Emperor and Clown (34 page)

The
goblin nodded, visible now as a gray shape in the dawn. “He was on the longship
with you, then? Thought it sounded like him.”

“He
was a good man, Little Chicken. He came to Hub with me.”

The
angular eyes widened in understanding. “Yes, good man ... What did Kalkor throw
you yesterday?”

Rap
shuddered. “His heart. It was still beating.” The goblin thought about that,
then shook his head. “Bad way to kill a man. No honor.” He had strange ideas
about good ways to die, but it was a tribute. “I must kill Kalkor!” Rap said.
His fury flickered into flame, making his hands shake.

Little
Chicken shrugged. “He said you’d come here, wanting my word.”

“Will
you share it with me?”

“No.”
The big fangs showed again. “Nice being strong.”

“You’ll
still be plenty strong if you share it.”

The
goblin shook his head. “How many you got already?”

“I’m
not saying.”

“And
I’m not telling.” He brayed an unexpectedly strident laugh. “You can’t magic a
word from me, Flat Nose. What else you going to try?”

Rasha
had inflicted pain on Rap and then threatened to use it on Inos, but neither of
those techniques would work on the goblin. If his anthropophagous lover had
lived ... but Rap could not injure an innocent woman, no matter what his
hatred.

That
left persuasion, or threat. “If Kalkor kills me, then you don’t. You can’t take
me back to Raven Totem if he’s held up my head at the Reckoning.”

Again
the goblin chuckled. “That’s what he said you’d say. But if I do tell you, then
you’re a sorcerer. So he said. Can’t torture a sorcerer.”

If
Kalkor knew that Rap was already a mage, then he was taking an astonishing risk
in leaving the goblin’s word lying around unattended, as it were. Either he was
insanely confident of his own sorcerous prowess, or he knew something Rap had
not thought of.

The
wardens, maybe? Nordland raiders were Bright Water’s prerogative; the witch of
the north might intervene to defend Kalkor against sorcery.

Or
perhaps he had forsaken this entire meeting and knew for certain that the
goblin was not going to share his word of power. Rap dared not use farsight.

He
checked again and the thane had not stirred from his pallet. Possibly Kalkor
was just relying on a word’s reluctance to be told-Little Chicken had never
been cooperative, and now he was enjoying being obstinate and forcing Rap to
beg. Quite likely Kalkor also was sleepily enjoying the fruitless struggle as
he rested alongside his most recent victim.

Rap’s
jotunnish blood was racing. The trembling in his hands had spread all the way
to his shoulders. His anger needed a victim, and if he couldn’t make the young
goblin cooperate, he would certainly kill him. Perhaps that was the outcome
Kalkor had foreseen? That would amuse him.

“If
I promise?”

“Promise?”
the goblin scoffed. “Promise to let me slay you? A sorcerer? Won’t work, Flat
Nose. Just have to trust the Gods.”

“I
want to kill him,” Rap said, beginning to feel desperate, “for Gathmor. And
this is my only chance. Tell me your word of power, and I swear that I’ll
fulfill your prophecy. I’ll come back to Raven Totem with you and let you kill
me.”

The
goblin fell silent, but Rap could see the start of indecision in his ugly face.

“What
about the woman? You fixed her burns.”

“She
has another chief. I told you she was a chief’s daughter and must marry a
chief.”

“Won’t
take her?” Little Chicken looked disbelieving.

“No,
I won’t take her. She chose that one.”

“Not
doing this for her?”

“I
told you-I’m doing it for Gathmor. Kalkor’s death won’t help Inos.”

The
goblin shook his head. “Don’t care. Won’t tell you my word, Flat Nose. Tell me
yours and I’ll kill thane for you. Then take you back to Raven Totem.”

Rap
was struggling to keep his teeth from chattering with fury. The despicable
green runt had no idea how close he was to death. “Tell me or die! I swear I
will kill you, Trash! Gods spurn my soul, but I’m going to kill you.”

The
angular eyes flashed. “Not trash now!”

But
his looks didn’t support his words. Rap quickly reached for memories. He had
never untangled the intricacies of the goblins’ custom, but he could do that
now.

“I
say you’re still my trash, goblin!”

“Not
trash! Saved you from the imps in Milflor!” Again untruth registered to a mage’s
insight: taut neck, sweat-filmed skin, speeding heart. Little Chicken was
lying.

“No,
you didn’t! They didn’t intend to kill me, and I’d have gotten away without
your help! And I called you back when you attacked the soldiers. You disobeyed
my order, so what you did didn’t count!”

Little
Chicken was tense with rage, but he wasn’t denying the accusations. Rap
chuckled as he saw his guesses scoring.

“So
you’re still my trash! But Kalkor’s going to kill me today unless you share
your word with me. You can save my life this time! Then you won’t be trash any
more; really not.”

The
goblin pouted, considering. He looked up slyly. “Then I get to kill you-very,
very slow?”

“I’ll
endure as long as I can. Longer than anyone ever has.”

It
was a gruesome promise, but a meaningless one. The white-fire destiny was going
to destroy Rap first, probably before the day was out. He wasn’t going to
survive long enough to see Raven Totem again.

“You
swear, Flat Nose?”

“I
swear it by any God you want.”

“I
think you’re a man of your word, Flat Nose.” The goblin grinned and licked his
lips. “Much honor! I’ll do it! I’ll tell you my word.”

Rain
drummed mercilessly on the sodden tent, seeping through seams to drip onto Rap’s
head, puddling around his feet. He could hear the spectators slithering on the
slick mud of the bank outside, but the crowd was much smaller today and would
see little of the contest through the driving mist that obscured the field-much
of which was already a silvery marsh. Thunder rumbled overhead in clouds thick
as mud. The magic casement had predicted the conditions exactly.

The
magic casement had arranged the whole thing. That was what magic casements did!
Much more than just prophesying, they warped the flow of events to serve their
owners’ interests. Just who the Krasnegarian casement regarded as its owner was
yet an unsolved mystery, but apparently not Kalkor, for it had already
destroyed him as surely as it had destroyed Inos’s great-grandfather. Rap had
told Kalkor of the duel and Kalkor had contrived to make it happen for his own
amusement, but he would never have thought of it without the casement’s
prompting.

The
casement had trapped him. He would never reign in Krasnegar now, because he had
used power on the regent to force the second Reckoning. That was a violation of
the Protocol and must bring retribution from the wardens. No matter what the
outcome of the duel, Kalkor would die.

Some
things were very obvious to a sorcerer!

Rap
had seen the bitter truth just after his visit to Little Chicken, but it made
no difference to him, for his jotunn bloodlust was still an agony in him. He
would avenge Gathmor’s death at any cost at all. It was not a task he could
leave to the wardens’ justicehe himself must make Kalkor pay, or die trying. He
could barely remember his father, but his father had been a jotunn, descended
from generations of killers, and that jotunn blood pumped now in Rap. He was
not doing this for Inos. Officially he was her champion, as the casement had
suggested, but in his own mind he was fighting to avenge a friend, most
callously murdered to gratify the raider’s whim.

Blood!

He
slumped on a low stool and wished his bones were not so heavy, his muscles so
throbbingly painful. He was keeping himself mundane, and suffering for it, out
of some strange perverse desire for misery. He had not slept at all in the
night, and little the night before.

A
smelly length of bearskin lay heaped on the wet grass beside him. Opposite, on
another stool, sat an ancient jotunn whose name had not been offered. In his
overlong red robe, he held a great battle-ax across his lap and was busily
running a whetstone along its edge, although it was already sharp enough to
split gossamer. A horned helmet and a battered bugle lay at his feet.

“You
must get ready!” he growled, frowning shaggy white brows. He disapproved of
Rap. Mongrels should not be allowed to participate in sacred jotunn ceremonies,
and this one did not look much like a fighter anyway.

“There’s
time yet,” Rap snapped.

What
he really should be doing was practicing sorcery. Hearing his fourth word had
been a cataclysmic experience, greater than any of the others had produced. His
mind still jangled from it. Perhaps the goblin’s word had been especially
strong, or perhaps this was just what being a sorcerer was. He felt as if he
had been given an extra set of senses.

Now
he knew the ambience itself, like a whole additional occult world superimposed
on the mundane. He could see it without seeing it-or smell it, taste it, feel
it, hear it, and none of those words fit exactly what he knew. It was another
plane, to which he could move without leaving where he was. Hub was a great
city to his eyes, but in that other set of dimensions it was a universe of
shadows inhabited by glowing beacons of sorcery.

Beacons,
or standing rolls of thunder, or monstrous shapes, as he chose. Between them
were the little whirls and flashes of minor magics: a woman using glamour to
ensnare a lover, an occultly gifted cook producing a masterpiece of pastry for
a lord’s table, a merchant sweetly swindling an unsuspecting opponent. He could
see them as they were, if he wished, or he could view their extensions in the
ambience, their projections of power. Purple and shrill, pungent or angular and
angry-words and concepts had become totally inadequate to convey even the
thoughts, and to describe them to a mundane would be impossible if he tried
until the sun went out. Small wonder that sorcerers were not like other people.

Did
all sorcerers perceive these things so clearly, or was such insight a function
of strength? And how strong was he? He felt giddy with power, omnipotent. Was
that a dangerous self-delusion? Could he truly be as mighty as he sensed?

On
the far side of the field, Kalkor stood in the other tent, too excited to sit.
He was steadying his ax upright with one hand and sharpening it with a stone
held in the other, and he had already stripped down to the fur wrap, ready for
blood. Then he felt Rap’s attention and looked up, blue eyes shining with
madness.

Rap
glanced into the ambience and there he saw Kalkor as a transparent, naked image
of himself. In that dimensionless space he might have been standing an arm’s
length away, or far off in Nordland. But there was more than just a wraith
there; Rap also sensed red, twisted hatred like a coiling fire. Death and rape
and atrocity sparkled in it and there was nothing human.

“You
die soon, halfman!” Kalkor said, and his flames flailed hotter, gloating.

“Why?”
Rap asked. He kept his arms on his knees and sent out his message without
speech. The old man beside him did not look up. “What do you hope to gain by
this madness?”

Kalkor
laughed, and his laughter was blood spilled steaming on snow and women writhing
in savage thrusts of pain. “If you do not know, you are unworthy to know. “

“You
seek to win a kingdom with sorcery. The wardens will not allow it. Already you
have transgressed against the Protocol!”

“The
wardens?” The jotunn sneered. “I do not fear the Four! Olybino has three wars
on his hands already and dares not rouse the jotnar, also. Bright Water
applauds me. She sought me out on my ship one night, clothed only in occult
beauty, seeking my strength and relishing my overpowering will.”

Rap
could not tell if this was truth or madness. The twisted web of fire became a
thing of claws and scales and poison fangs, clamoring in discordant dirge. “So
I have two on my side, and the regent also will shun further wart I will carry
the vote, and the wardens will not intervene)” Physically Kalkor stood in his
tent on the far side of the campus, a long bowshot away, but with that
contemptuous outburst he seemed to snap his fingers right under Rap’s nose.

Rap
wrestled down his own dread fury, resisting the urge to hurl a bolt of power at
the monster. The worst thing was, what the thane said might even be true. If
the magic casement had foreseen that Kalkor’s succession would best serve the
future of Inisso’s house, then Rap was the one who had been tricked! The other
claimants, Inos and Angilki, had been sidetracked and Rap was doomed to die
here.

Oh,
poor Krasnegar!

Horrified,
he peered deeper into the nightmare pit of Kalkor’s mind. He found no fear. He
could hardly even find much interest in the outcome of the Reckoning, for the
raider had long since lost any sense of human life being valuable, even his
own. His insanity in forcing the match made a sort of weird sense, therefore.
To a man who sought his thrills from danger, every new escape became a
challenge to risk more the next time. Death and rape and loot must pall at last,
and yet there was nothing else to gain if that was what a man lived for. So he
had sought out occult power also, and that had made the problem worse. If he
survived today’s spectacle then he must just seek a grander way to die, for now
only death itself remained as the ultimate, inescapable, goal. And perhaps
fame, as the thane who had sailed his ship to Hub and gambled a kingdom on a
Reckoning in the capital of the Impire.

Appropriately,
thunder clamored in the murky sky, and thousands of hands went over ears in the
crowd. The downpour seemed to gather strength.