“Fingernails!” Rap shuddered. Goblins murdered travelers in horrible ways. It was said they would hand a man a pair of tongs and demand a fingernail as road toll. If he had the courage to pull out one of his own fingernails, they would let him go. If he didn’t—they didn’t.
“The only alternative is an armed escort, at least a dozen. Better two dozen. And I can’t afford to hire that many.”
“Andor, this is the northland. The cold is a killer. It’s not like hiking across a desert or somewhere warm. You should take someone with some experience.”
There was a pause while the candle flame danced in silence. “I have a better idea,” Andor said. “By the way, merry Winterfest!” He pointed to the bundle on the bed.
“You shouldn’t have!” Miserably Rap leaned elbows on knees and buried his face in his hands. From the wine or from embarrassment, he felt sick.
“Will the boots fit? A man’s feet are usually the first part of him to stop growing.”
“They look all right.” Rap did not even turn his head to look at the bundle-mukluks and fur trousers wrapped in a parka, fur from young polar bears, lined with the down of ducks . . . garments of a quality he could never hope to own in his lifetime. He did not have to open the damned parcel. “It’s very, very kind of you, Andor. No one’s given me a Winterfest present since my mother died. But what could I give you in exchange? Horse buns?”
“It is a bribe, of course,” Andor admitted cheerfully. “I was hoping that you might agree to share. Yours seems to be stronger than mine, so a sharing would be a gift to me.”
“Share what?” Rap looked up in both hope and puzzlement.
“You tell me your word and I’ll tell you mine. Two words make an adept. On my trip, I’ll be safe from cold and goblins both—if you’ll do that for me.”
Unhappily Rap shook his head. “I don’t have a word. The king asked me; I told him the same. Do you think I would have lied to my king? I know no word of power. These horrible things just started happening to me by themselves.”
“You must have a word! It’s too late to deny it, Rakkie-boy! Yes, they’re usually kept secret, but yours is common knowledge now.”
Rap remembered how his lecture from Sagorn had been cut short. “The king told me that there were dangers in knowing a word. What dangers?”
“Gods, man!” Andor almost shouted. “They’re valuable! Incredibly valuable! They’re magic-proof themselves, so they can’t be extracted by sorcery, but every sorcerer in the world always wants one more word, to become more powerful. One of these days someone’s going to nail you to a post and start heating irons! That’s another reason we should share—we’ll be much safer as adepts, because we’ll have abilities we don’t have now.”
“I don’t want to be a sorcerer!” Rap cried. “I want to be a man-at-arms and serve Queen Inosolan. That’s all I pray the Gods for!”
“Rap!” Andor said impatiently. “Two won’t make you a sorcerer, but with two you can be a champion whatever-you-want, including a champion swordsman. You’ll be able to beat anyone in the world, except another adept or a mage or sorcerer. Doesn’t that idea appeal to you?”
“It sounds sort of sneaky.” Rap surprised himself by grinning. Andor chuckled and looked hopeful. “And in the forest I’ll be in no danger at all. Well, not much.”
The forest! Swordmanship forgotten, Rap came back to sad reality. “But I don’t have a word to share.”
Andor sighed and held out the bottle again. “All right! If you won’t, then you won’t.”
Rap slid off his chair, onto his knees. “Ardor, if I could, I would! I d give you mine and not want yours, and I’d try to forget mine. But I don’t have any magic words! I swear it!”
“You must have! Don’t grovel—it’s not manly. Tell me how your mother died and what she said to you the last time you saw her. The words are usually passed on a deathbed.”
Rap climbed back on his chair. He felt dizzy with the wine and sick to his heart. He would oh-so-gladly tell Andor what he wanted to know if he could. Andor was a good friend, the only friend he had, and he felt soiled and petty at refusing him. “Jalon has one?” he asked. “He offered to share, too, and I didn’t understand!”
“Of course he does. No one could sing like that otherwise.” Rap knew that Andor had met Jalon. “Why not share with him, then?”
Andor hesitated and then said, “We tried. We both know the same word, so nothing changed. Now, your mother?”
But Rap knew that there was no help there. As happened every few years, fever had swept into the town from a visiting ship. People had been dying every day. Anyone becoming ill in the palace was removed at once. It was his first year in the stables. He had spent a morning mucking out and gone home, expecting his mother to be there working at her lace, as she usually was, with his lunch ready and a smile and a hug and a little joke about her working man. It had been two days before anyone thought to tell him where she was, or why she had gone. Even then he had not been allowed to go and see her. She had died on the third day. So there had been no deathbed farewells, no secret words of power passed.
He told the story and Andor looked baffled.
“She came from Sysanasso,” Rap said. “Perhaps their magic is different and they don’t use words of power?”
“Yes they do. I’ve been there.” Andor had been everywhere.
He fell silent, looking sulky.
Despite himself, Rap reached out with his mind and saw those glorious soft furs on his bed. The thought of owning them was like the thought of a hot summer’s day and a picnic on the shore with . . . with Inos or someone. He could not accept such a gift.
“Well!” Andor brightened again. “What I really need is a good sorcerer, as the saying goes, but I shall find a companion, some man who is good with horses, courageous, dependable . . .”
“I’m glad to hear that, Andor. To go by yourself would be very foolish. I’m very sorry you’re leaving, but I shall feel happier if I know you took someone with you who knows the north. And I’m very grateful for the gift, but I can’t accept it.”
“I hadn’t finished! Here, last drop.” Andor handed back the bottle. As Rap was draining it he said, “Courageous, dependable, preferably a seer—”
Rap choked.
He finally stopped coughing and gasping. “No! I’m not a trapper or a seal hunter! I’m a city boy!”
“You’re a man, Rap. A good one.”
Rap shook his head. He certainly was not man enough for that madness—weeks of trekking through forest, with wolves and goblins . . .
“You’re a man!” Andor insisted. “Being a man is not a matter of whether hair grows on your chin, lad. It’s inside your head. Some males never make it at all. Being a man is rolling up your sleeves and telling the world `Now I’ll play by the real rules—no more wooden swords. If I succeed, then the credit belongs to me, not my parents or teachers or employers, and I shall savor the prizes without guilt, knowing I earned them. And if I fail, then I’ll pay the penalties without whimpering or blaming anyone else.’ That’s what manhood is, and it’s up to you to decide when it starts. I think you made the decision that night on the beach, my friend.”
Friend? But what was this friend asking him to risk? Rap was very glad he had declined that gift. Brave was good, rash was not.
“I am proud to be your friend, Andor,” he said, struggling for words with a strangely heavy tongue. “And if I thought my help would be of value, then I would give it eagerly. But I think I would just be a liability to you. Really!”
“The king is dying.”
Right on cue, the candle guttered and went out, leaving faint starlight and a long silence.
“You’re sure?”
“Sagorn is. I’ve spoken to him. Do you want to hear it from him, or will you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you! When?”
“Can’t say when. Not today or tomorrow, but he’ll never see grass again. That’s what Sagorn says, and there are no wiser doctors than he.”
The enormity of it felled Rap. All his life King Holindarn had ruled Krasnegar, a remote, benevolent, all-seeing father to his people, and all the more so to a boy with no father of his own. He had seemed as stable and permanent as the rock itself. The thought that one day he might suddenly not be there was impossible to grasp.