Zinixo chewed a fingernail. His suspicion seemed to darken the night. ”Show me!” he said.
Bright Water shrugged, almost dislodging the fire chick. She glanced around the room, then went into her weird dance again, waltzing over the magic carpet, and eventually arriving in front of the big oval mirror on the wall. She pouted at it for a moment, stroking her fire chick, which turned a ghostly rose shade.
“Must be almost dawn in Zark,” she muttered. “They may have struck camp already. “ The glass shimmered and changed. Rap discovered that he was digging his nails into his palmsthis was nastily reminiscent of the magic casement in Krasnegar, which had caused so much trouble.
Soon he heard a strange noise, unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was faint, but it came from the mirror, a monstrous bellowing, distant and muffled, as if filtered through a thick window. Everyone in the Gazebo was watching whatever it was that the witch was doing.
Without warning, a hairy animal face appeared in the frame. It bared giant teeth and roared.
Zinixo leaped to his feet. “What the Evil?”
“It’s a camel!” Oothiana shouted, and Bright Water cackled shrilly. The monster faded back into darkness. Now a pearly light flowed from the glass, as if it were a window to somewhere brighter than the darkness that still enshrouded the Gazebo. Bright Water’s shadow lay long on the floor; the lamps seemed to have dimmed.
Then a new scene appeared, a row of dark shapes under trees. Rap recognized the trees. They were palms, and Thinal had said that there were palms in Zark. He wiped his forehead and glanced at Little Chicken, who was scowling, and at Oothiana, obviously fascinated. Zinixo was still gnawing his finger. At the far side of the room, the fake goblin Raspnex was being inscrutable, thick greenish arms folded over his barrel chest.
The view crept closer to the dark shapes, and they became more distinct, a line of black tents.
“This one, I think,” the witch said. She might be crazy, but her sorcery was impressive. The tent that now dominated the view was much like all the others, except that it seemed to be flapping more, as if its ropes were loose, and its door flap hung awry. “Let’s see, shall we? Queen Inosolan!” Everyone jumped at her shout.
Rap eased forward to the edge of the couch. Nobody noticed. For a moment only the wind and the sea spoke, and the muffled monster howls from the glass. He held his breath. Inos? Alive and well? He could hear his heart pounding. Again the witch called out “Queen Inosolan!”
The flap moved. Someone scrambled out on hands and knees, then stood up, a dark-shrouded figure with long bright hair. She peered around as if to locate the voice. Even in the predawn gloom, Rap knew her. Tears prickled under his eyelids.
“There she is!” Bright Water remarked triumphantly, stepping aside so that everyone could have a clear view.
They were going to marry Inos off to Little Chicken!
“Oh, that’s very nice!” Zinixo said. “Tender and succulent! She shall be my guest until the Four have arranged a marriage for her.”
No! No! Rap lurched to his feet, ignoring a gesture from Oothiana. He bounded across the room to the looking glass. “Inos!” he shouted. “It’s me! Rap!”
Inos looked around, puzzled. The glass was muffling his voice. Then she seemed to see him. Her mouth opened, and he heard a faint scream.
Clutching the ornate frame with both hands, he yelled as loud as he could. ”Inos! It’s a trap! Run away, Inos! Don’t stay with them!”
He had hardly time to register another shape that came bursting out of the tent. It charged straight at him with sword flashing in the dawn. Yet an image in a mirror could not hurt him.
Magic could. Before he could utter another word he was hurled away by an invisible impact as heavy as a charging bull. He crashed full length to the floor, far from the looking glass.
Magic shadow shapes:
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
— Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§68, 1879)
NINE
Dead yesterday
1
The stones dug sharply into Inos’s hands and hip. She was sprawled on the cold ground with Kade’s comforting arms around her; shaking uncontrollably, not trusting herself to speak.
“I saw it, also!” Azak loomed protectively over them, still holding his scimitar and glowering around at the dawn. Fooni had come out, rubbing sleep from her eyes, bewildered but mercifully silent. Other people were emerging from other tents, alerted by Inos’s scream. The camels kept up their awful bawling in the background, and the peaks of the Agonistes glowed pink to the west.
“A wraith?” Kade repeated.
“I know not what else,” Azak snarled. “Not that I have ever seen one before. You knew him?” he demanded of Inos.
She nodded miserably.
Rap, oh Rap! It had sounded like Rap. It had looked like Rap, a faint transparent image in a blur of darkness. She had even made out his ever-tangled hair and the stupid tattoos on his face.
But why Rap? She had never thought of Rap as being wicked. Clumsy, maybe. Stubborn. Apt to do damage without meaning to, but never wicked. Yggingi had been an evil man. Andor, too, perhaps. Ekka had certainly schemed most foully. But Inos would never have imagined that there had been more evil than good in Rap. When the Gods had weighed his soul, then surely the balance would have been good, and gone to join the Good and become part of it forever, as the sacred texts said. Only a great sinner left a residue of evil that the Evil itself rejected and left behind to haunt the world as a wraith. Not Rap! If Rap had been judged so evil, than what hope was there for her, for her dead father, for anyone?
The others were approaching warily, starting to ask questions. Then the men noticed uncovered female faces and turned back. The women drew closer, jabbering.
“ ‘Twas nothing!” Azak insisted, whirling on them fiercely. “Merely a bad dream.” When they retreated in haste, he seemed to realize that he was still brandishing his sword; he sheathed it.
Kade tried to lift, and Inos let herself be helped to her feet. She fought to control her trembling limbs. “I’m fine!” she said. “Inos?” Kade whispered, blue eyes wide. “Who was it?”
“It was Rap.”
“Rap? Oh, no!” But probably Kade was relieved that Inos had not seen her father.
“Who was this Rap?” Azak demanded. Inos just shook her head.
Kade explained. “A servant in her father’s house. A groom. He was slain by the imps, we thought.”
“He must have died somehow. There are no footprints where I saw him. My blade passed right through the vision.” Azak also was showing the whites of his eyes. He must be more troubled than he would admit. He rounded on little Fooni and roared at her to make coffee. Fooni fled. Kade helped Inos toward the tent, and suddenly her legs steadied.
“I’m all right,” she insisted. “I can walk.”
Azak lifted the flap, and they all went inside, away from prying eyes. Inos sprawled loosely down on her bedding and shivered. Kade drew a blanket over her shoulders for her.
“It spoke,” Azak said. “What did this apparition say to you?”
“It . . . he . . . it said something about me being in a trap. It said to flee, to run away.”
The big man grunted. He adjusted his sword and sat down cross-legged. ”Which is exactly what we were about to do.”
“We can’t now,” Inos whispered, thinking of the crowd that had appeared. She huddled the blanket tighter.
“Not today, anyway. Tomorrow we shall be farther inland, away from the boat. And it may not wait for us.” He scratched at his stubbled face and scowled.
“Wraiths are the embodiment of Evil!” Kade protested. ”Whatever it said we must ignore! It would be the height of folly to take the advice of a wraith!”
Inos looked at Azak and they nodded simultaneously. “We must not trust it!” he said.
Yet it had seemed so much like Rap! It had sounded so much like Rap, Rap very agitated about something. She had never thought of Rap as especially clever. Dogged. Well meaning. Earnest. And had Rap spoken as emphatically as that, he would have had good reason. He had never played silly practical jokes, like Lin or Verantor.
She discovered that her instincts were telling her to trust what the eerie vision had said. Run away! But Kade was being sensible. To take the advice of a ghost would be insanely foolish. Its motives would always be evil.