A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  “I warned you,” Bright Water sneered. “Never ask ‘why’ of elves, lad. They think like drunk moths. But East thinks he has Kalkor to worry about, the goblins have burned Pondague and are raiding over the pass, and now he can’t deliver up a girl the imperor wants to meet. Poor ninny’s as red as a djinn.”

  Zinixo chewed a fingernail. His suspicion seemed to darken the night. “Show me!” he said.

  Bright Water shrugged, almost dislodging the fire chick. She glanced around the room, then went into her weird dance again, waltzing over the magic carpet, and eventually arriving in front of the big oval mirror on the wall. She pouted at it for a moment, stroking her fire chick, which turned a ghostly rose shade.

  “Must be almost dawn in Zark,” she muttered. “They may have struck camp already.” The glass shimmered and changed. Rap discovered that he was digging his nails into his palms—this was nastily reminiscent of the magic casement in Krasnegar, which had caused so much trouble.

  Soon he heard a strange noise, unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was faint, but it came from the mirror, a monstrous bellowing, distant and muffled, as if filtered through a thick window. Everyone in the Gazebo was watching whatever it was that the witch was doing.

  Without warning, a hairy animal face appeared in the frame. It bared giant teeth and roared.

  Zinixo leaped to his feet. “What the Evil?”

  “It’s a camel!” Oothiana shouted, and Bright Water cackled shrilly. The monster faded back into darkness. Now a pearly light flowed from the glass, as if it were a window to somewhere brighter than the darkness that still enshrouded the Gazebo. Bright Water’s shadow lay long on the floor; the lamps seemed to have dimmed.

  Then a new scene appeared, a row of dark shapes under trees. Rap recognized the trees. They were palms, and Thinal had said that there were palms in Zark. He wiped his forehead and glanced at Little Chicken, who was scowling, and at Oothiana, obviously fascinated. Zinixo was still gnawing his finger. At the far side of the room, the fake goblin Raspnex was being inscrutable, thick greenish arms folded over his barrel chest.

  The view crept closer to the dark shapes, and they became more distinct, a line of black tents.

  “This one, I think,” the witch said. She might be crazy, but her sorcery was impressive. The tent that now dominated the view was much like all the others, except that it seemed to be flapping more, as if its ropes were loose, and its door flap hung awry. “Let’s see, shall we? Queen Inosolan!” Everyone jumped at her shout.

  Rap eased forward to the edge of the couch. Nobody noticed.

  For a moment only the wind and the sea spoke, and the muffled monster howls from the glass. He held his breath. Inos? Alive and well? He could hear his heart pounding. Again the witch called out “Queen Inosolan!”

  The flap moved. Someone scrambled out on hands and knees, then stood up, a dark-shrouded figure with long bright hair. She peered around as if to locate the voice. Even in the predawn gloom, Rap knew her. Tears prickled under his eyelids.

  “There she is!” Bright Water remarked triumphantly, stepping aside so that everyone could have a clear view.

  They were going to marry Inos off to Little Chicken!

  “Oh, that’s very nice!” Zinixo said. “Tender and succulent! She shall be my guest until the Four have arranged a marriage for her.”

  No! No! Rap lurched to his feet, ignoring a gesture from Oothiana. He bounded across the room to the looking glass.

  “Inos!” he shouted. “It’s me! Rap!”

  Inos looked around, puzzled. The glass was muffling his voice. Then she seemed to see him. Her mouth opened, and he heard a faint scream.

  Clutching the ornate frame with both hands, he yelled as loud as he could, “Inos! It’s a trap! Run away, Inos! Don’t stay with them!”

  He had hardly time to register another shape that came bursting out of the tent. It charged straight at him with sword flashing in the dawn. Yet an image in a mirror could not hurt him.

  Magic could. Before he could utter another word he was hurled away by an invisible impact as heavy as a charging bull.

  He crashed full length to the floor, far from the looking glass.

  Magic shadow shapes:

  We are no other than a moving row

  Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

  Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held

  In Midnight by the Master of the Show.

  Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§68, 1879)

  NINE

  Dead yesterday

  1

  The stones dug sharply into Inos’s hands and hip. She was sprawled on the cold ground with Kade’s comforting arms around her; shaking uncontrollably, not trusting herself to speak.

  “I saw it, also!” Azak loomed protectively over them, still holding his scimitar and glowering around at the dawn. Fooni had come out, rubbing sleep from her eyes, bewildered but mercifully silent. Other people were emerging from other tents, alerted by Inos’s scream. The camels kept up their awful bawling in the background, and the peaks of the Agonistes glowed pink to the west.

  “A wraith?” Kade repeated.

  “I know not what else,” Azak snarled. “Not that I have ever seen one before. You knew him?” he demanded of Inos.

  She nodded miserably.

  Rap, oh Rap! It had sounded like Rap. It had looked like Rap, a faint transparent image in a blur of darkness. She had even made out his ever-tangled hair and the stupid tattoos on his face.

  But why Rap? She had never thought of Rap as being wicked. Clumsy, maybe. Stubborn. Apt to do damage without meaning to, but never wicked. Yggingi had been an evil man. Andor, too, perhaps. Ekka had certainly schemed most foully. But Inos would never have imagined that there had been more evil than good in Rap. When the Gods had weighed his soul, then surely the balance would have been good, and gone to join the Good and become part of it forever, as the sacred texts said. Only a great sinner left a residue of evil that the Evil itself rejected and left behind to haunt the world as a wraith. Not Rap! If Rap had been judged so evil, than what hope was there for her, for her dead father, for anyone?

  The others were approaching warily, starting to ask questions. Then the men noticed uncovered female faces and turned back. The women drew closer, jabbering.

  “’Twas nothing!” Azak insisted, whirling on them fiercely. “Merely a bad dream.” When they retreated in haste, he seemed to realize that he was still brandishing his sword; he sheathed it.

  Kade tried to lift, and Inos let herself be helped to her feet. She fought to control her trembling limbs. “I’m fine!” she said.

  “Inos?” Kade whispered, blue eyes wide. “Who was it?”

  “It was Rap.”

  “Rap? Oh, no!” But probably Kade was relieved that Inos had not seen her father.

  “Who was this Rap?” Azak demanded.

  Inos just shook her head.

  Kade explained. “A servant in her father’s house. A groom. He was slain by the imps, we thought.”

  “He must have died somehow. There are no footprints where I saw him. My blade passed right through the vision.” Azak also was showing the whites of his eyes. He must be more troubled than he would admit. He rounded on little Fooni and roared at her to make coffee. Fooni fled. Kade helped Inos toward the tent, and suddenly her legs steadied.

  “I’m all right,” she insisted. “I can walk.”

  Azak lifted the flap, and they all went inside, away from prying eyes. Inos sprawled loosely down on her bedding and shivered. Kade drew a blanket over her shoulders for her.

  “It spoke,” Azak said. “What did this apparition say to you?”

  “It … he … it said something about me being in a trap. It said to flee, to run away.”

  The big man grunted. He adjusted his sword and sat down cross-legged. “Which is exactly what we were about to do.”

  “We can’t now,” Inos whispered, thinking of the crowd that had appeared. She huddled th
e blanket tighter.

  “Not today, anyway. Tomorrow we shall be farther inland, away from the boat. And it may not wait for us.” He scratched at his stubbled face and scowled.

  “Wraiths are the embodiment of Evil!” Kade protested. “Whatever it said we must ignore! It would be the height of folly to take the advice of a wraith!”

  Inos looked at Azak and they nodded simultaneously.

  “We must not trust it!” he said.

  Yet it had seemed so much like Rap! It had sounded so much like Rap, Rap very agitated about something. She had never thought of Rap as especially clever. Dogged. Well meaning. Earnest. And had Rap spoken as emphatically as that, he would have had good reason. He had never played silly practical jokes, like Lin or Verantor.

  She discovered that her instincts were telling her to trust what the eerie vision had said. Run away! But Kade was being sensible. To take the advice of a ghost would be insanely foolish. Its motives would always be evil.

  Rap had helped the goblin kill the proconsul. Had that been the wickedness that had tipped the balance? Oh, Rap!

  Azak was staring. What must he be thinking of her?

  “I’m a fool,” she said. “I should not have cried out like that. It was just so sudden, so unexpected.”

  “Perfectly natural.”

  Perfectly natural for sheltered palace flowers, but that was not how she wished to be judged.

  “No, it was unforgivable. I am ashamed.”

  “Queen Inosolan,” Azak said softly, his dark gaze unwavering, “you reacted by shouting for help. Why not? You faced an unexpected danger. You were alone and unarmed. I reacted by charging like a mad bull. That was not rational or forgivable, for I had not taken time to assess the nature of the enemy. And if you fear that I may think the less of you because of what has just happened, then please set your mind completely at rest. Ever since I watched you ride my most ungovernable horse, my lady, I have never doubted your courage, nor shall I ever doubt it. You taught me that a woman could be brave like few men I know, and that was a wonder beyond all my experience and outside the lore of the ancients.”

  Huh? Inos gaped. She had never expected to provoke a speech like that from the giant. In fact, she was astonished to discover he was capable of it. She had just found another unexpected facet of his character.

  Before she could frame a reply worthy of her Kinvale training, the tent door was darkened by a large bulk. “First Lionslayer, may I enter?”

  Azak flashed the women a glance of warning. “Enter and be welcome to my humble abode, Greatness.”

  Sheik Elkarath stooped and came in, wheezing softly, massive enough to make the tent seem crowded. He had discarded his many-colored garments before leaving the city and now wore a simple white robe. He sank to his knees, not looking at faces. “May all the Gods respect this house,” he muttered formally to the matting.

  Azak gave a ritual response, offering food and water.

  “You have troubles, Lionslayer?” The sheik fingered his rings and still did not raise his eyes.

  Azak hesitated, then told the story. Swift sunrise brightened the tent. Inos cowered inside her blanket, still trying to control her shivers.

  Thinking of Rap.

  “And her Majesty knew the man,” Azak concluded. The only item he had not mentioned was that the sheik’s chief guard had been planning to desert and take his companions with him. But there were bundles lying around, and a wily old trader might well be wondering why someone had been packing at so early an hour.

  “Majesty?” he murmured, with a glance in the general direction of Inos.

  “One of her late father’s stablehands,” Kade explained. “Slain by the imps who pursued us.”

  The old man thoughtfully stroked his snowy beard with plump fingers that splattered rainbows. “And what did it say to you?”

  Inos found her tongue and repeated the wraith’s words as well as she could recall them.

  “Ah!” Elkarath nodded. The sunlight flashed crimson from the rubies on his headband, and some jewel among his rings streaked orange fire. “Did the sorceress ever meet this man?”

  “Yes!” Inos said excitedly. “Yes, he was in the chamber when she came. It was she who showed me later that he had been killed!”

  He chuckled. “Then she is playing tricks on you! Do you see?”

  “Of course!” Relief surged through Inos like spring sunshine melting winter snow. “It was a sending from Rasha!” She looked to Azak, who grinned with a ferocious joy.

  “Indeed!” he exclaimed. “This is most logical! Mayhap the harlot cannot find us herself, but is capable of sending evil spirits after us. They might take any form! Who knows the limitations of her power? I do think you have solved the mystery, Greatness!”

  “I agree!” Inos said. “Aunt?”

  Kade nodded, although she still seemed doubtful.

  “Then I take it that you will not obey the commands of this abomination?” Elkarath inquired softly.

  “Of course not!” Inos said. “Your wisdom has solved the mystery, your Greatness. We are relieved, and much in your debt.”

  “Let us hope that by nightfall we shall be out of her range, then.”

  The others exchanged smiles of agreement and relief. The sinister chill of the evil undead had been banished and replaced by indignation at the sorceress’s spite. Feeling much warmer now and rather foolish under her blanket, Inos threw it off and laughed. How stupid to be frightened by an apparition so insubstantial that Azak’s sword had passed right through it!

  Rap must still be dead, but she need not worry that he had become a wraith. After all, death came to everyone. Rap’s end had been tragic, but she was beginning to accept it, and her father’s, also. They would both have gone to join the Good, and she would not let Rasha persuade her otherwise.

  Elkarath chuckled and started to rise. Azak jumped up to help him. Even Kade was smiling.

  There could be no thought now of leaving the sheik’s caravan. Ahead lay the desert and adventure and the road to Ullacarn.

  The emergency was over.

  2

  For some minutes, Rap just lay and tried to collect his spilled wits. The impact with the floor had left him winded and shaken, hurting at every protruding bone: knees, elbows, and hips. There had been a man in her tent. Two hard landings in one night were two too many. Counting the one the night before would make three, but a convenient sorcery had cured the effects of the first one. Even so, he ought to take better care of himself. Wouldn’t always have sorcery around to help. His face still throbbed from Bright Water’s first attack, and it was resting on a threadbare rug stinking of age and dust; his nose was dribbling blood on it. A man in her tent?

  There were dead leaves all around him. A moment ago they had been casting shadows across the tattered landscape of carpet. Now they weren’t. That meant that the magic mirror was no longer showing Zark; no more dawn sunshine and palms and sand and tents and Inos. He couldn’t hear the camels, either.

  No need to hurry, then. There had been a man in her tent. Bright Water was speaking. Then the dwarf. They both laughed. Zinixo must be feeling extremely sure of himself if he could laugh. Perhaps they were laughing at him, idiot stableboy spread out bleeding on the floor. What ever happened to the bold young hero who was going to go to Zark and find Inos because he’d told her he was coming and he wanted to keep his word? A few hard knocks and he shattered like a crystal goblet.

  He raised his head, and it didn’t fall off. It was none of his business if Inos had been sharing a tent with a man. The witch was babbling something to Oothiana, calling her by the wrong name. Then she spun around, warbling one of her fragments of song, and somehow arrived on the shiny magic mat. There might be a moral there: Bright Water goes round and round but she gets where she wants to be. With the dragon glowing amber, witch and fire chick faded away and vanished.

  Had she bought him from the dwarf or not? Had Zinixo bought Inos? Would Inos heed Rap’s pathetic warning? I
t had been all he could do, to shout to her like that. He hoped she had understood.

  He pushed himself up, but didn’t quite make it to a sitting position. He leaned on his arms instead and blinked to get his eyes working. It couldn’t be any more than a month since Inos left Krasnegar, and probably not as much. His head ached.

  “Right, Uncle,” the warlock said. “Go and get ’em!”

  The fake goblin stalked over to the magic portal. Rap caught a rank whiff of rancid grease as he went by. Of course Inos had always been popular and could probably make new friends very easily, but a month wasn’t very long to make really close friends. Intimate friends.

  “Tell me exactly what I must do, Omnipotence,” Raspnex. said.

  “Being cautious. Uncle?”

  “Nephew, you make anyone cautious.”

  The boy laughed, but his mirth had a mean ring to it. “Go north and stay close to the imps when they leave Krasnegar. If you detect power, mark who’s using it. Don’t reveal yourself. Serve my interests as you see them.”

  “To the death, of course?”

  “Of course. Take the welcome mat with you.”

  The older dwarf shrugged and headed over to stand on the shiny rug. He shut his eyes, as if he were concentrating hard.

  Rap struggled to his knees. The witch had shouted, Inos had come out of the tent. Rap had frightened her, she had screamed, and the man had come out. Big. Young. Can use a sword. Same tent.

  Raspnex and magic carpet faded away together.

  The warlock yelled in triumph and did a little dance like Bright Water’s, his boots thumping loud on the planks. He held out a hand to Oothiana and spun her around roughly.

  “Oh, I shall have East where I want him! He’ll be ordering his legions about in a shrill soprano from now on!”

  Rap scrambled to his feet and reeled out of the way as the two sorcerers went whirling by. Inos’s tent had been quite large, hadn’t it? Too big for just two people, maybe. There might have been other people in there, as well. Her aunt, perhaps.