So here were the wardens, revealed at last—four handsome young people on their thrones in Emine’s Rotunda and four ogreish nightmares crowding in around Rap in the ambience. He had a strange illusion that they all wanted something from him, although he could not imagine what. He felt as if skeletal fingers were pawing at his arms and digging in his pockets. Remembering the palsied, putrefying beggars of Finrain, he decided he would prefer to be beset by them, or by starving anthropophagi.
“Do sit down, old friend,” Lith’rian remarked to the imperor. His kindly tone might be genuine, but it shocked the courtiers. Emshandar sank down stiffly onto his throne.
“Death Bird!” the witch of the north shrieked, springing to her feet and stretching out arms in invitation. The spectators jumped, and Little Chicken actually fell back a pace. Then he squared his thick shoulders and advanced toward the White Throne.
Under an ominous night sky, the giant fortifications to the west had crept much closer to Rap, and now a great boulder came hurtling down from above, aimed to crush him. He stepped aside and let it sweep on past, twirling downward forever through the ambience. He dug fingernails into his palms to restrain his temper. That odious gray runt had sold Rap to the galleys. There were some other scores to settle there, also. Evil take the lot of them!
“West, behave yourself!” Olybino snapped petulantly. “He’s just testing, “ he told Rap. “He isn’t using anything like his full strength. “
Another boulder came bouncing down a hill, straight for East. A thick-limbed warrior stepped forward and smashed it to a shower of gravel with one stroke of his shining sword. Olybino laughed hoarsely. “You are being childish, West! ”
But some false note in the voice left Rap wondering how much of his resources that pompous imp had needed to parry the dwarf’s playful blow.
Little Chicken had reached the witch, and she was embracing and kissing him fondly. In the ambience Rap himself lay screaming on the floor of Raven Lodge. He closed out the image easily now, his control increasing with practice. On a parallel plane, the tiny relic of a goblin woman leered up at him. “You die good, faun!”
“And now he has my promise.”
She cackled like a startled barnyard. “So he has, Your Majesty,” said the young woman by the White Throne, “this man is most dear to us. We charge you to make him welcome in your house and to see he is returned unharmed to his people. You will not deny him his destiny!” the hag told Rap with a friendly leer. “And you will remember that I helped?”
She was mad, totally mad. She did not seem to realize that Rap could detect the writhing horrors of her mind. It seemed strange, in fact, that the warlocks should also be revealing themselves so blatantly. Was it possible that they were not viewing the ambience in the same way he was, as a jostling confusion of ideas and emotions projected by themselves? It was certainly unfair that he must undergo this contest when he had had so little time to learn the sorcery business.
Little Chicken was heading back toward Krushjor, dazed and aroused by the youthful witch’s caresses, while being assured by the puzzled imperor that he was an honored guest of the palace.
“Yesterday,” Lith’rian proclaimed, “his Impermanent Highness, Regent Ythbane, tried to summon us here to consider the case of Sultan Azak. He also planned to inquire if Thane Kalkor had used power on him—which he had, of course. My colleagues and I, aware that another sorcerer was in the vicinity, decided that events might best be allowed to continue for another day.”
A giant stone pillar toppled . . . Rap stepped back with surprise and let it shatter at his feet. That one had been closer. The young dwarf glared resentfully at him under his craggy brows. Rap frowned back warningly.
Lith’rian piped on: “Now it may be that that same sorcerer has solved the Kalkor problem permanently for us—perhaps occultly, although the thane was a Nordland emissary—and has also cured a grave sickness inside the crowned head of the imperor. Furthermore, he possibly laid a truth trance upon the regent and thereafter smote the poor fellow from the throne. We must consider, Sister and Brothers: first if any of these alleged acts was real; and second, if so, whether it constituted political use of occult power; and third, if so, then what punishment is fitting. Are there any other charges?”
The Rotunda fell silent. Rap had not moved on that plane at all, but the nearer spectators had been edging away from him, leaving him even more isolated than before. Emshandar stared miserably at him, eyes bleary with weakness, face crumpled like old paper. On his stool out in the darkness, Shandie was hugging himself and jiggling his feet in an agony of apprehension for his new friend Rap. Inos and Kade were holding hands and biting their lips in mirror image.
“Very well,” the elf said. “The defendant known as Rap is present—such a demotic, nondescript name! Our dear brother of the west? How say you? Did the alleged acts occur? Speak to the nice people, Shorty. In sentences if you can.”
But the dwarf answered occultly, and even that was a growl. “Who gets his words?”
“That’s irrelevant just now, Stone Head. What say you to the evidence, Brother?”
The youth on the Red Throne was chewing a fingernail. Then he spoke mundanely for the first time, in a voice like falling rocks. “I reserve judgment.”
Wasps buzzed in the ambience, but the other seeming youth, the elf, just shrugged. He looked across at Bright Water. “Our sister of the north, what say you?”
“There is no truth in the allegations,” the young woman said promptly. The mundane witnesses gasped.
In the ambience, Lith’rian winked an opal eye at Rap. “And I regretfully say there was. Your Majesty, the wardens are evenly divided. North and West are for acquittal, East and South for conviction. How says our mundane brother of the center?”
Inos beamed, and Shandie pulled his feet up on his stool so he could hug his knees—but Rap saw the ancient crone simpering mawkishly at him and heard the shrieks of his own dying corpse.
Olybino did not wait to be asked. “Of course he’s guilty!” he snapped. On dusty plains in the ambience, legion after legion was marching onward to battle. The warlock of the east wanted Ythbane restored, and the Zarkian war, also.
“Brother West, do you wish to judge now?” Lith’rian trilled. ”Last chance, Ugly! “
“Yes, he did all those things,” the dwarf admitted grumpily.
“And I concur,” Lith’rian said, with an occult sound of retching. ”Defendant, by vote of three to one, we find that you committed certain suspicious acts. Now we must consider whether any one of those constituted an illicit use of occult power—that is to say, for political ends.”
He beamed at the company in the Rotunda, but in the ambience he scowled at the dwarf beside him, amid a strong stench of barnyard. “Perhaps we’ll go round the other way this time, and give stone-wits a chance to think about the question. Brother East?”
Hooves thundered and banners snapped in the wind. “Guilty!”
“Sister North, how say you?”
“Not guilty,” the goblin maiden said. The hag leered at Rap. She had another fate in mind for him, but she seemed to think he ought to be grateful for the opportunity.
If all this was designed to confuse him, it was succeeding admirably; his mind reeled between conflicting existences.
“Dear brother of the west?” Lith’rian cooed. “Who gets his words?” the dwarf demanded again. “If you must know, it’s my turn. The last one was that imp in Drishmab, and East got her; nine years ago. “
“There was no illicit use of power!” the dwarf rumbled.
A great horror came over the imperor’s face. He knew what had been done, by whom, and who had gained from it. Now his honor was thrown into conflict with his gratitude. The spectators seemed likewise appalled, holding their breath, waiting for his reply.
A rock the size of a melon whistled out of nowhere, aimed straight at Rap’s head. He ducked and let it go past. He was sure he could have swung at it with an occult bat and hurled it right back at the dwarf, but he was also sure now that such a response would reveal more of his power than simple avoidance did. If Zinixo wanted to know his strength so badly, then that was good enough reason to keep it secret.
Furthermore, Rap was beginning to suspect that he lacked all the spectral paraphernalia that accompanied the others’ projections within the ambience. Its absence might not be a weakness but a sign of strength, an ability to see more clearly or manipulate power more directly.