Magic Casement (50 page)

“I
have a distant cousin-or great-great-aunt, or some such relation-the dowager
duchess of Kinvale. She wants to marry me to her son. He has a claim to my
throne, if a woman cannot inherit. “

“So!”
The sultana beamed. “And can a woman inherit?”

“I
think so!” Inos said angrily. “My father said so! By the laws of
the Impire I could.”

“But
Kalkor disagrees, so the imps want to block the jotnar? Well, well!”
Young queen Rasha’s smile was delectable, yet sinister enough to stir the
hair on the back of Rap’s neck. “Politics is a tiresome men’s
game, but sometimes we poor, feeble women are forced to play a hand or two,
just to protect our interests.”

“You
will help me?” Inos exclaimed.

“We’ll
see,” the sorceress said darkly. “I shall need to know a little
more.” She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Sagorn,
standing stiffly at the end of the line. “Men can be so obnoxious at
times. . .”

She
frowned as if puzzled and sauntered over toward him. Rap had never seen a woman
move with such grace. Even without his farsight he could detect the glory of
her long legs moving within the filmy robe, and he caught glimpses of tiny
silver sandals. Oh, those hips! Of course this was sorcery at work. No woman
should be able to raise his heart pound like this just by walking across a
floor. She had not looked like this when-but he couldn’t recall what she
had looked like when she first appeared. It was how she looked now that
mattered. Oh, wonder of womanhood! Oh, vision of all man’s desire!
Sorcery curdling his brains-dangerous! He knew it, knew he was helpless against
it. She was turning him into a helpless slave, a human jelly. All other
thoughts had fled his mind.

Inos
wrenched her hand loose from his sweaty grip and he barely noticed.

Sagorn
straightened up and licked his lips. “Would you turn down the intensity a
little, ma’am?” he mumbled. “It’s very hard on the
arteries at my age.”

“But
what a wonderful way to die!” She laughed and reached up to stroke his
cheek with a teasing finger. Rap felt fires of insane jealousy leap through him
like lightning bolts.

Sagorn
moaned-and was the much-too-handsome Andor. Queen Rasha sprang back, raising a
hand as if to strike. For a bewildering fraction of a second, Rap imagined a
glimpse of a heavy, middle-aged woman in a shabby brown wrap, with unkempt gray
hair and bare feet, with wrinkles and sagging cheeks. Then the delusion was
gone, and the glorious Queen Rasha was there again, radiant in gossamer and
pearl, studying Andor in languid amusement.

With
hair in disarray, in a gown too large for him, Andor was clutching his left
arm, whose sleeve was already darkening with blood, yet he contrived to bow
gracefully nonetheless. “Oh, yes! “ he said. “Exquisite!
Majesty, how may I serve you?”

Queen
Rasha nodded to acknowledge the bow, regarding him with some curiosity. “A
sequential spell? Fascinating! And well done, too-a very sharp transition. Can
it truly be a matched set? Let’s see, the old one would have been the
scholar-”

“And
I your devoted slave. “

“Of
course a lover,” she said curtly, seemingly more to herself than to
Andor. Before he could say more she cut him off with a snap of her fingers.

And
he had gone. In his place was Darad, huge and ugly, his head still dribbling
blood from Rap’s chair-work. He howled, clasping a hand to the eye that
Little Chicken had injured. Andor’s blood-and now Darad’s own-had
now soaked through the left sleeve of the robe, and his sudden move produced a
ripping noise from an overstretched shoulder.

“The
fighter!” The sorceress pulled a face and snapped her fingers again.

The
gown seemed to fall inward, around the slight form of the flaxen-haired Jalon.
His dreamy blue eyes widened at the sight of Rasha. “The artist, ma’am,”
he said, bowing. “Your beauty shall evermore be on my lips and my song
raised in your-”

“Some
other day. “ Sultana Rasha snapped fingers a third time, and the brown
robe collapsed yet again. All that was visible of the latest occupant was a
narrow, dark face peering out from under a tangle of lank black hair-a small
and very ordinary impish youth, his mouth and eyes now stretched wide in
terror. With a wail, he tried to fall on his knees before the sorceress, but
his feet were as immovable as Rap’s, and he succeeded only in dropping to
a squat. He raised clasped hands in supplication. The sound of chattering teeth
filled the chamber.

“Well!”
The sultana appeared to be less antagonistic than she had been toward his
predecessors. “Scholar, lover, soldier, artist-and you must be the
financier of the group?”

The
youth wailed, big eyes peering up at her from a nest of heaped robe. “I
mean no harm, your M-M-Majesty!”

“But
you’re a bazaar fingersmith if I ever saw one!”

He
whimpered. “Just crusts, lady-a few crusts, when I was hungry. “

This
was the fifth member of the gang? Thinal, the thief whom Sagorn had called
their leader, and Andor’s brother. A less memorable face Rap had never
seen. It was pocked, moreover, with oozing acne pustules and marred by
unsightly tufts of hair. No one would willingly look even once at Thinal; he
would disappear instantly into any crowd in any city of the Impire. Yet the
king had told Inos she could trust him!

The
sorceress nodded approvingly. “Very fine work. Who did it?”

“Or-Or-Orarinsagu,
may it please your Omnipotence. “

“A
long time ago, then?”

“Over
a c-c-century, Majesty.” For a moment the teeth chattered again, and then
the little thief managed to blurt out a plea: “M-M-Majesty? We c-c-crave
release. . .”

“I
should not dream of breaking up such a masterpiece.”

The
imp wailed and cowered down ever farther into the crumpled brown robe, so that
only his hair was visible.

“Besides,”
the sorceress said, “having a whole handful of men available when required,
but, only one at a time to put up with-that seems like an excellent
arrangement.”

Leaving
the lad apparently sobbing into his knees, she came strolling back along the
line. She paused in front of Little Chicken and regarded him with dislike. “You
must be a goblin. Your name?”

With
his odd-shaped eyes stretched wider than Rap had ever seen them, Little Chicken
merely moaned and reached out toward the sorceress. She drifted backward until
he was leaning forward at an absurd angle, only the fixation spell on his feet
preventing him from crashing to the floor. He continued to moan.

She
studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “Not bad below the neck, but the
face would have to go.”

She
left him there, completely off balance, and wandered past Princess Kadolan
without a word, to stop once more before Rap and Inos. “Extraordinary
retainers you chose, child,” she muttered.

Why
would she call Inos a child when she was no older herself? Her eyes were the
same deep red-brown shade as her hair, and they were burning Rap’s soul
to ashes. The curve of her breasts below the filmy gauze of her robe was
driving him mad, and her nearness made the blood pound in his chest until he
felt it was about to burst.

“And
a faun? What’s your name, lad?”

He
opened his mouth. “Raaaaa... “ His name disappeared in a choking
noise, as he felt himself strangle in sudden revelation. His name was not Rap.
That was only a nickname, a short form of--of his word of power. He had never
told anyone his real name, not even the king. It was a great long thing,
Raparakagozi-and another twenty syllables-and he had not heard it since his
mother had first told it to him, a few days before she became sick, warning him
not to repeat it because if an evil sorcerer learned your name he could do you
harm and of course she must have seen with her foresight that she was going to
die and the fact that he could even remember such gibberish after all these
years meant that it was his word of power and now he desperately wanted to tell
it to this entrancing seductive beauty standing before him and yet some part of
him was screaming at him not to-the words were hard to say, Sagorn had told
him-and his tongue tripped between the two set of commands and...

“What
is a faun doing so far north?” Queen Rasha inquired before he had
resolved his conflict and brought his mouth under control. She curled a lip
that men would have died to kiss just once. “But he’s only a
halfbreed, isn’t he? That’s a jotunn jaw, and he’s too tall.
But those tattoos! Why do savages think that mutilation can possibly improve
their appearance?”

“Huh?”
Tattoos?

“This
is Master Rap, a stableboy!” Inos said, in a strangely sharp tone. Rap
did not look at her.

Queen
Rasha sighed. “I do hope his duties are not too complex for him. “
She seemed to lose interest in Rap. His world crashed down into terrible black
despair. It wasn’t his fault he was a mongrel, and he’d have
managed to tell her his name if she’d just given him another minute or
two. He so desperately wanted to please her, just to earn one tiny smile...

“Krasnegar,”
the sorceress murmured, regarding Inos again. “Inisso? A word or two of
power, perhaps?”

“I
don’t know what you mean!” Inos shouted.

“Don’t
be tiresome!” Rasha sighed. “Granted the words themselves are
invisible, but I don’t need the occult to tell me when a slip of a girl
is lying. And you do have an interesting problem.” She glanced
thoughtfully at the door, still decorated with a burly arm. “I don’t
think now is the time to solve it.”

“What
do you mean?” Inos cried. Rap’s conscience stirred vaguely.
Something must be bothering Inos, and he should not be staring so fixedly at
Sultana Rasha.

“I
mean,” the sorceress said, rather absently, as if lost in thought, “that
when you opened that magic casement, it creaked so loud that I heard it down in
Zark. A casement shouldn’t do that. What could have charged it up with
power like that?”

No
one spoke, and she shrugged. “Just a malfunction, I expect. Old-it
obviously hasn’t been used in years, right? You were lucky that most of
Pandemia was still asleep. Including the sorcerers. Including, more important,
the wardens! But to linger longer would not be wise. Go now. “

She
pointed to the window. Inos turned. She began to walk stiffly toward it, and
then twisted around and held out her hand, even as her feet were still moving.

“Rap!”
she cried. “Help!”

With
a shuddering start, he turned to look. As soon as his gaze left Rasha, he broke
free of his dreams. “I’m coming!” He tried to move, but his
feet remained as solidly fastened as before. He could do nothing, and Inos
continued to walk unwillingly to the casement.

Again
she screamed. “Rap!”

“I’m
coming!” he yelled, but he wasn’t. Off balance, he toppled
backwards and crashed to the floor, his feet still immovable. Elbows and head
smashed into the boards. Heavens full of stars blazed before him.

“What
is the meaning of this?” her aunt shouted. “Release her at once!”

But
already Inos, still moving in small jerks like a puppet, had reached the
casement and started to clamber over the sill. Peering through eyes blurred
with tears of pain, Rap saw that the manycolored haze beyond it was a drapery
of sparkling beads, flickering in a gentle breeze. The sun must be shining behind
it, although the other three windows showed only a predawn glow. The whole
chamber, he realized, was full of warm air, scented with flowers.

Inos
staggered on the far side of the wall, cried, “Rap! “ once more,
and then vanished through the shimmering rainbow drape. Failure! He had failed
Inos!

“Queen
Rasha! “ Princess Kadolan said hotly. “This is highly improper!
Return my niece at once, or else permit me to accompany her.”

Rasha
regarded her with some amusement. “You would not prefer to remain and
lecture the imps on deportment? Very well, go.”

Kadolan’s
roly-poly form hurried willingly across the chamber. She struggled for a moment
with the climb, almost fell over the sill, stumbled through the drape in a
tinkle of jewels, and was gone.

The
sorceress glanced around the others. “Boys will be boys,” she said.
“Time for ladies to retire and leave you all to your male fun. Tell them
to be sure and clean up the blood afterward!” She uttered an
astonishingly raucous laugh.

Still
half stunned, Rap was also bewildered-the sultana’s draperies were not
nearly as flimsy as he had thought, and her hair was covered again, and he
could not recall her replacing her veil. She seemed much older than he had been
thinking, and broad, not slender.

She
took a couple of steps and paused to study the sleeping Fleabag, who leaped up
and bounded over to her, his tail wagging vigorously. Again Rap felt the bite
of jealousy.

“Splendid
creature! “ Queen Rasha said, with what sounded like real admiration. “You
will make a fine pair with Claws.” She glanced down at the prostrate Rap.
“Yours, faun?”

Rap
nodded, unable to trust himself to speak.

Fleabag
turned, lolloped across the chamber, and bounded over the sill of the casement
after Inos. Rasha waddled across the room and paused again at the window to
look back suspiciously.

“Why
should a queen call for a stableboy?”

Rap’s
mouth was suddenly very dry. Because he had a word of power, perhaps? He must
not even think about words of power around a sorceress. That was what had been
worrying Inos all along, he saw now, and he had been so bewitched by this-this
old woman?

“Huh?”

Rasha
shrugged. “No accounting for tastes, is there?” She moved again,
seemed to float through the sill, and vanished. The misty brightness went,
also, and a swirl of polar wind rushed into the chamber, bearing cold and
snowflakes and dark.