“A most fortuitous bolt of lightning, Master Rap,” the regent said. ”I understand from the ambassador that you are now entitled to style yourself `Thane Slayer!’ “
Oh, he was a nasty one! He made Rap’s skin creep. He had no magic, though. Seen through the ambience, he looked just the same as he did in the mundane world, except that farsight penetrated such trivia as clothes, and hence showed that despite his impish features he was part merman, with his hair and eye brows dyed black to disguise the fact. His twisted ambition was a deformity of the soul.
“Call me whatever you wish, Highness.” Reluctantly Rap turned face and mind to Inos, and met a smile like a summer dawn. Her cypress velvet cloak was spangled with a million fine diamonds of moisture. He toyed briefly with the thought of making them real diamonds. Well, at least Little Chicken wasn’t the only one pleased to see him survive the Reckoning. But why must she show it so blatantly? Even the mundanes were reading the look on her face. Inos, no! Stop that!
Her aunt stood nearby, beaming proudly at her sorcerous protege as if he were all her own invention. Well, he didn’t mind her.
“I think we shall now adjourn this court to the Rotunda,” the regent announced. The thought was making him uneasy, most likely because he had been sadly humiliated there last night, but he was hiding his feelings behind his usual pomp. “We shall require the wardens to certify that the thane died by an act of the Gods and not by sorcery.”
And he had the impudence to smirk at Rap as he said it!
“It was sorcery!” Rap said grimly.
The merman mongrel paled, and the courtiers around him all recoiled a step. His frowsty, sourpuss wife uttered a wail. Even the little boy lurched back. Rap took a harder look at the little boy.
What in the name of all the Gods was wrong with him?
None of Rap’s business! He had never really wanted to be a sorcerer. Or had he? He had stolen a word from Sagorn and then groveled to get another from Little Chicken. He had schemed as hard as he could to become a sorcerer—whom was he trying to fool?
The old man in the background, wrapped in his rug like a parcel and wedged into a chair—he must be the old imperor. Rap had heard good things of him, poor man. His light burned very low now; and yet there was still light there. Yesterday, as a mage, Rap had been sorely puzzled by the old man’s affliction. Today, his stronger sorcerer wisdom found the trouble at once. He shuddered as he sensed the pulsing black spider-thing inside the old man’s skull. That did not belong there! Could he remove it without destroying the surrounding brain? Very likely he could, but that was not his business, either. He couldn’t go around curing all the ills in the world. Imperors were off limits anyway.
The lumbering machinery of Imperial politics was still grinding along the muddy track of mundane thought. “Then you may have violated the Protocol, Sorcerer,” the regent was saying. “The thane was an ambassador at large from Nordland, and Nordland may take the view that . . .” He droned on, talking policy and right of succession and other drivel.
The sycophantic courtiers standing around him all nodded in sad agreement, sneering at the poor rustic who knew no better, taking comfort from thoughts of the guardian wardens.
Was that what the white agony meant?—that Rap was to be judged by the Four and put to death by them? No, Lith’rian and Bright Water would surely have recognized their own hands in that mysteriously cryptic future. That couldn’t be it.
So why did the Evil-take-them wardens have to meddle at all? Why must they come after him, when they had left Kalkor alone for so long? Where was the justice in ignoring the atrocities of an odious cur like Kalkor and then punishing the one who had ended his career? Rap’s temper was bubbling higher, pressing hard against the limits of his control.
Again he looked at the little boy, who was staring at him with hollow eyes and chalky face, shivering in his thin hose and doublet. The kid’s little backside was a monstrosity of welts and bruises, and there was something like a cowl over his personality, a web, a mist . . .
Horrible!
“So we shall require you to attend,” the regent concluded imperiously. “Also our council, and Sultan Azak, and—”
“That won’t be necessary!” Rap snarled. He isolated Azak’s form in the ambience, a dully mundane giant wearing only the sheen of sorcery on his skin. Rap took hold of it and ripped—it came away like a film of soap bubble and he discarded it.
He flipped back to mundane senses. “I have cured the sultan’s problem for him, your Highness. If you will just grant him safe conduct back to his home, then he and his wife can depart.” He smiled at Inos. “A wedding present for you!”
Inos gasped and looked up at Azak. Azak stared at Rap and then looked down at Inos. Princess Kadolan uttered a shriek of alarm and put both hands to her mouth in obvious consternation.
Error?
Azak held out a clenched hand to his wife. Inos shot Rap a look of horror and then gingerly touched a delicate finger to the massive red fist. Of course nothing happened—did they think Rap could wield lightning against Kalkor and then not know when he had canceled out a clumsy spell like that curse?
Azak took Inos in his arms and tried to kiss her. Her instant repugnance sent a burst of fury through Rap, and he hurled them apart, so that they both went reeling back.
Inos! Why was she looking at him like that?
Oh, Gods! He wasn’t leaking anything now, not a whisper.
She really did love him? She didn’t want big Barbarian Muscles after all?
Inos, oh, Inos! A mongrel wagon driver? You’re crazy, Inos!
Then why had she . . .
He thought of madcap Inos putting her horse over ditches, of Inos scrambling up cliffs after birds’ eggs and getting herself so horribly trapped that he and Krath had almost had to stand on their heads to haul her up to safety, of Inos charging recklessly into brawls on the waterfront to break them up and nearly being broken up herself in the process . . . Inos the headstrong . . . Inos who never stopped to think . . . Inos the impetuous . . .
He pushed the memories away. She had married that man of her own free will. It was too late!
And her feelings now were quite obvious to everyone. The djinn was black with fury, breathing hard, fists clenched.
“Oh, you cured his problem, did you, Sorcerer?” the regent said. ”It seems to us as if your assistance was not entirely welcome.”
The odious courtiers burst into raucous laughter at such wit.
Rap grappled with a rage that threatened to choke him.
And lost. Fury!
His anger headed for the lecherous Azak and then swung away, for Inos’s sake. It hovered briefly over the crazily impulsive Inos herself and retreated even more quickly. It peered longingly at the looming vulture nests of the wardens’ palaces in the distance and shrank back in baffled impotence.
And so it returned to the easiest victim, the smirking little regent on his wooden throne.
Teach him to make jokes about Inos!
Rap reached out with sorcery and cured the imperor.
4
For a few moments nobody noticed. The old man opened his eyes and blinked at the shadowed crowd under the canopy, at the noisy torrents of water gushing off it near him and the gloomy rain beyond. Rap sent a surge of strength into the emaciated body—the mind was already burning up bright and clear.
The regent had risen, so the honored few with chairs were rising also. Flunkies were dashing off into the downpour to summon coaches; soldiers were running to alert the hussars.
Ythbane glanced around the crowd, selecting the favored ones who would be allowed to attend the meeting with the Four.
Then a lady squealed. Courtiers looked where she was looking and backed away in haste, pushing those at the edges out from cover. An aisle opened between the old man and the regent.
Ythbane made a fast recovery. “Your Imperial Majesty! You feel better today? You delight us! Medics!”
“Consul?” The voice was strong. “Would you explain what we are doing here? Is this some sort of nature festival?”
The regent—or possibly ex-regent—staggered. Then he turned to stare at Rap, and all the other eyes came around to Rap, also.
Rap allowed himself a satisfied smirk, and let it grow wider as he saw the horror and confusion spreading over those well-fed, pampered faces. This felt better than anything that had happened since he healed Inos’s burns.