C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 03

by Mage Quest

  The waiter, carrying a tray filled with strawberry tarts, interrupted us at this point. But palm trees became our goal for the next two days. Ascelin was able to find a ship going to Xantium that was willing to take us, and while it was loading its cargo we followed steep, rocky paths down to the harbor, and from the harbor along sandy beaches that led for miles in either direction. Here at last were the palms I had imagined during the winter in Yurt, their old fronds lying dry and close to the trunk, their new fronds branching out from the top, reminding me oddly of the way that young Prince Paul drew pictures of trees.

  "So is this it, Wizard?" Hugo asked me with a chuckle. "Everyone is searching for something on this trip. The chaplain wants pilgrimage churches; the king wants a blue rose; I want to find my father; Dominic, having found his father, is now looking for whatever's in the Wadi; and Ascelin wants the chance to boss everyone around that I'm sure the duchess doesn't give him at home. And you're on a quest for trees?"

  I laughed, but his comment started me thinking. I myself had thought that I was on this quest to find Evrard, as well as to assist my king however I could, but I might well be searching for some­ thing else as well. There was an old saying I had first heard as a boy in the City, "What ye seek, and what ye find, will oft-times be of different kind."

  As we and our highly dubious horses boarded the ship at last, and the sails creaked up the mast to catch the dawn wind and take us out of the sage-scented harbor, I wondered again what I was seeking. Once out of harbor, the sails filled and the lines tightened, and the bright waves began slapping against our ship's hull as we started east along the coast. Whatever it was, or whatever I would find, we seemed to be heading toward it.

  PART FIVE - XANTIUM

  I

  The great City by the western sea, the city where I had grown up, did not have a name. For official purposes it was called the Urbs, but that was only City in the old language of the empire that had once been centered in it. Those who lived there merely called it the City, as though there were no other, or at least no other that mattered.

  As our ship, with its cargo of furs, leather, and six pilgrims, rounded the headland and entered the great basin of Xantium harbor, I realized what a hopelessly provincial attitude that was.

  "The duchess and I should travel more," said Ascelin, leaning on the railing next to me. "She would love to see this city. Maybe when the girls are bigger we can all come."

  But I wasn't listening. Above us, on top of a sheer cliff, an enormous tower glowered down on us, and I could sense that we were being watched with magic as well as eyes. Massive iron rings protruded from the cliff at water level. Another tower stood on another promontory a quarter mile away. The only way into the harbor was through the narrow, black-watered channel between them.

  "In times of war," commented Ascelin, "I understand they chain the harbor shut."

  The harbor itself was as large as a lake and jammed with hundreds of ships and boats, from tiny dinghies to massive vessels that dwarfed our own ship. Many were trading vessels, of the sort I had been accustomed to seeing in the City docks, but many others seemed to be pleasure barges, and even among the ones I assumed were traders were a great number with riggings I had never before seen.

  A long ship came up behind us and shot by into the harbor, its banks of oars dipping and pulling smoothly. "Probably rowed by slaves," said Ascelin.

  The others had come up to stand by us at the railing. "I thought Xantium was a Christian city," I said to the chaplain.

  "It is, or at least its governors are Christian," he said gravely. "But God is worshipped in many ways. And they interpret Christianity somewhat differently here than do the bishops of the west. After all, the Bible does not specifically forbid slavery, although all right thinkers must realize that as men and women are brothers and sisters together under God, slavery cannot be tolerated."

  The sailors hurried back and forth, and some swarmed up the mast to release the booms as the captain negotiated through the shipping. We tried to stay out of the way, looking at the city that covered the hillside beyond the harbor.

  It reached most of the way around the basin. Directly above the docks rose gray walls, pierced by open gates, and behind the walls the city strode up the hill, a jumble of towers, minarets, and spires. The high walls followed the edge of the water for several miles on either side before turning inland, but the city continued beyond the walls, an incoherent mass of buildings large and small, some painted brilliant colors and some dark. A complex of smells, flowers, spice, and garbage, mingled with the salt tang of the harbor.

  "We're entering the East at last," said the king.

  "In fact, sire," said Joachim, "it depends on how you define the East. Xantium is indeed called the East's gateway, but we're still west of the Holy Land, and everyone knows that the Holy City is in the exact center of the inhabited earth, so that there are still thousands of miles of the true East beyond."

  And I had thought when we were entered the eastern kingdoms that we were already somewhere in the East.

  "I wonder how difficult it would be to travel deep into the East," said Ascelin thoughtfully. "It would be worth it, to see which of the tales are really true, to see the bushes that produce tea and spices, the stones from which silk is spun."

  "I've heard," put in Hugo, "that silk isn't really spun from a stone at all but rather made by some kind of worm. How about it, Wizard? What do they teach in your school?"

  If they taught about silk manufacture in the wizards' school, they had certainly not taught it to me. "It's a secret known only to the wise," I replied airily, then groped for something I could say with certainty. "But I can assure you that silk is not made by worms."

  Our ship now moved very slowly on just one sail, little more than drifting among the moored vessels. The captain steered us carefully past the moorings and then along the tangle of wooden docks that protruded from the city gates. At last we slid smoothly up next to a dock and stopped with only the slightest bump.

  The sailors all cheered and busied themselves tying down the sails and the lines. The gang plank went over the railing with a clatter. Already a group of burly men were moving out along the docks toward us, members of the dockhands' guild I assumed, though the dockhands in the City at home had never worn cobalt blue tunics and shoes with long, curled toes.

  We went off first, before the real cargo, leading our horses. The king spoke briefly with the captain about finding a good place to stay. I heard the captain add, "I've picked up from a few things your party has said that you're missing something. Missing objects from all around the Central Sea have a way of ending up in Xantium. You might try the Thieves' Market."

  Our horses were stiff and restless from the voyage, especially Whirlwind. He sniffed the air as though in disgust and decided to treat every person, every bale on the docks, and every piece of trash blown by the wind as a potential threat, an excuse for whinnying and rearing. Dominic clung grimly to the bridle, using his own weight to hold the stallion down, and stayed close behind Ascelin.

  I stopped to stare at a tall pole from which three dead men dangled limp over the water. A dockhand saw my stare and smiled.

  "Don't you hang thieves in the west?" he asked. "The governor allows no one to violate the integrity of Xantium harbor, not the thieves' guild, not amateurs. Of course, the old governor was rather soft and let things get out of hand, but the new one's really cracked down the last few years."

  We picked our way along the docks to shore, where we were stopped by black-robed officials before we could enter the gates.

  "Governor's orders," said one crisply. "Xantium is finally being run efficiently. He's the last Christian governor as one heads east, so all pilgrims have to sign in here. Then if you're not back in a few months, we can send word to your relatives in the west. Be sure to remember to sign back in when you return from the Holy Land."

  I remembered that the governor's office had given Sir Hugo's wife the news that he and his
party had never returned to Xantium. The book we had to sign asked for a relative or friend and then for a second person to notify in case the first could not be reached.

  We all put Yurt's queen in the first column, then I wrote down the wizard's school, Joachim his bishop, Hugo his mother, Ascelin the duchess, and King Haimeric and Dominic the king of Caelrhon, the kingdom that bordered Yurt. The king wanted to put King Warin, but the rest of us wouldn't let him.

  I wondered briefly if Sir Hugo and his party—or at least Evrard—had put down the royal court of Yurt as the party to be notified if the governor's office could not reach Sir Hugo's wife.

  We continued through the city gates and into the narrow streets beyond. The buildings leaned so closely over the streets that these were very dim. The ground floors were jammed with shops and businesses, and loud voices greeted us on every side, offering us accommodations, young girls fresh from the country, hot baths, exquisite jewels, spicy dishes, purple silks, fine weapons, and maps of the city. King Haimeric ignored them all, walking with Ascelin beside him, following the directions the captain had scrawled on a piece of paper.

  In a few minutes we emerged from the noisiest streets into what appeared to be a residential area. Dark-haired children who had been playing in the gutters raced up to beg for pennies. Halfway down a dead-end street a silver-plated bush protruding from a house-front marked the inn to which the captain had directed us.

  "Do you think we dare stay here, Haimeric?" asked Ascelin in a low voice. "If anyone followed us through the eastern kingdoms, it would have been easy enough for them to find out which ship we'd taken, and they'd quickly discover the inn the ship's captain recommended. And thanks to an officious governor we've told anyone in Xantium with enough money to bribe his clerks that a party from Yurt has arrived."

  Ascelin had already been worried about our safety back when we visited Joachim's brother. Arnulf's manor house, surrounded by rich green, seemed as alien from Xantium as though it had been on the moon. In retrospect, I thought, it must seem safe and secure to him.

  "We'll only be here a few days," said King Haimeric. "And I doubt this enemy you imagine is anywhere near as good at tracking as you are."

  "I just hope they aren't still planning to kill the chaplain," said Ascelin darkly as we turned through an elaborate doorway into the inn's flowering courtyard.

  But we stayed at the inn for only half an hour. Once we had booked our rooms and stabled our horses, we started out again toward the church of the Wisdom of Solomon.

  "It's Xantium's most famous sight," said Joachim, "even if we didn't need to give thanks to God for our safe sea voyage."

  "Solomon's the only man, I think," said Ascelin thoughtfully, "ever to combine the functions of priest, of king, and of magic-worker."

  "According to Arnulf's books," put in Hugo, "the last of the caliphs, the one who renounced Solomon's Pearl, was both a mage and a secular leader, though I guess he wasn't a priest."

  "This church," said Joachim, "is dedicated to Solomon's Holy Wisdom."

  The innkeeper had given us a map over which the chaplain and Ascelin bent their heads to find the best route. Without a map we would have been hopelessly lost in under ten minutes. The maze of streets was jammed with people who all, unlike us, seemed to know exactly where they were going. We spotted a few who also appeared to be pilgrims, but most were very different from anyone ever seen in the west. Dark-skinned men in striped robes and headdresses; women so heavily veiled that only their eyes were visible; men at whom Dominic frowned, whose cheeks were rouged and eyes outlined in black; long-legged warriors, some nearly as tall as Ascelin, wearing turbans and wide, curved swords; half-naked children; black-robed clerks talking seriously to each other; sumptuously dressed dandies who moved in the center of a group of bodyguards; and grumpy-looking women, dressed drably and carrying net bags full of vegetables, all jostled together in the streets.

  Once or twice I thought I thought I saw someone following us, but it was impossible to keep track of anyone behind us in such a crowd, even with magic.

  "I'd looked forward to seeing the East," I said to the chaplain, "but it's even more, well, different from Yurt than I'd expected."

  "That's why one travels," he commented. "At home, you're always looking in a mirror. Everything you see becomes so familiar it is almost an extension of the self. Elsewhere, you see everything except yourself." He paused, then added thoughtfully, "I think we need them both: the contemplation of our inner souls, and the jostling out of ourselves, the reminder that we are not the entire world and shall meet even God face to face."

  Most of the house fronts along the streets were blank, but whenever we passed one whose gate was open we caught a glimpse of a passage leading to a cool-looking courtyard, bright with flowers and often with a fountain.

  It was hot and steamy even if the mid-afternoon sun was blocked before it reached our level. For the two weeks we had coasted along the north edge of the Central Sea, the sea breezes had kept us cool, but it was now indubitably high summer, and a much hotter summer than anything known in Yurt.

  We moved with Joachim and the king in the center of a square formed by the rest of us, even if it meant that we sometimes jostled the people we met against the housefronts. Ascelin was as alert as I, and Hugo seemed wound up almost to the breaking point. When the chaplain stopped abruptly, we all stopped.

  We had come around a corner, and one side of this street was lined not with buildings but with a fence, and a shadowy courtyard lay beyond. A bell, with the same tone as the chapel's bell in the royal castle of home, began to sound. Its note was sweet and restful, as though the noises of the street were a thousand miles rather than just a few feet away.

  Looking through the fence, we saw a group of men in dark vestments walk through the courtyard in procession, carrying candles and singing. Their expressions were rapt, and anything on our side of the fence might as well have not existed. For a moment I thought they were priests, but the shaved crowns of their heads made them unlike any priests I knew. They disappeared through an archway on the far side of the courtyard, and the bell's ringing came to an end.

  Joachim turned and started walking again. "Monks," he said to me. "We don't have them in the west, and I'd never seen them before. They're somewhat like hermits, except that they live together, under the fatherly direction of a leader."

  "More like nuns?" I asked.

  Before the chaplain could answer, we heard another sound, a piercing, modulated wail coming from a minaret under which we were passing.

  "It's the priests of the Prophet," said Ascelin, "calling the faithful to afternoon prayer."

  Considering that I was supposed to be a well-educated wizard, I didn't seem to have had any idea all trip what we would see. Maybe when we met some eastern mages I'd have a chance to show off my own knowledge out of Melecherius on Eastern Magic.

  But we reached the church of Holy Wisdom without meeting any mages. There was a tiny square in front of the great doors where a peddler was selling little bottles of purportedly holy water. We pushed by him without listening to his pitch and went up the steps and inside.

  From the outside, it was impossible to tell the size of the church, but from the inside it was enormous. We all stopped in amazement to look around.

  Candles gleamed from golden candelabra, lighting up a forest of porphyry columns and green marble arches. The floor beneath our feet was onyx veined with gold. Windows through which the sunlight poured pierced the dome high above us. The air was thick with incense. Mosaics, made of a hundred thousand glittering tiles, illustrated Bible stories.

  As we walked slowly into the church we saw the biggest mosaic of all. The saved and the damned rose in alarm from their coffins to see the sky split open above them. I approved of the artist's rendering of the scene. Christ in majesty, thirty feet high, dressed in brilliant blue and rimmed in gold, greeted us and them with a raised hand.

  There were a large number of other people in the churc
h, pilgrims, men who appeared to be priests even though their vestments were purple instead of black, women who seemed to have stopped in for a quick prayer on their way home from the market, and even some of the tall, turbaned men we had noticed earlier. But the size of the church swallowed us all up without even seeming to notice.

  As we reached the main altar and Joachim went to his knees, I thought I saw a flicker of motion behind us, as though one of the other people in the church did not want us to see him.

  I probed quickly with magic. Someone was there, all right. I rose two inches above the floor to be able to move silently and darted around the base of a column. A black-haired boy squatted there, looking around the far side. He turned and saw me just too late.

  I had him by the back of the shirt as he jumped up to run. "I'm a mage," I said. "I don't want to hurt you, but if you try to get away you're going to become a frog."

  He was apparently willing to believe me, for he went limp. I pulled him from behind the column and to the others without letting down my guard.

  "Good work, Wizard," said Ascelin. "Is this the person who's been following us?"

  "I think so. He doesn't seem armed."

  "It's a boy," said the king. "Surely he can't mean us any harm."

  "What did you mean, boy?" asked Ascelin.

  He ducked his head, but he did not strike me as at all afraid of us, which I certainly would have been under the circumstances. His black eyes flashed and he gave me a grin before answering Ascelin.

  "In the name of God, the all-merciful," he said, "I wish you peace. I only want to help you. Perhaps you need a guide through the city streets? Perhaps you need to hire someone to take you where you're going? Perhaps you'd be willing to pay someone to take you safely to the Thieves' Market?"

  Ascelin and King Haimeric looked at each other. "It's certainly not shown on the city map," said the king.