Magic Casement

by Dave Duncan

  Boxes and bales and trunks . . . How could they possibly have amassed so much luggage? It smelled of soap and lavender.

  Ula indicated two large trunks and Aunt Kade began to cross-examine her closely on their contents. Inos did not bother to listen. She gave herself a last angry inspection in the mirror and stuck out her tongue at her ludicrous reflection, then stalked to the door. She would take a final walk through the castle and say a private good-bye to some of her friends.

  The past frantic week had been so dominated by dressmakers and seamstresses that she had hardly spoken to anyone else. Since that shattering day when the God had appeared, she had been lost in a blizzard of silks and satins, of lace and lingerie. She had not ridden Lightning once, not once! Rap had vanished the next morning. The sinister Doctor Sagorn had growled a brief farewell a few days after that and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. And now Jalon had gone riding off into the hills. By Winterfest he would probably still be going round in circles somewhere, she thought—if he had not been tortured to death by a band of ferocious goblins.

  Before Inos reached the door, however, it opened to admit Mother Unonini, stark in her black chaplain's robe, smiling with responsibilities and clutching a roll of papers. She stopped and regarded Inos with surprise, and then made a curtsy. On her absurdly short legs it was a clumsy move, but she had never done that before. Suddenly Inos did not feel quite so hostile to Mother Unonini. She was another familiar face not to be seen again for a whole interminable year.

  Inos returned the curtsy.

  “You look very charming, my dear,” the chaplain said. “Turn around!”

  Inos decided she must look like a weathervane, the way everyone kept wanting her to turn around. She turned around.

  “It does look nice,” Mother Unonini said warmly.

  Inos felt temptation and succumbed. “It's only an old tablecloth.”

  Unonini frowned, then suddenly laughed and put her arms around Inos and hugged her . . . garlic today, not fish. “We shall miss you, my dear!” She turned hurriedly toward Aunt Kade and curtsied again.

  “I brought the text of the prayer you will be reading, your Highness. I thought perhaps you would like to look it over beforehand; practice a little.”

  “Oh, dear!” At once Kade was flustered. “I do hate having to read prayers! I hope you wrote it big? The light is so poor in the chapel.”

  “I think so.” The chaplain fussed with her papers. “Here's yours. You will be invoking the God of Travelers. Corporal Oopari will address the God of Storms. The ship's captain will be doing the God of Sailors, of course, and he will have his own text. His Majesty will invoke the God of Peace . . . his own choice,” she added disapprovingly. “It does seem curious.”

  “Diplomacy, Mother,” Aunt Kade said. “He is concerned with relationships between Krasnegar and the Impire and so on.” She held her script at arm's length and blinked at it.

  “Can the corporal read?” Inos asked. Oopari was a pleasant young man. He and his men would doubtless do a good job of protecting her on the voyage, but she could not imagine him reading.

  “No,” said Mother Unonini. “But he has been rehearsed. You, Inosolan, will speak to the God of Virginity, and—”

  “No!”

  Inos had surprised herself as much as the others. There was a shocked silence and the two ladies both colored.

  “Inos!” Aunt Kade breathed. “Surely—”

  “Oh, of course not!” said Inos, aghast. “That's not what I meant!” She was certain she had gone pinker than both of them now. She looked to the chaplain. “I want to speak to the God who appeared to us that day. They are obviously looking after me. Well, are interested . . .”

  Mother Unonini compressed her lips. “Yes, I agree that it would be appropriate, but we don't know who they were. I should have asked, of course . . .”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Well,” Inos said brashly, “then we shall have to think of a name. They told me to try harder, so the God of Good Intentions, perhaps?”

  Mother Unonini looked doubtful. “I'm not sure that there is one. I should have to look at the list. I mean, they all believe in good intentions—the good Gods, of course.”

  “Religion is so difficult!” Aunt Kade remarked, studying her paper again. “Why can't Inos just ask for 'the God I saw here in the chapel'? They would know, wouldn't they? Is this word 'devote' or 'devout'?”

  “'Denote,’ “Mother Unonini said. “Yes, that is a good idea. And she can ask for help in trying harder.”

  “Trying what harder?” a voice asked, and there was the king in the doorway, looking very grand in a long scarlet robe trimmed with ermine. It brought with it a scent of the cedar chest in which it snoozed away the centuries. Inos smiled at him and turned around before he could ask her to.

  “Very nice! Charming!” He was carrying his crown under his arm. He did not look very well. He had been suffering from indigestion a lot lately, and the whites of his eyes had a nasty yellow tinge to them. “Trying what harder?” he repeated.

  Mother Unonini explained and he nodded gravely.

  Aunt Kade was studying her brother with care. “Kondoral will be saying the prayer for the palace and those who live in it?”

  “Of course!” The king chuckled quietly. “We couldn't teach him a new prayer at his age, and we can't stop him saying it.”

  “And I,” Mother Unonini proclaimed proudly, “will invoke the God of Wedlock to find a good husband for the princess.”

  She flinched under a royal frown.

  “I think perhaps that would not be in the best of taste, Mother. It sounds rather predatory. After all, the purpose of her visit to our ducal cousin is merely to experience courtly life and complete her education. Husbands can wait.”

  Unonini looked flustered and Inos felt a sudden wash of relief. Both her father and Aunt Kade has insisted she was not being sent off to find a husband, merely to learn deportment, but she still secretly dreaded that matchmaking was behind it all. This sounded like a very firm denial, though, being made to the chaplain, and hence indirectly to the Gods. Perhaps her father was reassuring her. She must find time for another private talk before they sailed.

  “Oh!” Mother Unonini was at a loss now. “Then which God should I speak to?”

  “You could take the God of Virginity,” Aunt Kade suggested.

  King Holindarn of Krasnegar caught his daughter's eye momentarily, blinked a couple of times, then turned hastily away. Inos stared back blankly. Certainly that remark of Kade's could be taken in a very catty way . . . but surely he had not thought that Kade had meant it like that? Anyone else . . .

  But not Kade.

  The service in the dank, dark chapel was horrible. Silk was not warm enough. Inos shivered the whole time. No Gods appeared.

  The drive down to the harbor was worse. She tried to smile and wave to the politely cheering crowds while rain splashed into the open carriage. Her stupid, stupid hat wanted to blow off all the time.

  All this pomp had been Aunt Kade's idea. She had talked the king into it.

  The farewell on the dock was the worst of all, saying formal good-byes to the notables of the town, being polite, smiling when she wanted to weep. None of her own friends was there. They were working in the castle, or out on the hills: Lin and Ido and Kel . . .

  And a young man with gray eyes and a big jaw. A young man stupid enough to drive a wagon through the sea itself when he thought it was his duty.

  She blinked. The rain must be getting in her eyes, even although Ula was standing behind her holding a leather umbrella.

  Aunt Kade was being impossible, chatting with everyone, taking ages.

  The captain badly needed a bath, but she was glad when he interrupted all those interminable polite farewells to announce that they were going to miss the tide if they did not go soon.

  His ship was even dirtier than he was. And it was so tiny! Inos tried to hold her gown off the grubby deck and tr
ied to hold her breath in that revolting—

  “What is that stink?” she demanded in horror. A month of this?

  “Bilge!” Aunt Kade positively chuckled. “Try not to get your gown dirty, dear.”

  “Dirty?” Inos protested. “We'll all be pig litter in five minutes.”

  “That's why we brought old clothes for the voyage, dear.”

  Then she was being helped—none too gently—down a ladder and into a black and vile hold. The cabin . . . These were her quarters? A closet! She pulled off the hat and she still could barely stand upright. “This is my cabin?” she wailed at her aunt. “I have to live for weeks in this?”

  “Our cabin, dear. And we have two trunks coming, remember. Don't worry, you'll get used to it.”

  Then her father was there, also, and those could not be raindrops in her eyes now and she must not upset him by weeping.

  “Safe voyage, my darling.” His voice was gruff.

  She tried to smile. “This is exciting.”

  He nodded. “It will seem strange, but Kade will take good care of you. I hope old Krasnegar does not seem too horribly small and bleak when you return.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat and it was still there. She had things she wanted to ask him, things she should have asked long since and had not wanted to, and now there was no time.

  “Father?” Then she blurted it out. “You truly don't want me to marry Angilki, do you?”

  They were so cramped in that odious little cabin that he hardly had to move in order to put his arms around her and hug her tight. “No, of course not! I've told you—it might cause all kinds of trouble with Nordland if you did.”

  Relief! The Gods were not as cruel as she had feared.

  “But keep your eyes open,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked, and the ermine collar was tickling her nose.

  He laughed softly. “For some handsome young man of good family. Preferably a younger son, and certainly one with some brains and tact. One who pleases you. One who would be willing to live in this wild, far-off country at your side and help you keep Krasnegar out of the clutches of Nordland and Impire both.”

  She looked up and the laugh was not in his eyes. Even in the bad light she could see the yellow. He looked ill!

  “Your Majesty!” the captain said urgently from outside the door.

  “Tides do not wait for kings, my darling.” Then he was gone.

  She was horribly aware of Aunt Kade standing there and she wanted to be alone.

  “We can go back up on deck and wave, if you want,” Aunt Kade said quietly.

  “There was so much I wanted to say!” Inos was very much afraid she was about to weep. “And I couldn't say it because there was no time. All those formalities!”

  “That's why we have them, dear.” Kade patted Inos's arm. “They keep us behaving like royalty.”

  4

  Southward lay the hills. On the hills were the herds, and therefore the herders.

  Herding was lonely work and usually dull. The cattle and the horses were the first to return to the land in the spring, as soon as the winter hills began to molt into brown. Rack-boned and staggering, they were driven across the causeway and then by gentle stages up to the higher slopes to join as many of the sheep as had survived. There they prospered mightily. They grew fat and sleek and produced young—and also began to develop independence of mind. In particular, they took to hankering after the hayfields and crops. Much of the herdsmen's time was spent in keeping the livestock away from the farming. Cattle especially were stubborn creatures that could not see why they must graze the scanty grass of the uplands when the valley bottoms were more lush. Undiscouraged, ever hopeful and bovinely stupid, they would spend all day circling around, looking for a new approach. A few stout fences would have made life simpler for the herders, but in Krasnegar the cost of lumber made fences unthinkable. So there were no fences and the dreary contest continued, day after day, year in and year out.

  Not long after his return, Rap was ambling the high hills upon a gray gelding named Bluebottle while three large, tangle-haired dogs bounded along at his side. He was wearing beige leather trousers that he had purchased in the spring. Their many patched patches bespoke a long history of previous owners, but they were very comfortable, and he regretted that his ankles were already growing out of them. He carried a shirt tucked in his belt on one side and a lunch poke on the other. Earlier there had been rain to give the world a clean, fresh smell, but now the sun smiled from a cloudless sky, the wind played lazily in the grasses, and a curlew wailed its mournful cry.

  Dull! Almost he could have hoped for a wolf or two coming after a lamb or a calf or a long-legged foal, but wolves normally found easier pickings in the summer among the coneys and mice. And even wolves were not very exciting—the dogs took care of them, upon request.

  That day Rap was minding the horses. They were not quite so idiotic as the cattle, but their leader was a stallion named Firedragon who had a driving ambition to keep his herd as large as possible. He objected mightily to having its members conscripted and driven off to take their turns at wagon duty. He was willing to forget about the hay crops in the name of freedom, dreaming of some promised land to the south, beyond the reach of men, to which he was determined to lead his people. These tendencies, also, it was Rap's job to discourage, with the enthusiastic but muddled assistance of his dogs.

  The morning had been spent, therefore, in maneuvers, with Firedragon seeking a breakout to the south and Rap persistently cutting him off. At noon the game was postponed for some serious grazing and rolling, and Rap was then able to start thinking about lunch. His viewpoint looked down upon the highway, and it was then he observed a solitary traveler in obvious trouble. Having confirmed that Firedragon had temporarily suspended his planned migration—being presently more interested in one of the mares—Rap pointed Bluebottle down the hill and went off to assist. On the way he donned his shirt to be respectable for human company.

  The highway was a barely visible track through the hills, here following a winding valley marked at long intervals by the graves of some who had tried to follow the trail in winter, but otherwise barren of any other sign of mankind. Plodding upon it was the traveler. Some way ahead of him, a saddled horse methodically cropped the grass. Every few minutes it would wander a few steps and return to eating, but those few steps were deceptively effective. The gap between quarry and pursuer was growing no narrower. It certainly never would, unless the horse was unlucky enough to catch its reins in a bush. There were very few bushes.

  The wayfarer noted Rap's approach and stopped to wait for him, undoubtedly with relief. He flinched as the dogs bounded up, but once they had sniffed him thoroughly and decided that he was not a wolf in minstrel's clothing, they wandered off to inspect the scents upon the road.

  Jalon was garbed in the same brown cloak and oversize doublet he had worn when Rap challenged him at the palace gate, and the same baggy hose.

  “You are a welcome sight, young man!”

  Rap returned the smile, slid from Bluebottle's back, and eased his aching legs. “It is a long walk to Pondague, sir.”

  “You think perhaps I should ride the horse?”

  “It would be quicker.” Obviously Rap had not been recognized, which was not surprising, for men-at-arms did not wander the hills. He unhooked his grub bag from his belt. “I was about to eat, sir, if you would care to join me? Company with lunch would be a rare luxury.”

  Jalon glanced at his mount, which was pretending not to be watching but had noticed Bluebottle. “I was going to do the same about an hour ago,” he confessed, “but I forgot that a horse is not a harp, which stays where you put it.” Then his smile turned to alarm as he saw Bluebottle also wandering off in search of lusher nourishment. “Have you not just made the same mistake?”

  Rap shook his head. “He'll come if I call.”

  Now Jalon had noticed more and was staring in disbelief. “No saddle? No bridle?
No reins?”

  His surprise was understandable. Rap squirmed slightly. “It was a wager, sir. Some of the other men bet me that I could not ride herd all day like that. Usually I use saddle and bit, sir. Except for very short journeys.”

  The minstrel studied him for a few moments in astonished silence. “You can control a horse without?”

  “Most of them.” Rap felt more embarrassed than flattered. It was no great trick, for the horses had known him all their lives.

  Jalon frowned. “Then can you call mine over? I have some royal provisions that I shall be happy to share.”

  Rap nodded. “That one I can. Sunbeam! Come here!”

  Sunbeam raised her head and sent him a look of studied insolence.

  “Sunbeam!”

  She twisted her ears a few times, bent for a few more mouthfuls to show that she was pleasing herself, and then began to drift toward the men, nibbling as she came.

  “They don't like to be rushed,” Rap explained, but he did not have to call again. In a few moments Sunbeam arrived and nuzzled his hand. He loosened the saddle girths and tied the reins back out of harm's way. Then he detached the saddlebag and laid it down. He patted Sunbeam's rump and she wandered off to join Bluebottle.

  “Incredible!” Jalon said.

  “Sir, the way you sing is incredible. You must allow me a knack for horses.”

  Rap thought he had made rather a cute little speech there—for a stableboy—but it had an astonishing effect on Jalon. He started. His mouth opened and closed a few times. He almost seemed to lose color.

  “Impossible!” he muttered to himself. “But . . . you are the one the princess went to!”

  Rap did not answer that, but his face must have reacted, for the minstrel at once said, “I beg pardon, lad. I mean no harm.” He knelt to fumble with the saddlebag.

  His supplies were certainly more appetizing than Rap's. One spot being as good as another, the two of them sat down where they were. Jalon laid out a fine lunch of cold pheasant and fresh rolls, wine and cheese and big green pickles, but obviously he had encountered some problem and his eyes kept coming back to Rap's face.