He bowed clumsily to her. “I am greatly in your debt, ma’am.” He stammered and blushed. “A woman . . . lady . . . having the spunk . . . I mean—”
“It was the least I could do, Master Rap. I feel responsible for much of what has happened.”
His eyes widened. They were clear gray eyes, very innocent looking, but she sensed that he was using more than a mundane self-control to keep his face from revealing his thoughts. His calm was uncanny—no man could recover so quickly from such an ordeal. “You, ma’am?”
She nodded wearily. “I’d rather not go into it now.”
“Of course, ma’am.” He frowned and waved a hand at one of the bodies. “How many died altogether?” She glanced at Sagorn, who said, ”Eleven.”
Rap pulled a face. “God of Mercy! I’m not worth that!”
Could he be serious? “You don’t think they deserved it? After what they did to you?”
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the ones who deserved it who died, would it? The Gods are rarely so tidy. And besides, I started it! I killed three, they told me. And wounded more. I can’t blame them too much for wanting to get even.” He shook his head sorrowfully.
He seemed to be sincere—but who could tell with a mage? She did not know this boy. She must just remember that Inosolan had chosen him as her friend, and unconsciously as more than friend; and the Gods had confirmed her judgment. Who was Kadolan to question now?
“Can you get us out of here, Master Rap?”
“I have no idea! I haven’t been a mage long enough to know what I can do.” A faint hint of smile tugged at the corners of his big mouth—whatever Inos had seen in him, she had not chosen him for his looks.
He frowned and glanced around. “The djinns are bringing sledges. Persistent lot, aren’t they? I suppose I can put the door back and make them stand aside to let us pass . . . This is rather like the night we had the imps after us, isn’t it?” His eyes strayed to Sagorn, whom he had been ignoring. ”And this time I did become a mage!”
Sagorn smiled cynically, but he could not conceal his dislike. “This time you had no choice.”
Rap ignored the barb; he looked upward. “I think I can stretch that air hole. Would you mind climbing a ladder, your Highness?”
“I’ll climb a greasy pole if it will get me to a bathtub.”
He twitched, instantly apologetic. “I can remove the blood, ma’am. If you want.”
“I’d rather do it with hot water, thank you.”
He nodded, then stared at the hole in the roof again, for longer. It widened imperceptibly until it was a shaft, and there was a bronze ladder stretching down to the rug.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “I need to work on the top a bit more.” He went scrambling up the rungs and disappeared.
Kadolan looked at Sagorn, who was scowling but failing to conceal his amazement.
“An efficient young man!” she said.
The sage nodded. “Oh quite! A very efficient young man. A very stubborn one, too.”
“What does that mean?” She struggled to rise, feeling her weariness like a wagonload of marble on her shoulders.
“I mean that Master Rap always does exactly what he wants to do, and no one can ever talk him out of it. And now no one can stop him, either.”
3
The original chimney had been much too narrow to have been dug by mundane hands. Obviously it was the work of some long-ago sorcerer, who had modified a natural cave to make the dungeons, just as Rap was now modifying the wormhole into a manhole. The rock wasn’t too hard to do, because it was just reshaping; the bronze ladder was really difficult. After a couple of fathoms of that, he switched to spruce, and wood was much easier to produce, somehow.
He’d wondered how it felt to do magic, and now he knew. He couldn’t have explained it, though. Can a man explain how he saw, or how he made his muscles work in the right order when he was running? Describe green. Or pretty. Stop your heart for a minute. Magic was like those. It just was. It was possible, so he could do it. Just wanting . . .
Well . . . he could do some things, and now he was trying to do an evil lot of things all at once, and he hadn’t even had a chance to practice with some simple lessons. Basic cursing and frog transformations . . . There were different levels to magic, too. His broken bones and poisoned flesh, his eyes and tongue—he’d cured those, but they weren’t really cured. In part he was keeping them cured, just as he was keeping his clothes in existence . . . and halfway up his new ladder, he realized that he had relaxed his control over those wish—garments, and they weren’t there anymore. He made a mental note to dress himself again when he got to the top, then ignored the problem. The ladder, likewise, was going to flicker out of existence as soon as he took his mind off it, although the bronze would last longer than the wood, as some compensation for being harder to create in the first place. The wall that was blocking the djinns . . . and the shaft would shrink back to its original size, so he’d better keep that firmly in mind while Inos’s Aunt Kade was inside it!
Moreover, once he’d reached the level of the main cellars he was working with masonry instead of solid rock, and he had to be careful to thin the stones without shifting them or collapsing a wall. And his farsight was telling him that the exit was going to put him in a crowded courtyard, so he was working on the shaft and the ladder at the same time as he began to wonder about making himself invisible. He was also rippling the ambience horribly. Probably he could develop a smoother touch with practice, but every time he added one more rung to the ladder, he seemed to shake the palace like a tambourine. Amazing that no one else noticed! . . . everyone ought to be falling down and shouting earthquake. Lucky the whole palace had a shield around it, although it wasn’t a very good one, and it bulged oddly in places, but it would probably be enough to mask his activities from any sorcerer outside. Gods! They’d feel him in Krasnegar otherwise. Lith’rian had made a few ripples, but Rap was creating tidal waves. Rookie!
Twinges of pain told him not to forget his own body. Now there was another sort of sorcery: healing. If he took his mind off himself now, then he’d snap back to almost the same near corpse he’d been before. He was keeping himself whole with magic, but he was also encouraging his natural healing. Maybe that natural healing was a sorcery the Gods did, but he could certainly feel the mending going on at a deeper, slower level, another sort of occult. Even as an adept he’d been able to speed up his natural healing. He thought that now he’d be able to do it for other people, as well. Like Inos. Burns? Yes, he thought he could.
Of course a full sorcerer would be able to do an instant, total cure with the creation magic, but a mere mage would just have to be patient and keep his occult bandages in place until his healing was complete. He’d also have to be careful where he slept for a few nights; someplace where a whiff of gangrene wouldn’t bother anyone. He could put a sleep spell on himself, couldn’t he? . . .
Removing his beard and the bloodstains—that had been yet another sort of magic, a go-away magic. That was permanent, he thought. No time to work it out . . .
The original opening had been a very small grille, high in the wall of the building. Rap opened a new one at ground level, with an inattention anticharisma around it, and he scrambled out onto the courtyard flagstones, hot already from the early-morning sun. He kept his eyes closed against the glare while he gazed around at the blue sky and the kites floating up there. Flowers and fountains and fine horses, and the occult wall around the palace blocking any farther view. The djinns were going frantic down in the cellars and the dungeon . . . far too many of them in the dungeon; they were passing out from lack of air.
A troop of mounted guards went right by him without a glance at the new opening in the wall, or the naked . . . Whoops!
Now he was pushing his ability to dangerous limits, juggling too many hatchets, keeping himself healthy and clothed, and the shaft open and the ladder in existence, and everyone else distracted, and an eye on the princess and Jalon . . . Jalon? . . . making their way up to the surface. And he mustn’t forget about his mind, either. Too much calm and he’d fade out and drop some of the hatchets. Too little and he’d have to deal with the crazy boy in there who’d been bent to breaking point by fear and agony and just wanted to scream and scream . . . that was another healing that was going to take patience. Nights were going to be tricky, certainly.