Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“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 many-colored 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.

Rap scrambled giddily to his feet, trying to rub head and elbows at the same time. Little Chicken roared in fury. King Holindarn’s brown robe seemed to rise up of its own accord, so inconspicuous was the impish youth inside it. The troops beyond the door came back to life with a loud howl.

For the moment, the legionaries were having an argument, and the threatening arm had been removed. Rap turned away in time to see Thinal, holding up his gown with both hands, heading for the still-open casement. With his head still pounding, Rap lurched over to block him.

“Where are you going?”

So high was the collar around Thinal’s ears that his nondescript, spotty face seemed to stare out of it, pale in the dawn gloom, as if the robe were swallowing him.

“I want to see if I could climb down, Rap.”

Sagorn had said that Thinal was a human fly. Rap and Little Chicken weren’t.

“Call Sagorn!” Rap shouted. “He got us into this mess. Maybe he can get us out yet!”

The young imp shook his head vigorously. “No. He’s too frail now. We can’t risk him.”

Rap grabbed the thief’s puny shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. “Call Sagorn!”

Thinal staggered back and almost tripped over his robe. “Don’t do that!” he screamed.

“Do what?”

“Don’t bully me! I frighten easy, Rap.”

“So?” Rap advanced on him again.

“I might call Darad!” Thinal wailed, sounding almost in tears. “It’s too easy! I might not be able to help myself!”

Rap took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he grunted. Then, “Oh, demons!”

He whirled around to the door. The imps had massed outside again; again the arm came through the jagged hole. But the bolt was too far from the hole to reach with just a hand, and the timbers were very thick. The big imp had stopped and thrust his whole arm in, right to the shoulder. Before Rap could say a word, Little Chicken went sprinting across the room, leaped, and struck that so-tempting, protruding elbow with both feet. He bounced off and landed on his feet like a cat, while the imp’s scream seemed to shake the whole tower.

Great! There went any hope of merciful treatment.

The legionaries helped their disabled comrade extract his shattered and mangled limb, all roaring furiously. Another giant grabbed up the ax, and the door shivered under his blows.

“Now what are we going to do?” Rap’s head ached. He had betrayed Inos, but it did not look as if he would have long to mourn his inadequacy. “We could still share words,” he suggested.