Perilous Seas (27 page)

Small
though he was, the man’s stink was powerful enough to register over all
the others. Could this disgusting little scavenger truly be a powerful
sorcerer?

“Lily
seems to think she has met you before, Adept. “ So that was it! “She
may have ... my lord--”

“Just
call me Ishist. I always detect overtones of irony when day men offer me
titles. Your name is Rap. You say you are only an adept? “

“Yes
... Ishist.”

There
was shrewdness in those inkwell eyes, and sudden surprise. “You have
indeed met Lily before!”

“She
was called Precious then.”

The
fire chick reacted to the name with a flash of blue-green flame that made Rap
wonder when his hair would start smoking. His ear and neck were turning
painfully red.

“Bright
Water?” the gnome muttered. “Well! I did not know that. My master
did not take me into his confidence.” He grinned, showing innumerable little
teeth, still white and needle sharp despite his age. “You wander around
bearing strange secrets, Adept!”

He
chuckled at Rap’s horror. “Yes, I am poking around in your
memories. Don’t worry-you have no more bizarre obscenities in there than
most men do. Remarkably few, in fact.” He showed even more of the tiny
teeth. “Some minds can disgust even a gnome, Master Rap, but I
congratulate you. Now I must attend to your injuries; but I’m not going
to try it with a fire chick on your shoulder. Come away, Lily.”

The
dragon turned a sulky green, and crouched low, while trickles of Rap’s
blood oozed out around its tightening claws. The other fire chicks, meanwhile,
were circling him in flickers of curious pink, gradually daring to approach
more closely. He thought he would be scorched or shredded if they all tried to
land on him.

“I’m
not doing this, sir! Ishist, I mean.”

The
sorcerer scratched thoughtfully at the old carrion caked around his mouth. “I
know you’re not. It’s very unusual, and probably a very real
compliment. But we can’t stay here all night. Be off with you all!”

Lily
shot up from Rap’s shoulder in a stream of purple fire, and the whole
juvenile blaze of baby dragons went swirling high into the ghostly upper
reaches of the chamber, to race around like six violet comets, while their
squeaks of anger and fright echoed as discordant bell strokes inside Rap’s
head.

Ishist
ignored them, frowning at Rap. “Now, Master Adept, it is safe to use a
little power around you! Never entered my head that you might not be a full
sorcerer. You terrified poor Primrose. Fools rush in where mages fear to tread
. . .” While he was muttering, Rap’s wounds were closing and
healing, from his mangled feet to the dragon scratches on his shoulder. “...so
I overdid the summoning spell ... at least we know you’re not holding
back anything if you had to endure this ... there. How does that feel?”

The
black-button eyes twinkled shrewdly, and Rap suddenly realized that even his
fatigue had been lifted, or most of it, and he had lost his sense of smell
also. That was the greatest blessing of all. He took a deep breath of relief.

“That’s
much better, Master Ishist. Thank you.”

The
gnome nodded with ironic amusement. “I was planning to throw you in a
dungeon, but my wife is very anxious that you dine with us.”

Athal’rian
had been staying back, as if not wishing to interfere with business. Now she
said, “Oh, yes!” breathlessly, and came over to cuddle against her
husband and place a hand on his shoulder. Ishist took it and kissed it; she
stooped to place a kiss on his bald pate, although it was plastered with what
seemed to be old bird droppings. The elderly gnome and the much-younger elf
woman were behaving like two lovesick adolescents, yet she had apparently
already borne him seven . . . no, there were eight children present now. What
was that baby eating?

“It
will have to wait awhile, my love,” Ishist said. “I must go and
find Master Rap’s two companions before the wildlife does.”

Athal’rian
wailed. “You won’t be long, though, darling?”

“No,
no! And it is still dark. I shall be as quick as I can, dearest.” He
patted her lovingly on the rump, as if she were a -horse.

“But
the food will spoil. And I did so want the children to see what a proper dinner
party is like.”

As
a mother she seemed to have strange priorities. Ugish and the oldest girl were
now fighting furiously, rolling around in the mire and biting each other, but
Athal’rian was paying them no heed at all.

“It
won’t hurt them to stay up past dawn for once,” Ishist said firmly.
“Now, magic is magic, but sleep has its own magic. I’m sure that
our guest would appreciate a little rest. Where are you planning to put the
visitors?”

She
hesitated, shuffling her toes in the dirt. “I thought ... the northwest
towel’?” She waited anxiously for his opinion. “Very good
choice, my dear. So you show Master Rap to his chamber. I promised Ugish he
could come with me. Stop that, you two!” He separated the combatants with
a couple of wellplaced kicks. Then he accepted a very long, tight embrace from
his tearful wife, before plodding off toward the door. Young Ugish trailed
after him, angrily licking a bleeding arm with a very long black tongue.

Still
holding his wisp of dirty rag, Rap followed his hostess along innumerable
corridors and up narrow, winding staircases. The walls were rough stonework,
the floors soft with dirt as if they had not been cleaned since the founding of
the Impire. Mummified carcasses and gnawed bones lay in drier comers, while
wetter parts were ankle-deep in sewage and the doors had rotted away to rusty
relics of hinges. In other places the ceilings had collapsed, requiring painful
climbs over heaps of rubble.

He
could not assess the full extent of the huge ruin, but he could easily believe
that it was old enough to have known the Dragon Wars. Everywhere he detected
ancient occult barriers, although once in a while he caught shadowy vistas
running off for incredible distances between them. Sometimes then he glimpsed
far-off groups of gnomes going about their business.

Many
parts were more or less illuminated by the sort of sorcerous mist he had seen
in the Mews; others were pitch black. Athal’rian seemed to find her way
through those mostly by memory and touch, but he followed her with farsight,
trying to ignore the details: the rashes under the dirt, the close-packed
insect bites, the elven grace of her slender hips. She glided like a moonbeam,
confirming all the tales he had heard about elves and dancing.

She
sickened him-how could any human being exist in such condition? But in a
gruesome fashion he found her fascinating. He kept trying to imagine her
cleaned up and properly clad.

If
Ugish was thirteen or so, then his mother must be over thirty, surely, but she
had a figure any adolescent could envy. Perhaps sorcery had helped there, and
bearing tiny gnome babies might not be very taxing to a woman of a tall race.
Also, he had a vague idea that elves were long-lived.

Although
he kept reproaching himself, he still felt very uncomfortable at the idea of an
elf marrying a gnome. He was convinced that her obvious infatuation must be a
product of sorcery, and yet Ishist himself seemed equally besotted. Could a
sorcerer bespell himself? Would he ever want to? And who was Rap to question
the follies of love when he had been crazy enough to fall in love with a queen?

Finally,
at the top of a breathlessly winding spiral staircase, Athal’rian brought
him to a place that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Inisso’s chamber in
Krasnegar and almost as large, the uppermost room of a circular tower. The
floor creaked alarmingly under his feet. Starlight seeped in through gaps in
the corbeled roof, but the four tiny casements were tightly sealed, opaque with
grime. The only furniture was a giant four-poster bed whose draperies were
mostly cobwebs.

She
waited by the door, peering doubtfully at him.

“It’s
magnificent, my lady,” he said gamely. “I shall feel like a king in
such royal quarters. “

Relief
showed through the dirt, but her laugh had an awkward ring. “I know how
difficult it can be to adjust to gnomish ways, Adept. No one has been here for
a long time, I’m sure. “

He
saw no need to mention that he had been relieved of his sense of smell. “It
is a beautiful room,” he insisted. “And it must have a wonderful
view. “

He
walked over to one of the casements and rubbed the glass. His farsight was
blocked and he could see nothing in the starlight except that the walls were
enormously thick, doubtless dragonproof.

His
approval had filled the simple Athal’rian with delight, although she was
smiling in the wrong direction, not having heard him move. “Well, you
will want to rest. I’ll send Ugish or Oshat to call you when dinner is
ready.” She floated into a curtsy.

He
bowed, clumsy as a drunken troll. He thanked her and watched for a moment as
she padded down off down the stairs on her bare feet. Then he took another look
around the room. The holes in the ceiling had admitted bats, and some were
already flitting around over his head, returning from their nocturnal outings.
He could certainly use some sleep-but where? The bed would collapse if he laid
as much as a hand on it. Beetles had fretted the woodwork; the thick feather
mattress had been tunneled out by centuries of mice. There were hundreds of
them still in there.

The
floor might be as soft as the bed, though; both of them were inches deep in bat
dung. He tried to pull the top cover from the bed and his hand came away
holding a fragment of rag no larger than a kerchief. He sighed, chose the
floor, and lay down.

Endlessly
rolling from side to back and then back to her side, Inos had never spent a
more miserable night, wondering a million times if she had somehow lost the
ability to go to sleep without the aid of Elkarath’s sorcery. Whenever
she did begin to slide below the surface of drowsiness, the four pixies were
there at once, all around her, gloating and hurting, repeating their cruelties
of the day and going on to achieve worse and worse things, until she awoke in
spasms of terror, soaked and shaking and choking back screams. She despised
herself then for such cowardice, but that did not help her escape the
nightmares.

The
little room was so packed with its four small beds that to move around without
climbing over them was almost impossible. Two had remained empty, as a gesture
of respect to royalty. Kade snored peacefully on the fourth, not stopping once
all night. After months in a tent, the stuffy garret seemed confining as a
coffin, and although its little dormer window looked out only on a sagging tile
roof, it had an inexplicable ability to gather up the racket of the street
below: sounds of carousing sailors until an hour before dawn, and then the
wheels of wagons rattling over cobblestones. Where now were the peace and
serenity of the desert?

Demons
haunted the night, spinning giddy circles of mockery in her mind. She had not
escaped from Rasha, nor from Rasha’s plans. Rasha would proceed to trade
her to Warlock Olybino, and he in turn would marry her off to a goblin. Rasha
might reasonably resent Inos’s attempted flight, and be in future even
less considerate than before.

What
spiteful punishment would she inflict now on Azak? Perhaps Inos should have
married the sultan while she had the chance. For both their sakes.

Inos
and Kade were royal guests, but also prisoners, for the door was locked. Only a
cat could depart through that window. Having refused to give his parole, Azak
had been led off to a dungeon somewhere.

Escape
would not be so easy at Ullacarn as it had been at Three Cranes, with Elkarath
now alert and watching for it. To slip away in a strange town with no friends
or plan would be madness. No, the next escape must be prepared much more
carefully than the madcap flight from the oasis, and Inos had no idea how much
time she might have to plan. Perhaps noneOlybino might appear in the morning to
take delivery.

Azak
might no longer be a willing ally. Since Elkarath had suggested that Inos could
use magic, the sultan had spoken not a single word to her. Had there been any
truth in the accusation, then Inos could have understood. She knew how she
herself had felt about the late Sir Andor and his foul sorcery, but in her case
the suggestion was ludicrous. Kade had not helped by hinting that Azak was just
angry at himself for his own shortcomings. Azak now regarded Inos as one of
those shortcomings. And that hurt.

The
House of Elkarath in Ullacarn was a great rambling old building, yet it seemed
to be crammed with people from cellar to gable. The cramped little attic room
was not exactly the Palace of Palms in Arakkaran, nor yet even Kinvale, but it
was comfortable enough for just two. An attic was certainly preferable to a
dungeon, a dungeon with fleas and chains and rats, Elkarath had said.

Azak
had chosen the dungeon. Pigheaded idiot!

A
mage could probably detect lies. Would Azak have given his parole to a mundane,
meaning to break it as soon as he could find the opportunity? Were all men so
stubborn?

And
here was Inos, dancing naked on the grass and shouting unthinkable promises to
dozens of young men, as they came running toward her to accept. But they kept
turning to stone and sinking into the meadow as they drew near. Hundreds and
thousands of them drowning in the ground, and every one of them was Azak. Then
she awoke again, gasping and shaking.

Would
she ever again be able to stand close to a man without expecting rape, without
breaking out in a sweat of terror?

She
had remote relatives in Hub, some of them very influential people. Senator
Somebody, for example. Kade had innumerable friends there also. Ullacarn was
allied with the Impire, and so the post must call here. If Kade could write a
letter, enclosing a petition to the imperor or the other wardens, then they
might be able to deliver it for her. That was one possibility. Ullacarn was a
busy port. That was another.