He thought of Inos, and the children, and Krasnegar, calling up their likenesses in his mind’s eye. He thought of the God’s censure, and warnings. If he was somehow responsible for this impending catastrophe, then he had a duty to fight it, however hopeless the struggle might seem.
He squared his shoulders and continued on up to the door. Still shaky, he passed through the shielding. The outside world vanished from his farsight, and he saw only the convoluted interior of the warren itself. The present occupants were all huddled into a room on the floor above, and the rest was deserted.
As he followed his companions up a narrow, creaking staircase, he noted that the place was in no better shape than it had been eighteen years before. If anything, it was even shabbier and more untidy. Each of the five bachelors who inhabited it in turn seemed content to leave housework to the others.
Still, the security of occult shielding gave him a great feeling of relief and safety. For the first time in weeks he could relax the rigid control he had been holding over his powers. Just for starters, he banished his own physical weariness, and then he unobtrusively eased the painful inflammation in the backbone of the old count climbing slowly ahead of him. Sorcery brought ethical burdens, but it could also be a blessing.
He heard himself being announced as he followed the others into the crowded room. It was a pigsty of a place, stuffy and dimly lit by wavering candles, and there were only three chairs for, now, eleven occupants. The window was tightly shuttered, the grate heaped with litter.
He had no trouble recognizing the imperor, although he was merely a young man in doublet and cloak, with nothing remarkable about his appearance. Physically, the puny little boy had grown into a nondescript adult, cursed with unsightly acne like so many male imps. Royal responsibilities had expanded his psyche, though. A sorcerer could pick him out immediately as a man worthy of notice, one who burned brighter. He was staring at Rap with his mind racing, weighing risks and probabilities and possible deceptions.
“Rap!” he whispered. “Really Rap?”
Rap said, “My, Shandie, but you’ve grown! I’ll bet you can’t wriggle through that transom into the Imperial Library anymore.”
“Ah, Rap!” The imperor strode forward and enveloped his old friend in an embrace of welcome.
Yes, this was a worthy young ruler and trained warrior—he was cautious, yet he could make fast decisions. Even as a child, he had possessed charm. Rap was reassured. If he could like the new imperor as a person, that would make cooperation easier in whatever trouble was brewing.
On the other hand, by remaining in his capital, Shandie was ignoring the warnings of a warlock, and that was plain pigheadedness, whatever Raspnex’s motives had been. Rap would have to pound some common sense into the imperial skull, and quickly. He had no mundane authority to wield. He detested the thought of using sorcery to impose his will on other people, although in this case the stakes might be high enough to justify even that obscenity.
Little Princess Uomaya was asleep in her mother’s lap. Impress Eshiala did not attempt to rise; regarding the newcomer gravely, she held up fingers to be kissed. She was very young, breathtakingly beautiful, and terrified out of her wits. She was concealing that fact totally from everyone else.
Rap bowed, kissed, murmured polite greetings. Did Shandie not realize that his lovely wife was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown? Gods! Who would want to be a sorcerer? Whatever evil was rending her was more than the handiwork of a single stressful day, though, and it would have to wait.
There was something oddly familiar about her face. Perhaps it was just the perfection of classical beauty, and yet Rap had a strange hunch that he had seen her before somewhere. She had certainly never visited Krasnegar. Kinvale, perhaps? She was not the sort of woman a man would forget meeting.
He turned to greet Sagorn. In a room full of imps, the old jotunn towered like a spruce tree in a bramble patch, a head taller than anyone else. His rugged face was winter pale and twisted in a familiar sardonic sneer, ice-blue eyes glinting below an incongruous dusty skullcap that sat awry on his thin silver hair. The deep clefts framing his mouth were as marked as ever. His robe was shabby and in need of a wash; he wore nothing under it. He seemed no older than Rap remembered, but that would be because Rap’s own sorcery had put much of the last eighteen years out of his reach.
Shandie’s associates were waiting. The strengths and weaknesses of the new imperor’s most trusted confidants would reveal much about his judgment and ability. The first was a well-dressed fat man, beaming nervously at the renowned sorcerer. Instead of presenting him, Shandie began to pontificate about returning to the palace.
Not likely! Not only might that move be suicidally dangerous, but it would envelop them all in a swamp of courtly pomp and protocol, and Rap had no intention of enduring any of that rigmarole. Granted, Shandie had been born to the purple, and the king of Krasnegar was only an erstwhile stableboy with a knack for magic, but even with his sorcerous abilities pruned to a stump of what they once had been, in the present circumstances he must still be the senior partner. He would have to convince Shandie of that as soon as possible.
“This is an excellent place for a confidential meeting,” Rap said firmly. “The building is shielded against sorcery. It is one of the most private locales in the city, and I vouch for Doctor Sagom’s discretion.” He noticed the old jotunn’s frosty eyebrows shoot upward at that remark. ”No, let us discuss the problem here before we go anywhere else.”
The imperor glowered. “Very well. However, we may not need quite so large an audience.”
The fat man’s face sagged like warm butter. Rap was amused at that telltale reaction—and still determined to have his own way. He thrust out a hand. ”My name’s Rap.”
Shandie capitulated. “I have the honor,” he said icily, “to present Lord Umpily, our chief of protocol.”
Umpily beamed, agog with excitement at these untoward events. Imps were notoriously inquisitive people, but he clearly had the trait in excess. Whatever his official title, he was more likely Shandie’s chief of intelligence, the imperial gossipmonger.
“Sir Acopulo, political advisor . . .” The next aide was a diminutive, wizened man with a priestly air to him. His eyes were as bright as a bird’s. Sensing a sharp mind there, Rap tentatively assessed him as the strategist of the group.
Then came a strikingly handsome youngster in armor, bedecked with a signifer’s wolfskin cape. His grip was firm, his manner confident, his smile faultless. Rap chided himself for being prejudiced—good looks were not necessarily a drawback in a man, and Signifer Ylo was entitled to his self-esteem if he was at once a military hero, the sole survivor of his clan, and a trusted confidant of the new imperor. Face and physique had not won him all that.
As he turned away, idly wondering how the unscrupulously handsome Andor was wearing his years now, Rap detected a sudden wash of fright. The youngster’s cheerful smirk hardly wavered, yet something close to guilt had flared up in Signifer Ylo, some remembered secret he did not want to reveal to a sorcerer. His heart was thumping at twice its former beat.
For a moment Rap was sorely tempted to pry . . .
Ethics! he reminded himself. To dig into another man’s thoughts was a despicable abuse of power.
And that, evidently, had completed the introductions, for he had reached Centurion Hardgraa, picketing the door like a granite monolith. Hardgraa he had already met.
Eight men, two women, and a sleeping child. Time to get down to business.
Time to deliver the useless warning he had brought too late. The doughty Countess Eigaze was still standing, and that would not do. “Do be seated, my lady,” Rap said. Ignoring more imperial frowns from Shandie, he arranged the company, with the women and old Sagorn on the seats.
The imperor settled on the arm of his wife’s chair. His manner was chilly, but he was tolerating the upstart, although he must know that Rap was baiting him a little. Would he be willing to listen to reason, or would he flare into an autocratic rage? He had already flouted a warlock’s warnings, so what argument would convince an accomplished warrior that he must flee from his city immediately? How could anyone persuade a newly succeeded monarch to give up his throne and run?
Rap leaned back against the fireplace and surveyed the room. They were wary, all of them. Now what?
“I bring no good tidings,” he said. But that was not quite true, for things could be worse. “The only cheerful news I can give you is that I detect no magic on any of you—no loyalty spells or occult glamours or any abominations like that. I can’t be quite certain, because a better sorcerer could deceive me.”