Satisfied he had won, Kadolan turned her face away. Out beyond the doorway, on the far side of the anteroom, the stairway entrance glowed bright. Someone was coming!
She slammed the door shut-(boom!)-and struggled with the great bolt until it grudgingly scraped home. Through the grille she heard boots on the stairs.
Then she turned and dropped to her knees beside the prisoner and whispered, ”Master Rap?”
Darkling way:
She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears.
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found;
In all the house was heard no human sound.
— Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes
THREE
Best-laid scheme
1
The aurora had faded, the lights, the blazing stars. The trumpets and meadowlarks had fallen silent, the dark returned.
Darkness and silence—deeper now, because he could hold the pain away altogether instead of only partly. Lately he hadn’t been able to do very much about the pain, because his will had been sapped by weakness and creeping death. Now he could banish all feeling, shut out everything. That was good. Much better.
Now he could make himself die.
Ironic, that! She’d told him a word of power. He’d recognized the feeling, the glory. So he was a mage. A mage ought to be able to make himself die. Sink down. Deeper. Darker. Colder. Peace.
She was Princess Kadolan, Inos’s aunt. He wished she would stop shouting in his ear like this.
He wished whoever was doing all that hammering would stop, too.
Sagorn, also, fretting and pacing. Let the old scoundrel think his way out of this one.
He squashed out his hearing, closing his ears. Peace. He couldn’t see, of course, after what they’d done to his eyes; but he didn’t need eyes. And the princess’s pleading kept sliding through, also. Annoying.
All those djinns outside the door, with swords and axes, it was almost like being back in Krasnegar, with the imps trying to break their way into the chamber at the top of the tower, except this was a cellar under a cellar. A cave, not a tower. Other end of the world. Everything upside-down. Funny. That was what all the noise was. He could stop that.
But why bother?
That was what Inos’s aunt was shouting about. To make him stop the djinns. Telling him he had power now.
Power wasn’t the problem. Will was the problem.
He didn’t want to.
Inos was married. Married by her own choice. She’d been angry with him when he broke up the wedding. Not that it had been all his fault. Lith’rian had planted the idea—he could see that now. Big joke to an elf, that. Probably that was why. He ought to resent that and want revenge on the warlock. But who could ever get revenge on a warlock? And it didn’t matter all that much. He would snuff himself out like a candleflame and then he wouldn’t have to care anymore.
Care about Inos.
Why shouldn’t she marry if she wanted to? Big, chunky fellow. Rich. Royal. Good-looking. Everything a queen would want. Everything he wasn’t. Lost her kingdom, didn’t matter. She’d found another. A bigger, better, brighter place. So Inos was happy and didn’t need him, had never needed him. He needn’t have bothered coming.
Poor old Krasnegar.
But he could still feel the ax blows, even if he had corked his ears and turned his hearing off. Nuisance. Annoying. Disturbed a man when he was busy dying. Could stop the djinns if he wanted. Too much effort.
All that way he’d come, and he needn’t have bothered.
How did a mage snuff himself? Oddly difficult.
Words didn’t want to be lost? No, one of them didn’t. The other two were shared and didn’t mind. Interesting—his mother’s word was all his own, then.
Could make Sagorn open the door, though. That might be easiest. Just a command to the old man to pull the bolt, and then they’d all be quiet and let him die in peace. Not long. The old rascal wouldn’t like it.
Too bad about Inos’s aunt. Nice person. Well thought of in the castle. Polite to the staff. Real lady. Pity to see her here, all frantic and dirty. Maybe best just to pull the roof down and kill them all. Or snap the bolt himself and let the djinns in.
Now what was she screaming about? Inos? Inos hurt?
He’d missed the thought. Could pry for it. Bad manners. Not nice thing to do, poke in someone’s mind. Ask her to repeat that? Yes, he’d do that.
Couldn’t talk with his tongue all cooked. Heal his tongue, then? Not hard. Turn his hearing on again, take the corks out?
Too much bother.
Door wasn’t going to last much longer. Then they’d all let him have some peace.
Inos. Happy. Husband and kingdom and children. Good. Want Inos to be happy.
Hurt? Injured?
Ask her to say that bit again? She’d stopped shouting. Weeping? Poor lady. What about Inos? Inos hurt? Have to cure his tongue. Uncork his ears.
So.
“What about Inos?” he asked. “Hurt?”
A sort of gasping noise from Princess Kadolan . . . “Her face has been burned, Master Rap. It’s going to be terribly scarred. She isn’t beautiful anymore.” That was very bad! Terrible! Anger!
He cured his eyes and opened them, so she would know he was listening.
Too late, the door was falling.
Take away the door. Put a wall of rock there. Good, that had stopped the djinns—let’s see them knock holes in that!
Rap frowned up at Princess Kadolan. “Tell me about Inos,” he said.
2
For a few minutes, Kadolan just stood and watched the miracles happen. Then she realized that she was no longer looking at a broken, rotting carcass. It was almost back to being a young man, and he was wearing nothing but caked blood. She turned away, only to find that Sagorn was also staring, completely spellbound. She nudged him and gestured; he scowled; she insisted.
They walked to the far end, stepping carefully over the sprawled corpses until they reached the rug, still sprinkled with dice and coins. He gave her a hand and steadied her as she settled herself on a cushion. Then he sat beside her, but he faced himself toward the mage. Two old fools . . . but maybe they’d win out yet.
The doorway was filled by a wall of masonry, black like the walls of Inisso’s castle, and quite unlike the adjoining local rock, which was reddish. The family men had been balked for a while, but their quarry was entombed, and the flickering lamps were steadily fouling the air. There was no obvious way out of this crypt, yet she kept telling herself not to worry, because the sorcery was on their side now. Things were going to be different.
Sagorn coughed repeatedly. Once he frowned and looked up, and when she followed his gaze, she saw a tiny aperture in the rocky roof. She had felt a faint draft earlier and guessed that there must be some ventilation, yet a child could not climb through that small chimney. Still, it was better than nothing. It might explain why the guards had sat at this end of the room, or perhaps the prisoner had been put by the door so they would look him over every time they came and went. It didn’t matter. She was too weary to care. “Ought to put out the lamps,” Sagorn muttered. “Just leave one.” But he did not move. His face was haggard, the clefts in it deeper than ever, and his skimpy hair was plastered in white streaks. The blood on his garments had dried, but his hands and the folds of his neck were blood-streaked. Kadolan must look as bad herself. It had been a very close-run thing. Reaction was setting in, and she felt older than the witch of the north.
Then Sagorn exclaimed in wonder and she turned to see that the faun was sitting up and had his hands free. He pulled the rusty fetters off his ankles as if they were made of taffy. He glanced at his audience; Kadolan averted her eyes again quickly.
In a moment, though, he came walking over, and he was fully dressed—boots and long pants and a longsleeved shirt, the sort of rustic homespun garments a stableboy would wear in Krasnegar. He was clean, and the stubble had gone from his face; but he still had the idiotic tattoos around his eyes, and his brown hair was tangled like a gorsebush.
Rasha had changed her appearance to suit her mood. Kadolan felt confident that Master Rap would regard that sort of deception as beneath his selfrespect. He must have power in plenty, or he could not have achieved the wonders she had already witnessed, but he would not tamper with the truth. She might soon have to admit that the Gods knew what They were doing.