Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

Rap gulped in horror. “But these are Imperial legionaries!” he protested. “Aren’t they reserved to one of the warlocks?”

Sagorn gave him a long, hard stare. “It is true that the Imperial army is East’s prerogative. Andor thought you were ignorant of such matters. Did you actually manage to deceive Andor, young man?”

“Andor began my education!” Rap said hotly.

“Painless learning may be worthless learning. Anyway, you are correct. To use occult force against these imps might well call down the wrath of the warlock of the east—supported, likely, by the whole Council of Four.”

Rap felt as if he had scored a point, although he did not know what the game was. “Tell me, then. Had I shared my word with Jalon, or with Andor, would they have called Darad to kill me?”

Sagorn shrugged, uninterested. “Perhaps. I don’t recall that either of them had decided. But Darad would have been called sooner or later, when one of us was in trouble. Then he would have come after you, to get more power; he is a simple soul. There would be more sorcerers around if sharing were easier, you see. It needs a great trust.”

“And you could cheat? Tell a wrong word?”

The old man smiled thinly. “I expect people usually do.”

“And,” Rap concluded, feeling triumphant, “the Darad problem still exists if we share now, doesn’t it?”

Sagorn pouted, emphasizing the clefts that flanked his deep upper lip. “I suppose it does. Well, Queen Inosolan, shall we try Inisso’s magic casement instead?”

The strain of an unbearable day was showing on her face, but Inos raised her head proudly and said, “If you wish, Doctor.”

Nobody moved. Fleabag was panting, and the wind moaning around the turret. Very faint thumping sounds came drifting up from the imps' axes.

“Well, this is exciting!” Princess Kadolan said. “I have always wanted to see some real magic. Who goes first? You, Doctor Sagorn?”

He glanced at her disbelievingly and then nodded. “I suppose so. Come back here, Master Rap.”

Rap walked over to them, and the icy chamber was rapidly plunged into darkness, Inos’s candle barely visible. Then Sagorn moved slowly toward the casement. Again light shone on the dusty, footprinted floor and this time it seemed to be normal sunlight—white, but not the fearsome glare that Rap had provoked.

Sagorn went close and studied the emblems on the tiny panes. As before, Rap felt that they were changing, but could see no transformation actually happen. A red spiral near the lower left corner was farther to the right than he had thought, the gold and green seashell higher, a group of silver bells on azure petals…

Then the gaunt old man seemed to find courage. He reached up and grasped the fastening in the center, grunted quietly as if it were stiff, and pulled the two flaps toward him. As he stepped back, the casement swung open.

A gust of hot, dry wind swirled through the chamber, raising the dust in acrid, eye-stinging clouds. The sunlight, also, stung Rap’s eyes and he squinted for a moment, registering only that the bright sand outside was little lower than the floor within, as if the tower had sunk into the ground. Then, as he adjusted to the sunshine, he saw that he was looking across a level space, a sandy and rocky ground, toward a rugged, sun-blasted cliff of black rock, littered at its base with boulders. The only vegetation consisted of a few spiky clumps of some plant he had never seen before; the heat coming in on the breeze was intense.

It was real, and not real. His senses insisted that he was standing in a room about one story above the ground, looking out an open window. Even the smell of the air was real, and the waves of heat shimmering off the sand. But his farsight detected nothing outside the casement at all. So accustomed was he now to using his occult talent that its failure unbalanced him and made him feel dizzy.

In the distance, three men were picking their way along the base of the cliff, between the rocks. He wondered why they did not move out into the open and walk on the flat ground. They wore robes with the hoods raised to shield them from the sun’s glare, so he could not see their faces. The one in front was the tallest and his walk seemed familiar.

“That’s you in the brown, Doctor, isn’t it?” Princess Kadolan said.

Sagorn stepped back a pace and spoke without turning. “Yes, I think it may be. I wonder who the others are.”

There was no sound except a faint rustling as the wind stirred dried twigs in the withered bushes below the casement.

Then the men all stopped and peered up at the sky. They seemed to study something, the middle one pointed. They began moving again, and as the first man moved around an especially large boulder—the size of a small cottage—he turned toward the casement, and the viewers. Certainly it was Sagorn, strands of white hair falling over his gaunt, angular face, but he was too far off for his voice to be audible. The second man followed. He wore a greenish robe and hood, and his face was too pale to be anything but jotunn, although he was shorter than most jotnar. All Rap could be sure of was that he sported a voluminous silver moustache.

Which was hardly helpful, because many sailors did. Then the third followed, but he was keeping his head lowered. All three disappeared momentarily behind high-piled debris.

“That was Rap!” Inos exclaimed. “The one in black?”

“No. Not Flat Nose!” Little Chicken growled angrily.

Rap could not tell, not knowing what he looked like from the outside, but he felt very uneasy.

“I find this extremely unhelpful!” Sagorn sniffed. “There is no way to tell where this is. That may be Master Rap with me, but I’m not sure. Does anyone recognize the second man? Where? When? What are we doing?”

Then a huge blackness swept over the two men and was gone—a giant shadow. They dropped hurriedly, cowering behind boulders and staring up at the sky. Faint shouts drifted in the wind.

Sagorn gave a strangled cry and stumbled back from the casement. The scene rippled, fragmented, turned gray, and was gone. Icy wind swirled snowflakes into the chamber. The old man tottered forward again to grip the leaves of the casement and force them closed against the Krasnegar night, fastening the clasp.

He swung around, almost invisible, for the candle had blown out long since and there was only a faint glow from the eastern window. “Did any of you recognize that shape?” His voice quavered.

“No,” said the others, almost as one, but Inos' aunt said, “Yes, I think so. Wasn’t it a dragon?”

“I think it was. Nothing else could be so big. I have been shown my death!”

“Then you had better stay away from dragon country, sir.” Rap was feeling more and more unhappy. The magic had made his scalp creep, but perhaps that had been because to his farsight the scene had been invisible, a mysterious nothing. Of course his farsight had not detected Bright Water the first time he met her, either.

“And that was Rap with you!” Inos said.

“Not!” Little Chicken snapped.

Princess Kadolan and Sagorn tended to think that Inos was right. Rap himself was uncertain. But it could have been, and none of them had known the second man, except that they all agreed he was likely a sailor. That was not a very profound conclusion, because jotnar often were, and Dragon Reach was somewhere in the southern parts of the Impire, near the Summer Seas, a very long way from Nordland.

“Well, there are no dragons here now,” Rap said, and cursed himself for babbling like a nervous child. But there were imps, and the steady thud of axes was coming closer.

“Who wants to try next, then?” Sagorn asked, shepherding them back against the far wall. “That was not very helpful.”