Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

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.

“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.

“We are honored, your Majesty,” Inos said frostily.

Queen Rasha’s dark eyes narrowed. “So you should be. I do not recall a Queen Inosolan? Krasnegar? Goblin country?”

Princess Kadolan said, “My niece has just lost her father, King Holindarn. Today? I suppose it’s tomorrow now—just yesterday.”

The sorceress sneered at Inos. “And you inherited a magic casement, so the first thing you wanted to do was to play with it?”

“I was desperate!” Inos shouted. “Imperial troops have seized my kingdom, the people are on the brink of civil war, and Kalkor is going to invade as soon as the ice goes!”

Sultana Rasha’s exquisite eyebrows rose again. “Kalkor?”

“The Thane of Gark.”

“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” Now she was certainly intrigued. “And what is the imperor’s interest in a flyspeck fiefdom like Krasnegar? That doesn’t sound like Emshandar. His new marshal, perhaps? He seeks to provoke the jotnar?”

“I don’t think the imperor even knows his troops are here. The proconsul in Pondague made a deal—”

Inos stopped abruptly. Rap wondered why; he was having great trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. The sorceress was taking up far too much of his attention—the diamonds twinkling below her gorgeous earlobes, the smooth perfection of her arm. Funny how at first he’d mistakenly thought her arms were draped in sleeves! The effort of not using his farsight on her was making his head throb, and yet he hardly needed it, for her hot, ruddy-hued skin seemed to glow through the gauzy stuff of her draperies.

Rasha strolled toward him, but her attention was on Inos. “A deal? Don’t lie to me, girl. I can read your mind if I wish, or cast a truth spell on you. I prefer not to—it takes all the fun out of things. What sort of deal?”

For a moment Inos and Rasha stood eye to eye in silent challenge. They were about the same height, the same age—but how had Rap ever believed that Inos was beautiful? How plain and dull she seemed, compared to the other girl’s radiance! How weary and bedraggled! Her grip on Rap’s hand grew very tight, then she dropped her gaze.

“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.”