“I don’t know, sir. It seemed important.”
Doctor Sagorn nodded in satisfaction. “It was the importance that was important, I think. You don’t like using your power, do you?”
“No, sir!”
Again the gruesome smile. “So you suppress it. You only do it, or think you can do it, when it matters a lot?”
Rap puzzled about that. He did not want to know that the king kept his crown in that big chest, at the bottom, under the fur rug, and he had just about convinced himself that there he was only guessing. The first time on the causeway he had desperately wanted to do a good job of driving the wagon—that had certainly been important to him. “Perhaps that is so, sir. Then you mean I have always had it?”
“Since it was given you, certainly,” the king said. “And it must have been your mother who gave it to you.”
“But . . . like my nose, your Majesty? Or my brown hair?” The king shook his head.
Rap was bewildered. “I thought maybe it was something I was growing into, like shaving.”
“Or holding hands with pretty girls?” The king smiled—almost grinned. “Oh, that was not fair! I am sorry, my young friend. Just a joke! Forgive me! I think what you are growing into is responsibility—serious matters, where such powers can be of use to you. I am told you have an uncanny knack with horses, also.”
“That I don’t mind, Sire.” Rap risked a smile of his own.
Sagorn made a sniffing noise. “He can call mares away from a stallion. ”
The king looked up, startled. “You jest!”
The old man gave him a curiously cryptic glance. “So I was informed by a certain minstrel who, quite typically, had lost his horse in the hills. Master Rap saved him. Then, not wanting to interrupt his lunch, he broke up a herd by shouting.”
The king looked from Rap to Sagorn and back again several times. ”Rap,” he said, “I am almost more impressed by that than what you did last night! Has this minstrel returned, also, then? I should like to hear the story.”
He looked to Sagorn, who hesitated.
“No, Majesty.”
The king started angrily, then turned to Rap. “I understand that you had two helpers. One was a stableboy?”
“Ylinyli, Sire. He is known as Lin.”
“I must thank him, also, then. The other was a stranger?”
“A gentleman, Sire,” said Rap. “He told me his name was Andor. ”
The king’s jaw clamped shut and he nodded, as if he had suspected as much. He glared again at Sagorn. “Why has he come?” The old man seemed almost as angry, but very careful. “I could not stop him, could I?”
The king looked furious now. “The minstrel?”
Sagorn nodded and the king turned to Rap. “I repeat what I told you before, lad. Guard that secret of yours—it may easily be worth more than your life!”
Rap wondered how he could guard something he did not have, but the king had not finished. “And in particular, watch out for that Andor man. He is as warm as sunshine and as slippery as ice. I shall have to lock up every maiden in the kingdom if he is around.”
Rap was very confused now. Why could the king not simply order the man away? True, the ships had gone and a journey by land at this time of year would be dangerous in the extreme. But a king was a king, was he not?
This king sank back stiffly in his big chair. He grimaced, as if in pain, and pressed his fingers against the lump in his side. What lump? Stop prying!
“Sire?” the Sagorn man said.
“It’s all right,” the king muttered, although his forehead was shining wetly. “Tell Master Rap about the words. Warn him of the dangers. He does not seem to know, and who better to tell him than the learned Doctor Sagorn?”
There was more to that remark than there seemed to be. The old man flushed angrily.
“With pleasure, your Majesty!” He turned to Rap. “Have you never heard of the words of power?”
“No, sir.”
Sagorn shrugged. “All magic, all power, comes from certain words. There are a great many of them; no one knows how many. But they are what gives sorcerers their abilities.”
Rap’s jaw fell open. “You are not saying I am a sorcerer, are you, sir?” Horrible thought!
“No.” The old man smiled slightly and shook his head. “But you must know at least one word—and an unusually powerful one, because to be a seer normally requires more. It takes at least three to make a sorcerer. I think that the words may be growing weaker. Were I to set up in public as a sorcerer, I should want no less than four. Inisso, however, had but three.” He glanced at the king.
“Never mind that!” Evidently the spasm had passed, for the pain had left the king’s face. He glowered angrily.
Sagorn bowed slightly, ironically. “As your Majesty wishes. One word, Master Rap, does several things, but mostly it enhances natural talents. You obviously have inherited a knack for animals from your faun ancestors, and the word has raised it to occult proportions. Your mother was reportedly a seer. We asked the seneschal about her. He says that she could foretell events—when a girl would marry, or the sex of babies. Can you do such things?”
Bewildered, Rap shook his head.
“Can you sing? Dance? What are you good at?”
“Horses, sir, maybe. Good with horses.”
“You did not know that the king would summon you today before you were actually told?”
“No, sir.”
“You wanted to be a man-at-arms. Have you ever had fencing lessons? ”
“The sergeant tried me out, sir, with a wooden sword.”
“Were you good?”
Rap’s face grew warm again. “He didn’t seem to think so.”
Sagorn exchanged nods with the king. “Then we must assume that you know only one word, and the skill you displayed yesterday must be another natural talent in you, although what it is in other people I am not sure—a sense of direction, perhaps. Some people never get lost. Or just good guessing?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “After all, foresight is just a sort of guessing.”
The king interrupted. “The jotnar have legends of men they call farsighted, able to pilot boats through shallows, or fight in the dark.”
“Ah!” Sagorn looked pleased. “I had forgotten that! So it may be that he gained some talent for farsight from his father, and again the word has magnified it greatly.”
He paused, looking quizzically at Rap, who nodded, although all this sounded very confusing. Yet his mother had told him once that his father had been a good pilot—and he had walked home in the dark a hundred times, she had said, before at last he fell off the dock.
“So one word makes you a sort of genius in your own field. But even one word can do other things, as well. It makes its owner an effective sort of person. Successful. Lucky. Very hard to kill, they say.” He glanced momentarily at the king.
Lucky? That settled it, Rap thought—he did not have a word.
“Tell him about two words,” the king growled.
Sagorn raised an ironic, shaggy eyebrow, then again he bowed and turned to Rap. “Not all the books agree, you understand? Words of power are not discussed openly, and there is much that even I have not been able to discover, in a long lifetime of searching. But it seems that with two words you start to get somewhere. Knowing two of the words makes an adept. Not a true sorcerer, but someone who can do almost anything—anything human. If you knew two words, young man, then one lesson would be enough to turn you into a swordsman, as you desire. Or an artist, or a juggler. Normally the true occult powers like farsight start to come only with a second word. Do you understand?”
“Not very much, sir. Do you mean like spells? I didn’t say any spells to call the horses or find the causeway.”
The old man shook his head impatiently. “No, no! You do not say these words. You only have to know them. They are passed down from generation to generation as the most precious thing a family can own. They are usually told only on deathbeds.” His eyes wandered back toward the king.
The king was gritting his teeth again. “So you see why we think you know one of the words of power, Rap?”
“The minstrel, Sire!” Rap said. “He asked me!”
The king managed a twisted smile. “Any man who can sing like Jalon is automatically suspected of knowing a word. Any supreme talent like . . . any genius . . .” He broke off, took a deep breath, then grunted at Sagorn, ”Tell him of the dangers.”