Magic Casement

1

Rap could tell that Inos had not expected the suggestion, for she colored angrily. He was managing not to stare at her, for when he did, and their eyes met, he was sure he started blushing at once, and certainly he felt as if he were all hands and feet and worried if his hair was a mess—it always was, of course… So he was pretending not to look.

But he could not keep his farsight off her. She was wonderful!

What fools they were, all those stupid old men! Why had they not seen what a marvelous queen she would be? She was a queen to her fingertips, noble and regal even in those bedraggled old clothes. He had been amazed by her beauty in the forest and he was still in awe of that, but now he could sense her grace, her royal bearing, her majesty. Her father’s death had not broken her spirit, nor the horrible fright and disappointment he, Rap, had been forced to inflict on her to unmask Andor.

Any lesser woman would have blamed him for that, would have cursed him and spurned him. But not Inos! She had royal courage. She was not afraid of his farsight, like all his other friends had been.

Kinvale had changed her. She was no longer the girl he had grown up with, the playmate of his childhood. He felt a little sad about that.

But he had always known that she would be his queen, not… not anything else. He had said he would serve her, and so he would, and be proud to. And right now he was proud of the way she was standing up to that stringy old doctor with his sneering manner and stupid jokes about sorcerers.

“My father wouldn’t let you do that!” she said angrily.

“Ah, yes, the spy,” Sagorn said unpleasantly. “You heard more than you admitted that day, then?”

Inos blushed harder and looked furious. Rap felt himself bristle, wishing he could stop this sinister old scholar from insulting his queen. Whatever the king had said about him being trustworthy, he had obviously betrayed Rap to Andor.

He began moving toward the door. “Your father, child, did not have an army of impish cutthroats coming up the tower after him at the time. Now, did you or did you not seek my counsel?”

Inos set her teeth, but obviously she was going to give in and let Sagorn go up the tower. There was a dead body upstairs, and she had suffered quite enough already without having to look at that. Rap moved quickly, to reach the doorway first, and Little Chicken scrambled up and followed.

The room one floor up was very gloomy, filled with gigantic shadows cast by a single small candle flame. Rap hurried across to where Yggingi lay, just inside the other stairwell. The goblin would always extend trash’s duties to include anything that let him show off his strength, and as soon as Rap took hold of Yggingi’s ankles. Little Chicken shoved him aside. “Out window?”

That gruesome thought had not even occurred to Rap. “Ugh! No. In that closet.”

The goblin dragged the corpse across the room and tucked it away among the king’s robes, while Rap dragged a rug over and covered the puddle of blood. He hoped Inos would not wonder why it was there, and that the blood would not soak through. By the time he had done, the other three had arrived.

Sagorn stood a moment, breathing hard. “But you must understand,” he was saying, “that we have no common purpose except to be released from the curse, and therefore to seek out more of the words. Otherwise we all go our own ways.

“Jalon soon got lost in the forest, and he called Andor. Andor did not have my scruples toward your father, and hence his daughter.” He made a small bow to Inos and then headed for the couch. “So Andor went to Kinvale to make your acquaintance. He even dreamed of becoming a king, I regret to say.”

“When he told us that he brought you back to Krasnegar afterward,” Inos asked, “then he was sort of telling the truth?”

The old man leaned back, chuckling breathlessly. “Yes, he was, for once. Here he had two words to chase: yours, when you got it; and Master Rap’s. By the sort of improbable chance that the words produce, he arrived at Krasnegar just as Rap was revealed as a seer.”

Rap closed the down door and bolted it. Little Chicken started playing with the bolt, flicking it back and forth, showing childish curiosity and delight. Rap listened to Sagorn’s story with half his head. The other half was sighting. The imps had already found axes and were breaking down the door into the robing room. He should be flattered that they were sending a hundred men after him, he supposed.

“Your father sank faster than I had expected,” Sagorn continued. “So Andor decided to go south and fetch you. He was annoyed that he could not charm Master Rap’s word out of him. Nor would he give it when threatened by the goblins. How did you escape, young man?”

Rap told them briefly. Fleabag thumped his tail on the floor at the sound of his name. Little Chicken scowled, so he must be picking up impish as fast as Rap had picked up goblin. It would be harder for him, though, for impish was a more complex dialect.

“Darad is a fool,” Sagorn said. “I despise his murdering ways, but he is not even efficient in them. He should have asked the goblins to extract the word from you. They would have been happy to demonstrate their skills.”

Except that Rap knew no word of power to tell; he shivered. “The imps are almost through into the robing room, your Majesty.”

Sagorn sighed and rose from the couch. “Next floor, then.”

“You chased me down these stairs once, Doctor,” Inos said. “I thought at the time that you were remarkably unwinded.”

“No. Thinal did the running for me. The curse does have its uses, I admit.”

Rap called to Little Chicken for help and began pushing one of the big cupboards over to the door. Then they fetched another. Those might gain a few minutes—for what, though? When he crossed to the stairs, Inos’s voice came echoing eerily down from above.

“… exactly does it do?”

“It is a last relic of Inisso’s works.” The old man’s voice came in bursts, now, as if he were very short of breath. “Magic casements—like talking statues and preflecting pools—are a supreme test of a sorcerer. They will show the future… and give advice. That is… the scene they show… is a hint… of the best course to take… a view down the best path… as it were.”

“Why would my father not let you try it, then?”

Sagorn had reached the bedroom door and stopped again, wheezing. “If he had, it might have warned him not to send you to Kinvale, and then this trouble might have been averted.”

“How could it have done that? A window do that?”

“It might have shown you here at Winterfest, perhaps? I admit that it is dangerous. It drove your great-grandfather mad.”

Rap did not like the sound of that, remembering the awesome glow he had provoked in the casement when he went near it—and remembering, also, the strange apparition who might have been Bright Water, witch of the north. She had gabbled something about foresight. She had accused Rap of blocking her foresight. Could there be a connection there?

Inos hurried across the bedroom, the death chamber. “Let us go straight up,” she said, and her voice almost cracked.

Rap felt a mad impulse to run after her and take her in his arms to comfort. He wanted that so badly that he trembled. He kept remembering how she had kissed him good-bye, almost a whole year ago now. But queens did not kiss factors' clerks—or horse thieves.

All the rest of Krasnegar had spurned him, and she had not. He had never doubted that she would remain his friend, once she was free of Andor’s witchery. It was very difficult to remember that she was his queen. If she were wearing a royal robe and a crown it might be possible, but despite her royal bearing in that shabby leather riding outfit, with her gold hair flying loose halfway down her back, she was still too much the companion of his childhood—on horses, clambering over cliffs…

Sagorn was still catching his breath.

“You know I have only been up there once in my life?” Princess Kadolan said. She was puffing, also, but perhaps that was only from politeness. “My grandfather died in a fire, I thought.”

The bedroom was brighter, with more candles still burning in the sconces. Sagorn went to study the two portraits over the mantel. “Yes, but he was mad before that.”

“Oh, dear! You think he saw his death through the casement and the sight drove him insane?”

The old man shrugged. “That is what your brother thought, and your father before him. It is an interesting paradox. The prophecy drove him mad, but had he not been mad, then he would not have been locked up, so he could have escaped the flames. Curious, isn’t it?”

Deciding again that he did not like this sinister, cold-blooded old man, Rap began heaving a dresser toward the door, and the goblin came to help.

The imps were into the robing room now, crossing to the stairs that led up to the antechamber. Once Rap reached the uppermost room, he would be unable to watch what they were doing. He hoped Inos was right to trust Sagorn, but it was not his place to advise her, and he had no advice to offer anyway. The situation looked hopeless, once the proconsul’s body was discovered, the culprits would be lucky if they were just thrown in the dungeon and not beheaded out of hand.

With the goblin at his heels, he followed the others, climbing the last flight unwillingly, sensing the blankness above him. When his head broke through that invisible barrier, he felt like a worm coming out of the ground. Again he was seized by a giddy excitement, an exhilaration stemming from the combination of great height and occult farsight, producing a divine—a detestable—ability to spy on everyone in Krasnegar outside the castle.

Sagorn was leaning one hand against the wall and breathing hard. Inos held a candle, standing with her aunt close to the doorway, staring across the empty chamber at the magic casement. It was dark and seemed no different from the other windows, except for its greater size. One of the others was rattling in the wind. Princess Kadolan shivered and hugged herself in the cold. Fleabag was wagging his tail, sniffing at the bedding and the rest of the two fugitives' camping equipment, lying in untidy disorder.

Little Chicken jostled past Rap, saying, “See!” He strode toward the south window. As before, it reacted to his approach by starting to glow, shimmering with a reddish-yellow light, and the multitude of many-colored symbols became visible in its panes. He stopped a few paces away from it, studying the imperceptible shifting.

“Curious!” Sagorn said. “Firelight?”

“And watch what happens when I go near, sir.” Rap called Little Chicken back, and the casement became dark. Then Rap moved slowly forward, and the pulsating, hard white glare came again, the feverish changing of the bright-colored emblems. He turned around and saw the others illuminated by it, flecks of rainbow appearing and disappearing on their faces. They all looked worried, even the old man.

“I am no sorcerer,” Sagorn said uneasily. “I have read of these, but never seen one demonstrated.” He paused. “There is another way of escape for us, you know.”

Rap could guess what was coming, but Inos asked eagerly, “What’s that?”

“I have a word of power. So do you now, ma’am, and so does Master Rap. Three words will make a mage, a sorcerer—a minor sorcerer, but even a mage would be strong enough to handle a band of stupid imps, I fancy. We can share.”

Rap saw Inos bite her lip. “Even Andor told me not to.”

“He expected to get it out of you, though. When you were alone together.”

“Are you suggesting that that was the only reason he proposed to me?” she shouted furiously.

“I know that was the only reason,” he snapped back. “I have his memories. Andor uses people like spoons or forks—women for pleasure, men for profit. He is the ultimate cynic.”

“And I do not know any word,” Rap said. “So I cannot share.”

Sagorn studied him, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the casement at his back. “Jalon did not believe you when you told him that. Nor did I. Nor did Andor. Nor Darad. Now your life is again in danger, and this may be the only way to put Inosolan on her throne. Yet you still maintain that you do not know a word?”

“I do.”

With a sigh the old man said, “Then I think perhaps I do believe you, this time.”

“I will tell Rap mine if you will!” Inos said.

Rap gulped in horror. “But these are Imperial legionaries!” he protested. “Aren’t they reserved to one of the warlocks?”

Sagorn gave him a long, hard stare. “It is true that the Imperial army is East’s prerogative. Andor thought you were ignorant of such matters. Did you actually manage to deceive Andor, young man?”

“Andor began my education!” Rap said hotly.

“Painless learning may be worthless learning. Anyway, you are correct. To use occult force against these imps might well call down the wrath of the warlock of the east—supported, likely, by the whole Council of Four.”

Rap felt as if he had scored a point, although he did not know what the game was. “Tell me, then. Had I shared my word with Jalon, or with Andor, would they have called Darad to kill me?”

Sagorn shrugged, uninterested. “Perhaps. I don’t recall that either of them had decided. But Darad would have been called sooner or later, when one of us was in trouble. Then he would have come after you, to get more power; he is a simple soul. There would be more sorcerers around if sharing were easier, you see. It needs a great trust.”

“And you could cheat? Tell a wrong word?”

The old man smiled thinly. “I expect people usually do.”

“And,” Rap concluded, feeling triumphant, “the Darad problem still exists if we share now, doesn’t it?”

Sagorn pouted, emphasizing the clefts that flanked his deep upper lip. “I suppose it does. Well, Queen Inosolan, shall we try Inisso’s magic casement instead?”

The strain of an unbearable day was showing on her face, but Inos raised her head proudly and said, “If you wish, Doctor.”

Nobody moved. Fleabag was panting, and the wind moaning around the turret. Very faint thumping sounds came drifting up from the imps' axes.

“Well, this is exciting!” Princess Kadolan said. “I have always wanted to see some real magic. Who goes first? You, Doctor Sagorn?”

He glanced at her disbelievingly and then nodded. “I suppose so. Come back here, Master Rap.”

Rap walked over to them, and the icy chamber was rapidly plunged into darkness, Inos’s candle barely visible. Then Sagorn moved slowly toward the casement. Again light shone on the dusty, footprinted floor and this time it seemed to be normal sunlight—white, but not the fearsome glare that Rap had provoked.

Sagorn went close and studied the emblems on the tiny panes. As before, Rap felt that they were changing, but could see no transformation actually happen. A red spiral near the lower left corner was farther to the right than he had thought, the gold and green seashell higher, a group of silver bells on azure petals…

Then the gaunt old man seemed to find courage. He reached up and grasped the fastening in the center, grunted quietly as if it were stiff, and pulled the two flaps toward him. As he stepped back, the casement swung open.

2

A gust of hot, dry wind swirled through the chamber, raising the dust in acrid, eye-stinging clouds. The sunlight, also, stung Rap’s eyes and he squinted for a moment, registering only that the bright sand outside was little lower than the floor within, as if the tower had sunk into the ground. Then, as he adjusted to the sunshine, he saw that he was looking across a level space, a sandy and rocky ground, toward a rugged, sun-blasted cliff of black rock, littered at its base with boulders. The only vegetation consisted of a few spiky clumps of some plant he had never seen before; the heat coming in on the breeze was intense.

It was real, and not real. His senses insisted that he was standing in a room about one story above the ground, looking out an open window. Even the smell of the air was real, and the waves of heat shimmering off the sand. But his farsight detected nothing outside the casement at all. So accustomed was he now to using his occult talent that its failure unbalanced him and made him feel dizzy.

In the distance, three men were picking their way along the base of the cliff, between the rocks. He wondered why they did not move out into the open and walk on the flat ground. They wore robes with the hoods raised to shield them from the sun’s glare, so he could not see their faces. The one in front was the tallest and his walk seemed familiar.

“That’s you in the brown, Doctor, isn’t it?” Princess Kadolan said.

Sagorn stepped back a pace and spoke without turning. “Yes, I think it may be. I wonder who the others are.”

There was no sound except a faint rustling as the wind stirred dried twigs in the withered bushes below the casement.

Then the men all stopped and peered up at the sky. They seemed to study something, the middle one pointed. They began moving again, and as the first man moved around an especially large boulder—the size of a small cottage—he turned toward the casement, and the viewers. Certainly it was Sagorn, strands of white hair falling over his gaunt, angular face, but he was too far off for his voice to be audible. The second man followed. He wore a greenish robe and hood, and his face was too pale to be anything but jotunn, although he was shorter than most jotnar. All Rap could be sure of was that he sported a voluminous silver moustache.

Which was hardly helpful, because many sailors did. Then the third followed, but he was keeping his head lowered. All three disappeared momentarily behind high-piled debris.

“That was Rap!” Inos exclaimed. “The one in black?”

“No. Not Flat Nose!” Little Chicken growled angrily.

Rap could not tell, not knowing what he looked like from the outside, but he felt very uneasy.

“I find this extremely unhelpful!” Sagorn sniffed. “There is no way to tell where this is. That may be Master Rap with me, but I’m not sure. Does anyone recognize the second man? Where? When? What are we doing?”

Then a huge blackness swept over the two men and was gone—a giant shadow. They dropped hurriedly, cowering behind boulders and staring up at the sky. Faint shouts drifted in the wind.

Sagorn gave a strangled cry and stumbled back from the casement. The scene rippled, fragmented, turned gray, and was gone. Icy wind swirled snowflakes into the chamber. The old man tottered forward again to grip the leaves of the casement and force them closed against the Krasnegar night, fastening the clasp.

He swung around, almost invisible, for the candle had blown out long since and there was only a faint glow from the eastern window. “Did any of you recognize that shape?” His voice quavered.

“No,” said the others, almost as one, but Inos' aunt said, “Yes, I think so. Wasn’t it a dragon?”

“I think it was. Nothing else could be so big. I have been shown my death!”

“Then you had better stay away from dragon country, sir.” Rap was feeling more and more unhappy. The magic had made his scalp creep, but perhaps that had been because to his farsight the scene had been invisible, a mysterious nothing. Of course his farsight had not detected Bright Water the first time he met her, either.

“And that was Rap with you!” Inos said.

“Not!” Little Chicken snapped.

Princess Kadolan and Sagorn tended to think that Inos was right. Rap himself was uncertain. But it could have been, and none of them had known the second man, except that they all agreed he was likely a sailor. That was not a very profound conclusion, because jotnar often were, and Dragon Reach was somewhere in the southern parts of the Impire, near the Summer Seas, a very long way from Nordland.

“Well, there are no dragons here now,” Rap said, and cursed himself for babbling like a nervous child. But there were imps, and the steady thud of axes was coming closer.

“Who wants to try next, then?” Sagorn asked, shepherding them back against the far wall. “That was not very helpful.”

“I shall try, if you like, sir.” But Rap did not really want to know what was causing the unearthly radiance that he created beyond the casement. Apparently the others did not care to know, either.

“I should prefer that you stayed away from it, young man!” Sagorn now sounded more like his usual acerbic self. There were murmurs of assent from the women.

“Then I shall try!” Inos said, not sounding enthused. “I need guidance more than anyone.”

Her footsteps headed for the casement and in a moment she was silhouetted against it as it began to glow. It was going to be daylight again, Rap concluded, but not so bright as in Sagorn’s scene—a gray day. The iridescence of the symbols was less intense, the tints softer. Inos reached up to the clasp and pulled the leaves open.

Then she jumped back, a fist to her mouth to stifle a scream. There was a man standing just outside, his back to the viewers. Without conscious thought, Rap rushed forward. Suddenly—unexpectedly, unforgivably—Inos was in his arms. And they both ignored that fact, staring out of the magic casement.

The man was a jotunn, no doubt of that. He wore a fur around his loins, but the upper half of his body was bare, and only jotnar were that pale shade. His back and shoulders were slick with rain. They were also heavy with muscle and his arms were scarred, his legs invisible below the sill. His thick hair hung like silver plate to his shoulders, hardly stirring in the wind. It was not, as Rap had first thought, Darad. This man was younger, smooth rather than hairy. He had fewer scars and no visible tattoos. It was not Darad, but a man almost as tall. And he was starting to turn.

Rap noticed that Inos was clutching him, also, and her grip grew tighter as the man in the vision turned. Would he be able to see them as they could see him? Rap was just about to release Inos and reach for the flaps—

“It’s Kalkor!” Sagorn’s voice came from close behind them. “The Thane of Gark. And that’s the Nordland Moot!”

The man had stopped moving, but he seemed oblivious of the watchers beside him, who were now seeing his gaunt jotunn face in profile. Looking at it, Rap could understand the man’s reputation, and Inos began to tremble in his arms. In a way it was almost a handsome face, but Kalkor’s appearance suited his reputation. Rap would have expected an older man, but he had never seen a face that so clearly expressed cruelty and implacable determination. It would take a brave man to risk the anger of Thane Kalkor.

There was some sort of ceremony in progress. He seemed to be waiting. Then another man stepped in from the side, an elderly man wearing a red woolen robe, sodden wet from the rain, and a ceremonial helmet decorated with horns. He carried a huge ax and he raised it now, holding it vertically in front of him, using both arms, unable to prevent its great weight from wobbling in his grasp. He gasped some hurried words in a tongue unfamiliar to Rap.

Kalkor reached out one hand stiffly and grasped the monstrous, two-edged battle-ax. It must weigh a ton, Rap thought, seeing how the thick shoulders flexed as Kalkor took the strain at arm’s length, leaning back for balance.

The Nordland Moot? Now, peering into the misty background beyond the foreground figures, Rap made out what Sagorn had seen sooner—a wide flat area of turf, a bare green moorland under a weeping gray sky. Clumped in an irregular circle around the battleground was a huge audience, vague and indistinct in the mist and rain. It was a bleak and ominous scene, barbaric and deadly.

And yet… the watchers were all foggy and indistinct. There was something ghostly and unreal about that background, quite unlike the hard sharpness of Kalkor and his companion, or of the desert in the first showing. Was that just an effect of the rain, or not?

Rap’s attention switched back to the action by the casement. Kalkor raised the ax to his lips, then laid it over his shoulder, moving with military precision. He adjusted his grip and swung sharply around, turning his back to the viewers once more. The shining blue-white blade seemed to be almost within the chamber.

The sounds downstairs had stopped momentarily, then picked up again, much louder. The imps must now be tackling the door to the royal bedchamber.

Kalkor was marching forward over the turf toward the center of the circle, the ax on his shoulder, wearing nothing but the animal hide wrapped around his loins, bare-legged and barefooted.

The man in the red robe had withdrawn. It seemed safe to speak. “What’s the Nordland Moot?” Rap asked.

“It’s held every year at midsummer on Nintor,” Sagorn said quietly. “The thanes settle their disputes by ritual combat.”

“I bet that Kalkor never lost an argument.”

“But this is Inos’s prophecy! Don’t you see, boy? Kalkor will seize her kingdom, and she will take her complaint against him to the moot!”

“I hope I am allowed a champion to fight for me,” Inos said. “I don’t think I could even lift that ax. That would be quite a handicap.”

No one laughed. Muffled voices in the distance were the only sound, too far off for the words to be distinguished, but obviously coming from a large crowd.

“Champions are allowed under certain conditions. Darad has earned good money there. Needless to say, the rest of us do not look back on the memories very happily.”

And the scene began to shimmer and fade, just as Kalkor’s opponent became visible, emerging from the mist, advancing toward him from the far side of the circle. Came the darkness; snow whirled in again. Sagorn stepped forward to close the casement.

Inos clutched Rap fiercely. “That was you again!” she said, peering up at him. “Wasn’t it?”

This time Rap thought he had been the one in the vision. The goblin and Sagorn agreed. Princess Kadolan pleaded old eyes and would not say. But whoever it had been, he had been much sharper and less blurred than the other figures in the background—was the casement defective, or did that distinction have some significance? Rap wondered how much danger there was in meddling with such occult power as this. It felt wrong.

“That’s crazy!” he said. “Me fight Kalkor with an ax? You’d better find a better champion than that.”

He realized that he still had one arm around Inos, and he released her quickly.

“This is very strange,” Sagorn muttered. Even in the darkness, Rap knew of the puzzled expression on the scrawny face. “The Place of Ravens is marked by a circle of standing stones. I don’t recall seeing those—did any of you?”

Heads were shaken.

“And it rarely rains like that on Nintor. And, Master Rap, why should you turn up in two other people’s prophecies? Why do you agitate the casement so much when you approach it?”

Again Rap thought of the old goblin woman. Why can’t I foresee you? “Perhaps I haven’t got any future to foresee,” he said bitterly. “But I do seem to be a popular player in these events. Which comes first, the dragon or Kalkor?”

“Whichever it is, you survive,” Sagorn said, and there could be no argument about that. “And the legionaries, as well, tonight,” he added, less certainly.

“Are you sure this contrivance is not just playing jokes?” Princess Kadolan asked hotly. “It still has not told us how to evade the imps. Listen!”

Rap did not need to listen. If the imps had broken into the bedroom, there was only one more bolted door left. He headed for the stair, meaning to find out—

“Me next!” Little Chicken marched over to the casement, making the eerie firelight flicker again beyond the panes.

“No!” Rap stopped and swung around. He had a premonition of what was going to be revealed, but his protest was too late. The flaps swung open once more, and the chamber was filled with a sound of applause and acrid, eye-watering gusts of wood smoke.

As Rap had feared, he was looking into a crowded goblin lodge, seeing over spectators' heads. Fire blazed and crackled in the middle of the stone platform, throwing light on the audience gathered around the walls: near-nude men and boys, shrouded women and girls. They were all jabbering with excitement and laughing. The naked victim was staked out on the floor, and the tormentor standing over him holding a flaming brand was Little Chicken.

Rap swung away, burying his face in his hands and feeling his stomach heave with nausea and terror. Inos screamed. So did her aunt, and Sagorn muttered something guttural under his breath.

Then strong hands grabbed Rap. “It is you!” Little Chicken was wild with excitement. “Come! You see!” He began dragging Rap bodily back to the casement and resistance made no difference. “Hear applause! You do well for that! You making good show! And I doing good job! See your hands? See ribs?”

“No! No!” Rap howled, struggling to keep his face turned, his eyes closed. “Shut the window!”

“Good show!” Little Chicken insisted, squealing with joy. “It is Raven Totem! There my brothers! Watch what I do now!”

Rap forced his eyes open momentarily and then shut them tight again quickly. The victim did look like him, and not very much older than the face he had glimpsed in Hononin’s kitchen mirror.

And yet, there had been something wrong! He sneaked another quick glance and again had to shut his eyes hastily to prevent a fit of nausea. It was his face, but somehow blurred—fuzzy? Little Chicken sniggered wildly at some new horror and the goblin spectators burst into applause again.

Then, mercifully, the light faded against Rap’s eyelids, the excited babble of the crowd died away, and he felt the icy touch of the polar night and the cool caress of snow on his face. He relaxed and opened his eyes.

A thump on the back from Little Chicken almost laid him on the floor. “I told true!” he sniggered. “I kill you! We make good show.”

“Neither dragon nor Kalkor?” Sargon said acidly. “You are indeed a hard young man to kill. Perhaps that is all the message we are going to get—you will survive the imps, so why worry?”

“More likely it’s telling us that I’m as good as dead already!” Rap cried, and was ashamed at the shrillness of his voice. “Or that the imps may give me a better death than anything else in my future.”

“In either case it would just show the imps killing you, I think,” the old man remarked calmly.

Inos put an arm around Rap and led him away from the window.

He might survive jotunn or dragon, Rap thought, but he would not want to survive goblin. The victim in that last scene had already been horribly mutilated.

“Was it me?” he whispered, trying to control his trembling. “I thought it looked strange—blurred, somehow.” Say it was not me! Small wonder that Inos' great-grandfather had gone mad.

Sagorn hesitated. “Yes,” he muttered. “I noticed that. I thought it was just the smoke stinging my eyes, but your friend here seemed sharp enough… So we have seen you three times. The first two glimpses were ambiguous and the third time was suspiciously unreal. I wish I knew more about these things! It is all so insubstantial! What we need is a sorcerer to explain them.”

Crash! The door shuddered. The imps had arrived. Only one bolt now lay between Rap and their vengeance.

Inos hugged him more tightly. “But you will be my champion,” she said.

That was a nice thought, but for the rest of his life he would know that his eventual fate was to return to Raven Totem and the loving care of Little Chicken—while not looking very much older than he did now.

He wondered what would happen if he killed Little Chicken first. He had put down the sword somewhere, but now he wished he had it handy. Would it be possible to make a liar out of the casement? Was that why Bright Water had warned him not to harm the goblin? Had she foreseen Little Chicken being hurt by Rap?

Again the ax crashed against the door. Not long now.

“We might as well let them in!” Rap said wearily. “I think I agree with the casement that a quick hanging might be all for the best.”

“No!” Inos shouted. “Doctor Sagorn, a sorcerer could beat a dragon, couldn’t he? And Kalkor? That’s what it means! That is the message—we must share our words of power with Rap! He can’t share with us, but if we make him a sorcerer—a mage—then he will save you from the dragon one day, and beat Kalkor as my champion! Don’t you see? That is the only way he can survive the dangers we have seen in store for him, and he must survive two of them—I mean at least two, Rap, of course. And that fuzziness you saw—he was using magic against the goblins, too!”

Rap groaned. Not a sorcerer! Farsight was bad enough. The imps would be better than that.

“Darad—” Sagorn said, and paused. “I am too old to risk weakening my power, child. My health… You must share yours with me, also.”

“Yes!” Inos said. “You and I share, and then share with Rap. We’ll each have two, and he’ll have three.”

Rap groaned.

“Why not?” She stamped her foot with rage and dug her fingernails into Rap’s arm.

He was finding it very hard to think straight with Inos holding him like this. “Inos,” he said hoarsely, “I don’t want to be a sorcerer, even a mage. Sagorn is saying you must tell him first. Then he becomes an adept, right? He might call Darad to kill you to become a stronger adept! I don’t think you should trust him, not that much.”

The old man flushed angrily. Inos released Rap with a sob. “The God promised me a happy ending. Carried off captive by imps? Breeding sons for Kalkor? And you’re going to be thrown in the dungeons at the least, you dummy! I think that stupid casement is too old! It wasn’t working right!”

The door shuddered and splintered. It had lasted longer than the others, so perhaps it held some residual magic. Rap could farsee the burly imp wielding the ax, the heads and shoulders of others behind him, lower on the stairs, seeming cut off at floor level.

“Listen!” Inos said firmly. “I will tell Doctor Sagorn my word, and then he will tell both of them to Rap. You won’t be in danger then, Doctor, will you? I will trust you, as Father said I should.”

The old man shrugged. “Your plan makes sense, Majesty. I can think of none better. We have indeed been instructed to share our words with Master Rap. You will just have to reconcile yourself to becoming a mage, young man! Obviously that is what the casement was telling us to do.”

Rap groaned again.

Crash! Splinters flew. That blow had come right through the planks.

Inos clasped his hand. “Rap? Please?”

Please? He was making his queen beg? What sort of loyalty was that, to refuse the very first command she gave him? Rap squared his shoulders.

“Of course, your Majesty!” Then he sensed the spasm of hurt that crossed her face. That wasn’t right, either! “I’ll be proud to be your court magician, Inos—if I can be master-of-horse sometimes?”

He tried to smile and discovered that he had forgotten how to.

Inos took his hand. “Thank you, Rap.”

“And you know that if I knew a word of power, I would tell it to you gladly?”

Sorcerer? Prying into people’s minds as well as their clothes and houses? Manipulating people, like Andor? Killing them off when they got in the way, like Darad? Hateful! Hateful!

“Perhaps we should pray?” princess Kadolan said quietly. “When the God appeared to Inos—”

Inos started to say something, then glanced at the door as a whole plank shattered, hurling more splinters across the floor. Rap sensed the big imp outside lowering his ax, and the others surging up close behind him with swords drawn.

But he had seen the splinters, seen them with his eyes. The door was brightly lighted. So was the floor, with five shadows stretched out across it.

No! Six shadows!

Fleabag yawned and lay down. He had a shadow, also—seven!

Simultaneously they all swung around to see. Light was streaming in the still-open casement from a strange, many-colored mist that glowed outside. The extra shadow came from a woman standing before it, inside the chamber.

Disaster! Idiot! With his stupid pig-headed refusal to obey his monarch, Rap had delayed too long. He had been warned that sorcerers could sense occult power being used, and here was a sorceress come to investigate.

The magic casement had given the answer, the solution to all their problems, and he had mulishly thrown it all away.

Now anything could happen.

3

“Well, well, well!” said the newcomer. “What have we here?”

Rap grabbed Inos' hand and spun around, heading for the door—and his boots froze to the floor. He windmilled his free arm wildly to regain his balance. He tried to pull his feet out of his boots, but they would not come loose either—he was rooted. The others had all reacted in the same way and they were all similarly immobilized, cemented to their own shadows. Meanwhile, a brawny arm reached through the hole in the door and fumbled for the bolt.

Rap twisted around awkwardly to watch the woman plodding forward to inspect her captives. A sorceress! Dumpy and wide, she walked with a heavy-footed gait. She was swathed all over in some soft fabric of pure white, even more hidden than a goblin woman, for a veil concealed all of her face below her eyes. She was much too large to be Bright Water, witch of the north.

The rest of the Four were men, warlocks, so this was someone new, someone unexpected.

“A magic casement left open?” she said. “No bug screen? Someone has been very careless!” She was speaking impish, but with a strange, harsh accent.

Then she seemed to notice the legionary’s hand, still struggling with the bolt at a difficult angle. She made a small gesture, and the imp froze. So did all those behind him, so far as Rap’s farsight would reach—completely petrified. Struggling to comprehend the sheer size of this latest disaster, he registered vaguely that the newcomer had just used magic on Imperial troops. Was that good or bad for Inos? Would the warlocks now descend in fury on Krasnegar?

Yells of alarm came drifting up the stairwell as the soldiers farther down discovered what had happened to their leaders.

The woman stopped in front of Inos’s aunt, hands on hips and feet spread, in a stance more like an angry fishwife than whatever Rap would have expected of a sorceress.

“Let’s start with you, dearie,” she said. “Who’re you?”

The princess’s pearly gown was bedraggled and tea-stained, her white hair mussed, but she drew herself up as tall as she could—which wasn’t very—and said haughtily, “I am Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar. And you?”

The sorceress’s eyebrows vanished up into her headcloth, and Rap sensed amusement. “Well! I’m Rasha aq’Inim, Sultana of Arakkaran.”

“Oh!” The princess thawed at once and smiled, “How nice that you can join us, your Majesty!”

A sultana was a Majesty?

The self-styled queen laughed coarsely. “My pleasure entirely. Do excuse me just dropping in like this, without formal invitation and all.”

“I only wish we could offer you proper hospitality.”

“Oh, I quite understand! You’ll excuse me a moment?”

She pulled off her head covering to reveal hair of a dark-red hue, its magnificent gleaming waves cunningly held by combs of silver and mother-of-pearl. Her gown was of much lighter, sheerer material than Rap had realized, and it sparkled with many jewels.

How had he failed to notice those earlier?

This astonishing sultana glanced coyly around the great circular chamber, dirty and cold and lighted only by an opalescent glow from the magic casement, and then she dropped her veil. She was much younger than Rap had realized, and of no race that he had ever met. Her skin, like her glorious hair, was a deep ruddy shade, her nose high-prowed and arrogant. She was not conventionally beautiful, perhaps, and past her first youth, but a magnificent, statuesque woman, with an air of power, and mystery, and, yes! —beauty! Certainly beauty—a stunning woman!

Princess Kadolan said, “Oh!” again, faintly, and then rallied. “I am sorry to say that you find us in rather a state of confusion, your Majesty.”

Sultana Rasha glanced at the petrified arm protruding through the door. “I noticed. The lower orders can be tiresome at times, can they not?”

“Indeed they can. May I present my niece, Pri—Queen Inosolan?”

The sorceress glanced across at Inos and seemed to disapprove. Rap, at her side, tried to maintain a stern, warning expression, as if he were truly a protector, but he was struggling against a craven yearning to smile at the beguiling young Rasha.

“We are honored, your Majesty,” Inos said frostily.

Queen Rasha’s dark eyes narrowed. “So you should be. I do not recall a Queen Inosolan? Krasnegar? Goblin country?”

Princess Kadolan said, “My niece has just lost her father, King Holindarn. Today? I suppose it’s tomorrow now—just yesterday.”

The sorceress sneered at Inos. “And you inherited a magic casement, so the first thing you wanted to do was to play with it?”

“I was desperate!” Inos shouted. “Imperial troops have seized my kingdom, the people are on the brink of civil war, and Kalkor is going to invade as soon as the ice goes!”

Sultana Rasha’s exquisite eyebrows rose again. “Kalkor?”

“The Thane of Gark.”

“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” Now she was certainly intrigued. “And what is the imperor’s interest in a flyspeck fiefdom like Krasnegar? That doesn’t sound like Emshandar. His new marshal, perhaps? He seeks to provoke the jotnar?”

“I don’t think the imperor even knows his troops are here. The proconsul in Pondague made a deal—”

Inos stopped abruptly. Rap wondered why; he was having great trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. The sorceress was taking up far too much of his attention—the diamonds twinkling below her gorgeous earlobes, the smooth perfection of her arm. Funny how at first he’d mistakenly thought her arms were draped in sleeves! The effort of not using his farsight on her was making his head throb, and yet he hardly needed it, for her hot, ruddy-hued skin seemed to glow through the gauzy stuff of her draperies.

Rasha strolled toward him, but her attention was on Inos. “A deal? Don’t lie to me, girl. I can read your mind if I wish, or cast a truth spell on you. I prefer not to—it takes all the fun out of things. What sort of deal?”

For a moment Inos and Rasha stood eye to eye in silent challenge. They were about the same height, the same age—but how had Rap ever believed that Inos was beautiful? How plain and dull she seemed, compared to the other girl’s radiance! How weary and bedraggled! Her grip on Rap’s hand grew very tight, then she dropped her gaze.

“I have a distant cousin—or great-great-aunt, or some such relation—the dowager duchess of Kinvale. She wants to marry me to her son. He has a claim to my throne, if a woman cannot inherit.”

“So!” The sultana beamed. “And can a woman inherit?”

“I think so!” Inos said angrily. “My father said so! By the laws of the Impire I could.”

“But Kalkor disagrees, so the imps want to block the jotnar? Well, well!” Young queen Rasha’s smile was delectable, yet sinister enough to stir the hair on the back of Rap’s neck. “Politics is a tiresome men’s game, but sometimes we poor, feeble women are forced to play a hand or two, just to protect our interests.”

“You will help me?” Inos exclaimed.

“We’ll see,” the sorceress said darkly.

“I shall need to know a little more. ” She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Sagorn, standing stiffly at the end of the line. “Men can be so obnoxious at times…”

She frowned as if puzzled and sauntered over toward him. Rap had never seen a woman move with such grace. Even without his farsight he could detect the glory of her long legs moving within the filmy robe, and he caught glimpses of tiny silver sandals. Oh, those hips! Of course this was sorcery at work. No woman should be able to raise his heart pound like this just by walking across a floor. She had not looked like this when—but he couldn’t recall what she had looked like when she first appeared. It was how she looked now that mattered. Oh, wonder of womanhood! Oh, vision of all man’s desire! Sorcery curdling his brains—dangerous! He knew it, knew he was helpless against it. She was turning him into a helpless slave, a human jelly. All other thoughts had fled his mind.

Inos wrenched her hand loose from his sweaty grip and he barely noticed.

Sagorn straightened up and licked his lips. “Would you turn down the intensity a little, ma’am?” he mumbled. “It’s very hard on the arteries at my age.”

“But what a wonderful way to die!” She laughed and reached up to stroke his cheek with a teasing finger. Rap felt fires of insane jealousy leap through him like lightning bolts.

Sagorn moaned—and was the much-too-handsome Andor.

Queen Rasha sprang back, raising a hand as if to strike. For a bewildering fraction of a second, Rap imagined a glimpse of a heavy, middle-aged woman in a shabby brown wrap, with unkempt gray hair and bare feet, with wrinkles and sagging cheeks. Then the delusion was gone, and the glorious Queen Rasha was there again, radiant in gossamer and pearl, studying Andor in languid amusement.

With hair in disarray, in a gown too large for him, Andor was clutching his left arm, whose sleeve was already darkening with blood, yet he contrived to bow gracefully nonetheless. “Oh, yes!” he said. “Exquisite! Majesty, how may I serve you?”

Queen Rasha nodded to acknowledge the bow, regarding him with some curiosity. “A sequential spell? Fascinating! And well done, too—a very sharp transition. Can it truly be a matched set? Let’s see, the old one would have been the scholar—”

“And I your devoted slave.”

“Of course a lover,” she said curtly, seemingly more to herself than to Andor. Before he could say more she cut him off with a snap of her fingers.

And he had gone. In his place was Darad, huge and ugly, his head still dribbling blood from Rap’s chair-work. He howled, clasping a hand to the eye that Little Chicken had injured. Andor’s blood—and now Darad’s own—had now soaked through the left sleeve of the robe, and his sudden move produced a ripping noise from an overstretched shoulder.

“The fighter!” The sorceress pulled a face and snapped her fingers again.

The gown seemed to fall inward, around the slight form of the flaxen-haired Jalon. His dreamy blue eyes widened at the sight of Rasha. “The artist, ma’am,” he said, bowing. “Your beauty shall evermore be on my lips and my song raised in your—”

“Some other day.” Sultana Rasha snapped fingers a third time, and the brown robe collapsed yet again. All that was visible of the latest occupant was a narrow, dark face peering out from under a tangle of lank black hair—a small and very ordinary impish youth, his mouth and eyes now stretched wide in terror. With a wail, he tried to fall on his knees before the sorceress, but his feet were as immovable as Rap’s, and he succeeded only in dropping to a squat. He raised clasped hands in supplication. The sound of chattering teeth filled the chamber.

“Well!” The sultana appeared to be less antagonistic than she had been toward his predecessors. “Scholar, lover, soldier, artist—and you must be the financier of the group?”

The youth wailed, big eyes peering up at her from a nest of heaped robe. “I mean no harm, your M-M-Majesty!”

“But you’re a bazaar fingersmith if I ever saw one!”

He whimpered. “Just crusts, lady—a few crusts, when I was hungry.”

This was the fifth member of the gang? Thinal, the thief whom Sagorn had called their leader, and Andor’s brother. A less memorable face Rap had never seen. It was pocked, moreover, with oozing acne pustules and marred by unsightly tufts of hair. No one would willingly look even once at Thinal; he would disappear instantly into any crowd in any city of the Impire. Yet the king had told Inos she could trust him!

The sorceress nodded approvingly. “Very fine work. Who did it?”

“Or-Or-Orarinsagu, may it please your Omnipotence.”

“A long time ago, then?”

“Over a c-c-century, Majesty.” For a moment the teeth chattered again, and then the little thief managed to blurt out a plea: “M-M-Majesty? We c-c-crave release…”

“I should not dream of breaking up such a masterpiece.”

The imp wailed and cowered down ever farther into the crumpled brown robe, so that only his hair was visible.

“Besides,” the sorceress said, “having a whole handful of men available when required, but only one at a time to put up with—that seems like an excellent arrangement.”

Leaving the lad apparently sobbing into his knees, she came strolling back along the line. She paused in front of Little Chicken and regarded him with dislike. “You must be a goblin. Your name?”

With his odd-shaped eyes stretched wider than Rap had ever seen them, Little Chicken merely moaned and reached out toward the sorceress. She drifted backward until he was leaning forward at an absurd angle, only the fixation spell on his feet preventing him from crashing to the floor. He continued to moan.

She studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “Not bad below the neck, but the face would have to go.”

She left him there, completely off balance, and wandered past Princess Kadolan without a word, to stop once more before Rap and Inos. “Extraordinary retainers you chose, child,” she muttered.

Why would she call Inos a child when she was no older herself? Her eyes were the same deep red-brown shade as her hair, and they were burning Rap’s soul to ashes. The curve of her breasts below the filmy gauze of her robe was driving him mad, and her nearness made the blood pound in his chest until he felt it was about to burst.

“And a faun? What’s your name, lad?”

He opened his mouth. “Raaaaa…” His name disappeared in a choking noise, as he felt himself strangle in sudden revelation. His name was not Rap. That was only a nickname, a short form of—of his word of power. He had never told anyone his real name, not even the king. It was a great long thing, Raparakagozi—and another twenty syllables-and he had not heard it since his mother had first told it to him, a few days before she became sick, warning him not to repeat it because if an evil sorcerer learned your name he could do you harm and of course she must have seen with her foresight that she was going to die and the fact that he could even remember such gibberish after all these years meant that it was his word of power and now he desperately wanted to tell it to this entrancing seductive beauty standing before him and yet some part of him was screaming at him not to—the words were hard to say, Sagorn had told him—and his tongue tripped between the two set of commands and…

“What is a faun doing so far north?” Queen Rasha inquired before he had resolved his conflict and brought his mouth under control. She curled a lip that men would have died to kiss just once. “But he’s only a halfbreed, isn’t he? That’s a jotunn jaw, and he’s too tall. But those tattoos! Why do savages think that mutilation can possibly improve their appearance?”

“Huh?”

Tattoos?

“This is Master Rap, a stableboy!” Inos said, in a strangely sharp tone. Rap did not look at her.

Queen Rasha sighed. “I do hope his duties are not too complex for him.” She seemed to lose interest in Rap. His world crashed down into terrible black despair. It wasn’t his fault he was a mongrel, and he’d have managed to tell her his name if she’d just given him another minute or two. He so desperately wanted to please her, just to earn one tiny smile…

“Krasnegar,” the sorceress murmured, regarding Inos again. “Inisso? A word or two of power, perhaps?”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Inos shouted.

“Don’t be tiresome!” Rasha sighed. “Granted the words themselves are invisible, but I don’t need the occult to tell me when a slip of a girl is lying. And you do have an interesting problem.” She glanced thoughtfully at the door, still decorated with a burly arm. “I don’t think now is the time to solve it.”

“What do you mean?” Inos cried. Rap’s conscience stirred vaguely. Something must be bothering Inos, and he should not be staring so fixedly at Sultana Rasha.

“I mean,” the sorceress said, rather absently, as if lost in thought, “that when you opened that magic casement, it creaked so loud that I heard it down in Zark. A casement shouldn’t do that. What could have charged it up with power like that?”

No one spoke, and she shrugged. “Just a malfunction, I expect. Old—it obviously hasn’t been used in years, right? You were lucky that most of Pandemia was still asleep. Including the sorcerers. Including, more important, the wardens! But to linger longer would not be wise. Go now.”

She pointed to the window. Inos turned. She began to walk stiffly toward it, and then twisted around and held out her hand, even as her feet were still moving.

“Rap!” she cried. “Help!”

With a shuddering start, he turned to look. As soon as his gaze left Rasha, he broke free of his dreams. “I’m coming!” He tried to move, but his feet remained as solidly fastened as before. He could do nothing, and Inos continued to walk unwillingly to the casement.

Again she screamed. “Rap!”

“I’m coming!” he yelled, but he wasn’t. Off balance, he toppled backwards and crashed to the floor, his feet still immovable. Elbows and head smashed into the boards. Heavens full of stars blazed before him.

“What is the meaning of this?” her aunt shouted. “Release her at once!”

But already Inos, still moving in small jerks like a puppet, had reached the casement and started to clamber over the sill. Peering through eyes blurred with tears of pain, Rap saw that the many-colored haze beyond it was a drapery of sparkling beads, flickering in a gentle breeze. The sun must be shining behind it, although the other three windows showed only a predawn glow. The whole chamber, he realized, was full of warm air, scented with flowers.

Inos staggered on the far side of the wall, cried, “Rap!” once more, and then vanished through the shimmering rainbow drape.

Failure! He had failed Inos!

“Queen Rasha!” Princess Kadolan said hotly. “This is highly improper! Return my niece at once, or else permit me to accompany her.”

Rasha regarded her with some amusement. “You would not prefer to remain and lecture the imps on deportment? Very well—go.”

Kadolan’s roly-poly form hurried willingly across the chamber. She struggled for a moment with the climb, almost fell over the sill, stumbled through the drape in a tinkle of jewels, and was gone.

The sorceress glanced around the others. “Boys will be boys,” she said. “Time for ladies to retire and leave you all to your male fun. Tell them to be sure and clean up the blood afterward!” She uttered an astonishingly raucous laugh.

Still half stunned, Rap was also bewildered—the sultana’s draperies were not nearly as flimsy as he had thought, and her hair was covered again, and he could not recall her replacing her veil. She seemed much older than he had been thinking, and broad, not slender.

She took a couple of steps and paused to study the sleeping Fleabag, who leaped up and bounded over to her, his tail wagging vigorously. Again Rap felt the bite of jealousy.

“Splendid creature!” Queen Rasha said, with what sounded like real admiration. “You will make a fine pair with Claws.” She glanced down at the prostrate Rap. “Yours, faun?”

Rap nodded, unable to trust himself to speak.

Fleabag turned, lolloped across the chamber, and bounded over the sill of the casement after Inos. Rasha waddled across the room and paused again at the window to look back suspiciously.

“Why should a queen call for a stableboy?”

Rap’s mouth was suddenly very dry. Because he had a word of power, perhaps? He must not even think about words of power around a sorceress. That was what had been worrying Inos all along, he saw now, and he had been so bewitched by this—this old woman?

“Huh?”

Rasha shrugged. “No accounting for tastes, is there?” She moved again, seemed to float through the sill, and vanished. The misty brightness went, also, and a swirl of polar wind rushed into the chamber, bearing cold and snowflakes and dark.

Rap scrambled giddily to his feet, trying to rub head and elbows at the same time. Little Chicken roared in fury. King Holindarn’s brown robe seemed to rise up of its own accord, so inconspicuous was the impish youth inside it. The troops beyond the door came back to life with a loud howl.

4

For the moment, the legionaries were having an argument, and the threatening arm had been removed. Rap turned away in time to see Thinal, holding up his gown with both hands, heading for the still-open casement. With his head still pounding, Rap lurched over to block him.

“Where are you going?”

So high was the collar around Thinal’s ears that his nondescript, spotty face seemed to stare out of it, pale in the dawn gloom, as if the robe were swallowing him.

“I want to see if I could climb down, Rap.”

Sagorn had said that Thinal was a human fly. Rap and Little Chicken weren’t.

“Call Sagorn!” Rap shouted. “He got us into this mess. Maybe he can get us out yet!”

The young imp shook his head vigorously. “No. He’s too frail now. We can’t risk him.”

Rap grabbed the thief’s puny shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. “Call Sagorn!”

Thinal staggered back and almost tripped over his robe. “Don’t do that!” he screamed.

“Do what?”

“Don’t bully me! I frighten easy, Rap.”

“So?” Rap advanced on him again.

“I might call Darad!” Thinal wailed, sounding almost in tears. “It’s too easy! I might not be able to help myself!”

Rap took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he grunted. Then, “Oh, demons!”

He whirled around to the door. The imps had massed outside again; again the arm came through the jagged hole. But the bolt was too far from the hole to reach with just a hand, and the timbers were very thick. The big imp had stopped and thrust his whole arm in, right to the shoulder. Before Rap could say a word, Little Chicken went sprinting across the room, leaped, and struck that so-tempting, protruding elbow with both feet. He bounced off and landed on his feet like a cat, while the imp’s scream seemed to shake the whole tower.

Great! There went any hope of merciful treatment.

The legionaries helped their disabled comrade extract his shattered and mangled limb, all roaring furiously. Another giant grabbed up the ax, and the door shivered under his blows.

“Now what are we going to do?” Rap’s head ached. He had betrayed Inos, but it did not look as if he would have long to mourn his inadequacy. “We could still share words,” he suggested.

Thinal was edging toward the window again. “Not enough. Two only makes an adept. Maybe we could climb up on the roof and wait until they’ve gone?”

“They’ll shut the casement!”

“We might break a pane or two first.” Thinal shuffled a little farther—the human fly.

“We’ll be seen from below; it’s almost daylight.” Rap sighed, feeling weariness settle over his fears like thick snow. “I think this is the end! I shouldn’t have been so stubborn and argued so long. The magic told me to become a mage, and I wouldn’t.”

He had disobeyed his monarch’s first order; or at least talked back. If he had done his duty promptly, he would have become a mage and served her by driving away the imps, forcing the townsfolk to accept her—how much could a mage do, anyway? Well, it didn’t matter anyway, not now.

He forced a smile at the terror-stricken little thief. “Go on, then, if you think you can save yourself. Little Chicken and I will surrender to the soldiers, even if it means the last weighing.”

The goblin had been listening. “No!” he shouted.

The door shuddered, and a whole spar fell out.

“Yes!” Rap said. “Unless you’ve got any ideas?”

A gust of hot, muggy wind swirled into the chamber. Surf roared.

“Death Bird! Here!”

All three spun around. There was no one in sight to explain the voice, but the casement now looked out on strange frondy trees silhouetted against a grayish predawn sky. Rap smelled sea and damp vegetation. Another wave broke noisily, somewhere nearby.

Stunned and wary, all three hesitated.

“Who said?” Little Chicken growled.

“Palms!” Thinal screamed. “Those trees, Rap! They’re palms!”

The door shuddered again, the top hinge almost torn loose from the frame.

“Death Bird! Hurry!”

There was still no one visible to explain the dry old voice, but Rap knew it. “It’s Bright Water!” Would she save the faun as well as the goblin she had called precious?

Thinal grabbed Rap’s arm. “That Rasha—she was a djinn. From Zark. Where there’s djinns, there’s palms!”

“Right!”

All three moved at once. Little Chicken went fastest, clearing the sill in one huge bound. Then he seemed to realize his error, for he yelled from outside, “Flat Nose! Come!”

“I’m coming!” Rap called, and toppled over after him, tumbling onto hot, dry sand. Hampered by his robe, Thinal came last and tipped out almost on top of Rap.

The door fell bodily to the floor. The legionaries poured into the chamber.

They heard a faint, fading echo of a voice crying, “I’m coming.”

They caught a faint wisp of warm, tropic air, and then an icy blast from the Krasnegar night swirled snow at them.

One window was open. There was some discarded bedding on the floor. Otherwise, the chamber was empty.