The uncanny sense of madness unsettled Rap. Zinixo, however, merely thumped his fists onto his hips and leaned forward, the better to scowl at her.
“How sweet! I never heard of South giving away dragons to anyone. Did this exceptional gift seal some secret agreement?”
“Oh, no!” The old woman cackled. “No, no, no! He knows I like them, that’s all. I’ve had fire chicks before, well before your time, sonny. Just hatchlings. Can’t keep them very long, you know! Haven’t got big enough shoulders!”
She shrieked another cackle of amusement and reached up to stroke the luminescence as if it were a kitten. It turned a warm blue—and Rap felt a strange purr. That wasn’t farsight; that was his empathy for animals. Apparently the flame was alive, or enough alive that he could hear its feelings, but the sensation was bitter and alien, like a metallic taste in his mind. He shut it out.
But he could not shut out the stories he had heard about dragons and metal, and there must be metal around this bizarre summer house. Nails, lamps . . . he glanced up at the windstirred lanterns, and they certainly looked as if they were made of gold, or at least trimmed with it. Gold was worst of all; all the tales warned about the terrible things that happened when dragons found gold.
“Now!” The witch turned around, peering. “Haven’t been here since the days of Ho-11th. Not much change. Same furniture, by the look of it. We ate mangoes on that sofa and threw passion spells at each other. Where did you . . . Ah! Death Bird! Are you all right, my sweet?”
Clumping in her boots, she marched straight off the mat, heading for Little Chicken, who was sprawled back in his chair, eyes and mouth wide with disbelief.
Zinixo twitched, as if startled.
The witch wheeled with incredible agility, the fire chick on her shoulder flashing momentarily orange. “Stop that!” she snapped. “That’s no way to treat guests!”
Pause. The warlock had bared teeth like rows of tombstones.
He was rigid as a granite boulder, and his youthful face gleamed wetly in the glow of the swinging lamps. His cheeks were chalky. Then he forced his grimace into a cynical and dangerous smile. He made a small bow, without taking his eyes off the old woman. “Of course, Grandmother. But don’t do anything rash.”
“Course not!” Bright Water said. “That’s—” The baby dragon flared green and flew up off her shoulder in an erratic, wobbling flight. ”Oh! Be careful, my Precious!”
The dragon chick fluttered around the room at head height as if exploring. Eventually it came to hover suspiciously above Rap. There was very little substance to it, but he thought perhaps he could see a dragon shape there more often than anything else. At times it was a star, or a bird, or a butterfly, and often just a blur of light.
The witch put two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. Precious changed to a nervous yellow shade and zigzagged back to her shoulder. Cooing, she stroked it until it was blue again. Strangely, the incomprehensible tension somehow faded then. Oothiana and Raspnex exchanged puzzled glances.
And the witch seemed to notice Raspnex for the first time. “What was I about to say?” she inquired stiffly.
The dwarf blinked and shrugged.
“Well, then!” she snapped. “Haven’t we met somewhere recently, young man?”
“We spoke about five minutes ago in the glass.”
“Oh?” She looked vaguely around the room and frowned at Oothiana. ”Aren’t you Urmoontra, what’s-his-name’s wife?”
“Her great-granddaughter, your Omnipotence.”
“Oh, Gods and mortals!” Bright Water shook her head sadly, causing another rope of hair to fall loose. “It is getting late, isn’t it? Bedtime, everybody.” She leered uncertainly in the direction of a potted palm, then curtsied. “Evening, Senator.”
There might be an invisible senator there, of course. Nothing was impossible in this madhouse.
Finally the witch discovered Zinixo. “And you, lad?”
“You know who I am, you stinking offal bucket! Stop the play-acting.” He stamped around her to reach Little Chicken, whom he indicated with a downward jabbing finger. “Tell us what your interest is in this.”
Bright Water blinked at the prisoner for a moment or two. Then she beamed, displaying a mouthful of huge goblin teeth, whose shiny perfection was not in keeping with her otherwise decrepit appearance. “Death Bird! Knew I’d put him some where safe. Couldn’t remember where. Isn’t the resemblance wonderful? ”
“What resemblance?” Zinixo was taut as a harp string, wary as a stalking cat, and growing madder by the minute.
“Blood Fan. My oldest brother, you know. When he was this age?”
”The oaf’s related to you, then? He doesn’t know it.”
The witch chuckled hoarsely, for what seemed like too long. Crazy, but not necessarily stupid—Rap had seen old Hononin act dim-witted often enough, usually when Foronod had gone barging into the stables to demand something the hostler had not wanted to grant. Almost always the factor had been driven to losing his temper and therefore the argument. This seemed like the same technique. If the witch made Zinixo much angrier, he might be capable of any sort of folly.
“He wouldn’t know,” Bright Water crooned. “Blood Fan was a sly lad, eh? A very quiet crawler when the fires were banked. Not a wife in the lodge didn’t feign sleep for him at least once. They caught him eventually and he put on a wonderful show. Almost three days. You’re very like him,” she added to Little Chicken, who was frowning as he tried to follow the outlandish conversation going on over his head. “Ho-11th liked mangoes, and what good did they ever do him, eh? Blood Fan fathered Gut Thrust on Petal Bed, and Gut Thrust—”
“And is that all?” the warlock shouted furiously, his anger booming like a mountain thunderstorm. “Is that the only reason you’re interested in him? That he’s some distant bastard descendant of yours?”
The ancient goblin drew herself up stiffly and tried to look down her long nose at the dwarf. She failed, because she was even shorter than he was, except for her tangle of red hair and ivory combs. “Course not. Fill your guts with hot coals. Do you mean you haven’t foreseen him?”
Zinixo seemed taken aback at the question. “No,” he admitted. ”He’s got a destiny?”
“Oh, yes!”
The warlock shot Oothiana a meaningful look. “You’re no good at this, are you?”
“Not much, Omnipotence.”
He nodded, then spun around to face Little Chicken. The goblin’s eyes rolled up, and he slumped in his chair, unconscious. His face turned a pale-lime color.
Looking intrigued, Raspnex moved in, also, so that the goblin was surrounded by three sorcerers, all staring down at him fixedly.
Oothiana leaned back on the couch. “My lady?” Rap whispered uneasily.
She did not turn to him. She was watching the room intently—especially the magic rug—and he wondered if she had been left on guard while the dwarves’ attention was on other things. “It’s very difficult,” she said softly. ”Like trying to follow a river through a swamp. There are always so many channels. Sometimes they join up again, sometimes not. Even the thoughts of people nearby can affect a man’s future. It gives me a terrible headache.”
“So all you can see are possibilities?”
“The Gods decree destinies for some mortals. Most of us are only given chances.” She smiled absently. “Of course someone like a quarry slave wouldn’t have many, would he? Any fool could foresee his future—more life unchanging, then death. A sailor, now, or a jotunn raider, he’d usually have so many they’d be almost impossible to unravel. But the rest of us . . .” She fell silent.
Inisso’s magic casement had forecast several fates for Rap—being roasted by dragons, being hacked to bits by Kalkor, being filleted by Little Chicken. Perhaps those had been alternatives that depended upon who did what first. That might explain why he had seemed doomed to die three times. If he could choose one of those deaths, though, it would never be the third.
“Can you foresee your own destiny, then?” he whispered. She shook her head, watching the others, but in a moment she added, “Very hard. Your own reactions change the images. That’s one reason sorcerers make magic casements, or preflecting pools.”
“I can kill him,” Zinixo muttered. In the dim golden glow of the whirling lanterns, his rough-skinned face was again shining with sweat. Raspnex’s was worse. The little goblin woman was scratching at her scalp with all ten fingers, making the precarious hairdo rock. The dragon had shrunk to a tiny wisp of yellow light, pulsating on her shoulder.
“That’s always a choice,” she croaked. “Not always wise, though. Time with all his banners rolling . . . See the faun?”
“No.”
“Push ahead. Back in the north. Snow! See now? All roads lead to the faun.”
“Almost all.”