3

Sagorn screwed up his eyes against the pink glare, wincing as the seams of his breeches exploded and his toes were crushed—why did that moronic artist never learn to think? Why did he never consider that he was the smallest of the five of them, except for Thinal? Sagorn never called Darad without loosening his clothes first—not that he ever called Darad unless he had to. All it took was a little foresight. Knowing he might be returned in daylight, he always closed his eyes if he had to call a replacement when he was in a dark place, like Dreadnought’s fo’c’s’le.

He risked a peek through slitted lids and saw the prognathous smile of the king of Krasnegar. After a moment he blinked his eyes fully open and strained awkwardly to remove the boots.

Rap said, “Morning, Doctor! Or possibly good afternoon.”

“Have you tried lifting your shielding at all?”

“No!”

Mm? That dangerous? “You did not explain the hazard very clearly to Jalon, or if you did he didn’t listen.”

With the unconscious suppleness of the young, the faun rolled back to lean his elbows on the grass. “It’s quite simple. Zinixo had melded with the Covin, or some of them, and was hunting for me in the ambience—me personally. It’s almost impossible for a sorcerer to hide there.”

“But you don’t know if he is persisting in his endeavors?”

“And I don’t intend to investigate. One clear glimpse and he’d have me.”

“He can utilize this technique to locate any sorcerer known to him?”

“Undoubtedly. At these distances it requires enormous power, but he has that.”

“So Witch Grunth and the two warlocks are likewise in danger?”

The faun pulled a face, which made him look even more grotesque than usual. ”Yes. I just hope they were as lucky as I was, being within easy reach of shielding when it happened. Making a shield is a very conspicuous use of power.”

“But shielding is not common as crabgrass, surely? We must assume that most or all of the wardens have now been apprehended and perverted.” The enemy continued to grow stronger.

Rap nodded in glum silence. Sprawled back with his shirt off, he looked like a common quarry worker, but he was more than mere brawn. He had worked out the evil tidings and chosen not to burden Jalon with them.

“So why hasn’t the Almighty—”

“Please, Doctor!”

“All right,” Sagorn said sourly, thinking that the name seemed more appropriate all the time. “So why hasn’t Zinixo tried this before? No, never mind.” There were at least four possible reasons, and the point was moot anyway. “This occult cloak of yours—it is substantially identical to the immurement you once imposed on him?”

“You do like big words, don’t you? Yes, it’s the same, except that mine I put on myself, so I can take it off. When I shut him up, years ago, I was mightier than he was, so he couldn’t break out of the shielding.”

“You explained that adequately back in Hub. But he must be out of it now, if you saw him in the ambience?”

The faun scowled. “I saw only his eyes, but yes, it was him. You’re right, of course.”

The deduction was satisfyingly obvious and yet Rap had apparently not realized the terrifying corollary that could be drawn from it. Sagorn decided to save that insight for later.

He glanced around at the hollow. There was nothing to see except scrubby grass—which was why the spot had been selected, of course, for privacy. The underside of the sky tree loomed overhead like a ceiling. He would not have believed that any mineral growth could support its own weight over such a span, but he noted how the ribs were cantilevered to channel and direct the stress. The great vaulting swept downward steeply and obviously must reach ground level just over the rise. The road would end there.

When the next question did not come, he glanced down to meet the intent gaze of the recumbent faun. “You called me to ask how to get in, I presume?”

Rap nodded morosely. “I’m not even a beetle-sized sorcerer now, Doctor. I’m more of a mundane than you have ever known me—more of a mundane even than you. I need your insight.” He plucked a blade of grass and tucked it in his mouth, playing yokel. His flattery would be more effective if it was sincere.

“Well, I cannot assess the occult defenses. We may even be within shielding here.”

The faun shook his head. “I don’t dare take the risk of trying to find out. We’ll have to chance the sorcery—occult alarms may ignore mundane intruders, you agree? But I can’t guess how to avoid even mundane alarms, or guards. I assume there will be guards, and locks, and so on. Valdorian has a resident warlock to defend it, but most of the trees must rely on ordinary precautions, so I expect it has those, also.”

Logical! The former stableboy had always possessed a clearer mind than his appearance led one to expect, and he had learned the value of ratiocination from associating with Sagorn himself.

“The guards may have fled with the civilian population,” Sagorn remarked cautiously. He stretched and yawned, only too aware that he had been roused from a deep sleep just a few minutes ago, in his time. “The fact that you have been able to approach so near without being observed would suggest that the entire tree is abandoned. Getting in may be both elementary and pointless.”

“If the population has fled!” Rap said. “Perhaps all the people have taken refuge within the sky tree itself, in which case it will be packed like a herring barrel and we have no hope of entering unobserved. I do not wish to be thrown into an elvish jail, comfortable though they may be. Or a herring barrel,” he added solemnly.

“Oh, come! Women and children and old folk? That would be carrying Suicidal Last Stand to extremes, even for elves.”

The faun had not worked that one out yet. “Why are you so sure?” he asked, frowning to concede the point.

“Oh, I’m not certain! But we do not prognosticate mundane armies laying siege, and I’m sure the elves don’t, either. If the Imperial legions were coming, yes, they would take refuge. The trees can hold out indefinitely, for they have their own sources of food and drink. But in sorcerous wars they are notoriously vulnerable. Jalon displayed unusual tact in not singing you any of the ballads about Valdobyt Prime.”

“What of it?”

“It was the greatest of them all. Is-an-Ok overthrew it in the Second Dragon War, spreading destruction for leagues. That’s why the outlying population has fled, of course. They don’t know which way Valdorian will fall.”

“This is the sort of intelligence I need,” Rap said humbly. ”This is why I asked for you. How do I go about getting in?” He seemed gratifyingly sincere, but he was talking utter rubbish. Was he up to something?

From what he had said earlier, the war was to all intents over. The Covin had won—Zinixo had won; he had earned his self-bestowed honorific of the Almighty. As the brains of the Group, Sagorn had a duty to his associates to set strategy, and the only sane strategy now was a speedy withdrawal from King Rap and his lost cause; the farther the better. There was no point in continuing a fight once it became impossible.

He glanced around again. There was no point in his lingering here, either. The altitude was already oppressive and the shadow of the tree made the air uncomfortably cool on his bare skin. If he stood up, the remnants of Jalon’s garment would fall off him, and he was much too old to go parading around in the nude. He must call one of his associates in his stead and depart. First, though, he should unravel the faun’s childish scheme, whatever it was; and a wise man tested his hypotheses against all. available evidence.

“Zinixo was a very powerful sorcerer in his own right, was he not? Even before he became warlock?”

“Extremely. A once-in-a-century sorcerer.” Rap stuck out his jaw. ”But I bested him!” His fists clenched, apparently of their own volition.

“Only just, as I recall your admitting once.” Sagorn smiled encouragingly to hide his perennial irritation that the finest scholar in the Impire should have to elicit magic lore by interrogating a semiliterate laborer. ”But when you gained a fifth word and were a demigod, then you had no trouble dealing with him?”

Rap sat up and removed the grass stalk from his mouth. “None whatsoever. Why?” he asked suspiciously.

“Give me the facts, please.”

“The facts are obvious.” He grimaced. “And just because I’m shielded doesn’t mean I don’t hurt like hell when I talk about them! Every word brings a new level of power. A demigod is as much above a sorcerer as a sorcerer is above a mage . . . or an adept above . . . a genius . . . I rolled out Zinixo like a wad of pastry and . . . thumped him back again.”

He wiped his forehead. He was chalky pale and streaming sweat, as if seized of a very serious disease. Stubbornness had its uses sometimes. Still, there was only one question left now.

“And when you wrapped him up in the shielding spell, did you put all your demigod power into it, or only a fraction?”

“I gave it every glimmer I had!” Rap shouted. “I tied that little turd in a bag that I thought the Gods Themselves would not have gotten—” He stopped abruptly, gagging.

So there it was: hypothesis confirmed.

“You all right?” Sagorn inquired, not much interested in the reply. The faun groaned in agony, clutching his head. Indeed, there it was! The cause was lost, and the only question now was how best Sagorn could extract himself and his associates from it-also how far and how fast. He had been called by Jalon; last time he had called Andor. That meant he now had a choice of Darad or Thinal.

Darad’s animal mind would not comprehend the change in allegiance, and would not care if it could. That human polar bear had long ago decided he approved of Rap. That meant he gave him the unquestioning devotion of a dog.

Thinal, on the other hand, was even more protective of his own skin than his brother Andor. Being still young, Thinal would have a chance of outrunning King Rap in a fair, mundane foot race starting right here, and that might well be necessary. Thinal, despite his limitations, was still the best of the five of them when knives began to glint in the shadows. He had resources all his own. He could be relied upon to move himself as far from Valdorian as possible, as soon as possible, and as safely as possible, in effect taking the other four with him.

Thinal it would have to be. “Why?” Rap moaned.

“Why what?” Sagorn thought back to the conversation.

“Why was I asking those questions? Merely to confirm the obvious, as you surmised.”

But if it was all so obvious, then why had the big faun consulted him, in turn? Why had he asked Jalon to call Sagorn here at all?

Just to confirm the obvious, also? What was he up to?

“What obvious?” Rap asked, still breathing hard from his ordeal.

“The obvious fact that you—er, we, I mean—have lost! If Zinixo is now free of the shielding you put upon him, then the Covin must have released him. Therefore the Covin has finally enlisted enough sorcerers to be collectively stronger than you were as a demigod. Add to that strength Zinixo himself now, plus the three wardens, and it is obvious that there is no force in the world that can ever hope to withstand the Alm . . . the dwarf.”

Rap snorted. “You are too ready to grant him the wardens! I admit Grunth may have been vulnerable, out there in Dragon Reach. He may have nabbed Grunth. But Warlock Raspnex is probably down a mine somewhere in the Isdruthuds, and I would bet that Lith’rian has spent the last half year under a shielded bed in some safe hidey-hole.”

Sagom shrugged. “A warden or two here or there hardly matters. The odds were never auspicious. Now they are infinitesimal. I was never sanguine; now I see the cause as hopeless.”

“I do not intend to give up!”

“I fail to see what you can do, even where you can start.” Rap had recovered his composure and was glowering. He jerked a thumb at the overweening mass of the sky tree. “I start by getting into Valdorian and finding Warlock Lith’rian.”

“How?”

“That was what I called you to inquire! Thinal is the forest burglar in all Pandemia. If anyone can get me in there, he can. But the question is, how do I motivate him?”

Sagorn shook his head in disbelief. “The last time he was called, on the ship, you damned near throttled him! You expect him to cooperate with you now?”

The faun ran fingers through his gorse-bush hair. “I’m truly sorry about that! I will apologize sincerely. I will kiss his toes, if that will make him forgive me.”

It would certainly impress the mean-minded little guttersnipe. Few things would please him more than having a king grovel in the dirt for him. Sagorn felt a twinge of worry—could he absolutely trust Thinal to abscond, as he had presumed? Thinal had a sneaking admiration for the stableboy who had stolen both sorcery and a kingdom.

There was another problem, too. Almost a year ago, Thinal had begun organizing an elaborate conspiracy to filch certain priceless artworks from the Abnila Museum in Hub and replace them with forgeries. Appalled by the risks involved, the rest of the Group had cooperated to keep Thinal out of harm’s way. Unfortunately their abilities in that regard were limited by the terms of the sequential spell, as amended once by Rap himself, which required Thinal to exist for about a third of the time, so that he might catch up in age with the others. By the night of Emshandar’s death, when this madcap venture had started, the little thief had been seriously behind in his quota of real life. The others had been experiencing difficulty in calling one another, instead of him.

Then Rap and Shandie had appeared and dragged them away adventuring. Thinal had regained some ground, but lately he had fallen behind again. At his last appearance, on Dreadnought, he had managed to call a replacement only with a great effort, when Rap had threatened him. That must have been eight or nine days ago. Now he would probably find it impossible. When Thinal arrived, Thinal would have to remain. He would be unusually vulnerable without his customary escape hatch available.

“What I was thinking of,” Rap said hopefully, “is professional status. I mean, who in all history can ever have managed to break into a sky tree? I’m sure a warlock’s enclave is packed with valuables, too. It would be a fabulous heist! Do you think an appeal to his vanity would have any success?”

Sagorn resisted a need to smile. The chances of Thinal falling for that argument were significantly less than zero, absolutely inconceivable. His entire mindset was against it. In fact, Sagorn himself had explained that aspect of Thinal’s psychology to Rap twenty years ago, in Faerie, on the occasion of their third meeting. If the stablehand had forgotten it, then that was his lookout.

But had he forgotten it? Or was he playing a double game? If he truly wanted Thinal, then why had he not asked Jalon to call him directly?

Why had he summoned Sagorn at all?

Just to ask such footlingly stupid questions? Ah! Of course!

Rap did not want Thinal! He wanted Darad!

Obviously Rap believed that he would have to fight his way into the sky tree and needed the warrior to assist him. But Jalon could not have called Darad for him, because Jalon had called Darad the last time. Jalon could have called only Thinal or Sagorn. Believing that Thinal would bolt in short order, the faun had asked for Sagorn instead. Now that Sagorn had demonstrated reluctance to cooperate further in the fruitless struggle against the Almighty, the faun was pretending to want Thinal in the expectation that Sagorn would seek to balk him by calling Darad instead. The yokel was trying to double-cross him!

Nicely tried, Master Rap, your Majesty!

“I do believe your reasoning will impress Thinal,” Sagorn said blandly. “So perhaps we have completed our discussion and I should now call him for you?”

“I would be grateful,” Rap said, completely straight-faced. ”May the Good go with you, Doctor.”

“Very well, then. Until we meet again!” With a quiet snigger to himself, dearly wishing he could be present to see the faun’s chagrin when Darad failed to appear, Sagorn called: