Rap clambered out of his chair and summoned two more chairs from the cabin. He spoke formal greetings to the pixie, and hugged Kadie. He tried to believe that she was less wooden in his arms than before. He thought he even detected a hint of the old Kadie, a faint trace of devilry as she inquired sweetly if her mother had slept well.
“Of course not,” Inos said blandly. “Do sit down.”
Alas! Kadie was startled by the reply, so she had not been needling. Her green eyes flicked from Inos to Rap and back again. She was of an age to start appreciating her parents as people and not natural phenomena, but she seemed shocked to think they might still do that at their age.
The four of them settled in a circle, the youngsters insisting that the older folk take the more comfortable chairs. Rap invited Thaile to provide refreshments according to local taste, and she magicked up a cool and tantalizingly bitter fruit punch. The meeting was all very civilized and fraught with undertones. Was this merely a rehabilitation visit for Kadie, or was there a deeper purpose?
“Papa?” Kadie said with almost the old primness she had displayed when plotting mischief. “Tell us how the war is going.”
“I doubt if Thaile wishes to talk of such somber matters.”
“Oh, she does. I mean—” Kadie caught her friend’s eye and sniggered. “I mean, I am sure she won’t mind.”
Deeper purpose!
“She probably knows as much as I do, or more,” Rap said cautiously. He was certain that the Keeper had instituted the meeting with Toom and Raim that had triggered his visit to the caliph, but he did not think Thaile would be so cooperative, not with the woman who had slain her child and lover. Nothing was certain with sorcery, of course.
“The djinn army is still withdrawing, your Majesty,” Thaile said quietly. “The caliph still rides in a litter.”
“I am delighted to hear it. Please call me Rap unless you see me actually wearing my crown. I left it on the bedpost today.” She nodded solemnly. “So Thume is out of danger, thanks to you.”
“But can it stay that way?”
She shrugged. “Probably, for only sorcery can expose us and we have defenses against sorcery. How does your war go? Have you and, er, Inos had time to compare notes?”
“We have,” Rap said, wondering who else was listening to the conversation. “I doubt if we know as much as the Keeper does, but here is what we do know. Of the four wardens, East is dead and West, Witch Grunth, has been coerced into joining the Covin. Lith’rian is sulking in his sky tree, determined to throw away his life in futile defiance, and Raspnex we believe to be holed up in a Zarkian jail.”
Kadie said, “Jail, Papa?” in scandalized tones.
“A shielded jail. It is probably the safest place he could be. Every sorcerer seems to agree that open hostilities will break out on Longday, the day after tomorrow. That happens to be when the thanes of Nordland gather in moot to proclaim war against the Impire.”
Kadie bit her lip. “And that’s where Gath went?”
“He went to Nordland,” Inos said soothingly. “It is extremely unlikely he will manage to attend the moot.”
“And all the longships will be loaded with warriors when they head south,” Rap added. “They certainly won’t carry tourists. So Gath will remain in Nordland. He may actually have found himself a very safe stall.”
Kadie looked from one face to another, obviously wondering if she should believe this. Her concern for her twin was a good sign, though. Yes, she was better since that record-breaking weep with her mother.
“All sorcerers in the world know of the impending struggle,” Rap said, continuing his review, and wondering if the right word was struggle or just rout. “How many will elect to join in remains to be seen. If the fist clash goes badly, I expect most of them will remain in hiding—no one joins lost causes. If we can put up a good show initially, we may enlist more support.”
Who was we? Who was left? He suspected Zinixo was picking off the opposition like flies on a window. Olybino had gone. Grunth had gone. There had been no groundswell of support for them. Now he was out of it, also, unless the Keeper relented.
Thaile had been studying her hands, hunched in her chair like a woman four times her age. She looked up now with a frown.
“You don’t have any idea of numbers?”
“None. I don’t know how strong the Covin is. Hundreds, I expect, and it includes at least two of warden rank. Zinixo raided the Nogids and snatched more than half the anthropophagi. He must have collected a majority of the dwarves in his twenty years of plotting. Probably all goblin sorcerers were votaries of Bright Water, so he would have inherited them, apart from the two Raspnex found at Kribur. But Azak’s private little covin of djinns is still at liberty, as far as I could tell.
Shandie unearthed—I use the word advisedly—a sizable contingent of gnomes, who indicated that they might support him under the right circumstances.”
It sounded even worse put into words than it did when he thought about it in private.
He sighed. “I admit that it looks bad, Archon. Thaile, I mean. The anthropophagi and trolls who went to Dragon Reach must have been betrayed by Grunth, or most of them. The rest of the trolls would much prefer to stay in their jungle. Imps . . . I have no idea, although imps probably outnumber other races in sorcerers, so there must be many still at large.”
“But less than half?” Thaile said coldly.
“Very likely. The elves won’t fight, except to defend their sky trees. The pixies won’t fight, either.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you still say we should?” Put like that, the question had a horribly obvious answer. “That leaves jotnar and merfolk,” Rap said, avoiding it.
“The merfolk I know nothing about. Jotnar? I doubt that Nordland has many sorcerers. Jotnar despise sorcery.” Silence.
A pair of butterflies danced across the shadowed circle and waltzed away into the sunshine again. Rap thought of pixies. The Keeper was right. You should not try to turn butterflies into hornets.
“You have omitted one factor from your appraisal, Rap,” Thaile said quietly.
He looked at her in surprise. She seemed so young and so much an innocent country maid that it was easy to forget the wisdom her great power must have brought her.
“What’s that?”
“That you have been removed from the battle.”
“Me? I doubt that I would make any difference at all. I must be the weakest sorcerer in the world.”
“But you are the acknowledged leader of the counter-revolution. So now it is leaderless. What of the imperor?”
“As far as we know, he is in jail with Raspnex.”
Inos Intervened. “Shandie cannot be the leader. First, he’s a mundane. Second—Raspnex says—the other races will never rally behind an imp, and especially that one.”
“And I’m a half-breed?” Rap said. “A mongrel? Is that what he implied?”
“Not at all.”
“I never wanted to be leader.”
“Exactly. He said that it was only because you had repeatedly refused a warlock’s throne that everyone would be willing to accept you.”
Now there was perverse logic! It sounded more like an elf’s than a dwarf’s. So what was the purpose of this discussion? Was Thaile hinting that she might be able to help Rap escape from Thume if he still wanted to go and take charge of the war? And did he really want to? His review of the situation had emphasized just how horribly hopeless it was. Every race in Pandemia seemed to have lost more than half its sorcerers to the Covin, which meant that his cause was mathematically hopeless already. The few exceptions were hardly encouraging: djinns and merfolk totally unknown quantities, the jotnar probably of little account. That left gnomes. What hope of them ever even showing up?
Common sense said he should accept the safe haven he had found in Thume and let the world fend for itself.
“Thaile . -. .” He stopped. “Something wrong?”
The pixie was staring blankly into space. She muttered an apology and rose to her feet.
Kadie jumped off her chair. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Thaile murmured. “Have business to attend to . . .”
She faded away like smoke. Kadie screamed in alarm.
3
The sorrel gelding was a big, strong fellow, although he had a lazy streak. Ylo had been delighted to get him and had paid a ridiculous price for him. The roan was gentler, a placid little mare with a good seat, chosen for Eshiala. Now he could see that he need not have been so fussy hat woman could ride a whirlwind!
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