Magic Casement (48 page)

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 jotunnish, 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 gonea 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. “

“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. Suddenlyunexpectedly, 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.

As
Rap had feared, he was looking into a crowded goblin lodge, seeing over
spectators’ heads. Fire blazed and crackled in the middle of the stone
platform, throwing light on the audience gathered around the walls: near-nude
men and boys, shrouded women and girls. They were all jabbering with excitement
and laughing. The naked victim was staked out on the floor, and the tormentor
standing over him holding a flaming brand was Little Chicken.

Rap
swung away, burying his face in his hands and feeling his stomach heave with
nausea and terror. Inos screamed. So did her aunt, and Sagorn muttered
something guttural under his breath.

Then
strong hands grabbed Rap. “It is you!” Little Chicken was wild with
excitement. “Come! You see!” He began dragging Rap bodily back to
the casement and resistance made no difference. “Hear applause! You do
well for that! You making good show! And I doing good job! See your hands? See
ribs?”