Upland Outlaws Read Online Free

either, although he was trying to hide his doubts. He did indeed expect Rap to solve things.
    Well, Rap was not going to use sorcery to persuade them. “I do not even know the name or nature of the enemy. Does anyone?”
    “Sir Acopulo?” Shandie.said. “You are our advisor in such matters. “
    “Speculation upon insufficient data is invariably hazardous. As a working hypothesis …” The little man looked like a priest, but he sounded more like a schoolmaster. His ideas of warden behavior seemed improbable even to Rap, whose experience of the Four would let him believe almost anything of them. Sagorn was making no attempt to conceal his mounting skepticism, and eventually his disdainful sneer registered on Acopulo.
    “It fits the facts!” he snapped, glaring.
    Shandie asked for a second opinion, and the jotunn went on the offensive.
    “It fits a judicious selection of the facts, Sire. As a student, Acopulo was always selective in his use of evidence, and I see he has not changed. The last news we had of the wardens, Lith’rian was hurling his dragons at Olybino’s legions. They were at each other’s throats! Now we are to regard them as allies?”
    Scholarship was an uncommon calling for jotnar. Sagorn was an unusual jotunn, but not so unusual that he lacked belligerence, and now he was obviously intent on exterminating the unfortunate imp with traditional ruthlessness. The tongue was mightier than the ax, that was all.
    Little Acopulo bristled. “That is your only objection?”
    “It is the least of them.” Sagorn sneered. “Granted that the Four often squabble, you have failed to explain why this disagreement is so much more virulent than all others in three thousand years-so dire that it required desecration of the Rotunda. You did not explain the dwarf’s prophecies and warnings. You did not explain why King Rap has come from Krasnegar. And you have most certainly failed to explain why, after a thousand years of extinction, a pixie should reappear now, and to his Majesty.”
    “Pixie? ” Rap exclaimed. Shandie had met a pixie?
    “A possible pixie,” the imperor said, smiling at a sorcerer’s surprise. “On my way, back to Hub, I broke my journey at a post inn in the Wold Hills. An ancient crone appeared to me, but not to my companions. From my description, Doctor Sagorn believes that she may have been a pixie.”
    Rap shot a glance at the old rascal and saw glitters of satisfaction in the faded blue eyes. Sagorn would not have admitted how much he had been guessing. His knowledge of pixies was probably limited to what Kadolan had told him in a conversation on board
    Unvanquished, beating up the coast of Zark one blustery morning eighteen years ago-Rap himself had been down in the hold with the ship’s gnome, but eavesdropping nonetheless. Inos and her aunt had narrowly escaped being murdered in Thume, and it was odd that … Holy
    Balance!
    Relying on the shielding to keep out the overweening world disaster, Rap risked a peek with premonition-yes, he was on to something. Inos had mentioned her adventures in Thume a few times, but he had never paid much attention. How odd! He had never visited Thume on his solitary sorcerous travels.
    He had never really thought about Thume at all!
    Perhaps he could only keep it in mind now because he was inside a shielded building. Obviously the defenses were enormously powerful, and perhaps even selectively aimed at sorcerers. Remembering the amount of power he had needed to renew the inattention spell on tiny Krasnegar, he was appalled at what would be required to cover a land as large as Thume.
    No inattention spell would endure a thousand years without renewal!
    Shandie was still relating how he had gone to Wold Hall and consulted the preflecting pool. Rap had heard most of the story from Ionfeu and Eigaze: Lord Umpily had seen a dwarf sitting on the Opal Throne itself, Acopulo had seen Sagom, which was why the imperor was here now; young Ylo …
    Young Ylo