A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  If not by road … But of course it was only in Krasnegar itself that harbors closed a few weeks after midsummer. The ships then must sail back to the Impire, and reports extracted from the captains would take more weeks to reach Hub. The timing was reasonable.

  “And how is Krasnegar, Sire?”

  “Bad.” He heaved himself out of his chair and went to search the heaped table. “Right after I pulled the troops out, a jotunn by the name of Greastax arrived with a longship full of the usual scoundrels. He claims to be Kalkor’s brother, holding the realm in his name. Half brother, I expect. Ah, here it is. This is a summary of what we know.”

  He handed her a booklet of eight or ten sheets in a leather binding. The hand was neat and professional, but behind the bloodless bureaucratic prose was tragedy. She scanned through it swiftly and passed it back, shocked to the depths of her soul. “Thank you … Sire?”

  The imperor was chuckling as he returned to his chair. “You’re not quite as speedy as Master Rap, but then he didn’t need to turn the pages.”

  Now she was in no mood to be teased, nor even to humor old imperors. “That news is months old! How many more deaths and rapes since then?”

  Emshandar stared at her over the rim of his wineglass for several bleak seconds. “The Gods know. The raping may have been reduced by the time element. Last spring … Those troops were the worst in our army. I would never use trash like that Pondague detachment for anything but garrison duty. The killing … likewise! Those who might resist have already done so, and only the cowed remain. But what about food supply?”

  “It is always touch and go,” she muttered, mulling over what she had just read. The trade had been poor. At least two ships had returned with their cargoes intact, rather than deal with the bullying jotnar overlords, and the imps had already looted all the money and valuables from the city. She wondered if Foronod would have managed to accomplish his usual harvest miracle with a demoralized or depleted workforce. Anything that impaired the harvest threatened famine by spring, in any year.

  “I must go!” she said. “Soon!”

  The skeletal old man shook his head sadly. He did not need to speak, because a moment’s thought reduced what she had said to obvious nonsense. She could do nothing. Even the Impire’s crack troops could not penetrate the taiga now, and the seas were frozen until summer.

  Only Rap.

  “He read all that?” she asked.

  “Yes. Plus some earlier reports on Krasnegar, which will interest you also. Do you know, there, was not one reference to Krasnegar in the Imperial archives? Inisso did a fine job of making it immemorable.” A gentle smile eased the severity of the wasted face, but she realized that he was hiding a great weariness. She should go and let him rest.

  “Inisso died centuries ago!”

  “I know. But when the news broke, I had no recollection of ever having heard of a place called Krasnegar. I demanded files, reports … anything! There was nothing. So I did what imperors usually do in emergencies — I asked the appropriate warden. Needless to say, her ravings told me very little.”

  Inos evaded the unspoken invitation to comment. Bright Water would have been on the side of the goblins, not the rampaging imp army that had started the troubles.

  “I got more from Olybino — he was concerned about the troops … But basically the secretariat had to start from scratch. They did some analyses of Krasnegar’s economics and social structure that will be of interest to its queen, I am sure.”

  “Will I be its queen?” She spoke more to herself than to him.

  It would all depend on Rap. He could evict the jotnar. He could make the people accept her, although she doubted there would be much fight left in the town now. If she arrived with a sorcerer, she would be accepted. If she didn’t, then there might not be any town left by summer.

  Where was Rap?

  If he would make her queen, then she would gladly make him king.

  She looked up with eyes suddenly misting. The old man in the bulky robe … It was not Sagorn he had been reminding her of, but the last King of Krasnegar, and that was stupid because Emshandar emphatically did not look like Holindarn. Just something about the way he held his glass, and lounged in the chair … Something fatherly …

  She sniffed. “Excuse me. Sire! I have presumed upon your time long enough …”

  “You stay! You will have another glass of wine with me and we shall drag all your troubles out into the open.”

  She tried to protest and again he overruled her — imperors of the XVIIth Dynasty were not noted for their meekness. He had nothing to do with his time except work and more work, he said. Her company was welcome. He refilled the goblets, then he settled back into his big chair as if ready to spend the night there.

  “Sultan Azak has gone. I expect you know.”

  “He came around to say good-bye,” she agreed. “That was good of him! But I had gone riding. Kade saw him, and Char was there. Rap cured him, too!”

  Then she had to explain how Char had been beaten by the legionaries. Frowning, the imperor lifted a slate from alongside his chair and made a note on it.

  Life without Azak would be easier, certainly. “Rap has been busy,” she remarked, and was surprised at the edge to her voice. “Sorcering here, sorcering there … All work and no play!”

  Emshandar sighed and steepled his fingers. He stared at the windows for a moment; the lawns were darkening as the winter day faded in pinks and orange.

  “Inos … if I may call you that … I have more experience of dealing with sorcerers than any other mundane in the world — four wardens, and oftentimes their votaries. When we learned about the goblin problem, for example, and I could get nothing out of Bright Water, I appealed to East, and he transported a man to Krasnegar. Next day he was back and I talked with him for an hour. I knew all about you and your kingdom months before the official word arrived. It’s not part of the Protocol, it’s just a favor wardens do for imperors, once in a while …

  “So what I’m leading up to is that I do know sorcerers, and no one else can say that. And they are not like other people!”

  She shivered. “How not like other people?”

  Even an imperor tended to drop his voice when he talked of sorcerers. “They don’t seem to think like us.”

  “Sorcery makes people ‘unhuman’? That’s what Rap told me.”

  The imperor nodded. “When Master Rap wakened me from my sickness — then he seemed quite ordinary. Melancholy, perhaps; he was brooding about something. Naive. But a very pleasant young man, I thought; unschooled, but well above average. Yet I was not too surprised to learn that he’d only been a sorcerer for a few hours. Since that night, when you and he … Since he came back, he is sadly changed!”

  As Inos had not met him since then, she could hardly be expected to comment on that. But the bald statement worried her: changed? She was changed herself, of course — she was an adept now.

  Emshandar was regarding her with an intimidating Imperial curiosity. “Will you tell me what happened that night?”

  So in spite of all his jolly little chats with Master Sorcerer Rap, the old fox had not managed to learn that? If Rap wouldn’t tell, why should she? Well, for one thing, she really had nothing to tell.

  “I wish I could, Sire! It’s still not at all clear in my mind. Rap moved us both to … he called it the ambience. It’s another world, sort of. Beside this world and yet not part of it.”

  “You obviously went somewhere. Can you describe it?”

  She shook her head. “No words fit. Not light nor dark. Not silent nor noisy. No up or down. A world of mind? As hard to describe as a dream.” He did not comment, so she forced herself to continue. “Once he’d shared two of his five words with me, then he managed to wrest the power under control. He cured our burns, dressed us … sent me back.” It should have been the greatest experience of her life, and it was all just infuriatingly vague, and fuzzy. “I think he blocked my memory. I can remember the fire h
urting, but not what the pain was like.”

  Emshandar nodded solemnly, studying her face as she spoke.

  “That’s odd, though!” Inos said. “I just realized … Zinixo told Rap a fifth word, expecting to kill him with a burnout. Then he would have got back the power he’d given away. But Rap shared two with me, and that reduced his overload so that he could control it. But when he killed Zinixo afterward, then he must have received all the power of the word they both knew?”

  Emshandar took a sip of his wine, as if considering what to say, and when he did speak, he was obviously being cautious. “I gather that he didn’t actually kill West. He wouldn’t say precisely what he had done with him, just that the dwarf would not be bothering any of us again.”

  Inos shuddered. One thing she did remember from those lost minutes was that Rap had been angry as she had never suspected he could be. He had frightened her.

  “One other thing I must know,” the imperor said quietly. “Rap was a human furnace. How did you ever find the courage to rush over and hug him like that?”

  “My aunt is always accusing me of being impetuous.”

  “Impetuous? Plague of lawyers, woman! That was more than just impetuous!”

  “Well, Sire, I met a God once.”

  She expected surprise, but he said, “Yes, I’ve heard.” He heard everything, obviously.

  “And, seeing Rap about to die like that, I suddenly remembered what They told me — to trust in love. The warning seemed to fit. The man I loved needed help. It felt like what I was supposed to do.”

  He shook his head wonderingly and raised his glass to her. “I admire you beyond words for doing it. Had my legionaries a tenth your courage, I would rule the whole world.”

  Even adepts could blush all the way to their ears. “But Rap would not explain what happened?”

  Emshandar shook his bony head. The room was growing dim, the fire brighter. “No. And whatever it was, it seems to have scared the wardens spitless. Bright Water babbles. Lith’rian has disappeared altogether; he’s probably hiding down in Ilrane. And Olybino won’t talk at all. He just says that what happened is impossible. Which is not exactly helpful.”

  “And Rap? Do you know why he’s avoiding me?”

  “No. Some things he won’t discuss, and you’re one of them. But he’s changed, Inos. I didn’t know him very well before, but he is certainly not the same as he was.”

  He stared at the coals for a moment. “If it didn’t sound so absurd, I would say he’s in deep trouble and needs help.”

  3

  The unseasonably fine weather continued. A couple of days after Inos’s private chat with the imperor, an elegant brougham made a long trip southward through the winding thickets of Hubban urban sprawl, until it came to a rattling halt on a narrow street in a nondescript district somewhere on the prosperous side of slum. A few spectators watched from the street, and more from behind window drapes. Fine carriages came by often enough, but never carriages escorted by four Praetorian Hussars, with their fine horses and shiny plumed helmets. Those splendid young men seldom strayed so far from the palace.

  Their tall but rather chinless leader doubled over in the saddle to peer in the brougham’s window.

  “This is the place, I think.” He pointed at a plain, weathered door at the top of a short flight of steps.

  Kade had never used that door, but her bedroom window had looked out on this street. She recognized the mismatched buildings opposite. “Very likely.”

  The hussar swung a long leg and dropped nimbly to the road. “I’ll announce you.”

  “Wait!” Kadolan said. “That would be a great honor, Tiffy, but I think I’d better come with you.”

  Frowning, he opened the door to hand her down. “Why?”

  “Well, there might not be anyone home if just you went. You are rather intimidating, you know.”

  Tiffy blushed scarlet with pleasure. “Oh, I say! Do you really think so? Intimidating?”

  Beaming proudly, he guarded her from perils unspecified as she mounted the stoop. Then he yanked the bellrope hard enough to bring every firecart in the city, although Kadolan had already seen a drape twitch. For a few minutes nothing happened, then the door opened.

  “Doctor Sagorn!” she chirruped.

  The old man looked both heated and bothered. His hair was awry, his garments disheveled. He nodded sourly to Kadolan and blinked at the shiny breastplate beside her, the ferociously scowling boyish face above it.

  “My house is honored, your Highness.” Sagorn stepped aside to admit her, not disguising his reluctance.

  Tiffy eyed the lintel and began removing his helmet. Kadolan laid a hand on his arm. “This will be rather a private meeting, Tiffy.”

  “Oh?” He peered distrustfully at Sagorn.

  “A medical matter, Tiffy.”

  “Ah!” With a final warning pout at the discomfited physician, the hussar refastened his chinstrap and went clattering down the steps to the street to wait.

  Kadolan did not recognize the room to which she was shown, but she had seen its like elsewhere — a typical medico’s sanctum, dread and drear, although this one could have been brightened considerably by cleaning its leaden-paned casements. It came complete with chairs and desk and ominously stained table. The shelves lining its walls bore many impressively weighty books, plus hundreds of bottles labeled in illegibly cursive script, racks of butcher implements of all sizes, and more complex instruments of unguessably horrible purpose. The obligatory skeleton hung in a corner, grinning through a shroud of cobwebs. Anonymous nasty things floated inside jars.

  Much less to be expected were two large trunks, one already roped closed, the other open and half filled with books, clothes, and more medical equipment.

  Kade chose the better of the two chairs. Sagorn settled on the other. He ran a hand through his hair, smearing his forehead with grime. He was sulking.

  “You are planning to leave town.” Kade found she could not make a statement so obvious sound like a question.

  “How did you guess?”

  “May I ask why?”

  He glared. “That should be even more obvious.”

  She shook her head. “It seems illogical when the imperor himself wishes to consult you. Your prosperity will be guaranteed for life, I should think.”

  “Prosperity? Bah!”

  He rose, tall and grim, and began pacing the office, his slippers making unpleasant gritty noises. “You know well enough how we have guarded our secret, and for how long! Now we are unmasked! Our curse will become common knowledge. We shall be the laughingstock of mundanes and the prey of sorcerers! The imperor may reveal us to the wardens. And all this disaster has befallen us because we answered Holindarn’s plea and went to Krasnegar!”

  “You are being quite ridiculous,” Kadolan said calmly. “Nobody is revealing your secret. The imperor merely seeks your counsel regarding the Duke of Kinvale. Master Rap has done all he can with sorcery, but he suggested your skills would still be valuable. As for sorcerers and wardens — if you have any trouble with them, then I suggest you mention that you are a friend of his. From what I’ve heard, that will stop any of them.”

  Sagorn shot her a startled glance as he shuffled by. He did not speak. Kade let out her annoyance one more notch.

  “What is even more surprising is that you are doing your own packing. I should have thought you would have delegated that to younger hands. Or is your decision subject to argument?”

  “God of Pity, Kade! You know I can’t control what the others may do!”

  “But they usually accept your decisions, don’t they? Your judgment?”

  The old man snorted. “Tell me what you want of me and then go.”

  “Have you seen Master Rap?”

  “Not since Gathmor’s funeral.” He stopped his aimless pacing and stared down bleakly at the open trunk for a moment. “Ah … you did not know? My apologies, ma’am.”

  “I suspected,” Kade said sadly. On the
journey from Arakkaran, she had developed a curious admiration for the rough sailor. He had possessed many admirable qualities. “Did his death have anything to do with Master Rap’s decision to fight Kalkor?”

  “Everything.”

  She sighed. She had known that the faun did not change his mind lightly. “I am sorry. And glad that he is now avenged. And I wish you knew where Master Rap was! Well, perhaps you can guess why he’s avoiding Inos?”

  Sagorn stopped by the second-best chair and sat down again. “Avoiding her?” he repeated incredulously.

  “Definitely. You know that he is now a full sorcerer? You have heard what he did, and that the wardens acquitted him?”

  “There are more stories about the faun sorcerer running around Hub than there are rats in the sewers, but I think I have the gist, yes. West challenged him to a duel, or vice versa. He vanished in flames and then returned victorious. He is the new warlock of the west.”

  “No, he refused the honor.”

  “Typical!” Sagorn muttered in disgust.

  “It was Inos who saved him, but he has not spoken to her since that night. He healed Angilki as well as he was able, and Azak’s crippled retainer, also. He has been spending time with the prince and also with that young goblin. He reportedly went out of town, but he’s back. Yet he does not go near Inos!”

  Sagorn leaned back without taking his eyes off Kadolan. He crossed his legs and then smiled his sinister smile. “And when did you see him?”

  “This morning,” she admitted. “I was on my way to my room, and suddenly he came around a corner. He spoke to me, very briefly, and then he just wasn’t there!” She was trying not to show how upset she felt, but the old sage could read her well enough.

  “What words did he speak very briefly?”

  When she hesitated, Sagorn said, “I can’t advise you if you withhold information!”

  “He said. ‘Tell her I do love her!’ That was all.”

  The old man frowned, very dark. “How did he seem?”

  “Upset. Wild, even.”

  “Mad as a shampooed cat, I expect,” Rap said, closing the door behind him. Kadolan started and looked accusingly at Sagorn, but he was obviously even more surprised than she was — frightened, even.