So what next? Rap had gone fishing for an ally and landed an army, and he had no idea what to do with it. Probably nothing. Zinixo had nurtured his Covin in secret until he was ready to strike, and Rap had told Shandie that they would do much the same. No rendezvous, he had said, no preordained day of uprising. To set a time or place would be to invite discovery. Sneak attacks might betray the entire movement. Bizarre as it seemed in mundane terms, that strategy had been accepted by both imperor and warlock.
The troll sorcerers would fit in well with it. They would very happily vanish off back to their castles and wait until trumpets of the Last Battle rang in the ambience. Whether they would then respond, of course, was a problem for the future.
But the anthropophagi must find some safer refuge. They were already homeless refugees and would enjoy life in the Mosweeps no more than a faun did. Inevitably they would start preying on the imps, if not for meat then just for sport. As soon as their presence became known the army would start hunting them, and the Covin would come to assist.
Had any would-be leader ever commanded a force so grotesque: trolls and anthropophagi? Rap was yoking the ox with the tiger. His own occult powers were trivial, good for little more than fairground juggling, and yet as the only outsider in the group he must somehow keep the peace between the two sides. It would be a marriage of fire and water, but if he let his army sit still and do nothing, it would rot. So follow me! Where to?
Faerie? Dragon Reach?
Always he came back to that nagging feeling that he had forgotten something.
Then he had company . . .
A slender woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light of the bonfires within. She stepped closer with a familiar jingling sound, and he found himself looking at a skirt of white bones, human ribs. He stood up quickly.
She was young. Mostly she wore tattoos of red and blue, but take those away and she would be very pretty. She had flowers tucked in her air, and bones through her nose and earlobes, but take those away . . .
She was very close. “I am Sin Sin,” she said huskily. Rap gulped, sweating in the damp night. Inos, come here, I need you! “I’m, er, I’m Rap.”
“I know,” she breathed.
Her bra seemed to be fashioned out of two juvenile skulls, one slightly larger than the other. He realized that he had been staring at it rather too long.
“Isn’t that very uncomfortable?” he asked. “Yes. Do please take it off.”
“Er, no. I’d rather not.”
“As you wish.” She sighed and tried to embrace him. He backed away, almost falling into the pool below. “Sin Sin, I’m on guard.” A long time since Inos . . . too long with only trolls . . .
“I came to relieve you. But you needn’t go.”
“I wouldn’t want to distract you while you keep watch.”
“You won’t.”
“Yes, I will. I mean, I might.”
“Fauns are so-o-o handsome!”
“No, they’re not. Please, Sin Sin!”
“Yes, yes!”
“I’m married.”
“So? You still look good enough to eat.” She smiled seductively, but the effect was spoiled by her sharpened teeth. Rap’s self-control came back with a rush.
“That’s what I’m afraid of!” he said firmly, and slipped by her. He splashed through the stream into the castle. The largest bonfire was the size of a small cottage, and its glare blinded him. The noise of drums and singing was mind-crippling, and the tumult in the ambience even worse. Forty or so sorcerers and mages were making merry, and that must be a rare event in the history of the world. Until now, power had always brought danger, and the sorcerous had been reclusive people. This infant brotherhood he had created was changing the rules already.
He must not claim all the credit—Thrugg had not enslaved him, despite his greater power, and Tik Tok’s band had kept their individual freedom—but it was Rap’s vision of a society of free sorcerers that had inspired this party.
What a party! Had Pandemia ever seen its like? Incandescent dragons circled near the roof. Naked troll maidens were dancing erotically—and it took him a moment to realize that they were illusory, as was the band of anthropophagous muscle men parodying them on the other side. A fountain of wine was spouting into the stream. The air was filled with smoke and colored balls and half a dozen albatrosses and giant bats, apparently playing some sort of team game. A bewildered camel brayed in terror on a high ledge. The great chamber was a madhouse of mirth and foolery.
Trolls and anthropophagi? Probably there had never been such a meeting before. Were they mundanes, half the gathering would be cooking the other half, but these were sorcerers, united in a common cause. So far. They were all drunk on magic. Was he just being a nervous maiden aunt, or could he already detect dangerous undertones in the horseplay? If it went too far, there were no limits on what might happen. And even if it didn’t, there would be the emotional hangover when it ended and reality returned. Poor old worrywart Aunt Rap!
He checked the upstream rooms and discovered several strange orgies in progress, some of the participants real and some occult. In an obscure chamber he located the people he wanted. Of course there was no such thing as privacy around sorcerers, but the little room was secluded—off the main stream, watered only by seepage. He transported himself there, into calm and sanity. Or maybe not.
Grunth was reclining in an elaborate chair large enough to be called a throne, decked out like an impress in jewels and scarlet satin. Her tiara flashed with a fortune in rubies and sapphires; her great clawed feet were encased in golden sandals. She beamed a toothy baboon snarl at him and he saw that she was drunk.
Tik Tok sprawled in a wicker chair, wearing a blissful idiot look of extreme intoxication. He had rearranged his tattoos in yellow and magenta, and festooned his hair with pink rosebuds. He was gnawing on a juicy bone that Rap carefully did not inspect carefully.
Thrugg had chosen to squat on the floor as usual, nude as usual, munching noisily on nuts and roots. He looked up with a sour glance that was very unusual—for him—and must mean trouble.
The fourth member of the party was Doctor Sagorn. Darad had needed little persuading to make him depart from such alarming company, and he had summoned the old jotunn in his place. The scholar sat erect on a highbacked chair. He wore a thin gown of pale-blue cotton. It was sweat-stained and rumpled, but his customary arrogant disdain for once seemed to be hiding an agreeable mood. His pale-blue eyes gleamed when he saw Rap, and the withered lips trembled on the verge of a smile.
The stuffed penguin in the doorway defied explanation.
Rap materialized a seat for himself and a mug of Krasnegarian beer. He sat back and, after a moment’s reflection, added a local cool breeze. The mundane environment was satisfactory, then. The ambience continued to rock, flash, riot, boom, stink, and swim as the party continued, downstream in the sprawling castle. He tried to ignore it. When nobody said anything, he began with Thrugg. ”What’s wrong?”
The troll’s mouth was too full for speech. “Wurnk and Vog.”
Sagorn spasmed with surprise, so he must have been included in the sending.
“The old fellows?” Rap asked.
“Yes. They don’t like crowds. Wanna go.”
“Not surprising! I expect the rest will follow them in a day or two.”
Abandoning words, Thrugg flashed an excruciating image of a slave being beaten by a gang of imps. Everyone winced, and yelped. The implication was one of strong disapproval, which seemed out of character for the unwarlike troll. Why should he want to keep the army together?
“Isn’t that the plan?” Sagorn muttered. “To hide out individually until battle is joined?”
Again Thrugg replied without words, and this time the image was a relative measure of the strength of forty sorcerers and a couple of dozen lesser magic-users. Not only was a larger group inherently more powerful, it was also much less detectable. Sagorn’s mouth fell open.
“Good point,” Rap admitted. “If we must have an army, then the larger the better.” Sorcery would become possible again, if it was used with caution.
Thrugg nodded more cheerfully, pulping timber in his monstrous jaws.
Rap readjusted his thinking yet again. “So we keep the trolls enlisted. We need to hunt down the rest of the fifty you mentioned, though. That means organizing messengers. It means setting up a central headquarters. Two might be better. Would Vog and Wurnk do that much?”