“Arrived mad?”
“Very, very mad.” As if realizing how she was fidgeting, Oothiana pulled her hand away from her knee and folded her arms.
“It was a stupid plan anyway!” she snapped. “Even if he had learned four words and become a full sorcerer, he would never have been able to defy the warlock. Sorcerers as strong as the dwarf are historical freaks. Oh, Yodello might have managed to break free of my binding, but he’d never have broken the one on me. And he’d have had to face the warlock eventually. It was a crazy dream.”
It had been the sort of mad risk a man might take for the woman he loved, and for his children. Rap decided he could almost forgive the crime Little Chicken had uncovered in that jungle hamlet. Almost. What was being done to Yodello himself could never be forgiven.
Again the sorceress glanced around the room. Why were there mundane legionaries guarding this building? Who else was in here? Invisible guards?
The magic portal opened a crack, slashing a sliver of brighter light across a rug so threadbare that boards showed through it in spots. Rap’s heartbeat speeded up disgracefully. For a moment nothing more happened. Then the door swung wide, revealing a brief glimpse of a book-lined chamber with a fire crackling in a grate. A blast of air swirled through, and the door slammed shut by itself.
Silence again . . . except that the tension had just doubled, or tripled. The warlock was now present, and Rap no longer doubted that there were more bodyguards around than he could see.
Little Chicken looked puzzled. Oothiana was tense, staring straight ahead. The wind stirred the trees with a dry, insectile sound.
Then a voice spoke out of the air beside Little Chicken, and he jumped. It was the deepest voice Rap had ever heard, even deeper than Raspnex’s.
“Goblin! Tell me what you know about Bright Water.” Little Chicken’s eyes stretched wide, and he glanced all about and then licked his lips. Even his tongue seemed an odd color in this light. “Nothing,” he said shakily, “your Omnipotence. Not seen her. Not heard of her, until Flat—the faun—told me about her.”
“Tally your ancestors.”
The goblin stammered, then rattled off his forebears for a dozen generations.
Silence fell again, but Rap was not surprised when the voice addressed him next, from somewhere just in front of him. “How did you escape, faun?”
Rap explained.
There was no answer, no further question. Oothiana was still as a statue, not revealing the warlock’s position with her eyes. Why should the most powerful sorcerer in the world bother to play such tricks?
Then the sepulchral voice spoke again, from farther away. “In the morning we’ll give the goblin three fairies. Have you picked out three older men, as I ordered?”
“Yes, your Omnipotence,” Oothiana said.
The unseen warlock grunted. “Good. I’m tired of having them die without speaking. Too many suicides, too. It’s inefficient. That woman I was burning—has she recovered her wits yet?”
“Not yet, Omnipotence.”
“Exactly! It’s too slow. This way we’ll get three words quickly.”
There was no hint of regret in the voice, and yet the implications were enough to freeze Rap’s blood. Little Chicken had his mouth open and eyes wide, stunned by the idea of a woman being tortured.
“So you’ll have a goblin sorcerer!” Rap shouted.”What do you do then? You planning to torture words out of a goblin?” Oothiana started, shooting him a look of warning. Suddenly the warlock became visible. He had the same heavy build as his uncle, but his clothes were even shabbier-motheaten, and frayed at the knees. He was young and his shortness made him seem younger, yet his hair was as gray as the older dwarf’s; his colorless, unbearded face looked like stone freshly quarried. He stood in front of Rap, studying him with a look of cold dislike, nibbling at a hangnail. By repute, he was the most powerful sorcerer in the world. He could have been a farmhand, or a gardener’s boy.
He took his finger from his mouth. “No. I don’t plan to torture anything out of a goblin. I shall bribe him.” He grinned teeth like white pebbles. ”We both know what he wants, don’t we? And I can keep you alive as long as I want while he satisfies his ambitions.”
Little Chicken had apparently worked out what was involved. He grinned at Rap, also, gloating.
Rap failed to restrain a shudder. “Then he’ll kill you, too!” he told the goblin.
Little Chicken laughed gleefully. “Don’t care!”
“There!” said Zinixo. “That’s all arranged, then.” He spun on his heel and began pacing the room, gnawing his hangnail and thumping the dusty floor with heavy boots. Goblins, fauns, legionaries, fairies, legates-this dwarf’s indifference to other people was even nastier than Little Chicken’s deliberate cruelty. At least Little Chicken regarded agony as an honor and had been prepared to endure it himself when Rap bested him. Obviously Zinixo’s world held no one of importance except Zinixo.
After a moment, Oothiana said, “I found Arakkaran, Omnipotence. There’s shielding around the palace.”
Zinixo ignored her. Little Chicken was still beaming happily. Rap wondered how many invisible guards were present in the room, and what he would have to endure to satisfy the goblin, and why the magic casement had not done a better job of prophecy.
The warlock stopped his pacing. He put his back against a wall panel and let his gaze jerk to and fro around the room. “What’s keeping them? This isn’t some sort of trap, is it?”
“I’m sure it isn’t, your Omnipotence,” Oothiana said soothingly—”They’re ganging up on me!” His voice was an octave higher already, and rising.
“No, Sire! I expect—”
The dwarf jumped and spun around as the door flew open, but it was only Raspnex returning. He bore a long roll of fabric like a blanket draped slackly over his shoulder. He closed the door firmly.
“Well?” the warlock yelled. “Out with it, Uncle!”
“She’s coming.”
“Ah!” Zinixo looked around. “Ready? If she tries anything, strike at once! Blast the whole building if you have to.” Oothiana and Raspnex nodded obediently. Perhaps the unseen others nodded, also.
“Let her come.” Zinixo wiped a sleeve over his forehead; he flexed his thick shoulders as if readying himself for a tussle. Raspnex threw down his bundle in the middle of the room and kicked it. It unrolled and became a small oblong rug; an oddly shiny one, glittering in the dim golden glow of the lamps. Both dwarves backed away a few paces. For a moment no one spoke, and Rap sensed tension coming to a boil. Oothiana was kneading her hands together and the warlock chewing fingernails again. The older man had crossed his arms, but he was wary, also. He remained standing.
For a few moments the only sounds were the distant surf, grinding the coast with ageless hunger, and leaves skittering thinly in the wind. Rap was becoming inured to magic; the most incredible sorceries now seemed quite commonplace to him, and he was not at all surprised when a faint shimmer appeared above the little carpet and quickly solidified into a tiny woman.
Had he not been expecting Bright Water, though, he might not have recognized her. On the two occasions he had met her before, her garb had been a goblin woman’s long buckskin gown, but now she wore a frilly white dress, short and sleeveless. It glittered in a thousand dewy rainbow twinkles of sequins or perhaps gems, but it was also rumpled and soiled. Below the brief, flared skirt, her bare legs were fleshless as a crab’s, ending in incongruous boots. Her dusky arms and shoulders were scraggy and gnarled, her chest flat and leathery. In absurd contrast to her goblin-khaki skin, her hair shone a brilliant auburn, lush and youthful. It had been piled high on her head and pinned there with combs of ivory—and apparently some time ago, for the coiffure was falling apart, and stray wisps and tresses tumbled loose. The effect was ludicrous, as if a crone had turned herself into an adolescent to go to a ball and then changed only partway back. Judging by the hair and the dress, the ball had been over for days.
Strangest of all, a pale-pink flame burned upon the hag’s humped left shoulder. It flickered, changed color a few times, and congealed into the shape of a small, crouching animal. But it was still glowing and Rap’s farsight could detect only a vague, fuzzy presence and an odd sense of something alive.
“Well!” the warlock shouted. “And what is the witch of the north doing with a dragon?”
Bright Water wheeled around to look for him. The light on her shoulder brightened and seemed to grip harder, as if afraid it might fall off.
“A gift!” she shrilled. “Isn’t she lovely? Precious, I call her, a present from Lith’rian.”