Rap groaned.
“Why not?” She stamped her foot with rage and dug her fingernails into Rap’s arm.
He was finding it very hard to think straight with Inos holding him like this. “Inos,” he said hoarsely, “I don’t want to be a sorcerer, even a mage. Sagorn is saying you must tell him first. Then he becomes an adept, right? He might call Darad to kill you to become a stronger adept! I don’t think you should trust him, not that much.”
The old man flushed angrily. Inos released Rap with a sob. “The God promised me a happy ending. Carried off captive by imps? Breeding sons for Kalkor? And you’re going to be thrown in the dungeons at the least, you dummy! I think that stupid casement is too old! It wasn’t working right!”
The door shuddered and splintered. It had lasted longer than the others, so perhaps it held some residual magic. Rap could farsee the burly imp wielding the ax, the heads and shoulders of others behind him, lower on the stairs, seeming cut off at floor level.
“Listen!” Inos said firmly. “I will tell Doctor Sagorn my word, and then he will tell both of them to Rap. You won’t be in danger then, Doctor, will you? I will trust you, as Father said I should.”
The old man shrugged. “Your plan makes sense, Majesty. I can think of none better. We have indeed been instructed to share our words with Master Rap. You will just have to reconcile yourself to becoming a mage, young man! Obviously that is what the casement was telling us to do.”
Rap groaned again.
Crash! Splinters flew. That blow had come right through the planks.
Inos clasped his hand. “Rap? Please?”
Please? He was making his queen beg? What sort of loyalty was that, to refuse the very first command she gave him? Rap squared his shoulders.
“Of course, your Majesty!” Then he sensed the spasm of hurt that crossed her face. That wasn’t right, either! “I’ll be proud to be your court magician, Inos—if I can be master-of-horse sometimes?”
He tried to smile and discovered that he had forgotten how to.
Inos took his hand. “Thank you, Rap.”
“And you know that if I knew a word of power, I would tell it to you gladly?”
Sorcerer? Prying into people’s minds as well as their clothes and houses? Manipulating people, like Andor? Killing them off when they got in the way, like Darad? Hateful! Hateful!
“Perhaps we should pray?” princess Kadolan said quietly. “When the God appeared to Inos—”
Inos started to say something, then glanced at the door as a whole plank shattered, hurling more splinters across the floor. Rap sensed the big imp outside lowering his ax, and the others surging up close behind him with swords drawn.
But he had seen the splinters, seen them with his eyes. The door was brightly lighted. So was the floor, with five shadows stretched out across it.
No! Six shadows!
Fleabag yawned and lay down. He had a shadow, also—seven!
Simultaneously they all swung around to see. Light was streaming in the still-open casement from a strange, many-colored mist that glowed outside. The extra shadow came from a woman standing before it, inside the chamber.
Disaster! Idiot! With his stupid pig-headed refusal to obey his monarch, Rap had delayed too long. He had been warned that sorcerers could sense occult power being used, and here was a sorceress come to investigate.
The magic casement had given the answer, the solution to all their problems, and he had mulishly thrown it all away.
Now anything could happen.
3
“Well, well, well!” said the newcomer. “What have we here?”
Rap grabbed Inos' hand and spun around, heading for the door—and his boots froze to the floor. He windmilled his free arm wildly to regain his balance. He tried to pull his feet out of his boots, but they would not come loose either—he was rooted. The others had all reacted in the same way and they were all similarly immobilized, cemented to their own shadows. Meanwhile, a brawny arm reached through the hole in the door and fumbled for the bolt.
Rap twisted around awkwardly to watch the woman plodding forward to inspect her captives. A sorceress! Dumpy and wide, she walked with a heavy-footed gait. She was swathed all over in some soft fabric of pure white, even more hidden than a goblin woman, for a veil concealed all of her face below her eyes. She was much too large to be Bright Water, witch of the north.
The rest of the Four were men, warlocks, so this was someone new, someone unexpected.
“A magic casement left open?” she said. “No bug screen? Someone has been very careless!” She was speaking impish, but with a strange, harsh accent.
Then she seemed to notice the legionary’s hand, still struggling with the bolt at a difficult angle. She made a small gesture, and the imp froze. So did all those behind him, so far as Rap’s farsight would reach—completely petrified. Struggling to comprehend the sheer size of this latest disaster, he registered vaguely that the newcomer had just used magic on Imperial troops. Was that good or bad for Inos? Would the warlocks now descend in fury on Krasnegar?
Yells of alarm came drifting up the stairwell as the soldiers farther down discovered what had happened to their leaders.
The woman stopped in front of Inos’s aunt, hands on hips and feet spread, in a stance more like an angry fishwife than whatever Rap would have expected of a sorceress.
“Let’s start with you, dearie,” she said. “Who’re you?”
The princess’s pearly gown was bedraggled and tea-stained, her white hair mussed, but she drew herself up as tall as she could—which wasn’t very—and said haughtily, “I am Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar. And you?”
The sorceress’s eyebrows vanished up into her headcloth, and Rap sensed amusement. “Well! I’m Rasha aq’Inim, Sultana of Arakkaran.”
“Oh!” The princess thawed at once and smiled, “How nice that you can join us, your Majesty!”
A sultana was a Majesty?
The self-styled queen laughed coarsely. “My pleasure entirely. Do excuse me just dropping in like this, without formal invitation and all.”
“I only wish we could offer you proper hospitality.”
“Oh, I quite understand! You’ll excuse me a moment?”
She pulled off her head covering to reveal hair of a dark-red hue, its magnificent gleaming waves cunningly held by combs of silver and mother-of-pearl. Her gown was of much lighter, sheerer material than Rap had realized, and it sparkled with many jewels.
How had he failed to notice those earlier?
This astonishing sultana glanced coyly around the great circular chamber, dirty and cold and lighted only by an opalescent glow from the magic casement, and then she dropped her veil. She was much younger than Rap had realized, and of no race that he had ever met. Her skin, like her glorious hair, was a deep ruddy shade, her nose high-prowed and arrogant. She was not conventionally beautiful, perhaps, and past her first youth, but a magnificent, statuesque woman, with an air of power, and mystery, and, yes! —beauty! Certainly beauty—a stunning woman!
Princess Kadolan said, “Oh!” again, faintly, and then rallied. “I am sorry to say that you find us in rather a state of confusion, your Majesty.”
Sultana Rasha glanced at the petrified arm protruding through the door. “I noticed. The lower orders can be tiresome at times, can they not?”
“Indeed they can. May I present my niece, Pri—Queen Inosolan?”
The sorceress glanced across at Inos and seemed to disapprove. Rap, at her side, tried to maintain a stern, warning expression, as if he were truly a protector, but he was struggling against a craven yearning to smile at the beguiling young Rasha.