by Dave Duncan
Inos waited politely. There was more lecture to come.
"If he would only compromise . . ." Elkarath droned. "Bow the knee just once! Say the words she wants to hear! I think she then would gladly be to him whatever he wanted: lover, mother helper . . ."
"She would see through his lies at once," Inos muttered, disgusted.
"Perhaps," the old man said softly. "But he would have said them! And I think she might then be content. I expect a sorceress can deliberately deceive herself, just as any of us can. We all believe what we want to believe, not questioning, lest we lift scabs from unhealed wounds. We all seek happiness. Who knows what she seeks—now, after such a lifetime? Might not one kind word won be counted a triumph?"
He drank and the goblet faded from his hand. Then he raised his face to peer at the stars, or perhaps the restless treetops, and she had a clear view of his blood-red eyes and the haggard folds of his neck.
"But even without the dangers from Sultana Rasha, child, I tell you that you are making a grievous error. Even if the two of you flee to your kingdom at the far end of the world, you shall not find happiness with Azak ak'Azakar. Yes, he has promised. I am sure he has promised. He lusts after you and cannot have you, so he will persuade himself of anything. Yet many a good marriage has sprung from that seed! No, it is his background that is wrong. He loves you? Meaning he wishes to possess you and breed sons with you, and, yes, I suppose he wishes to make you happy. But he is not capable of making you happy, no matter how sincere he is."
"I entirely agree."
"I am serious, child."
"So am I, Greatness. Perhaps my Imperial ways have deceived you, and I do fear they may have misled His Majesty. It is not unknown within the Impire for men and women to be merely friends."
"When I told you that he had not been killed by the pixies—"
"I was delighted, yes. Naturally! Azak and I have much in common, from our royal birth to our problems with sorcery. It is natural that we should find grounds for friendship. I admire him, enjoy his company, appreciate his invaluable help. On my side, at least, there is nothing more." So there!
The mage studied her sadly, in the longest straight gaze he had ever given her, firelight chasing odd shadows over the desert landscape of his face. Then he sighed deeply and looked away.
"There may be more than you think already," he said. "And how long can you resist his wooing? To be sought after by a man of his power and presence—it is very flattering."
"Very!" Inos said through clenched teeth. First Kade, now him! Could the old never learn to trust the young? "But Sultan Azak is my friend and political ally. Nothing more."
The mage sighed again, and looked away.
An elderly djinn . . .
Silly old man.
Azak emerged from the darkness holding a bulky leather bag.
"Ah!" The old man sprang to his feet with youthful agility. "The newcomers are advancing very rapidly. We must depart before they draw any closer. Now, let me see . . ."
He fumbled with the bag's fastenings and then pulled out a bundle that glittered like cloth of gold. He turned to study the ground nearby and wandered off with his head bent as if in search of something. Azak tossed away the bag and folded his arms. He scowled after the sheik, ignoring Inos.
Kade came stumping wearily back across the meadow, still holding the blue light. Inos walked over to meet her, and they exchanged worried smiles. Kade put the light down on the grass as carefully as if it were fine crystal. She straightened and took her niece's hand. Her fingers trembled slightly. Or maybe that was Inos herself.
"This seems flat enough here," Elkarath announced from the far limits of the firelight. "And that way is north."
He shook out a cloth, which flashed and gleamed, and spread surprisingly large. It floated to the ground, then seemed to wriggle and squirm of its own accord, until it was lying flat—completely flat, although it was obviously extremely thin.
Almost dragging her aunt, Inos hurried over.
"I've seen this before! Rasha called it a welcome mat." Inos also recalled that the mat had been dangerously hypnotic in the palace. Here in the starlit dark of the forest it lay like black water, displaying faint shimmers of light that seemed to come from deep within it, as from goldfish moving in a shadowed pond. She tried not to look at it.
"Indeed?" The old man beamed briefly. He seemed to be reveling in some secret anticipation, like a child expecting a treat. "It is a magic carpet. Her Majesty gave it to me for just such an emergency as this. It may be the very one you saw."
Avoiding Inos, Azak paced over to the edge of the mat and glared down at it.
Elkarath studied the sky again for a moment. "Yes, that is north . . . To make return journeys, of course, one needs three of them. We have only two; but then we do not plan to return to Thume, do we?" He chuckled and rubbed his hands.
Then he glanced thoughtfully downriver.
"Where is the other, then?" Inos asked, feeling prickles of apprehension. She tried to catch Azak's eye, but he was watching the sheik.
"If Skarash did as he was told, it is now laid out in my house in Ullacarn. If he didn't . . . then we may shortly be in some difficulty. Ready?"
"What do we have to do?" she asked, feeling Kade's grip tighten.
"Just stand together on the carpet. I shall come on last, as it is prespelled to my person."
"And then?" Azak growled, fingering the hilt of his scimitar.
"Then it will position itself upon the one in Ullacarn. That is how they work."
Azak was suspicious. "You told me you dared not use much power near Ullacarn, yet now you work a major sorcery like this?"
"Be silent!" the mage said sharply. "Silence beseems the ignorant. The whole point of magical devices is that they are much harder to detect than brute power. Now—must I coerce you?"
Azak shrugged and took two long strides, which put him in the center of the mat, but it did not flex or dimple under his weight. Inos glanced at her aunt, and they advanced gingerly together, holding hands. The surface felt rigid, and rather slippery.
"There!" Elkarath said. "I suggest you stoop a little, Lionslayer—the ceiling may be a trifle low. Right! Now me."
He took two fast steps onto the mat, causing it to twist, and lurch. Kade cried out, and Inos steadied her. Then they found their balance again, blinking in the sudden brightness of lamps hung on crumbling plaster walls.
Azak cautiously raised his head and scowled at the sloping rafters just above him. Street noises of hooves and voices and wheels drifted in from the dark beyond the open window. The scent of grass and trees was replaced by smells of candles and spices and old cooking.
"Welcome to Ullacarn," said Elkarath.
Life and death:
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and river,
Life and death.
Stevenson, In the Highlands
SEVEN
The splendour falls
1
Befuddled with exhaustion, Rap stared blankly at a hole in a cliff. The night was bright with stars, and the air pleasantly cool on his skin, but for a while he did not understand what he was doing. Then he remembered the last part: darkness and picking his way through the tangled and shattered rocks with his farsight. His feet were slashed bloody, his ankles and knees swollen like dropsy, even his arms all gashed and bruised. In the foggy nightmare that was what he recalled of the journey, he could vaguely remember carrying Gathmor for an hour or two, but now he was alone, and at the end of his powers. His companions were long lost behind him, their mundane strength broken by efforts to obey a sorcerous command.
The gnome boy had vanished, last seen still skipping as freshly as ever. So this cave must be R
ap's destination. It was perfectly circular, bored by sorcery through draperies of black rock where a cliff had been melted. Dragons had been at work here, obviously, and his farsight was blocked; which likely meant that he was close to a sorcerer's lair. But it could be anything's lair—leopards or bears might lurk inside.
For a moment he leaned wearily against the rock. He ought to be terrified. He ought to be fighting the compulsion that he could feel growing in him again. Perhaps he was merely too exhausted to think straight, and yet some strange inner hunch was telling him that the summoning had been a good thing, an opportunity—that fortune was favoring him by bringing him here.
That crazy illusion must be part of the summoning itself! Unable to resist longer, he dropped to hands and knees and crawled into the pipe. The wind blowing through it was cool with the chill of ancient stone and long-forgotten caverns.
The barrier was thicker than any mundane castle wall, but he emerged eventually into a deep crevice, open to the stars. Rugged rocky walls towered up on either hand, close enough that he could touch them. The floor was smooth and level, but speckled with unpleasantly sharp pebbles. Here and there giant blocks had fallen from the peaks and jammed in the gorge to make archways; any smaller debris must have been removed. He hobbled along, following its turns and twists into the mountain for ten or fifteen minutes, recognizing that this cryptic entrance had been designed to be dragonproof; he could guess at its immense antiquity. Finally the burrow was blocked by a wall of rough masonry. Faint, spectral light spilled out through a kennel-size door.
He crouched down and recoiled before the familiar stench of gnome. Gnomes were scavengers and carrion eaters, tolerated in many places because they removed every scrap of garbage. They were certainly better than alternative vermin such as rats, but never pleasant companions. No one but a gnome would ever enter a gnome burrow—except that Rap now seemed to have no choice. Even a moment of hesitation was bringing back his compulsion to chase after the little boy.
Very reluctantly, and holding his nose, he ducked through and straightened up at once, gagging and retching. His eyes watered.
This was no burrow. He was inside a huge hall, whose walls soared up like great cliffs of masonry to an indistinct luminous fog that hid the ceiling and shed a dim bluish light over the rest of the vast space. There were many deep shadows, though, not all of which seemed readily explainable.
The floor was carved from the living rock, buried now below an oozing carpet of corruption—gnomes did unpleasant things at their front doors to discourage visitors. Here and there his farsight was blocked, or at least blurred, as if by ancient, forgotten barriers. He could see shapes that didn't feel quite solid, including gigantic rings of stone set in the walls; other shapes he could sense and not see in the dimness. The whole place had a sinister, sorcerous feel to it. And it stank worse than any pig farm he could imagine.
On a low stone wall at the far side of this enormous chamber sat his elusive quarry, the little boy. He, at least, was real. He was watching Rap with an understandably satisfied grin, while again stirring the inside of his nose with a finger.
Water! That parapet enclosed a circular pool of water! Holding a hand just below his nostrils in the hope that the smell of his own skin would overcome the other smells—it didn't—Rap limped carefully across the vast room. There was no way he could avoid treading in filth, but he hoped not to slip and sit down in it. The water, when he reached it, proved to be coated with green slime, but he brushed that aside with his hand and knelt to drink. Although it tasted about the way he had always suspected stable washings would taste, he was dried out like a raisin, and he sucked up bucketfuls of the odious brew. At least he could be sure that gnomes would not have been using it for bathwater.
Then he sank down on his buttocks and wiped his face with his hand, and realized that he was sitting in the mire after all. What the Evil did it matter?
His second word of power seemed to have granted him some occult ability to ignore pain, and he suspected that without it he would be screaming. He knew it was there, though—his butchered feet, his joints, his muscles—but at last the compulsion had gone, the spell was lifted, and the mere act of sitting down at last brought a wave of fatigue that threatened to push him over into instant sleep. And the pain came rushing in as soon as his attention faltered. He sat up straighter, suppressed the pain, and glared blearily up at the boy who had led him here.
"I'm Rap."
The boy sniggered.
"Don't you have a name, sonny?"
The boy removed his finger long enough to say, "Ugish," and giggle. He had more teeth than a pike. And sharper.
"You're a sorcerer, Ugish?"
A bigger grin and a head shake. Gnomes were by preference nocturnal, but Rap had met them in Durthing. He had seen them in Finrain and on his trips to Milflor. Their eyes were very large, and round, showing almost no white. In daylight they showed almost no pupil either, only a shiny black iris. Ugish's eyes were large, but different—the whites bright amid the dirt, and the irises bronze, with an intense luster. So perhaps there was more than one type of gnome.
Not all the inhabitants of Krasnegar had been notable for their personal cleanliness and some were notoriously unpopular companions indoors, but no other race seemed to enjoy filth as gnomes did.
Rap tried a smile. "Then who—ulp!"
A woman had emerged from a doorway and was striding around the end of the trough, coming toward them. Rap quickly pulled up his knees and clasped his arms around his shins.
She was no gnome—tall as he, and of a striking build. At first he could not even guess at her race. She wore a loose dress, dirty, sleeveless and short, and so tattered that it was indecent, but she moved with grace and poise. She was every bit as filthy as the boy, her skin color indeterminate and her long hair a disgusting slimy tangle halfway down her back. Then he saw the sweat-washed tufts in her armpits, and they were bright gold.
And her eyes! They were very large, and oddly slanted, their irises gleaming with a wonder of rainbow fires, like opal or mother-of-pearl. So her skin would be golden also; she was an elf. He had glimpsed a few elves in Milflor and Finrain, but never close to. He could not tell her age, but he thought she might be very beautiful if she were clean.
And now Rap understood Ugish's eyes, although he had never heard of a gnome halfbreed before.
Rap hugged his knees tighter as she stopped and bobbed a hint of a curtsy to him.
"I am Athal'rian, of course." She smiled rather vacantly, making faint cracks appear in the coating on her face. She scratched her scalp absentmindedly.
"I'm Rap, ma'am. I . . . I haven't any clothes."
She frowned. "Oh, but . . . Well, Ugish, give him yours for now."
Grinning, the boy untied the rag that was all he wore and held it out to Rap, who recoiled in disgust. It was not something he would willing touch with a long stick, but he did not want to offend his hosts. Gnomes were normally shy and inoffensive, but they must have feelings like anyone else, and elves certainly would.
So he accepted the tattered relic and its passengers, and rose to his feet with all the dignity he could feign. Fortunately the cloth was not long enough to tie around his hips, so he just held it in front of him like a towel, not letting it touch him. It was even less adequate for him than it had been for Ugish.
He could not stand without swaying.
Athal'rian smiled again and offered a black-nailed hand. "You are welcome to Warth Redoubt, Sorcerer. It is long since we had company for dinner."
Rap gulped and ignored the hand, as both of his were occupied. "I am no sorcerer, ma'am. I am merely an adept—and a very new one, at that."
She looked puzzled. "But I thought Ishist said you were using mastery on a . . . Oh, dear!" She was staring down—at his feet, Rap was relieved to see. "Don't those hurt? Ugish, run and tell your father to come."
The boy shrugged and sauntered away, taking his time and idly kicking at fungoid growths sproutin
g amid the ordure on the floor.
"You must forgive us, Adept! My husband must have thought . . . Tut! Do, please sit down." She waved at the edge of the trough.
Rap perched himself on the crumbling stone and reluctantly spread the slimy rag over his lap. Then she again offered a hand to shake, and he had no choice but to accept. He hoped she hadn't expected him to kiss it.
Still standing, Athal'rian began to talk in a tuneless singsong. "It is wonderful to have visitors! I haven't cooked a proper meal in ages. I mean, one gets used to gnomes' tastes, but . . . well, it was nice to dig up some of Mother's old recipes. Ishist made some really fresh things for me to use. Eating at table will be a good experience for the children. I thought he said three of you?"
Even sitting, Rap was swaying with fatigue. He wondered whether he was mad or she was. Or both. "My friends have less power even than me, ma'am. They are out there somewhere."
"Tsk! Well, we must have them brought in at once. There are leopards and other bad things out there. This is wild country, I'm told." She peered vaguely around the great empty chamber. "Do you dance, Adept Rap?"
"Er, not very well, ma'am."
"Oh."
Rap's eyelids began to droop, and at once a fire of agony consumed his feet. He jerked awake again. Keep talking . . .
"Ma'am, what is this place?"
"Place?" His hostess smiled, and for a moment said nothing more. Then her wits lurched into action again. "We call it the Mews, but of course we just use it for—" Rap had already seen what it was used for. "— but it was a mews, long ago." She gestured apologetically at one of the walls, and Rap saw that there was an archway there, blocked up. But originally it would have been big enough for . . .
"Dragon mews, ma'am?"
Another pause. "Dragon stables? We don't bring dragons in here."
