the darkness. Goblins were not accustomed to stairs.

The town man vanished into another door and Rap set off again, his companions following the tap of his moccasins on the cobbles and steps. He had spent many hours planning this return, thinking while running, wondering whom he would seek out, reviewing all those childhood friends who had turned aside when he had demonstrated occult powers. His final choice had surprised him greatly.

He was approaching the castle. He could, if he wanted, run right in through the gates, for no guard was ever posted there, except in summer when there were strangers in town. Krasnegar had sheltered too long behind the diplomatic skill of its king, a skill buttressed by a word of power.

If Holindarn was still alive to tell Inos that word, would it serve her in the same way? Rap had not thought to wonder what change the word would produce in Inos. What was her great talent? Not diplomacy! Gaiety? Zest? Beauty?

Perhaps beauty. He would never forget her as he had seen her in the forest, unexpectedly sprung from the child he remembered to glorious woman, a slender wood nymph in a malachite cloak, with hints of golden hair inside the hood, green eyes shining in her winter-pale face. He wept himself to sleep with that memory.

Inos with her beauty augmented by magic would be a goddess. She was close enough now.

And so he thought again of Andor, baring his teeth. He had plans for Andor that he had never thought he could have for any man. Almost, Rap could think of turning him over to Little Chicken.

They stopped in an alleyway by a door and waited for their hearts to slow and breathing to calm. Nothing like a few months' running to put a man in shape, even for running up Krasnegar.

Rap scanned, sensing the small apartment of two rooms and a kitchen. There was a communal toilet on the other side of the alley, behind Rap. The owner was up and dressed, kneeling by his fireplace. His wife and children had died years ago, in the same pestilence that had killed Rap’s mother, and he had lived alone ever since. Rap had never been invited into this tiny home; he knew no one who ever had.

He tapped.

Hostler Hononin looked around in surprise and then heaved himself to his feet. His feet were bare and his shirt hung down unfastened over his pantaloons and hose. His face was weather-beaten, lumpy, and wizened, and his stoop thrust his head forward aggressively. The tangle of gray curls around his bald spot was still rumpled by sleep; he appeared even more surly than usual as he padded over to the door.

“Who’s there?” His voice was loud enough to make Rap jump.

Rap tapped again, reluctant even to whisper his name.

The little man scowled, then opened the door a crack—it had not been locked—and light jumped in Rap’s face, dazzling him.

“Oh, great Gods, boy!” Hononin recoiled. “By the Powers! Rap!” He was stunned. Then he pulled the door wide. “Quick! Come in before anyone sees you! And who the hell is this?”

Then they were all inside and the door closed. Hononin choked and put a hand over his mouth.

“Sorry, sir. It’s bear grease. It keeps the cold out.”

The old man looked him over, then the others. Fleabag sniffed suspiciously at him. Little Chicken was staring around the little room, his odd-shaped eyes stretched by alarm and claustrophobia.

“Did you tell her?” the hostler mumbled, through his fingers.

“She’s coming. Tomorrow.”

As his eyes adjusted to the light, Rap glanced curiously around the room. He had been gone so long that furniture seemed very strange to him—the table and two wooden chairs in the middle, and a big, overstuffed chair near the fire, with its insides falling out. Crude sketches of horses hung on the bare plank walls. One candle in a bone candlestick threw a wavering light over a heap of old tack in one corner and a small bench with saddler tools. A threadbare rug… Cozy enough in its way, though.

The old man nodded. “Good.”

“He’s still alive?”

“So they say.”

Rap breathed a deep sigh. That was what he had wanted most—that she be able to say good-bye.

Hononin retched again and backed away. “You stink like you’ve been bathing in the honey pit. I’ve got some soap somewhere I’ve been saving. Ever used soap?”

“Once or twice, sir.”

“Use it good. Need hot water. Get those rags off.” He headed for his kitchen and soon a loud clanking told that he was working the pump. Rap began unlacing and instantly Little Chicken had knocked his hands away and started doing it for him. Rap knew better than to resist; his last attempt had given him a sprained wrist.

Hononin returned with a bucket and stopped to stare at this valet service. “Who the hell is he?”

“He’s a goblin, sir.”

“I can see that, idiot! And what are all those marks on your face? You gone goblin, too? Burn those rags—they’ll help heat the water, and maybe get the stink out of here. His, too. You undress him now or does he do it himself? You’ve grown, lad. You leave any spare clothes behind in that room of yours? No, they wouldn’t fit you now anyway. I’ll go and see what I can find.”

“This is good of you, sir,” Rap said, naked now and bundling up his buckskins.

“Damn sure it is! You’ll hang certain if Foronod finds you. So you stay here and get cleaned up. Here’s the soap. Use it all. Filthy putrid pair, you are. And a lousy wolf. You didn’t bring them back, did you?”

He meant the horses. Rap shook his head.

“Pity. Might’a let you off with a flogging.”

Hononin thrust feet into boots. He grabbed his doublet from a peg, banged the door, and was gone.

It was a long while before the old man returned, and faint gleams of daylight were leaking in around the curtains. People paraded up and down the alley, greeting one another in Rap’s native tongue and making his heart ache with it.

A long while… but it took all that time to remove the grease, even with soap and sand and hot water. Little Chicken resisted and argued, complying only when Rap explained that the smell would be investigated, and then the townsfolk would find Rap and kill him.

For the first time since Winterfest, Rap found a mirror. His own face was a shock to him, the face of a stranger. He did not think it was a boy looking back at him as he wielded Hononin’s razor against some quite impressive stubble; illogically, he was pleased by the stubble and yet disgusted to see how furry fauns' legs could be when they were not smeared with grease. They were not the legs he had departed on. These were hairier and much thicker, while his face was hairier and thinner.

Fleabag had discovered Hononin’s breakfast and eaten all of it except the butter, which Little Chicken had rescued. He wanted to smear Rap with it.

Then the hostler thrust his gnarled face around the door to warn his guests that he had a lady with him; but the guests already knew that and had taken cover in the bedroom. So he tossed a bundle of clothes in at Rap and went back to the front room to wait until they appeared. That took time, also, as Little Chicken would neither let Rap dress himself nor listen to an explanation of how hose worked. Little Chicken was going to be a large liability in Krasnegar.

At last Rap was ready and could go in. He had already identified the visitor—Mother Unonini, the palace chaplain. Rap knew her, but they had never spoken. Under a trickle of morning daylight, she seemed as forbidding as midnight.

She was a tall, stern woman in her black gown, sitting as straight as was possible in the overstuffed chair by the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap. She returned a nod to Rap’s clumsy bow and looked him over without revealing her conclusions.

“Eat first, talk later.” The hostler pointed to the table. Rap had already scented the hot loaves and his mouth was watering. Bread! He sat down and began to gorge. In a few minutes Little Chicken came in and scowled horribly at the sight of a woman with her head bared. Mother Unonini flinched at a man with his shirt open which was not the goblin’s fault, for all the buttons had already popped off. Rap managed a two-dialect introduction with his mouth full.

Little Chicken did not approve of bread, but he was hungry, also. He helped himself to a meal and sat on the floor to eat it. The hostler chuckled and took the third chair.

“Perhaps you can eat and listen, though.” The chaplain had a hard, masculine voice. “I shall bring you up to date first, Master Rap, and then…” She frowned. “I do not care for nicknames. What is that short for?”

“Just Rap,” said Rap.

That was not strictly true, for his real name was a great, long incomprehensible chant that he never used. He supposed it was a Sysanasso name. “Never tell your real name to anyone,” his mother had said when she had told it to him, “because a sorcerer may learn it and use it to do you harm.” He had believed her then, of course, because he had been only ten or so at the time, and ten-year-olds believe most of what their mothers tell them; but now he knew much more about sorcerers, and he could see that that had been only another of his mother’s strange superstitions, like a south wind bringing rain. His friends would have laughed at such a name, though, so he had never told it to anyone, even Inos.

The chaplain pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Very well—Master Rap. The king is alive, but every day seems like to be his last, poor man. Even the cordials that Doctor Sagorn left will barely ease his pain now. We who are close to him pray for his release. It seems astonishing that he has survived so long.”

“He has a word,” Rap mumbled.

She raised her eyebrows and paused. “Perhaps! What do you know of… But, of course, you must have one, also. Foolish of me.” She fell silent, reconsidering. The old hostler grinned fiendishly —a rare and unpleasant sight—and helped himself to some of the bread before it all vanished.

Mother Unonini continued, seeming now to choose her words more carefully. At times Rap had trouble understanding her—like most Krasnegarians, he spoke a pidgin of impish and jotunnish. Inos could switch from that to pure impish and back again. So did the king and his senior officials, but they did not sound as prissy as the chaplain, who had a southerner’s accent worse than Rap had ever heard, even from sailors.

“The city is badly divided—between imps and jotnar, of course. The imps believe that the princess went to Kinvale to marry her cousin the duke, who has a good claim to the throne. They expect him to return with her. But the imps themselves are divided; many would prefer that the city be annexed as a province of the Impire. The jotnar are unhappy at either prospect. They talk of Thane Kalkor of Nordland, who has a claim at least equal to the duke’s.”

“Foronod is their leader,” Hononin interjected. “Some want to put him on the throne himself, but he seems to be supporting Kalkor. He’s written to him, they say.”

The chaplain frowned, as if she were giving away too much.

“Rap ought to know,” the old man snarled. “Foronod was howling for his heart over the horses. If he hears that Rap summoned the princess back, then he will be even worse.”

She nodded. “Certainly we must smuggle Master Rap and his friend back out of the city tonight. As soon as possible.”

Rap stopped eating. After coming so far he was expected to leave?

Hononin cackled suddenly and they all looked at him. “I should warn you, Mother. When you see that jaw set like that, you might as well save breath. Obviously Master Rap is not leaving.”

“He must!”

Hononin shook his head. “Perhaps, but he won’t. Even when he was this high, that jaw was the signal.”

Rap grinned suddenly. He had been right to come to the cantankerous old hostler, and it was good to find a friend at last.

“We shall see!” Mother Unonini set her own jaw.

“And you?” Rap glanced from her to the hostler and back. “Where are your loyalties?”

He was being presumptuous; the chaplain frowned again. “My objective must always be the greatest good. Civil war would be a great evil—life is precarious enough here without that.” She considered for a moment and added, “If I had the power to impose a settlement… Inosolan is not yet of age. A regency council would be a fair solution—Factor Foronod and Chancellor Yaltauri, perhaps.”

Lukewarm at best, Rap thought. He turned to the hostler.

“I’ll try to keep your neck its present length, lad,” the old man said, “even if it was my horses you took. But I’m staying out of politics. Too dangerous at my age.”

Was no one loyal to Inos, then?

“Can you speak between gulps now, young man?” the chaplain inquired.

“I think so, Mother. It’s a long story. You knew the man called Andor?”

She nodded. “A fine gentleman.”

“No! I thought so, also, and I trusted him when he suggested that the two of us go and tell Inos–”

“Stop right there! Only two of you went?”

Rap nodded, surprised. She glanced at the hostler.

“I told you there were only two bedrolls missing,” he said. “And the tent was too small for three.”

“Three?” Rap echoed.

“Doctor Sagorn,” Unonini said. “He left, also. It did not matter, for he had trained the nurses in the use of the cordial, but he went with you, we thought.”

Sagorn, also?

Of course!

And Darad.

Rap pushed the remains of his meal away and started to talk. He was interrupted no more. In the corner Little Chicken ate steadily, while watching the incomprehensible talk with suspicious eyes, but it was a long tale, and even the goblin’s appetite was satisfied before Rap finished.

The hostler and the chaplain looked at each other.

Hononin nodded. “I believe him. He’s a good lad—no, a good man. He always was.”

She nodded reluctantly and studied her fingers for a moment. Then she rose and started to pace back and forth across the little room with her hands clasped behind her. It was a strangely unfeminine action, and she had an awkward, jerky gait on her surprisingly short legs. She no longer seemed tall, as she had in the chair. At last she seemed to reach a conclusion, returning to her seat.

“Very well!” she said. “The hostler supports you, Master Rap, and that carries weight. But I have been thinking, also, of what the Gods want. It is common knowledge that a God appeared to Inosolan and myself. They gave her orders, and now I suspect that those referred to you.”

Rap tried to remember what Inos had told him of the God and Their words, but it was a long time ago and his memories were blurred. He was about to ask, but she gave him no chance.

“I shall accept your story,” she said pompously. “Obviously there is sorcery about, and you are probably right—someone is after the royal word of power. Inosolan will be in grave danger if she learns it. She may not, you know. The king is rarely conscious now. Yet you think that Andor and this Darad are the same man?”

“And Sagorn! And Jalon the minstrel, also!” He explained how Sagorn had appeared in the palace the previous summer without entering the gate—and Sagorn had returned in the fall at about the same time Andor had arrived, on the night of the blizzard, when Rap’s farsight had become general knowledge.

Jalon had spoken of Darad. Andor had known Jalon, and Sagorn.

Yet it was incredible, even to Rap. He had met Sagorn once. He had shared a meal with the minstrel. Neither had been Andor, and certainly neither had been Darad. To think of the dreamy, amiable Jalon and the savage Darad was to link water and fire—they were incompatible. There was more than shape-changing involved here. If Jalon could turn himself into Darad at will, as Andor seemed to be able to, then why had he not done so when he was alone with Rap in the hills? Darad would surely not hesitate to use any means at hand to extract a word if he had the opportunity. For that matter, why had Andor not done the same when he had Rap alone in his attic those many long evenings?

Suddenly Hononin snapped his fingers. “The keys! You say that Andor got them from me? But I never saw him all that day.”

“What happened to them?” Rap asked.

The hostler scowled hideously at him and then at the chaplain. “I don’t know. Found them on the stable floor; thought I’d dropped them. I’d been sure they’d been on my belt as usual. It wasn’t Andor, certain! Nor that Sagorn man.”

“So he may have other shapes?” Unonini said. “That is bad news. And yet he can’t be a sorcerer. If he is, then he does things the hard way.”

“And what about this army?” Rap asked. “I don’t know why Inos is bringing troops, but they must be stopped.”

The chaplain shook her head. “Inosolan may have no choice. And we don’t, either. Sergeant Thosolin and his men can’t fight two thousand.”

“Let them in?” Hononin looked disgusted.

“We must,” she said. “What alternative do we have? They could burn the town and starve out the castle. You and I cannot even warn anyone without saying how we know, for then Master Rap would be in jeopardy. Inosolan is with them. Why should they savage her realm?”

“Why savage the goblins?” Rap asked bitterly “They do no harm except to themselves.”

That remark raised eyebrows and produced an awkward silence.

Little Chicken let out an enormous belch and grinned.

Little Chicken—who would be Death Bird now, had Rap and Andor not blundered into the Ravens' territory—how much of this conversation was he managing to follow?

“I have a question, Mother,” Rap said reluctantly. “Tell me about the Four, please.”

The chaplain started. “What about the Four?”

“Who they are, what they do.”

Her eyes narrowed. She dropped her gaze to her fingers and kneaded them for a moment. “I really know no more about them than you do—than anyone else does. What were you taught in school about the Four?”

“Nothing. I haven’t had much schooling, Mother.”

She nodded, disapproving. “I see. Well, back in ancient times, the Dark Times, Pandemia was a very violent land. There was magic about, and much evil in it. Sorcerers set themselves up as kings and waged war among themselves. There are legends of great massacres, of pillage and destruction, of men fighting dragons, monsters appearing and destroying whole armies, sheets of fire blasting hapless cities, and there are stories, too, of armies being released from binding spells and falling on their own leaders. It was a wicked time. You must have heard such tales!”

Rap shook his head, although he knew a little.

“Is this relevant?” she asked, staring.

“I think so.”

Now the chaplain shot a worried glance at the hostler, who shrugged.

“The Imperor Emine II set up the Council of Four almost three thousand years ago. He gathered together the four most powerful sorcerers in all Pandemia and charged them to guard the Impire against sorcery. Hub is the city of five hills, you know.” She sighed. “The city of the Gods! The most beautiful place, the center of the Impire, on the shores of Cenmere. I spent three years there attending… But I suppose that doesn’t matter now. Well, the imperor’s palace is in the center, and each of the four warlocks has a palace, also: North, East, South, and West. The imperor himself must always be a mundane, to preserve the balance. No one may use sorcery against the imperor himself, or his court, or family.”

Rap nodded and waited for more.

Unonini seemed reluctant to give it to him, but after a moment she licked her lips and continued. “The system has worked, with a few temporary breakdowns, to this very day. Balance is the key, you see, just as the balance between the Good and the Evil rules the world, so the balance between the warlocks rules the Impire.”

“If an evil sorcerer arises, then the wardens of the Four combine against him. Sorcerers are human, too, Master Rap. They are torn between evil and good, as we all are—more so, perhaps, because their power to do good or evil is so much greater. And if one of the Four falls into evil ways, then the other three can combine against him. It is the only way to prevent the sort of anarchy that prevailed in the Dark Times. Balance!”

Rap nodded. “But tell me of the present wardens.”

“Why?”

“I think I met one.”

Unonini gasped, then again looked to the hostler, who scowled.

“Which one, lad?”

“A very old goblin woman?”

The chaplain closed her eyes for a moment, and her lips moved.

“Tell us,” Hononin said, looking grim even for him.

So Rap told of the two occasions on which he had seen the apparition, and of how she seemed to have a special interest in Little Chicken. He kept his eyes off the goblin; he spoke as fast as he could, and in the best impish he knew.

There was a pause, then the chaplain shuddered. “Bright Water,” she whispered, and the hostler nodded.

“It sounds like her,” he said. “Rap, lad, I think you did meet one. She’s witch of the north, and legend says she’s about three hundred years old—sorcerers live a long time. She’s been one of the Four longer than any.”

“And?” Rap said.

Again it was the hostler who spoke, and even he had dropped his voice to a whisper. “They say she’s totally mad.”

Rap glanced uneasily at Little Chicken, and his odd-shaped goblin eyes were very intent. He grinned his giant teeth at Rap.

“Flat Nose, you did not tell me this.”

“No,” Rap admitted. “I thought maybe it was me who was mad. I’ll tell you later. I promise.”

The goblin nodded.

“Tell me of the other three, Mother,” Rap said.

She was reluctant. “I do not care to discuss them. No one does. There is only one witch at present. The other three are men, warlocks. South is an elf, East an imp, and the newest is West, a young dwarf. I don’t know very much, Master Rap. You haven’t met any of those, have you?”

Rap shook his head, and she looked relieved.

The hostler laughed uneasily. “There is one other thing that everyone knows that we can tell him, though. As well as claiming a quarter of the compass, each of the four has a specialty.”

The chaplain choked back an exclamation, as if she had not thought of that.

“What sort of specialty?” Rap asked.

The old man smirked. “Little things like dragons.”

Mother Unonini thumped her hand on the arm of her chair, expelling a cloud of dust and feathers. “We don’t know this! It is a commonly held belief, maybe, but people don’t go round questioning sorcerers, Master Hostler, and especially not warlocks. Who can say what they do or don’t do?”

Hononin glared at her. “I know what I was told, and no one’s ever told me different. Earth, water, fire, and air—so my grandpappy said.”

The chaplain glared back, then turned to Rap. “Tradition says that even Emine’s compact did not stop the troubles at first—that the Four turned out to be as bad as any other group of sorcerers and strove among themselves for dominance. Eventually—I am cutting a thick story thin—eventually the Four agreed to share out the powers of the world between themselves. They had already divided Pandemia itself into quarters, calling themselves North and East and so on, but then they each took charge of a mundane power, also.”

“Dragons?” Rap said. “Are dragons mundane?”

“Borderline.” The chaplain rose and started to pace again in her ungainly way. “The Impire is not Pandemia, Master Rap. It is the largest dominion, of course, and because it is central, it has always tended to be the greatest—and of course it has the Four to preserve it—but there are many other kingdoms and territories beyond the Impire’s borders.”

Like Krasnegar, for instance. Rap nodded.

“But nothing can hope to withstand the Imperial army if it extends its full might.”

“Except by sorcery.”

“Of course. So the imperor and the Four agreed that no one might use sorcery on the Imperial army—neither to harm it nor to aid it. Like the imperor himself, it must be sacrosanct. The only exception is the warlock of the east. He can. The army is his prerogative.”

Rap nodded again, beginning to see why the others had been so worried when he brought the talk around to the Four. “You mean that the witch I saw—”

“You saw a sorceress,” the chaplain said, “and it may have been Bright Water herself, but we don’t know that!”

“Either way, she couldn’t stop the troops on their way here?”

The chaplain paused by the fire and glanced briefly at the hostler before continuing her lecture. “That’s what they say. Those soldiers are part of the Imperial army, and to meddle with them would bring down the fury of the warlock of the east—and the others would support him in that instance. So 'tis said. One thing I do know—there must be many great sorcerers and sorceresses around Pandemia, Master Rap, but there is certainly none who could withstand the Four acting together.”

Rap toyed for a moment with crumbs on the table. Sour old Unonini was keeping something back.

“I gotta go,” Hononin muttered. “Word gets round I’m sick, there’ll be mobs of nosy old women bringing jugs of bad soup here, just so they can pry.” But he stayed where he was, on his chair.

Rap looked up. “What are the other powers, then? Dragons?”

Unonini pursed her lips, then nodded. “Dragons rarely roam outside Dragon Reach, but they are said to be the prerogative of the warden of the south. When dragons waste, then the imperor must call on South to drive them back.”

“Even if he set them loose himself in the first place!” the hostler said with a foul grin.

The chaplain winced nervously.

“Well, why not?” the old man snapped. “Two years ago a flight of dragons wasted some town on the Winnipango. That’s halfway across Pandemia from Dragon Reach, and they didn’t touch anywhere in between! You telling me they weren’t sent there? You know that sorcerers meddle, so why wouldn’t a warlock use his own special power when he wanted to?”

“I never met a sorce—”

“Piddle! I never met a God, but I believe in Gods. And I believe the tales. My grandpappy went to watch a hanging once, down in Pilrind; and when they hauled the man up, he just disappeared! Faded like mist, he did! Left the noose just dangling, empty. Some sorcerer had rescued him.”

The chaplain sniffed. “I never said there weren’t sorcerers, nor that they don’t use sorcery. Of course they do—all the time. An old schoolmate of mine once saw a poor, demented woman throw herself off a high roof. She should have fallen into a crowded street, but someone in the crowd must have been a sorcerer, because she floated down gently; like a leaf, my friend said.”

“What’s North’s pre-prerogative?” Rap asked.

She hesitated so long that the hostler answered for her, confirming what Rap had suspected. “The jotnar. Army’s land, see? Dragons fire. The jotunn raiders are the sea—water, that is.”

“It’s not as true nowadays as it was in the Dark Times,” the chaplain added, “but the jotnar are still the finest sailors of the world. And they don’t always confine their activities to trading, either.”

Rap’s father had been a slaver, and a raider when convenient, no doubt.

“Anywhere within reach of the sea,” Unonini said, “is within reach of the jotnar.”

It was what Rap had expected. “So if the imp army comes to Krasnegar, and Thane Kalkor brings his jotnar, then… What then?”

Unonini sighed heavily. “Then may the Good be with us! I don’t suppose the Four often intervene in petty quarrels; little wars and small atrocities go on all the time. As long as sorcery is not invoked, then the warlocks seem to ignore them. But if Imperial legionaries face off against jotunn raiders—well, then the warlocks may very well become involved—very well! Bright Water is a goblin, and you say that the imps have been slaughtering goblins. By spring they may be battling her jotnar, here in Krasnegar.” She shuddered and made the holy sign of balance.

“I must go,” the hostler muttered again.

“Yes!” The chaplain straightened her shoulders. “I, also. And you, Master Rap, and your… companions… must stay here for now, and out of sight. I wish this wynd were not so much traveled.”

“What’s West’s specialty?” Rap asked doggedly. Were the warlocks such very bad news? They might even help, as Bright Water had helped him. They might keep jotunn and imp apart.

“Weather, they say. And you think Inosolan will be here tomorrow?” Mother Unonini mused. “She will go straight to her father. I shall see that the doctors reduce the dosage and try to revive him for the meeting… if he lasts that long. Then they will both be in danger.”

“Both?”

She nodded somberly. “'Tis said that to share a word reduces its power. If the word is keeping him alive, he may die because of the sharing. And Inosolan will be in danger because she knows it.”

They all worried over that thought for a while, and then the chaplain said, “If you insist on remaining in the town, then we must find somewhere safer than this for you, Master Rap.”

“He’s welcome here, Mother.” But the hostler was eyeing Fleabag with a dislike that was obviously mutual.

“You do not even have a lock on your door! But where else can we hide him in a tiny place like Krasnegar? With two thousand legionaries coming? They will be billeted anywhere there is a span to spare.”

Hononin heaved himself to his feet. “Nowhere I can think of.”

“I was told once of a place,” Rap said, “if you can get us there. A place where no one ever goes.”

2

A single candle flickered and shivered in the night, casting its uncertain light on the dying king. His face was wasted, yellow and skull-like, his hair sparse and gray, his beard white. Even in sleep he writhed restlessly under the covers.

The drapes had been drawn all around the high bed, except for one small gap near the pillow. Sitting beside that opening, the attending nurse patiently waited out the long hours until her relief would come at dawn. From her seat she could not see the door to the chamber, and no one entering from the stairway could see either patient or nurse—unless that person had farsight, of course.

Mother Unonini crossed the room to talk to her, and to inspect the invalid, her lantern making inky shadows dance until she vanished around the corner of the fourposter. The chaplain was an ideal accomplice for intruders, able to go anywhere, answerable only to the Gods. Two youths and a dog came in silently behind her and crept across to the deep shadows on the other side of the bed.

Worms of fire crawled over the peats in the big fireplace and the room was heavy with their pungent scent. Curtains on one window tapped monotonously to draw attention to an ill-fitting casement. The drugged king moaned querulously in his slumber.

Quietly Rap laid down his bundle and waited, sending a restraining signal to Fleabag, who was eager to investigate the unfamiliar scents of the sickroom. Little Chicken also bore a bundle, but he continued to hold his, looking around bleakly at the shadows.

From the far side of the draperies came a crackle of vellum and Mother Unonini’s hard voice. “… a special invocation. It will probably take me an hour or so…” For a servant of the Good, she was a surprisingly slick liar. Tactfully dismissed—and probably relieved that she need not listen to an hour’s hard praying—the nurse rose and departed. Rap traced her progress as she descended the stairs within the far wall.

He could find no signs that the prowlers had been detected. Even the great hall at the bottom of the tower was deserted. The palace slept on, unaware that intruders had penetrated all the way to the royal bedchamber, unaware, as well, of the army poised to invade on the morrow.

Reassured, he tried to check overhead, also, and was seized at once by a strong desire not to pry. Inos had spoken of a spell protecting the long-dead sorcerer’s secrets. Sweat broke out on his face and his head started to throb, but he forced himself to look. There was another staircase in the wall—he established that at the cost of a thumping in his temples and sick twinges in his gut—but it ran up to…

Nothing! The flat wooden ceiling marked the roof of the world.

He relaxed then, knowing that the effort was fruitless. He had noticed this same opaque blankness when he entered the castle half an hour ago. Indeed he had noticed it when he left with Andor at Winterfest, although his farsight then had not then been as acute as it was now. Now he could sense almost every move in the whole building—even some irregular activities in one of the maids' dormitories of which Housekeeper Aganimi would certainly disapprove if she knew—but his knowledge stopped at the walls. Inisso had thrown an occult barrier around his bastion, cut it off from all the world.

And the chamber of puissance, if it existed—and Rap now felt strongly inclined to disbelieve in it—was outside that shield.

Then the lights and shadows began to move again as Mother Unonini came waddling around the corner of the bed and headed toward the high dresser opposite the doorway, Rap moved to join her, and then they both halted, irresolute.

“It’s the spell,” Rap said. Moving furniture around when the king was dying—it seemed like a desecration. It felt wrong. There couldn’t be anything interesting behind it anyway.

The chaplain nodded uneasily. “You do it!”

“Little Chicken?”

The goblin shook his head vigorously, his angular eyes glinting wide in the light of the lantern.

“Scared?” Rap asked, although his own ribs were dribbling sweat.

The gibe brought the still-reluctant goblin, and the two of them lifted the heavy dresser away from the wall. The moment Rap saw the door, the strange reluctance released him. He grabbed up his bundle again as the chaplain produced a ring of massive keys and began trying them. In a moment the click of the lock rang like clashing blades through the silence. When she pushed the door, it uttered a groan that seemed loud enough to waken the whole city.

She paused and raised her lantern to see Rap’s face. “Anything?”

He scanned again, all the way down to the great hall. Two dogs had been snoring before the fireplaces. They lifted their heads as the departing nurse emerged from the stairwell. When nothing else happened, they went back to sleep.

“All right.”

Mother Unonini nodded and led the way up the narrow steps, her lantern showing matted white cobwebs and dusty treads curving up into darkness. It was as much as Rap could do to keep Fleabag from bounding ahead of her, for at the same time he was disconcerted by the eerie blankness awaiting him at the top. He felt like a fish being hauled upward to the water’s surface. Closer and closer came that sinister nothingness. He was so accustomed now to viewing the world with his occult talent that he felt he was being threatened with blindness; the conflict between his two senses dizzied him.

Then his head broke through. The uppermost chamber rose to a conical roof and of course it lacked an opposing door leading to a higher story, but otherwise it seemed identical to all the other great circular rooms of the tower. The fireplace was empty. The guarderobe door was closed, but Rap could sense through that.

He could sense the city, also. It was the castle now that was barred to him, locked within its occult shield. Sheer height made his head spin, as he felt the streets and alleys, and the distant icepack piled on the rocks, far, far below. He staggered and almost tripped on the last few treads.

The door at the top stood open and the intruders walked through into Inisso’s chamber, the sorcerer’s place of power.

“Well!” breathed the chaplain, raising her lantern and then lowering it quickly, seeing that its rays on the windows might alert any watchers outside. She was a very nosy person, of course. She had first been shocked when Rap had suggested this place as a bolt hole, but then her own obvious curiosity and the unexpected opportunity to pry had overcome her scruples. She must be feeling disappointed—there was nothing to see except dusty footprints showing vaguely on bare boards, where the king and Sagorn had walked on their visit in the summer, The air was cold and still and musty, but totally lacking in mystery. Just an empty room.

Being unfurnished, it seemed large. Fleabag began slinking around this vast circular emptiness, nose to the floor, pausing from time to time to analyze some detail of scent.

Little Chicken threw down his bundle and went to peer out of the nearest casement. Mother Unonini sniffed disapprovingly at the billow of dust he had raised.

Rap was still overwhelmed by his giddy sense of height. Combined with farsight, it was intoxicating, exhilarating, almost terrifying. Far, far below, a mother nursed her baby in a dark basement room, with the rest of her family asleep around her, bakers' apprentices were already stoking their masters' fires; a lover tiptoed past a bedroom door on his way home…

Was this what it was like to be a sorcerer? Did warlocks perch like brooding eagles, high on their towers in Hub, watching all Pandemia laid out below them, naked and defenseless? The wardens, being the strongest sorcerers of all, must have a range enormously greater than Rap’s—had Bright Water really sensed him all the way from Hub? Was she even now slumped naked on her ivory throne in her own chamber of puissance, scanning the north, waiting for those ripples she had mentioned, ready to strike down any evil use of magic? What would such power do to its owner? He shivered.

The chaplain noticed. “I warned you that you would freeze up here!” Satisfied that her prediction had come true, she pulled her cloak tight with her free hand. But Rap was wearing a fur parka over his doublet and he was not cold at all; in fact it was the first time he had been comfortable all day.

“It isn’t that. Mother?”

“Mmm?”

“If the Four guard us all against misuse of magic—”

“I do not wish to talk about the Four! Certainly not here.”

Which is what Rap had been about to ask: Why had she been so reluctant to discuss the warlocks? Why was everyone, always? He had rarely heard them mentioned, ever.

“Look there!” The chaplain raised her lantern a fraction and pointed to the southern casement. “It’s different!”

Little Chicken, having failed to see anything much to the north, now moved around to peer out eastward. He found glass puzzling, because it did not melt when he breathed on it.

The southern casement was certainly larger than the others. The dormer was higher and wider than the other three and held not only the main arched window, but also two smaller lights flanking it. Rap tried to remember if he had ever noticed that lack of symmetry from below, and concluded he had never really looked properly. The pattern of lead between the panes was more complex and less regular, and that was another minor difference, but the panes showed just as black against the night outside.

“I wonder why?” Puzzled, the chaplain walked over toward it.

The window began to glow.

She stopped with a hiss of surprise. The many tiny panes between the leads were of all shapes and all colors, decorated with pictures and symbols: stars and hands, eyes and flowers, and many others less comprehensible, all vaguely visible in a pale gleam as if the moon were out there. The colors were as faint and faded as a very old manuscript—sienna, malachite, ochre, and slate. Rap’s eyes saw them, but farsight told him there was only a window there with nothing unusual about it. Yet when he tried to make sense of the visual images, he felt as if they were changing. Each one was constant while he stared at it and altered as soon as his attention strayed. An umber bird’s head in the upper right corner was now much lower than it had been. A ram’s horn inexplicably seemed to curl to both right and left at the same time, and an image of a tawny flame writhing, a rose-and-lilac wheel turning… He shivered again.

Mother Unonini backed away and the moonlight died beyond the glass.

Little Chicken grunted angrily. Abandoning the east casement, he began stalking round to the south, one hand on the dagger in his belt, his shoulders bent forward, looking very much like Fleabag investigating a porcupine.

“Stop!” both Rap and the chaplain said at the same moment.

But Little Chicken kept on, walking slowly on the balls of his feet. The casement began to glow again, and this time the light was different; it was warmer and restless—not the moon, but firelight? Firelight at the top of a tower, seven stories above a castle that itself stood a hundred spans or more above the sea?

“Stop!” Rap said again, more urgently. He laid down his own burden—it held cups and food and useful things that might make a noise if dropped—and he hurried forward.

The light changed again, dramatically. By the time he had reached Little Chicken and grabbed his shoulder, the window was a blazing, seething brilliance, too bright to look at—surges of ruby, emerald, and sapphire stabbing amid flashes of ice-white like the facets of a giant diamond. Now certainly the symbols were changing more rapidly, flickering in the corners of the eye. Even to study a single pane was impossible against that glare.

Rap pulled and the goblin yielded. They backed away and the brilliance faded again until they were standing once more in the glimmer of the lantern. Rap’s eyes hurt and the insides of his eyelids were stained with blurs of many hues.

Stiffly the chaplain rose from her knees, where she had been praying. Her face was pale and drawn in the gloom. “Magic!” she declared unnecessarily. “A magic casement!”

“What does it do?” Rap asked, still keeping a firm grip on Little Chicken.

“I don’t know! I’m a priestess, not a sorcerer. But I think you had better stay well away from it.”

All Inisso’s other secrets had gone, but that one was built into the walls and could not be removed. Was this why the mysterious Doctor Sagorn had come up here with the king, to a room Inos had never been told about?

“Oh, I agree. Keep away!” Rap added in goblin.

Little Chicken nodded. “Bad!” He turned his back on the offending window.

“You still want to stay here?” Mother Unonini asked.

Rap nodded. “It’s the safest place. And I can use my farsight from here.” He would have to sit on the stairs to do so, below floor level, but she did not need to know that.

“Yes, but what can you do?” She had asked that question a dozen times.

He gave her the same answer as before. “I don’t know. But somehow I must warn Inos that Andor is not what he seems.”

She came close and lifted the lantern to study his face. “For her sake, or yours?”

“Hers, of course!”

She continued to stare. “If the people want a king instead of a queen, then they are not likely to accept a factor’s clerk, you know.”

Rap clenched his fists. “I was not suggesting that they would!”

“Do you think you can overhear what he says to Inosolan?”

Fury flared up in Rap, and evidently his expression was answer enough. She lowered her lantern. “No. I apologize, Master Rap. That was unworthy.” She pulled her cloak tighter. “I shall go, then. You had better come down and replace the dresser.”

Rap nodded. “And we’ll push the door closed behind it.”

The chaplain nodded. “Of course—but remember that it creaks. I shall return tomorrow night, if I can, and bring some oil.” She shivered. “I must be crazy! I hope that I am interpreting the God’s words correctly… and that They were a benevolent God, on the side of the Good. Kneel and I will give you a blessing; I wish I had someone to bless this night’s work for me.”