Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“I shall try, if you like, sir.” But Rap did not really want to know what was causing the unearthly radiance that he created beyond the casement. Apparently the others did not care to know, either.

“I should prefer that you stayed away from it, young man!” Sagorn now sounded more like his usual acerbic self. There were murmurs of assent from the women.

“Then I shall try!” Inos said, not sounding enthused. “I need guidance more than anyone.”

Her footsteps headed for the casement and in a moment she was silhouetted against it as it began to glow. It was going to be daylight again, Rap concluded, but not so bright as in Sagorn’s scene—a gray day. The iridescence of the symbols was less intense, the tints softer. Inos reached up to the clasp and pulled the leaves open.

Then she jumped back, a fist to her mouth to stifle a scream. There was a man standing just outside, his back to the viewers. Without conscious thought, Rap rushed forward. Suddenly—unexpectedly, unforgivably—Inos was in his arms. And they both ignored that fact, staring out of the magic casement.

The man was a jotunn, no doubt of that. He wore a fur around his loins, but the upper half of his body was bare, and only jotnar were that pale shade. His back and shoulders were slick with rain. They were also heavy with muscle and his arms were scarred, his legs invisible below the sill. His thick hair hung like silver plate to his shoulders, hardly stirring in the wind. It was not, as Rap had first thought, Darad. This man was younger, smooth rather than hairy. He had fewer scars and no visible tattoos. It was not Darad, but a man almost as tall. And he was starting to turn.

Rap noticed that Inos was clutching him, also, and her grip grew tighter as the man in the vision turned. Would he be able to see them as they could see him? Rap was just about to release Inos and reach for the flaps—

“It’s Kalkor!” Sagorn’s voice came from close behind them. “The Thane of Gark. And that’s the Nordland Moot!”

The man had stopped moving, but he seemed oblivious of the watchers beside him, who were now seeing his gaunt jotunn face in profile. Looking at it, Rap could understand the man’s reputation, and Inos began to tremble in his arms. In a way it was almost a handsome face, but Kalkor’s appearance suited his reputation. Rap would have expected an older man, but he had never seen a face that so clearly expressed cruelty and implacable determination. It would take a brave man to risk the anger of Thane Kalkor.

There was some sort of ceremony in progress. He seemed to be waiting. Then another man stepped in from the side, an elderly man wearing a red woolen robe, sodden wet from the rain, and a ceremonial helmet decorated with horns. He carried a huge ax and he raised it now, holding it vertically in front of him, using both arms, unable to prevent its great weight from wobbling in his grasp. He gasped some hurried words in a tongue unfamiliar to Rap.

Kalkor reached out one hand stiffly and grasped the monstrous, two-edged battle-ax. It must weigh a ton, Rap thought, seeing how the thick shoulders flexed as Kalkor took the strain at arm’s length, leaning back for balance.

The Nordland Moot? Now, peering into the misty background beyond the foreground figures, Rap made out what Sagorn had seen sooner—a wide flat area of turf, a bare green moorland under a weeping gray sky. Clumped in an irregular circle around the battleground was a huge audience, vague and indistinct in the mist and rain. It was a bleak and ominous scene, barbaric and deadly.

And yet… the watchers were all foggy and indistinct. There was something ghostly and unreal about that background, quite unlike the hard sharpness of Kalkor and his companion, or of the desert in the first showing. Was that just an effect of the rain, or not?

Rap’s attention switched back to the action by the casement. Kalkor raised the ax to his lips, then laid it over his shoulder, moving with military precision. He adjusted his grip and swung sharply around, turning his back to the viewers once more. The shining blue-white blade seemed to be almost within the chamber.

The sounds downstairs had stopped momentarily, then picked up again, much louder. The imps must now be tackling the door to the royal bedchamber.

Kalkor was marching forward over the turf toward the center of the circle, the ax on his shoulder, wearing nothing but the animal hide wrapped around his loins, bare-legged and barefooted.

The man in the red robe had withdrawn. It seemed safe to speak. “What’s the Nordland Moot?” Rap asked.

“It’s held every year at midsummer on Nintor,” Sagorn said quietly. “The thanes settle their disputes by ritual combat.”

“I bet that Kalkor never lost an argument.”

“But this is Inos’s prophecy! Don’t you see, boy? Kalkor will seize her kingdom, and she will take her complaint against him to the moot!”

“I hope I am allowed a champion to fight for me,” Inos said. “I don’t think I could even lift that ax. That would be quite a handicap.”

No one laughed. Muffled voices in the distance were the only sound, too far off for the words to be distinguished, but obviously coming from a large crowd.

“Champions are allowed under certain conditions. Darad has earned good money there. Needless to say, the rest of us do not look back on the memories very happily.”

And the scene began to shimmer and fade, just as Kalkor’s opponent became visible, emerging from the mist, advancing toward him from the far side of the circle. Came the darkness; snow whirled in again. Sagorn stepped forward to close the casement.

Inos clutched Rap fiercely. “That was you again!” she said, peering up at him. “Wasn’t it?”

This time Rap thought he had been the one in the vision. The goblin and Sagorn agreed. Princess Kadolan pleaded old eyes and would not say. But whoever it had been, he had been much sharper and less blurred than the other figures in the background—was the casement defective, or did that distinction have some significance? Rap wondered how much danger there was in meddling with such occult power as this. It felt wrong.

“That’s crazy!” he said. “Me fight Kalkor with an ax? You’d better find a better champion than that.”

He realized that he still had one arm around Inos, and he released her quickly.

“This is very strange,” Sagorn muttered. Even in the darkness, Rap knew of the puzzled expression on the scrawny face. “The Place of Ravens is marked by a circle of standing stones. I don’t recall seeing those—did any of you?”

Heads were shaken.

“And it rarely rains like that on Nintor. And, Master Rap, why should you turn up in two other people’s prophecies? Why do you agitate the casement so much when you approach it?”

Again Rap thought of the old goblin woman. Why can’t I foresee you? “Perhaps I haven’t got any future to foresee,” he said bitterly. “But I do seem to be a popular player in these events. Which comes first, the dragon or Kalkor?”

“Whichever it is, you survive,” Sagorn said, and there could be no argument about that. “And the legionaries, as well, tonight,” he added, less certainly.

“Are you sure this contrivance is not just playing jokes?” Princess Kadolan asked hotly. “It still has not told us how to evade the imps. Listen!”

Rap did not need to listen. If the imps had broken into the bedroom, there was only one more bolted door left. He headed for the stair, meaning to find out—

“Me next!” Little Chicken marched over to the casement, making the eerie firelight flicker again beyond the panes.

“No!” Rap stopped and swung around. He had a premonition of what was going to be revealed, but his protest was too late. The flaps swung open once more, and the chamber was filled with a sound of applause and acrid, eye-watering gusts of wood smoke.