Perilous Seas by Dave Duncan Page A

family. The wardens might just possibly have installed
her on the throne of her fathers, with a compromise consort acceptable to both
thanes and imperor . . . not, thank the Gods, Little Chicken!
    Never
Rap.
    The
man in her tent had been a swordsman, almost certainly an aristocrat. Big,
handsome fellow.
    So
Rap must continue his search if it took a lifetime. She would welcome him into
her household, perhaps make him master-of-horse, as they had joked together
when they were children. She need never suspect how he felt about her. He would
serve her loyally as subject and worship as lover from afar.
    And
if all he was feeling was an overaged juvenile infatuation, then he would grow
out of it in time.
    Could
a juvenile infatuation hurt this much?
    Now
he knew why the fairy child had not told him her word of power-her name, or
possibly the name of her guardian elemental, if that is what the words were.
She had told Little Chicken because he had truly known his life’s great
desire, and because he had wanted it enough to die for it. Rap had not said
that he loved Inos, only that he wanted to find her and be her loyal subject.
Not the whole truth! Had he known the truth, and said it, then he would be an
adept now, with two words. And the fairy would have died in his arms, not the
goblin’s.
    What
if Kalkor got to Inos first?
    Or
changed his mind and slew Rap out of hand? He obviously took the prophecy
seriously.
    Or
decided to torture his word out of him to become an adept? Better not to think
about that.
    No,
somehow Rap must escape from the thane’s clutches.
    He’d
escaped from the goblins, hadn’t he? And from the imps, and from a
warlock.
    How
obvious now was the advice that King Holindarn had given him, and even
Andor-that occult powers must be kept secret at all costs. Too late! A jotunn
raider would never willingly release a seer. Before landfall, Rap would find
himself chained or deliberately crippled so he could neither run nor swim.
    “Rap?”
    The
whisper startled him out of his brooding, and he jerked around to stare at a
brilliantly flushed face. For a moment the redness suggested an extreme,
comical embarrassment; then he saw that it was only a very bad case of tropic
sunburn. Jalon had now found a shirt to give him some protection, but he must
be suffering. Under his pain, he was pathetically bewildered and frightened. He
still clutched the frivolously ornate harp in one hand and was holding up his
oversized breeches with the other.
    Once
Jalon had confessed to having elvish blood in him. Seeing him now alongside so
many pure jotnar, Rap thought he could detect a goldish tinge to his skin, and
a slant to his eyes. And of course he lacked the height and muscle. It would be
unkind to comment on that, though.
    “Take
a chair,” Rap said sadly. “Wine? Sweetmeats?”
    “Don’t!”
the minstrel said, crouching down. “Don’t mock, Rap! Gods, man, but
you’ve grown! “
    “I
have?”
    “It
was only two days ago we met, you know. For me, that is.”
    “You
share memories, don’t you?” Rap thought of Thinal and Sagorn and
Darad, and all that had happened in the year since that picnic ... more than a
year.
    “Yes.
But mine are the clearest to me. The others never see things properly!”
That was the artist speaking, the painter. He took a harder look at Rap’s
face and grimaced. “It wasn’t me set Darad on you, Rap!”
    “Oh,
no!”
    “Really!”
Jalon’s dreamy blue eyes filled with tears. “I warned you about
him, remember! Then I got lost in the forest, and I was tempted to call him,
because he knows that country, but I knew he’d head straight back to get
you, so I called Andor instead. He recognized the danger, Rap, too. Andor’s
not all that bad! He managed to find his way south . . . “
    “Did
he meet any goblins?” Rap asked, suddenly curious. The minstrel nodded. “A
few, in ones and twos, and of course he could charm that many. They’re
fairly harmless in the summer, anyway.