“Seeing the world through the eyes of a nobody—it’s frightening! You know, I almost didn’t want to go back to being my own self?”
Rap had not thought of the gentle Quip’ as a nobody. He had felt much more at ease with him than he did with the sinister, deadly warlock, despite their identical appearance.
Lith’rian removed his cap. He pulled off the feather and dropped it into the river. As he replaced the cap itself, it changed color to match his shirt. The silence continued until Rap began to find it oppressive.
“You said . . . I mean, Quip’ said that you must either cut off my head or go to war with Clan’nilth—your Omnipotence.” The warlock nodded. ”That’s what the rules say.” He patted Rap’s hand on the rail. ”But there’s a couple of ways out, very old precedents. Once a young man of the Clan’lyns uttered the Sublime Defiance against the Clan’ciels and knelt in his own father’s shadow. His father was rich, and apparently stupid. Anyway, he sent the golden bucket, but the head in it was a replica.”
Rap felt an invigorating surge of relief. “That was acceptable?”
“Perfectly. It was solid gold also.”
“I can see how that would help.” Lith’rian nodded. “I think it will work in this case. We’re in a civilized spell at the moment in Pandemia, when civil wars seem to be in poor taste.”
Rap risked another step. “Then you don’t share Quip’s views on the most appropriate outcome of my quest, your Omnipotence?”
The warlock snorted. “His sense of the romantic is revolting. Gushy sentiment! What would you expect from a dishwasher?” He lifted his face skyward, staring at a circling seabird. He sighed. “No. I know a much more romantic ending.”
“Tragic or happy?”
The elf sighed. “Too close to call. The balance trembles still.”
No more answers, obviously.
“Still, Rap, you did very well in diverting Allena straight here.”
No need to ask why it had all been necessary. Elves liked things done in style, never the easy, obvious way. “It was a wild trip, your Omnipotence.”
“You’re going to have a wilder one. I’d estimated eight days was the absolute minimum, twelve more likely, and you got here in nine. That will help. ”
“Help, my lord?”
“Time is very short. Very! I can’t even take you to Valdorian to complete the Sublime Defiance ritual, appropriate though that would be. Regretfully, the Rap’rian who goes to Valdorian will be a facsimile, not the real you. Here comes your transportation now.”
A small boat was gliding across the blue mirror of the channel, heading for the ship and pulling a lucent fan of ripples. Allena was tied up now, and both crew and passengers were concentrating their attention on the far side of the deck. Nobody seemed to notice the mysteriously speedy boat, although its sail was flapping around chaotically as it came up against the slight breeze. It carried three young elves, skinny golden boys wearing almost nothing. Two of them were fighting for the tiller, but the boat was paying no attention to the rudder anyway.
On the other side of Allena’s deck, shrill shouting had broken out as some of the passengers learned for the first time that they had been brought all the way to Vislawn and not to Malfin. Filthy as a common sailor, wiping horny hands on his pants,
Gathmor came striding over. He stopped and frowned, as if he had forgotten why he had come.
“Captain Gathmor,” Lith’rian said pleasantly. “Bring a rope ladder quickly.”
Gathmor opened his mouth and then took another, harder look at the adolescent elf. “Aye, sir!” he said, and ran.
Rap drew a deep breath, not sure whether he even dared ask the question. ”My lord . . . Where is Inos?”
“In Arakkaran.”
“Still?”
“Again.”
“Bright Water said—” Rap began.
“If you mean that night in the Gazebo, I know exactly what happened, and what was said. Exactly.”
Rap sensed a challenge. “You do? I mean . . . Oh! Fire chick?”
Lith’rian’s eyes danced in rainbow colors and he nodded. “You were the fire chick?”
“No, but I used it. They have odd properties, dragons. Useful, sometimes. Couldn’t let Bright Water go into that nest of tunnel rats without support. And you mustn’t take anything she said then too literally. You do see why she betrayed Inos to the mole though?”
Of course elves liked dwarves no more than dwarves liked elves, and Rap sensed unsteady footing ahead. “No, my lord.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” Lith’rian said snappily. “We’re stuck with that dweller-under-rocks as a warlock, but we can’t have him thrashing around on his own, threatening everyone, so we have to educate him into a few alliances. Allies can keep him under some sort of control, right? So Bright Water offered him Olybino’s head on a plate, see? And the way that nervous neatherder thinks, if you give him an opportunity, he at once suspects it’s a trap and goes in the opposite direction. The same with Inos—Bright Water said I’d stolen her from the Rasha woman, but of course Rasha was merely hiding her from Olybino—the witch had predicted that, because only a woman can forecast how a woman will think, so she was waiting ready to track Inos—and that let her give the mole a chance to steal Inos away from me and from Olybino’s sector and offer her to the imperor as a bribe for support or else to reveal the supposed plot to Olybino and try to bribe him and either way he’d think he had gained an ally, either East or Emshandar. Follow?”
“Er . . . What went wrong?”
“Olybino did, of course. Idiot! He cut the knot by telling Emshandar that Inos was dead, so the plan unraveled. Then Inos herself went and escaped from the Rasha woman’s votary, and he had to use so much power to get her back that Olybino’s locals tracked him down and he captured her, only she wasn’t any value by then except a negative value as an embarrassment. He didn’t kill her, so now she’s back in Arakkaran. It’s all perfectly simple.”
Any less simple and Rap’s head would fall off. “Yes, my lord.”
“She’s in danger though,” Lith’rian said sternly, “in danger of making a terrible mistake. You must warn her.”
“Me, sir? I mean, your—”
“You.” The warlock sighed. “Quip’ was right about some things, lad. Arakkaran’s in East’s sector. I daren’t interfere.”
“But—”
“But nothing. You’ve already met two of them—which would you say was crazier? And the fourth, Olybino, is a fool, a pompous, frightened fool. He is being stupid, but if I meddle in his affairs then he may get much stupider. Things are too dangerously poised. I mustn’t give West a real ally!” He waved an expressive hand in an inscrutable gesture.
Rap said, “Oh!” His hopes spiraled down into endless dark. How could he help when a warlock daren’t?
“You will have to do it,” Lith’rian said firmly. “Or try, at least. I can give you help, but time is desperately short.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Gathmor came hurrying back with a bundle of dowel and hemp under his arm just as the little boat slid to a stop directly below the watchers, its sail hanging limp. The three youngsters gazed up with big expectant grins.
“Make it fast, sailor,” the warlock said impatiently, and Gathmor began bending the lines to a convenient cleat.
“What exactly am I to do?” Rap asked, feeling both alarmed and suspicious. He had never liked being rushed into things. “Do what the God told Inos to do—trust in love!”
“Yes?” Rap said noncommittally.
“And go and remind her of those instructions! Minstrel, you can play one of these?” Lith’rian held out a rack of silver tubes to Jalon, who had at some point begun to take an interest in the proceedings. Where the pipes had come from, Rap had no idea.
Jalon’s dreamy blue eyes widened. “Of course. They’re faunish, but I’ve used them.”
“Do you know `Swiftly Comes the Dawn’?”
Jalon pouted. “A Dwanishian melody on Sysassanoan panpipes?”
“Barbaric, I admit.”
“But I expect I can come close enough.”
“Good. And `Rest, My Beloved’?”
“That’s worse—but, yes.”
The ladder clattered down the side, and the boys began scrambling up.
“We’re going in that?” Gathmor protested. “Square sail? The mast’s set too far forward. It’ll do nothing except run before the wind.”
The warlock chuckled. “But this boat always has a following wind! Don’t pull faces, sailor. Sometimes magic serves the Good. So you must steer and Master Jalon must whistle the wind. `Comes the Dawn’ for more wind, `Rest, My Beloved’ for less. Any questions?”
The three boys tumbled over the side in fast succession, panting, grinning, and clustering excitedly around Lith’rian. He flashed them a smile and tousled their curls.
Rap had been peering down at the bundles in the boat. “That long package—swords?”