“Go away!” he mumbled through salt-cracked lips. “Shoo.” The gull tried the other eye.
Another gull flapped down on his other side, his left side, out of sight.
“I’m not dead yet. Come back in an hour or two.” The first gull waddled two steps forward.
Humiliation! To be so weak that a stupid seagull could peck his eyes out! He wanted to weep with frustration. “Shoo! G’way!”
More gulls shrieked overhead. They would swarm over him like flies. If he could only have a drink of fresh water, he might find the strength to move. Drinking seawater drove a man insane, didn’t it? He had probably lowered the level of the oceans perceptibly. His head was spinning and his belly was racked with cramps.
The gull spread its wings and began to flap madly. It took off, low above the sand. What had scared it? Over the rumble of the surf, Rap heard a voice, a human voice, shouting.
With a mumble of relief, he contrived to turn his head and look to his left. A girl was running over the sand toward him. She had long black hair, like Kadie.
He made out the word she was shouting as she ran. He must be delirious already. He was having delusions.
4
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy . . .”
Delirious or not, by the time the apparition reached him, Rap had managed to struggle to his knees. It could not possibly be Kadie, and yet it looked just like Kadie-thinner, perhaps, than he recalled, but a juvenile imp with trailing black hair and emerald eyes. She wore a long striped skirt and a white cotton blouse. And a sword? Obviously it was an illusion! But it sounded like Kadie. It stopped just out of reach and regarded him nervously.
“Papa?”
He held out trembling arms and tried to speak her name. What came out was a strangled croak: “Water?”
She backed away a couple of steps and looked around. No, that was never Kadie! Rap slumped limply to the sand. There was another girl . . . woman? Sorcery? No, for magic could not penetrate his shielding. Delirium!
Then a beaker of cool water was thrust at him and hands helped him hold it to his mouth. He drank and drank. He threw it all up and then drank more.
“Why are you shielded?” a woman’s voice asked. “If you remove that shielding, I can help you.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh. There isn’t much to it. There!”
Occult strength poured new life into him. His pain vanished, his head cleared. He blinked and returned to reality with a rush-gritty sand, baking sun, saltwater, and the rumble of the sea.
Two girls. One could only be a pixie. Her eyes were elvish, big and slanted, but gold. Her ears were even more pointed than an elf’s, but her hair was hazel, her skin fawn, her nose wide. She was very young, unless pixies, like elves, did not show their age. The other was either his older daughter or an exact double. .
“Kadie! Is it really you?” He scrambled to his feet in joy. Kadie flinched at his approach. She went rigid in his embrace and did not respond. When he released her, she stepped quickly to the other girl’s side, looking horrified.
“Kadie?”
“She has had a harrowing experience, your Majesty. “ Only now did Rap register the ambience. It was a ghostly shadow of the ambience he had known, indicating his loss of power, but the pixie was rock solid in it. She must be a very powerful sorceress.
He bowed unsteadily to her. “I am Rap, of Krasnegar.”
“I am Archon Thane of the College,” she said aloud. ”Your daughter was a prisoner of the goblins, “ she added privately. ”They did not harm her physically, but she has not yet recovered from the ordeal. Perhaps more clothes would calm her–she seems to mistrust men with bare chests. May I assist?”
“I’mm very glad to see you, Papa,” Kadie said uncertainly. ”Oh!”
Rap had said, ”Please, “ to the pixie, and been immediately clothed in shirt and long trousers and sandals, with loose, cool cotton replacing his sodden wool breeches.
“Kadie, my darling!” Again he offered his arms, and this time she seemed more willing to be hugged, now he was no longer a half-naked castaway. Yet again she returned quickly to the pixie, her smile unconvincing and troubled. Where was his little minx, the juvenile harridan who tried to run the entire kingdom? Where was the irrepressible tormentor who battled her wits with her father in make-believe revolutions? Had reality so damaged the starry-eyed storybook princess? Tears sprang to his eyes. Oh, Kadie, Kadie!
“Who did this? And what?”
“She was a prisoner of goblins for many months,” the sorceress said sadly. ”Dawn alone will not banish such nightmares. ”
“Kadie—your mother?”
Kadie blinked uncertainly and surreptitiously clasped the other girl’s hand, as if in need of reassurance. “Mama and Gath went off with the imperor, Papa. I don’t know what happened to them.”
“Kinvale? The goblins took Kinvale?”
She nodded, edging even closer to the pixie. “They burned it and they were going to kill the imperor but Gath saved him I mean Mama did because Gath told her who he was and then Death Bird took me as hostage and was going to marry me to his son Blood Beak and the other three were sent off with the dwarves.” She blinked fearfully at him.
Marry her? Dwarves? Where did dwarves come into this? Rap clamped a hold on his tongue. As the Thaile girl had said, Kadie was obviously in a state of distress. Sorcery could heal damaged bodies, but not bruised souls. Oh, my fledgling!
“I’m so glad that you’re safe, anyway!” he said, forcing a smile.
She returned the smile doubtfully. “And you, Papa. I kept hoping you would come and rescue me but you never did. I prayed to the God of Rescues. Is there a God of Rescues?”
His heart felt as if it were being squeezed. “I don’t know, Kadie. But someone rescued you?”
“Thaile did!”
“She was at Bandor, your Majesty.”
“She saw the massacre?”
“She was the only survivor. I detected her sword.”
Sword? What sword? Rap peered in bewilderment at his daughter. He remembered that he had seen her wearing a sword a moment ago. Oh! Yes, there was indeed a rapier hanging at her side, but now it was fuzzy and hard to make out. How had Kadie ever acquired a magic sword? And Kadie the only survivor of that appalling destruction, his child?
He took a very deep breath. Then he looked around, concentrating. The three of them stood at the water’s edge on a long white beach. Inland lay grassy dunes and clumps of trees, and low hills beyond them. The serenity of the land was as palpable as the sunlight. Thume. He was in Thume. With Kadie.
The other girl—woman—was regarding him anxiously. “So this is the Accursed Land?” he said, trying to believe it. “I knew that there were people still, because my wife visited here, many years ago. I suspect that there was sorcery. I had trouble making anyone else agree with me. The inattention spell is extraordinarily potent.”
“I know about your wife. Very few come and depart safely, your Majesty.”
“Please call me Rap. And your title—Archon? Are you a ruler here, then?”
The young face was solemn. “Thume is ruled by the Keeper, and I have to take you to her at once.”
Mm! His wild hypothesis seemed to have been proved correct. There was sorcery in Thume, much sorcery. That did not mean that he would be a welcome visitor, of course. Kadie had definitely flinched at the mention of the Keeper, whoever she was.
But Kadie was safe, if not quite unharmed, and that was wonderful. Yet, like him, she was an intruder in a closed land. A long time ago a God had warned him that he must lose a child. Kadie? He had a horrible feeling that part of Kadie had been lost, perhaps forever.
Or Gath? And where was Inos?
Perhaps the Keeper, whoever she was, would have some answers.
5
Like some gigantic millipede, the caliph’s army crawled along the coast of the Morning Sea. On one hand rose the barren crags of the Progistes Mountains, on the other white foam washed the cliffs. Only seabirds kept vigil in the vast bleak terrain.
This no-man’s land was unmapped, but there were old records of Imperial armies invading Zark across these borders, so a return journey must be possible. At times progress was halted by the need to bridge wadis or scout a passable route, and water was strictly rationed. By and large, though, the expedition was proceeding on schedule.
The caliph was pleased. So Zarga said.
Azak had carried through on his promise to bring Inos back to Thume. She journeyed in a screened wagon with six of his women. It creaked and rocked and tortured her with nausea. Its heavy drapes cut out all view of the world and made the interior insufferably hot. Drawn by oxen, unsprung, the cumbersome vehicle tossed its unfortunate passengers around on their silken mattresses. At times it would lurch bodily sideways and they would all slide together, ending as a screaming heap of cushions and nubile female djinn. And Inos. Often she would wrench her twisted shoulder in these scrimmages, or bang her swollen face, and at such times she was hard put not to express her true feelings about the mighty Azak.