But being turned to stone … Was this oddly youthful sultan trying to be humorous? As Inos was planning a suitable query, the drape jingled again. A huge gray dog bounded through, skidded on the polished tiles past both Inos and her aunt, and came to a stop facing Azak. The dislike was immediate, and mutual.
The dog bared teeth, flattened ears, and raised hackles. Azak put hand to sword hilt.
Inos was about to speak, then her courage failed her. Rap had called the monster “Fleabag” affectionately, as if it were a cuddly lapdog instead of an overgrown timber wolf. It had obeyed him eagerly, but dogs were always happy to go along with Rap’s suggestions, and Rap was not present now. It had not noticed Kade or Inos, apparently, and even to speak its name might attract its hostility.
Moreover, something about Azak’s stance suggested that he did not believe he was in much danger, and Inos decided that she was more concerned for Rap’s dog. True, it had overpowered Andor and then savaged the giant Darad. The djinn was not as massive as the jotunn had been, but he was almost as tall; he was younger and probably faster, and Darad had been hampered by entering the fight when he was already on the floor with the monster’s teeth in his arm … Shocked to discover that she was assessing the contest as she might weigh an upcoming skittles match at Kinvale, Inos looked to Kade, and Kade was very obviously not going to interfere, either.
Azak’s slim, curved blade slid into view. Inos glanced around at the drape in the hope that Rap might appear. If Rasha had allowed his dog through, surely she would not leave Rap himself to the unlikely mercy of the imps? The sword was out now. The wolf had begun to growl. Was that a good sign or a bad?
It garnered itself to leap; Azak drew back his elbow. The dog turned to stone. Kade recoiled, moaning, and Inos reached out to hug her, but more for her own comfort than her aunt’s, probably.
May the Good be with us! There was no doubt—stone it was. No mundane sculptor could ever have matched the detail of the coat so well, nor achieved the cunning fit of the grain of the rock to the gleam of light over muscle and bone, but otherwise what had a moment before been a living, breathing, and highly dangerous predator was now only a graceful ornament. Inexplicably, that felt wrong. Inexplicably, that sorcery impressed Inos more than all the miracles she had seen and experienced since the terrors began, so many hours before.
Azak, on the other hand, sheathed his scimitar quite matter-of-factly, as if petrification were no more remarkable in Arakkaran than shampooing, or ladies entering rooms through windows.
Before anyone spoke, the jewels tinkled again, signaling the arrival of Sultana Rasha. Light flared up behind her and there was no longer an impossible night beyond the drapery. She was wearing the face of a mature woman, an imperious matron in her thirties—not conventionally beautiful, but striking. In Inisso’s chamber her appearance had flicked back and forth from age to youth, from ugliness to beauty, and her flowing white raiments had varied similarly, from coarse white cotton to silks embroidered with pearls and gems. Now, like her face, her dress represented a compromise, rich but not ostentatious. Her fingers glittered with gems, though.
She stopped abruptly, frowning at Azak. “What’re you doing here, Beautiful?” She spoke to him as Inos would to a wayward horse.
Azak scowled. His teeth were large and regular and very white. “You summoned me.” Again the dislike was obviously mutual.
Rasha laughed. “Well, so I did! I’d forgotten. I was feeling bitchy and wanted some entertainment.” She turned to Inos. “You’ve met Prince Azak, dearie?”
“He’s not the sultan?”
“Oh, never! Don’t believe a thing he says. He’s a notorious liar.”
A jotunn would have struck her for that remark, even had the act meant suicide. Azak almost did. His lips paled, his neck bulged, but he managed to control his fury, just barely.
Rasha was enjoying herself. “All men are liars, my dear,” she said with affected sweetness. “Whatever they tell you, they only want one thing, and lots of it. Don’t call him ‘sultan’ inside the palace, either—I’m trying to stamp out that nonsense. Here’s all right; nowhere else. Now come, move your little buns.” She led the way, marching like a legionary, her vestments floating out behind her. As she went by Azak, she reached up and tweaked his beard. He recoiled with a choking noise.
“Wait!” Inos cried. But the sorceress kept going, weaving between the furniture. Inos ran after, dodging overstaffed divans and bronze urns and porcelain animals. “What about Rap? And Doctor Sagorn? And the goblin?”
She caught up with Rasha at a circular balustrade in the center of the room. Here a grand staircase spiraled down to a lower chamber. That was why there were no doors, of course.
“What about them?” the sorceress asked, not looking around.
“You just left them there? Left them for the imps to kill?”
The sultana walked around to the top of the stair and paused at the first step, where the way was partly obstructed by a life-size carving of a black panther, seemingly poised to spring at any intruder coming up toward it.
“This is Claws,” she muttered absently, but she was studying the great shimmering dome overhead. Or possibly she was listening to something. A small smile played around her mouth, registering satisfaction. Then she set off down the stairs, stroking the basalt neck in passing. “Isn’t he gorgeous? I think I’ll put him on one side and the wolf on the other.”
Chasing down after her, Inos said, “It’s real?”
“When I want it to be. Lucky I remembered to warn it that the Meat Man was coming.”
Inos was becoming more bewildered by the minute. “Who?”
“Azak,” said the sorceress. “I’ve got lots of names for him, but that one really twists his nose. It fits him, though—he’s got biceps like the humps on his camel. I’ll have him show you sometime.”
Halfway down, she suddenly slackened her pace, as if the urgency—whatever it was—was over. Azak was padding down the stairs behind Inos in his kidskin slippers. Aunt Kade was just passing the panther.
“But Rap!” Inos exclaimed. “Doctor Sagorn? You can’t just leave them there for the imps!”
Rasha continued down the stairs without replying. The lower chamber was as overloaded with furniture as the upper had been, mostly innumerable chests and tables of random styles. Two windows added little to the light spilling down the central stairwell. The walls were poorly lighted, therefore, and yet cluttered with ornate mirrors and bright tapestries barely discernible in the shadows. Musk and flower scent hung in the air like syrup.
Despite her worry over Rap and the others, despite her bone-deep weariness, Inos was intrigued by these exotic, alien rooms. They were like nothing she had ever seen, not even in the Duke of Kinvale’s collection of lithographs; a collection that he had amassed from all over the Impire, and had inflicted on her during several mind-numbing afternoons. Neither in art nor reality had she ever seen decor so alien. Double doors vast enough to admit a coach and four stood shut; against the opposite wall was an absurdly huge bed, the largest four-poster in the world, wide and high, draped in filmy gauze. Then her eyes had adjusted to the gloom and the nature of some of the statuary penetrated her fog-shrouded mind. She took an incredulous second look at the illustrations on the walls and was suddenly very glad that such obscenities were so poorly lighted. Kade would have an apoplectic fit.
Hastily Inos turned her attention back to the sorceress. Surely the legionaries would be breaking down the door by now?
“You must save them!”
Rasha spun around. “Must? You say must to me, child?”
“I’m sorry, your Majesty! But I beg of you—please save them!”
“Why should I?” inquired the sorceress, smirking.
“Because they’ll be killed!”
“Better than what you’d have got, dearie, if I’d left you there! You know what gangs of men do to pretty girls?”
“No!” Inos had never even considered such a th
ing. Imperial legionaries? A band of raiding jotnar, certainly, but not the imperor’s army! It had been Rap who had been in danger, and the goblin, also—not her! “Not that!”
“Yes, that!” the sorceress said, her mouth twisting in an expression Inos could not read. “I know more about men than you’ll ever guess at it, sweetie girl. Believe me, I know!”
Inos was still a couple of steps up, staring down at her in horror. Possibly the sorceress thought she was not being believed, because she suddenly discarded about twenty years, to become again the gem-bedecked, sylphlike maiden who had so bewitched Rap, her flesh glowing hot and tantalizing through garments of mist.
She smiled mockingly up at Inos. “All men have to do is die, and they have to do that eventually, don’t they? That’s nothing compared to what a woman might get. What do I owe them? What does any woman owe a man, ever?” She glanced past Inos, apparently at Azak. “Well, Wonderstud?”
Receiving no answer, she chuckled and turned away, sauntering toward the great bed with her hips swinging, ruddy flesh and ox-blood hair shining through garments that seemed to have become flimsier than ever, over a body even more voluptuous.
Inos had heard of women who dressed like that and behaved like that—had heard of them mostly in whispered tales in the castle kitchens. She had never expected to see a queen do such things.
Shakily she descended the last couple of steps, fighting back tears, trying to scrape some last trace of strength from the bottom of her personal barrel. Her knees trembled with exhaustion. Her head told her that the sultana’s palace was rocking gently, like a ship, and that was not very likely. Soon she would simply fall over. Oh, Rap! Rasha must be a very powerful sorceress, but she might be crazy, also. Was her hatred of men genuine? Had she endured the sort of experience she had hinted at?
Could anyone ever believe anything said around here?
Azak stepped past Inos and moved toward the door—head high, back rigid. Kade came to Inos’s side and took her hand in a gesture that held only caution and sympathy. Those were not much use.
Rap! He was only a stableboy, yet he had been the only one to stay faithful. Even when Inos had spurned him in the forest, he had not wavered in his allegiance. He had endured the ordeal of the taiga for her sake, not once but twice. Her only loyal subject! Monarchs dreamed of loyalty like that. For Rap, Inos would brave even the fury of a sorceress.
She had just one arrow left in her quiver, and it might make things immeasurably worse, because despite what Rasha said, men as well as women could meet ordeals more terrible man a quick death.
“He knows a word of power!”
Rasha spun around, matronly dignity replacing nymph seduction instantly. “Who does?”
“Doctor Sagorn!” Inos watched the sorceress stalking back toward her like a hungry cat. “And Rap has one, too.”
“So!” Rasha came very close, smiling dangerously. “So that was why you were holding hands with a stableboy? I wondered why the smell didn’t bother the royal nose.”
Queen Rasha herself reeked sickeningly of gardenia. Rap, Inos suddenly realized, had smelled of laundry soap, not of horses as he usually did. Which was irrelevant …
“His talent doesn’t work on people! Just on animals. He’s a faun.”
Kade said, “Inos, dear!” in a warning tone.
Still somehow catlike, the sorceress smiled. “But words of power have side effects. Even one word would naturally make a man more successful at lechery; he would automatically collect any stray princesses around.”
“That wasn’t what—I’ve known Rap all my life! I’d trust him with—”
“More fool you!” Rasha sneered. “Don’t ever trust a man, any man. Muscles, you stay! I’m not done with you.” Her eyes had not wandered from Inos’s face; she had spoken to Azak without looking at him. “Men keep their brains between their legs. Don’t you know that yet, child?”
“Not Rap!”
“Yes, Rap.” She considered Inos slyly for a moment. “Maybe I will fetch him for you! I could show you his real colors.”
“Don’t believe her!” Azak shouted from the door. “She can inflame any man to madness!”
Rasha raised her eyes to glare at him. She did not seem to do anything more, but the young giant screamed, clutched his belly, and fell writhing on the floor.
“Brute!” Rasha muttered, then went back to studying Inos. Azak was thrashing and whimpering. Inos had heard tales of animals caught in traps trying to chew off their own paws … why was she thinking of such stories at a time like this? Appalled as much by the sorceress’s casual indifference as by the barbarity itself, she fought in vain for words.
“No,” the sultana said. “They’re all after the same thing, and nothing else.”
“Not Rap!”
Rasha seemed to grow taller, and her eyes redder. “You think so? What do you know of life, Little Palace Flower?”
“Enough!” Inos shouted. “I was about to be married to a man I loved and I saw him transformed into a monster!”
“Inos!” Kade said sharply.
“At twelve I was sold to a monster. He was old. He oozed.”
“I watched my father die!”
“When I was younger than you I watched my babies die!”
“I crossed the taiga in winter!”
“I was cook on a fishing boat for five men. Can you guess what that was like, Butterfly?”
Kade was clucking like a panicky hen at Inos’s side. To yell at a sorceress was certainly rash, but Inos ignored the warnings. Yet she didn’t think she was going to win this crazy shouting match. Rasha sounded like one of the fishwives on the docks at Krasnegar, an expert.
“I can’t help what happened to you!” Inos bellowed, louder still. “But you could help me now!”
Azak was still sobbing and squirming in agony on the floor, disregarded by everyone.
“Help you?” The sorceress glared. “Help your stableboy lover, you mean?”
Inos dropped her eyes. It was hopeless! Oh, Rap!
“On the other hand …” Rasha said more softly. “Which one was Sagorn?”
“The old man.”
“One of the sequential set? But they must share memories, so they all know it?”
Inos nodded, looking up with sudden hope.
“Interesting!” Rasha had reverted to her matronly, queenly guise, which was encouraging. “A matched set with a word of power! That could be amusing. And two words would be worth salvaging. Come, then, dearie, and let’s see.”
She started back up the stairs. Hope leaping wildly within her, Inos brushed past Kade, ignoring her attempts to signal warnings, following the sorceress. As she rounded the curve, she saw the basalt panther watching her with eyes of yellow onyx, gleaming bright. They seemed to follow her as she approached, but it remained a statue, and she ignored it, staying at Rasha’s side.
Before they had quite reached the top, the sorceress stopped, holding out a hand to stay Inos, also. Then she advanced cautiously, one step at a time. When her head was level with the floor, she paused a long time, seeming to be listening, as she had before.
“What —” Inos said.
“Sh! All clear …” Apparently reassured, Rasha strode upward again. Once past the panther she did not turn north, toward the magic casement, but headed instead to the southeast, weaving between bijou divans and tables and grotesque carvings, until she came to a large mirror hung on the wall. It was oval, bound in an intricate silver frame depicting leaves and hands and numerous other shapes, all vaguely sinister. Even the reflections seemed oddly distorted.
Inos stared in horror at the two images she saw there, shadowed and dim. She was a fright—face livid, eyes staring, honey hair awry, looking for all the world like flotsam washed up on a rock. Rasha, meanwhile, seemed as fair and regal as everyone’s ideal of motherhood. She was observing Inos’s reaction with cool disdain.
Then she frowned, as if in concentration. The twin reflections faded and the glass d
arkened. Shapes moved within it. Inos gasped at this new sorcery, seeing the mists coalesce into the forms of imp legionaries. Soon she recognized the chamber at the top of Inisso’s Tower, dimly lighted, with snow swirling beyond the panes and settling on the leading. She could make out the shattered door, and the throng of soldiers milling around in the thin gray light. There was no sound, only the vision in the glass.
“See?” the sorceress muttered. “No sign of your lover.”
“He was not that! Merely a loyal subject!”
“Hah! He’d have been slobbering all over you as soon as he got the chance. They all do. But I don’t see the goblin, either; nor one of the set.”
Inos blinked tears from her eyes.
“And look here!” Rasha said. The scene lurched sideways and steadied again. Several of the legionaries were leaning out the great south casement, staring down. “Either they had the sense to jump,” Rasha said, “or they just got thrown. Thrown, I expect.”
The scene blurred as the tears won over the blinking. Rap and Aunt Kade—only two of her father’s subjects had stayed loyal to Inos. And now there was only Kade.
3
Eastward, a faint glow rising from the sea was washing the stars from the sky, playing on waves that rolled in monotonously from the dark to lap a beach already shining like hammered silver. Westward, behind Rap, the jungle was wakening into carillons of birdsong. He had never heard melody like that.
He had never breathed such air—warm and affectionate on the skin, sweet with scents of sea and vegetation. The humidity stole his breath away. It made his head spin, seducing him like a hot bed. It felt decadent. He distrusted such air, and the soft warm sand, also.
Morning was coming, and he had not slept at all. His eyelids kept drooping, no matter how fiercely he told them to behave themselves. Not that he needed his eyes, for his farsight told him that no danger lurked nearby. Nothing larger than a raven stirred within that dense foliage, and whatever those jeweled birds might be, they were not ravens. He had already scanned carefully as far as he could reach, satisfying himself that the forest was not merely deserted, it was impenetrable, a tangle of lush vines, succulent leaves, and nasty fleshy flowers. It teemed with bugs and snakes. He had never known trees so huddled, nor so varied.
A Man of His Word Page 40
