The goblin nodded, visible now as a gray shape in the dawn. “He was on the longship with you, then? Thought it sounded like him.”
“He was a good man, Little Chicken. He came to Hub with me.”
The angular eyes widened in understanding. “Yes, good man . . . What did Kalkor throw you yesterday?”
Rap shuddered. “His heart. It was still beating.” The goblin thought about that, then shook his head. “Bad way to kill a man. No honor.” He had strange ideas about good ways to die, but it was a tribute. ”I must kill Kalkor!” Rap said. His fury flickered into flame, making his hands shake.
Little Chicken shrugged. “He said you’d come here, wanting my word.”
“Will you share it with me?”
“No.” The big fangs showed again. “Nice being strong.”
“You’ll still be plenty strong if you share it.”
The goblin shook his head. “How many you got already?”
“I’m not saying.”
“And I’m not telling.” He brayed an unexpectedly strident laugh. ”You can’t magic a word from me, Flat Nose. What else you going to try?”
Rasha had inflicted pain on Rap and then threatened to use it on Inos, but neither of those techniques would work on the goblin. If his anthropophagous lover had lived . . . but Rap could not injure an innocent woman, no matter what his hatred.
That left persuasion, or threat. “If Kalkor kills me, then you don’t. You can’t take me back to Raven Totem if he’s held up my head at the Reckoning.”
Again the goblin chuckled. “That’s what he said you’d say. But if I do tell you, then you’re a sorcerer. So he said. Can’t torture a sorcerer.”
If Kalkor knew that Rap was already a mage, then he was taking an astonishing risk in leaving the goblin’s word lying around unattended, as it were. Either he was insanely confident of his own sorcerous prowess, or he knew something Rap had not thought of.
The wardens, maybe? Nordland raiders were Bright Water’s prerogative; the witch of the north might intervene to defend Kalkor against sorcery.
Or perhaps he had forsaken this entire meeting and knew for certain that the goblin was not going to share his word of power. Rap dared not use farsight.
He checked again and the thane had not stirred from his pallet. Possibly Kalkor was just relying on a word’s reluctance to be told—Little Chicken had never been cooperative, and now he was enjoying being obstinate and forcing Rap to beg. Quite likely Kalkor also was sleepily enjoying the fruitless struggle as he rested alongside his most recent victim.
Rap’s jotunnish blood was racing. The trembling in his hands had spread all the way to his shoulders. His anger needed a victim, and if he couldn’t make the young goblin cooperate, he would certainly kill him. Perhaps that was the outcome Kalkor had foreseen? That would amuse him.
“If I promise?”
“Promise?” the goblin scoffed. “Promise to let me slay you? A sorcerer? Won’t work, Flat Nose. Just have to trust the Gods.”
“I want to kill him,” Rap said, beginning to feel desperate, ”for Gathmor. And this is my only chance. Tell me your word of power, and I swear that I’ll fulfill your prophecy. I’ll come back to Raven Totem with you and let you kill me.”
The goblin fell silent, but Rap could see the start of indecision in his ugly face.
“What about the woman? You fixed her burns.”
“She has another chief. I told you she was a chief’s daughter and must marry a chief.”
“Won’t take her?” Little Chicken looked disbelieving.
“No, I won’t take her. She chose that one.”
“Not doing this for her?”
“I told you—I’m doing it for Gathmor. Kalkor’s death won’t help Inos.”
The goblin shook his head. “Don’t care. Won’t tell you my word, Flat Nose. Tell me yours and I’ll kill thane for you. Then take you back to Raven Totem.”
Rap was struggling to keep his teeth from chattering with fury. The despicable green runt had no idea how close he was to death. “Tell me or die! I swear I will kill you, Trash! Gods spurn my soul, but I’m going to kill you.”
The angular eyes flashed. “Not trash now!”
But his looks didn’t support his words. Rap quickly reached for memories. He had never untangled the intricacies of the goblins’ custom, but he could do that now.
“I say you’re still my trash, goblin!”
“Not trash! Saved you from the imps in Milflor!” Again untruth registered to a mage’s insight: taut neck, sweat-filmed skin, speeding heart. Little Chicken was lying.
“No, you didn’t! They didn’t intend to kill me, and I’d have gotten away without your help! And I called you back when you attacked the soldiers. You disobeyed my order, so what you did didn’t count!”
Little Chicken was tense with rage, but he wasn’t denying the accusations. Rap chuckled as he saw his guesses scoring.
“So you’re still my trash! But Kalkor’s going to kill me today unless you share your word with me. You can save my life this time! Then you won’t be trash any more; really not.”
The goblin pouted, considering. He looked up slyly. “Then I get to kill you—very, very slow?”
“I’ll endure as long as I can. Longer than anyone ever has.”
It was a gruesome promise, but a meaningless one. The white-fire destiny was going to destroy Rap first, probably before the day was out. He wasn’t going to survive long enough to see Raven Totem again.
“You swear, Flat Nose?”
“I swear it by any God you want.”
“I think you’re a man of your word, Flat Nose.” The goblin grinned and licked his lips. “Much honor! I’ll do it! I’ll tell you my word.”
2
Rain drummed mercilessly on the sodden tent, seeping through seams to drip onto Rap’s head, puddling around his feet. He could hear the spectators slithering on the slick mud of the bank outside, but the crowd was much smaller today and would see little of the contest through the driving mist that obscured the field—much of which was already a silvery marsh. Thunder rumbled overhead in clouds thick as mud. The magic casement had predicted the conditions exactly.
The magic casement had arranged the whole thing. That was what magic casements did! Much more than just prophesying, they warped the flow of events to serve their owners’ interests. Just who the Krasnegarian casement regarded as its owner was yet an unsolved mystery, but apparently not Kalkor, for it had already destroyed him as surely as it had destroyed Inos’s great-grandfather. Rap had told Kalkor of the duel and Kalkor had contrived to make it happen for his own amusement, but he would never have thought of it without the casement’s prompting.
The casement had trapped him. He would never reign in Krasnegar now, because he had used power on the regent to force the second Reckoning. That was a violation of the Protocol and must bring retribution from the wardens. No matter what the outcome of the duel, Kalkor would die.
Some things were very obvious to a sorcerer!
Rap had seen the bitter truth just after his visit to Little Chicken, but it made no difference to him, for his jotunn bloodlust was still an agony in him. He would avenge Gathmor’s death at any cost at all. It was not a task he could leave to the wardens’ justice—he himself must make Kalkor pay, or die trying. He could barely remember his father, but his father had been a jotunn, descended from generations of killers, and that jotunn blood pumped now in Rap. He was not doing this for Inos. Officially he was her champion, as the casement had suggested, but in his own mind he was fighting to avenge a friend, most callously murdered to gratify the raider’s whim.
Blood!
He slumped on a low stool and wished his bones were not so heavy, his muscles so throbbingly painful. He was keeping himself mundane, and suffering for it, out of some strange perverse desire for misery. He had not slept at all in the night, and little the night before.
A smelly length of bearskin lay heaped on the wet grass beside him. Opposite, on another stool, sat an ancient jotunn whose name had not been offered. In his overlong red robe, he held a great battle-ax across his lap and was busily running a whetstone along its edge, although it was already sharp enough to split gossamer. A horned helmet and a battered bugle lay at his feet.
“You must get ready!” he growled, frowning shaggy white brows. He disapproved of Rap. Mongrels should not be allowed to participate in sacred jotunn ceremonies, and this one did not look much like a fighter anyway.
“There’s time yet,” Rap snapped.
What he really should be doing was practicing sorcery. Hearing his fourth word had been a cataclysmic experience, greater than any of the others had produced. His mind still jangled from it. Perhaps the goblin’s word had been especially strong, or perhaps this was just what being a sorcerer was. He felt as if he had been given an extra set of senses.