The hostler and the chaplain looked at each other.
Hononin nodded. “I believe him. He’s a good lad—no, a good man. He always was.”
She nodded reluctantly and studied her fingers for a moment. Then she rose and started to pace back and forth across the little room with her hands clasped behind her. It was a strangely unfeminine action, and she had an awkward, jerky gait on her surprisingly short legs. She no longer seemed tall, as she had in the chair. At last she seemed to reach a conclusion, returning to her seat.
“Very well!” she said. “The hostler supports you, Master Rap, and that carries weight. But I have been thinking, also, of what the Gods want. It is common knowledge that a God appeared to Inosolan and myself. They gave her orders, and now I suspect that those referred to you.”
Rap tried to remember what Inos had told him of the God and Their words, but it was a long time ago and his memories were blurred. He was about to ask, but she gave him no chance.
“I shall accept your story,” she said pompously. “Obviously there is sorcery about, and you are probably right—someone is after the royal word of power. Inosolan will be in grave danger if she learns it. She may not, you know. The king is rarely conscious now. Yet you think that Andor and this Darad are the same man?”
“And Sagorn! And Jalon the minstrel, also!” He explained how Sagorn had appeared in the palace the previous summer without entering the gate—and Sagorn had returned in the fall at about the same time Andor had arrived, on the night of the blizzard, when Rap’s farsight had become general knowledge.
Jalon had spoken of Darad. Andor had known Jalon, and Sagorn.
Yet it was incredible, even to Rap. He had met Sagorn once. He had shared a meal with the minstrel. Neither had been Andor, and certainly neither had been Darad. To think of the dreamy, amiable Jalon and the savage Darad was to link water and fire—they were incompatible. There was more than shape-changing involved here. If Jalon could turn himself into Darad at will, as Andor seemed to be able to, then why had he not done so when he was alone with Rap in the hills? Darad would surely not hesitate to use any means at hand to extract a word if he had the opportunity. For that matter, why had Andor not done the same when he had Rap alone in his attic those many long evenings?
Suddenly Hononin snapped his fingers. “The keys! You say that Andor got them from me? But I never saw him all that day.”
“What happened to them?” Rap asked.
The hostler scowled hideously at him and then at the chaplain. “I don’t know. Found them on the stable floor; thought I’d dropped them. Id been sure they’d been on my belt as usual. It wasn’t Andor, certain! Nor that Sagorn man.”
“So he may have other shapes?” Unonini said. “That is bad news. And yet he can’t be a sorcerer. If he is, then he does things the hard way.”
“And what about this army?” Rap asked. “I don’t know why Inos is bringing troops, but they must be stopped.”
The chaplain shook her head. “Inosolan may have no choice. And we don’t, either. Sergeant Thosolin and his men can’t fight two thousand.”
“Let them in?” Hononin looked disgusted.
“We must,” she said. “What alternative do we have? They could burn the town and starve out the castle. You and I cannot even warn anyone without saying how we know, for then Master Rap would be in jeopardy. Inosolan is with them. Why should they savage her realm?”
“Why savage the goblins?” Rap asked bitterly. “They do no harm except to themselves.”
That remark raised eyebrows and produced an awkward silence.
Little Chicken let out an enormous belch and grinned.
Little Chicken—who would be Death Bird now, had Rap and Andor not blundered into the Ravens’ territory—how much of this conversation was he managing to follow?
“I have a question, Mother,” Rap said reluctantly. “Tell me about the Four, please.”
The chaplain started. “What about the Four?”
“Who they are, what they do.”
Her eyes narrowed. She dropped her gaze to her fingers and kneaded them for a moment. “I really know no more about them than you do—than anyone else does. What were you taught in school about the Four?”
“Nothing. I haven’t had much schooling, Mother.”
She nodded, disapproving. “I see. Well, back in ancient times, the Dark Times, Pandemia was a very violent land. There was magic about, and much evil in it. Sorcerers set themselves up as kings and waged war among themselves. There are legends of great massacres, of pillage and destruction, of men fighting dragons, monsters appearing and destroying whole armies, sheets of fire blasting hapless cities, and there are stories, too, of armies being released from binding spells and falling on their own leaders. It was a wicked time. You must have heard such tales!”
Rap shook his head, although he knew a little. “Is this relevant?” she asked, staring.
“I think so.”
Now the chaplain shot a worried glance at the hostler, who shrugged.
“The Imperor Emine II set up the Council of Four almost three thousand years ago. He gathered together the four most powerful sorcerers in all Pandemia and charged them to guard the Impire against sorcery. Hub is the city of five hills, you know.” She sighed. “The city of the Gods! The most beautiful place, the center of the Impire, on the shores of Cenmere. I spent three years there attending . . . But I suppose that doesn’t matter now. Well, the imperor’s palace is in the center, and each of the four warlocks has a palace, also: North, East, South, and West. The imperor himself must always be a mundane, to preserve the balance. No one may use sorcery against the imperor himself, or his court, or family.”
Rap nodded and waited for more.
Unonini seemed reluctant to give it to him, but after a moment she licked her lips and continued. “The system has worked, with a few temporary breakdowns, to this very day. Balance is the key, you see, just as the balance between the Good and the Evil rules the world, so the balance between the warlocks rules the Impire.”
“If an evil sorcerer arises, then the wardens of the Four combine against him. Sorcerers are human, too, Master Rap. They are torn between evil and good, as we all are—more so, perhaps, because their power to do good or evil is so much greater. And if one of the Four falls into evil ways, then the other three can combine against him. It is the only way to prevent the sort of anarchy that prevailed in the Dark Times. Balance!”
Rap nodded. “But tell me of the present wardens.”
“Why?”
“I think I met one.”
Unonini gasped, then again looked to the hostler, who scowled. “Which one, lad?”
“A very old goblin woman?”
The chaplain closed her eyes for a moment, and her lips moved. “Tell us,” Hononin said, looking grim even for him.
So Rap told of the two occasions on which he had seen the apparition, and of how she seemed to have a special interest in Little Chicken. He kept his eyes off the goblin; he spoke as fast as he could, and in the best impish he knew.
There was a pause, then the chaplain shuddered. “Bright Water,” she whispered, and the hostler nodded.
“It sounds like her,” he said. “Rap, lad, I think you did meet one. She’s witch of the north, and legend says she’s about three hundred years old—sorcerers live a long time. She’s been one of the Four longer than any. ”
“And?” Rap said.
Again it was the hostler who spoke, and even he had dropped his voice to a whisper. “They say she’s totally mad.”
Rap glanced uneasily at Little Chicken, and his odd-shaped goblin eyes were very intent. He grinned his giant teeth at Rap. “Flat Nose, you did not tell me this.”
“No,” Rap admitted. “I thought maybe it was me who was mad. I’ll tell you later. I promise.”
The goblin nodded.
“Tell me of the other three, Mother,” Rap said.
She was reluctant. “I do not care to discuss them. No one does. There is only one witch at present. The other three are men, warlocks. South is an elf, East an imp, and the newest is West, a young dwarf. I don’t know very much, Master Rap. You haven’t met any of those, have you?”
Rap shook his head, and she looked relieved.
The hostler laughed uneasily. “There is one other thing that everyone knows that we can tell him, though. As well as claiming a quarter of the compass, each of the four has a speciality.”