Rupert could see nothing to one side or the other, but could only stare straight ahead at the ladies of light, who were cajoling and beckoning him, whispering promises of secret tales more intriguing than any he had ever heard, of perfections beyond what he had thought possible, of sensations of softness and comfort and ease not dared dreamed, of grace and voluptuous warmth coupled with wild excitement. He rose slowly, intently, to his feet and stepped forward.
Carole cried out as the boat dipped toward the bow and the sail slackened. No sooner did she cry than from somewhere beside her, another angrier cry broke through the crackling. The foliage rattled again, and the green lights flamed up with a whoosh and blurred off the way they had come, leaving only the dazzling sunlight.
Rupert half-fell back into the boat with the recoil from the release of the spell. The rowan shield he wore at his back clacked against the boat’s hull. Simultaneously, in the brush along the river, another rustling of leaves was followed by hoof beats and the patter of running feet. A tag-end of green curled and disappeared behind a tree root and Carole, watching intently, grabbed an oar and turned the boat, paddling for shore. The magic wind deserted the sails and they hung slack and unresisting as she altered the course. Rupert recovered rapidly, and helped her paddle. They put ashore near the tree where the last of the green vanished. Carole climbed out and scanned the area. The crystal bottle was shaded by the tree root, all but one edge, which glittered like a peridot in the sun’s rapidly dying light.
A silver-inscribed stopper dangled from the bottle’s neck by a silver chain. Carole stuck it rapidly into the mouth of the container. Something about the bottle felt unsavory, disquietingly sly and somehow unnatural, tricky.
Once the bottle was sealed she held it to the sun, trying to look through the green-tinted glass to see what swirled murkily within.
“What is it?” Rupert asked.
A pair of eyes opened abruptly inside the bottle, staring out accusingly at them. “Take out the stopper,” a voice commanded silently.
“Oh, no, you don’t, my dear,” Carole said. “In you went and in you’re going to stay.”
“Who are you to keep me here? You aren’t one of the masters.” The voice was huffy.
“No, but neither am I someone you can order about,” Carole said. “If you didn’t wish to stay there, why did you return?”
“It’s my place, of course. The only place since I’ve been in service. But without the stopper, I am free. You are not a master. You can’t keep me.” The voice wavered from sounding as if there were a blank space in what it knew of itself to a belligerent determination to cover up that lack of knowledge.
Carole was not fooled. “No. But if you want out of there, you’ll need to answer a question or two. You’re one of the Miragenian servants I take it?”
“Fancy that! So much power over the helpless and clever, too! How did you figure that one out? Let me guess, the bottle—”
“The spell you cast on us, for starters,” Carole said. “Who put you up to it?”
“What? That little love charm? Surely you’re not miffed about that? Obviously some lady wanting to impress that large fellow looming over your shoulder.”
“You nearly killed him.”
“It’s not my fault if he’s clumsy enough to fall in. She just wanted him back. The masters hire us out for profit, you know. The results are not always guarantee-able. Don’t hold me responsible. Let me go and I promise never to do it again. How’s that?”
“I’ll let you go when you tell us where Miragenia is and how we can get there.”
The eyes closed and opened again. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to go there? Big contract for the masters, eh? More profit to their coffers?” The voice seethed with a stew of hostile emotions and the eyes all but burned a hole in the crystal bottle.
“Hardly,” Carole answered. “And why is none of your business. Keep that attitude up and I can assure you you may stay stoppered in there for good, Frostingdung has quite enough monsters loose already.”
The eyes blinked again, wetly this time, and were half-veiled, but the voice was stubborn. “Are you bringing them more business?”
“We can’t say,” Carole replied.
“Then I can’t tell you,” the voice said, choked to a near-whisper.
“No,” Rupert said from behind her. “Not to do business. Not exactly.”
“Ah!” the voice said, brightening. “Make trouble then?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said.
“What would you say?”
“We need to tend to something they have that belongs to us,” he answered cagily.
“There’s a clever lad. If they have something that belongs to you, you’ll be lucky to see it again.”
“Then you’ll tell us?” Rupert asked, encouraged by the voice’s obvious lack of good will toward Miragenia and Miragenians.
“I’m thinking about it.”
“I have ways of making you talk,” Carole warned. She would feel no sillier making a bottle dance than she did having an argument with one.
“You’ve bullied me into it,” the voice said cheerfully. “I hope you feel better. Like heroes, eh? Pushing mists around. Don’t think you’re forcing me, either. Anything that will cause the masters trouble is fine with me. To get to Miragenia, you need only cross into the desert, and if they want to see you, they’ll arrange to come to you.”
“But they don’t,” Rupert said. “We already told you that.”
“There are magic words, in that case, but you mustn’t let it get out. I only know because you overhear a lot of things sitting in a shop window. To make them think they want to find you, you have only to keep repeating the motto of the profitable client—”
“Which is?”
“I want to get rich quick—” The voice broke off with a screech as a snakelike flash of black wrapped around it three times, missing Carole’s fingers altogether and snatching it deftly from them. A glowering rider mounted on a froth-flecked black steed glared at them from dark eyes burning out above a black face covering. He drew his saber and bore down on them, driving them towards the water. Only the fact that his attention was divided while he stuffed the bottle into a bag slung across the horses back saved them. For as Rupert stepped backwards, drenching himself to the knees in the river, the sky suddenly darkened, the rider’s horse shied, and the rider, not giving full attention to his mount, slipped sideways and threatened to lose his seat.
Grippeldice’s front claws grazed the part in Carole’s hair as the dragon overflew the cousins and landed in front of them, flaming. The horse reared, screaming, and bolted, rider clinging desperately to its mane, streaming cloak trailing smoke and sparks as the terrified mount galloped heedlessly off down the trail.
Grippeldice beat her wings once and started to take off after the horse, but Rupert cried out. Carole stopped the dragon with a word.
“Tell her we need to find that desert as quickly as possible now,” Rupert told Carole. “We have no way of knowing how long the Miragenian was listening, or when or if he will compel the bottle to tell him of our conversation. We must reach the desert and use the magic words before they discover we know them. Otherwise, I fear we will never find Miragenia or the child.”
Chapter IV
Carole deeply regretted the haste, for she had looked forward to visiting the Imperial Palace again and seeing for herself the changes wrought by Miragenian decadence. She had also hoped to visit Princess Anastasia and her sisters in their castle in the Nonarable Lands. Both places might have yielded some very useful christening gift for the child. She and Rupert needed to find Miragenia and use the magic words before they were altered or in some other fashion the cursed place managed to elude them. They couldn’t expect to find so many neglected bottles that they could afford to waste the information they had gleaned from the first.
They flew several hours before the desert appeared as a beige sea
on the far side of low, rugged foothills. The heat reached out and grabbed for them even before they cleared the hills, and the dragon relaxed, flexing her wings more fully, luxuriating in the sensation.
“Let’s see now,” Carole said. “The magic words were what? ‘Now to get rich quick… how to get rich quick’… ?”
“I want to get rich quick,” Rupert said. “I want to get rich quick.”
“I want to get rich quick,” Carole chanted. “Fine. I don’t see anything yet, do you?”
The desert was closer, but just as empty as before.
Rupert shook his head. “Neither do I. Perhaps we’re not saying it correctly. Tell me, have you ever wanted to be rich?”
She glanced back at him, her hair whipping in front of her eyes, “Why?”
“Well, I just thought if we could really say the words with conviction we’d be more likely to succeed. So I wondered… I wondered if you ever wanted to be rich. I mean, I believe I should enjoy it.”
“But you’re a prince. You are rich.”
“Not exactly. I can’t just suit myself. I must dress just so for each occasion, my spending is controlled by the exchequer, I go where I am sent. I never go hungry, true, but my choices are dictated for me by whatever someone else thinks is the good of the realm. Actually, I’m finding this journey more interesting than anything I’ve done in recent years. But back to my original question, cousin. How about you? What would you do if you were rich? What would you buy? Dresses, jewels?”
She considered. “That would be very nice but I actually haven’t anywhere to wear such things. I would like a house facing the sea for myself, perhaps, and a lot of conch shells to keep songs and stories in, like Sir Cyril Perchingbird has in the Archives at Queenston. I would like to be able to come and go as I wish, and perhaps to buy one of those carpets or flying horses the Miragenians have, since dragons don’t ordinarily find me to their liking.”
“How about a dowry?” he asked slyly. “You’re not too old to think of marrying yet—”
“Bite your tongue,” she said crisply and finally.
“Well, pardon me.”
“It’s under consideration. If I choose to marry it won’t be to someone who wants my dowry. Or anything or anyone else but me. In fact, it would be very nice to get rich quick simply so I would be wealthy and powerful enough that no one, not even princes, would feel free to ask impudent questions. Yes, indeed, I can see that as a very valid reason. With that in mind, I can say decidedly that I want to get rich quick.”
Rupert was wondering whether to respond with a tart rejoinder or freeze her with silence when the dragon abruptly began down-flapping, and the heat shimmering above the surface of the sand suddenly coalesced into walls, spires, and gates rising from them, a city with the same architectural accouterments within its walls as those so recently grafted on to Suleskeria. “It worked,” Rupert said, gaping.
“Magic words generally do,” she said with somewhat contemptuous smugness, still smarting from his unintentional probing of her old wound.
A cloud of dust billowed around the walls, dancing motes on the heat waves.
If the elusive illusory city had any intention of scurrying away into the concealment of heat and dust, Grippeldice quickly foiled it for she flew so swiftly over the wall that she stampeded a herd of flying horses grazing on several of the flat rooftops. She landed on the largest of these rooftops, one covering a building large enough to be the great hall of some palace. It turned out to be a warehouse. This they learned when, dismounting Grippeldice, they saw a train of mules back a wagon up to the front of the building. The mules strained their harnesses upwards, shaking their heads and stamping, their eyes rolling as they tried to see the dragon they smelled above them.
The warehouseman, arriving at the door to inspect the cargo carried by the mules, followed their gaze and saw the dragon, who could not restrain her curiosity and looked back down at the man. Carole groped in her medicine pouch. Her fingers closed on the hidebehind capsule. Knowing that she was probably sacrificing it prematurely, but unable to think of any other way to avoid drawing further attention to themselves, she popped the capsule far back into the dragons gaping jaws. Grippeldice, startled, turned from the edge of the roof to see what had occasioned the small interruption in her surveillance of the warehouseman, then abruptly vanished. Rupert and Carole stepped quickly away toward the center of the roof.
“What did you do to me?” the dragon demanded, shooting a warning blast of fire over Carole’s head.
Carole ducked behind Rupert, knowing the dragon would hesitate to harm him, and quickly whispered her reply. “I gave you a pill that will make you invisible for a while. You’ll recover. But meanwhile, it would be very helpful to what we have to do here if you’d find something to occupy yourself elsewhere. Two people can disguise themselves sufficiently to infiltrate Miragenia long enough to locate and christen a child. Two people and dragon are a bit more conspicuous.”
“That is true,” Rupert whispered. “Say that I wish her to leave now as well, that we appreciate—”
“Yes, yes,” the dragon grumbled. “I can see I’m not wanted. Nevertheless, dear Prince, just holler if you’re in hot water again. I’ll understand and come. The language of love speaks with equal warmth to all creatures.” And with a rush of hot wind she was gone, once more stampeding a herd of horses flying overhead.
The warehouseman and his helpers unloaded the cargo and carted it inside the building, no doubt assuming the dragon was just another transitory spell conjured on the roof by some competitor, or perhaps an advertising gimmick. Before anyone could change his mind and investigate further, Rupert hopped nimbly to an adjoining rooftop and urged Carole to do the same, springing from one of the closely packed structures to another until they were a good distance away from where they first arrived.
They had flown all night and found the desert in late morning. Now the day grew so hot that Carole found it difficult to stand, much less jump. Below them, the streets were quiet. People napped or ate inside their houses or under the awnings where they did their business. She could hardly believe her own eyes when Rupert, spotting several robes spread drying on a rooftop, scooped up two and began to don the larger, handing her the smaller.
The idea of tormenting her overheated, sweating, heat-drenched body with another layer of clothing horrified her. Her expression must have showed it.
Rupert turned to her cheerily, tugging at the robe’s sleeves, which refused to cover him below the middle of his forearm. He pulled the hood up over his golden hair and lowered his burnished lashes, letting his chin touch his chest. “If we wear these robes like this, you see,” he said, his words getting somewhat lost in fabric and the dust skimming the heights on a simmering breeze, “no one will ever recognize us for anything other than Miragenians.”
* * *
“As soon as we’ve captured him, I want him measured for a proper robe,” the chairperson of the board of Mukbar, Mashkent, and Mirza proclaimed. “Such an ill-fitting costume makes a joke of our corporate dignity.”
“On an Argonian, mademoiselle?” the old man, Mashkent, asked with a sly twinkle in his eye. “What possible difference could it make to our corporate dignity what an Argonian wears?”
The board members were seated on deep cushions surrounding a circular pool of visions, and had just been entertained by watching the dragon land and disappear and the Prince and his companion deck themselves ludicrously in borrowed robes.
Mlle. Mukbar, heiress to old Mukbar’s controlling interest in the firm, head of the household composed of herself and nine younger sisters, lifted her raven tresses with a languorous arm. Her eyelids, heavy with their fringes of curling black lash, veiled her almond eyes and her full, carmined lips pouted at her old uncle. “Naturally we’ll assume control of such an outstanding asset as His Highness. Or weren’t you watching? He is a fine figure of a man, of wealth, power, position and family connection. Just the husband my sisters and I n
eed. With his past training, he’ll make an excellent sales representative, once he gets used to us.”
“And how do you propose to make that happen?” Mirza, sharp-faced and nervous in middle-age, his black hair threaded with gray, challenged her. He had rather fancied himself as husband to the Mukbar heiresses. Keeping the wealth in the family was not a bad idea in Miragenia. “He has come for the brat, of that you may be sure, and will neither leave nor stay and certainly will not do your bidding willingly until he has done what he came for. And that, as you know, is not possible. Are you so desirous of him as to use spells on him, mademoiselle? That would be damaging to the dignity of the firm also, I would think.”
She laughed an earthy laugh from deep in her memorable bosom. “Nonsense, my dear Mirza. It is standard operating procedure among women of choice to use all manner of spells to procure the proper mate. My scruples will give my dignity no trouble whatsoever. Besides, he will be safest there, among my sisters and myself. He must be kept from the child until her destiny has taken its course.”
Mashkent, ancient now, his whiskers wispy, his eyes sparkling with a certain magically induced artifice from behind clouded lenses, shifted on his bony shanks and cleared his throat. “You are your father’s daughter, Alireza, to speak so. What are we to tell the parents when they demand their child back when the fifteen years allotment has passed? Will you have your pet diplomat make them some pretty speech about how she chose to remain in our service, only without her body?”
A golden-skinned, round-faced man with a thatch of black hair and a smug expression tapped the edge of the pool in front of him. “You grow addled in your old age, Illustrious One. You do recall my prophecy, do you not, that that child will bring certain ruin to the balance of trade? She is a liability, which the dear lady has in her infinite cleverness managed to turn into an asset, even while ridding us of the danger.”
“Had we waited until the mother had performed her sentimental rites over this babe, we would not have had to deal with this princeling at all. He increases our danger a hundredfold, he and the witch.”
The Christening Quest Page 6
