Magic Casement

1

The king’s face was pinched and straw-tinted, his beard visibly grayer than it had been only a few months before. The wrists protruding from the sleeves of his heavy blue robe were as slender as a boy’s. He was restless, unable to settle, shifting from window to hearth and back, clutching his right side and keeping his jaw clenched much of the time.

Rap sat very straight on the extreme edge of a thickly padded leather chair and felt more uncomfortable than he could have believed possible. He was the owner of the largest and most obvious pair of hands in the Powers' creation and he did not know what to do with them. He was wearing his best, which was in truth but this better, for he possessed only two doublets and they were both too small for him. His boots were clean, after he had worked a whole hour on them, but he was sure that his Majesty would smell horse. He had shaved and scrubbed and he had plastered his shaggy brown hair down with egg white, which was what he thought his mother had used on it sometimes; but he still probably stank of the dogs who had shared his tent for the last month. Thinking of the dogs gave him an unbearable desire to scratch.

The sky was blue beyond the windows. The wagons were rolling again and the storm had faded with the tide.

When the king had thanked him—for that was why he had been summoned—Rap had mentioned the sunshine. His efforts had all been in vain, unnecessary. His Majesty had said that it did not matter, that it was the attempt that counted. Krasnegar should be just as grateful to him as if he had indeed staved off a famine.

Now the king seemed to be having trouble finding words, or deciding whether certain words should be said. “Master Rap,” he began, then paused again. “Is that your real name, or is it short for something?”

“It’s my name, Sire,” Rap said automatically, then remembered that this was his king he was addressing. Before he could say more, the king continued.

“I received letters on the last ship.” He paused to look out the window. “Inosolan and her aunt arrived safely at Kinvale.”

Rap did not know what to say and was afraid that his face would be turning red. “Thank you, Sire.” Hononin had told him he should say Sire sometimes instead of your Majesty always. Next time would have to be your Majesty, because that was two Sires in a row.

“I thought you would like to know,” the king muttered. He swung around and walked back to the fireplace.

The king’s study was a very intimidating room, bigger than the dormitory that Rap had shared the previous night with six boys. It was fortified with lumpish leather furniture and books, haunted by shadows, made warm by the glowing peat in the fireplace and by wool rugs on the floor, a brown and gold room. There were tables littered with papers, piled or rolled or loosely scattered. Maps hung on the wall, mysteriously inscribed with script incomprehensible to Rap. A massive iron-bound chest in the corner contained many things, including the king’s crown… angrily Rap told his mind to stop prying.

The fire impressed him most, though. To squander precious peat so early in the winter with the sun yet shining outside was a truly royal luxury. He found the room very warm—that must be why he was sweating—and yet the king kept returning to the fire place as if he were chilled inside his voluminous robe, his deepblue robe with its gold piping. The aimless prowling of that big, bundled man hinted of a bear at bay, cornered, and the dogs closing.

“Friend Rap, I owe you an apology.”

Rap gulped and burst out, “Oh, no, sir!” and forgot the your Majesty.

The king did not seem to notice. “No one had ever told me about your mother’s skill, or I should surely have guessed after your first exploit on the causeway. Perhaps I should have trusted my daughter’s judgment more, too.” He looked ruefully at the Other Man.

The Other Man was not helping Rap’s edginess at all. He was elderly and tall and white-haired. He had a large curved nose and very glittery, deep-set blue eyes, and he stood as motionless as the furniture alongside one of the tables, a long-fingered hand resting on it. He wore a long robe like the king’s, but dark brown, and he had done nothing but study Rap since he came in. If sorcerers ground herbs in mortars, then Rap was the next herb. This vulture-eyed sentinel must be the Doctor Sagorn that Inos had described—the one who had lied to her, or, else was a sorcerer. And if he wasn’t a sorcerer, he had still lied.

The Other Man smiled slightly in reply to the king and returned to staring at Rap. Rap looked away.

“Well, what reward can we offer?” the king asked. “What can we do for a young man who performs such a miraculous act for us?”

“Nothing is necessary, Si—your Majesty.”

The king smiled thinly. “I insist on rewarding you.”

God of fools!

“Then I should like to be one of your Majesty’s men-at-arms, Sire,” Rap said hopefully.

The king frowned, glanced at the Other Man, and stroked his beard. “You’re a little young yet… and I’m not sure that that would be a very good idea anyway, Rap. You are going to find that some men resent your abilities, you know. By forcing you to reveal them in public, Factor Foronod and I have done you a grave disservice. Sword practice is dangerous enough without grudges and jealousies creeping in… although you would then have the ability to defend yourself, I suppose. Is there someone you especially want to maim?”

“No, your Majesty!” That was a horrible thought.

“Then why do you need to be a man-at-arms?” The king seemed puzzled.

Rap stammered.

“Dragons, Sire?” murmured the Other Man. “For rescuing beautiful maidens from?”

“I should have thought of that!”

Rap suspected he was blushing. They were laughing at him.

The king turned serious again. “Can you read?”

“No, your… Sire.”

“I think you should learn, Rap. Both for your own sake and… and for your future queen, if you plan to remain in her service.”

Now Rap was certain that he had blushed, from hair roots to belly button, and he could only nod.

“Well, that takes care of two hours a day.” The king chuckled. “I think I shall appoint you as assistant to Foronod—serve him right! I shall tell him to teach you some of his cares and worries. You will learn a great deal about the palace and the town if you do nothing but follow him around—and I am sure that he will find more than that for you to do.”

There was nothing to say then except “Thank you, Sire.”

Then the royal eyes met Rap’s and seemed to drill right through. “I think you are an honest man, lad. A queen of Krasnegar… even a sly old king… can always use an honest man’s loyalty, and especially so if that man has useful knowledge, also.”

Rap gulped and nodded. “I shall be proud to serve, sir—Sire.”

But he wondered whether he was pleased or not. He felt that he had hoped for something a little more manly than factoring.

“In another month or two, we shall see again.” The king was wandering toward the window once more. “Now, I am sure that your mother warned you carefully, and you are fairly safe here in Krasnegar, but remember to guard your secret. It is common knowledge now. There can be evildoers even in Krasnegar.”

“Sir—Sire—I have no secret.”

The king frowned at him and looked to the Other Man, who shrugged. The king came back to the hearth and eased himself stiffly into a big chair. “Then how do you perform your wonders?”

“They… they just happen,” Rap said.

“Your mother did not tell you a word?”

Rap shook his head. “No, your Majesty.”

“How long have you been able to do these things?”

“That day I got my chance to drive a wagon,” Rap explained. “That day was the first time… er… Sire.”

The king looked again at the Other Man and said, “Sagorn?”

The old man was smiling. He had an old man’s smile, thinning the lips without showing teeth. His lower jaw seemed to slide up between the clefts that flanked his mouth, closing tight like a trap. Not a comforting smile—sinister. “When Foronod asked you if you could find the trail, you asked why—or so I am told. Why did you ask why?”

“I don’t know, sir. It seemed important.”

Doctor Sagorn nodded in satisfaction. “It was the importance that was important, I think. You don’t like using your power, do you?”

“No, sir!”

Again the gruesome smile. “So you suppress it. You only do it, or think you can do it, when it matters a lot?”

Rap puzzled about that. He did not want to know that the king kept his crown in that big chest, at the bottom, under the fur rug, and he had just about convinced himself that there he was only guessing. The first time on the causeway he had desperately wanted to do a good job of driving the wagon—that had certainly been important to him. “Perhaps that is so, sir. Then you mean I have always had it?”

“Since it was given you, certainly,” the king said. “And it must have been your mother who gave it to you.”

“But… like my nose, your Majesty? Or my brown hair?”

The king shook his head.

Rap was bewildered. “I thought maybe it was something I was growing into, like shaving.”

“Or holding hands with pretty girls?” The king smiled—almost grinned. “Oh, that was not fair! I am sorry, my young friend. Just a joke! Forgive me! I think what you are growing into is responsibility—serious matters, where such powers can be of use to you. I am told you have an uncanny knack with horses, also.”

“That I don’t mind, Sire.” Rap risked a smile of his own.

Sagorn made a sniffing noise. “He can call mares away from a stallion.”

The king looked up, startled. “You jest!”

The old man gave him a curiously cryptic glance. “So I was informed by a certain minstrel who, quite typically, had lost his horse in the hills. Master Rap saved him. Then, not wanting to interrupt his lunch, he broke up a herd by shouting.”

The king looked from Rap to Sagorn and back again several times. “Rap,” he said, “I am almost more impressed by that than what you did last night! Has this minstrel returned, also, then? I should like to hear the story.”

He looked to Sagorn, who hesitated.

“No, Majesty.”

The king started angrily, then turned to Rap. “I understand that you had two helpers. One was a stableboy?”

“Ylinyli, Sire. He is known as Lin.”

“I must thank him, also, then. The other was a stranger?”

“A gentleman, Sire,” said Rap. “He told me his name was Andor.”

The king’s jaw clamped shut and he nodded, as if he had suspected as much. He glared again at Sagorn. “Why has he come?”

The old man seemed almost as angry, but very careful. “I could not stop him, could I?”

The king looked furious now. “The minstrel?”

Sagorn nodded and the king turned to Rap. “I repeat what I told you before, lad. Guard that secret of yours—it may easily be worth more than your life!”

Rap wondered how he could guard something he did not have, but the king had not finished. “And in particular, watch out for that Andor man, He is as warm as sunshine and as slippery as ice. I shall have to lock up every maiden in the kingdom if he is around.”

Rap was very confused now. Why could the king not simply order the man away? True, the ships had gone and a journey by land at this time of year would be dangerous in the extreme. But a king was a king, was he not?

This king sank back stiffly in his big chair. He grimaced, as if in pain, and pressed his fingers against the lump in his side. What lump? Stop prying!

“Sire?” the Sagorn man said.

“It’s all right,” the king muttered, although his forehead was shining wetly. “Tell Master Rap about the words. Warn him of the dangers. He does not seem to know, and who better to tell him than the learned Doctor Sagorn?”

There was more to that remark than there seemed to be. The old man flushed angrily.

“With pleasure, your Majesty!” He turned to Rap. “Have you never heard of the words of power?”

“No, sir.”

Sagorn shrugged. “All magic, all power, comes from certain words. There are a great many of them; no one knows how many. But they are what gives sorcerers their abilities.”

Rap’s jaw fell open. “You are not saying I am a sorcerer, are you, sir?” Horrible thought!

“No.” The old man smiled slightly and shook his head. “But you must know at least one word—and an unusually powerful one, because to be a seer normally requires more. It takes at least three to make a sorcerer. I think that the words may be growing weaker. Were I to set up in public as a sorcerer, I should want no less than four. Inisso, however, had but three.” He glanced at the king.

“Never mind that!” Evidently the spasm had passed, for the pain had left the king’s face. He glowered angrily.

Sagorn bowed slightly, ironically. “As your Majesty wishes. One word, Master Rap, does several things, but mostly it enhances natural talents. You obviously have inherited a knack for animals from your faun ancestors, and the word has raised it to occult proportions. Your mother was reportedly a seer. We asked the seneschal about her. He says that she could foretell events—when a girl would marry, or the sex of babies. Can you do such things?”

Bewildered, Rap shook his head.

“Can you sing? Dance? What are you good at?”

“Horses, sir, maybe. Good with horses.”

“You did not know that the king would summon you today before you were actually told?”

“No, sir.”

“You wanted to be a man-at-arms. Have you ever had fencing lessons?”

“The sergeant tried me out, sir, with a wooden sword.”

“Were you good?”

Rap’s face grew warm again. “He didn’t seem to think so.”

Sagorn exchanged nods with the king. “Then we must assume that you know only one word, and the skill you displayed yesterday must be another natural talent in you, although what it is in other people I am not sure—sense of direction, perhaps. Some people never get lost. Or just good guessing?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “After all, foresight is just a sort of guessing.”

The king interrupted. “The jotnar have legends of men they call farsighted, able to pilot boats through shallows, or fight in the dark.”

“Ah!” Sagorn looked pleased. “I had forgotten that! So it may be that he gained some talent for farsight from his father, and again the word has magnified it greatly.”

He paused, looking quizzically at Rap, who nodded, although all this sounded very confusing. Yet his mother had told him once that his father had been a good pilot—and he had walked home in the dark a hundred times, she had said, before at last he fell off the dock.

“So one word makes you a sort of genius in your own field. But even one word can do other things, as well. It makes its owner an effective sort of person. Successful. Lucky. Very hard to kill, they say.” He glanced momentarily at the king.

Lucky? That settled it, Rap thought—he did not have a word.

“Tell him about two words,” the king growled.

Sagorn raised an ironic, shaggy eyebrow, then again he bowed and turned to Rap. “Not all the books agree, you understand? Words of power are not discussed openly, and there is much that even I have not been able to discover, in a long lifetime of searching. But it seems that with two words you start to get somewhere. Knowing two of the words makes an adept. Not a true sorcerer, but someone who can do almost anything—anything human. If you knew two words, young man, then one lesson would be enough to turn you into a swordsman, as you desire. Or an artist, or a juggler. Normally the true occult powers like farsight start to come only with a second word. Do you understand?”

“Not very much, sir. Do you mean like spells? I didn’t say any spells to call the horses or find the causeway.”

The old man shook his head impatiently. “No, no! You do not say these words. You only have to know them. They are passed down from generation to generation as the most precious thing a family can own. They are usually told only on deathbeds.” His eyes wandered back toward the king.

The king was gritting his teeth again. “So you see why we think you know one of the words of power, Rap?”

“The minstrel, Sire!” Rap said. “He asked me!”

The king managed a twisted smile. “Any man who can sing like Jalon is automatically suspected of knowing a word. Any supreme talent like… any genius…” He broke off, took a deep breath, then grunted at Sagorn, “Tell him of the dangers.”

Sagorn kept his eyes on the king, but spoke to Rap. “The words resist telling—they are hard to say. You truly do not remember your mother telling you hers?”

“No, sir.”

“Yours is undoubtedly stronger than most,” the old man muttered, but his attention was still on the king. “Perhaps it is making you forget that you know it, although I have never heard…”

The king uttered a groan and writhed suddenly. His hand was pressed to his side and now sweat dribbled down his ashen face.

“More of the cordial, Majesty?”

Holindarn nodded without speaking, the old man turned and went to a corner table. He returned bearing a glass and a tall vial full of some smoky green liquid. Rap rose from his chair, feeling out of place. Sagorn caught his eye and nodded.

Rap bowed and backed toward the door.

He was outside before he realized that he had not been told of the dangers.

2

Next morning Rap found Foronod standing with a group of other men on the shingle in the sunshine. The snow had almost gone. He waited patiently on the outskirts until the others had all been assigned tasks, then stepped forward in his turn. His only greeting was a nod. Although he looked as if he had not slept since the night of the blizzard, the factor made no comment on that affair at all, merely rubbing his eyes and listening in silence as Rap explained the king’s command.

Then the silver mane nodded. “Can you read?”

“No, sir. But I am to learn.”

“It will have to wait, though. Ready to start helping me now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m told there’s a whale beached on Tanglestone Point. I need to know if it’s fresh enough to harvest. Take a good horse.”

Tanglestone would be a long ride. Rap took Firedragon, returning that evening weary and content, having achieved what he set out to do. And even Firedragon, had he been gifted with speech, might have reported enjoying the outing. It had been years since any other man had attempted to ride the stallion. No one else ever succeeded in staying on him very long, but Rap he never minded.

Three weeks later, Rap and Foronod fought their way through a blizzard, following the last caravan to cross the causeway. The big one had come at last and Krasnegar was now closed for the winter… or, as the inhabitants put it, the world was cut off.

The two rode in weary silence through the town. Foronod halted at the foot of a long flight of steps. He slid stiffly from the saddle and handed his reins to Rap. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and headed off on foot—to family and warm bed, to a long rest that no one had earned more, and possibly even to a hot bath.

Rap took the horses to the castle stables, wondering where he would go afterward. Dim and warm and rankly smelly, the stables themselves were more home to him than anywhere else was now. Cobbled floor, rough plank walls, shabby untidiness… they all offered a welcome familiarity, but after so long out of doors he also felt oppressed by being confined. He felt as if those walls were leaning over him whenever he turned his back—and there was always a wall behind him. He rubbed down Foronod’s mare and was still working on his own pony when old Hononin appeared out of the shadows as if one small patch of darkness had just decided to solidify. He looked grumpier and surlier than ever.

He grunted a sort of greeting.

“It’s good to be back, sir,” Rap said.

Another grunt. “Is it? Where are you living now?”

“I was wondering the same.”

Neither said the obvious—that Rap was too old for the boys' dormitory. It might even be full, anyway. But a factor’s assistant would presumably be paid more than a stableboy, and perhaps almost as much as a driver. Rap had not asked.

“I shall find lodgings in the town, sir.”

The little man scowled and snatched the wisp from Rap’s hand. “I’ll finish this; you look beat. You know the garret next the drivers' office?”

Rap nodded, surprised.

“It’s been cleaned out. There may even be a bedroll in it. A man could stay there until he found somewhere better.”

“Thank you, sir. That was kind of you.”

Honinin just grunted.

Krasnegar might be battened down for the winter, but the factor still had much to do, and much of that he could delegate to his new apprentice. Rap was partly diverted by his morning lessons in the arts of reading and writing and summing, squeezed unhappily into a desk at the back of a schoolroom filled with children who giggled and found him an amusing giant. He chewed his knuckles, ruffled his hair, and wrestled with the mysteries of knowledge and the vagaries of a quill pen just as stubbornly as he had battled Firedragon.

The royal appointments of Rap as assistant to Foronod might have been well intentioned, but it greatly widened an already extensive moat. Of necessity, as the accounts were closed on another season, the king’s factor must investigate many matters that had been pushed aside in the summer rush. A wagon crash, unpaid taxes, unexplained injuries, and mysteriously vanished goods—all of these came under review. Every year brought its accountings, to attribute blame or malfeasance, and that year had no more and no less than others.

Yet where the respected factor could rush in, his juvenile helper must tread with care. Rap found himself asking questions whose answers were not readily at hand, testing memories suddenly at fault. He spent a whole week in quest of a certain valuable keg of imported peach brandy that had vanished between the dock and the palace cellar; and he gained no friends thereby.

When he finally made his glum and quite negative report, Foronod scowled and asked grumpily, “You can’t just see it?”

“No, sir. I tried.”

That was a lie. Rap had tried very hard not to see it in his wearying treks through town and castle. Always he tried very hard not to use his farsight, if that was what he had. Yet he had an inexplicable conviction that the missing—and now empty—keg was located under the staircase by the armory latrines.

He had already passed beyond the populous domain of childhood, but the well-settled realm of manhood still lay ahead. The borderlands are thinly inhabited and never easy going, being roamed by monsters that prey most readily upon the solitary traveler—and now Rap had no companions.

When he set about a search for lodgings, he discovered what old Hononin had already guessed—that rooms were in short supply. Rap smelled now of the uncanny. An odor of sorcery hung about him, and while no one was so unkind as to snub him for it openly, his friends would drift in other directions when given the chance. The brand was unobtrusive, but it was there. He was human and he suffered. Women suspected that he could see through their clothes and they shunned him even more than men did. And no one wanted a lodger who could spy through walls.

Of necessity, Rap’s temporary residence in the garret above the stable became his permanent abode. He moved his scanty possessions in and squandered most of his savings on buying a bed and was miserably content. He ate in the castle commons, but he did not sit at the drivers' table.

His work for Foronod might lack the romance of being a man-at-arms but it was a challenge; it implied that he was trusted. The factor was a hard master—demanding, saturnine, and slow to praise—yet he was fair. Rap respected him, did his best, and strove to be worthy.

The blizzards came more frequently, the days dwindled. Wagons rolled no more, even within the town itself. Yet Krasnegar had been built for its climate and pedestrians could travel by covered alleys and staircases. A man could walk from castle to deserted harbor without more than a half-dozen brief dashes out of doors. Peat fires glowed. The business of life continued safely below the storms, and pleasures continued, also. There was food in plenty and drink and companionship; singing and dancing; talk and fellowship and romance—but not for Rap.

He was not completely without friends. He did have one, a sophisticated man of the Impire, for whom the supernatural held no terrors; a man without visible occupation to fill his hours and yet of apparently unlimited financial resources—well spoken, much traveled, sympathetic, and even proficient in the use of swords.

“Fencing?” he said. “Well, I’m no expert, my friend, and I would not venture to draw at the imperor’s court, where any young squire may turn out to be a swordsman of prowess, but I am probably as competent as any of the wood-chopping rustics I have noted here in the castle guard. So if you want a lesson or two, lad, I shall be most happy to oblige.”

Rap said, “Thank you very much, Andor.”

Krasnegar had never before met anyone like Andor. He was young, yet as poised as a prince. A gentleman and apparently wealthy, he mingled freely with both the lowly and the high. He was as handsome as a young God, yet seemed unaware of the fact. One day he could be found wrapped in filthy furs in the common saloons, trading vulgar ribaldry with sailors; the next he would be seen in satin and silk, holding respectable matrons spellbound at an elegant soiree; or with Kondoral, laughing heartily at the old seneschal’s interminable, threadbare monologues. The very candles seemed to burn more brightly near Andor.

It was rumored that the king disapproved of him, and certainly he was never seen in the king’s company, not even at the weekly feast for the palace staff, over which the king presided. As the days shortened, however, his Majesty stopped appearing at those functions, and then Andor began to attend—sometimes sitting at the high table with Kondoral and Foronod and the other dignitaries, sometimes squashed in with the servants near the squeaking spits of the fireplace, his arm around a wench.

His success with women became an instant legend; it verged on the uncanny. Resentment was inevitable and he was an imp—some jotunn would have to educate the intruder. Very soon after his arrival, while Rap was still on the mainland following Foronod, one tried.

It happened in a bar near the docks, and the details were never very clearly established. The volunteer enforcer was an enormous and ill-reputed fisherman named Kranderbad, who tersely invited the stranger outside. Reportedly Andor first attempted to talk his way out of the challenge, then yielded with reluctance. The imps in the group sighed unhappily, the jotnar grinned and waited eagerly for Kranderbad’s return. But it was Andor who returned, and very soon. It was said that he had no bruises on his knuckles or sweat on his brow, and apparently none of the blood on his boots was his. Kranderbad was not seen in public for many weeks thereafter, and the extent of his injuries impressed even that rough frontier company.

Another attempt occurred a few days later and now the challenger had a friend waiting outside to help. Both joined Kranderbad in the infirmary, and one of them never walked again.

That one had a brother who was a barber, and the same evening he was overheard vowing vengeance. Before morning he was found in an alley without his razor, his tongue, or his eyelids, and thereafter Andor was left in peace to woo whom he pleased.

He established lodgings at the home of a wealthy widow. Her friends censured but were too intrigued to ostracize. They whispered among themselves that she seemed to have shed ten years.

Soon he knew everyone and everyone knew him. With very few exceptions, men found him irresistible and were pleased to call him friend. What women called him was less easily established, but none seemed to bear grudges, as they would have done if they had felt jilted or cheated. He was discreet—no match or marriage failed because of Andor.

He showed Foronod a better system of bookkeeping. He gave Thosolin’s men-at-arms tips on fencing and he advised Chancellor Yaltauri on current politics in the Impire. He could dance superbly and play the lute well by local standards. He had a passable singing voice and a bottomless store of stories, from the literary to the scatological.

Krasnegar fell at his feet.

Yet even Andor could not be in more than one place at a time, and he spread himself thinly. He rejected any efforts by his admirers to become followers, for the young men of the town would have flocked along behind him like baby ducklings had he given them the chance. He roamed Krasnegar from palace to docks, and none of the hundreds who called him friend could claim to know him well or see him often… with one exception.

Why a sophisticated man of the world, a wealthy gentleman, should be interested at all in a solitary, awkward adolescent—a minor flunky lacking grace, family, and education— was a major mystery. But for Rap, it seemed, Andor had unlimited time.