Blood and destruction and satisfaction . . . only those.
By the time he drew near to the northernmost of the five hills and the shielded mystery of the White Palace, milky dawn was seeping into the watery sky. Traffic was picking up in the city, populating the rainswept streets with carters and early-rising apprentices. Any he spoke to answered his questions willingly and swiftly, and eventually he found one who could direct him to the place he sought.
It was a big ramshackle building in its own wellwooded grounds, a relic of prosperity within an area that was sliding into slumhood. Men and even families came and went, but the owner of this property was immortal.
If Rap had guessed wrongly, and his quarry slept on the longship moored in the lake, then he was a dead faun.
He went over the wall of the Nordland Embassy faster even than any cat could have managed, into a once-fine estate that had been allowed to sink into forest, unattended. There were no dogs—true jotnar detested them—and dogs would have been no problem anyway. The problem was Kalkor. Breaking into the Opal Palace had been less risky than this, because there was a sorcerer in here somewhere, and merely touching his mind with farsight might awaken him.
Dragging his aching feet through the sodden shrubbery of abandoned garden, Rap began to probe the big house ahead. Already a yellow streak marred the eastern skyline, below the rain clouds. Even a thane was not likely to oversleep on a day he must fight a mortal duel.
Farsight drew a blank in the great bedchambers, but a Nordlander might spurn those as decadence. Rap switched his attention to the back, the former servant quarters, and there he soon found Thane Kalkor already awake, and busy with a recreation from which he would not be easily distracted. He might well go back to sleep afterward.
So Rap could concentrate on his main quarry. More swiftly now he continued scanning, room by room. There were surprisingly few people in the great sprawling mansion. The crew of Blood Wave would mostly be sleeping aboard, of course, not trusting the imps.
He finished the rooms. Nothing. He tried the cellars. Blank. Then the attics. Likewise.
Despair!
Failed! By the time he could reach the lake, the sailors would be awake. Fool! Fool! He had guessed, wrong.
He stood in the cold rain and earthy-scented shrubbery and faced the unpleasant truth that Kalkor was going to chop him to pieces. His only recourse now was to try to sneak into the house and try to kill the thane while he was distracted. Sneak up on a sorcerer, mm?
And then he registered a collection of decaying wooden sheds and outhouses around the back of the house. There! In the woodshed. Of course.
It could not have been easier. He trotted around and found the door ajar. He sent a wakening nudge ahead of him, to where his quarry lay on a moldering old rug on the bare dirt, with a rag tied around him as a token garment. He would have chosen this place of his own free will, loving the temperature and the smell of wood.
As Rap entered he sat up and stretched. Even a fullgrown timberwolf might have envied his yawn. “Hello, Little Chicken.”
The goblin squinted at the shadow in the doorway. “Flat Nose?”
“Yes.” Rap sank down gratefully, cross-legged on the dirt, still panting. Weary, weary! He ached all over, but especially his legs. Amid the high-heaped firewood there was barely enough space for him; he was knee to knee with the goblin. But it was good to get out of the rain at last, and good to sit.
“You come to visit an old friend?” Little Chicken’s angular eyes glinted with satisfaction. He scratched himself busily. “Or you want something, maybe?”
Rap’s fury had refined itself now to pure purpose, his mind was icy clear. ”Yes. Need something. You know, in an odd way I’m glad they didn’t get their goblin stew.”
“I think I know why you’re glad, Flat Nose!” The goblin chuckled, gloating a little. “Thane told me you’d come.”
Oh, he had, had he? Rap checked quickly, and Kalkor was still at it, heedless of his intended victim trespassing.
“We’ll get to that. I’m really curious—how did you escape?”
Little Chicken pointed to a scar on his thigh. “Put an arrow in me, took me prisoner. They’d eaten their fill that night. No room for goblin.”
“So they kept you to fatten you up?”
Once Rap had been afraid of Little Chicken and his monstrous ambitions, but that was over now. The goblin could save Rap’s life or condemn him to death this day, but that was the limit of his power at the moment. True, the wardens had foreseen a great future for him, and Rap had assumed that it involved ruling Krasnegar. A mage’s insight, plus the smattering of news and rumor he had collected in Hub had shown him how wrong he had been. Now Bright Water’s interest and help were understandable. What lay in store for Little Chicken was something quite unrelated to Krasnegar, but it did involve Rap and the third prophecy.
“They tie you up or cage you?” Neither would detain a man with the goblin’s occult strength.
The big tusks flashed again. “Caged me. I let a day or two go by and then left. Lots of jungle on the wet side of the island . . . Took a woman along to do the cooking.” The ugly khaki—hued face was just as easy to read as anyone else’s.
“What was her name?”
“Couldn’t work my tongue hard enough,” Little Chicken said offhandedly. “I just called her `Woman’ and she did what she was told.”
“How did she feel about this?”
The goblin shrugged. “Seemed happy. After the first couple of days, said she wouldn’t run away, so I could leave her untied at nights.” He leered. ”Good man for her! Strong!”
All the time Rap had been a sailor, living in Durthing, the goblin must have been hiding out in the Nogid jungle, letting his wound heal, tended by the girl he had stolen. There were a lot of things he wasn’t saying, though.
“And then you sailed away and left her?” No, that wasn’t right . . .
“Paddled a tree trunk across to next island. Woman said we could get to another imp fort after six, seven islands.”
So Little Chicken had gone hunting his destiny and she had chosen to go with him. He wasn’t lying about her feelings; the anthropophagous woman had genuinely.fallen in love with her goblin kidnapper. Likely he had treated her as well as he had been able, for women were useful. Was it possible that Little Chicken had ever done anything so ungoblinish as to fall in love? On the verge of taunting him with that, Rap suddenly drew back.
“Bad current,” the goblin said. “Big storm came.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” A mage could sense the real sorrow under the pose of indifference. How strange! How sad!
The rest of the tale came easily. Heading westward again in Blood Wave, Kalkor had encountered a log floating in Dyre Channel with a near-dead goblin on it, but that was exactly the sort of freakish coincidence that words of power could produce, and of course the goblin knew a word, also. Kalkor must have seen his own destiny then, for he had known of the three visions in the casement. That must have been when he had conceived his mad expedition to Hub.
“So he forced your word of power out of you, and that made him a sorcerer?” Rap asked.
Little Chicken flushed olive at the insult. “You know goblins better than that! He was a sorcerer already. Didn’t need it!”
That was good news, maybe. Little Chicken’s word had come straight from a fairy. No one else shared it—yet. A strong word.
Rain drummed on the roof of the shed and dribbled through leaks. Again Rap scanned the house. Kalkor had finished what he was doing and seemed to be asleep again. The woman lay at his side, sobbing in silence. Elsewhere men were starting to stir, though. Even jotnar might feel the chill of this clammy morning and decide to light fires. He must be quick.
Little Chicken stretched again. “Why’d you agree anyway? I saw. Didn’t use magic on you?”
“No. Not directly.” Of course Kalkor could have changed Rap’s mind as he had changed the regent’s, but that would not have been playing the game the way he wanted it played.
“How then?” the goblin asked. “You’re stubborn as a mother bear, Flat Nose. I know.”
Despite his fury and grim purpose, Rap chuckled. “Well, thank you, Little Chicken!” Those awful weeks in the forest had faded in his memory until he could look back on them with something like nostalgia. Oh, the innocence of youth! He had not been a mage in those days. “Remember Gathmor?”