Magic Casement (41 page)

The
chaplain noticed. “I warned you that you would freeze up here!”
Satisfied that her prediction had come true, she pulled her cloak tight with
her free hand. But Rap was wearing a fur parka over his doublet and he was not
cold at all; in fact it was the first time he had been comfortable all day.

“It
isn’t that. Mother?”

“Mmm?”

“If
the Four guard us all against misuse of magic-”

“I
do not wish to talk about the Four! Certainly not here. “ Which is what
Rap had been about to ask: Why had she been so reluctant to discuss the
warlocks? Why was everyone, always? He had rarely heard them mentioned, ever.

“Look
there!” The chaplain raised her lantern a fraction and pointed to the
southern casement. “It’s different!”

Little
Chicken, having failed to see anything much to the north, now moved around to
peer out eastward. He found glass puzzling, because it did not melt when he
breathed on it.

The
southern casement was certainly larger than the others.

The
dormer was higher and wider than the other three and held not only the main
arched window, but also two smaller lights flanking it. Rap tried to remember
if he had ever noticed that lack of symmetry from below, and concluded he had
never really looked properly. The pattern of lead between the panes was more
complex and less regular, and that was another minor difference, but the panes
showed just as black against the night outside.

“I
wonder why?” Puzzled, the chaplain walked over toward it.

The
window began to glow.

She
stopped with a hiss of surprise. The many tiny panes between the leads were of
all shapes and all colors, decorated with pictures and symbols: stars and
hands, eyes and flowers, and many others less comprehensible, all vaguely
visible in a pale gleam as if the moon were out there. The colors were as faint
and faded as a very old manuscript-sienna, malachite, ochre, and slate. Rap’s
eyes saw them, but farsight told him there was only a window there with nothing
unusual about it. Yet when he tried to make sense of the visual images, he felt
as if they were changing. Each one was constant while he stared at it and
altered as soon as his attention strayed. An umber bird’s head in the
upper right comer was now much lower than it had been. A ram’s horn
inexplicably seemed to curl to both right and left at the same time, and an
image of a tawny flame writhing, a rose-and-lilac wheel turning... He shivered
again.

Mother
Unonini backed away and the moonlight died beyond the glass.

Little
Chicken grunted angrily. Abandoning the east casement, he began stalking round
to the south, one hand on the dagger in his belt, his shoulders bent forward,
looking very much like Fleabag investigating a porcupine.

“Stop!”
both Rap and the chaplain said at the same moment. But Little Chicken kept on,
walking slowly on the balls of his feet. The casement began to glow again, and
this time the light was different; it was warmer and restless-not the moon, but
firelight? Firelight at the top of a tower, seven stories above a castle that
itself stood a hundred spans or more above the sea?

“Stop!”
Rap said again, more urgently. He laid down his own burden-it held cups and
food and useful things that might make a noise if dropped-and he hurried
forward.

The
light changed again, dramatically. By the time he had reached Little Chicken
and grabbed his shoulder, the window was a blazing, seething brilliance, too
bright to look at-surges of ruby, emerald, and sapphire stabbing amid flashes
of ice-white like the facets of a giant diamond. Now certainly the symbols were
changing more rapidly, flickering in the corners of the eye. Even to study a
single pane was impossible against that glare.

Rap
pulled and the goblin yielded. They backed away and the brilliance faded again
until they were standing once more in the glimmer of the lantern. Rap’s
eyes hurt and the insides of his eyelids were stained with blurs of many hues.

Stiffly
the chaplain rose from her knees, where she had been praying. Her face was pale
and drawn in the gloom. “Magic!” she declared unnecessarily. “A
magic casement! “

“What
does it do?” Rap asked, still keeping a firm grip on Little Chicken.

“I
don’t know! I’m a priestess, not a sorcerer. But I think you had
better stay well away from it. “

All
Inisso’s other secrets had gone, but that one was built into the walls
and could not be removed. Was this why the mysterious Doctor Sagorn had come up
here with the king, to a room Inos had never been told about?

“Oh,
I agree. Keep away!” Rap added in goblin.

Little
Chicken nodded. “Bad!” He turned his back on the offending window.

“You
still want to stay here?” Mother Unonini asked.

Rap
nodded. “It’s the safest place. And I can use my farsight from
here.” He would have to sit on the stairs to do so, below floor level,
but she did not need to know that.

“Yes,
but what can you do?” She had asked that question a dozen times.

He
gave her the same answer as before. “I don’t know. But somehow I
must warn Inos that Andor is not what he seems.” She came close and
lifted the lantern to study his face. “For her sake, or yours?”

“Hers,
of course!”

She
continued to stare. “If the people want a king instead of a queen, then
they are not likely to accept a factor’s clerk, you know.”

Rap
clenched his fists. “I was not suggesting that they would! “

“Do
you think you can overhear what he says to Inosolan?” Fury flared up in
Rap, and evidently his expression was answer enough. She lowered her lantern. “No.
I apologize, Master Rap. That was unworthy.” She pulled her cloak
tighter. “I shall go, then. You had better come down and replace the
dresser.”

Rap
nodded. “And we’ll push the door closed behind it. “

The
chaplain nodded. “Of course-but remember that it creaks. I shall return
tomorrow night, if I can, and bring some oil. “ She shivered. “I
must be crazy! I hope that I am interpreting the God’s words correctly...
and that They were a benevolent God, on the side of the Good. Kneel and I will
give you a blessing; I wish I had someone to bless this night’s work for
me.”

Casement
high:

A
casement, high and triple-arched there was,

All
garlanded with carven imagaries

Of
fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,

And
diamonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumerable
of stains and splended dyes,

As
are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings...

Keats,
The Eve of Saint Agnes

Faithful Found

The
worst moment of that whole terrible day was Inos’s first glimpse of her
father, the sight of the poor withered relic that was all remaining of the
exuberant, vital man she remembered. Compared to that, nothing before or after
was as bad-none of the murder or horror or sorcery that followed, not even the
news of his death, for that was a release.

Of
the morning she was to retain only confused images, a few fitful glimpses and
recollections. She had left Krasnegar in summer drizzle, sitting in a landau
with her father and Aunt Kade, cheered more or less sincerely by amused but
affectionate townsfolk. She returned on a blustery spring morn, in sunshine
mingled with flurries of snow, riding with Andor on one side of her and the
despicable Proconsul Yggingi on the other. Now the citizens huddled in their
furs to watch, or peered around shutters, their faces reflecting shock and
anger at an invading Imperial army desecrating their streets.

The
palace staff and the officers of the realm had been hurriedly assembled in the great
hall that now seemed like a shoddy barracks to Inos. They, also, glared in
impotent fury. Their greetings were curt, their welcomes insincere. Familiar
faces bore unfamiliar expressions-old Chancellor Yaltauri and the much older
Seneschal Kondoral, Mother Unonini and Bishop Havyili, and the tall, stark
figure of Factor Foronod, his livid face almost as pale as the silver helmet of
his hair.

How
small Krasnegar was, how bleak, how shabby after Kinvale! The palace was a
barn. And when she was ushered politely up into the withdrawing room she looked
around at the gilt and rosewood furniture that Aunt Kade had brought back-three
years ago now-and it seemed pathetic, a bitter mockery of what comfort and
elegance ought to be. Yet it had not changed and she hated herself because it
was she who had changed.

The
way she spoke to them, the way she moved, the way she returned their looks-she
had gone, but she had not returned. She never would return. The place was the
same place. She was another person.

Then
the doctors, bowing and mumbling and making excuses. His Majesty was conscious
and had been informed.

It
was at that moment that Inos issued her first command.

“I
shall see him alone!” she stated, and she silenced their protests with
the best glare she could muster. Even Andor. Even the hated Yggingi. Even Aunt
Kade.

Astonishingly,
it worked. They all agreed and no one was more surprised than Inos herself.

She
climbed the familiar curving stairs alone, noting with surprise that the treads
were dished by centuries of footsteps, noting how narrow the way was, and how
the very stonework of the walls was glazed by the caress of innumerable
garments. Kinvale had all been so new. She came to the dressing room and
remembered it as it had been in her childhood, with her own bed against the
northwest wall, although now there was an ancient wardrobe standing there.
Nurses and doctors came trooping out the far door and bobbed politely to her
and hurried across the room and off down the stair behind. And when the last of
them had gone, she pushed unwilling feet to the steps and began to climb once
more.

The
drapes of the bed had been pulled back, the room was bright with transitory
sunshine, and at first she thought there had been some terrible mistake, some
macabre joke, for the bed looked empty. Then she came near and... and smiled.

She
sat by him for many hours, holding his hand, making conversation when he was
capable of it, else just waiting until he awoke again or the spasm of pain had
passed. His mind wandered much of the time. Often he mistook her for her
mother.

Aunt
Kade came at intervals, tiptoeing and doleful. She spoke to him, and sometimes
he knew her. Then she would ask if Inos wanted anything, and slip quietly away
again. Poor Aunt Kade! Weeks on horseback... she had ridden all through the
wastelands, bravely insisting that this was the greatest adventure of her life,
not to be missed. It had not done a damned thing for her figure. She was just
as dumpy as ever, and today she looked old. The lucid moments were at once the
best and the worst. “Well, Princess?” he asked in his whisper. “Did
you find that handsome man?”

“I
think so, Father. But we have made no promises.”

“Be
sure,” he said, and squeezed her hand. Then he began to mumble about
repairs to the bandshell, which had been tom down before she was born.

Her
mother’s portrait had been cleaned and moved to one side. Alongside it
hung Jalon’s pastel sketch. It made her look absurdly young, a mere
child.

Her
father asked about Kinvale and seemed to understand some of what she said. He
talked of people long dead and troubles long since solved. When pain struck and
she offered to call the doctors, he refused. “No more of that,” he
said.

Much
later, after a long quietness, he suddenly opened his eyes very wide. She
thought it was another pain, but it seemed more as if he had remembered
something. “Do you want it?” he demanded, staring at her.

“Want
what, Father?”

“The
kingdom, “ he said. “Do you want to stay and be queen? Or would you
rather live in a kinder land? Now you must choose. So soon! “

“I
think I have a duty,” she replied. “I should not be happy evading a
duty. “ He would approve of that, although she could not quite suppress
her own resentment. Why must she be so bound, when ordinary people were not?
She had never asked to be a princess.

He
gripped her hand tightly in pain. “You have grown up!” She nodded
and said she thought so.

“Then
you will try?” he asked. “You can do it, I think.” His eyes
roamed restlessly around the room. “Are we alone?”

She
assured him that they were alone.

“Come
close, then,” he said softly. She bent over him and he whispered some
nonsensical thing in her ear. She jerked up in surprise, for she had thought he
was clear-minded. He smiled up at her weakly, as if that had been an effort. “From
Inisso. “

“Yes,
Father.”

“Ask
Sagorn,” he muttered. “You can trust Sagorn. Maybe Thinal,
sometimes, but not the others. None of the others. “ She thought that
statement a harsh verdict on all the faithful servants and officials who had
served Holindarn all their lives--if that was who he meant. And who was Thinal?
He was rambling. But Sagorn? Andor had said that Sagorn had returned after she had
left, but she had seen no sign of him.

Her
father winced suddenly, but then he said, “Call the council.”

“Later,”
she said. “Rest now.”

He
shook his head insistently on the pillow. “I must tell them.” Just
then Aunt Kade made one of her visits, and Inos told her to call the council.
Doubtfully she went off to do so. In a short while they all trooped in, the
bishop and Yaltauri and half a dozen others. But by then the king was mumbling
about grain ships and white horses; the council withdrew.

After
that, he seemed to sink rapidly. The silences grew longer, broken only by the
hiss of the peat in the fireplace and a periodic cry of wind through the leaky
west window. She recalled how that plaintive wail had frightened her when she
was a child, and how that casement had always defied repair. Once or twice she
thought she heard a faint creak from the ceiling, but she dismissed it as
imagination. On Aunt Kade’s next visit, Inos asked her to send a doctor,
and thereafter she allowed the man to stay.