A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “What can we do?” Verity wrung her hands.

  A strange gleam shone in Docility’s silver eyes. “It will be all right! No other men ever come here! With the bridge down, we shall probably never have visitors ever again!” She glanced defiantly from Virtue to Chastity and back, as if daring them to disagree.

  “But our vows!” Virtue whimpered.

  “It is not a sin!” As always in emergencies, the big woman had taken command. “The Church recognizes the impossibility of resisting the curse. Or are you ordering us to let the man drown. Mother?”

  “No, of course not! But what of ourselves? I mean… Well, we shall quarrel! Fight, even! It will be awful!”

  Chastity shivered, having a momentary nightmare of Sister Docility wielding her rake against all seven of her sisters. There were butcher cleavers in the kitchen. The possibilities were appalling!

  Docility drew herself up to her full height. Cotton seemed to strain over her ample bosom in a way Chastity had never noticed it doing before. “We are not mad children! We are mature women. Holy ladies! It will be a test of our commitment, of course, but we have all lived together in harmony for many years. Surely we can agree on, er…”

  Even Docility could not quite put it into words.

  “Share him, you mean?” Chastity whispered.

  “We shall have to. Just as we share the leadership.”

  “Really!” Virtue protested.

  “Well…” she added.

  “Indeed!” she concluded triumphantly. “You are perfectly right, Daughter. We cannot let him drown, and we cannot escape the consequences. The two, er, duties will have to go together, and today I am Mother.” She beamed excitedly.

  “No, Mother!” Docility said firmly. “Duty and, er, pleasure…” She cleared her throat harshly. “I mean, one cannot supervise the work schedules and — ahem! — tend the visitor at the same time. We must establish some other rule.”

  Virtue’s eyes flashed. “I think it is my prerogative to settle this matter, as I am Mother Superior at the moment.”

  “Your responsibility is a grave trial. Mother,” Docility said with what seemed to be a severe effort. “But would it not make more sense if we assigned the, er, hospitality duty to another day? Fewer distractions?”

  “The following day!” Chastity exclaimed. “The day after being Mother. A reward!”

  “Reward?” Her companions turned shocked stares on her.

  “Well, er… Well, yes! Why not be honest about it?” Chastity was astonished to find herself arguing with them like this, but her heart had not thumped so ferociously in years. She thought she might burst into tears if they refused her now.

  “I suppose that does make sense,” Virtue admitted, wringing her hands. “I mean, tomorrow is not so very long to wait.”

  “Seven days?” Docility moaned. “I shall be the last!”

  “A real test of your commitment!” Chastity snapped.

  “Indeed!” Docility bit her lip. “Of course, if he is young and hale… and strong…”

  “Muscular, you mean?” The strange visions floating up from Chastity’s imagination were probably cause for a three-day contrition.

  “Not necessarily, although I hope, I mean, some men can, are capable of, like to… One a day is not necessarily the limit.”

  Docility’s flush darkened as me other two eyed her with open suspicion.

  “As long as he plays no favorites!” Virtue conceded.

  “Exactly what I was trying to say,” Docility agreed with relief. “After all we must consider our, er, guest’s wishes, also. If we explain the problem, he may be able to satisfy —” Her eyes widened.

  The other two spun around and then uttered shrieks of alarm. The dinghy was very close to the beach already.

  “No, wait!” Docility’s big hand settled on her Superior’s shoulder. “The surf is not extreme. Perhaps Sister Chastity can handle… I mean, she will not require assistance. You and I, Mother, should go and warn the others of what we, you that is, have decided.”

  Without waiting for further encouragement or the results of the argument. Chastity lifted her skirts and ran.

  * * *

  Hopelessly out of breath, she reached the beach just as the boat did. It slued sideways and tipped. The next wave hurled it over. She saw the occupant fall clear before it turned turtle. She plunged into the water, struggling to run as waves tugged at her skirts, beat against her knees, her thighs, her waist. The boat rolled and bounced, its mast leaping alongside in a tangle of ropes. Chastity went down and was submerged. A wave rolled her and thumped her on the seabed; she swallowed water; choked. Then she sat up and found her head above the surface. She coughed. A big green wave curled up before her.

  Strong hands grabbed her and pulled her erect. The sailor! She clung to him as the wave broke around them. Then the two of them stumbled awkwardly shoreward together, holding each other, gazing at each other in joyful wonder.

  He was not young — about her own age. Thin silver hair was streaked over his face and scalp, white stubble adorned his cheeks. But his face was a wonderful tan color and his eyes a wild, mysterious black. And he was a priest! Any lingering doubts about sin could be forgotten if a priest was involved, and he certainly was involved. He seemed even more frantically eager than she.

  “Wet clothes!” she said. She must get him out of his wet clothes before he caught a chill, and apparently he had the same idea about hers. She was fumbling with the buttons on his back before the two of them were even out of the water, then her patience gave out. His clerical habit was tattered already — she ripped it apart. He might not be young and muscular, but he had a wonderfully hairy chest. He wore some sort of packages strapped around his waist, and she had trouble getting them off him because he was busy with her underwear and the two of them kept getting in each other’s way. He was moaning with frustration and impatience.

  Then it was done, all except for his socks, which didn’t matter. He might be scrawny-limbed and pot-bellied, but oh, how beautiful he was! His lips pressed against hers. She clasped him to her, hairy chest against breasts. They sank to the sand together. As her last rational thoughts were swirled away by storms of passion. Sister Chastity realized that the doubts she had felt earlier had been answered.

  There was much good in hurricanes.

  3

  Rap hit the water with an impact that half stunned him. In a moment he became aware that his clothing was slowing his descent into the depths, but already the light had faded to green darkness and he was choking. He tried to kick, fought against panic as his boots resisted, watched the daylight grow slowly, slowly brighter. Saltwater filled his nose and mouth. At the last possible moment he broke surface and gasped life-saving air before he went under again.

  He tugged his right boot off; seized another breath, then set to work on the left. After that he took a brief rest, treading water, before he began tugging at sodden garments. By the time he had stripped to his breeches, he already felt exhausted.

  He had been a strong swimmer twenty years ago. Now he was twenty years older and had not swum a stroke since. Blue-green swells raised him, lowered him, and there was nothing but sea anywhere. He snorted water out of his aching nose. This might all be some sort of elvish prank, but more likely Thume’s occult defenses had skewed the sorcery and deflected him.

  How far? If he was as much as a league out to sea, then he would never make it. And which way? North was usually landward in the Summer Seas. Calling up blurred memories of charts, though, he recalled that the coast of Thume trended almost north-south, so he ought to head eastward — unless he’d been bounced right over the land and come down in the Morning Sea instead. The water felt warmish, so he’d best assume he hadn’t. The early sun would lie roughly southeast… except that he’d gone a long way east and the sun would be higher here.

  Time for sorcery! He must remove his body shielding and use farsight — and hope that the defenses, whatever they were, did not make him
forget where he was supposed to be going, and also hope that the Covin had not detected a hint of his arrival and set watch for more power in use.

  His shielding would not budge, he remained mundane.

  That was ridiculous! He stopped treading water for a moment, letting himself sink as he tried again, but again his power failed to operate. No one could make a spell so strong he could not undo it! It was impossible. This must be more

  Thumian mischief. No help for it, though, he would just have to swim.

  He kicked back to the surface, turned until the sun was over his right ear, and began.

  * * *

  Sometime in the long ordeal that followed, he worked out what had happened to his sorcery. Three of the four words he knew were feeble wraiths of words, words that Inos had crippled years ago by broadcasting them to a multitude of listeners. The only effective word of the four was the one she had never known, the one he’d bullied Sagorn into sharing with him, long ago.

  So now he knew what had happened in the sky tree after he had been sent on his way. Obviously, Lith’rian had unraveled the sequential spell in order to administer justice on Darad. Thrown to the winds, the warlock had said, and no imagination was needed to understand what that meant in a sky tree. The jotunn was probably dead already. He had attempted a massacre and might have slaughtered everyone present had he not been balked by sorcery. Killing had been a reflex to him, he had been a wild beast. Rap could not find it in his heart to mourn.

  He felt no sorrow, only guilt. In retrospect, he saw that he had let personal gratitude blind his judgment. He had been wrong to include Darad in the meld when he replaced the sequential spell. He should have left the jotunn out and transported him to Nordland, where his behavior would have been controlled by others of his own kind.

  Yet who could say what Darad might have done then? Free of the time limits of the spell and knowing a word of power, he might easily have won himself a thanedom and led murderous raids southward to ravish the coasts of the Impire. “Might have been” was not a game for mortals.

  Lith’rian had not harmed the others. Sagorn, Thinal, Jalon, and Andor must at least be alive, for they were Rap’s problem. The word of power must now serve five where it had once served only two. He could not remove his own spell. He was even less of a sorcerer than he had been before.

  He was a lot less of a swimmer, too. He kept up a slow, leisurely stroke, telling himself that he was conserving his strength and trying to avoid a killer cramp. In fact, of course, it was all he was capable of.

  He was going to drown.

  There were worse ways to die. It was better than falling into Zinixo’s clutches, for a start. His biggest regret was that Inos would never know what had happened to him. He wished he had been less brusque when they said good-bye, three-quarters of a year ago. He had walked out of her life without warning and she would never know that his corpse had fed fish in the Sea of Sorrows.

  He began taking rests, floating on his back. The rests grew longer and more frequent.

  He had no memory of the end of the swim. Suddenly he was in surf, and his knees hit sand. He rolled, scrabbling vainly with his fingers to resist the undertow. Then he was lying on a beach with shallow water racing away around him. Behind him, he could hear the next wave coming.

  His limbs would not take his weight. They were made of dough. Froth surged over his legs, lifting him, bearing him landward. Again he grounded and dug fingers in the sand to fight against the back flow. He dragged himself a span or so up the beach and the next surge did not move him.

  So he was in Thume. Or perhaps the Keriths, or almost anywhere. He was deadwood; he could not lift his head. He needed a drink. He needed shade, for the sun was a furnace on his back. He was going to go to sleep. Sleep was death. Couldn’t help it.

  A flapping sound made him open his eyes. A large gull had settled near him and was busily tucking its wings back into storage. It studied him with one cruel yellow eye.

  “Go away!” he mumbled through salt-cracked lips. “Shoo.”

  The gull tried the other eye.

  Another gull flapped down on his other side, his left side, out of sight.

  “I’m not dead yet. Come back in an hour or two.”

  The first gull waddled two steps forward.

  Humiliation! To be so weak that a stupid seagull could peck his eyes out! He wanted to weep with frustration. “Shoo! G’way!”

  More gulls shrieked overhead. They would swarm over him like flies. If he could only have a drink of fresh water, he might find the strength to move. Drinking seawater drove a man insane, didn’t it? He had probably lowered the level of the oceans perceptibly. His head was spinning and his belly was racked with cramps.

  The gull spread its wings and began to flap madly. It took off, low above the sand. What had scared it? Over the rumble of the surf. Rap heard a voice, a human voice, shouting.

  With a mumble of relief, he contrived to turn his head and look to his left. A girl was running over the sand toward him. She had long black hair, like Kadie.

  He made out the word she was shouting as she ran.

  He must be delirious already. He was having delusions.

  4

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…”

  Delirious or not, by the time the apparition reached him, Rap had managed to struggle to his knees. It could not possibly be Kadie, and yet it looked just like Kadie — thinner, perhaps, than he recalled, but a juvenile imp with trailing black hair and emerald eyes. She wore a long striped skirt and a white cotton blouse. And a sword? Obviously it was an illusion! But it sounded like Kadie. It stopped just out of reach and regarded him nervously.

  “Papa?”

  He held out trembling arms and tried to speak her name. What came out was a strangled croak: “Water?”

  She backed away a couple of steps and looked around. No, that was never Kadie! Rap slumped limply to the sand. There was another girl… woman? Sorcery? No, for magic could not penetrate his shielding. Delirium!

  Then a beaker of cool water was thrust at him and hands helped him hold it to his mouth. He drank and drank. He threw it all up and then drank more.

  “Why are you shielded?” a woman’s voice asked. “If you remove that shielding, I can help you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Oh. There isn’t much to it. There!”

  Occult strength poured new life into him. His pain vanished, his head cleared. He blinked and returned to reality with a rush — gritty sand, baking sun, saltwater, and the rumble of the sea.

  Two girls. One could only be a pixie. Her eyes were elvish, big and slanted, but gold. Her ears were even more pointed than an elf’s, but her hair was hazel, her skin fawn, her nose wide. She was very young, unless pixies, like elves, did not show their age. The other was either his older daughter or an exact double.

  “Kadie! Is it really you?” He scrambled to his feet in joy.

  Kadie flinched at his approach. She went rigid in his embrace and did not respond. When he released her, she stepped quickly to the other girl’s side, looking horrified.

  “Kadie?”

  “She has had a harrowing experience, your Majesty.”

  Only now did Rap register the ambience. It was a ghostly shadow of the ambience he had known, indicating his loss of power, but the pixie was rock solid in it. She must be a very powerful sorceress.

  He bowed unsteadily to her. “I am Rap, of Krasnegar.”

  “I am Archon Thaïle of the College,” she said aloud. “Your daughter was a prisoner of the goblins,” she added privately. “They did not harm her physically, but she has not yet recovered from the ordeal. Perhaps more clothes would calm her — she seems to mistrust men with bare chests. May I assist?”

  “I’m very glad to see you. Papa,” Kadie said uncertainly. “Oh!”

  Rap had said, “Please,” to the pixie, and been immediately clothed in shirt and long trousers and sandals, with loose, cool cotton replacing his sodden wool breeches.r />
  “Kadie, my darling!” Again he offered his arms, and this time she seemed more willing to be hugged, now he was no longer a half-naked castaway. Yet again she returned quickly to the pixie, her smile unconvincing and troubled. Where was his little minx, the juvenile harridan who tried to run the entire kingdom? Where was the irrepressible tormentor who battled her wits with her father in make-believe revolutions? Had reality so damaged the starry-eyed storybook princess? Tears sprang to his eyes. Oh, Kadie, Kadie!

  “Who did this? And what?”

  “She was a prisoner of goblins for many months,” the sorceress said sadly. “Dawn alone will not banish such nightmares.”

  “Kadie — your mother?”

  Kadie blinked uncertainly and surreptitiously clasped the other girl’s hand, as if in need of reassurance. “Mama and Gath went off with the imperor. Papa. I don’t know what happened to them.”

  “Kinvale? The goblins took Kinvale?”

  She nodded, edging even closer to the pixie. “They burned it and they were going to kill the imperor but Gath saved him I mean Mama did because Gath told her who he was and then Death Bird took me as hostage and was going to marry me to his son Blood Beak and the other three were sent off with the dwarves.” She blinked fearfully at him.

  Marry her? Dwarves? Where did dwarves come into this? Rap clamped a hold on his tongue. As the Thane girl had said, Kadie was obviously in a state of distress. Sorcery could heal damaged bodies, but not bruised souls. Oh, my fledgling!

  “I’m so glad that you’re safe, anyway!” he said, forcing a smile.

  She returned the smile doubtfully. “And you. Papa. I kept hoping you would come and rescue me but you never did. I prayed to the God of Rescues. Is there a God of Rescues?”

  His heart felt as if it were being squeezed. “I don’t know, Kadie. But someone rescued you?”

  “Thaïle did!”

  “She was at Bandor, your Majesty.”

  “She saw the massacre?”