Magic Casement (31 page)

He
said no more. He was still lying there leering at the dark when Rap fell into
an exhausted sleep.

Recognizing
no rules, the goblin could not resent cheating.

His
satisfaction came from learning that he had been beaten by a mortal and not
some superhuman freak event... or so Rap concluded.

Rap
was wrong.

Three
fleabags emerged the next morning, into a thick white ice fog. The forest
vanished within yards, trees fading away into the pervasive grayness in all
directions. Still, bitterly cold, and treacherous, ice fog made all ways seem
the same.

“Nice
cave,” the goblin said sarcastically. “Stay long time.”

“South
is that way. I will lead.”

“Go
in circles.”

Rap
shook his head. “Not me. South to the river, then upriver to Elk Totem,
right? “

His
companion shrugged, probably thinking that the exercise would do no harm, and
he could always backtrack, or make another cave. So that day it was Rap who
led, trotting through a white world striped with gray tree trunks, a silent
goblin at his heels. The river appeared where it was supposed to and they
followed it upstream. Farsight told Rap where to cross the ice and cut through
the forest again, and he brought Little Chicken right to the door.

He
was wondering what reaction he would get to this second revelation of
supernatural power-awe? Respect? But when the buckskins came off in the firelit
lodge, Little Chicken merely smiled with more secret amusement and made no
comment.

Rap
went to the hearth and was introduced to the rest of his hosts, being given the
usual oily embraces. Little Chicken appeared with the inevitable grease bucket.

“I
don’t need that any more,” Rap said firmly. “My legs are
strong now. No massage.”

He
turned his back. He had forgotten that Little Chicken took his duties seriously
and was an expert wrestler. Without warning Rap was flat on his face, with the
goblin kneeling on him. The audience enjoyed that massage more than Rap did.

Lynx
Totem... another Eagle Totem...

At
Beaver Totem they were stormbound for four days while the worst weather of the
winter howled like giant wolves around the cabins. So unbearable was the chill
of the wind that even Little Chicken dressed in his buckskins to run from cabin
to cabin, or to attend to calls of nature. The goblins strung lines between the
buildings lest they become lost in the snow and freeze to death within yards of
their own doors.

Rap
spent most of the time in lonely brooding. He had been four weeks on his
journey now. The king might be already dead and Inos had not been told of his
illness.

Or
had she?

He
watched the goblins as they lived their boring winter lives, studiously
ignoring him except when hospitality demanded that they must offer him food or
drink. He endured Little Chicken’s mocking contempt on the rare occasions
when he appeared in the adults’ building. He wished fervently that his
talent for befriending animals would work on people, like Andor’s.

Always
his thoughts came back to Andor.

King
Holindarn knew a word of power. So Andor had said.

If
Andor had gone to such trouble to try to learn Rap’s word, then he would
also try to steal the king’s.

Words
were passed on deathbeds. If Inos could return to Krasnegar in time, her father
would tell her the word that had been passed down from Inisso. More and more,
Rap was becoming convinced that Darad would revert to Andor, and Andor would
seek out Inos at Kinvale. He would use his occult charm upon her to win her
trust, then accompany her back to Krasnegar. She must be told about her father,
but she must also be warned against Andor.

He
had gained a week while Rap was a prisoner at Raven Totem. He might be gaining
time now if he were already over the mountains, beyond the storm’s reach.
As soon as the weather cleared, Rap would tell Little Chicken to increase the
pace again.

Somehow
he must keep up.

The
weather cleared at last. The journey resumed and became more than an endurance
test. Now it was a contest. The runs became longer, the rests shorter. Little
Chicken would offer the challenge, and Rap would stubbornly accept. He ran
until blood flowed from his nostrils and life was an endless torment of pain
and exhaustion.

It
was madness. With his farsight, Rap was incredibly surefooted, but if Little
Chicken sprained an ankle, the two of them would die in the wilderness. They
both knew that. Rap was not going to admit that he was in any way inferior to
the goblin. But he was, as Little Chicken could demonstrate with no apparent
effort. Rap’s supernatural abilities he merely ignored, so that they did
not count. Day by day he raised the wager. Day by day Rap would call his raise.
He despised himself for it, but he could not stop. He had cheated the goblin
out of the opportunity to torture him-so now he was torturing himself. The
agonies might not be quite so severe, although at times that seemed debatable,
but they went on longer-much, much longer, day after agonizing day. The harder
Rap tried, the more amusing the goblin seemed to find him... and the harder he
tried.

Then
one night, Rap thought he saw his chance. It had been the worst run yet-as they
all seemed to be-and he reeled on his feet as he gathered firewood. The goblin
allowed him to help with that task now, because his efforts were so obviously
inferior. Suddenly, through the blur of fatigue and pain, Rap sensed movement
within his range. He straightened, searched, and decided that it was a small
deer. Calling for silence, he sent Fleabag out to circle beyond the doe and
then drive it. Puzzled but impassive, Little Chicken squatted down, watching
without a word. Rap strung his bow, notched an arrow, and waited, trembling
with exhaustion and mental effort, carefully tracking his quarry’s
approach. The deer burst through the trees where he knew it would, at easy
range. He shot.

He
missed.

Without
seeming to hurry at all, Little Chicken rose, lifted the bow from Rap’s
hand, stooped to pick up an arrow, aimed, shot, and unerringly nailed down
their supper just before it vanished into the trees. He handed the bow back
with a smile that showed more enamel than any human mouth should contain.

Shrouded
in silent misery, Rap watched the skinning and cooking. It had been fatigue
making his hands shake, of course. Even as clumsy an archer as he was should
not have missed that one. He had tried to look clever and he had made a fool of
himself again. Every joint and muscle in his body was shaking. This last leg of
the journey seemed to have lasted for days without a break. Had he thought to
notice the moon’s position when they started, he could have estimated the
time, but he knew only that it had been many, many hours. He was so grossly
exhausted that he was not sure he would be able to eat any of the venison
anyway. He could barely keep his eyes open, his chest burned, his legs
ached--and Little Chicken seemed as fresh as if he had just climbed out of bed.
There had to be a limit to the amount of this torture that a man could take,
and Rap was certain he had reached it now.

Why
not just admit that the contest was hopeless? Who cared?

What
did it matter?

Then
Rap saw that the goblin was studying him from his crouch by the cooking fire,
and his big ugly mouth was curled in disdainful amusement again. “Eat
now, Flat Nose. Then sleep? Or run more?”

Rap
glared back at the smirk.

Something
inside him whimpered as he spoke.

“Run
more, of course,” he said.

A
hiss of rain rushing over glass died away into petty dripping noises. Logs at
the far end of the room spat and spluttered sleepily in the great hearth, and
somewhere far off a door was tapping.

Rain
was a sign of spring, Inos thought happily, and she marveled once more that it
should come so soon. For long months yet the iron heels of winter would stamp
on poor old Krasnegar, but yesterday she had gathered snowdrops. Flowers! Trees
had never impressed her much, but flowers did.

It
was a drowsy do-nothing afternoon and she was curled into a big chair in the
library with a book of wide erudition and archaic, inscrutable handwriting.
Near the fire Aunt Kade nodded over a slim romance. Various other ladies and
gentleman were also pretending to read-few of them seriously. Inos was serious,
but about ready to admit defeat. She could ask to have a scrivener transcribe
the key passages for her, of course, but she had an inexplicable certainty that
she was not supposed to be troubling her pretty little head over this
particular tome. The request would not be refused, she thought, but the results
might be a long time in coming, and meanwhile the book itself would be
unavailable. Spring! Summer would arrive in its turn and her ship would be
waiting. She sighed and twisted a lock of golden hair and stared at the
rain-blurred windows. Krasnegar? To be really honest, she did not long so much
for Krasnegar now. She missed her father of course, but who else? There was no
one of her rank there, and no one of her age who would understand one word she
might say about Kinvale.

Inos
turned to gaze for a moment at Aunt Kade’s drooping eyelids, wondering
how she had stood it. Forty years or more she had lived in Kinvale, as wife and
widow, and then she had thrown it all up and gone back to Krasnegar to mother a
suddenly bereaved niece. A mere niece-a niece who had not appreciated her until
she had seen what the old dear had given up. To return to stark and barren
Krasnegar for a niece, when Kinvale had offered so much?

And
she? Of course she must go back. She could not doubt it. She would return in
the summer, unwed and unbetrothed, apparently.

Five
months since Andor had gone...

Aunt
Kade and her Grace-or Disgrace?-the duchess had run out of candidates at last.
The long parade of suitors that had begun with the glorious Andor had ended now
with the unspeakable Proconsul Yggingi. Andor had been an accident and Yggingi
was a disaster. Yggingi had not been invited to Kinvale for Inos’
sake--Kade had assured her of that quite vehemently. After all, he was twice
her age and already married. Unfortunately Yggingi himself did not seem to
appreciate such considerations. He was the worst yet, the bottom of the barrel,
and not even the official barrel. Any barrel. There were a few pleasant young
men in residence at the moment-men who might be allowed to brighten a maiden’s
day, if not share her life-but not one of them dared come near Inos now.
Yggingi’s menacing glare had walled her off as his private preserve.

One
of the reasons she had fled here, to the library, was to escape the creepy
attentions of Proconsul Yggingi. A library was the last place that man was
likely to visit.

How
beautifully Andor had read poetry to her!

None
of the others had ever compared to Andor. Of course she had never expected that
a lightning strike of romantic passion would be waiting in the clouds. A
princess must expect to settle for rank, character, and a purely conventional
physical relationship. All she could hope for there was that the man not be
totally disgusting. But even being practical, she had found nothing of a size
to match her mesh-except Andor. If she discounted him, there was no second
best.

And
she must discount him. Five months...

She
raised the book again and made another attempt. A Brief History of the Late and
Dearly Mourned Beneficient Sorcerer Inisso, His Heirs and Successors, with an
Adumbration of Their Acts and Accomplishments. Dull to the risk of lockjaw, but
relevant. A strange man Inisso must have been. Why should he have built his
tower on the far shores of the Winter Ocean? Stranger still, why should he have
divided his heritage? For it seemed that he had bequeathed each of his three
sons an equal share of his magical powers, and apparently that was a most odd
thing for a sorcerer to do. There were broad hints here, she had discovered,
that some of that magic had been passed down in her own family. She would ask
Father about that when she returned. She smiled at the thought of her
practical, matter-of-fact father secretly performing sorcerous rituals.

She
had never even had a chance to visit that forgotten chamber of puissance at the
top of the main tower. It was curious that she should have found this tattered
and dogeared tome in the library at Kinvale. Very dog-eared-it had been much
read over the centuries... By whom? Of course the Kinvale family was also
descended from Inisso. She and the droopy-lipped Angilki were related through
Inisso, as well as by countless later cross-linkages. So was the sinister
Kalkor of Gark, gruesome man.

Kade
had noticed her settling down with the monster volume and had asked what it
was. Her first reaction had been approval--Witless Young Maiden Starts Taking
Interest-but that had been followed by a strange uncertainty. Inos could not
imagine her aunt ever reading such a nightmare of ennui, but knowing Kade, she
might very well have a good idea of the gist of it-better than Inos would gain
by her studies, likely. What she really needed was someone to discuss it with.
But whom?

The
library door swung open on well-oiled hinges to admit a footman, a gawky,
baby-faced footman, looking around with large eyes, seeking someone.

So
spring would be followed by summer and Inos would return to Krasnegar with Aunt
Kade, and in a year or two they would come back to Kinvale and try again. She
was young yet. Andor could not be the only bearable man in the world.

The
rain slapped again, louder than usual, and Inos turned to stare at the windows
without really seeing them. Why had the Gods been so cruel? Why produce the
perfect candidate before she could understand how incredibly superior he
was-and then whisk him away again? He had saved her sanity, of course. He had
blazed through Kinvale like a vacationing God. In a few short weeks he had
shown her how to live, had demonstrated what life should really be. But
comparing Kinvale-with-Andor to Kinvale-without-Andor was almost like comparing
Kinvale to Krasnegar. The shadows had returned when he left-not so deep, but
emptier. He had sparkled with fun from dawn till exhaustion, a bottomless well
of amusement, zest, entertainment, flattery, serious conversation, and-and
living.