Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“He’s welcome here, Mother.” But the hostler was eyeing Fleabag with a dislike that was obviously mutual.

“You do not even have a lock on your door! But where else can we hide him in a tiny place like Krasnegar? With two thousand legionaries coming? They will be billeted anywhere there is a span to spare.”

Hononin heaved himself to his feet. “Nowhere I can think of.”

“I was told once of a place,” Rap said, “if you can get us there. A place where no one ever goes.”

A single candle flickered and shivered in the night, casting its uncertain light on the dying king. His face was wasted, yellow and skull-like, his hair sparse and gray, his beard white. Even in sleep he writhed restlessly under the covers.

The drapes had been drawn all around the high bed, except for one small gap near the pillow. Sitting beside that opening, the attending nurse patiently waited out the long hours until her relief would come at dawn. From her seat she could not see the door to the chamber, and no one entering from the stairway could see either patient or nurse—unless that person had farsight, of course.

Mother Unonini crossed the room to talk to her, and to inspect the invalid, her lantern making inky shadows dance until she vanished around the corner of the fourposter. The chaplain was an ideal accomplice for intruders, able to go anywhere, answerable only to the Gods. Two youths and a dog came in silently behind her and crept across to the deep shadows on the other side of the bed.

Worms of fire crawled over the peats in the big fireplace and the room was heavy with their pungent scent. Curtains on one window tapped monotonously to draw attention to an ill-fitting casement. The drugged king moaned querulously in his slumber.

Quietly Rap laid down his bundle and waited, sending a restraining signal to Fleabag, who was eager to investigate the unfamiliar scents of the sickroom. Little Chicken also bore a bundle, but he continued to hold his, looking around bleakly at the shadows.

From the far side of the draperies came a crackle of vellum and Mother Unonini’s hard voice. “… a special invocation. It will probably take me an hour or so…” For a servant of the Good, she was a surprisingly slick liar. Tactfully dismissed—and probably relieved that she need not listen to an hour’s hard praying—the nurse rose and departed. Rap traced her progress as she descended the stairs within the far wall.

He could find no signs that the prowlers had been detected. Even the great hall at the bottom of the tower was deserted. The palace slept on, unaware that intruders had penetrated all the way to the royal bedchamber, unaware, as well, of the army poised to invade on the morrow.

Reassured, he tried to check overhead, also, and was seized at once by a strong desire not to pry. Inos had spoken of a spell protecting the long-dead sorcerer’s secrets. Sweat broke out on his face and his head started to throb, but he forced himself to look. There was another staircase in the wall—he established that at the cost of a thumping in his temples and sick twinges in his gut—but it ran up to…

Nothing! The flat wooden ceiling marked the roof of the world.

He relaxed then, knowing that the effort was fruitless. He had noticed this same opaque blankness when he entered the castle half an hour ago. Indeed he had noticed it when he left with Andor at Winterfest, although his farsight then had not then been as acute as it was now. Now he could sense almost every move in the whole building—even some irregular activities in one of the maids' dormitories of which Housekeeper Aganimi would certainly disapprove if she knew—but his knowledge stopped at the walls. Inisso had thrown an occult barrier around his bastion, cut it off from all the world.

And the chamber of puissance, if it existed—and Rap now felt strongly inclined to disbelieve in it—was outside that shield.

Then the lights and shadows began to move again as Mother Unonini came waddling around the corner of the bed and headed toward the high dresser opposite the doorway, Rap moved to join her, and then they both halted, irresolute.

“It’s the spell,” Rap said. Moving furniture around when the king was dying—it seemed like a desecration. It felt wrong. There couldn’t be anything interesting behind it anyway.

The chaplain nodded uneasily. “You do it !”

“Little Chicken?”

The goblin shook his head vigorously, his angular eyes glinting wide in the light of the lantern.

“Scared?” Rap asked, although his own ribs were dribbling sweat.

The gibe brought the still-reluctant goblin, and the two of them lifted the heavy dresser away from the wall. The moment Rap saw the door, the strange reluctance released him. He grabbed up his bundle again as the chaplain produced a ring of massive keys and began trying them. In a moment the click of the lock rang like clashing blades through the silence. When she pushed the door, it uttered a groan that seemed loud enough to waken the whole city.

She paused and raised her lantern to see Rap’s face. “Anything?”

He scanned again, all the way down to the great hall. Two dogs had been snoring before the fireplaces. They lifted their heads as the departing nurse emerged from the stairwell. When nothing else happened, they went back to sleep.

“All right.”

Mother Unonini nodded and led the way up the narrow steps, her lantern showing matted white cobwebs and dusty treads curving up into darkness. It was as much as Rap could do to keep Fleabag from bounding ahead of her, for at the same time he was disconcerted by the eerie blankness awaiting him at the top. He felt like a fish being hauled upward to the water’s surface. Closer and closer came that sinister nothingness. He was so accustomed now to viewing the world with his occult talent that he felt he was being threatened with blindness; the conflict between his two senses dizzied him.

Then his head broke through. The uppermost chamber rose to a conical roof and of course it lacked an opposing door leading to a higher story, but otherwise it seemed identical to all the other great circular rooms of the tower. The fireplace was empty. The guarderobe door was closed, but Rap could sense through that.

He could sense the city, also. It was the castle now that was barred to him, locked within its occult shield. Sheer height made his head spin, as he felt the streets and alleys, and the distant icepack piled on the rocks, far, far below. He staggered and almost tripped on the last few treads.

The door at the top stood open and the intruders walked through into Inisso’s chamber, the sorcerer’s place of power.

“Well!” breathed the chaplain, raising her lantern and then lowering it quickly, seeing that its rays on the windows might alert any watchers outside. She was a very nosy person, of course. She had first been shocked when Rap had suggested this place as a bolt hole, but then her own obvious curiosity and the unexpected opportunity to pry had overcome her scruples. She must be feeling disappointed—there was nothing to see except dusty footprints showing vaguely on bare boards, where the king and Sagorn had walked on their visit in the summer, The air was cold and still and musty, but totally lacking in mystery. Just an empty room.

Being unfurnished, it seemed large. Fleabag began slinking around this vast circular emptiness, nose to the floor, pausing from time to time to analyze some detail of scent.

Little Chicken threw down his bundle and went to peer out of the nearest casement. Mother Unonini sniffed disapprovingly at the billow of dust he had raised.

Rap was still overwhelmed by his giddy sense of height. Combined with farsight, it was intoxicating, exhilarating, almost terrifying. Far, far below, a mother nursed her baby in a dark basement room, with the rest of her family asleep around her, bakers' apprentices were already stoking their masters' fires; a lover tiptoed past a bedroom door on his way home…