She hugged Kade tighter, aware that one of them was trembling. Or both of them.
The hall was growing so dim now that it was hard to make out the details, but again Rap had leaned close to the sorceress’s ear. He choked, and again pulled away. “It still hurts!”
“Tell! Or I give Inosolan what I gave you! Last chance!” Inos tensed again, mad with her own helplessness. Azak growled wordlessly. At the far end of the hall, torches flickered brightly where the guard was lining up.
Again Rap bent to Rasha. He began to whisper, and stopped with a heart-rending groan. There was certainly no one else within earshot now, but apparently to speak a word of power for even one listener hurt about as much as Rasha’s occult tortures.
Someone shouted a command by the door, and the squad of family men began to move, starting down the aisle, at least fifty of them, bringing their flaming torches. Their boots thumped in steady cadence, and shadows began to shimmy behind the pillars.
Rap tried again, and this time seemed to finish what he was saying. Then he reeled back, doubled over and gagging. “Ah!” Rasha stiffened in triumph and seemed to grow taller. “Yes, yes!”
She spun around to face Azak. “Yes! Now I—” Rap straightened, staring at her.
Inos gasped and moved closer to Kade—the sorceress’s eyes were glowing red in the gloom. She tried to speak and produced only a gabble of gibberish. Azak took a step forward and stopped, grimacing. Now her face and hands were shining with a ghostly pink light.
Kade’s fingers bit into Inos’s arm. “Am I mistaken,” she whispered, ”or has her Majesty made a serious error?”
“Too much power?” Inos said. “Rap warned her!”
Rap clapped his hands to his head, as if hearing something inaudible to mundane ears.
Pale wisps of smoke trickled from the sorceress’s garments, her head and arms glowed through the silk. Then she either realized the extent of her danger for the first time, or else the pain overcame her defenses. She screamed.
The leading rank of family men stopped abruptly, others ran into them, and the march fell into chaos. Men stumbled, knocking over chairs, or one another. The leader roared.
Rasha whirled around toward Rap and held out her arms. “Take it back!” she yelled. She staggered forward, and he lurched away in horror. Smoke poured from her wrists, lighted by the red glow of her hands. She tried to speak again and the words were lost in an animal howl as her sleeves exploded into flame, followed at once by her headdress.
The sorceress blazed then, a human bonfire illuminating the hall and the royal party on the dais and the terrified faces of the close-bunched guards, whose eyes reflected her brilliance like the eyes of a wolf pack peering from a forest. Sparks and smoke roared up to the arches of the roof. Inos saw the glare through her eyelids; she gagged at the vile stench of burning hair and cloth.
The fire dwindled, the light faded into darkness, but the screaming continued, and Inos opened her eyes again to see. Rasha was still there. Her clothes and hair had burned away, but she herself seemed to be fighting back, hanging on to her mortal existence by some supreme act of will or sorcery. There was no fakery or pretense now, no tall queenly stature or maidenly beauty, only a grotesque roly-poly figure of hairless flabby skin, staggering around and keening with a shrill thin note that froze the ears. And the whole of that hideous figure shone like a lantern with an internal pink light, brightening the gloom of the hall.
Inos wanted to run to Rap, and could not bring herself to release Kade. The two of them hugged and shivered together. The guards were backing away down the aisle.
Again Rasha tried to appeal to Rap, holding out her arms in supplication. Again he refused her. She tried to speak, and every word burst from her mouth as a spout of white fire. She wheeled around in search of someone else to aid her, and her eyes lit on Azak.
Except that she had no eyes now. Where they should have been were two dark shadows in the blaze that was the front of her head. The shape of her skull was visible, shining through her flesh, and when she spread her arms toward Azak, the bones were visible also, burning white-hot inside her.
She tottered forward, one unsteady step at a time, all the way to the dais. Azak advanced to meet her, holding out a chair as if she were a dangerous animal he must keep at bay. He halted at the top of the steps, barring her advance.
Again she tried to speak, whimpers mingled with vomits of flame like a smith’s furnace. Inos could feel the heat; she thought she made out a few words—”Help,” maybe, and “Sorcerer,” and perhaps even ”Lover,” but that could have been imagination. The inside of Rasha’s mouth was hotter than a potter’s kiln.
She put a foot on the first step, and managed that, then swayed as she tried for the next. Azak was standing his ground against the heat, all his jeweled finery sparkling like a dew of blood, his face contorted in revulsion, but the chair he held extended before him was starting to smoke as Rasha neared it.
“No!” he shouted. “Go away! Monster!”
The Rasha thing raised its face to the sky and uttered one last, loud, ear-splitting howl of despair, and the word was clear: “Love!” It came out as a long jet of white fire squirting upward, and that cry of resignation seemed to burst the mortal bubble. The strangely resistant flesh exploded into flames, and for the second time the sorceress blazed as a bonfire—hotter and brighter than before, as her very substance burned away in a roar of sparks and fire. Azak dropped his shield, covered his face, and backed away.
For a moment the skeleton alone remained, standing on the first step, miraculously balanced, and every bone shone hot as the sun. Then it collapsed, even as it also was consumed in an upward rush of flame and ash.
The hall was plunged into silence and darkness. Inos could see nothing except a greenish afterimage of a skeleton and the stone glowing briefly red where its feet had rested, two faint footprints fading fast. The marble cracked like thunder.
“Bring those lights!” Azak roared, and the family men sprang to life. Two of the torchbearers hurried forward to brighten the scene.
Eyes recovered slowly, but soon Inos could make out the night sky framed in the high arches, their stone traceries speckled with stars, the faint curve of vaulting. Within the dancing yellow glow on the floor, nothing remained of Sultana Rasha but a stain of lime on scorched marble and a cracked step. And a nasty, burned smell.
“She’s dead,” Rap said in a thin voice. “Quite dead. I felt her die. I felt my power come back!” He walked forward and peered at the step.
“Free!” Azak threw back his head and bellowed the word so the echoes boomed. He brandished fists in the air. “Free of the harlot! Free to be sultan at last!”
“I thought she was to be your aide-de-camp?” Kar muttered the question so softly that Azak likely did not hear him.
But Inos did, and it confirmed what she had suspected. Rasha would have been in charge of occult defense in the coming war. Azak had bought two sultanas. Gone, now, all gone . . .
Azak gestured, and the family men hastily advanced, then spread out in a cordon in front of the chairs. He pointed at Rap. “Bowmen! If that man speaks one word without my permission—shoot to kill.”
With six arrows aimed on him at point-blank range, Rap shut his mouth and kept it shut. He tucked his thumbs in his belt and rolled his eyes ironically at Inos. He looked much happier than he had a few moments ago. But of course—Rasha was dead and Elkarath had not returned, so far as Inos knew. Whether he was a mage or only an adept as he claimed, Rap was senior sorcerer in Arakkaran. Her brain struggled to accept that idea. Rap?
“I have a couple of questions, prisoner!” Azak barked. “Azak!” Inos pulled away from Kade and hurried across the dais, her train rustling heavily after her.
Azak turned to face her, glaring. He put hands on hips. “You dare to plead for this felon?”
“I certainly do!” Inos snapped. “He is no felon. He rid you of the sorceress, didn’t he?”
“No. She rid me of herself.”
“Then you need a replacement advisor in occult matters. I will vouch for Master Rap’s loyalty. He is honest and trustworthy.”
“Loyal to whom? No, I shall have no hateful sorcery within my kingdom. He dies!”