Only Rap.
“He read all that?” she asked.
“Yes. Plus some earlier reports on Krasnegar, which will interest you also. Do you know, there was not one reference to Krasnegar in the Imperial archives? Inisso did a fine job of making it immemorable.” A gentle smile eased the severity of the wasted face, but she realized that he was hiding a great weariness. She should go and let him rest.
“Inisso died centuries ago!”
“I know. But when the news broke, I had no recollection of ever having heard of a place called Krasnegar. I demanded files, reports . . . anything! There was nothing. So I did what imperors usually do in emergencies—I asked the appropriate warden. Needless to say, her ravings told me very little.”
Inos evaded the unspoken invitation to comment. Bright Water would have been on the side of the goblins, not the rampaging imp army that had started the troubles.
“I got more from Olybino—he was concerned about the troops . . . But basically the secretariat had to start from scratch. They did some analyses of Krasnegar’s economics and social structure that will be of interest to its queen, I am sure.”
“Will I be its queen?” She spoke more to herself than to him.
It would all depend on Rap. He could evict the jotnar. He could make the people accept her, although she doubted there would be much fight left in the town now. If she arrived with a sorcerer, she would be accepted. If she didn’t, then there might not be any town left by summer.
Where was Rap?
If he would make her queen, then she would gladly make him king.
She looked up with eyes suddenly misting. The old man in the bulky robe . . . It was not Sagorn he had been reminding her of, but the last King of Krasnegar, and that was stupid because Emshandar emphatically did not look like Holindarn. Just something about the way he held his glass, and lounged in the chair . . . Something fatherly . . .
She sniffed. “Excuse me, Sire! I have presumed upon your time long enough . . .”
“You stay! You will have another glass of wine with me and we shall drag all your troubles out into the open.”
She tried to protest and again he overruled her—imperors of the XVIIth Dynasty were not noted for their meekness. He had nothing to do with his time except work and more work, he said. Her company was welcome. He refilled the goblets, then he settled back into his big chair as if ready to spend the night there.
“Sultan Azak has gone. I expect you know.”
“He came around to say good-bye,” she agreed. “That was good of him! But I had gone riding. Kade saw him, and Char was there. Rap cured him, too!”
Then she had to explain how Char had been beaten by the legionaries. Frowning, the imperor lifted a slate from alongside his chair and made a note on it.
Life without Azak would be easier, certainly. “Rap has been busy,” she remarked, and was surprised at the edge to her voice. “Sorcering here, sorcering there . . . All work and no play!”
Emshandar sighed and steepled his fingers. He stared at the windows for a moment; the lawns were darkening as the winter day faded in pinks and orange.
“Inos . . . if I may call you that . . . I have more experience of dealing with sorcerers than any other mundane in the world—four wardens, and oftentimes their votaries. When we learned about the goblin problem, for example, and I could get nothing out of Bright Water, I appealed to East, and he transported a man to Krasnegar. Next day he was back and I talked with him for an hour. I knew all about you and your kingdom months before the official word arrived. It’s not part of the Protocol, it’s just a favor wardens do for imperors, once in a while . . .”
“So what I’m leading up to is that I do know sorcerers, and no one else can say that. And they are not like other people!”
She shivered. “How not like other people?”
Even an imperor tended to drop his voice when he talked of sorcerers. ”They don’t seem to think like us.”
“Sorcery makes people `unhuman’? That’s what Rap told me.”
The imperor nodded. “When Master Rap wakened me from my sickness—then he seemed quite ordinary. Melancholy, perhaps; he was brooding about something. Naive. But a very pleasant young man, I thought; unschooled, but well above average. Yet I was not too surprised to learn that he’d only been a sorcerer for a few hours. Since that night, when you and he . . . Since he came back, he is sadly changed!”
As Inos had not met him since then, she could hardly be expected to comment on that. But the bald statement worried her: changed? She was changed herself, of course—she was an adept now.
Emshandar was regarding her with an intimidating Imperial curiosity. ”Will you tell me what happened that night?”
So in spite of all his jolly little chats with Master Sorcerer Rap, the old fox had not managed to learn that? If Rap wouldn’t tell, why should she? Well, for one thing, she really had nothing to tell.
“I wish I could, Sire! It’s still not at all clear in my mind. Rap moved us both to . . . he called it the ambience. It’s another world, sort of. Beside this world and yet not part of it.”
“You obviously went somewhere. Can you describe it?”
She shook her head. “No words fit. Not light nor dark. Not silent nor noisy. No up or down. A world of mind? As hard to describe as a dream.” He did not comment, so she forced herself to continue. “Once he’d shared two of his five words with me, then he managed to wrest the power under control. He cured our burns, dressed us . . . sent me back.” It should have been the greatest experience of her life, and it was all just infuriatingly vague, and fuzzy. “I think he blocked my memory. I can remember the fire hurting, but not what the pain was like.”
Emshandar nodded solemnly, studying her face as she spoke.
“That’s odd, though!” Inos said. “I just realized . . . Zinixo told Rap a fifth word, expecting to kill him with a burnout. Then he would have got back the power he’d given away. But Rap shared two with me, and that reduced his overload so that he could control it. But when he killed Zinixo afterward, then he must have received all the power of the word they both knew?”
Emshandar took a sip of his wine, as if considering what to say, and when he did speak, he was obviously being cautious. “I gather that he didn’t actually kill West. He wouldn’t say precisely what he had done with him, just that the dwarf would not be bothering any of us again.”
Inos shuddered. One thing she did remember from those lost minutes was that Rap had been angry as she had never suspected he could be. He had frightened her.
“One other thing I must know,” the imperor said quietly. “Rap was a human furnace. How did you ever find the courage to rush over and hug him like that?”
“My aunt is always accusing me of being impetuous.”
“Impetuous? Plague of lawyers, woman! That was more than just Impeeuouu!”
“Well, Sire, I met a God once.”
She expected surprise, but he said, “Yes, I’ve heard.” He heard everything, obviously.
“And, seeing Rap about to die like that, I suddenly remembered what They told me—to trust in love. The warning seemed to fit. The man I loved needed help. It felt like what I was supposed to do.”
He shook his head wonderingly and raised his glass to her. “I admire you beyond words for doing it. Had my legionaries a tenth your courage, I would rule the whole world.”
Even adepts could blush all the way to their ears. “But Rap would not explain what happened?” Emshandar shook his bony head. The room was growing dim, the fire brighter. “No. And whatever it was, it seems to have scared the wardens spitless. Bright Water babbles. Lith’rian has disappeared altogether; he’s probably hiding down in Ilrane. And Olybino won’t talk at all. He just says that what happened is impossible. Which is not exactly helpful.”
“And Rap? Do you know why he’s avoiding me?”
“No. Some things he won’t discuss, and you’re one of them. But he’s changed, Inos. I didn’t know him very well before, but he is certainly not the same as he was.”
He stared at the coals for a moment. “If it didn’t sound so absurd, I would say he’s in deep trouble and needs help.”