A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  As he pitched forward, the last thing he saw was Ythbane’s dark eyes watching him.

  2

  Far, far to the east, evening drew near to Arakkaran. Yet white sails still sprinkled the great blue bay, and the bazaars were thronged. Palms danced in the warm and salty winds — winds that wafted odors of dung and ordure in through windows and scents of musk and spices and gardenias along foul alleys. All day, as every day, by ship and camel, mule and wagon, the wealth of the land had flowed into the shining city.

  Jotunn sailors had toiled in the docks, while elsewhere a scattering of other folk had plied their trades: impish traders, dwarvish craftsmen, elvish artists, mermaid courtesans, and gnomish cleaners; but these outsiders were very few amid the teeming natives. Tall and ruddy, swathed mostly in flowing robes, the djinns had argued and gossiped as always in their harsh Zarkian dialect; they had bargained and quarreled, laughed and loved like any other people. And if they had also lied and cheated a little more than most — well, anyone who didn’t know the rules must be a stranger, so why worry?

  At the top of the city stood the palace of the sultan, a place of legendary beauty and blood-chilling reputation; and there, upon a shaded balcony, Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar was quietly going insane.

  Almost two days now had passed since her niece had married the sultan, and Kadolan had heard nothing since. Inosolan might as well have vanished from the world. Of course a newly married couple could be expected to treasure their privacy, but this total silence was ominous and unsettling. Inosolan would never treat her aunt this way by choice.

  Kadolan was a prisoner in all but name. Her questions went unanswered, the doors were locked and guarded. She was attended by taciturn strangers. She would never have claimed to have friends in Arakkaran, but she did have many acquaintances now among the ladies of the palace; persons she could address by name, share tea and chat with, whiling away a gentle hour or two. She had asked for many, with no result.

  Especially she had asked for Mistress Zana. Kadolan had a hunch that Zana’s was the most sympathetic ear she was likely to find, but even Zana had failed to return her messages.

  Something was horribly wrong. By rights, the palace should be rejoicing. Not only was there a royal wedding and a new Sultana Inosolan to celebrate, but also the death of Rasha. Arakkaran was free of the sorceress who had effectively ruled it for more than a year. That should be a cause for merriment, but instead a miasma of fear filled the air, seeping from marble and tile to cloud the sun’s fierce glare.

  It must be all imagination, Kadolan told herself repeatedly as she paced, but an insistent inner voice whispered that she had never been prone to such morbid fancies before. Although no one outside Krasnegar would have known it, and few there, she was almost seventy years old. After so long a life, she should be able to trust her instincts, and her instincts were shouting that something was very, very wrong.

  She had left Inosolan at the door of the royal quarters. Two nights and two days had passed since then.

  The days had been hard, filled with bitter loneliness and worry. The nights had been worse, haunted by dreams of Rasha’s terrible end. Foolish, foolish woman! Again and again Kadolan had wakened from nightmares of that awful burning skeleton, that fearful, tragic corpse raising its arms to the heavens in a final rending cry of, LOVE! — only to vanish in a final roar of flame.

  Four words of power made a sorcerer. Five destroyed.

  Master Rap had whispered a word in Rasha’s ear, and she had been consumed.

  The balcony was high. Over roofs and cloisters Kadolan had a distant view of one of the great courtyards, where brown-clad guards had passed to and fro all day, escorting princes in green or, rarely, groups of black-draped women. Horsemen paraded sometimes. They were too far off for her to make out details, and yet something about the way they all moved had convinced her that they were as troubled as she.

  She had erred.

  So had Inosolan.

  A God had warned Inosolan to trust in love, and she had taken that to mean that she must trust in Azak’s love, that in time she would learn to return the love of that giant barbarian she had married.

  And then, too late …

  He was only a stableboy. Kadolan had never even met him until that last night in Krasnegar. She had not exchanged a word with him directly. She did not know him. No one did — he was only a stableboy! Not handsome or charming or educated or cultured, just a commonplace laborer in the palace stables. But he had saved Inosolan from the devious Andor, and when the sorceress had abducted Inosolan, he had shouted, “I am coming!”

  How could they have known? Crossing the whole of Pandemia in half a year, fighting his way in through the massed guards of the family men, removing the sorceress by telling her one of his two words of power — even if he had not planned the terrible results.

  The God had not meant Azak. The God had meant the stableboy, the childhood friend.

  It was all so obvious now.

  Too late.

  And the boy … man … Rap?

  At best he was chained in some awful dungeon somewhere, under peril of the sultan’s jealousy. At worst he was already dead, although she feared that death itself might not be the worst.

  Even that last awful night in Krasnegar, Kadolan should have realized that a stableboy who knew a word of power was no ordinary churl. And somewhere on his journey he had learned a second word; he had become an adept, a superman. That was an astounding feat in itself, but even two words of power could not save him now.

  To and fro … to and fro … Kadolan paced and paced.

  She had been Inosolan’s chaperon and counselor. She should have given better advice.

  She had tried, she recalled. She had been inclined to trust Rasha, where Inosolan had not. What better things might then have happened? Who now could know? Kadolan had warned against the flight into the desert, which had ended so ignominiously, in defeat and forced return. But Kadolan had not been insistent enough.

  So Inosolan was doomed to a life of harem captivity, bearing sons in an alien land. Her kingdom was lost, abandoned by the impire and the wardens to the untender mercies of the Nordland thanes.

  And the boy Rap was dead or dying, and that guilt tortured Kadolan worse than anything.

  Love or mere loyalty, neither should be so cruelly repaid.

  She had never put much stock in magic. She was not a very imaginative person, she knew, and she had never quite believed in the occult — not even when she had sensed the death of Inosolan’s mother and gone racing back to Krasnegar, fleeing from Kinvale at three days’ notice to catch the last ship before winter. In retrospect, that had been a miraculous premonition, and yet she had refused to believe, she had never told anyone. Holindarn had accepted that her arrival was a merely a fortunate coincidence. Inosolan had been too young to wonder about it at all.

  The balcony had grown insufferably hot below the westering sun. Reeling with weariness from her endless pacing, Kadolan tottered indoors and sank into a padded chair.

  By the palace standards, her new quarters were almost an insult — old and shabby, absurdly overfurnished with ugly statuary in the style of the XIVth Dynasty, which must be loot from some long-forgotten campaign. It was almost as if she had been locked up in a boxroom until someone figured out what to do with her.

  Why, oh, why would Inosolan not answer her messages?

  Had they ever reached her?

  3

  Farther down the hillside, in the middle of the city, evening shadows lay cool and blue across Sheik Elkarath’s jeweled garden, and the air was fragrant with jasmine and mimosa. The earliest stars twinkled, fountains tinkled.

  Master Skarash was definitely tipsy now. He reached for the wine bottle and discovered that it was empty. He tossed it into a hibiscus. How many did that make? What did it matter? What was the cost of a few bottles of wine against the profits to be made from a major business partnership? Opportunities like this came rarely in any merchant’
s lifetime, and Grandsire was going to be enormously proud of him. Of course the details were still somewhat obscure and extremely complex, and would have to be worked out very carefully in the morning, when both parties were more alert, but there was no doubt that this evening’s jollity would reap huge wealth in the future for the House of Elkarath. It would be the first coup of a very long and successful career.

  Skarash bellowed loudly for one of his cousins to fetch more wine. He peered blearily at his drinking companion.

  “You did say exclusive license, sir?”

  “Absolutely,” said the visitor. “The Imperial court prefers to deal with a single supplier for each commodity — or even several commodities. It saves superfluous bookkeeping, you understand.”

  Skarash nodded wisely, hiccupped, and shouted again for wine. How wise Grandsire had been to leave him in charge until his return! “How many commomm-odities would you expect?”

  “Many! But enough of tedious business. Let us talk of lighter things. I understand you have only recently returned from Ullacarn?”

  “Thatsh absholutely correct. How did you learn that?”

  “On the same ship as the sultan?”

  Skarash nodded again as a shrouded maiden — a cousin or one of his sisters, perhaps — scurried out from the house with more supplies.

  “From Ullacarn?” the stranger inquired, smiling. For an imp, he was extraordinarily handsome. Very cultured and likable. And he had the polished accents of a high-class Hubban. Skarash had been listening carefully to those rounded vowels … not lately, though.

  “Yesh,” he found himself explaining, “I went directly. By camel. Not that we traders go directly, you unshersand … understand … because we wander. Right?”

  “Of course,” the stranger agreed with another winning smile. “And the sultan?”

  “The sultan and Grandsire made a small detour.”

  “Detour?”

  “Through Thume!”

  “No! The Accursed Land? Now you have really intrigued me!”

  A little later Skarash found time to wonder if he had been wise to mention that Grandsire was a mage, and now votary to Warlock Olybino himself, but the imp poured out more wine himself and proposed a toast or two, and the conversation continued without significant interruption.

  Talk droned; insects hummed.

  “But how on earth could even a mage have tracked them down in such a wilderness?”

  “Ah!” said Skarash, being mysterious. He really ought to call for some food, to mop up all this liquor slopping around in his insides. Djinns were notoriously susceptible to alcohol and tended to shun it for that reason. He never normally indulged in it himself. “Well, the sorceress had given Grandsire a device to trace the use of magic, you see …”

  4

  “Aunt?”

  Kadolan blinked her eyes open. The room was dark. Her head felt thick and a nasty taste in her mouth told her she must have been asleep. Then she made out the shrouded figure standing in the moonlight.

  “Inos!”

  “Don’t get up …”

  But Kadolan struggled to her feet and reached out, and they came together and hugged.

  “Oh, Inos, my dear! I have been so … er … concerned! Are you all right?”

  “All right? Of course, Aunt!” Inosolan broke away and turned toward the window. “Of course I am all right. I am the most cherished, tightly guarded woman in Arakkaran. Perhaps in all of Zark. How could I not be all right?”

  Kadolan’s heart shattered at the tone. She moved forward, but her touch caused Inosolan to edge away.

  “What are you doing all alone, sleeping in a chair, Aunt? Have you dined yet this evening?”

  “Tell me, dear!”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Everything!”

  “Really! You want the details of my wedding night?”

  Kadolan gulped and said, “Yes, I think maybe I do.”

  Slowly Inosolan turned to face her. She was swathed from head to floor in some sweeping white stuff. Only her eyes showed. “Why, Aunt! That is not a very ladylike question.”

  “Don’t joke, Inos. There is something wrong.”

  “Intruders have been breaking into the palace and killing guards.”

  “Inos, please!”

  “There is Rap. He is in prison.”

  “Yes.”

  “Recause of me. That is wrong — that a faithful friend should suffer for trying to aid me.”

  “In a few days, when the sultan has had time to repent of his anger …”

  Inosolan wrung her hands. “Do we have a few days?” Her voice quavered, then steadied. “What are they doing to him, Aunt? Do you know?”

  “No, dear. I have asked.”

  “I dare not. Azak promised no more bloodshed, but he is insanely jealous. I never knew what that phrase meant before. It’s a cliché, isn’t it, insanely jealous? But in this case it’s exact. He forbids me even to think of another man. To plead for Rap again would doom him instantly. And what he did in the Great Hall …”

  “We shall do what we can, dear.”

  “Little enough, I fear.”

  Silence fell, and the two stared at each other in the diffuse glow of the moon beyond the windows while Kadolan heard the pounding of her heart. “There is more, isn’t there?” she said.

  Inosolan nodded. “I never could deceive you, could I?” Then she raised a hand and removed her veil.

  Oh, Gods! Kadolan closed her eyes. No! No!

  “Rasha died too soon,” Inosolan said.

  “She had not removed the curse!”

  “No, she hadn’t. She’d said she would, but she hadn’t got around to it. He was going to kiss me.”

  Even in that spectral glow, the marks were plain. Two fingers on one cheek … the print of thumb on the other. And the chin! Burned into the flesh.

  How frail was beauty! How fleeting!

  Gone now. Gone! Hideous, scabbing wounds!

  Shocked, stunned, Kade staggered back and tumbled into her chair. She stared up at Inosolan in shivering, impotent horror.

  “The pain is bearable,” Inosolan said. “I can live with that.”

  But the marriage …

  Oh, Gods! The marriage?

  “He still cannot touch a woman,” Inosolan said bitterly, “Not even his wife.”

  The room seemed to blur, and Kade wasn’t sure if that meant she was about to faint or if her eyes were just flooded with tears. “What can we do?” She had not dreamed that things could get worse, but they had — Inosolan condemned to a chaste marriage, doomed to lose even Azak’s one-sided love, for he would surely turn against a woman he craved and could never possess.

  “There is only one thing we can do,” Inosolan said in a futile attempt to sound calm. “What we tried to do before — we must go and seek occult aid.”

  “Master Rap?”

  “No, no! He is only an adept. It will take a full sorcerer to cancel a spell.”

  “Sorcerer?” Kade was too horrified to think properly.

  “The Four, the wardens. A curse set upon a monarch is political sorcery, so they should be willing to remove it. And heal my face, I hope.”

  Kade took a few deep breaths, but her brain was dead as flagstones. “Well, I have always enjoyed sailing, and a visit to Hub at last —”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You are not coming. He will not allow it. I have come to say farewell, Aunt. And Gods bless.” The usually musical voice was flat and cold as a winter pond. “And … and thank you for everything.”

  “But when?”

  Somewhere a door creaked, and boots clacked slowly on the tiles in the corridor. Kade struggled to rise and failed.

  Inosolan came and bent to kiss her cheek. “It will be days before the court realizes he is gone,” she whispered quickly. “Officially we shall be touring the countryside. That will hold for a week or two. After that … well, the Gods will provide. And Prince Kar, of course, will
be in charge here.”

  Hub? “You can’t go veiled in Hub!”

  “I can’t not!”

  Oh, Holy Balance! May the Good preserve us — Inosolan had lost everything now, even her beauty.

  The boots were almost at the door. Only one man had unimpeded access to any room in the palace.

  “Remember Rap,” Inosolan breathed. “Do what you can. He’ll be safe with Azak gone, I’m sure. There is a fast ship,” she added, a little louder, “headed west, and a carriage waits. He thinks we can just reach Qoble before the passes close. Wish me luck, Aunt. Wish us luck?”

  “But the war?” Kadolan cried. “Isn’t the Impire massing troops in Ullacarn?” Zark was about to be invaded. A djinn sultan journeying to the enemy’s capital …

  “Just one more risk to take,” Inosolan said brightly. “It will be a most interesting journey. Gods be with you, Aunt. We’ll be all right. We’ll be back by spring — my husband and I … look after yourself.”

  The door swung open, and a tall shadow stood there, its jewels faintly shining.

  “Gods be with you both,” Kade said, and watched Inosolan glide silently away, like a wraith, following Azak into the darkness.

  5

  However much Andor might be enjoying himself out in the sheik’s pleasance, back in the dingy kitchen quarters of the rambling mansion, the chairs were hard and the hot air rancid with scents of long-dead cooking. Gnats and moths twirled around the smelly lamps and held races on the low ceiling. Gathmor crossed his ankles the other way and eased his back. The bulky djinn on the other side of the table scowled at him briefly and went back to scratching his armpits. He had not spoken a word to Gathmor all evening, which was fine by Gathmor; from the smell of him the oaf was a camel driver by trade, now being used as watchdog to make sure the jotunn behaved himself. Gathmor would like very much to see him try. He’d observed many others wander through the scullery during his long wait; he’d take on any two of them cheerfully.

  The women, on the other hand … Even wrapped like corpses, they moved like elves, and there was something challenging in all that concealment and the swirl of cloth as they hurried past on their master’s business. It really caught a man’s imagination; made him watch the folds shift for a hint of how much lay beneath, and where. The flame-red eyes … After all, Wanmie must have died in Kalkor’s massacre, and in some ways that was beginning to feel like a long time ago. In some ways. Not that she’d have grudged him a nibble or two at another table, once in a while, had he ever wanted that. He was very tempted to try speaking to the next shrouded maiden who came through — and not just to rouse the camel driver, either.