Perilous Seas (28 page)

But
how could one ever deceive a mage and a sorceress? Again Inos was back in the
forest meadow, and this time Rasha was there also, laughing uproariously. She
had rooted Inos’s feet to the ground, as she had once done in Krasnegar.
She was watching and gloating as the pixies . . . but they were not pixies, now
they were goblins.

A
faint glimmer of dawn smiled in through the window. The entire Imperial army
seemed to be shoeing its mounts down in the street, but the yearlong night was
ending at last.

And
again Inos was back in the forest, and this time the men tormenting her were
djinns, and the glowing figure riding up to rescue her on a shining white horse
was Rap.

Rap,
who had remained loyal when the imps and jotnar of Krasnegar had turned against
their queen.

Rap,
the only man who had ever accepted a kiss from her without expecting more.

Rap,
who had died for her.

Rap,
whose wraith had haunted her the night she left Arakkaran.

Crazy
dreams!

“Why
aren’t you sleeping in the bed?” Ugish demanded, nudging Rap with a
toe.

Rap
groaned, rubbed his smarting eyes, and sat up. Then he sneezed six times in
rapid succession. Faint traces of dawn showed through the eastern window. He
was stiff and chilled, and filthy as a gnome.

“Is
that for me? “

“Uh-huh.”
Ugish had brought a robe, a fine-looking linen garment whose obvious newness
suggested that it had been specially made by his father. Unfortunately Ugish
had been dragging it, and that showed also.

There
would be no chance for shaving or washing here. Rap heaved himself to his feet
and took the robe. “You can have your loincloth back, thank you very
much. “

Ugish
shrugged. “Don’t want it. Why do I have to get all dressed up just
because we have visitors?”

“Mothers
are funny about things like that.”

“Uh-huh.
Why didn’t you sleep in the bed?”

Rap
ran fingers through his hair and regretted the action. “Because it’s
full of mice.”

The
little gnome’s glorious bronze eyes widened. “Babies; too? “

“Yes,”
said Rap. “But you’d better save them for later. If you spoil your
appetite now, your mother will scold. “

Ugish
nodded reluctantly. “Awright-if you promise not to tell the others! “

As
Rap walked out onto the great terrace, the first pinks and peaches of the
rising sun were just starting to blossom on a forest of crumbling towers and
turrets behind him. Warth Redoubt was ten times vaster than he had even guessed,
a sprawling landscape in its own right. Once it must have clasped a whole city
within its throbbing heart, but it had long since fallen into ruin. Shattered
pillars and broken statuary lay thrown around in weedstrewn rubble.

Warth
perched like an eyrie on the lip of a huge natural arena. On all sides jagged
peaks stood dark against the brightening sky.

Ishisi
was waiting, with Darad and Gathmor. The two jotnar had been healed and
restored, as Rap had been, and they wore white robes like his. Their faces
showed great relief when they saw him.

“I
thought you might like to watch the dawn rising,” the sorcerer remarked. “We
are sheltered here.”

Rap
had already registered the occult barrier enclosing the terrace, and he
supposed that there would be other spells that he could not sense, for it was
not the sun they would be watching rise.

Far
below, the blasted, barren valley was still dark except where awakening dragons
were glowing and breathing jets of many-colored fire. Their rumbling anger
echoed from the rocky walls. He wondered if the worms .themselves could have
excavated so enormous a pit, even if they had started before the coming of the
Gods.

“This
is Warth Nest, of course,” Ishist said, “home of the largest
surviving blaze. In its prime it nurtured several times as many as it does now.
It was from here that Olis’laine drew the sky army that he used to waste
the Cities of the’Ambly Pact. From here too came the Legions of Death in
the Second Dragon War. “ He droned on for a while, obviously enjoying
having an audience, however unappreciative. Rap did not know much history, and
soon concluded that he did not want to.

Then
a dragon spiraled up and up, until it was a dark shape against brightness; and
yet the sun flashed brightest on its scales and wings. It was followed rapidly
by others, and the sorcerer fell silent. Deadly the monsters undoubtedly were,
but their beauty was undeniable, too. Soon the sky was filled with them, a
hundred or more, and they danced for the dawn. They soared too high for sight,
they swooped like falcons girt in thunder, they spun and rolled in pairs or
groups, in wild confusion like schooling fish or in the rigid ranks of geese.
Some were as small as ponies, others longer than longships and older than
storied cities. Their voices roared and rang like every instrument ever known,
reverberating in chorus from the peaks, and Rap thought he also heard some hint
of mental song, the secret melody of dragon serenading dragon.

They
shone in the hues of pearls and dew and the wings of butterflies; they blazed
like a Winterfest ball. They were at once the most awesome thing he had ever
witnessed and the most glorious. He felt tears run down into his stubble and he
did not care. He wished Jalon had been here to see this, or Inos to share it
with. And when the blaze had scattered and noise had faded and the last few
were vanishing into the distance, he felt both crushed into insignificance and
yet strangely uplifted.

He
wiped his cheeks as he looked at the tiny old sorcerer. “Thank you, my lord.
Thank you!”

“You
are welcome, lad,” the gnome said wryly. “You enjoyed it.”

“It
was so beautiful! How many men have seen that?”

“Very
few in these times.” Ishist glanced at the stunned horrified expressions
on the faces of the two jotnar, and he chuckled. “Not many deserve it.
Let us go and have this meal my wife is so excited about.”

Oftentimes
the banquet hall had rung to the laughter of famed heroes, Ishist said, and
mighty kings. From here Alsth’aer had marched to meet his doom foretold.
Olis’laine had feasted here, and the grim Jiel, and their noble companies
had cheered them, clashing silver goblets in toast and making sterner metals
ring in pledge of honor. Here the brave and the beautiful had trod and sung and
sworn historic oaths. Trumpets had brayed to the banners on the hammerbeams,
viols had lamented, and many a nimble dancer had been showered with gold.
Warlock Thraine of high renown had visited Warth more than once, ‘twas
said, and had wrought many marvels in this very chamber for Allena the Fair.

But
now the fine-arched windows held no glass and the subtle panels had all fallen
from the walls. Now it belonged to the rodents, the birds, and the gnomes. In
places the planks had rotted away, and a careless step might drop a man four
stories to the cellars.

But
in the center of the dusty, windswept desolation stood a long and shining
table. Gold plate glinted on damask, and crystal sparkled. The sorcerer had
been at work, Rap saw, and he wondered whether the gold was shielded from the
dragons or was merely an illusion that would not deceive them. As the men
approached, Athal’rian was adjusting eight children around her, while
clutching a baby. Her family seemed to increase each time Rap turned his back.
The smaller ones kept pulling off their wraps, and she kept telling Ugish and
the older girls to dress them again. Ugish himself was setting a poor example.

She
handed the baby to one of the older children so she could embrace her husband.
By the time the long kiss was ended, more than half the children had stripped
again and one of the toddlers was heading for a chasm. Rap himself went after
it and brought it back. It bit him.

“Now,
are we ready?” Ishist inquired. “Chairs, dearest?” Athal’rian
said. “Chairs of course. Describe them.”

Athal’rian
became flustered and made vague gestures. “Blue velvet. Oak. About so
high. Backs carved, tall . . . “

Three
chairs appeared at one end of the table, and about a dozen at the other.

Her
greasy face lighted up. “Thank you, my love. Master Adept, perhaps you
and your friends would like to sit at that end, where the children will not
disturb you?” Such tact was oddly touching in a woman so obviously
addled.

Rap
seated himself at one end of the long table, with Darad and Gathmor flanking
him. Both seemed too overcome by emotion to speak, and from the greenish tinge
of their cheeks, Rap suspected that their noses were working at normal
efficiency.

There
was a fair breeze blowing through the ruin, but even so the idea of dining with
gnomes was enough to stun anyone. For the first time he now saw inhabitants of
Warth Redoubt other than the dragonward and his family. He had already sensed
them with farsight, and the Mews floor had certainly suggested a large
population. A troop of servant gnomes brought in dishes and laid them before
the diners, and then mercifully departed. The first course was a thin soup. It
was cold and greasy, but Rap gulped it down manfully, choking on the gristly
lumps and ignoring floating feathers. The others copied him with grim
dedication. The wine had a sour flavor but it was drinkable, and probably
occult.

Then
the gruesome company of ragged footman returned with the second course. And
departed.

“This
was ... is ... fish,” Rap remarked cheerfully. “Her ladyship tells
me that she uses freshly ensorceled supplies, prepared according to famed
elvish recipes.” He gave each companion in turn a steely look, and each
groaned softly and grudgingly addressed his high-piled plate. The fish was a
sort of pike, mostly bones, and smothered in sickly caramel sauce.

At
the other end of the table the children were having great difficulty adjusting
to the idea of chairs, and reasonably so, for the small ones could not see the
fare even if they stood on the seats. Ignoring their mother’s ineffectual
protests, some of them settled on the floor as usual, but most crawled up to
sit on the table itself, eating out of the serving dishes. The food at that end
was traditional gnomish cuisine, and Rap wished his farsight was not so
efficient. Sweat prickled on his forehead as he tried to force sticky, bony
pike down his throat.

Ishist
himself had magicked his own chair to a suitable height and was eating in
rather moody silence, using both hands, seeming to be balanced somewhere
between annoyance at this folly and tolerant affection for his wife’s odd
notions.

“This
fish is most delicious, ma’am,” Rap said.

Athal’rian
flashed him a smile of relief and thanked him for the compliment.

He
nagged his mind to give him something else to say. He knew how formal affairs
should go, because he had watched Holindarn entertain guests at the high table
in Krasnegar. Gentlefolk chatted while they ate. They made jokes, and laughed.
Jokes about what, though?

Darad
must have the right sort of experience in his multiple memory, but his wits
were too dim to use it or even see the need. Gathmor’s idea of dinner
conversation was planning the brawl to follow.

Inspiration
came to Rap like a pardon to a felon. “I have never seen so magnificent a
chamber, my lady! The king’s hall in Krasnegar would fit in here a dozen
times. “

“Oh,
do tell me about it, Master Adept!”

So
Rap described the palace in Krasnegar, and if the dragonward’s lady
somehow assumed that the raised dais was where he had sat and the servants’
end was not, well, that was what she expected, not what he said. Then he asked
about dining halls in Hub, and she became quite animated in describing them,
ignoring her ironically smiling husband and the chaos of children squabbling
amid the gold plate. As daughter of the warden of the south, she had moved in
the highest levels of society. At fifteen, she had been presented to the
imperor. She knew the Opal Palace itself.

“I
hardly think of Hub anymore,” she asserted, smiling at her husband, “and
I would never dream of going back. “ They kissed on that.

She
could not have been very old when she left, Rap decided, unless her age had
been occultly altered. Mentally she was a small child. Was that the reason she
now lived as a gnome, or had she been sane when she came here?

Something
was licking his toes ...

Rap
slid his plate unobtrusively from the table and laid it on his lap. Soon he
could hear satisfying sounds of pike bones crunching. When he brought it up
again, it had been polished. The two jotnar at his side were chewing grimly,
their faces running sweat.

The
servants came trooping in again with another course, and Rap found himself
facing a stag’s head with antlers gilded and a potato in its mouth. He
was expected to carve from this, apparently, but the cooks had neglected to
skin it before boiling it, and it looked rather too rare, anyway. There was
still a reproachful look in its eyes.

In
an attempt to seem busy, he ladled out generous heaps of vegetables, comprising
unwashed tubers and soft-boiled lemons. The other two nibbled listlessly at
them while he prepared to do battle with the stag. He must also continue the
insane conversation with the girl-woman at the far end of the table. Yelling over
the rioting children between them, she asked about his travels. Rap told a
vague tale of being kidnapped by jotunnish raiders, and of shipwreck.
Eventually he mentioned that he had visited Faerie and had been a guest of the
proconsul. That convenient euphemism caused Ishist’s globular eyes to
twinkle like cabochons of jet. He must have ransacked all of Rap’s
memories by now, and probably the others’ also.

“I
have always wanted to visit Faerie,” Athal’rian remarked wistfully,
“but of course my husband’s duties make it so difficult for us to
get away. “