Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

What was Rap doing? He was bent over something, muttering angrily.

“Can’t you see?” she asked again, shivering as her sweaty skin cooled.

“No. Daren’t use sorcery.”

“By the Powers! What have you been doing all night, then?”

“That’s different. Not me.”

What was the use of having a sorcerer for a husband if he couldn’t even see in the dark? Then the huge dark shape right in front of her uttered an ear-splitting whinny and she realized that Rap was fumbling with the tether.

“Got it!” he said. “Up!” He lifted her onto the horse’s back. Hooves clumped the pebbles. He tried to scramble up after her and almost pulled her off.

“Who’s there?” demanded a harsh voice close by.

“No one,” Rap said. “Umph!” He was aboard. “Lie flat!” Either he used occult mastery on the horse, or else his faun gift for animals was enough by itself. The beast took off through the night like an arrow, as if the Evil itself were after it, hooves thumping up the valley. Inos sprawled forward, head alongside its neck, clutching its mane with both hands and trying to favor her bad arm. Rap was on top of her, crushing her, clinging madly. Half the jeweled sash was between them, and with every bounce his weight drove it into her back. Branches caught in her hair and slashed at her legs. It was the wildest ride she had ever known, wilder even than the time she had demonstrated her riding skills for Azak and the princes, long ago in Arakkaran. Time and again she thought they were both about to slide off and crash to the ground. Time and again their steed stumbled and recovered, whinnying with terror. Whatever Azak had been planning for her could hardly have been worse than this.

Fires rushed by. Men were shouting everywhere, and camels roaring. The horse could not understand that it was invisible and silent-it was past caring anyway. Unsuspecting soldiers were smashed aside like puffballs as it thundered through the camp. Then the woods were dark and deserted. The exhausted mount began to slow.

With no warning the trees ended, the slope reversed, and the horse clattered and slithered down a shingled incline. It came to a shivering halt.

Rap straightened. Inos straightened. She felt as if she had been dragged behind on a rope, the whole way. Her shins and feet had been whipped raw. Overhead whirled the stars, and before her-more stars. For a bewildering moment she thought the world ended there, until she realized that they stood on the verge of a huge dark lake, reflecting the sky.

Rap slid to the ground and helped her down and held her. She would have fallen without that support.

“All right?”

“No, I am not all right!”

“Fussy! Never satisfied. What’s bothering you now?”

“Let’s start with my jewel-encrusted spine.”

He chuckled and hugged her tighter, even as he applied sorcery. Her pains eased and were gone. She sensed her tattered veils solidifying into warmer, more modest wear, soft wool. Shoes clutched her feet. Relief! Wonderful, wonderful sorcery!

She clung to him, hearts beating together. “Oh, Rap! Gad, I have never been so glad to see anyone as I was to see you tonight.”

“I should hope not!”

He kissed her. There was no passion in the embrace—that must wait for later—but there was love beyond measure. Rap, oh, Rap!

After a while he said, “And I to see you. The Gods were good to both of us tonight.”

That did not sound like the Rap she knew, but she was not about to disagree. In the background the horse splashed its hooves into the lake and began drinking noisily. Far away down the valley the camels still roared.

“Oh, how I missed you!” Rap said. “You can’t imagine.”

“Yes, I can. I know exactly.”

He squeezed her again. “I have never understood how I came to deserve you.”

“The honor is mine, all mine. And Kadie’s all right?”

She detected the tiny pause, the hesitation. “Physically she’s all right. The goblins didn’t hurt her, but she had a very long, very hard ordeal. And then . . . you know what happened to the goblins, at Bandor?”

“I heard.”

“She saw it. She hasn’t quite recovered yet. She needs her mother.”

“Take me to her, then.”

“In a minute.” Rap stepped back, still holding her hands. “Gath went off to the Moot, you say?”

“We were in Urgaxox. The word was that it would be a war moot. We decided it would be useless to go, and far too dangerous, but Gath—”

“Who’s `we’?”

“Shandie and I—”

“Shandie! Shandie’s all right? He’s still with you?”

“Gath saved him from the goblin—”

“Kadie told me.”

Of course! She thought of all the things that had happened since she parted from Kadie, then decided they could wait

“The last I heard, about a week ago, the imperor was in a jail back in Zark. Warlock Raspnex is there, too, I think.”

Rap uttered a disbelieving bark of a laugh, almost a cry of despair. “A warlock in jail?”

“As far as I know. Gath hitched a ride on a longship going to Nintor.” She steeled herself to ask the question that had tortured her for weeks. ”Rap, does Gath know you killed Thane Kalkor?”

This time the pause was longer, more worrying. “I think he does, but he can’t know all the implications. You don’t mean he hitched a ride with Drakkor, do you?”

“I don’t know who he hitched a ride with. He dreamed it up all by himself.”

“But why?”

“Because he thinks you’re dead. To help your cause. To be worthy of a father he loves and admires and mourns.”

Rap made a strangled, choking noise. His face was a blur in the night. ”Midsummer! The moot’s held at Midsummer, and the evil begins then.”

The God had told him he must lose one child. She felt her nerves beaten raw, and a hundred years old. “How is the war going, Rap?”

“Poorly. Tell you everything tomorrow.”

“Take me to Kadie.”

He sighed. “I’ll try. I just hope this will work.” He raised his voice, calling into the night. “Archon, we are ready!” Everything vanished at once: the stars and the starlit lake, the sounds of the horse, and the cold.

The air was like steamed towels wrapped around her head. It reeked of earth and rotting leaves. Inos sensed thick jungle, drippy and likely dark even in daylight. In the night she could see nothing at all. Rap’s arm was around her.

“There’s a door just ahead,” he said. “The side door. It’s level ground.”

She let him ease her forward “Where is this? Where are we?”

“In Thume. This is the heart of it, the holy of holies, the Chapel.” He sounded displeased, as if he had hoped to be somewhere else.

Ancient hinges groaned. She saw something—not truly light, but a different quality of darkness. Rap went first, ducking his head for the archway, and she made that out. She followed.

The inside was vast and blank and still almost dark. In one corner a bluish gleam fell on a group of people, but even they were indistinct, and the rest was all shadow. She could not see where the light was coming from. It seemed like moonlight, but there was no moon. The air was much cooler than it had been outside, and musty like old attics, yet the floor was clean, not heaped with leaves or bat droppings. She walked forward at Rap’s side, clutching his hand, that strong, familiar, welcome hand.

Nine people—she counted them—kneeling in a row with their backs to her. They had left a gap in the muddle, four on one side, five on the other.

“Sh!” Rap squeezed her hand tightly. What God was worshipped in this chapel?

They reached the gap, and Inos saw that there was a tenth person present, beyond the glow, a dark, hooded figure standing alone in the corner, holding a long staff. Her scalp prickled. Whatever or whoever that was, it was not a God, for she had seen a God once, and yet the nine seemed to be praying to it. What manifestation of the Evil was this?

And then, to her astonishment, Rap knelt, also, tugging on her hand. Dumbfounded, Inos obeyed. She could never have imagined Rap kneeling to anyone. Even to the Gods he knelt reluctantly.

A voice came from the venerated figure beyond. It sounded like fingernails scratching on pottery, almost too quiet to be heard, even in this enormous silence. It might, just possibly, be female.

“You have proved yourself a friend to Thume, Rap of Krasnegar.”

“Thank you, Holiness,” Rap said with what sounded like genuine humility. “I think the caliph will depart and take his army with him. He will not be riding a horse, though.”

“You did well not to kill him.”

“I surprised myself.” There was a hint of a more normal Rappish humor there.