Then why had the Gods been worried? Not He would not interfere.
The world shimmered around him and seemed to darken. He cried out with a rending sense of loss. Inos! She was doing it! She would kill herself. Frantically he ran to his horse and scrambled into the saddle. He turned Firedragon’s head to the north and dug in his heels. And even as he did so, the world shimmered again, and shrank, and darkened about him. He groped for the ambience and it had gone. Inos knew four of the five words he knew—and she was destroying them.
8
A mundane could not travel as a sorcerer did, and his return took many hours.
Long before dark he saw the storm clouds gathering; snow began to fall at sunset, out of a lurid, bloodsoaked sky. He wondered if the Gods were about to level punishment for his defiance. He rode on without a pause, into the fury of an arctic storm.
Inos had done what she planned. Four of his words of power were gone, and he was thrown back to where he had been before he became an adept.
He still had farsight, a poor mockery of a sorcerer’s vision, but enough to follow the trail through the hills and lead him on to Krasnegar, even in driving snow and dense dark. That morning the world had been spread before him, all Pandemia; now his range was less than a league, a tiny patch of grass and scrub surrounded by nothing. He could not see what was happening in the town, and that was torture. He knew Inos had survived the destruction of three words, because he had felt them all go, but had she managed to survive the fourth? Even if she lived, what might such torment have done to her mind?
He still had his mastery for animals, and he used it to coax every possible hoofbeat out of poor old Firedragon. The stallion was game and stout-hearted. His breath froze around his nostrils, his hooves thumped the hard earth, and he strained his utmost for his friend Rap. The younger, stronger Evil could have done no more.
Somewhere on that long mad ride, Fleabag was lost. Probably the dog had just fallen from exhaustion, for Rap would have seen a wild pack pull him down. If so, he would recover. He would follow later if he chose, or else head south to the forest and survive in wolfish ways.
Rap had no idea how far he must travel, but he knew he must catch the night ebb tide or die before dawn. He drove his mount as he had never believed he could treat a horse, but his plight was desperate. Now he had no power to keep himself warm, or shorten his journey, or deflect hunger and fatigue. He was not dressed for the climate; he had brought no food.
Mostly he rode almost prone, leaning his face against his horse’s lathered neck, with one hand wrapped in his mane for warmth and the other covering his exposed ear. Every few minutes he would change sides. This was an ordeal to test a goblin, and it would have quickly killed a purebred faun. He especially cursed his inadequate boots, fearing he would lose his toes.
Caked with snow, man and horse pressed onward.
He was so battered and weary that he failed to register the shore cottages when they came within his range. At first his dulled wits tried to interpret them as strange rock formations. Then he recognized the sea beyond and saw that the flood was well underway. He was too late to cross the causeway before morning.
He let Firedragon slow to a walk and headed numbly for shelter. The workers would have fled to town when they saw the storm coming, and there would be nothing there to sustain him. Then his farsight detected a fire, and a man dozing beside it. Furthermore, there were horses in one of the new stables. At the cottage door, Rap fell from the saddle and just lay. He could not rise, but the man inside had heard the hooves even over the noise of the wind. The door swung open in a blaze of firelight, and he came shuffling out to help. He dragged Rap inside and swathed him in a blanket by the hearth.
Rap’s head spun giddily with the aftereffects of cold. His heart pumped nausea through every vein, and pain besides. He shivered so hard he could barely sip at the steaming mug the old hostler thrust into his hand.
Hononin took Firedragon to the stable to rub him down and bed him with the other horses. One of those others was Evil, but he was well tethered, and Firedragon himself was much too weary to make trouble.
Shadows leaped over the rough stone walls and the dirt floor. The wind howled around the slates, and blew puffs of eye-watering smoke into the little cottage. In the distance surf pounded the shingle.
Then the old man returned to kneel at Rap’s feet and rub his toes with horny hands in exquisite torture. By then Rap was just able to speak.
“How is she?” he croaked.
“Don’t know,” the hostler said in his usual grumpy fashion. “I been here since afternoon. But she wasn’t in good shape when I left.” He took the mug from Rap’s shaking hand and refilled it with more soup from the pot on the hob.
“She said you’d be coming,” he muttered. “Called me in while the bell was still ringing. Said you might be coming soon.” He shook his head wonderingly. “She’s got quite a way to her, for such a slip of a girl. She looks at a man with those green eyes! Suddenly whatever else he wants to do just don’t seem important any more. After, I wondered if she’d just gone crazy. Decided I’d better come see, anyhows. There was only one road you could come, and I figured you’d need a change of mount at the least.”
“You’re a good m-m-man, Master Hononin!” Rap said through his insanely chattering teeth. “How long t-t-till the t-tide?” His farsight showed the causeway, but the ink-dark sea ran swiftly over it, driven by the rising wind.
“Near to noon. You’ve got lots of time to sleep. I ought to go check again on that old plug you were riding.”
“He’s d-d-done me p-p-proud!” Rap agreed, his words almost lost in the clattering of ivory.
“ ‘Stonishingly like a stallion we’ve got up in the castle.”
“That’s j-just your imagination. How’s that big black to ride?”
“Murder. Just brought him along for the outing. Think you could handle him?”
“Likely. Tell me about Inos.”
“Well, she’s queen now. You know that?” The old man peered sourly at Rap with rheumy eyes. “Met a fellow once, couple a’ years ago, near enough. Came to my door one morning. Looked just like you, ‘cept he had goblin tattoos around his eyes. Was running with a goblin, too.”
“We fauns get around,” Rap said uneasily. The explanations he was going to need!
Hononin grunted. “Sailors last summer . . . brought some odd tales of goings-on in Hub. Seems there was a faun sorcerer—”
“I’m not a sorcerer!” Rap sniggered. Joy! The burden had gone. ”I am not a sorcerer!” He grinned at the old man and caught a faint answering smile.
“You don’t dress well for the climate, you know that? Meet many other travelers in the forest?”
“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow, I swear!” Rap mumbled. ”Tell me about Inos!”
The old man left off torturing Rap’s feet and threw more driftwood on the fire. “Today . . . No, yesterday. It’s morning now. She had the great bell rung, so everyone went running up to the castle to see . . .”
It had happened much as Rap had feared. Typically, Inos must have acted at once, as soon as he had departed. Having summoned as many of her subjects as she could assemble in one place—not in the Great Hall, though, but out in the bailey which was larger—she had climbed on the wall by the armory steps and had shouted out her words of power for all to hear. She had fainted after the third and been rushed indoors by the housekeeper and the seneschal. But she had rallied before the people could disperse and had insisted on going out to them again and destroying her fourth word, as well. No one knew what gibberish she had been trying to say. Krasnegarians in general had no knowledge of the words of power, and if any of those present had any inkling, they had not explained to the others. She was assumed to have had a brainstorm.
To tell a word weakened it. To broadcast it to hundreds or thousands of listeners would reduce it to nothing at all.
Rap would not have believed it was physically possible. He was not surprised that Inos had collapsed completely at the end. The council had been summoned, but then Hononin had gone off to gather some horses and bedding; he had caught the morning tide with minutes to spare.