Flashes at the top of the shaft showed that the battle was raging more fiercely than ever, so obviously the four votaries were being left behind to cover the warlock’s departure. Dwarves hated to part with anything, and Raspnex’s ruthless sacrifice of his forces showed how desperate the situation was.
The mundanes’ voices were becoming louder and shriller as the calming spells wore off.
“Quiet!” the warlock roared, and the deep bellow rolled away along the tunnel, leaving a twittering silence. “I’ll shift you in fours. Move out of the way as soon as you arrive!”
Ylo, Ionfeu, Eigaze, and Eshiala all vanished from the head of the line. The tunnel curved, Rap noted, and was heavily shielded. It must lie far belowground.
“Is this new?” he asked quietly. “Dwarf work?”
“Dwarf work, certainly, but not new.”
“Then Zinixo—”
“But it doesn’t end where he thinks it does,” Raspnex chortled. ”It changed course recently.”
Shandie and his daughter disappeared, Umpily and Hardgraa, also.
The witch of the west must have approved this alteration to her palace. It could have been done any time in the years since Zinixo had been driven out, but the devious thinking was not trollish. Dwarves made good accomplices in a jailbreak, Rap decided.
Then power enveloped him. With Sagorn, Acopulo, and Raspnex himself, he was translated to the far end of the tunnel, and a rocky, underground chamber.
Here was troll work—massive stone walls and a high corbeled ceiling. Under a ghostly blue light of no visible source, the fugitives were standing around the walls, shocked now into silence. A flight of stone stairs spiraled up to the roof in the center of the chamber. It seemed to have no purpose whatsoever, but Rap detected a break in the shielding there and guessed that the next move was going to be tricky. The paving was wet, the air chill. Water was dripping somewhere.
A woman in dark, heavy work clothes had joined the group. She was taller than anyone present except Sagorn, and the whitegold hair bound on the crown of her head made her seem even taller. As impish women tended to stoutness in middle age, jotunn women were inclined to become scraggy. This one was neither old nor young. Her bare shins and feet showed that she was a sailor; her rawboned form was powerful, almost masculine, and yet she was still handsome enough to catch a man’s eye. She would be capable of blacking it, too.
She had identified him, the royal faun. She nodded respectfully. He returned the nod, noting the shimmer of the loyalty spell on her. He wondered if she knew how her fellow votaries were being so callously squandered this night.
“ Jarga,” Raspnex said, half to her and half as an introduction to Rap. “Everything well?”
Her grim features softened in affection. “Well, master.”
“Test it once more.”
Without a word, Jarga elbowed Hardgraa aside like a cotton drape and marched over to the stairs. Her head vanished before it reached the roof. The rest of her followed, with her big, horny feet being the last to go. Several of the mundanes moaned.
Rap was impressed, though. “Beautiful work, again!” he said to Raspnex. There had been hardly a shimmer in the ambience. “Yours?”
The dwarf shook his big head. “Grunth herself.” He sighed. “Grimrix would have done it even better. I’m going to miss that kid.”
Faint tremors of power were filtering down through the gap in the shielding, so at least one of the struggles was still in progress. Almost certainly Grimrix would have been overcome by now, so he would be fighting on the other side, as fanatically loyal to Zinixo as he had been to Raspnex. Perhaps he was already using his might against the defenders at the palace. And when that fell, the Covin would gain four sorcerers more.
A moment later, Jarga reappeared down the magic staircase. “All clear,” she said aloud. There was a sprinkle of fresh snow on her broad shoulders.
“Come on then, all of you,” the dwarf rumbled. He looked weary. They all did.
Jarga ascended again, with the dwarf rolling after her. Rap waved the others on. Again Ylo led the mundanes, so perhaps he regarded himself as the most expendable. He vanished systematically, from wolf’s head to sandals. Hardgraa followed him.
Sagorn stepped closer to Rap. “Have you any idea where we are, your Majesty?” he inquired. His pale face bore a livid hue in the spooky light.
“Under Cenmere, I think.” The jotunn gulped.
“After you, Doctor,” Rap said, and brought up the rear.
At the top of the stairs, he emerged on the snow-covered deck of a barge—anchored, but rolling slightly under his boots. Waves slapped, ropes creaked. Although his eyes could see nothing at all, he sensed that he was a long way offshore. The two sorcerers were helping the mundanes climb overboard. Even as Rap arrived, the imperor clambered over the rail and then turned around to accept his daughter. Beyond him, Ylo, Hardgraa, Lady Eigaze, and Ionfeu were similarly suspended on nothing but a layer of snow. A couple of buckets hung near them, and farsight also detected some recently replaced ropes and snowy furled sails overhead. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Rap began to make out the fabric of the shielded vessel tied alongside.
Very clever! Who would ever suspect a dwarf of escaping by boat? And once it was cast off, it could drift away unseen over the great freshwater sea. When the fugitives went belowdecks, even they would be undetectable to sorcery. Unless the use of the magic stairs had been noted, Raspnex had achieved the impossible.
Rap headed for the rail, but he declined Jarga’s offer of assistance. ”I’m not all faun,” he said. “Count me as crew.” Despite the knee-deep snow, she was still barefoot. “Not much need for crew, King, but thanks.”
Rap paused, taking a last scan before guiding his companions to the companionway. His farsight was too weak to inspect the city in detail, although he could tell where it was. The ambience was another matter. Once he had been able to sense power in use at the ends of the world. His range was pitifully limited now, yet there was enough power still crackling around the roof of the Red Palace to illuminate some detail for him. The roofgarden fire had spread to two of the towers. Badly outmatched, the defenders had retreated to some inner layer of shielding. Under the attackers’ blows, the ambience shook like a tablecloth in the hands of a spring-cleaning housewife.
Nothing to the south . . . .
Then, as he started to walk across the deck, the south erupted.
Fury blazed in the ambience. He staggered at the mental din, the pain. He sensed buildings collapsing like soap bubbles—several blocks of buildings, men crushed, burning, terror, death . . . Much death!
Raspnex swung around with a cry. “Grimrix!”
There could be no doubt what that conflagration had signified. The young votary had refused to let himself be turned. He had stayed loyal to the death.
Burning deck:
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead . . .
There came a burst of thunder sound;
The boy,—Oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds, that far around,
With fragments strewed the sea.
Felicia Hemans, Casabianca
TWO
Newer world
1
In Krasnegar, in midwinter, daylight was a brief something that happened sometimes. When it did appear, it came at noon, long after the day’s work had begun, but often it was so muffled by the weather that no one noticed it at all. Jotunn faces grew as pale as the ash-blond hair around them—or on them—and the imps pined. Jotnar and imps alike bore lanterns everywhere they went, mingling whale oil reek with the peat smoke of the fires. Shadows jumped and danced, but no one who took fright at shadows had any business living in Krasnegar.
The great hall of the castle was normally a very shadowy place, lit mainly by one or more of the huge hearths along the kitchen end, but it could shine brightly enough on special occasions, such as royal birthdays. Now the darkness had been driven away. Pages were lighting candles and lamps; crystal and silverware sparkled on the high table. A whole sheep sizzled on a spit. In an hour or so, Prince Gath and Princess Kadie would be entertaining their friends at a formal dinner. “To celebrate the beginning of their fifteenth year” was how Kadie had described the event on the invitations. That had sounded more grown-up than “fourteenth birthday.”
She had confessed to her mother that a grand ball would have been more appropriate, but her men friends were mostly poor dancers. Inos could have told her that boys of that age were strongly resistant to dancing with girls taller than themselves, but she had merely agreed that a dinner was probably better. The boys would be in favor of a dance next year—Kadie probably had it planned already.