A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  More elves were emerging. The imps had mostly gained their sea legs by the third day of the voyage. Elves apparently never did, and Rap’s unique ability to function was assumed to be merely one more proof of his sorcery. On this millpond channel, though, old Sir Thoalin’fen could strut around in silver and sea green. Fern’soon was displaying her gorgeous legs below an extremely daring burgundy wrap. Grandmother or not, she was a lovely girl! Jalon’s golden jotunn hair was a faded washrag compared to elvish curls.

  And finally came Quip’, still pale, but resplendent in rose and peacock blue.

  He paused in the companionway door rather unsteadily, glancing around until he located Rap. Registering great relief, he walked over to join him, adjusting a saffron cap topped with a scarlet plume. When he was still a few paces off, Rap bowed. Jalon was lost in a trancelike contemplation of a barge being poled past and did not notice, but Quip’ stopped dead, suddenly worried.

  “Why’re you bowing to me, Rap’?”

  “Because I don’t think your name is Quip’, your Omnipotence.”

  Ice! For a moment Rap felt more frightened than he could ever remember feeling before in his life. Then the opal eyes twinkled, and the elf stepped to his side, laying hands on the rail. His physical appearance did not change in the slightest—he stayed shorter than Rap and much slighter, and he still looked no older than fifteen. But he was a different person.

  Had there been a hint of a ripple there, or was it just Rap’s teeth trying to chatter? Or was he shying at moths now?

  Still in Quip’s husky treble, Lith’rian said, “ Tell me?”

  Rap found some saliva and said, “ I’ve learned how to control my memory. There was no one clearing plates near Lord Phiel’nilth when I made my challenge.”

  The elf chuckled and shook his head sadly. “How the tiny flaw can spoil the great design! Well done, Master Rap! Anything else?”

  “He denied it, but I think the dragonward must have some way of communicating with the warlock of the south.”

  “Yes, he does; a magic scroll. Whatever he writes on it can be read on its mate in Hub. It’s a very small magic and the drakes don’t seem to mind. That’s all?”

  “I got seasick a few times. I wasn’t sure that you … I mean, I wanted to see if Quip’ was all right.”

  Quip’s cabin had not been on the ship, and the harder Rap had searched for it, in person or by farsight, the more violently his insides had protested.

  The elf pursed his lips. “If you got close enough to feel nauseated, then you’re a remarkably determined young man—you’d dug through three layers of … But we knew that about you, didn’t we?” He chuckled. “And that reminds me, I must give Captain Prakker back his cabin!”

  Ripple!

  Lith’rian stiffened, staring hard at Rap. “You felt that!”

  Rap nodded nervously. “Yes, your Omnipotence.”

  “You’re only an adept! Reading the ambience? What else can you do?”

  Rap listed the talents he had discovered, and they all seemed very insignificant compared to the powers of a warlock. But he had felt a ripple when the bogus Quip’ departed and also when he returned a few minutes ago, and now he had felt Lith’rian remove the spell from the undiscoverable cabin. The elf looked impressed, but certainly not pleased.

  With his eerily boyish appearance and voice, Lith’rian was somehow even more intimidating than Bright Water or Zinixo. “I jumped to Hub, and that used a lot of raw power. I came back the same way. And just now I was very close to you. Can you feel this? Or this?”

  Rap shook his head.

  The big opal eyes flickered from blues and greens to red and orange. “Your sensitivity isn’t very high, then. But even so! Very few mages can feel disturbance in the ambience. Some sorcerers can’t, or do it poorly. I recall no precedent for an adept being able to do it at all.”

  Rap forced himself to meet the warlock’s glittering gaze and saw a nasty sort of appraisal in them. “What does that mean, your Omnipotence?”

  “It means that you have some surprising abilities. That’s all.”

  It mattered though, obviously. So did other things. “Inos, your Omnipotence?”

  “She’s well.”

  Rap sagged on the rail as if his heart really had taken flight and vanished into the sky. Logic and rationalization were fine, but they lacked conviction. She’s well! How much those two words conveyed! How much they brightened the sunshine! Even the flowers were more vivid. Inos was alive and well. He really hadn’t quite, totally disbelieved Sagorn. But now he knew. She’s well! She’s well!

  After a while he realized that the warlock was regarding him with what looked for all the world like a juvenile smirk.

  “Can you foresee me?” Rap demanded.

  For a moment Lith’rian’s smile did not change, and yet Rap thought of young boys dismembering insects or torturing kittens. He shivered, and reminded himself that this seeming kid was at least ninety.

  “No, I can’t,” the warlock said softly.

  His manner was a challenge to ask more impertinent questions, but Rap was not crazy, just too brash for his own good. He changed the subject quickly. “Ishist told me to mention to your Omnipotence that a God had appeared to Inos.”

  “Yes. I know about that. I think I know the whole story, Master Rap.”

  Blocks shrieked as sailors furled sails. On the far side of the deck, someone threw a line. Allena was about to tie up at a jetty, and most of the passengers were over on the far side. Jalon’s dreamy inattention was excessive, even for him, so he was being occultly distracted.

  The warlock was watching a passing pole boat. The boy in it was an elf who looked to be about Quip’s age, wearing only a rag. He was shiny all over with the effort he was putting into his work, and his bony chest pumped. Lith’rian seemed to change mood again. He laughed and put both elbows on the rail.

  “The dragonward may be in need of a vacation! He certainly is acting the clown. But he was right. This little escapade has amused me. Being Quip’rian was a gruesome experience!”

  Rap decided not to ask, but the warlock told him anyway. “There really is a Quip’rian. He was in the kitchen when you uttered the Defiance. I merely borrowed his name and personality, just as I could have borrowed his appearance had I wanted to. He knows nothing about all this, and never will. No one knew what he looked like …

  “Seeing the world through the eyes of a nobody—it’s frightening! You know, I almost didn’t want to go back to being my own self?”

  Rap had not thought of the gentle Quip’ as a nobody. He had felt much more at ease with him than he did with the sinister, deadly warlock, despite their identical appearance.

  Lith’rian removed his cap. He pulled off the feather and dropped it into the river. As he replaced the cap itself, it changed color to match his shirt. The silence continued until Rap began to find it oppressive.

  “You said … I mean, Quip’ said that you must either cut off my head or go to war with Clan’nilth—your Omnipotence.”

  The warlock nodded. “That’s what the rules say.” He patted Rap’s hand on the rail. “But there’s a couple of ways out, very old precedents. Once a young man of the Clan’lyns uttered the Sublime Defiance against the Clan’ciels and knelt in his own father’s shadow. His father was rich, and apparently stupid. Anyway, he sent the golden bucket, but the head in it was a replica.”

  Rap felt an invigorating surge of relief. “That was acceptable?”

  “Perfectly. It was solid gold also.”

  “I can see how that would help.”

  Lith’rian nodded. “I think it will work in this case. We’re in a civilized spell at the moment in Pandemia, when civil wars seem to be in poor taste.”

  Rap risked another step. “Then you don’t share Quip’s views on the most appropriate outcome of my quest, your Omnipotence?”

  The warlock snorted. “His sense of the romantic is revolting. Gushy sentiment! What would you expect from a dish
washer?” He lifted his face skyward, staring at a circling seabird. He sighed. “No. I know a much more romantic ending.”

  “Tragic or happy?”

  The elf sighed. “Too close to call. The balance trembles still.”

  No more answers, obviously.

  “Still, Rap, you did very well in diverting Allena straight here.”

  No need to ask why it had all been necessary. Elves liked things done in style, never the easy, obvious way. “It was a wild trip, your Omnipotence.”

  “You’re going to have a wilder one. I’d estimated eight days was the absolute minimum, twelve more likely, and you got here in nine. That will help.”

  “Help, my lord?”

  “Time is very short. Very! I can’t even take you to Valdorian to complete the Sublime Defiance ritual, appropriate though that would be. Regretfully, the Rap’rian who goes to Valdorian will be a facsimile, not the real you. Here comes your transportation now.”

  A small boat was gliding across the blue mirror of the channel, heading for the ship and pulling a lucent fan of ripples. Allena was tied up now, and both crew and passengers were concentrating their attention on the far side of the deck. Nobody seemed to notice the mysteriously speedy boat, although its sail was flapping around chaotically as it came up against the slight breeze. It carried three young elves, skinny golden boys wearing almost nothing. Two of them were fighting for the tiller, but the boat was paying no attention to the rudder anyway.

  On the other side of Allena’s deck, shrill shouting had broken out as some of the passengers learned for the first time that they had been brought all the way to Vislawn and not to Malfin.

  Filthy as a common sailor, wiping horny hands on his pants, Gathmor came striding over. He stopped and frowned, as if he had forgotten why he had come.

  “Captain Gathmor,” Lith’rian said pleasantly. “Bring a rope ladder quickly.”

  Gathmor opened his mouth and then took another, harder look at the adolescent elf. “Aye, sir!” he said, and ran.

  Rap drew a deep breath, not sure whether he even dared ask the question. “My lord … Where is Inos?”

  “In Arakkaran.”

  “Still?”

  “Again.”

  “Bright Water said—” Rap began.

  “If you mean that night in the Gazebo, I know exactly what happened, and what was said. Exactly.”

  Rap sensed a challenge. “You do? I mean … Oh! Fire chick?”

  Lith’rian’s eyes danced in rainbow colors and he nodded.

  “You were the fire chick?”

  “No, but I used it. They have odd properties, dragons. Useful, sometimes. Couldn’t let Bright Water go into that nest of tunnel rats without support. And you mustn’t take anything she said then too literally. You do see why she betrayed Inos to the mole though?”

  Of course elves liked dwarves no more than dwarves liked elves, and Rap sensed unsteady footing ahead. “No, my lord.”

  “It’s perfectly simple,” Lith’rian said snappily. “We’re stuck with that dweller-under-rocks as a warlock, but we can’t have him thrashing around on his own, threatening everyone, so we have to educate him into a few alliances. Allies can keep him under some sort of control, right? So Bright Water offered him Olybino’s head on a plate, see? And the way that nervous meat-herder thinks, if you give him an opportunity, he at once suspects it’s a trap and goes in the opposite direction. The same with Inos—Bright Water said I’d stolen her from the Rasha woman, but of course Rasha was merely hiding her from Olybino—the witch had predicted that, because only a woman can forecast how a woman will think, so she was waiting ready to track Inos—and that let her give the mole a chance to steal Inos away from me and from Olybino’s sector and offer her to the imperor as a bribe for support or else to reveal the supposed plot to Olybino and try to bribe him and either way he’d think he had gained an ally, either East or Emshandar. Follow?”

  “Er … What went wrong?”

  “Olybino did, of course. Idiot! He cut the knot by telling Emshandar that Inos was dead, so the plan unraveled. Then Inos herself went and escaped from the Rasha woman’s votary, and he had to use so much power to get her back that Olybino’s locals tracked him down and he captured her, only she wasn’t any value by then except a negative value as an embarrassment. He didn’t kill her, so now she’s back in Arakkaran. It’s all perfectly simple.”

  Any less simple and Rap’s head would fall off. “Yes, my lord.”

  “She’s in danger though,” Lith’rian said sternly, “ in danger of making a terrible mistake. You must warn her.”

  “Me, sir? I mean, your—”

  “You.” The warlock sighed. “Quip’ was right about some things, lad. Arakkaran’s in East’s sector. I daren’t interfere.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. You’ve already met two of them—which would you say was crazier? And the fourth, Olybino, is a fool, a pompous, frightened fool. He is being stupid, but if I meddle in his affairs then he may get much stupider. Things are too dangerously poised. I mustn’t give West a real ally!” He waved an expressive hand in an inscrutable gesture.

  Rap said, “ Oh!” His hopes spiraled down into endless dark. How could he help when a warlock daren’t?

  “You will have to do it,” Lith’rian said firmly. “Or try, at least. I can give you help, but time is desperately short.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Gathmor came hurrying back with a bundle of dowel and hemp under his arm just as the little boat slid to a stop directly below the watchers, its sail hanging limp. The three youngsters gazed up with big expectant grins.

  “Make it fast, sailor,” the warlock said impatiently, and Gathmor began bending the lines to a convenient cleat.

  “What exactly am I to do?” Rap asked, feeling both alarmed and suspicious. He had never liked being rushed into things.

  “Do what the God told Inos to do—trust in love!”

  “Yes?” Rap said nonconmuttally.

  “And go and remind her of those instructions! Minstrel, you can play one of these?” Lith’rian held out a rack of silver tubes to Jalon, who had at some point begun to take an interest in the proceedings. Where the pipes had come from, Rap had no idea.

  Jalon’s dreamy blue eyes widened. “Of course. They’re faunish, but I’ve used them.”

  “Do you know ‘Swiftly Comes the Dawn’?”

  Jalon pouted. “A Dwanishian melody on Sysassanoan panpipes?”

  “Barbaric, I admit.”

  “But I expect I can come close enough.”

  “Good. And ‘Rest My Beloved’?”

  “That’s worse—but, yes.”

  The ladder clattered down the side, and the boys began scrambling up.

  “We’re going in that?” Gathmor protested. “Square sail? The mast’s set too far forward. It’ll do nothing except run before the wind.”

  The warlock chuckled. “But this boat always has a following wind! Don’t pull faces, sailor. Sometimes magic serves the Good. So you must steer and Master Jalon must whistle the wind. ‘Comes the Dawn’ for more wind, ‘Rest, My Beloved’ for less. Any questions?”

  The three boys tumbled over the side in fast succession, panting, grinning, and clustering excitedly around Lith’rian. He flashed them a smile and tousled their curls.

  Rap had been peering down at the bundles in the boat.

  “That long package—swords?”

  “Of course.”

  Rap looked distrustfully at the warlock, the man who had given his daughter to a gnome.

  “I’m an adept. I can learn to play those two tunes. I can certainly steer a boat. The other two needn’t—”

  “No! No!” Lith’rian’s juvenile face took on the soulful expression that Quip’ had favored. His eyes misted. “Don’t you see? The three of you, hastening to Arakkaran … jotnar aiding a faun … that’s beautiful! That’s much more romantic than just one.”

  “Course it is.” Jalon tucked the
panpipes in his belt and clambered over the rail.

  “Just try and stop me,” said Gathmor with all his old menace. “Everything we need is there … er … my lord?” Perhaps he still did not know who the elf was, but he had recognized his authority.

  “You’ll find a chart in the big chest. There’s an inkblot on it, somewhere. That’s you.”

  The sailor tried not to pull faces again.

  “And, Captain … a prophecy. Veer south of the Keriths. If you go to the north you wreak havoc on the shipping there, and if you try to go through The Gut, you certainty run aground. You know about merfolk! Remember that, whatever else they are, they are also madly jealous. The men have fast knives.”

  “Troublemakers!” Gathmor agreed. “Had ’em around Durthing a few times. Always brought bloodshed.” He followed Jalon down the ladder.

  “The Gods be with you, Master Rap,” the warlock said. “Waste no time.”

  Still feeling that he should be arguing, Rap took hold of the rail and swung up a leg.

  Gathmor had the tiller already and the sail was spread. The tiny craft rocked as Rap settled on the thwart amidship, next to Jalon, who grinned childishly and raised the pipes to his lips. At the first haunting notes, a shadow of ripples rushed over the waters, and the sail swelled.

  “What’s her name?” Gathmor demanded. He looked up to ask the elf, but already there was open water spreading between the large craft and the small.

  “Call her the Queen of Krasnegar,” Rap said between his teeth.

  “So be it. May the Good go with her.”

  A stronger gust rocked the boat. Palms on the shore bent and thrashed.

  Ripple? The world steadied again at once.

  That one had been faint, but Rap had felt it—either because he was learning to, or because the power had touched him personally. His arms and knees had turned from gold to brown in front of his eyes. He gasped in agony, and then his shirt burst open in a shower of buttons, his pants ripped across the seat. Jalon stopped trilling on the panpipes to join Gathmor in great bellows of stupid, raucous laughter. The boat rocked with their mirth. Idiots!