She sickened him—how could any human being exist in such condition? But in a gruesome fashion he found her fascinating. He kept trying to imagine her cleaned up and properly clad.
If Ugish was thirteen or so, then his mother must be over thirty, surely, but she had a figure any adolescent could envy. Perhaps sorcery had helped there, and bearing tiny gnome babies might not be very taxing to a woman of a tall race. Also, he had a vague idea that elves were long-lived.
Although he kept reproaching himself, he still felt very uncomfortable at the idea of an elf marrying a gnome. He was convinced that her obvious infatuation must be a product of sorcery, and yet Ishist himself seemed equally besotted. Could a sorcerer bespell himself? Would he ever want to? And who was Rap to question the follies of love when he had been crazy enough to fall in love with a queen?
Finally, at the top of a breathlessly winding spiral staircase, Athal’rian brought him to a place that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Inisso’s chamber in Krasnegar and almost as large, the uppermost room of a circular tower. The floor creaked alarmingly under his feet. Starlight seeped in through gaps in the corbeled roof, but the four tiny casements were tightly sealed, opaque with grime. The only furniture was a giant four-poster bed whose draperies were mostly cobwebs.
She waited by the door, peering doubtfully at him.
“It’s magnificent, my lady,” he said gamely. “I shall feel like a king in such royal quarters.”
Relief showed through the dirt, but her laugh had an awkward ring. “I know how difficult it can be to adjust to gnomish ways, Adept. No one has been here for a long time, I’m sure.”
He saw no need to mention that he had been relieved of his sense of smell. ”It is a beautiful room,” he insisted. “And it must have a wonderful view.”
He walked over to one of the casements and rubbed the glass. His farsight was blocked and he could see nothing in the starlight except that the walls were enormously thick, doubtless dragonproof.
His approval had filled the simple Athal’rian with delight, although she was smiling in the wrong direction, not having heard him move. “Well, you will want to rest. I’ll send Ugish or Oshat to call you when dinner is ready.” She floated into a curtsy.
He bowed, clumsy as a drunken troll. He thanked her and watched for a moment as she padded down off down the stairs on her bare feet. Then he took another look around the room. The holes in the ceiling had admitted bats, and some were already flitting around over his head, returning from their nocturnal outings. He could certainly use some sleep—but where? The bed would collapse if he laid as much as a hand on it. Beetles had fretted the woodwork; the thick feather mattress had been tunneled out by centuries of mice. There were hundreds of them still in there.
The floor might be as soft as the bed, though; both of them were inches deep in bat dung. He tried to pull the top cover from the bed and his hand came away holding a fragment of rag no larger than a kerchief. He sighed, chose the floor, and lay down.
3
Endlessly rolling from side to back and then back to her side, Inos had never spent a more miserable night, wondering a million times if she had somehow lost the ability to go to sleep without the aid of Elkarath’s sorcery. Whenever she did begin to slide below the surface of drowsiness, the four pixies were there at once, all around her, gloating and hurting, repeating their cruelties of the day and going on to achieve worse and worse things, until she awoke in spasms of terror, soaked and shaking and choking back screams. She despised herself then for such cowardice, but that did not help her escape the nightmares.
The little room was so packed with its four small beds that to move around without climbing over them was almost impossible. Two had remained empty, as a gesture of respect to royalty. Kade snored peacefully on the fourth, not stopping once all night. After months in a tent, the stuffy garret seemed confining as a coffin, and although its little dormer window looked out only on a sagging tile roof, it had an inexplicable ability to gather up the racket of the street below: sounds of carousing sailors until an hour before dawn, and then the wheels of wagons rattling over cobblestones. Where now were the peace and serenity of the desert?
Demons haunted the night, spinning giddy circles of mockery in her mind. She had not escaped from Rasha, nor from Rasha’s plans. Rasha would proceed to trade her to Warlock Olybino, and he in turn would marry her off to a goblin. Rasha might reasonably resent Inos’s attempted flight, and be in future even less considerate than before.
What spiteful punishment would she inflict now on Azak? Perhaps Inos should have married the sultan while she had the chance. For both their sakes.
Inos and Kade were royal guests, but also prisoners, for the door was locked. Only a cat could depart through that window. Having refused to give his parole, Azak had been led off to a dungeon somewhere.
Escape would not be so easy at Ullacarn as it had been at Three Cranes, with Elkarath now alert and watching for it. To slip away in a strange town with no friends or plan would be madness. No, the next escape must be prepared much more carefully than the madcap flight from the oasis, and Inos had no idea how much time she might have to plan. Perhaps noneOlybino might appear in the morning to take delivery.
Azak might no longer be a willing ally. Since Elkarath had suggested that Inos could use magic, the sultan had spoken not a single word to her. Had there been any truth in the accusation, then Inos could have understood. She knew how she herself had felt about the late Sir Andor and his foul sorcery, but in her case the suggestion was ludicrous. Kade had not helped by hinting that Azak was just angry at himself for his own shortcomings. Azak now regarded Inos as one of those shortcomings. And that hurt.
The House of Elkarath in Ullacarn was a great rambling old building, yet it seemed to be crammed with people from cellar to gable. The cramped little attic room was not exactly the Palace of Palms in Arakkaran, nor yet even Kinvale, but it was comfortable enough for just two. An attic was certainly preferable to a dungeon, a dungeon with fleas and chains and rats, Elkarath had said.
Azak had chosen the dungeon. Pigheaded idiot!
A mage could probably detect lies. Would Azak have given his parole to a mundane, meaning to break it as soon as he could find the opportunity? Were all men so stubborn?
And here was Inos, dancing naked on the grass and shouting unthinkable promises to dozens of young men, as they came running toward her to accept. But they kept turning to stone and sinking into the meadow as they drew near. Hundreds and thousands of them drowning in the ground, and every one of them was Azak. Then she awoke again, gasping and shaking.
Would she ever again be able to stand close to a man without expecting rape, without breaking out in a sweat of terror?
She had remote relatives in Hub, some of them very influential people. Senator Somebody, for example. Kade had innumerable friends there also. Ullacarn was allied with the Impire, and so the post must call here. If Kade could write a letter, enclosing a petition to the imperor or the other wardens, then they might be able to deliver it for her. That was one possibility. Ullacarn was a busy port. That was another.
But how could one ever deceive a mage and a sorceress? Again Inos was back in the forest meadow, and this time Rasha was there also, laughing uproariously. She had rooted Inos’s feet to the ground, as she had once done in Krasnegar. She was watching and gloating as the pixies . . . but they were not pixies, now they were goblins.
A faint glimmer of dawn smiled in through the window. The entire Imperial army seemed to be shoeing its mounts down in the street, but the yearlong night was ending at last.
And again Inos was back in the forest, and this time the men tormenting her were djinns, and the glowing figure riding up to rescue her on a shining white horse was Rap.
Rap, who had remained loyal when the imps and jotnar of Krasnegar had turned against their queen.
Rap, the only man who had ever accepted a kiss from her without expecting more.