Aeromancer

by Don Callander

  “Do it, for goodness’ sake,” Flarman insisted. “I’m eager to kiss the bride myself.”

  “There’s the matter of poor little Hana. And her father, who had me kidnapped,” Myrn said to Flarman. “And I should like to thank so many of the people who helped me ... especially Shadizar and her delightful children ... and I’ve never even met her husband, Farrouk, you know. So many loose ends to bind up! Perhaps I should delay my testing?”

  “Delaying an Examination is never a good idea, unless you’re just not ready,” said Augurian. “And I know you are ready, stepdaughter!”

  “We must return to Samarca,” Douglas insisted. “I’d like to help Sultan Trobuk with the problem of his Grand Vizier. And thank Shadizar and Farrouki and Farianah, and meet Farrouk. But your Examination...”

  “I know—it’s important!” Myrn sighed. “Well, I can’t seem to postpone it, can I? We will just have to hurry!”

  “There’s Brand and Brenda,” put in Marbleheart. “I must admit I miss their pulling my fur out by baby’s fistfuls and smearing my handsome muzzle with cold porridge, and pulling my tail when I’m trying to study ...”

  “You’re a dear, dear, beloved Sea Otter!” Myrn melted. “For no other reason than to see my darlings, I ache to go home. But my husband is quite correct. Douglas and I must go back to Balistan to clear up one more mess and then thank everyone properly for their help!”

  “I have never learned to say no to my wife,” Douglas said with a sigh to Flarman Flowerstalk.

  “It’s why there are Wizards, my boy,” chuckled Flarman, clapping his former Apprentice on the back. “To grant wishes where they’re deserved.”

  ****

  The Supreme and Highly Revered, the Sultan of all Samarca and the High Desert tribes, the handsome and intelligent Trobuk sat cross-legged on the sandy shore of the great, shallow lake.

  In the clear, blue-greenish water before him swam two dusky nymphs, his beautiful wife Nioba and the girl everyone called simply Hana, the daughter of the Grand Vizier. Hana was holding the Sultana afloat with one hand, encouraging her to kick her shapely legs and paddle furiously with her arms.

  “No, no! Highness, you must put your head under the water on each stroke. Otherwise, you’ll sink!” Hana insisted, laughing.

  “Head down!” agreed the Sultan, reaching for a sugary date wrapped around a toasted almond. “Bottom up! Kick legs! Stroke! Stroke!”

  “What kind of language is that before a child... ulp?” sputtered his wife, stopping her earnest fluttering. With the end to her furious paddling, she sank abruptly beneath the surface.

  Hana quickly pulled Nioba erect and pounded her on the back while she coughed water from her throat.

  “You’re getting it!” her husband enthused. “Bravo! Hoorah!”

  “If I didn’t love you so much, I’d learn to hate you very quickly,” coughed the pretty Sultana. “Keep my head down! Keep my ... tell me, what kind of language ... ?”

  “Better call it a day, my sweet,” advised her royal consort. “A few more lessons from our water houri here and you’ll be swimming like a fish!”

  Nioba waded out of the clear lake water and accepted a warm, soft towel from the Sultan, trying to scowl but laughing despite herself.

  “Look! Here’s an old friend,” called Hana, who’d gone up to the pavilion to get their robes. “It’s Myrn! Welcome back, Mistress Aquamancer!”

  The Water Adept waved and came down to the beach from the road.

  “Mistress!” exclaimed the Sultan. “We’re making wonderful progress. My wife will shortly be a sea nymph, just like you ... if she can remember not to breathe water!”

  “Don’t tease her, sir.” Myrn grinned. “The first rule of learning to swim is to forget how you must appear to those who watch.”

  She hugged Nioba and then Hana, despite their dampness, and bowed gravely to the Sultan.

  “No bowing!” he ordered. “I’ll accept a hug, in its place! Tell us—did you rescue your friend from... whatever it was that snatched him from his northern land?”

  “My mission was completed and, happily, it ended as I wished it to!” Myrn answered.

  They walked up to the pavilion and, while the Sultan went off to don his own clothing, Myrn regaled the ladies with her adventures in the north.

  “We saw some interesting fireworks from that direction,” said Trobuk when he’d returned, fully clothed, and the story had to be told all over again.

  “That was the poor old Servant, or whatever it was called,” explained the Journeyman Aquamancer. “He’s escaped to his original home in the empty space between the stars.”

  “Your Journeying is finished, then.” Nioba sighed. “And you’ll wish to return home. Don’t you have an Examination to take very soon?”

  “Just a few hours hence,” Myrn answered with a nod. “We came back to finish up one last bit of business with you, Lord Sultan. If you have time to meet with my husband and our friends... ?”

  “There’ll always be time to talk to friends,” Trobuk promised. “Where is Douglas? And the Aeromancer—is that right?—and my friend the furry Sea Otter?”

  “When I heard you were swimming I asked them to wait for us up the road at the first cafe inside the city gate,” Myrn explained. “I knew Nioba would not want all those men watching her swimming lesson.”

  “Perfectly correct!” the Sultana agreed, laughing. “But who else have you brought to meet my husband and me?”

  “My Master, and Douglas’s Master, too. Powerful Wizards, both of them, but very sweet and kind.”

  “We’ll walk to Gateway Cafe, then,” decided the Sultan, waving off his squire, who’d been waiting to bring up their magnificent mounts.

  “We’re just plain tourists here,” explained Flarman after he’d been introduced to the Sultan, the Sultana, and young Hana. “Douglas and Myrn have told us of their warm welcomes here and we wanted to thank you, in the name of the Fellowship of Wizards, sir.”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” cried the Sultan. “We both loved Myrn from the first evening she set dainty foot in our palace, and Douglas was a fascinating guest... though for too short a time, I must admit. Welcome all, to Balistan!”

  They were seated about a large, round table under a gaily striped awning stretched over the side of the main road near the southern gate of Balistan. The cafe’s proprietor was rushing breathlessly about in wild excitement and his waiters were bringing fruit drinks and almond cakes and savory kabobs on bamboo slivers, highly spiced but delicious, to the royal party.

  “They came riding up on a monster!” squealed a street urchin, eyes wide in awe. “It’s still there, behind the cafe, eating orange sherbet by the tubful!”

  Most of the passersby only looked politely at the Sultan’s guests... and at the Sultan and his Sultana also, it must be admitted. But a crowd of children on their way home from school gathered on the walk before the cafe, ogling and goggling unashamed.

  “If you’d rather move inside, Lord Sultan,” said the cafe’s owner. “This crowd ... !”

  “Nonsense,” cried Trobuk. “They’re all my subjects and close friends and good neighbors. I like to ogle them while they ogle me and my wife!”

  To prove it he waved to the children and grinned while Nioba walked over to them and greeted them in a most kindly manner.

  “Sultana Nioba,” asked a girl of, perhaps, six. “Will you bear a royal heir soon? My mama says...”

  “Soon,” Nioba said, laughing. “I promise!”

  “What will his name be, then?” one of the little boys asked eagerly.

  “What’s your name?” the Sultana asked him.

  “Bomba, Your Majesty,” replied the lad, blushing brilliant red. “The son of Bomba, the best weaver of rugs in all Samarca!”

  “I’ve heard about your father, then,” called out Trobuk. “Many of his rugs grace the floors of my palace here, and at Port, too.”

  “If our first child is a boy-child, we’ll name him
for his great-grandfather,” Nioba told the children. “Does anyone here remember his name?”

  “I know! We know!” several children shouted. “He was the Magnificent Sultan Fadouzal!”

  “Correct,” cried Nioba, nodding her head. “And, my dear, what is your name?” she asked the girl who had asked about the coming baby.

  “I’m Maida,” the child said shyly. “My father is Alibab. He’s a soldier to the Sultan’s Guard.”

  “A truly beautiful name,” murmured the Sultana. “If my husband agrees, we shall name our first girl-child after you, pretty little Maida. And you shall come to the palace after school every day, if you wish, to play with her and help to bathe and dress her and teach her her first words.”

  The girl, although nearly overcome with joy, remembered to say, “Thank you, Your Majesty!” to the beautiful Sultana.

  “We came by,” Flarman was saying to the Sultan under cover of the conversation at the edge of the road, “to tie up the last loose end of Douglas’s and Myrn’s adventures in Samarca, if we may.”

  “Ah! The matter of Mistress Brightglade’s kidnapping?” Trobuk asked, serious at once.

  “Exactly.” Douglas nodded. “It was a perfidious and, what’s more, entirely selfish act! But it’s up to you, Sultan of Samarca, to judge the culprit and set his punishment.”

  “I suspect who you’ll name.” Trobuk sighed sadly. “It’s been in my mind ever since Myrn disappeared, but I’d no proof.”

  “We have no proof, either,” said Myrn. “Except the desert men who kidnapped me told me they were paid by the Grand Vizier to carry me away.”

  “I suspected as much,” cried the Sultan, laying his hand on Myrn’s arm in apology. “What will you have me do? Death by strangulation is the sentence meted out to those who steal young girls and sell them into slavery. Shall I order the wickedly ambitious Kalinort arrested? Say what you desire, my dear Lady Brightglade.”

  Myrn shook her head.

  “No, we but wished to make sure you understood who did the deed, and why, Sultan Trobuk. The three kidnappers said they’d been paid by the Grand Vizier to carry me off. Kalinort feared I would assist my friend Nioba and strengthen your resolve to have only one wife. Kalinort wanted to marry his daughter, Gerhana, to you, to cement himself to you more strongly than ever.”

  Trobuk nodded, looking very solemn.

  “It’s as I suspected. Kalinort is a very ambitious man... but also a very capable minister. As far as anyone here knows, he’s been an honest one”

  Nioba said quietly, “We can’t have our servants kidnapping our dear friends to influence your decisions, husband.”

  Trobuk held out his hand to his wife, who came and sat beside him.

  “I would exile him to the deepest desert,” she suggested. “We must not give anyone else the idea he can commit such a heinous crime for his own—or even our—benefit.”

  “I agree with you,” said the Sultan.

  “It’s your decision, of course,” Myrn said. “It seems to me such ... activities are not unheard of in the history of Samarca.”

  “Nor in our own, if it be honestly admitted,” put in Flarman. “People remain people, for all their fine manners and fancy dress. Perhaps this Kalinort, acted in the belief that he and he alone was responsible for the safety of the kingdom ... the Sultanate, rather.”

  “That makes it difficult, Master Wizard, because I agree with you. I have no reason to consider Kalinort a wicked self-seeker planning to replace me or my line. My rule represents a new day in Samarca. The bad old ways must be eradicated. A Grand Vizier has no license to kidnap anyone, or enslave them, or have them killed, no matter how worthy his purpose. Not even the Sultan, I am daily telling my people, has the right to take life or livelihood or freedom without due processes of law ... which applies to the lowest water carrier as it does to the Grand Vizier, or the Sultan himself!”

  He thought silently for a while, and the rest of the group about the table were very quiet, too, allowing him to ponder.

  “Let us,” Douglas spoke at last, “talk to this Kalinort and see how he reacts to what you know of his crime. Then, I’m positive, it must be you who decides his fate, Lord Sultan. You’ll have to live with your decision.”

  “As for me, it was no real hardship ... in fact, the kidnapping was very useful to my purposes, sir.” Myrn smiled softly at her memories. “I’d not condemn him too harshly, to tell the truth.”

  The young Sultan smiled dazzlingly at the beautiful Aquamancer.

  “You are more than kind! A condemnation of my Grand Vizier is a condemnation of his Sultan, I’m afraid. Politics enters into this, of course. Kalinort springs from a rich and powerful group of Port noblemen. Yes, let us adjourn to the palace. I’ll call for Kalinort and I’ll listen to the man before I judge him.”

  “No execution, however,” begged Myrn. “I don’t want blood on my conscience, Lord Sultan!”

  “It’s my decision, remember. Everybody finished? Then we’ll go up to the palace,” the Sultan said firmly.

  He rose from the table, gesturing to the host to come and receive his reward for a pleasant rest under his awning.

  A member of the Sultan’s Guard came to the Grand Vizier’s apartment as Kalinort sat at dinner with a dozen of his close followers and relatives.

  “Our Lord Sultan bids you attend him at once,” announced the Guard, politely. “I am to accompany you to his presence, Excellency.”

  “I’m going to him in a short while, at any rate,” Kalinort objected.

  “Sir, His Sublime Majesty bids you come at once!” the Guard insisted calmly.

  “I’m at my Sultan’s command, of course,” replied the Grand Vizier.

  The Guard led the Grand Vizier, unaccompanied by any of his followers or servants, through the palace halls to the Royal Suite. If Kalinort felt apprehension at the sudden summons, he didn’t show it.

  “Ah, Kalinort!” said Trobuk as they entered his presence. “Come sit with us, sir. You know Douglas Brightglade, the Pyromancer, of course. And you know his wife, the beautiful, and powerful, Aquamancer?”

  At the sight of Myrn, the Grand Vizier’s face lost some color and his smile turned to stone.

  “And the others here are...” The Sultan smoothly introduced the older Wizards as well as Cribblon and the Familiars, all of whom sat at his table.

  “Sire ...,” began the Vizier, coughing slightly. “I—”

  “Let me state our situation baldly, so we will know where we stand,” Trobuk went on, ignoring the attempt at interruption.

  He clearly but quickly told of Douglas’s mission, then of Myrn Manstar Brightglade’s Journeying. When he described how Myrn had been carried off into slavery at Stone Trees, the Grand Vizier lost the rest of what color he had and shrank into himself, bowing his head.

  “These are the facts as I’ve learned them,” finished Trobuk. “What have you to say of this matter, Grand Vizier? Did I hear it a-wrong? Is there anything missing?”

  Kalinort sat, head bowed, for a long minute in silence.

  Everyone at the table watched him in equal silence. When the Otter picked up a fruit knife to cut a plump orange, the Grand Vizier shrank back in sudden fear.

  Douglas shook his head at his Familiar.

  “Sorry,” Marbleheart apologized.

  He dropped orange and knife with a loud thump on the tabletop.

  “Your information, Sire,” began Kalinort softly. “Well... it’s right as far as it goes.”

  “Tell us how far it goes, then,” requested the Sultan, leaning back against his cloth-of-gold pillows.

  “I did order the lady—of course, I didn’t know she was a Wizard, Sire, at the time—to be carried off into slavery at Stone Trees.”

  “So much we know,” murmured Trobuk.

  “I-I—did it to strengthen your government! T-T-To strengthen your rule,” the frightened Grand Vizier stammered. “The Lords of the Coast, you know, are unhappy that you, a High Desert prince
, had chosen for wife a lady of the same High Desert tribes!”

  “I’m aware of their feelings,” said the Sultan, glancing at his wife.

  Nioba said nothing but gazed calmly at the Grand Vizier. Hana, seated at her side, glared angrily at her father. Tears coursed down her cheeks, but she also said nothing.

  “Well...,” Kalinort mumbled. “Well... as your Grand Vizier... I believed it was my duty to solidify the base of your rule by incorporating—”

  “I know all that,” said the Sultan. “Did you order my guest snatched—there is no other word for it, sirrah!—and sent off into the desert to serve in slavery?”

  “Ah ...” Kalinort hesitated, his eyes swinging wildly from side to side.

  “An answer is required!” Trobuk snapped. “At once!”

  Kalinort sank to his knees before the Sultan.

  “Yes ... I admit I had the lady stolen away. I did it for your sake, beloved Sultan Trobuk. You must believe me!”

  “I do believe you, Kalinort,” grunted Trobuk angrily. “The question is, can I forgive you? You may have had a good purpose in mind, Kalinort, but your means—especially when you did this thing in my name—were totally wrong and very wicked!”

  “Sire!” cried the Grand Vizier, who didn’t strike the onlookers as particularly grand now. “Sire, Sire!”

  “I cannot fault your loyalty, Kalinort,” the Sultan went on, allowing his anger to subside. “But neither can I find anything but great fault in your attack on a guest, let alone the fact that she’s a powerful magicker!”

  “Sire!” cried the wretched minister, bumping his head on the floor.

  “Saying ‘Sire’ does no good!” snapped the young ruler. “I hereby remove you from your post, to which I myself appointed you!”

  “Oh, please, Sire...!” sobbed Kalinort, wringing his hands. “Oh! Sire!”

  “Never before saw anyone actually ‘wringing’ his hands,” clucked Marbleheart to his Master.

  It was the following morning. The party from Wizards’ High was preparing to depart by Pin and Pearls.