“I forgot to ask,” she puffed, “just what I was coming up here to do.”
Rap had perched on the arm of the sofa. “It was your idea! Just to applaud, is all.”
“You’re going to send a message to Hub?”
“Gods, no!”
His vehemence surprised her and confirmed her worries.
The Chamber of Puissance was stark and bare, a circle of bare floor broken only by the royal treasure chest. Most of the gold Rap had made for it ages ago was still in there. She wondered if he could make gold now.
Three arched windows looked out on the storm, and they were caked with snow. The fourth opening had once held a magic casement, but long ago a certain faunish sorcerer had converted that into a magic portal, an arcane way out of the kingdom. Kade was dead, Hononin was dead. Only three people knew of this state secret at the top of Inisso’s Tower.
“Well, get on with it!” she said.
Rap laid down his lantern. Then he just stood. No lightning, no flames? What a very dull sorcery! Starting to shiver, she moved closer. Just once, very briefly, she had been a sorceress in this chamber, with the town all spread out below her, every room, every cranny. She had spoken with Rap from here, as he rode away out of her life forever . . .
Suddenly he yelled, and his knees buckled. She threw her arms around him to steady him, both of them made clumsy by their enveloping furs.
“No!” he cried, staggering. “No! No! No!”
“What’s wrong? Rap! What’s wrong?”
Little more than his eyes showed, but those were enough. Even when he had found his footing, she could feel him trembling.
“Bad!” he said. “Terrible! Oh, my love! Danger! Terrible danger.” He clung to her. His voice held a note she had never heard in it before. He was frightened. Rap was?
“Tell me!”
“I can’t . . . can’t put it into words! It’s too big! Something awful looming. Disaster, everywhere, to everyone!”
“Rap! Explain!” What in the Powers’ Names could frighten Rap so badly? Anyone else, maybe, but Rap?
“Remember this morning? How the sky grew blacker and blacker? It’s like that. It’s evil, Inos! Pure Evil!”
“All things include both the Evil and the Good,” she said automatically.
“Not this! This is just evil.” His voice cracked. “It fouls the future like a dungheap!”
“Whose future?”
He shuddered. “Mine. And yours. And Krasnegar’s. Oh, Gods! It threatens everything! Inos, I’ve been a fool, fool, fool!”
“No!”
“Yes! An idiot, hiding inside my safe little shell, playing at being a mundane—I thought I had time. The God said I had time! I thought we had another year left in the millennium.”
“You had duties here,” she said firmly. “The town needed you when the causeway was washed out. And what can you do anyway? Is it your job to save the world?”
She knew the answer before he said it.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“To try. Gods, Inos! It’s everyone’s duty to fight thiswhatever it is. I can’t see ahead very far, but . . . Darling, I must go! I must!”
“Go where?”
“’To Hub! I must talk with Shandie, maybe Sagorn. Maybe even the wardens.”
“Your duty is here!” she shouted. She released him and stepped back so she could see his face in the glimmer of the lanterns. “You have a wife and children and a kingdom . . .” Aghast, she stopped. “No?”
“I think this is bigger than even those, my darling. If the whole world is threatened? I must go!”
With no more explanation than that? Racing off on some harebrained half-baked scheme to save the world? “Rap! You—”
“Stop!” he shouted, suddenly backing away, raising fur-thick arms as if to defend himself from attack. “Don’t start throwing orders at me, darling!”
“Rap? What’s gotten into you? You—”
“If you start ordering me around, then I can’t resist! I put that royal glamor on you when I had a lot more power than I have now.”
She hadn’t realized. That was almost funny. But it would not be at all funny if she gave Rap an order and his own magic compelled him to obey her against his will. There would go their marriage.
He spoke more calmly. “I must go. I do go, dear. Now, tonight!”
“You promised—” She remembered Gath. “This is what Gath sensed about tomorrow! Do very bad events cast very long shadows, Rap?”
“Could be.”
“You’re breaking your promise to the children. That’s going to seem a very big disaster to them.”
Did Gath’s premonition make this argument pointless? Arguing with Rap was always pointless.
“Explain to them,” he said. “No, don’t. Tell them whatever you can, and that I love them. Inos, I’m doing this for them, too! And for you.”
“Then you’d better explain to me first. You’re exhausted. You haven’t slept a full night in weeks. After a thousand years, what can be so urgent that another day or two will hurt?”
Rap closed his eyes and turned around slowly. Then he raised an arm and looked where he pointed. East. “That way!” he said hoarsely.
“Goblins?”
“No . . .”
“Nordland?”
“No, I don’t think so. It has a dwarvish feel to it, I think. So Dwanish, rather than Nordland. Not jotnar, but . . . God of Fools!” He fell silent.
If evil was indeed brewing in Dwanish, then she knew of one likely suspect. ”Zinixo?”
“Maybe. What makes you think so?” His voice was guarded. “Just a guess. You didn’t kill him, did you? And he has reason to hate you.” Warlock Zinixo had been the most powerful sorcerer in the world, except for Rap. And also crazy as a drunken bat. “Who else fits as well?”
“No one. That’s a good point. No, I didn’t kill him. Do you suppose that was the error the God mentioned?”
“No idea. What did you do to him?”
“I thought I made him harmless. I can’t believe even Zinixo could represent this much trouble. I don’t understand, dear, but for Gods’ sakes, stay away from dwarves until I get back!”
“I don’t think any dwarf has set foot in Krasnegar in the last hundred years. All right, so you’re going to Hub. You’ll be back in a day or two, promise?”
“I’ll try. That’s all I can promise.”
She would have been content with that. Would she be happier with a husband who didn’t do his duty as he saw it?
She watched in dismay as he strode over to the treasure chest. A real sorcerer had no need for gold! How much use was a large sparrow size sorcerer? Zinixo was not the only danger waiting out there for King Rap. Any sorcerer might choose to make him a votary, and there were hundreds of sorcerers in Pandemia. Two of the wardens, Lith’rian and Olybino, might still have grudges to settle. Raspnex should be grateful and friendly, but who would ever trust a dwarf, or a sorcerer?
He gave her a hug and a kiss, dry-lipped in the cold.
“Be careful, my darling!” he said. “I swear I’ll return as soon as I can.”
“You be careful, too. Give Eigaze my love. And the others. All except Andor, of course . . .”
Rap left her the lantern, for sorcerers needed no light. He opened the magic portal, letting warm southern air swirl out like steam. He stepped through and was gone from Krasnegar.
Gather ye rosebuds:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And that fair flower that blooms today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
— Herrick, To Virgins, to Make Much of Time
NINE
Unhallowed ground
1
Aquiala, the Duchess of Kinvale, was entertaining a dozen or so friends to dinner. She remained unaware of the man who had just stepped out of a wall upstairs, but she would not have been surprised, for she knew of the magic portal.
Rap took a minute to catch his breath, then began peeling off his furs. Kade’s private sitting room was dark and musty. As a tribute to her, it had been left exactly as she knew it—a well-designed, tastefully furnished lady’s parlor, worn a little shabby. Her last knitting still lay on a table beside her favorite chair, but she would not have approved of the stuffiness, or the dust. She would have thrown open the drapes and windows and summoned the housekeeper to inspect the twigs in the grate, a sure sign that crows were nesting in the chimney pot.
From time to time Rap and Inos would slip away to Kinvale to attend a dinner party or a ball, although not so much of late, he realized. Was that a sign of age creeping up on them? Kade had acted as the royal purchasing agent, and now Aquiala filled the post. The neighbors knew Inos of old, but none was aware that she had become queen of Krasnegar, or would recall ever hearing of Krasnegar. She was understood to be a princess of some minor frontier kingdom who had married a reclusive local gentleman of faunish descent.