“No!” Rap said. “Inos, you know I wouldn’t lie to you!” Oh, Rap! Her heart lurched. Then Inos looked up at Andor again. He smiled sadly and shook his head. She saw how foolishly juvenile her momentary doubts must seem to him-and how mature he was not to lose his temper at the insults or at her silly wavering. She must not listen to any more nonsense, and that stench was making her feel nauseated. Inos lifted her chin disdainfully and turned, letting Andor lead her away.
“Inos!” Rap shrieked. “He’s a mage, or a demon, or something—”
Yggingi waved his men forward. “Bring him in! Tie him up.” Then all the horses reared and screamed in inexplicable panic. Hooves flailed. Men were hauled off their feet, or dragged through the mud. It seemed to be Inos who was the source of terrorplunging mounts fled from her in both directions along the road and even off into the undergrowth. Enormous animals bowled over whole groups of soldiers. The officers’ roars were drowned in oaths and whinnyings, splashings and thuds. Amid this instant chaos, she found herself, with Kade and Andor, isolated on the trail as the whole cohort fought to regain control of its frenzied livestock. The goblin apparition had vanished away into drippy shadow under the ancient trees.
Andor hurried Inos back to the coach. “Take cover in here!” he shouted over the racket. “This may be an ambush.” Then he thrust her inside and Aunt Kade, as well, while the troopers were struggling to restore order to their mounts. Inos was glad to obey.
With the carriage still canted at an absurd angle, she found herself being half crushed by Aunt Kade, and yet she did not mind. The human contact was very comforting.
“It was Rap,” she whispered, fighting tears and a heart as panic-stricken as the horses.
“Yes, dear.”
“But selling Father’s horses? In bars?”
“If he really did steal two of the palace horses,” Kade said, ”then he would have been found out, wouldn’t he?”
“Of course!” There were not so many horses in the stables that two could go missing undetected, and not so many hands that the thief could long remain unknown. Stupid Rap! “So he was found out and ran away!”
“And he must have taken refuge with the goblins,” her aunt agreed. ”I don’t know why he followed you south, dear. Perhaps he hoped to spin you some fantastic story . . .”
“Perhaps. That must be it.” Young men did tend to behave oddly at that age, she knew. That was when the bad apples showed up—she had heard plenty of stories at Kinvale and been given plenty warnings. Oh, Rap! “It wasn’t a wraith, was it?”
When a soul came before the Gods for weighing, the Evil was canceled out by the Good, and the balance went to join the Good, and live evermore as part of the Good. But in bad souls the residue was evil, and the Evil might reject it, to leave it wandering as a wraith, haunting the night.
Kade started. “Oh, I think it—he—was alive.”
“And Rap wasn’t evil!” Yet if he had descended to selling horses in bars, what else might he had done before he died? Inos shivered.
“I don’t think it was a wraith,” Kade said firmly. “I don’t think wraiths would smell that bad!”
Inos managed to chuckle and nod. She was relieved to find that she agreed. It had been Rap. Rap alive.
She glanced around. The soldiers were recovering and restoring order, but there was no one close to the coach. Not even Andor . . . “Aunt, how did Yggingi know about Father? Why was he waiting at Kinvale when Andor arrived? This must have been planned!”
Kade flinched. “It was my fault, my dear.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. I let slip to Ekka that I was worried about your father’s health. Chancellor Yaltauri was supposed to send me bulletins. He didn’t. “
“Then Ekka’s behind this?” Now Inos began to understand. “I fear so.”
“So when—if—Father dies . . .”
“The proconsul will proclaim the duke as king, I think. I have been very foolish, darling. I did not see—”
Inos pecked a kiss on her cheek. “But it was not Andor?”
“No! I don’t think so.”
“I trust Andor!” Inos said firmly. “Don’t you?”
“I . . .” Just for an instant Kade hesitated, and then she smiled. ”You’re asking me to choose between him and that very smelly boy?”
Inos laughed and hugged her. Invisible birds burst into glorious inaudible symphonies of song—no one had betrayed her except the odious dowager duchess! Kade had been foolish, but not evil. Andor was innocent—Inos would doubt him no more. Seeing Rap again beside him had somehow shown her how vastly inferior any other man must be. Andor, oh, Andor!
5
A wolf, a goblin, and a faun who had farsight—there had never been any danger that the troopers would find them.
After an hour or so, the expedition moved off along the mountain trail. Inos and her aunt were riding, and the coach had been left where it was. Inos’s mount was staying very close to Andor’s, but Rap could not tell at that distance whether or not it was secured there by a tether. He could not have summoned it anyway, because he did not know which horse it was. Andor might not know that; but, in any case, Rap had already discarded that plan as being too dangerous for Inos. It would also bring the whole imp army after him, and obviously his fantastic story was not going to be believed.
In thick woods on the hill above the road, he used his farsight to watch them all go. He was soaking wet and miserable, hunched on the ground, savagely digging holes in the moss with a stickjab . . . jab . . . Fleabag was sleeping, but he alone of the three of them heard the hooves through the muffling timber. He lifted his head to listen. Little Chicken was sitting on a fallen log, elbows on knees, waiting as patiently as the trees themselves.
Jab . . . jab . . .
Rain was dribbling down Rap’s neck, and he perversely left his hood down and let it. Almost he wished that the meeting had not happened, that he had missed Inos and gone on to lose himself in the Impire. But unlikely things happened to those who knew words of power-so Andor had taught him. And there was only this one pass through the mountains.
Spurned! Jab! Rejected, even by Inos! Jab!
But Andor had a word of power and he would be believed over anyone else. Trust was his talent.
Jab! The stick broke. Rap rose to his feet.
“Now we do what?” Little Chicken asked. Rap sighed. “You still my trash, goblin?”
This show of caution seemed to amuse the burly young woodsman. He nodded.
Despairingly Rap thought of the hard weeks ahead. “Now we run back,” he said, “back to Krasnegar.”
Damsel met:
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since
Of faery damsels met in forest wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.
— Milton, Paradise Regained
EIGHT
Casement high
1
Even to Krasnegar, spring came eventually. The hills were white and uninhabited yet, and the causeway still poulticed with crumpled ice floes and drifts, but brave men had trodden a footpath across it already, and a few more weeks would see the horses and cattle staggering back to the mainland.
There was no moon. Pale auroras danced in the sky like giant ghosts as Rap and Little Chicken emerged from one of the shore cottages, yawning and shivering in the dregs of sleep. A man could barely see his feet in that uncertain glimmer. ‘
Rap took a few deep breaths of the frigid air, welcoming the familiar salty tang of the sea and the distant crackling of the tide wrestling ice. Then he turned to his companion. He had made this offer at the end of the forest, but he would try once more.
“I release you, Little Chicken. You have paid any debt you owe me many times over. Go back to your people.”
“I am your trash,” said the stubborn whisper from the darkness. ”I look after you.”
“You can’t help me here! I am in grave danger, but you cannot help, and you will be in danger, also. Go, with my gratitude.”
“I look after you. Later I kill you.”
So the Gods had still not given the signal. Rap shrugged unseen. “You may have to be quick, if you want to be the first. Come on, then.”
He began to run. When they reached the causeway itself, though, he was forced down to a walk, steering entirely with his farsight, and at times Little Chicken had to hold his shoulder to stay with him in a heavy, dense dark like blankets. They were halfway across before Rap remembered bears. This was a bad time for them, but now he had so much trust in his farsight that he was certain none lurked in the vicinity.