The two women found themselves in a large and elegant room; Kilisha could not tell whether the walls or floor here were stone, as they were all covered with draperies and carpets, but the high ceiling was painted wood, depicting clouds and birds and butterflies against a blue background. A few sculptures, mostly statues of young women, stood about; a gilded shrine gleamed in one corner. Assorted couches, tables, and chairs were arranged in three neat groupings. Kilisha took all this in quickly, but then her attention focused on one specific couch in the nearest group.
There it was, at last-the crimson velvet couch that had stood so long in Ithanalin’s parlor. It blended surprisingly well with its surroundings.
And a handsome young man who she realized must be the overlord was sprawled on it, looking at her.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Kilisha managed to not burst out, “You’re on my couch!” Instead she caught herself, remembered her manners, and curtsied deeply.
Beside her, Nuvielle said, “Hello, Wulran.”
“Aunt Nuvielle,” Wulran said, folding his hands on his chest. “What brings you here, and who is this young lady?”
Kilisha hastily curtsied again and said, “I am Kilisha the Wizard’s Apprentice, my lord.” She thought that sounded more suitable for the situation than “of Eastgate.” When her head came back up from the ceremonial bob she took a good look at the overlord.
He was a tall, thin man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his complexion rather pale; his face was narrow and his jaw pointed, the sharp angle exaggerated by a neatly trimmed triangular beard. He wore a loose beige tunic embroidered in three shades of brown, black suede breeches, and very practical-looking brown boots, one of which was hooked under an arm of the couch, as the seat was really rather short for a man of his height to lie on.
Under other circumstances she wouldn’t have minded meeting such a man at all, but this man was the city’s overlord. His clothes might not be especially fancy, and he wore no crown or medallion or other token of office, but still, he had the power of life and death over tens of thousands of people.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he said, nodding politely. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not rising, but my bowels are in knots and my head is throbbing. My advisers have been shouting at me all morning about this blasted usurper in the Sands, and I haven’t been eating well for the past few days, and I’m afraid it’s all catching up to me.”
“Have you been sleeping well?” Nuvielle asked.
“No, I haven’t been sleeping well,” he snapped. “Aunt Kin-thera and Uncle Ederd and Ederd’s father arc out at sea somewhere with this madwoman threatening to kill them all, and there’s talk that I may be next after them, and dozens of people are already dead and Ederd’s palace is full of thieves and beggars sleeping wrapped in the tapestries-how am I supposed to sleep?”
“I hadn’t realized how much it troubled you, my lord,” Nuvielle said. “When we spoke yesterday you seemed quite calm.”
Wulran flung one arm over the back of the couch and pulled himself up partway to shout, “I’m supposed to seem calm! It’s part of the job.” Then he sank back down, letting his arm fall across his eyes, and said, “What did you want, my lady? Is there some new complication? Has Tabaea turned all our gold to seawater?”
“No, my lord, nothing like that. Nothing to do with Tabaea at all. I’m here because this wizard’s couch has run away.”
For a moment Wulran did not move, or respond in any way, and Kilisha wondered whether he had heard; then he said slowly, without moving, “Her couch has run away?”
Kilisha decided that the time had come to speak for herself, even to the overlord. “My master’s couch, actually, my lord,” she said. “The one you’re lying on.” She managed to keep her voice steady.
He lifted the arm from his face and turned his head to look at her. “This couch?” he said, tapping the velvet-upholstered back with one finger.
“Yes, my lord.”
“It ran away?”
“And came to the Fortress to hide, my lord, yes.” Each sentence came more easily than the one before; the overlord was too human, too ordinary, to stay frightening.
“It came here under its own power, then? It was alive?”
“Well, animated, anyway. I’m not sure alive is quite the right word.”
“That’s how it got in here? The servants didn’t bring it?”
“It ran away, my lord, and seems to have come here by its own choice.”
“And it just walked in here? How did it get past my guards?”
“I don’t know, my lord. I’ve wondered that myself. It’s apparently quite clever.”
“I see.” He let his raised arm drape over the back again. “And you’ve come here because you want it back?”
“Yes, my lord. Without it, I can’t undo a spell that has transformed my master.”
“Interesting.” He stroked the velvet upholstery. “You say it was animated-it doesn’t appear to be animated now, I’ve never seen it move.”
That had puzzled and troubled Kilisha. “I can’t explain that, my lord-it should still be animated.”
“Well, perhaps it’s been getting the sleep I haven’t. If you can prove it’s yours, then I’ll be happy to return it-though it’s been quite comfortable having it here.”
“I saw it in the wizard’s parlor,” Lady Nuvielle offered, before Kilisha could reply.
“And I have neighbors who will attest to it, as well, my lord,” Kilisha said. “One is in the antechamber right now.”
“She brought some friends to help carry it,” Nuvielle explained.
The overlord sighed. “Then I suppose I had better get off it and let you take it,” he said. He started to lower his arm, to push himself into a sitting position-and the couch bolted.
It dashed wildly across the room, narrowly dodging a table; its stubby curved legs were moving so fast Kilisha could sec only a blur. The overlord was still half-lying, half-sitting on it, one foot hooked under an arm and his eyes wide with astonishment as it bounded in a zigzag across the carpet.
The couch’s arm was not its original gracefully curved shape, Kilisha saw; it had closed down on Wulran’s ankle, trapping him.
“Guards!” Nuvielle called, far louder than Kilisha would have thought possible for a woman her size.
The two guards in the room were already moving, arms spread and knees bent, spears held horizontally, trying to corner the couch and force it back against one wall, away from any doors. At Nu-vielle’s shout, however, the door burst open and the other four guardsmen-no, five, Kilisha saw, as Kelder was with them-came rushing in.
The couch was rocking madly back and forth, bouncing first one end off the floor, then the other; the overlord was clinging to the velvet with both hands. He looked terrified.
The couch knocked over a pedestal, sending a large vase crashing to the floor; flowers, peacock plumes, shards of porcelain, and dirty water sprayed across the carpets as the vase shattered spectacularly. One of the first two guards shied away, raising his spear for a moment, and the couch dashed forward, ducking underneath. The overlord did not duck quite as quickly, and the shaft of the spear caught Wulran on the top of the head with a horrifying crack.
Then the couch was past that pair, and the other five had not yet had time to take in the situation; the maddened sofa charged through them, knocking one man to the floor, and leapt through the door to the antechamber.
Where it had previously moved freely in every direction-forward, backward, or side to side-it now seemed to have settled onto treating the end that held the overlord’s foot as its front, and the end where the dazed young man’s head rested on a pillow as its rear. Rather than bouncing about wildly it was now running full tilt, like a fleeing animal, with the overlord on its back.
“Catch it!” both Kilisha and Nuvielle shouted. Suiting her actions to her words, Kilisha ran after the fleeing furniture; she had been quickest to react, but the soldiers followed close on her heels.
Nuvielle did not join the pursuit, but Opir and Adagan, after watching in motionless surprise as the couch, the apprentice, and half a dozen soldiers ran past, fell in behind, chasing the couch up the passage from the antechamber.
Kilisha had expected the couch to turn left at the salon and head for the stairs by which she and her party had arrived, but instead it scrambled straight across, past a drapery into another passage, then turned right at the next crossing.
That brought it to a staircase, but a staircase going up. It bounded upward, almost catlike in its motion.
Kilisha followed, but even as she ran she tried to think of something she could do to stop the berserk thing without hurting either it or its passenger. While it would be bad enough if the couch smashed itself, Kilisha really didn’t want to be involved in anything that injured the overlord-or worse, killed him. That would be bad enough at any time, but now, when a usurper had already disrupted the government of the Hegemony, and Wulran had not yet sired an heir, it might be disastrous. Kilisha suspected that wizard or no, the Guild notwithstanding, if she got the overlord killed her head would wind up on a pike on the Fortress ramparts.
She reached for the flap on her belt pouch, trying to think what she could do with the spells she had prepared. Would the Spell of Stupefaction work on a couch?
Even if it would, the spell took several seconds to prepare, and she couldn’t do it while she was running. Maybe if the couch ever held still for half a minute...
The couch wheeled about on the next landing and bounded up another flight, Kilisha struggling to keep up.
The Spell of Optimum Strength-if she ever did get a hand on the couch she wanted to be able to hold onto it. She couldn’t drink the potion while she was running, though, any more than she could cast a stupefaction.
Sooner or later, though, if the couch kept going up, it would be trapped, wouldn’t it? It must be panicking, she thought, to be going up instead of down. If it had gotten out in the streets it might have been able to dodge them forever, but it wouldn’t be able to come back down these stairs without getting caught.
Of course, there might be other stairs...
“Someone go back down and make sure all the doors are closed!” she called back over her shoulder. “We mustn’t let it get out of the Fortress!”
“Right,” someone said-a deep male voice she did not recognize. She still heard boots pounding up the stairs behind her, but perhaps not quite as many. She could not risk looking back; she might lose her footing. A stumble here would not merely let the couch increase its lead over her, but might send her tumbling down the stairs on top of the guards.
It rounded a second landing, charged up one final flight, and at the top bounded across half a dozen feet of floor, then slammed into a door.
And bounced off.
Kilisha almost ran into the couch as it rebounded off the oak and iron barrier. It had clearly expected to smash right through, but the door had been stronger than it thought.
It was trapped! Kilisha grabbed for it, and felt the overlord’s hair brush her ringers, but then the couch veered to one side, to the left, and Kilisha saw that no, it was not trapped, as a long corridor extended from the head of the stairs in that direction.
The couch ran desperately down the corridor, gaining ground on its pursuers, then suddenly stopped, turned, and rammed its way through a large window.
“Gods!” Kilisha said, horrified. They were several stories up- she was not sure just how far. The couch and the overlord would be smashed to pieces! She dashed to the opening and looked out past the shattered glass and twisted leading, expecting to see empty air and the couch plummeting to its doom.
Instead she saw a broad sunlit and stone-paved courtyard-the one atop the Fortress that she had seen from the air three days before. The couch was galloping across it, the overlord still trapped on the seat.
It was already several yards away, and she was not about to just dive through the jagged remains of the window; she was not going to catch it just by running after it. She stood panting for a second or two, then reached for her pouch.
“It’s in the courtyard!”
“It went through the window!”
“Open this door!”
Kilisha ignored the shouting soldiers as she pulled out a vial and looked at the label, then dropped it back and grabbed the next.
On the third try she finally read STRENGTH; she pulled the cork and took a sip.
A flood of warmth rushed through her; her legs straightened and her hands tightened into fists, and she had to catch herself before she crushed the vial of potion. She carefully pressed the cork back into place, not allowing herself to push on it. She had used this spell before, and knew how easy it was to break things while enchanted.
She hoped that it would give her the speed and endurance she needed to catch the couch, and the strength to hold it.
She tucked the vial back in her pouch and jumped through the shattered window just as the soldiers got the door opened and poured through into the courtyard.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The couch was bounding up a staircase on the far side of the courtyard, up onto the ramparts. The overlord was still aboard, his foot still trapped under the arm; he appeared to be conscious, but was not struggling or gesturing or saying anything Kilisha could hear. Kilisha charged forward, across the court, after them.
The soldiers were shouting, and other soldiers, who had been patrolling the battlements, shouted replies. Several of them were already moving along the ramparts, closing in from both sides toward the top of the staircase the couch was climbing.
The couch reached the top of the stairs and turned left, trotting a quick dozen yards, only to find itself confronted by two approaching guardsmen. It wheeled on one leg and headed back in the other direction to find two more soldiers on the walkway and Kilisha already halfway up the stairs, the other pursuers close behind her.
It was apparently cornered-but Kilisha saw that there was another way out. “Some of you get below it, so it doesn’t jump!” she called. As she reached the top of the stair she grabbed the railing and glanced back to see that Adagan and one of the guards had heard her and taken heed; they were moving across the courtyard instead of climbing the stair, positioning themselves so that if the couch dove from the ramparts to the courtyard it would find them waiting.
Opir hesitated on the bottom step, then turned and followed Adagan.
Kilisha turned her attention back to the battlements.
The two patrolling soldiers from the north had come up beside her, and the three of them formed a barrier closing in one end of a box. The couch stood a dozen feet to the south, and another dozen feet beyond were two more guardsmen. To the east was a sheer drop of about eight or ten feet to the courtyard, and Adagan, Opir, and a soldier were waiting at the bottom; other soldiers and curiosity-seekers were emerging from various doors and corners and gathering there, as well.
To the west was a parapet, perhaps three feet high and a foot thick, pierced by foot-square crenelations, and beyond that wall was nothing but sky and sea. Kilisha knew that they were atop the Fortress, which stood atop the sea cliffs, which stood in turn atop the wave-washed rocks that gave the city its name; anything that went over that parapet would fall a hundred feet down a sheer stone wall and smash on the rocks below, and when the tide came in the pieces would be washed out to sea.
The couch was trapped, cornered on a strip of stone eight feet wide and eight yards long.
For a moment everything seemed to freeze; the couch, apparently realizing its situation, had stopped where it was. The guards on the ramparts had paused, unsure of what was happening. And Kilisha stood at the top of the steps, taking in the situation and preventing the men behind her from moving forward.
“Don’t hurt it!” she called. “It doesn’t know what it’s doing- it doesn’t remember who it is!”
“Who in the World is it?” someone asked. “And why does it look like a couch
?”
“It is a couch,” Kilisha shouted back. “But it has a piece of a wizard’s soul trapped in it. Only it didn’t get the wizard’s memories.”
“It’s holding the overlord,” another soldier called. “I don’t care who it is, it can’t do that!”
The couch turned back and forth as they spoke; at the last sentence it backed up against the parapet and squeezed down on the overlord’s leg.
“Ow!” Wulran bellowed. “It’s crushing my leg!” He reached for the couch’s arm, and pried at it helplessly. The couch was clearly stronger than he was; it clamped down, and Wulran was unable to loosen its grip.
“Don’t go any closer,” Kilisha called, as the four soldiers started forward. “It might break his leg!”
“But...” The nearest guardsman looked at her helplessly. “We have to do something]”
“She’s just an apprentice,” one of the soldiers on the stairs behind her said.
“She’s a wizard’s apprentice,” Kelder retorted. “She knows what’s going on here better than we do!”
Kilisha was grateful for the vote of confidence; she wished she deserved it, but in truth, she really knew very little more than anyone else. She could only guess what the couch was thinking, what it wanted...
But maybe she could figure it out. Maybe she could talk it into releasing the overlord and coming home peacefully-and if not, she could try the Spell of Stupefaction. She stepped forward.
“Couch,” she called, “do you remember me? Kilisha, your apprentice?”
The couch turned, and seemed to be listening-though Kilisha had no idea why she thought so. It had no ears, no eyes, no features, but it somehow seemed alert and attentive.
“Nobody wants to hurt you,” she said, taking another step forward.
Ithanalin’s Restoration loe-8 Page 23
