“But this word of power that you—Andor—learned from the woman in Fal Dornin? It did not break the spell?”
Sagorn stared at the floor sadly, shaking his head. “No. One is not enough. Probably we need three or maybe even four. And, knowing a word, we dared not then approach a sorcerer, for sorcerers are always on the lookout for more power.” He rose stiffly. “The imps will be fetching axes. I am slow on stairs, so perhaps we should begin?”
“Begin what?”
“Begin our climb,” he said. “We must go to the chamber of puissance at the top of the tower.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He bared irregular old teeth in a triumphant grimace. ”To consult the magic casement, of course.”
Faithful found:
So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he:
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal.
— Milton, Paradise Lost
TEN
Insubstantial pageant
1
Rap could tell that Inos had not expected the suggestion, for she colored angrily. He was managing not to stare at her, for when he did, and their eyes met, he was sure he started blushing at once, and certainly he felt as if he were all hands and feet and worried if his hair was a mess—it always was, of course . . . So he was pretending not to look.
But he could not keep his farsight off her. She was wonderful! What fools they were, all those stupid old men! Why had they not seen what a marvelous queen she would be? She was a queen to her fingertips, noble and regal even in those bedraggled old clothes. he had been amazed by her beauty in the forest and he was still in awe of that, but now he could sense her grace, her royal bearing, her majesty. Her father’s death had not broken her spirit, nor the horrible fright and disappointment he, Rap, had been forced to inflict on her to unmask Andor.
Any lesser woman would have blamed him for that, would have cursed him and spurned him. But not Inos! She had royal courage. She was not afraid of his farsight, like all his other friends had been.
Kinvale had changed her. She was no longer the girl he had grown up with, the playmate of his childhood. He felt a little sad about that.
But he had always known that she would be his queen, not . . . not anything else. He had said he would serve her, and so he would, and be proud to. And right now he was proud of the way she was standing up to that stringy old doctor with his sneering manner and stupid jokes about sorcerers.
“My father wouldn’t let you do that!” she said angrily.
“Ah, yes, the spy,” Sagorn said unpleasantly. “You heard more than you admitted that day, then?”
Inos blushed harder and looked furious. Rap felt himself bristle, wishing he could stop this sinister old scholar from insulting his queen. Whatever the king had said about him being trustworthy, he had obviously betrayed Rap to Andor.
He began moving toward the door. “Your father, child, did not have an army of impish cutthroats coming up the tower after him at the time. Now, did you or did you not seek my counsel?”
Inos set her teeth, but obviously she was going to give in and let Sagorn go up the tower. There was a dead body upstairs, and she had suffered quite enough already without having to look at that. Rap moved quickly, to reach the doorway first, and Little Chicken scrambled up and followed.
The room one floor up was very gloomy, filled with gigantic shadows cast by a single small candle flame. Rap hurried across to where Yggingi lay, just inside the other stairwell. The goblin would always extend trash’s duties to include anything that let him show off his strength, and as soon as Rap took hold of Yggingi’s ankles. Little Chicken shoved him aside. “Out window?”
That gruesome thought had not even occurred to Rap. “Ugh! No. In that closet.”
The goblin dragged the corpse across the room and tucked it away among the king’s robes, while Rap dragged a rug over and covered the puddle of blood. He hoped Inos would not wonder why it was there, and that the blood would not soak through. By the time he had done, the other three had arrived.
Sagorn stood a moment, breathing hard. “But you must understand,” he was saying, “that we have no common purpose except to be released from the curse, and therefore to seek out more of the words. Otherwise we all go our own ways.”
“Jalon soon got lost in the forest, and he called Andor. Andor did not have my scruples toward your father, and hence his daughter.” He made a small bow to Inos and then headed for the couch. “So Andor went to Kinvale to make your acquaintance. He even dreamed of becoming a king, I regret to say. ”
“When he told us that he brought you back to Krasnegar afterward,” Inos asked, “then he was sort of telling the truth?” The old man leaned back, chuckling breathlessly. “Yes, he was, for once. Here he had two words to chase: yours, when you got it; and Master Rap’s. By the sort of improbable chance that the words produce, he arrived at Krasnegar just as Rap was revealed as a seer.”
Rap closed the down door and bolted it. Little Chicken started playing with the bolt, flicking it back and forth, showing childish curiosity and delight. Rap listened to Sagorn’s story with half his head. The other half was sighting. The imps had already found axes and were breaking down the door into the robing room. He should be flattered that they were sending a hundred men after him, he supposed.
“Your father sank faster than I had expected,” Sagorn continued. ”So Andor decided to go south and fetch you. He was annoyed that he could not charm Master Rap’s word out of him. Nor would he give it when threatened by the goblins. How did you escape, young man?”
Rap told them briefly. Fleabag thumped his tail on the floor at the sound of his name. Little Chicken scowled, so he must be picking up impish as fast as Rap had picked up goblin. It would be harder for him, though, for impish was a more complex dialect.
“Darad is a fool,” Sagorn said. “I despise his murdering ways, but he is not even efficient in them. He should have asked the goblins to extract the word from you. They would have been happy to demonstrate their skills.”
Except that Rap knew no word of power to tell; he shivered. “The imps are almost through into the robing room, your Majesty.”
Sagorn sighed and rose from the couch. “Next floor, then.”
“You chased me down these stairs once, Doctor,” Inos said. “I thought at the time that you were remarkably unwinded.”
“No. Thinal did the running for me. The curse does have its uses, I admit.”
Rap called to Little Chicken for help and began pushing one of the big cupboards over to the door. Then they fetched another. Those might gain a few minutes—for what, though? When he crossed to the stairs, Inos’s voice came echoing eerily down from above.
“ . . .exactly does it do?”
“It is a last relic of Inisso’s works.” The old man’s voice came in bursts, now, as if he were very short of breath. “Magic casements—like talking statues and preflecting pools—are a supreme test of a sorcerer. They will show the future . . . and give advice. That is . . . the scene they show . . . is a hint . . . of the best course to take . . . a view down the best path . . . as it were. ”
“Why would my father not let you try it, then?”
Sagorn had reached the bedroom door and stopped again, wheezing. “If he had, it might have warned him not to send you to Kinvale, and then this trouble might have been averted.”
“How could it have done that? A window do that?”
“It might have shown you here at Winterfest, perhaps? I admit that it is dangerous. It drove your great-grandfather mad.”
Rap did not like the sound of that, remembering the awesome glow he had provoked in the casement when he went near it—and remembering, also, the strange apparition who might have been Bright Water, witch of the north. She had gabbled something about foresight. She had accused Rap of blocking her foresight. Could there be a connection there?
Inos hurried across the bedroom, the death chamber. “Let us go straight up,” she said, and her voice almost cracked.
Rap felt a mad impulse to run after her and take her in his arms to comfort. He wanted that so badly that he trembled. He kept remembering how she had kissed him good-bye, almost a whole year ago now. But queens did not kiss factors’ clerks—or horse thieves.