Magic Casement

1

In the whole of the Northwest Sector of Julgistro Province, there was no grander social event than the Kinvale Ball. There were many balls at Kinvale during the season, but the Kinvale Ball was the one held each year just two nights before Winterfest. It alone supported half the costume and jewelry trades of the region. Being added to the guest list had been known to induce bankruptcy among the lesser nobility. Being dropped from it was generally regarded as justifiable cause for suicide.

Thousands of candles sparkled amid the crystal droplets of the chandeliers. Hundreds of guests danced in a whirl of opalescent finery—silks and gemstones, satins and lace, color like shredded rainbows. The wine, the food, and the music were unmatched anywhere in the Impire. Amid the dark and cold of midwinter there was gaiety and happiness, laughter and light.

Ekka, the dowager duchess of Kinvale, was long since past indulging in dancing herself. She walked now with a cane and as little as possible, but the Winterfest ball was a Kinvale institution that she guarded and cherished. She had probably attended seventy of them herself—she could not remember how old she had been when she saw her first—and she would let nothing diminish the tradition. She could not improve on the pattern, for as far back as she could remember no expense or ostentation had been spared to make the ball as grand and enjoyable as possible, and she took care that it never dwindled by as much as a fly’s eyelash. Every year she watched the youngsters swirl past in their quadrilles and gavottes, and she was remorseless in her intent that they would enjoy themselves as much as she had done in her faraway youth.

Ekka was a tall and bony woman and had never been a beauty, although she had always had presence. She still did. Her nose was too large, her teeth too prominent, and age had increased her resemblance to a horse until she half expected her reflection to neigh at her every time she looked in a mirror. Frail now and unsteady on her cane, white-haired and wrinkled and ugly, she ruled Kinvale tyrannically, knowing that she terrorized everyone and gaining secret amusement from that fact. She had no power except the power to send them away, so what did they fear? That, she supposed, was presence.

She sat as straight as her crumbling bones permitted in a highback chair on a small dais at one end of the great ballroom. From this vantage she oversaw the splendor with both pleasure and the unwinking stare of a snake. Should she notice any maiden whose decolletage fell below her standards, or any young cockerel dipping too deep in the wine bowl, then would she thump the parquet with her gold-topped cane to summon a messenger from a small army of pages that stood near to hand. The offender would be requested to attend her Grace forthwith.

From time to time her friends and guests would pause in their progress to wish her merry Winterfest, or thank her for the hospitality, or merely to reminisce. Persons of especial interest she would permit to perch briefly on the chairs beside her to exchange a few fleeting words, but that was an honor sparingly granted.

Now the band was playing a reel. The ballroom flashed and surged with color as the dancers pranced and leaped through the intricate patterns. Ekka watched the pairings form and reform, all the permutations and combinations flickering together in her mind, for Kinvale was both a finishing school and a marriage bureau. Matchmaking was Ekka’s lifelong skill and recreation. To Kinvale came the eligible young ladies of half the Impire, with mothers or aunts or grandmothers in attendance, and few indeed were those who did not find themselves betrothed to their elders' satisfaction when they departed. Rank and wealth and looks and breeding—the possibilities and requirements were innumerable. It took a rare touch to blend them all in satisfying coalescence, and a diplomacy and knack bordering on sorcery to see that the young persons involved believed that they had followed nothing but their own wishes when they united in the pairings Ekka had selected.

Now the couples she had paired in her youth were sending their children or even grandchildren. At times she felt like godmother to the Impire.

The frenetic whirling reached its climax in the final chord, then an instant of silence. The men bowed to their partners, the partners curtsied. And all over the hall they each took a deep breath, for the tempo had been fiery. The ballroom seemed to gasp, then the tableau disintegrated in smiles and laughter and conversation, men moving to lead ladies back to their seats. Close by Ekka, Legate Ooniola was escorting Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar through the crowd with the same single-minded dedication he would have applied to maneuvering his legion. Ekka lifted her cane and caught Kade’s eye. The legate obediently right-turned and delivered the princess to Ekka’s dais. He bowed. Kade thanked him. He departed.

Puffing mightily, she sank down beside the duchess. Fans were in vogue again this year and Kade took advantage of the fact vigorously.

“Ooof!” she said. “I allow my ambitions to exceed my abilities! I feared I was going to have an apoplexy halfway through that one.”

“I am sure you would never do anything so gauche, my dear. It is going well, I think?”

“Marvelous!” Kade sighed contentedly. “Winterfest is a dry crust anywhere but Kinvale. It is wonderful to be back again.” Her eyes were raking the hall.

“Over by the far buffet,” Ekka said. “With the legionary, the tall one.”

Kade nodded and relaxed. “A great experience for her. She will never forget Winterfest at Kinvale. No one ever does.”

“Kind of you to say so.” Ekka frowned at the sight of the Astilo girl talking with the weedy Enninafia youth. His family did not need her money, and it could use an infusion of brains that her bloodlines would not supply. “Your niece does you great credit, ma’am.”

Kade simpered and they both chuckled. They had been—and indeed must still be—sisters-in-law. Their acquaintanceship dated back for almost half a century. They needed very few words to convey meanings to each other.

“She benefits more from the current fashion than I do,” Kade said wistfully. Ekka was too kind to smile. Only short weeks before Winterfest the dramatic news had come from Hub—trumpets were out, bustles were back in. Dress plans had been changed at very short notice, but the last thing Kadolan needed was a bustle. She had done the best she could, staying with dark-blue satin and a single strand of pearls, borrowing Ekka’s own pearl tiara, but even in such simplicity she was still dumpy, and the bustle mocked her.

“At the back she benefits perhaps,” Ekka remarked. “She is a little young yet for the necklines.” She disapproved of the present style in necklines. They took the men’s minds off conversation.

“Well, in necklines I am qualified.” Kade raised her fan to conceal her mouth. “My niece had the audacity to tell me that my figure was altogether two things of a good much.”

Ekka’s thin dry lips sketched a smile. “Of course you chided her for unladylike thoughts and unseemly vulgarity?”

The orchestra was striking up a gallopade, and the floor began to swirl again with eager couples.

“Of course! But Kinvale has been wonderful for her! Six months ago she would have said it in public.”

“That was what I wanted to ask you, dear. How is our young hussar faring?”

Kade sighed again. “She suspects that he may have left his helmet out in the sun too long. With his head in it.”

“It is not unlikely,” Ekka agreed. “I fear that I am running out of candidates, Kade. If you are still intent on leaving in early summer, we are facing a shortage of time. Shall we review the requirements?”

The gallopade was in full romp, and Inosolan was being passed down a line of men, laughing and smiling. Her dancing had improved beyond all recognition. The ladies continued their conversation while watching the dancers.

“Character, I fear, comes first,” Kade said sadly.

“That is a problem. Anything else is easy. And character is not merely rare, it is hard to detect soon enough. Although nothing brings it out like matrimony.”

“Too late then, of course.” Kade accepted a sparkling goblet from a footman’s tray. “Holindarn insists that she make a free choice, as I told you.” She paused. “Even if her happiness requires her to remain in the Impire, he said.”

Ekka was startled and said, “Indeed?” noncommittally, while she mulled this interesting complication. She could think of several families that would be gratified to pick up a meaningless royal title, so long as their son did not have to go and dwell in the barren north for it. Her own, for example—and there were other interesting implications.

“That certainly widens the field, then. He would allow her to relinquish the throne, you mean?”

Her sister-in-law hesitated again. “It may not be hers to relinquish, dear.”

Silence was the best lubricant for confidences…

Kade frowned, as if she had not meant to go so far. “In the Impire you have had several imperesses.”

“Mostly very competent!”

“History is not my strong point.” Kadolan was still watching as Inos drew closer in the intricacies of the dance. “But in Nordland there is no doubt—only men can rule. Krasnegar has no precedents in the matter.”

“So who makes the decision?” Ekka asked, nodding to some passing ladies.

“He does,” Kade said confidently. “He will name his heir.”

Ekka waited for more, then prompted. “But can he make it stick after his death?”

Kade smiled unwillingly. “Time has not blunted you, dear. That will depend on a lot of things. Will the people accept her? Will Nordland? Will the Impire?”

Mmm… obviously something more topical was bothering her. Something had provoked this confidence, or it would have come out months ago.

“And his decision, and all the others' decisions, will depend on her choice of husband?”

Kade nodded absently, acknowledging friends whirling past. “Very much so, I think. Certainly Nordland’s.” More silence and then she said, “And the timing.”

Ah! “Timing, dear?”

Inos came dancing by. She noticed her aunt and smiled radiantly, then was swept away into the pattern. She was almost the only woman in the room who could wear a green like that. It set off her eyes beautifully—and almost as much as her golden hair, it let Kade pick her out in the crowd.

“Holindarn can train a successor,” Kade said, “whether Inos herself or her husband. Ruling a kingdom, even a single-bed-size kingdom like Krasnegar, does take a certain knack.”

This time silence was not enough lubrication. “He is a relatively young man yet,” Ekka suggested.

“Of course.”

But there had been a hesitation. Travel between Krasnegar and Kinvale was not impossible in winter. Trappers and other rough men could do it. Such men would do it for money. If Kade had been concerned about her brother’s health, then she would certainly have arranged for someone in the palace hierarchy to keep her informed—she was not nearly as scatterbrained as she pretended.

“You have had no word lately, have you? No news is good news.”

“So they say,” Kade agreed, with a tranquility that did not deceive the dowager duchess for a moment.

For if Holindarn did not want his sister to hear, then he was quite capable of learning whom she had recruited and then derecruiting them. Had any message arrived at Kinvale, Ekka would surely have heard of it. No news, then, was bad news, and that was what was rankling.

And if Inos did not succeed, who was next in line?

“So the hussar we send back to his horse,” Ekka said, “or we may aim him elsewhere—the Astlio girl, perhaps… Have any of his predecessors dropped sparks on the tinder?”

“Yes indeed. I wanted to ask you about him. You built a blaze with your first attempt, dear, and left no fuel for the others.”

Ekka was surprised. “That merchant youth? What was his name? The one from Jini Fanda?”

“Good Gods, no!” Kade spluttered in a very unusual display of emotion. “Even I couldn’t stand him. No, the Andor boy.”

“Andor? Oh, that one! Still?” Ekka frowned. “He wasn’t one of mine, Kade. You gave me no warning, remember. It took a little time to call them in from the pasture. Angilki invited that one.” At that moment she noticed her son, dancing with the Yyloringy woman, his face as blank as a well-polished table.

“Perhaps a fortunate chance, then,” Kade remarked sanguinely.

“Perhaps.”

This time it was Kadolan who detected the hesitation. She turned to her hostess with an inquiring glance.

“It is his house, after all,” Ekka said. “I can hardly stop him from inviting his own friends to stay.”

“Of course not, my dear.”

But this would not be the first time Angilki had unwittingly thrown complications into his mother’s plans. She had told him more than once that he could invite anyone he liked except men—or women. The joke had escaped him. Jokes usually did. “Well, Sir Andor undoubtedly had character,” Kade said, “or at least charm. If diplomacy is a requirement for ruling Krasnegar—and it certainly is—then he would qualify on that. What else do we know about him?” Inos was coming around again.

A very good question! Ekka did not think her memory was failing her yet. She was rather proud of her memory. But on the spur of the moment, she could recall nothing at all about that Andor boy. She had engaged him in conversation several times, of course. She had begun a careful probing. Curiously, though, it seemed that the subject of Sir Andor’s background had always slipped out of play. All she could remember was laughing very hard at some of his jests.

“Why don’t we check the files in the morning?” she suggested. “He brought letters, of course… and my notes. Just look at that wretched Ithinoy girl! How could her grandmother ever dream of allowing her to wear puce, with her coloring?”

“Ekka?” Kadolan said sharply.

Ekka sighed. “You should have suggested him sooner. We could have invited him to the ball.”

“He is probably not available. He told Inos that he was leaving on some romantic mission of honor and danger. He has not written. She does not write to him.”

The two ladies exchanged puzzled glances.

“But why leave?” Ekka said. “If that’s what he was? If that was what he wanted?”

“If that was what he wanted, then he succeeded. She has not looked seriously at anyone else.”

“He did not…” Ekka paused. Even with a very old friend, there are some questions…

“No! I’m quite sure. One can always tell. But he certainly could have done, had he wanted. She was very innocent, remember. Now she is perhaps a little wiser, but he knew every trick in the box. I fancy I know most of them, but that young man could have sidestepped me with no trouble, had he wished.”

From Kade that was an astonishing confession. In her years at Kinvale, even before their respective husbands had died, she had been Ekka’s pupil and partner in matrimonial machinations. Anything the Princess Kadolan did not know about chaperoning and the wiles of swains should not be worth knowing.

Still, Ekka was relieved. Three juvenile domestics had been dismissed soon after Sir Andor’s departure, and probably several others had been more fortunate in their follies.

“So what was he after, I wonder? The crown?”

“Then why leave?” It was very unlike Kade to let worry show on her face. “What business could possibly be more important?”

“Perhaps he went off to take a look at Krasnegar?”

That remark provoked loud, unladylike guffaws from both of them.

The gallopade had ended. Angilki went by, leading the Yyloringy woman, breathing much too heavily and still half asleep with boredom.

“Well,” Kade said cheerfully. “There would seem to be no use worrying about the Andor man. Inos does not know where he is, and if she doesn’t, then I assume that no one does. We’ll just have to keep the parade going and hope that she takes to someone else.”

“Or until he chooses to return?”

“Exactly.”

“And if he brings a proposal?”

“Oh, Inos would accept with her next breath. He bewitched her. And I have my orders. Unless I have very—very—good reasons, she is to be allowed to make her own choice.” She sighed wistfully. “I can’t blame her, He certainly did sparkle. Grim old Krasnegar would be a merrier place with him around.”

But..,

Ekka nodded as the music began again for the gavotte. If Inosolan did not succeed, who would? How soon was Holindarn going to die? She had been thinking in terms of years, and now it sounded like perhaps months. There was a title involved. There was a kingdom. More than that, there was almost certainly a word, part of the Inisso inheritance.

Ekka decided to keep her own options open. She would summon Angilki and inform him that he need not propose to the Yyloringy woman this evening after all.

2

Two days before Winterfest, a fencing lesson ended when Andor’s wooden sword thunked across Rap’s armored abdomen hard enough to split the leather, spill the peatmoss padding, and force an agonized “Ooofl” out of the victim.

“That will do for today, I fancy.” Andor’s amusement was evident even in a voice muffled by a fencing mask.

“Not fair!” Rap protested, straightening up with difficulty. “You said—”

Andor pulled off his mask and laughed. “I said that the point was almost always better than the edge, yes. But I did not say that one should never use the edge, my friend. That’s why swords have edges! And you left yourself wide open for that one. Let’s go and have a drink.”

Ruefully Rap noticed that Andor’s hair was barely ruffled after almost two hours' vigorous exercise.

They put away the protective garments, the masks, and foils; they washed themselves at the communal trough; they prepared to depart. There were no other fencers in the garrison’s gym. Krasnegar was preparing for Winterfest.

“A beer at the Beached Whale would soften the tissues pleasantly,” Andor suggested, expertly snuffing candles. He was carrying a large and unexplained bundle of furs, which Rap was trying not to worry about.

“I’ll keep you company for a while.” Rap thought glumly of the lonely attic to which he must return, the long hours until the evening meal, and the longer hours after that until he could expect to sleep. Foronod’s affairs were shut down now for Winterfest, so Rap would have nothing to do for days. Yet he had no great longing to linger in the crowded, ill-lighted Beached Whale with its thick fug of beery odor and oil fumes and reek of unwashed bodies. The gaming would stop as soon as a seer entered; sometimes women would ostentatiously depart. For Andor’s sake he would be tolerated—briefly—but he was not the most popular of customers. He never stayed for long.

“On second thought,” said Andor, who always seemed to know what a man was thinking, “let’s go straight to your place. I have something private to discuss.”

They stepped out into one of the covered stairways of the palace and picked their way carefully down toward the light of a distant torch sizzling in its sconce.

“How’m I doing, Andor?” Rap asked. “In fencing?”

Andor frowned in the darkness… Rap thought he frowned. “Well, you’re still growing like a sorcerer’s sunflowers, and that throws a man’s coordination off. You’ll soon be over that, which will help. Otherwise—you’re average. Thosolin would be happy enough to take you on now. The Tenth Legion would not.”

After a moment of echoing footsteps he added, “It’s a pity you only have farsight and not some foresight as well; they often go together. Foresight makes deadly swordsmen, unbeatable. Even so, you should have known that carpet-beater was coming just now. It was not exactly a subtle stroke.”

Rap snarled. “Damn farsight! I still won’t believe it! I don’t see anything.”

“It’s a name, that’s all. And a precious gift. Stop fighting it!”

They went through a door and crossed a courtyard between high snowbanks, spectral in the starlight. The sky was a black crystal bowl, clear and bitter and infinitely deep. Soon the moon would come to dull the stars, but the sun was a brief visitor to Krasnegar at Winterfest. The air was deadly as steel. It could kill a man in minutes.

Then came more ill-lighted stairs and corridors. Starlight glimmered but faintly on the windows, yet Rap led the way without hesitation, his companion following closely. The final stair was black as a closed grave, but Rap hurried up it to his room. He went to the flint and candle on the shelf. He struck a spark and light danced over the floor. “There!”

“Most people keep their candles by the door,” Andor said dryly.

Rap swore under his breath. He went out again and hurried along to the drivers' office to borrow a couple of chairs. There was no light at all, but he put his hands on them without hesitation. He told himself that he was doing nothing out of the ordinary—he had put the chairs back there after Andor left the last time, and no one came near that office for six months at a stretch, so he had known exactly where they would be. But as he carried them to his room, he knew that Andor’s comment was valid—he did wander around in the dark. He had nothing to trip over in his little attic, only his bed and one small box, but he could always put his hand on anything he wanted. The thought troubled him. He was slipping, starting to make use of an ability that he refused to recognize or accept.

By the time he arrived with the seats, Andor had extracted the wine bottle from his mysterious bundle and was standing under the candle on its high shelf, fiddling with the seal. The bundle lay on the bed, a cushion shape of obviously fine-quality white fur, bound with a ribbon. Rap looked away from it quickly and told himself that it was not what he feared it was.

It was, though.

Andor glanced around for goblets, shrugged, and held out the bottle. “You first! Merry Winterfest!” He grinned.

“Merry Winterfest,” Rap echoed obediently. He did not care much for wine on principle, but he took the bottle and swallowed a mouthful. He did not like the taste much, even. He tried to return the bottle, but it was refused.

“You are not your father. You have a word! People who know words of power do not have nasty accidents like he did.”

Andor did not usually discuss such personal matters, and Rap was surprised that he knew the story. He took a long swig and collapsed into coughing and gagging.

“A man of taste and discernment, I see?” Andor sat down and sipped small mouthfuls for a while in silence.

Neither man had removed his parka. The wine would freeze if they took very long to drink it, but that was not unusual in Krasnegar. Only the rich could afford peat. Rap’s garret did not even possess a stove, although it did gain some warmth from the horses that lived below. Andor was probably comfortable, for his parka and fur pants were thick and down-lined. Rap’s were neither, and had he been alone he would have crawled into bed.

For the thousandth time he wondered why? He looked at the coarse plank walls, the low, canted ceiling, the equally rough floor. Every nailhead in that ceiling was highlighted by a small cap of ice. The tiny window was a shine of starlight through frost, a square eye of cold silver. Why would a man who could afford such clothes, a man who could enter almost any chamber in the city—with or without a beautiful hostess waiting—why would such a man spend hours in a place like this? Rap had not forgotten the king’s warning, yet Andor seemed like a true friend, improbable though that was. He had never suggested any wrongdoing, he did not pry. And he was the only friend Rap had. For a man who had once fancied himself as popular, that was a galling reflection.

Andor offered the bottle again. “Drink up! I want you good and drunk.”

“Why?”

Andor’s teeth flashed in his irresistible grin. “You’ll find out! I need your help on something.”

“You can have my help sober, for anything.” Rap took another swig.

He meant that. Andor was lavish with his time. By day he would often accompany Rap on his errands for Foronod, expertly checking the addition on a tally, carrying burdens like a common porter, throwing in a rapier question or two when a memory stumbled. Many evenings he had spent in this bare box, patiently explaining the mysteries of the alphabet and the arcane ways of numbers. He had pretended to enjoy being introduced to Rap’s other friends, the horses.

Why?

Andor had been everywhere. As Rap knew Krasnegar, Andor knew the Imperial capital of Hub, the city of five hills. He had described its avenues and palaces, its fountains and gardens, in words enchanting to a son of the barren north. Silver gates and golden domes, lords and fine ladies, crystal coaches, orchestras and zoological collections—he had paraded them all through this dingy attic under the protection of glittering Imperial cohorts with bands playing and bright banners waving.

And not only Hub. Andor had visited great cities uncounted. He had traveled the far south and seen devastation wrought by dragons. For so young a man, he had visited an incredible list of places. He had been to Faerie itself, bathing on its golden beaches, paying a silver penny for a ride on a hippogryff. He had met gnomes and dwarves and elves. He had haggled for tapestries in crowded bazaars and edged along walls in sinister alleyways; he had watched beautiful slave girls dance before their masters in opulent courts. He had sailed the Summer Sea in barques with silken sails curved by the scented winds. He had wept at the baleful song of merfolk lamenting a dying moon.

He had also sat long hours in this rough wooden attic and talked of cannibal islands and castles of glass, of unicorns, of elven trees that touched the clouds and of the jeweled cities nestling on their boughs, of enormous animals with noses long enough to wrap around a man and pick him up, of floating sea monsters so huge that men built houses on their backs and cultivated gardens there, of volcanoes in eruption and hot springs in which the locals boiled whole oxen for feastings and the guests afterward for entertainment. He had described the lairs of trolls and ancient ruins half digested by desert sands. Talking statues and mirror pools that showed the future were familiar to him, and he knew many tales of wonders greater yet.

Why?

Only once had Rap even dared to ask why? Why was Andor his friend? Why did Andor help him, keep him company, tell him of the wonders of the world, and even assist in his education?

What, he had inquired diffidently, was in it for Andor?

Andor had laughed. “For friendship! The others are only acquaintances. And because I admire courage more than anything in the world.”

“Courage? Me?”

“Remember the first time we met?” Andor had asked in apparent seriousness. “I had just arrived with the caravan, and a blizzard had just arrived, also. I was looking forward to a comfortable bath and a hot bed. I discovered that the tide had closed the causeway and there was a crisis on. I didn’t understand, but I made it my business to find out, because I’m nosy. It wasn’t difficult to locate Foronod and see that he was the boss. And then he sent for a boy! I said to myself, This man is crazy! But he asked you if you could guide the wagons and you didn’t say Sure!'—which a fool might have done. You didn’t whimper excuses. You looked over the problem and set that big jaw of yours and said, 'I’ll try! And then I said to myself, 'He means he’ll try his damndest. And this Foronod hasn’t sent for a boy; he’s sent for a man!'”

“Oh!” Then Rap had hoped he was not blushing, for he had felt immensely pleased that Andor of all men should think that of him.

“And then I picked.you!”

“You did. And I nearly panicked, right there. But you weren’t just risking your own neck. Any fool can do that. You were going to carry the whole town. That takes a backbone stiffer than most men’s. So I decided if you had that kind of courage to lead, I would have the courage to follow you. So I did.”

And although Rap could hardly dare to believe that explanation, he had never asked again. If he made Andor think more about the matter, then Andor might come to the correct conclusion. He might just say “You’re right; there is nothing in it for me,” and leave.

But Rap was thinking over the problem now, for Andor was being uncharacteristically silent, passing the bottle back and forth in silence, staring moodily at the floor. Usually he was irresistibly good company, leaving no time for Rap to brood. This day he seemed to have a problem. Was he thinking of all the festivities going on, the dozens of parties at which he would be welcome, so long as he did not arrive with Rap in tow?

Then Andor looked up and grinned. “Drunk enough yet?”

“For what?”

“I want a promise. I’m going to tell you a secret and I want your promise not to tell anyone. Ever.”

“You have it. Drunk or sober.”

“Don’t be so rash! Suppose I told you I was planning to kill the king?” Andor’s eyes twinkled, reflecting the candle flame.

“You wouldn’t.”

“All right, here goes. I’ve never told anyone this, though.” He held the bottle up to examine its contents. “You and I have something in common. We both have a word.”

Rap’s heart crawled out of a chrysalis and gently opened butterfly wings. “You have farsight, also?”

Andor guffawed. “If you knew how many collar studs I lose, you wouldn’t ask! No, not farsight.”

The wings were folded away again.

“Then what’s your talent?”

Andor grinned more widely. “Girls!”

“Oh!” Rap knew that he must not show his distaste, or he would seem like a narrow-minded provincial, Andor was a sophisticated citizen of the Impire. Rap knew of his reputation, but he had always thought it to be mostly jealous gossip, wild exaggeration like the stories of men being kicked to jelly in alleyway brawls. He would certainly not believe that of Andor, even if the girl’s part were true. “I’d be willing to trade,” he said.

“Not likely!”

“But why are you telling me this? Why aren’t you out exercising your talent? All the girls are in holiday mood.”

“You’re probably not drunk enough yet, but I’ll risk it. I’m leaving.”

Rap’s first thought was one of despair. Krasnegar seemed suddenly unthinkable without Andor. “What? Why?”

The bottle was thrust back at him. “Take a big drink. Listen! I’m leaving, because I’m bored. I thought a winter in the north would be exciting, but it’s dull as shelling peas.”

“Who’s going with you?”

Andor shrugged. “I’ve knocked about the world a lot. I thought I’d just take a horse and go.”

“You’re crazy! Mad! Mad! Mad! What about the green men?”

Andor shrugged, took the bottle back, and stretched out his legs. “I’ve been asking about them. I’m told that one man is usually safe. Goblins respect courage and they honor a solitary traveler. A group may get into trouble.”

“Fingernails!” Rap shuddered. Goblins murdered travelers in horrible ways. It was said they would hand a man a pair of tongs and demand a fingernail as road toll. If he had the courage to pull out one of his own fingernails, they would let him go. If he didn’t—they didn’t.

“The only alternative is an armed escort, at least a dozen. Better two dozen. And I can’t afford to hire that many.”

“Andor, this is the northland. The cold is a killer. It’s not like hiking across a desert or somewhere warm. You should take someone with some experience.”

There was a pause while the candle flame danced in silence.

“I have a better idea,” Andor said. “By the way, merry Winterfest!” He pointed to the bundle on the bed.

“You shouldn’t have!” Miserably Rap leaned elbows on knees and buried his face in his hands. From the wine or from embarrassment, he felt sick.

“Will the boots fit? A man’s feet are usually the first part of him to stop growing.”

“They look all right.” Rap did not even turn his head to look at the bundle—mukluks and fur trousers wrapped in a parka, fur from young polar bears, lined with the down of ducks… garments of a quality he could never hope to own in his lifetime. He did not have to open the damned parcel. “It’s very, very kind of you, Andor. No one’s given me a Winterfest present since my mother died. But what could I give you in exchange? Horse buns?”

“It is a bribe, of course,” Andor admitted cheerfully. “I was hoping that you might agree to share. Yours seems to be stronger than mine, so a sharing would be a gift to me.”

“Share what?” Rap looked up in both hope and puzzlement.

“You tell me your word and I’ll tell you mine. Two words make an adept. On my trip. I’ll be safe from cold and goblins both—if you’ll do that for me.”

Unhappily Rap shook his head. “I don’t have a word. The king asked me; I told him the same. Do you think I would have lied to my king? I know no word of power. These horrible things just started happening to me by themselves.”

“You must have a word! It’s too late to deny it, Raddie-boy! Yes, they’re usually kept secret, but yours is common knowledge now.”

Rap remembered how his lecture from Sagon had been cut short. “The king told me that there were dangers in knowing a word. What dangers?”

“Gods, man!” Andor almost shouted. “They’re valuable! Incredibly valuable! They’re magic-proof themselves, so they can’t be extracted by sorcery, but every sorcerer in the world always wants one more word, to become more powerful. One of these days someone’s going to nail you to a post and start heating irons! That’s another reason we should share—we’ll be much safer as adepts, because we’ll have abilities we don’t have now.”

“I don’t want to be a sorcerer!” Rap cried. “I want to be a man-at-arms and serve Queen Inosolan. That’s all I pray the Gods for!”

“Ray!” Andor said impatiently. “Two won’t make you a sorcerer, but with two you can be a champion whatever-you-want, including a champion swordsman. You’ll be able to beat anyone in the world, except another adept or a mage or sorcerer. Doesn’t that idea appeal to you?”

“It sounds sort of sneaky.” Rap surprised himself by grinning.

Andor chuckled and looked hopeful. “And in the forest I’ll be in no danger at all. Well, not much.”

The forest! Swordmanship forgotten, Rap came back to sad reality. “But I don’t have a word to share.”

Andor sighed and held out the bottle again. “All right! If you won’t, then you won’t.”

Rap slid off his chair, onto his knees. “Andor, if I could, I would! I’d give you mine and not want yours, and I’d try to forget mine. But I don’t have any magic words! I swear it!”

“You must have! Don’t grovel—it’s not manly. Tell me how your mother died and what she said to you the last time you saw her. The words are usually passed on a deathbed.”

Rap climbed back on his chair. He felt dizzy with the wine and sick to his heart. He would oh-so-gladly tell Andor what he wanted to know if he could. Andor was a good friend, the only friend he had, and he felt soiled and petty at refusing him. “Jalon has one?” he asked. “He offered to share, too, and I didn’t understand!”

“Of course he does. No one could sing like that otherwise.”

Rap knew that Andor had met Jalon. “Why not share with him, then?”

Andor hesitated and then said, “We tried. We both know the same word, so nothing changed. Now, your mother?”

But Rap knew that there was no help there. As happened every few years, fever had swept into the town from a visiting ship. People had been dying every day. Anyone becoming ill in the palace was removed at once. It was his first year in the stables. He had spent a morning mucking out and gone home, expecting his mother to be there working at her lace, as she usually was, with his lunch ready and a smile and a hug and a little joke about her working man. It had been two days before anyone thought to tell him where she was, or why she had gone. Even then he had not been allowed to go and see her. She had died on the third day. So there had been no deathbed farewells, no secret words of power passed.

He told the story and Andor looked baffled.

“She came from Sysanasso,” Rap said. “Perhaps their magic is different and they don’t use words of power?”

“Yes they do. I’ve been there.” Andor had been everywhere. He fell silent, looking sulky.

Despite himself, Rap reached out with his mind and saw those glorious soft furs on his bed. The thought of owning them was like the thought of a hot summer’s day and a picnic on the shore with… with Inos or someone. He could not accept such a gift.

“Well!” Andor brightened again. “What I really need is a good sorcerer, as the saying goes, but I shall find a companion, some man who is good with horses, courageous, dependable…”

“I’m glad to hear that, Andor. To go by yourself would be very foolish. I’m very sorry you’re leaving, but I shall feel happier if I know you took someone with you who knows the north. And I’m very grateful for the gift, but I can’t accept it.”

“I hadn’t finished! Here, last drop.” Andor handed back the bottle. As Rap was draining it he said, “Courageous, dependable, preferably a seer—”

Rap choked.

He finally stopped coughing and gasping. “No! I’m not a trapper or a seal hunter! I’m a city boy!”

“You’re a man, Rap. A good one.”

Rap shook his head. He certainly was not man enough for that madness—weeks of trekking through forest, with wolves and goblins…

“You’re a man!” Andor insisted. “Being a man is not a matter of whether hair grows on your chin, lad. It’s inside your head. Some males never make it at all. Being a man is rolling up your sleeves and telling the world Now I’ll play by the real rules—no more wooden swords. If I succeed, then the credit belongs to me, not my parents or teachers or employers, and I shall savor the prizes without guilt, knowing I earned them. And if I fail, then I’ll pay the penalties without whimpering or blaming anyone else. That’s what manhood is, and it’s up to you to decide when it starts. I think you made the decision that night on the beach, my friend.”

Friend? But what was this friend asking him to risk? Rap was very glad he had declined that gift. Brave was good, rash was not.

“I am proud to be your friend, Andor,” he said, struggling for words with a strangely heavy tongue. “And if I thought my help would be of value, then I would give it eagerly. But I think I would just be a liability to you. Really!”

“The king is dying.”

Right on cue, the candle guttered and went out, leaving faint starlight and a long silence.

“You’re sure?”

“Sagorn is. I’ve spoken to him. Do you want to hear it from him, or will you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you! When?”

“Can’t say when. Not today or tomorrow, but he’ll never see grass again. That’s what Sagorn says, and there are no wiser doctors than he.”

The enormity of it felled Rap. All his life King Holindarn had ruled Krasnegar, a remote, benevolent, all-seeing father to his people, and all the more so to a boy with no father of his own. He had seemed as stable and permanent as the rock itself. The thought that one day he might suddenly not be there was impossible to grasp.

“Inos! Oh, poor Inos! when spring comes, she’ll be waiting for the first ship to bring his letters and instead it will bring that news.”

“Who knows what news it will bring?”

“What do you mean?”

In the darkness, only his farsight told him that Andor shrugged. “When a king dies, his successor had better be on the spot and ready.”

“You mean someone may try to steal the throne?” But obviously that was what Andor meant—stupid question. Try to behave like a grown man, dummy! “Who would do that?”

“Anyone who thought he’d get away with it. Sergeant Thosolin has the armed men. Foronod may think he’d make a better monarch than a slip of a girl, and many would agree. Furthermore, the news is sure to reach Nordland before it gets to Kinvale, and the temptation to the thanes will be fresh seal to orcas. If Inos is not right here, then she has very little chance of ever becoming queen. That’s my guess, anyway.”

The injustice of it burned like lye. “Then why doesn’t the king send for her?”

Andor sighed and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position. “Sagorn says that he refuses to admit he’s that sick. He can’t keep food down, he’s in constant pain—but he’s not going to admit anything. Secondly, he refuses to risk men’s lives. Which is stupid, since half the men in town would volunteer. But he has forbidden any expeditions.”

Poor Inos!

“Is that the real reason you’re leaving, Andor? To tell her?”

Andor’s teeth showed faintly in the gloom. “It’s nothing to do with me, laddie.”

More silence, then he said quietly, “But we could travel together until we got over the mountains. Once we’re in the Impire, it’s easy, and I would see you on the right road for Kinvale. We could hire a guide, if you want one, but you’d have no problem there.”

Rap’s hands were shaking, and he clasped them together on his lap.

A long pause…

“Wooden swords, Rap? Or the real thing now?”

“I have no authority! Who would believe me?”

Andor did not even bother to answer. Inos, of course.

“Appoint myself? Disobey the king’s command?”

“Where is your loyalty, Rap? To the king or to her?”

Darkness and silence.

“If you must choose—and now you must—then where is your loyalty? Do you not think that Inos would want to be at his side in his last days?”

Rap did not need to answer that question.

It was a craziness. The odds were appalling. But Inos would want to be at her father’s side, and Inos was his friend—or would be, were she not a princess. Andor was right, as usual. In such an emergency, Rap must prove his courage, prove his manhood to himself, and show Inos his lo… loyalty.

He shivered. He was not sure which scared him more, the weather or the goblins. He had seen goblins hanging around the harbor. They were short, very broad people with gray-brown skin and jet-black hair. They called themselves the green men, and in certain lights their skin did have a greenish tinge in the brown, like old tarnished brass. In summer the men wandered around wearing an indecent minimum, each one usually followed by three or four women covered from head to toe. But all the stories agreed that they practiced torture.

It was a hair-raising thought—setting off with Andor on a journey through that cold, a journey that would take weeks. The air itself could kill.

“When?”

“Now.” Andor was smiling again now.

“Now?”

He pointed to the window, which was glowing more brightly silver. “The moon is rising. Everyone is so busy getting ready for Winterfest that we won’t be missed.”

“But… we need supplies!”

“Name them. I’ve got my list, let’s hear yours.”

“Four horses. Bedding. Food. Fodder—lots of oats. Weapons. A pot to melt snow…” He dried up and Andor chuckled.

“I thought of a few more things, but it isn’t really very many. No wooden swords?”

Rap gulped, smiled, and said, “No wooden swords.”

Andor reached out a hand to shake. “Good man! If we get caught by bears in the harbor or by a blizzard in the hills, we’ll die, but that we have to chance. Otherwise we just keep going—the hills, then the moors, then the forests, then the mountains. Once we’re over them, then it’s plum cake. Three weeks in summer… say five now. Then a week for Inos to get ready. Angilki will lend her some men, I think, or she can hire some. Five weeks back. Three months, or four at the outside. Sagorn thinks he may just last that long. Remember, he has a word of power, and that will help him.”

Sagorn had said the words made their owners hard to kill, and he had glanced at the king when he said it.

“The king has a word, too?”

Andor nodded. “Inisso had three, it is said, and he divided his power—one word to each of his sons. I can’t believe he would have done anything so stupid, but that is the legend. Kalkor of Gark probably knows one of them, even yet. He’s a superb killer, a thane’s thane. Duke Angilki must have one, 'cos he’s an utter idiot, but a demon with wallpaper—so I’ve heard—and the kings of Krasnegar have always had one. That’s how they have retained their independence for so long. But if Inos doesn’t get back here before her father dies, then it will die with him. The throne is not all she will be cheated out of, Rap.”

“But how could we collect all that stuff and get away unseen?”

“I told you—Winterfest. No one will question you, anyway. , They’ll assume you’re doing something for Foronod. And you can walk around in the dark! Where are the bedrolls kept, the thick ones?”

“I don’t know. In the storeroom by the smithy, I suppose.”

“Look for them!”

Rap scowled, and knew that his scowl would show in the silvery tendrils of moonlight spreading into the little room.

“Rap! I wouldn’t risk this madness with anyone else but you, and I won’t if you’re going to be a mule-headed pig. That farsight of yours will be our trump card. Nothing can sneak up on you, if you’ll use it. But use it you must! And you need practice. Now, are the bedrolls there?”

Rap thought about the storeroom and said, “In the corner beside the axes.”

“Axes! Good! I forgot those. You get the bags and—”

“The stable gate is locked. The keys are on Hononin’s belt.”

“Then I’ll get those.”

“You?” The hostler was one of the very few people in Krasnegar who did not like Andor. Hononin detested him, apparently. The hostler was a grumpy old demon.

“Yes, me!” Andor laughed. “Where can I find him, do you suppose?”

3

For the next two hours, Rap felt as if he were fighting a blizzard. The new clothes alone would have been enough to put him in a daze, and the thought of trekking off into the wastelands of the taiga, the prospect of an adventure with a hero like Andor, the chance of seeing Inos again… Emotions swirled through him like a spring tide. Moreover he now must force himself to use his uncanny sensing ability instead of suppressing it, and soon his head was throbbing with the effort. Yet farsight was a wonderful assistance for a common thief.

The realization that he was stealing upset him even more than the thoughts of danger ahead. He tried to convince himself that everything he was taking would be returned eventually, except the food. Andor had said that he would handle the food, and he had promised he would leave payment. Sweating in his opulent new furs, Rap scurried around the palace storerooms, collecting things and carrying them to the stables, using no lights, yet rarely having to hesitate or fumble.

The bedding was where he had known it would be, and so were axes and oats and spears and shovels… he cached his loot in an empty stall and then set to work on horses.

Firedragon was a temptation, but he was stud for the royal herd, so the temptation would have to be resisted. Young animals would be the best, but even some of those were beginning to show the effects of their harsh winter confinement. In the cold, uncaring moonlight he saddled Joyboy and Crazy; he loaded Peppers and Dancer with the bags of fodder and equipment.

Then he was ready and he slumped down on a bag of chaff to catch his breath, wondering what he might have forgotten. The stable was dark, warm, and smelly with horses, filled with their little snufflings and shiftings, homely and familiar… and as Rap sat there, the implications of what he had done suddenly struck him like snow falling off a roof. The storerooms had opened to him because he was Foronod’s helper—Foronod’s trusted helper. He had been entrusted with the keys, and he had betrayed that trust! He was disobeying his king. Who was he to summon Inos to a perilous trek back through the winter forest, when her father would not? Had Andor bewitched him? He began to shake and stream with sweat. Traitor! Thief!

He was crazy! Perhaps there was just time to correct his error before Andor arrived—then no one would ever know. Frantic with guilt, with fingers that seemed clumsy as toes, Rap began unloading the ponies.

He had hardly started when a door creaked. He jumped, but he knew it was Andor before he could see him.

Andor thankfully slid a huge pack of supplies off his back. “Good man! Almost ready, I see. You’re a wonder, Rap, even among northerners—and you know what people say about them.”

“No? What do they say about us?”

“Oh,” Andor said vaguely, “you know. Self-reliant, tough, dependable. That sort of thing. Now to business!” Grinning, he held up Hononin’s keys and jingled them.

How had he managed that? Rap’s heart pumped cold terror as he remembered the tales of the fisherman Kranderbad and the others. “What did you do to him? Tell me!”

“Not a thing, my lad, He’s still drinking Winterfest punch at the King’s Head.”

“He gave you the keys?”

“No. He dropped them on the floor right here, but he doesn’t know that yet. Now, what are we missing?”

Ten minutes later they unlocked the stable gate and walked out into the bailey and the deadly cold.

“Damn!” Andor said. The expedition had run into trouble already. Although the outer gates were never locked, only barred, a giant snowdrift lay across them. The postern was open, and a path through it well tramped, but the packhorses would not be able to pass that way with their burdens.

“We’ll have to unload and load up again outside,” Rap said, feeling the bite of the cold already.

“I suppose so,” Andor muttered. “Is there anyone out there to see?”

“I… I don’t know!”

“Use your farsight.”

“I can’t!” Rap felt a sudden panic. Was his mysterious power going to fail him now, when he had just agreed to use it? He could sense nothing which told him how much he had already become accustomed to using his farsight without realizing. A tremor of guilt teased at his conscience again. Were the Gods about to withdraw their gift to him?

Then Andor chuckled. “Try this, then. Go outside and see what happens.”

Puzzled, Rap handed him the lead rein and stepped through the postern. A moment later he returned. “You’re right! The gate stops it—whatever it is.”

“Should have known! The castle is magic-proof.”

“Magic? I’m not a sorcerer!”

“No, lad, but your farsight is something more than mundane. Why do you suppose old Inisso built a castle, anyway? There are no armies here! Sorcerers fear only other sorcerers, so the castle wall is magic-proof. Magic’ll work inside or outside, but not through the walls… I’ve heard of that. I’d forgotten. Well, come on! We’ll freeze to death if we don’t start moving!”

With Andor following, Rap led their string down through the alleys of Krasnegar and the Gods seemed to be cheering them on. The few people they met were so far advanced in festive preparations that they did not wonder where Rap might be going with horses at that time of year. Most did not even recognize him in his new clothes, and the rest were content to call a cheerful greeting as he went by. The town gates were unlocked. Andor swung up the bar, Rap followed him out to the docks—and stopped to check for bears.

Nothing moved in the black stillness. Neither eyes nor farsight detected danger. Spring and fall were when white bears roamed the coast. Midwinter should be safe—but not necessarily.

“Can’t see anything,” Rap muttered nervously.

“Right!” Andor led the way to a boat ramp, and the insane escapade had begun.

Windless and still, the night was yet cold beyond belief. Steam from the horses rose like the smoke of bonfires. Sealed cozily inside his new furs, Rap could feel the deathly touch only on the small corners of his face that were still exposed, but the insides of his nostrils crackled. Snow crunched noisily below hoof and boot.

The half moon had banished the aurora and most of the stars. Now its ghostly light fell from a clear black sky to glitter on the ice-covered bay. The islands of the causeway were drifted over and tangled with piled floes, but the bay ice itself would be safe enough if they could ever get to it, for its edges were a crumpled horror of tilted blocks and jagged monoliths, sharp ice and soft snow mixed in random confusion. Drifts and shadows concealed deep holes, deep enough in some cases to reach down to the water itself, with only a treacherous thin cover of new ice. For the first few minutes Rap floundered, convinced he would never find a way through such a trap, tripping and constantly sinking through surfaces that looked hard and yet were not. The horses behind him were doing no better and he could sense their terror.

“Take your time,” said Andor’s voice from the back, calmly. “The farsight will help you.”

Rap’s right foot sank deep into soft snow. He stumbled against a crystal wall, extracted that foot and lost the other, then both, and stopped of necessity, buried up to his thighs. He was gasping with nervousness and exertion, blowing clouds of steam that glistened faint rainbow colors in the moonlight. He thought of the endless leagues before him. At this rate they would starve to death before they even reached the mainland, far less the forests.

“Wait!” Andor called as Rap struggled to free himself. “Close your eyes!”

Rap closed his eyes. He knew that there was a giant canted slab on his right, and a heap of massive blocks to his left, but of course that smooth stretch ahead was all snowdrift and the ice below sloped steeply down. His eyes had not told him that. Over there, however, the snow was thinner…

It seemed a long time, but it could hardly have been more than ten minutes before he had found a route through the labyrinth, out onto the smoother surfaces in the center of the bay, where the floes had not been so contorted by the tide. Then it seemed safe to mount the horses. He had mastered the technique. He did not need to close his eyes now, he could blend the two types of sight in his mind and reach out ahead. When they came to the jumble on the opposite shore, he led the string through without having to backtrack once.

“Magnificent! Rap, my lad, you’re incredible! This is going to be a joyride.”

Praise from Andor was a hot drink, sweet and warm all through Rap.

And his magic worked on land, as well. He soon developed a sense for the depth and packing of the snow—where the horses could go and where they could not. In truth there was not much snow on the ground. Krasnegar was a dry place and the snow seemed impressive only because the wind made every flake do the work of ten. Open areas were mostly swept clear, and drifts formed only in the lee of obstacles. His headache faded as his confidence grew, or perhaps that was an effect of the clear and frigid air. Their route was less direct than would have been possible in summer, but they began to advance steadily into the hills, four horses in line sending up thick clouds of steam in the moonlight, the jingle of harness blending with the crackle of the snow crust, their shadows tracking beside.

As the sun ruled Krasnegar’s sky in summer, so the moon prevailed in winter. A full moon hardly set at all, riding high around the sky, ducking but briefly below the northern horizon to hide from the transient sun. But now the moon was waning and it would fail them in time. Yet even at midwinter there would be some daylight, and a brash new confidence was telling Rap that he perhaps did not need light at all.

They took their first break in the same little valley where he had met Jalon the minstrel, many months before, although now the countryside was strangely changed by the snow and the spectral light. This far from the shore bears were unlikely, because bears ate seals in preference to people.

Rap dug out a canteen from under a grain sack on Dancer, whose body heat had kept it unfrozen.

“Careful with this,” he warned as he passed it to Andor. “It will freeze to your lips if you let it.” He felt an unworthy twinge of pride in his superior knowledge, the jotunn guiding the imp.

They chewed pemmican and spilled some oats on the snow for the ponies. Rap muttered over their gashed ankles, he scraped the packed snow out of their shoes and carefully picked the icicles from their nostrils. He was almost laughing aloud with excitement, exhilarated by adventure and a sense of escape. Krasnegar had been a jail for him—he had broken out into freedom. He made a promise to himself: this journey would be the start of his manhood. If the air had not been so cold, he would have been tempted to sing.

They made camp in a peat cutting under the glorious canopy of stars. If there was some way to pitch a tent when the ground was iron, then Rap did not know it. They finally used their tent as a giant sleeping bag, putting the bedrolls inside it and then wriggling into them.

“This,” Rap said firmly, “is fun!”

“Great Gods!” Andor muttered. “He’s mad.” After a minute he added, “But it’s different, I’ll grant you.”

After another minute Rap whispered, “Andor? Have you ever had an adventure like this?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll tell you afterward; this one may be different.”

“How?”

“Because the others, I survived.”

About two hours before noon, a faint glow appeared in the south and gradually spread into a vague twilight, then a dim and foggy daylight. For a few minutes an edge of the sun showed. Soon it was gone and the day faded as slowly as it had come.

The moorlands were difficult, the rough ground heavily laced with drifts, the best trail winding and twisting like a tangled cord. But now Rap’s head did not ache at all, and he could choose the firmest route without even having to think.

Once that day they saw wolves far off, or at least Rap did, but they slunk away into blurry distance without any signs that they might be contemplating attack.

If the weather held… and the weather did. On the third day, while Krasnegar would be feasting and celebrating Winterfest, the moors dipped away and the first stunted trees stood as sentries for the great taiga ahead. Here ended the realm of the king of Krasnegar. Ahead lay a land that neither he nor the imperor could claim with conviction. Yet it was not no-man’s land. Trees were shelter from even the worst that a blizzard could do, but they were shelter for other men, also, and those could be more deadly than any blizzard.

Seven days into the forest, they were still alive.

For two rank beginners, Rap thought, they were doing well. True, Andor was an experienced traveler, but he was a man of the south. Rap was a native, but a city dweller. Only trappers, seal hunters, and prospectors left Krasnegar in winter. All that he had known of life in the wastelands had been gleaned from conversations with men such as those, and there was much that must be learned the hard way.

But Rap and Andor learned, They learned not to build fires under branches laden with snow; they learned to take their boots into their bedrolls with them at night; they learned to stay in the densest forest, where the undergrowth and snow cover were least. In that primeval gloom there were game trails and mysterious paths along which Rap led the horses unerringly with the aid of his supernatural vision.

So far they had seen no signs of the dreaded goblins. Even animal tracks were scarce and neither of the men could read what stories they might have had to tell. Only once was there obviously wolf spoor, and for two hours thereafter Rap’s ghostly farseeing was stretched to its limit as he nervously scanned the forest.

Andor grumbled that he would never eat pemmican or pancakes again, but Rap seemed to thrive on the monotonous diet. The horses were doing less well, and he hated to drive the poor creatures so hard. Their ribs showed like sapling groves. They staggered often. They spent the hours of rest pawing at the snow in search of the meager forest grass below.

And the human food supplies were dwindling fast. The self-taught pioneers would have to learn hunting soon or face starvation, but they agreed that they should press on southward as far as they could, as fast as they could, as long as the weather allowed. Some days they endured a bitter wind and light snow, but the trees gave shelter and no real killer storm had come seeking them.

Rap had seen trees before. There were a few twisted specimens in the castle gardens, and he had accompanied a search party southward two summers earlier, pursuing Firedragon and his herd. Yet he had never conceived that there could be as many trees in the world as he saw now in a single day; mostly spruce, black in their winter coats, silent and unfriendly. He had expected the taiga to be endless and featureless and unchanging, but it did change. It rolled up and down, it broke sometimes into open clearings, old firebreaks, which were tangled and hard going, and it had rivers and game trails and frozen marshes peppered with tiny, stunted spruce. He had never seen rivers before and he tried vainly to imagine how they would look with water in them instead of solid ice.

Some people never get lost, Sagorn had said, and Rap’s sense of direction was unfailing. In the darkest dark or the whitest ice fog, he could always face to the south and he could always find his way back to the wagon trail whose general course they were following. The trail itself, however, was often plugged with drifts, and for men and horses, the trees made easier going.

On the seventh day they were still alive.

4

“Rap! Let’s camp!” Andor’s voice was a croak. There was no moonlight now, and the endless blindman’s bluff was emotionally exhausting for him, as well as for the horses. Rap had become so expert that even in daylight he sometimes walked with his eyes closed, if the low sun shone in them.

Now the sun had just set, and Rap would have been willing to go on for longer. But he was secretly becoming concerned by Andor’s weakness—imps did not fare well in winter. Rap had jotunn blood in him and was enduring much better.

“Good idea,” he said. “I was just about to suggest it.”

They found a campsite in a small clearing and set to work building a fire. Soon the light from the flames danced over snow and the encircling woods, and Andor had his eyes back. He rummaged for the food, while Rap set to work cutting more firewood and spruce boughs to build a lean-to. They were becoming efficient and they had long since discarded the tent as useless baggage.

Rap had moved into the trees, some yards from the flickering firelight. His attention must have wandered, for it was a sense of alarm in the ponies that alerted him first, and his farsight confirmed the danger a moment later. He plunged back through the snow to the camp and said: “Andor! Visitors!”

Andor looked up from where he was kneeling by the fire. His black impish stubble was caked with ice. His face was darkly filthy, and only a glint of firelight in his eyes showed from inside the shadow of his fur hood. “How many?”

Rap counted. “Twenty or so. They’re moving around, making a circle.” His hands were beginning to shake, and he was astonished to hear Andor utter a low chuckle.

“Then this may be your last chance.”

“Last chance for what?” Rap did not want to raise his voice, and yet obviously the fire and the sound of his ax had already proclaimed their location like a carillon.

“Your last chance to share your word with me, of course. An adept would be in no danger, but I doubt that my talent will work well enough on these fellows. Spit it out, Rap! Quick!”

“I have no word!” Rap protested, horrified. Had Andor been thinking him a liar all this time?

Andor threw down the knife he had been using on the pemmican and put his mitted hands on his knees. “Last chance, Master Rap!”

“Andor…” Rap felt his world crumbling. His terror of the goblins faded before a heartbreaking sense of betrayal. “Is this all a trick? The king isn’t dying?”

“Oh, he’s dying. That doesn’t matter much now, does it? You know what the goblins will do to us, don’t you?”

They were closing in now, the circle shrinking. Yet eyes could not have detected them, and they made no sound. Only a seer could have known.

Rap wavered on the brink of panic.

“I have no word to tell! You tell me yours, then! If I do have one, then two will make me an adept, won’t it? Then I can save us!”

Ander uttered a snort of derision. “Not likely!” He climbed to his feet. “Which way are they coming?”

Rap searched with his mind. The circle had stopped shrinking and there was a knot of men advancing. “That way.”

“You’re quite sure you won’t tell me? It would be nicer than having bits pulled off.”

“I can’t! Tell me yours!”

Andor shook his head in exasperation. “That wouldn’t work! You’d need time to learn to control it. I don’t even need to become an adept, really—not for this. All I need your word for is to boost the talent I already have, more power. Then I’ll win over the goblins, and we’ll be made welcome. So you have to tell me yours, don’t you see?”

Talent? Win? How could he have ignored the obvious for so long? “It’s not just girls, is it?” Rap said bitterly. “It’s all people. Men, too. You tricked me.” Andor had done to Rap what Rap had done to Firedragon’s mares. Thief! Traitor!

Andor shrugged heavy, furred shoulders. “The goblins are no trick, and I don’t intend to stay around to entertain them. You’re being foolish, Master Rap.”

Then he turned to face the arrivals.

Three shadowy figures had emerged from the dark into the edge of the firelight, visible even to eyes.

If goblins valued courage, then they were not going to be impressed by Rap’s quivering jaw, or the way he was keeping his knees pressed together. He resisted the temptation to sidle in behind Andor and hide.

The three came slowly closer, spears raised, inspecting their catch with care. They were short and very broad. They wore jerkins and trousers and boots, but made of buckskin instead of fur, gaudily decorated with fringes and beadwork. The fire’s glimmer showed hard, unfriendly faces, dark-skinned and marked by complicated tattoo patterns around the eyes.

The one in the center seemed older than the others. He had the most ornate decorations on his clothes and on his face, and he spoke first, barking out a question that Rap could not understand, accompanied by a threatening movement of the spear.

Andor seemed to straighten up, tall and imposing. He rolled off a long answer in the same tongue, and his voice was harsher and much deeper than usual. Rap jumped with surprise when he heard it. It had never occurred to him that the goblins spoke another language.

Then he wondered how Andor knew it.

The spear points dipped slightly. The leader spoke another question, sounding surprised.

Andor replied and pointed to his face. Now Rap could catch a word or two. It was a strangely coarse dialect, but not a totally different tongue.

The chief snapped an order to his two companions and then advanced alone, holding his spear at waist height now. He peered up into Andor’s hood.

Rap had just noticed that he could barely see over Andor’s shoulder. Andor was much taller than he ought to be and certainly much broader. His parka strained over massive arms and shoulders. He looked wrong to Rap’s eyes, and also to his farsight. There was a bigger man in there than Andor.

The chief had rattled off more questions, Andor replying. The chief showed irregular teeth in a broad grin. He reached out a mitt and turned Andor around. He wanted to see Andor’s tattoos in the firelight, but in doing so he showed that face to Rap.

It was not Andor. It was a huge man, a man with the ugliest and most terrifying face Rap had ever seen—nose crushed over to one side, one corner of his mouth lifted by a scar, the corner of one eye pulled awry by another. Andor’s dark, stubbly beard had vanished—this man looked newly shaved. He was not a goblin, but he had goblin tattoos around his eyes—pale jotunn’s eyes, which now met Rap’s and crinkled with contemptuous amusement. He grinned. His front teeth were missing, top and bottom, giving him a most hideous and sinister wolfish leer.

Rap backed away in dismay, almost into the campfire. “Where is Andor?”

“You won’t be seeing him again, not likely.”

Rap’s heart was spinning, and he thought he might be going to faint. Andor had been there only minutes before. “Who are you?” he cried.!

“A friend of his,” the big man said. “I’m Darad. You were warned about me.”

5

The chief inspected Darad’s tattoos by the trembling light of the campfire and apparently approved of them. He smiled and dropped his spear, attempted to embrace the giant, and received a bear hug in return. That ought to be a good sign for Darad, but who was going to hug Rap?

The chief’s two companions were smiling also and coming forward for introductions and more embraces. The rest of the goblins floated in from the trees, silent as moonbeams, appearing suddenly in the firelight like ghosts. They were younger men, mostly, bearing spears or bows, and all wearing the same fringed and beaded buckskins.

What was going on? Obviously there was some sort of sorcery at work, yet Andor was most certainly not a sorcerer. Sorcerers need not endure the hardships of long days' trekking through the wastelands; they had abilities to avoid such dangers and discomfort. If Andor was a sorcerer and wanted that damnable magic word that he thought Rap possessed, he would surely have revealed his powers sooner.

And who was this Darad, against whom Jalon had warned him, this Darad who so conveniently bore goblins' tattoos and spoke their tongue? Rap trembled as he thought of Kranderbad and the others who had tried to fight Andor and had then been so callously maimed. The idea that the soft-spoken, kindly Andor might commit such atrocities, even in the heat of a fight, was just as unthinkable as the notion that he might be a sorcerer. Darad, however, looked capable of anything. Perhaps Darad was a demon that came to Andor’s rescue when he was in trouble. If so, and if the goblins were going to be friendly, would Andor now reappear?

But the goblins were not being totally friendly. The four horses had been caught and led forward into the firelight, tugged unwillingly by their manes; too weak and dispirited to resist. Darad and the chief were in guttural argument with much pointing and waving of hands. As the voices rose, Rap began to catch a few of the words: horse and four and saddle. The old chief turned and looked at Rap, who quivered instantly and reminded himself sternly that goblins respected courage. The thought brought him little comfort.

The chief asked a question, Darad replied. Rap made out his own name, but little else. The argument seemed to go back to the horses, then to him again.

Darad stepped over, took Rap’s arm in a grip that made his bones creak, and turned him away from the fire, toward the dark of the forest.

“I’ll give you one more chance.” His voice was low and harsh, blurred by the missing teeth.

“I don’t know any words of power!” Hopefully Darad—and the goblins, too—would think it was the fearsome cold that was making Rap tremble so much, Why couldn’t he stop?

“The chief must have a gift. I offered two horses. He wants all four. But he’ll settle for something less.”

“What?”

“You.”

“You wouldn’t!”

Darad grinned. His tongue and his eyeteeth were very prominent because of the gaps, and his grin was lupine and inhuman. His eyes were shiny and cold as the polar night. If Rap had been able to give him what he wanted, those eyes alone would have been persuasion enough.

“I don’t know any…”

Darad pushed contemptuously. Rap toppled into a snowbank. By the time he had picked himself up, Darad and the chief were embracing again.

Experienced woodsmen would not have made their camp half a mile from a goblins' village. As soon as Rap was pointed in the right direction and jabbed forward by the point of a spear, he could sense it at the limit of his range. He had been careless; now he was going to pay dearly for his stupidity.

He staggered along, dimly aware of the guards around him, and of Darad and the goblin chief walking arm in arm at the front of the line. They were an incongruous pair, for the huge Darad made the other seem like a dwarf. The big man was hobbling, as if Andor’s mukluks were hurting him.

Having registered that the horses and the equipment were being brought along, Rap concentrated on sensing out the clearing ahead, where four log structures stood in a square. He could soon tell that the closest was a stable containing three runtish ponies—small wonder that the chief had wanted all four of the Krasnegarian horses—but the farthest was much larger than the others and there were many people in there, mostly women. Of the two others, one seemed to be reserved for women and girls, and the smallest for boys. All three houses were sending up lazy columns of smoke into the crystal-cold night, but the big one was the communal house, and it was there that the procession headed. As it left the forest and crunched over the snowy clearing, a chorus of barking broke out in greeting.

Before Rap had any time to study all the details with his sensing, he had reached the largest hut and was hurriedly pushed inside. Blinded by a blaze of light, half choked by a fog of acrid smoke and fetid odors, he recoiled and was shoved forward bodily into a melee of undressing men. He tripped and rolled among greasy legs and smelly feet. He began to cough; his eyes streamed tears; he gasped in heat unbearable to him after a whole week of arctic cold.

All around him men were stripping off clothes; he rose and copied them out of necessity. The goblins stopped just short of total nudity, retaining only brief loincloths, the same indecent garments he had seen on goblins at Krasnegar. With head swimming and stomach all knotted up at the stench, quivering and sweating, he struggled to maintain control. Courage! he told himself. Brave men do not vomit!

He stripped to his shirt and shorts, and saw his furs tossed into a communal heap of buckskins by the door. Then an elderly, near-nude goblin shouted at him. Seeing that Rap did not understand, he ripped Rap’s shirt off and hurled it furiously to the floor—apparently wearing a shirt indoors was an insult. He shoved Rap ahead of him, over to a corner, and gestured that he must sit down. Glad to obey, tormented by this shameful undress, Rap crouched down, hugged his knees, and made himself small.

The building was one giant room, longer than King Holindarn’s great hall, made of enormous logs. The center held the place of honor, a low stone platform around a blazing hearth, where Darad was already stretching out on a pile of furs and looking comfortable.

The women were clustered around a much smaller fire at the far end of the hall, and farsight told Rap that they were preparing food. Neither hearth had a chimney; reluctant to depart through the hole in the roof, the smoke gathered overhead in a whitish cloud, billowing up and down like a sea swell.

Probably nowhere in the lodge was truly warm, except near the fires—Rap had been deceived when he first entered by the sudden change and by having furs on. Where he was sitting now, down low, the air was freezing, and polar drafts knifed in through chinks in the logs to ice his back. He shivered constantly and was hard put to keep his teeth from chattering. Perhaps the smell was not quite so bad down there, but his eyes still smarted unbearably. It was unfair to ask a man to pretend to have courage when he was so cold, and the air so smoky.

The women were invisible, swathed in voluminous buckskin robes reaching to the ground, their heads covered with wimples of woven stuff, and only their hands and faces showing. The few goblin women he had seen in Krasnegar had been shrouded like that, even in summer.

The men, by contrast, were almost completely visible, their dark-khaki skin shining greasily and displaying in the firelight the greenish tinge of which the goblins boasted. They wore their heavy black hair matted into a tail with fat and draped over one shoulder to hang down their chests like a bellrope. All of the men seemed short, although that was partly because Darad towered over them like a swan among mallards, but they were wide and deep, their limbs thick and heavy. Rap wondered how much of that meat was fat and how much muscle; seeing the easy and limber way the goblins walked around, he decided that it was mostly muscle. Their eyes were wrongly shaped and set at an odd angle in their heads, their limbs and bodies smooth, although most sprouted scattered black bristles around their mouths—goblins had big mouths, full of teeth that seemed too large and pointed.

Darad dwarfed them all. His pale-pink jotunnish body was furred in yellow hair, but also heavily scarred and much tattooed. Andor’s flimsy underwear clung on him in shreds, provoking loud hilarity until a suitably large loincloth could be found to replace it. He had been given the thickest rug, next to the chief, and two young maidens had been set to work rubbing grease into his pelt. Looking like a white walrus basking among seals, drink in hand, surrounded by admirers, he was obviously prepared to enjoy a fine evening.

Knowing that he must seem as odd to the goblins as they did to him, Rap was happy to remain as inconspicuous as possible. But he did not only look wrong, he smelled wrong. His farsight warned him, and he turned around hastily to meet the slitted eyes of the largest dog he had ever seen. It might even be a full-grown timber wolf—silver gray, and certainly weighing almost as much as he did. Its lips were curled to display teeth like white daggers. Its hackles were raised, it was already tensed to spring. None of the goblins was paying any attention and the visitor was surely about to be savaged.

Quickly Rap turned on the charm that he used for dogs, like the charm that worked on horses. He smiled, he raised a hand…

“Here, Fleabag,” he whispered. “Nice doggie?”

Fleabag postponed his attack to consider this unexpected development. As Rap’s soothing thoughts sank in, his ruff began to settle. He edged forward with great suspicion and sniffed at the hand. His tail started to twitch.

Rap discovered that he was shaking. Having his throat ripped out by a wolf might be much pleasanter than whatever the goblins had in store for him, but it was still an event better avoided.

Other dogs arrived to inspect what Fleabag had found, sniffing and then licking. Apparently Rap had an interesting taste. The dogs stank foully, but not as badly as their owners did, and while Rap might have been able to send them away, they were company and they helped to shield him from the goblins' view. They lost interest eventually and settled down to sleep, spread out untidily on the floor around him. Even in Krasnegar, the palace dogs had tended to follow him about.

The men around the central hearth—the most senior sprawling on the platform itself, on furs, youngsters sitting on its edge or squatting on the floor—were all busily rubbing grease on themselves or on one another, combing and greasing their hair.

The goblin chief was a middle-aged man, potbellied and thinshanked, but bearing himself like one who accepts no questions. His facial tattoos were richer and more complex than anyone else’s, his rope of hair was streaked in silver, and he wore a necklace of many strands of bear claws, which clicked and clacked when he moved. He reclined beside Darad and the two of them monopolized the conversation.

Darad was a guest. No one offered Rap a drink, or even a fur. Was he guest or captive? He might even be a slave if Darad had given him to the chief. It was hardly flattering to be second choice to two horses, but perhaps that was a realistic evaluation.

Meanwhile he could only sit and shiver in cold and fear and lonely silence. He ought to say a prayer or two, but he wasn’t much of a praying man and it seemed shameful to change now, when he was in trouble, after so seldom offering thanks for the good life he had enjoyed back in Krasnegar. The Gods might feel that his ingratitude was being well rewarded. If he’d done some serious praying sooner, he might have known that stealing the king’s horses was very wrong behavior.

In the end he decided it would be all right to ask the God of Courage to send him strength to endure whatever was coming.

Darad was holding forth, waving his beaker with one hand and pointing to his various scars and tattoos with the other. The goblins listened intently, seeming impressed. Rap began to catch some of the language, especially Darad’s words, and the name Wolf Tooth kept recurring. He concluded that this must be Darad’s goblin name and he was talking of himself, telling of Wolf Tooth’s triumphs and all the various tribes he belonged to worldwide, as evidenced by his tattoos. Sysanasso was mentioned.

So were murder and rape. Quite evidently Darad was a horror, as different from the gentle, sociable Andor as it was possible for man to be. Yet if a quarter of his tales were true he had traveled as widely as Andor had. He was also a braggart and probably stupid, but the goblins did not seem to mind that. After a while the women began to bring their menfolk dishes of food. Rap sat and watched them gorge. His mouth watered, hoping someone might think to throw it a bone.

The dogs snored and twitched in their dreams. Rap was weary, but fear and cold kept him alert. He wondered why women so greatly outnumbered the men. Scanning the other buildings with farsight, he saw that there the numbers were more even; girls in one, boys in the other. The difference was the adult men, therefore, and a reasonable guess would be that a war party was out raiding somewhere.

From time to time women would slip out the door and come back with more wood for the two monstrous fires. They at least wore robes, but men wandering out to relieve themselves did not bother to dress, although even the thought of going out unclothed into that unbelievable cold made Rap shudder. The buckskins that the goblins had worn earlier were much flimsier than his furs, so obviously goblins felt cold much less than faun-jotunn halfbreeds did, and the hearth was a place of honor, rather than of comfort.

The meal was finished. The drinking continued. After an hour or two, the chief looked across toward Rap and asked Darad something. Darad grinned and beckoned. Reluctant, feeling horribly embarrassed and vulnerable in his state of undress, Rap rose and advanced to the edge of the ring of junior goblins sprawled around the hearth.

His hosts inspected him with curiosity, with amusement, then with contemptuous comments that he could not catch. There was laughter. He knew he must look strange to them—the reverse of the way they looked to him. He would seem a very pale brown, very stringy, and too tall. His tussock of unruly brown hair would be entertaining, also. The minstrel Jalon had told him that fauns had hairy legs, and certainly Rap’s legs had been busily growing hairy recently. They obviously amused the goblins.

But evidently he had overlooked the feature that amused them most. The chief said something that provoked especially loud laughter. Darad’s reply brought more.

He leered at Rap. “The chief offered to give me your nose, because mine is broken. I said mine was still prettier.” He laughed again and took another drink.

The goblins all had wide, plump faces, but their noses were thin and very long. They also had big ears.

“When do I get to eat?” Rap asked.

Darad showed his tooth gap in another leer. “Why waste good food?”

“What’s going to happen, then?” Even if courage was important, Rap just could not feel courageous, but now anger was coming to his aid. If they were going to kill him, he would rather they got started than just left him in suspense.

Again that wolfish grin. “Wait and see! I wouldn’t want to spoil your surprise.”

The chief turned and grunted an order. One of the youngest men sprang up and ran along the big room and out the door. As Rap watched with farsight, he hurried to the smallest building, the one where the boys and youths of the tribe were sitting or lying around a fireplace. There seemed to be one grown man there, perhaps a supervisor, and he now rose to follow the chief’s messenger. Yet, while the messenger ran back, the newcomer took his time, idly kicking snow with his bare feet, brazenly strolling through that deadly arctic cold while clad in nothing but a strip of deer hide.

He sauntered into the hall and up to the fireplace, folded his arms, and looked expectantly at the chief. He was not a grown man, but not far off it; about Rap’s age, almost as tall and twice the depth, a barrel-chested, powerful youth; as big as any goblin in the room. He already had more moustache than most, and the black rope of his hair hung almost to his waist. There were no tattoos on his wide, ugly face, but there was much arrogance.

The chief said something. The youth looked Rap over and then grinned hugely with his oversized teeth. He held a meaty arm against one of Rap’s to allow a comparison. The audience exploded in appreciative laughter.

“This is Little Chicken,” Darad explained helpfully. “High Raven’s son. You’ll be seeing more of him in future. More than you want, I fancy!” He laughed and then translated his joke for the benefit of the audience. They found it equally amusing.

High Raven must be the chief. That and his size explained this youngster’s superior air.

“Do I have to fight him?” Rap demanded, uneasily studying Little Chicken’s impressively thick limbs and chest.

“Just hold your end up!” Darad said, laughing again.

The chief snapped an order. Little Chicken nodded and grabbed Rap’s wrist. The goblins respected courage; Rap felt pushed beyond all endurance by this mockery and ill treatment. He jerked his arm away and swung a fast punch with his other hand.

He hit nothing. He had no time to register the horrifying implications of that failure before Little Chicken doubled him over with a left hook in the belly and then flattened him to the floor with a thump on the back of his head. Dimly he heard the audience erupt in screams of mirth.

Little Chicken might be shorter, but obviously his greater weight was combined with much greater speed. He kicked at Rap to drive home the point and his father shouted what sounded like a warning. So Little Chicken casually knelt, tucked Rap under one arm, and rose to wander away while the spectators were still bellowing and hooting and rolling around on the platform.

Hands and feet trailing on the gritty snow, Rap was borne ignominiously over to the boys' building and dumped in a corner. The boys clustered around to inspect the dazed and still nauseated captive. They found him just as entertaining as their elders had done.

6

Princess Kadolan peered around the south drawing room, being careful not to appear to be peering; she did not think it seemly for a lady to screw up her eyes merely to see properly. In a moment she located the burgundy dress she sought, and the high-piled honey-blond hair. She set off at a measured pace, smiling and nodding to a few friends. The big room was almost empty, and also strangely drab. The snow floating down outside had muffled the morning sun and muted the normally joyful tones of Angilki’s decor.

In searching out the brightest light for her sketch book, Inos had curled up on a love seat by the window. Her bright gown burned hot against the winter whiteness without and the potted plants within. Behind her, beside the casement, an oversize grandfather clock steadily chopped away at the seconds, contrasting the relentless march of time with youth and beauty. Portrait of an artist…

Kade knew well that in most women such a pose would be a deliberate stratagem, but in Inos it came from pure instinct. Imperceptibly Kinvale had melted away her awkward adolescence to reveal a stunningly beautiful young woman. She had gained poise and grace, and yet she still retained her bloom of innocence. That would vanish, of course, as soon as she herself became fully aware of the change, but—as Ekka had remarked only a few minutes ago—the smallest part of the problem now was motivating the prospective suitors.

Inos flipped over a page and frowned at it. Then she noticed Kadolan’s approach, sat up straight, put her feet down…

“Don’t get up, dear.” Kade settled at her side. “Does this snow make you homesick?”

Inos flashed her a smile that could have demolished an Imperial legion. “This? I don’t think a Krasnegarian would call this snow, Aunt. You couldn’t lose a horse in this.”

“You could barely lose a copper groat in it. No, unless it gets much deeper it should not spoil the skating party.”

“I hope not,” Inos said, gazing happily out at the winter-shrouded lawns and hedges. She had not known how to skate until a few weeks ago—skating was not a practical pastime in Krasnegar—but she had taken to it like a horse to oats. From her father she inherited a natural ability for such vigorous pursuits.

She glanced around to see who might be within earshot. Kadolan had already determined that no one was.

“You have come to scold me, Aunt. You have that this-will-hurt-me-more look about you.”

“Oh, dear! Am I becoming so obvious in my old age?”

Inos chuckled and reached out to squeeze her hand. “Of course not! I am teasing. But I certainly ought to know when I have distressed you; I do it often enough, do I not?”

“No, dear…” Kade found herself being studied by the greenest eyes in the Impire, large and deep and unreadable.

“Well, I did!” Inos said, much amused. “I was quite horrid to you when we first arrived, my dear Aunt, and I am truly repentant. But I am seeing that expression much less often, so either you have given up on me, or I am getting better. Which is it?” When Inos chose to be charming, she was irresistible.

“You are doing wonderfully, my dear.”

A tiny gleam of pleasure was masked at once by a coquettish smile. “But…”

“Well… That naval person has departed—”

“Captain Eggoli?” Inos contrived to look shocked. “Should he be traveling in his present state of health? In this snow?”

“He seemed quite eager to leave—and not at all eager to come and make his farewells to you.”

Inos threw up her hands dramatically. “And I did so hope to hear just once more how he keelhauled those poor mutineers! Surely it would have been proper for an Imperial officer to have come to say good-bye?” She could not quite keep the satisfied twinkle out of her eye, although she was becoming much more skilled at hiding her feelings now. Inosolan was much more skilled at almost everything now.

And it really was very funny.

“What I cannot understand,” Kadolan said, playing along, “is how a strapping young sailor like that could have come down with such a terrible cold when everyone else seems perfectly healthy.”

Still Inos kept a straight face. “I did hear rumors that he spent a night in a potting shed.”

“That seems an unwise thing to do. The whole night?”

“A good part of it, I expect. He has very strong opinions.”

“Of himself, you mean? Oh, Inos! How could you?”

“Me? I wasn’t there!” With demure innocence, she turned to gaze out at the big cottony flakes drifting past the windows. Eventually she looked back at Kadolan, and then they both laughed. Their laughter was rather long and immoderate for high-born ladies.

Inos recovered first. She smoothed her sketch book with her hand, took a deep breath, and said, “He really did deserve it! I don’t mind the ones who are looking for wives, Aunt. I mean, I don’t mind them looking. I mind some of them thinking I would be interested… Oh, I’m not saying this very well.”

“Take your time, dear. I think we ought to have this out now.”

Inos looked startled. “Hair down? A woman-to-woman chat?”

“A lady-to-lady chat.” The sort of chat they could not have enjoyed even a few short weeks ago.

“All right! You and the dowager dragon—”

“Inos!” Kadolan murmured reprovingly.

“Hair down, Aunt! You two have been parading your breeding stock—”

“Inos!” She chuckled. “All right, but why do you think I had hysterics that time at the Kinford Horse Show?”

“I knew exactly why, dear, and so did everybody else.”

“And I should have grown out of it by now? I’m sorry, Aunt. I just can’t take it all seriously!” But her fists were clenched.

“You have to, my dear. You will be a queen one day. Your choice of husband is a matter of state. You know that.”

Inosolan sighed and pouted. “Father promised I was not being sent here to be married off!”

“Your father wants you to choose, for love. Few kings would be so considerate. Obviously there is no one suitable in Krasnegar, so he hopes you will meet someone here. Here you have been introduced to some of the most eligible—”

“Dullest, fattest, oldest—”

“Don’t be so conceited,” Kadolan said primly. “People do visit Kinvale for other reasons than you.”

Her niece colored slightly and said nothing.

“Also, Ekka has many other ladies visiting, also. She can hardly hand her gentleman friends a menu when they arrive, now can she?”

Kadolan did not add that all those other ladies were in despair, that Ekka’s renowned matchmaking venture had not produced an engagement in months, that no living, breathing male guest had eyes for anyone but the fabulous princess.

Inos nodded repentantly. “I am trying, Aunt. I really am! I made some mistakes at first, but I think I’m doing all right now.”

“You’re doing splendidly, my dear. I’m very proud of you.”

“Well, then! But there have been one or two, like the hearty Captain Eggoli . .” The big green eyes grew round with wonder. “He really believed me! He really thought I was going to meet him in the potting shed, of all places, so he could—”

“I think I can guess what he thought.”

Inos chuckled again, then sighed. “It isn’t fair! It just isn’t fair! Just because they’re bigger and stronger than we are, they think they can run the world to suit themselves. And run us, too.”

Kadolan could remember thinking things like that. “We are not totally without resources. Captain Eggoli is much bigger and much stronger than most, but he looked very miserable as he left. His nose was red, and his eyes were puffy as lambswool bedsocks.”

Inos sniggered, then became suddenly wistful. “Oh, we can win a point or two, now and then. But it still isn’t fair.”

“No, it isn’t. What are you going to do about it?”

“Oh! I’ve just made an epochal discovery, haven’t I? Inosolan’s Guide to the Universe! I suppose everyone sees it in her time! Did you experience the same shattering revelation at my age?”

“I was older than you, I think. But it is the way of the world, and we must just play the cards we are dealt.”

“Or refuse to play at all?”

Kadolan sighed quite genuinely. “No, my dear. That is not an option—not for anyone, and especially not for you. And even if the rules are unfair, all we can hope is that everyone plays honestly.”

Inos showed her teeth. “I’ll keep them honest!”

Overconfidence would be her next danger, of course. Regretfully Kadolan decided that she would have to be frank, although she hated to hazard this precious bridge of trust and understanding they had so painfully built to each other. But now the stakes were high, time was very short, and the perils great. She reached out to the sketch book on Inos’s lap and turned back the page that Inos had so casually flipped just before seeming to notice her aunt’s approach.

The big clock tick-tocked, tick-tocked, thin-slicing eternity.

Kade said, “It’s a very good likeness, my dear. I had not realized how talented you were.”

Inos was scarlet, eyes glinting furiously. She did not speak.

“Tell me about him.”

“I love him.”

“Yes, I think you do. But tell me about him.”

“What more is there to tell?” Inos was hurt now, and angry, and defensive. “What else matters?”

“Quite a lot, dear. You see, Sir Andor was a mistake.”

Inos drew a deep breath, and Kade interrupted before emotion could provoke indiscretion.

“I mean that he was not invited here to meet you. He was not invited here to meet anyone. He was not invited here at all, Inos. He brought letters of introduction, of course. It was the duke who asked him to stay.”

“Oh.” Inos was far from stupid. She smiled triumphantly. “So it was chance? Not the dowager dragon? The Gods intervened!”

“Possibly. The trouble is… his letters were signed by some very odd people. His Grace has many curious friends for a man of his rank—artists and builders. The nobility write introductions for one another all the time, of course, but one of Sir Andor’s references came from an artist, and another from a scholar. Most nobles would not accept such letters.”

“And the others?”

“From quite minor gentry. Ekka has been making inquiries. They now admit that they hardly know him.”

A dangerous frown came over her niece’s face. “Are you suggesting that Sir Andor is a fraud? An imposter? Because—”

“I’m not suggesting any such thing, Inos. You spent five weeks in each other’s company. You must have talked about yourselves. So you tell me about him.”

Inos turned away quickly to stare at the window. Her hands moved restlessly. “He had to leave upon a matter of honor. It may be dangerous, he said. But he promised to return, and I certainly trust—”

“That wasn’t what I asked, dear.” Kade spoke softly, treading gently. “Who is his father? Does his family have money? Land? Titles?”

Looking suddenly much younger—looking rather like a cornered fawn—Inos said, “Those things do not matter!”

“They do not matter very much, I agree. A good man is a good man, and I believe that your father might even accept a commoner, if he was a man of honor and good qualities. But they may matter if Sir Andor deliberately set out to win the heart of a princess by pretending to be something other than what he is.”

“He did. Did win the heart of a princess.”

“Then it does matter. Inos, you must see that?”

Again Inos turned her head to study the snowy scene beyond the casement, the drifting flakes. The big pendulum behind her stroked more seconds off their lives.

“Yes,” she said at last. “I see. I do see, now. I don’t know—he told me nothing about his family.”

“You did not ask?”

“No. I didn’t. I would now, I think… He is knowledgeable, very well traveled. He has had very wide experience. And charm! Oh, Aunt, you must admit he has charm!”

“Mountains of charm! Ranges of mountains of charm. Very good company, I agree. Krasnegar would be a much brighter place with Andor there.”

“Even the jotnar would like him! In a week he would have the rock itself turning cartwheels.”

“Polar bears would bring him the catch of the day.” That had been a childhood joke between Kade and Holi.

Inos missed it. “He is obviously a gentleman.”

“Obviously he acted like a gentleman while he was here.”

Inos blushed furiously. “Yes, he did!”

“I did not mean it that way, dear. He did not say when he would return?”

“No. But he will! I am certain.”

“Then we must just wait, I suppose.”

“And meanwhile keep the parade going?”

“Ekka says she has almost run out of candidates.”

“Good!”

Kadolan bit her lip. Obviously this conversation had served its purpose and should now be drawn to a close, but she had one more necessary spoonful of wisdom to administer. It also would hurt, but better to hurt more now, while Inos was already upset, than to wound her again on another occasion. Still no word had come from Krasnegar, and there should have been something. It would not be fair to burden Inos with mere suspicions—and Kade kept reminding herself that they were only suspicions—but time might well be running out, and the child had perhaps forgotten the stakes in this game she was being forced to play.

“How do you judge, my dear?”

Inos frowned. “Judge what?”

“Whom. How do you judge the candidates? Against Sir Andor?”

“Against Father.”

That could never be true. “Then you are comparing very young men in a difficult and unfamiliar setting against a mature king in his own kingdom. Is that fair?”

“Is it fair that I should have to judge at all?”

The situation was hopeless. Holindarn had insisted that his daughter be allowed to choose, and obviously she would have the Andor man or no one, and the Andor man was not available. Maybe in another year or so, when she had grown up more and had time to forget that first awesome flash of romance… all of which was exactly what Kade had told Ekka half an hour ago.

She sighed and rose. “Just be grateful that you have the chance to judge at all, dear.”

“Is that a threat?” Inos was reaching for her anger.

“Of course not. I’m trying to give you a warning: Remember what your father said.”

The anger was held back, momentarily. “About what?”

“About war. If the Impire and Nordland went to war over Krasnegar… whichever side won, do you think you would be allowed to choose a husband then?”

But Inos had not forgotten the stakes. The Kinvale lacquer cracked to show the frightened child hiding under the ladylike decorum. “Ah, yes! What a pity Thane Kalkor is married! What a pity you and Ekka can’t invite him here, also, so you could parade me around in front of that one!”

Kade had no need to fake a shudder. “His manners would be the problem, dear, not his marriage. If he fancied you, then he’d just give his current wife to one of his churls and take you in her place. They do that all the time.”

7

Faint daylight was seeping through the chimney hole in the roof when Rap was jerked away by a snowy boot being wiped on his face. The nightmare figure of Darad was looming over him, swathed again in furs, with his gap-toothed leer somewhere near the ceiling.

Rap had found a tattered rug to wrap himself in and had even gained a place fairly close to the fire by the simple method of throwing some of the smaller boys out of the way. The older ones had found this action amusing and had not objected. They had allowed him to drink from their communal bucket, but he had still not been fed. His belly cramps came from hunger as well as the aftereffects of Little Chicken’s haymaker.

Woodsmoke from a single hearth, the rank stench of bodies and rancid grease, smelly rugs on a packed dirt floor—the boys' hut was a smaller version of the adults'. At the moment Rap was the only occupant. He had slept well and felt rather pleased at that.

“I came to say good-bye, Stupid.”

Rap lay and scowled up at Darad for a moment, gathering his wits. “Good-bye.” What else was there to say?

The big man glowered. “This is your last chance, Stupid.”

He had said that the night before. “What’s my choice, then?”

Darad took a moment to answer, while frowning with the pain of thinking. “Tell me your word and I’ll get you out of here.”

“Or what?”

“Or you get tested. Against Little Chicken.”

“What sort of test?” Rap made a quick scan with his farsight and discovered that the missing boys were all over in the big building, eating.

Darad had struggled through to a decision, and now he dropped to one knee, poking at Rap with a mitted hand the size of a small shovel. “They like lots of wives, see?”

Rap did not see, but he stayed silent.

“So they get rid of the weaklings, see?” Darad sorted out another thought and continued. “It’s their winter fun. When two boys are old enough, they test them. The winner gets his tattoos.”

“And the other dies?”

“Right!” Darad smiled at Rap’s brilliance.

“And I look like a pushover, so the chief’s son gets me?”.

Darad nodded vigorously. “And you haven’t got a hope.”

“I haven’t got a word, either,” Rap said. “Tell me yours and I’ll get both of us out of here.”

Darad jumped up furiously. “You think I’m crazy? Give you half my word? You’re stupid.” He drew his foot back, and Rap hastily curled up, waiting for the kick.

But the giant merely laughed and stalked away, slamming the door. Relieved, Rap rearranged his furs against the cold air. Then he watched Darad’s departure.

Joyboy staggered when that huge carcass scrabbled up onto his back. He didn’t want to go, and the giant kicked him hard enough to bring tears to Rap’s eyes. Eventually Darad prevailed and rode off into the forest, leading Peppers.

He was heading south. Darad would have no interest in visiting Kinvale to warn Inos of her father’s illness. There would seem to be no reason why Andor should do so, either, were he to reappear in Darad’s place. But Inos must be told—which meant that Rap would have to escape and do it himself.

Stubborn, his mother had called him. Inos had, also, although usually she had preferred pigheaded. Well, if stubborn was what it was going to take, then stubborn he would be.

Rap sat up, wrapped himself in fur, and again scanned the big house. He had never felt hungrier, but somehow he was certain that he was not going to be fed. The boys must have crept out very quietly, deliberately not waking him—big joke! He was expected to run over and try to join them, so Little Chicken could have the satisfaction of making him beg, and then refusing.

Rap decided he could stand the pangs a little longer, and postpone his captors' satisfaction. If torture was what they had in mind, then they would not let him become too weak.

He began to puzzle again over the mystery of Andor and the monstrous Darad. What was Darad? Man or demon? Would a demon be as lean-witted as that? The minstrel Jalon had mentioned Darad, and Andor knew Jalon. They had all wanted his word…

Then something Darad had said finally registered. Revelation fell over Rap like grain from a burst sack.

Give you half my word?

That was why Andor had refused to share! When you shared a word you divided its power. If that was not so, then the words would be passed around like jokes—everyone would know words. Pandemia would swarm with sorcerers. There had to be a reason why words were not freely shared, and that must be it—sharing reduced their power!

Andor had not mentioned that!

Nor had Jalon.

Nor had Sagorn.

The king had. “Remember to guard your secret,” he had said, thinking that Rap would understand.

Now he understood! Inspiration after inspiration flashed through his mind. Words were usually passed on deathbeds. Sagorn had said so, and Andor, also.

Two people sharing a word each got half the power. But the words had been passed down for generations. Obviously they did not lose half their power at every telling, or they would long since have disappeared completely. So! So—if two people shared, they each got half the power, but when one of the two died, the other had all of it again?

Right! That was certain.

Died—or was murdered.

That was why it was dangerous to know a word.

And why it would be even more dangerous to share one.

If Rap had possessed a word to share and had told that word to Andor, then Andor or his Darad-demon would have killed Rap at once, to gain the other half, also.

That was something else that Andor had not explained.