Little Chicken was certainly following the conversation. With no further ado, he coldbloodedly poked a finger in Darad’s eye. He howled. “Tell him to get off, then!”
Rap motioned for the goblin to rise. He stood up, and the man on the floor was Sagorn.
Little Chicken hissed loudly and jumped back. Rap said, “Gods! That’s quite a trick, isn’t it?” Again Inos remembered the ladies in the romances who went mad with grief, she wondered how many of them could have had this much fun first.
“Doctor Sagorn!” Aunt Kade beamed, and Inos half expected her to add, How nice that you can join us.
The old man smiled up at them bitterly. “If you trust me, then you won’t mind if I remove these bonds?” Despite his undignified position, his sparse white hair was tidy, and he seemed calm and composed. He slipped his wrists free easily, for the tethers had been fitted to Darad’s mightier limbs.
Rap cut his ankles free, also, and then helped him to rise. “Let’s see if we can find something better for you to wear, sir.” Darad’s huge body had ripped Andor’s garments open, and the shreds were barely decent on Sagorn. They were also soaked in tea and blood. Rap turned to Little Chicken and spoke in goblin. The reply was brief.
“What did he say?” Inos asked.
Rap sighed. “He told me to get it myself. He has very exact ideas of a slave’s duties.”
So Rap ran upstairs and came down with a brown woolen robe. Fleabag, now released, indulged himself in a tour of the room, sniffing vigorously and cleaning up the remains of the food.
The lanky old man stepped into the stairwell for a moment and returned wearing the gown, his dignity restored. He bowed to Aunt Kade and then to Inos. She remembered how he had terrified her at their first meeting, but the glittery eyes and eagle nose held no threat for her now, although she had just witnessed a very obvious sorcery. She wondered if that was because she was older, or whether she was just numb from the daylong battering.
“My sympathies, ma’am,” he said. “Your father was a good friend to me in years past, and I grieve his sad end. I did everything within my skill.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Sagorn made himself comfortable on a chair next to Kade’s sofa and everyone else sat down, also, with Little Chicken crosslegged on the floor, scowling deeply as he struggled to follow the impish tongue.
“You will want an explanation, I suppose?” the old man asked. ”Please,” Inos said. “That was an unconventional entrance.” He smiled his thin-ripped grimace at her for a moment. “You are no longer the young lady who panicked at the mention of yellow dragons. Kinvale has done wonders for you. Can Andor claim some of the credit, I wonder?”
He was seeking to dominate her. “The explanation, please?”
“Very well.” He turned to Rap. “Your guess was remarkably close, young man. There are five of us—myself, Andor, Jalon, Darad, and Thinal, whom you have not met. Many, many years ago, we together gave cause for annoyance to a powerful sorcerer. He placed a spell on us, a curse. Only one of us can exist at a time. That is the whole of the matter.”
“But you are different persons?” Rap had always frowned ferociously when thinking hard.
“Quite different. Andor and Thinal were brothers, the rest of us merely friends. We have never met since that terrible evening long ago. We share a single existence and we also share the same memories. How did you escape from the goblins, by the way?”
Rap did not answer that. “A very convenient curse! You appear and disappear at will—”
“No! A terrible curse!” Sagorn glared. “We have been seeking release from it for longer than you would believe. Take Darad, for example. Would you like to be burdened with that man’s memories? Murder and rape? He is a mad dog, crueler than a goblin. And we do not come and go at will, only when called. None of the rest of us likes to call Darad, so it may be years before he exists again—but when he does appear, he will still have a burned back and a cracked head and a sore eye and a ripped arm. I hope none of you is within his reach at that moment.”
“And of course he will not be bound?”
“Not unless whoever calls him is bound.” They all thought about that for a moment.
“Father said I could trust you,” Inos said, “or sometimes Thinal. Who is Thinal?”
“Thinal? He was our leader.” The old man stretched his bloodless lips in a smile. “Yes, he is trustworthy after a fashion, as long as you have nothing precious around—like a ruby brooch, for example.”
“He stole my brooch?”
“He can climb a blank wall like a fly. He also lifted the hostler’s keys off his belt for Andor. He will oblige in such matters, but he will also steal for sport. As well as being light-fingered, he has a peculiar taste in practical jokes, but he does have a personal rule that he will always call back the one who called him, and we trust him in that sense. I can call any of the others at any time, but I have no control over what that one may do then, or whom he will call next.”
“I find this idea rather confusing, Doctor.” Aunt Kade could always be relied on for a massive understatement when needed.
“Tell us how you came and went. My brother sent for you last summer?”
He spoke more respectfully to her, gazing blandly across the debris and ruin. ”He did, ma’am, and it was Jalon who received the message. He decided to answer the call and caught a ship for Krasnegar. That was a remarkable success for Jalon—in the past he has been known to take the wrong boat because he thought it had a prettier name. But he managed to reach Krasnegar, went to the king, and called me.”
“But I don’t see how you knew about my dragon silk,” Inos complained.
“Jalon saw it at the gate. I told you, we share memories.” The old man waited a moment, as if she were a slow child, then addressed himself again to Kade. “As soon as I examined Holindarn, I saw that he was not likely to live long. I think he had already guessed that. I needed medicines, so Jalon had to go south again. I am old, you see, and the others are growing concerned about me, so they do the traveling. Jalon decided it would be more romantic to go overland.”
“And that was where I got involved,” Rap said, remembering the picnic in the hills.
Sagorn nodded. “You revealed occult powers to Jalon, and so to all of us. I told you that we have been trying to escape from our curse. We had two ways to try—either we could persuade another sorcerer to lift the spell, or we could seek to learn enough words of power to do it ourselves. I have spent my life in studies to that end, striving to know more of those elusive words.” He smiled his thin, cynical smile. “I was the youngest, once. I was ten. Darad was twelve, I think.”
“But . . .”
He shrugged. “But I was smart, and Darad was already big, so Thinal let us join his gang. We broke into houses—even then, he was a skilled cat burglar—until we happened to choose the house of a sorcerer. That was not a wise thing to do! I have not seen them since.” He paused, seeming lost in memory for a moment. “Always one of us is, four are not. To live is to age, of course . . . I have spent so many years in libraries and archives that now I am by far the oldest. Darad almost never gets into trouble he can’t handle, so he rarely has to call for help. He is starting to feel his years, too. Jalon is easily bored, so he soon calls someone else—usually Andor, for some reason. Thinal . . . Thinal never stays for long. He has hardly changed at all.”
“But you have occult powers of your own,” Inos said. “Did the sorcerer give you those?”
He laughed scornfully. “If you had ever met a sorcerer, you would not ask! No. I doubt that you wish to hear that tale.”
“Please do go on, Doctor,” Aunt Kade said brightly. “This is a most interesting narrative.”
He flashed her a calculating glance. “Very well, your Highness. In Fal Dornin I found a woman of middle years who knew a word of power—a single word. I called Andor.”
“And he charmed it out of her?” Inos asked acidly.
Sagorn smiled his sinister smile. “Seduced it out of her. Of course it affected each of us in turn. I became a better scholar, Jalon a finer singer, and Darad a more deadly fighter. The next time he existed, he went back to Fal Dornin, sought out the woman, and strangled her.”