“Dad! Save us!”
“Got you!” The whisper swelled into command: “Gath! Here! Come now!”
Rolling drums:
Thy voice is heard thro’ rolling drums,
That beat to battle where he stands;
Thy face across his fancy comes,
And gives the battle to his hands.
— Tennyson, The Princess, vi
TWELVE
God at war
1
On being wakened by a howl of alarm from Kadie, Inos had realized that Rap was not in bed at her side, where he belonged. When she had calmed her daughter, she learned that he had gone, returned, and then disappeared again by sorcery. On this ominous day, she was disinclined to go back to sleep after that news.
Breakfast presented a problem, as there was no food in the cabin and no resident sorcerer to produce any. Mother and daughter set out for the Commons. They found nobody there, which was definitely odd. Had the entire College been abandoned? Something vital must be happening, somewhere.
“We’ll try the Meeting Place!” Inos said firmly, and they set off through the woods again.
In a few minutes Kadie exclaimed, “That sounds like the sea!”
The Meeting Place was nowhere near the sea. There was certainly something noisy ahead, though. “Or a large crowd?” Kadie jumped and uttered another howl, the second of the day. The poor girl’s nerves were in terrible shape, Inos thought, and then stifled a scream of her own. A monstrous mushroom-colored giant was grinning at her from the bushes. It was browsing on a banana tree and it had no clothes on. It . . . she. . .
. . . mumbled something incomprehensible through a mouthful of juicy leaf.
“Er, good morning to you, too,” Inos said politely, and walked quickly past, towing Kadie by the hand. “Only a troll,” she whispered airily, as if trolls had always been commonplace in her life. Trolls in Thume? Behold the millennium! She sniffed. “And there are gnomes around somewhere. Come on! This is becoming exciting!”
“Exciting? I don’t want anything else exciting!”
“History being made? Would you rather call it `romantic,’ then?”
Kadie smiled wistfully. “I think I would rather be at home in Krasnegar and never have another adventure as long as I live.”
“Now you are making sense!” Inos said, but it was not the sort of sense a fourteen-year-old should make. She was sickened by the change in her daughter. The old Kadie would never have made such a remark.
Hand in hand, they emerged into the Meeting Place. It was full of people, all the way from the encircling woods down to the little lake in the center—pixies, of course, but also clumps of bright-clad folk, clumps of drab-clad folk, and groups showing much bare skin.
“See?” Inos said with a calm that belied her thumping heart. ”I expect they’re all sorcerers. Your father has been collecting allies. Elves over there? And imps, of course . . .”
“Inos!” Shandie came running through the crowd in a resplendent doublet of imperial purple, bedecked with several jeweled orders and strewn with chivalrous sashes. He swept her into a hug. “And Princess Kadolan!”
Kadie curtseyed low. The imperor pulled her up and hugged her, too. He put an arm around both mother and daughter, laughing and trying to speak at the same time. His excitement was much at odds with his very formal dress. “Rap told me you were here, and my wife, too, I understand, and of course old Raspnex—”
“Things are going well, obviously?” Inos said. Those brown bushy-haired people must be the anthropophagi Rap had mentioned. They seemed to be wearing nothing but paint and bones.
“Things are going marvelously!” Shandie said. “I was worried about you, but Raspnex swore you’d be safe enough with the caliph.” His eyes were asking questions his mouth wasn’t.
Inos would not inform Shandie of her experiences with Azak, even were Kadie not present. Raspnex ought to lose his warlocking license. “I assume that Rap is busy at the moment?”
“Very! This is a historic occasion! There are sorcerers here from all over the world, all gathered to combat the Covin.”
“Fauns? And goblins!” There were more pixies than anyone else, of course. They must be terrified by this invasion. Then Inos located the center of the action, halfway around the clearing, with Rap himself towering over a group of assorted races, probably the leaders of the various factions. Certainly that was Warlock Lith’rian at his side, looking no older than he had twenty years ago. The male troll was even taller than Rap and twice the width, and there was a brown man with a bone through his nose. Another anthropophagus? That small, white-cowled figure was probably the Keeper, but fortunately Kadie had not noticed her yet.
“I don’t see any jotnar,” Inos remarked. “Except Jarga.” She returned a smile and a wave from the big sailor, who was conspicuous within a group of two or three dozen dwarves.
“No, she’s the only jotunn,” Shandie said.
“Mama!” Kadie cried. “Down by the lake—those are merfolk!”
“Where? Good Gods! Shandie, are those . . . Kadie, how do you know about merfolk?”
“Don’t worry about them,” the imperor said confidently. ”They’re sorcerers, so there’ll be no trouble.”
“I’ve never seen merfolk before!”
Shandie scowled. “Remember Ythbane? He was part merman.”
Inos decided that merfolk were odd-looking fish, with their pale skins and blue hair. She did not think she could ever find any merman attractive, whatever the legends said. She was still staring at them, and hence at the little lake, when a Nordland longship materialized upon it with a crack of thunder. Waves leaped shoreward, crashed into the banks, drenched the closer bystanders with silver sheets of water-merfolk and djinns, mostly. Others, all the way from the elves to the dwarves, were sprayed. Cries of alarm echoed through the glade, and half the pixies winked out of existence.
“Recent information,” the imperor said, “hints that the Nordland contingent may have just reported for duty.” Kadie screamed for the third time that morning, but this time she was indicating joy. The sinister craft was packed with oversize fair-haired, fair-skinned people, men and women both, but there was no doubt which one mattered to her. A lanky young man had leaped up on the gunwale and was balancing there, windmilling his arms as the longship rolled. He wore leather breeches like all the other men aboard, but he was the only member of the crew whose hair did not lie flat and he was grotesquely lank. He yelled, “Dad! Dad! I brought you some sorcerers!” and took a flying leap to shore.
He slipped on the muddy bank and disappeared amid the rushes with another violent splash.
Kadie squealed piercingly. “Gath! That’s Gath!” She vanished into the crowd like an arrow from a bow.
As a sodden Gath emerged and scrambled out, Rap came plowing through sorcerers and archons and warlocks. The two of them crashed into an embrace.
“Inos?” Shandie said reprovingly. “You’re weeping!”
True! The Meeting Place had disappeared in crystal mist and the pain in her throat was unbearable. She turned to the imperor and hugged him, burying her face in his velvet collar. “Rap safe, Kadie safe, and now Gath safe! Just a week ago I thought I’d never see any of them again!” She could hardly force the words out—sentimental idiot! This was becoming a habit. She stepped back, wiping away tears. Then she saw that Rap was holding his son at arm’s length with one arm, studying him, and his other hand was surreptitiously wiping his eyes, also. It was catching.
Shandie regarded her with fond amusement. “Well, from now on, you can brag about that boy of yours. He seems to have succeeded where you and I dared not even try! Congratulations!”
“Thank you.” Gath was taller than his father!
“If he ever wants a job, just send him to me.”
“I plan to leave him mine.” How strange! Inos recalled that not so very long ago, she and Rap had seriously doubted Gath’s talents and prospects for future kingship. Not assertive enough, they had thought. So now the kid had taken off on his own to the Nintor Moot—and that exploit alone would guarantee him the lifelong worship of all the jotnar in her kingdom—and come wandering back from the market with a few dozen sorcerers in tow . . .
“He must have been incredibly lucky!” she said.
“In my experience, luck is more output than input,” Shandie said dryly. “I understand my wife and daughter are safe, also?”
How much had Rap told him? “Yes, they’re well,” Inos said, intently watching her son and husband’s reunion, Kadie’s frantic progress around the lake, the jotnar disembarking, the panicky pixies’ efforts to distance themselves from those ultimate terrors, the white-haired demons.
“But not Ylo?”
“No,” she said, “not Ylo.” She glanced cautiously at Shandie.
His expression was bleak. The glint in his eye was a challenge to their friendship. “I must stay here. Can you bring my wife to me?” It was as close as he could ever come to pleading.