"No, my lord, nothing like that. Nothing to do with Tabaea at all. I'm here because this wizard's couch has run away."
For a moment Wulran did not move, or respond in any way, and Kilisha wondered whether he had heard; then he said slowly, without moving, "Her couch has run away?"
Kilisha decided that the time had come to speak for herself, even to the overlord. "My master's couch, actually, my lord," she said. "The one you're lying on." She managed to keep her voice steady.
He lifted the arm from his face and turned his head to look at her. "This couch?" he said, tapping the velvet-upholstered back with one finger.
"Yes, my lord."
"It ran away?"
"And came to the Fortress to hide, my lord, yes." Each sentence came more easily than the one before; the overlord was too human, too ordinary, to stay frightening.
"It came here under its own power, then? It was alive?"
"Well, animated, anyway. I'm not sure alive is quite the right word."
"That's how it got in here? The servants didn't bring it?"
"It ran away, my lord, and seems to have come here by its own choice."
"And it just walked in here? How did it get past my guards?"
"I don't know, my lord. I've wondered that myself. It's apparently quite clever."
"I see." He let his raised arm drape over the back again. "And you've come here because you want it back?"
"Yes, my lord. Without it, I can't undo a spell that has transformed my master."
"Interesting." He stroked the velvet upholstery. "You say it was animated-it doesn't appear to be animated now, I've never seen it move."
That had puzzled and troubled Kilisha. "I can't explain that, my lord-it should still be animated."
"Well, perhaps it's been getting the sleep I haven't. If you can prove it's yours, then I'll be happy to return it-though it's been quite comfortable having it here."
"I saw it in the wizard's parlor," Lady Nuvielle offered, before Kilisha could reply.
"And I have neighbors who will attest to it, as well, my lord," Kilisha said. "One is in the antechamber right now."
"She brought some friends to help carry it," Nuvielle explained.
The overlord sighed. "Then I suppose I had better get off it and let you take it," he said. He started to lower his arm, to push himself into a sitting position-and the couch bolted.
It dashed wildly across the room, narrowly dodging a table; its stubby curved legs were moving so fast Kilisha could sec only a blur. The overlord was still half-lying, half-sitting on it, one foot hooked under an arm and his eyes wide with astonishment as it bounded in a zigzag across the carpet.
The couch's arm was not its original gracefully curved shape, Kilisha saw; it had closed down on Wulran's ankle, trapping him.
"Guards!" Nuvielle called, far louder than Kilisha would have thought possible for a woman her size.
The two guards in the room were already moving, arms spread and knees bent, spears held horizontally, trying to corner the couch and force it back against one wall, away from any doors. At Nu-vielle's shout, however, the door burst open and the other four guardsmen-no, five, Kilisha saw, as Kelder was with them-came rushing in.
The couch was rocking madly back and forth, bouncing first one end off the floor, then the other; the overlord was clinging to the velvet with both hands. He looked terrified.
The couch knocked over a pedestal, sending a large vase crashing to the floor; flowers, peacock plumes, shards of porcelain, and dirty water sprayed across the carpets as the vase shattered spectacularly. One of the first two guards shied away, raising his spear for a moment, and the couch dashed forward, ducking underneath. The overlord did not duck quite as quickly, and the shaft of the spear caught Wulran on the top of the head with a horrifying crack.
Then the couch was past that pair, and the other five had not yet had time to take in the situation; the maddened sofa charged through them, knocking one man to the floor, and leapt through the door to the antechamber.
Where it had previously moved freely in every direction-forward, backward, or side to side-it now seemed to have settled onto treating the end that held the overlord's foot as its front, and the end where the dazed young man's head rested on a pillow as its rear. Rather than bouncing about wildly it was now running full tilt, like a fleeing animal, with the overlord on its back.
"Catch it!" both Kilisha and Nuvielle shouted. Suiting her actions to her words, Kilisha ran after the fleeing furniture; she had been quickest to react, but the soldiers followed close on her heels.
Nuvielle did not join the pursuit, but Opir and Adagan, after watching in motionless surprise as the couch, the apprentice, and half a dozen soldiers ran past, fell in behind, chasing the couch up the passage from the antechamber.
Kilisha had expected the couch to turn left at the salon and head for the stairs by which she and her party had arrived, but instead it scrambled straight across, past a drapery into another passage, then turned right at the next crossing.
That brought it to a staircase, but a staircase going up. It bounded upward, almost catlike in its motion.
Kilisha followed, but even as she ran she tried to think of something she could do to stop the berserk thing without hurting either it or its passenger. While it would be bad enough if the couch smashed itself, Kilisha really didn't want to be involved in anything that injured the overlord-or worse, killed him. That would be bad enough at any time, but now, when a usurper had already disrupted the government of the Hegemony, and Wulran had not yet sired an heir, it might be disastrous. Kilisha suspected that wizard or no, the Guild notwithstanding, if she got the overlord killed her head would wind up on a pike on the Fortress ramparts.
She reached for the flap on her belt pouch, trying to think what she could do with the spells she had prepared. Would the Spell of Stupefaction work on a couch?
Even if it would, the spell took several seconds to prepare, and she couldn't do it while she was running. Maybe if the couch ever held still for half a minute…
The couch wheeled about on the next landing and bounded up another flight, Kilisha struggling to keep up.
The Spell of Optimum Strength-if she ever did get a hand on the couch she wanted to be able to hold onto it. She couldn't drink the potion while she was running, though, any more than she could cast a stupefaction.
Sooner or later, though, if the couch kept going up, it would be trapped, wouldn't it? It must be panicking, she thought, to be going up instead of down. If it had gotten out in the streets it might have been able to dodge them forever, but it wouldn't be able to come back down these stairs without getting caught.
Of course, there might be other stairs…
"Someone go back down and make sure all the doors are closed!" she called back over her shoulder. "We mustn't let it get out of the Fortress!"
"Right," someone said-a deep male voice she did not recognize. She still heard boots pounding up the stairs behind her, but perhaps not quite as many. She could not risk looking back; she might lose her footing. A stumble here would not merely let the couch increase its lead over her, but might send her tumbling down the stairs on top of the guards.
It rounded a second landing, charged up one final flight, and at the top bounded across half a dozen feet of floor, then slammed into a door.
And bounced off.
Kilisha almost ran into the couch as it rebounded off the oak and iron barrier. It had clearly expected to smash right through, but the door had been stronger than it thought.