by Mage Quest
"I trust this boy explicitly," said Ascelin pointedly. "How does he know what we might be looking for?"
"Many pilgrims who come to Xantium are looking for more than the route to the Holy Land," said the boy.
"What's your name?" asked the king.
"Maffi, revered lord," said the boy, giving me another grin. At this rate I really would have to turn him into a frog just to prove that I was a wizard.
"If we hired you as our guide," said the king, bending down to the boy's level and ignoring Ascelin's warning glare, "we'd have to wait until you'd taken us where we were going before we paid you. With the streets so crowded, you do realize that we'd worry you'd just dart away with our money and leave us stranded."
"Of course, revered lord," said Maffi. "And I'm so sure you'll be pleased with me as a guide that I'll be happy to take whatever you want to pay me, once we get there."
"That's settled, then," said the king. "Shall we go?"
"As soon as we finish giving thanks for our safe voyage," said Joachim.
Maffi, in spite of starting his conversation with us by praising God, remained standing while the rest of us obediently knelt in front of the altar. I looked at him sideways and wondered if he followed the Prophet rather than being a Christian. I had never known any of the People of the Prophet before.
II
Back out in the streets Maffi took the lead, slipping easily through the crowds while we tried to keep up with him.
"Do you think that wizard in the eastern kingdoms, the one who wanted to betray my father, has telephoned here?" Dominic asked me in a low voice. He seemed to have picked up Ascelin's suspicions.
"He didn't have a telephone," I said. "And even if he had access to one, I don't think there are any telephones in Xantium. It's school magic, and school-trained wizards tend to stay in the western kingdoms."
"But a renegade wizard might have installed one," said Dominic darkly.
Ascelin kept track on the map as well as he could of where we were. Maffi led us first to an enormous plaza where an open-air market was being held, voices and odors rising from booths jammed close together. But this did not seem to be the market to which we were going, for he only cut through one corner and again hurried down narrow streets. He next led us through what seemed to be the city's main governmental center. We had to step back abruptly as a curtained palanquin came straight toward us. Burly slaves carried the poles on their shoulders, and peacock feathers fluttered from the corners. The edge of the curtain lifted as the palanquin came even with us, but it dropped back into place before we could see the face within.
Here the streets temporarily grew broad, and there were even open, sunny squares with fountains playing in the center. For a moment we caught a glimpse of a white, domed palace. But then we plunged back into narrow streets and started downhill. As near as I could tell, we were on the far side of the main city hill from the harbor.
As we approached the outer walls, lower and looking less well maintained than those where we had first entered the city, the crowds became less dense. Some of the people we passed in doorways looked at us curiously, as though surprised to see pilgrims here.
Maffi, who had stayed almost but not quite far enough ahead that we would lose him, darted around a corner and was lost to sight. When we turned the corner a few seconds later, we found two tall, turbaned men blocking our path.
Hugo had his sword out in a second and elbowed the rest of us back behind him in the narrow street. "Come on!" he shouted. "Whichever one of you wants to attack first! But the other one had better run for a priest, because there won't be any use going for a doctor!"
But the men smiled and presented empty hands. "In the name of all-seeing God," said one, "we do not intend to attack you. We have been waiting for you. We knew that sooner or later we'd see you at the Thieves' Market, Arnulf."
Ascelin pulled Hugo back and frowned. "Arnulf?"
The men looked past him to Joachim. "Even after all these years, and even disguised as a priest, you're entirely recognizable, sir."
"I'm afraid you're mistaken," said the chaplain. "You've taken me for my brother. Are you his agents?"
One of the men glanced around and lowered his voice. "You're quite right, sir. It's better to maintain the disguise. We'll accompany you to the Market."
Joachim hesitated for a second, sliding a finger inside his collar and along the scar, but then stepped confidently forward, forcing the rest of us to follow. I looked again for Maffi and didn't see him.
The shortcoming of even the best magic is that it cannot tell you what someone else is planning. These men, whom Joachim seemed ready to trust, could be leading us to our deaths. But beyond freezing their curved swords into their sheaths, which I did at once, I could think of nothing else to do but stay very close to the chaplain.
It had never been clear from Joachim's account of his telephone conversation with Claudia—and it might not even have been clear to him—whether she had ever gotten the pigeon message he sent her from the mountains. If she had not heard until that phone call that whatever she had given him had been stolen, then Arnulf probably had not had time to get word to his agents here before we arrived. They should know, then, what it was King Warin's bandits had stolen from us and expect us to have it.
"We'll have to hope it is still for sale," said one of the men. "I assume you've brought what he wanted, Arnulf."
"I already told you," said Joachim, too honest to maintain a deception that could have been very informative, "you've mistaken me for my brother."
"But you did bring it with you?" The turbaned men seemed disturbed for the first time. They stopped and looked at Joachim fully. Ascelin and I tried unsuccessfully to ease between them and the chaplain.
"Bring what?" he asked.
"The magic ring, of course," said one of the men in an undertone, with a quick glance around. "Hidden in a bag of money, as you said you would bring it to us."
Dominic jammed his hand with the ruby ring into his pocket.
"My brother's wife gave me a gift before we left," said Joachim, in a voice clear enough that the turbaned men tried to shush him. "I never saw what was in it. But it was stolen as we crossed the mountains into the eastern kingdoms. The captain of the ship we took here suggested—obliquely, it's true—that something stolen from us might itself end up in the Thieves' Market."
"We're here now," said one of the men cautiously. "Don't you trust us either? At least we can find out if he's sold it to anyone else."
Ascelin looked at me with raised eyebrows. Short of seizing the chaplain bodily and carrying him away, we didn't have much choice but to follow. The narrow street we had followed debouched into a broad square, just inside the city's outer walls.
The sparse population of the last few streets was again replaced by noisy crowds. The square was full of booths, striped awnings protecting the people and goods from the harsh sun. Beneath the awnings was piled everything from clothing to weapons, and the spaces between were jammed with people. "I wonder if any of them sell rootstocks for roses," said the king.
For a second, as our street sloped down into the market, we could see the crowds from above, but then we were down among them. There was the same wild mix of people we had seen in the city streets. "Watch out for pickpockets," said Ascelin in a low voice.
But the turbaned men smiled. "In fact, the Thieves' Market is probably one of the few places in Xantium where you don't have to beware of pickpockets. The thieves patrol themselves. Of course, you do have to beware of everything else . . ."
Including you, I thought. My mind raced, trying desperately but unsuccessfully to think why Claudia would have sent a magic ring with us, assuming that was indeed what had been in her package.
We were now pushed on every side by sweating bodies so that it was hard to pick our way, and almost immediately I lost any sense of direction. The tiny alleys between the stalls were even more of a maze than the city streets. Voices on every side urged us to buy s
pices, armor, shoes only slightly used, silken robes, snacks, mirrors, and jeweled pendants. I caught glimpses of glittering brocade, of peacock feathers, of knives whose blades were inset with enamel, of tooled leather, and of bales of uncarded wool such as used to arrive in our ware house in the City. On the far side of the market, I thought I saw a carpet rising above the heads of the crowd with two men seated on it, but when I rubbed my eyes it was gone.
I tried probing with magic and found layers and cross-layers of spells so dense and so strange that I immediately gave up any attempt to understand them. I doubted Melecherius had understood them either. Even aside from a carpet that could fly, the colors and the quality of much of the merchandise must be heightened by illusion.
"Was everything here stolen?" Hugo asked Ascelin in an undertone.
One of Arnulf's agents answered for him. "Not necessarily. Some of the merchants here just prefer a more, well, informal setting than the government-regulated market. But a lot of the merchandise is stolen, and the market is run by the thieves' guild."
"Why does the government allow it?" protested Hugo.
"Do you think the governor has a choice? Didn't you know what he had to offer the guild in return for the safety and integrity of the harbor?"
I looked again for Maffi, but it was hopeless. The turbaned men found their way without hesitation through the dense crowd, taking advantage of every momentary gap in the press of humanity to move forward while we struggled behind them. Abruptly the crowd opened up, so unexpectedly I almost pitched onto my face.
We had reached a final booth on the very edge of the market. Its awning was closed, but a chess puzzle was set out on a board next to it. Unlike every other booth, this one was surrounded by a clear space ten feet wide. It was as though no one wanted to come too near.
One of the turbaned men let out his breath in a hiss. "I'd feared to hope, but it is still here. I can see the feet. Arnulf, or whoever you claim to be, you will remember, won't you, all we have done to inform you and all we have done to bring you safely here?"
The striped awning hung to the ground, but in a second I saw an eye through a slit, and with a sharp whirl the awning was wound up. We were abruptly confronted by an enormous black stallion.
It was big enough even for Ascelin, and so still and so uniformly dark that it could have been ebony. After an amazed second, I realized it was ebony. It was a magnificent work of art, but it wasn't real.
And then my eye was caught by something far more fascinating. Standing behind the ebony stallion was a mage.
Ascelin bit off a warning as I stepped forward into the space where no one else dared go. But I was too fascinated to care. A man bulging with fat, almost as dark as his horse, decked with odd bits of colored silk as though he made up for not being able to fit into ordinary clothes by wearing a lot of different small ones—all I saw was someone bristling with magic.
This was completely different from meeting the self-styled prince in the eastern kingdoms. His magic had been recognizable, even if dark and twisted with inturned evil. The magic I felt from this man was almost as novel as meeting magic itself for the first time.
"A mage who dares step up boldly," boomed the mage in a voice between a bellow and a laugh. His smile showed a gold tooth as his dark eyes scanned the rest of our party from Yurt, apparently liking what he saw. "And not a local magic-worker, I would guess, but one from the western kingdoms!"
I met his eyes, a voice in the back of my brain telling me insistently that I ought to be wary and afraid, and feeling not at all afraid. Instead I felt fascinated, as well as both amused and disgusted with Melecherius, whose book had never prepared me for this. The mage's eyes were pitch black, and the pupils completely filled the sockets, as though he did not have any whites. "Yes," I heard myself say, "I am Daimbert, Royal Wizard of Yurt."
The eyes widened, but still no white showed. The mage lifted his belly off the counter and came around his horse and out to meet me. "And I am Kaz-alrhun, the most powerful mage in Xantium. I have long hoped that someone from Yurt would visit me!"
I coveted the beautiful dark color of his skin and wondered briefly if he might be from Sheba.
"You've heard of Yurt?" I asked politely. The voice inside my head was now screaming that my absence of fear was a clear sign that he had put a spell on me, that he must be connected with the eastern wizard who had tried to betray Dominic's father, but somehow the message didn't get through.
He didn't say anything more about Yurt. "Western wizards come here but rarely," he said instead, apparently as interested in me as I was in him. Magic hung about him, crackling the air until it seemed it must be visible. If any mage could master an Ifrit, I thought, this one could. "The last western wizard I saw was red-haired, but that was a great many months ago."
"Evrard," I said aloud. Maybe, at last, we were on the trail.
"I hear, in the west, interest in my magic horse is high," he said.
I wrenched my attention from him to the ebony animal. "Does it move by magic?"
"Of course! Even you of the west must know that on Judgment Day all of us who have made lifelike images will be asked to set them in motion, and unless we can make them move by themselves we will be denied heaven."
This was news to me, but then I had never made any lifelike images. "How does it work?"
"Mount, and I shall demonstrate it to you!"
The stirrup was too high for me, and there was no mounting block, so I flew straight up to land on the horse's hard wooden back, as I had lifted Prince Paul up on Whirlwind's back on a wintry day that could have been a lifetime ago. For a second I saw my companions and Arnulf's agents, clustered together a few yards away and looking highly concerned, but I had no time to spare for them.
"Do you observe that little pin on the side of the neck?" asked Kaz-alrhun. "Give it a turn to the left, and hold on tightly!"
I thrust my feet into the stirrups, took a firm grip on the reins with one hand, and twisted the little pin.
The response was immediate. The horse was instantly alive, still ebony-hard but moving, muscles rippling. It tossed its head, pranced for a second, gave a whinny that resounded throughout the Thieves' Market, and launched itself into the sky.
All the fear I should have been feeling the last ten minutes abruptly made itself felt. The stirrups held my feet in immovable bands of steel, and the reins felt welded to my left hand. Wind rushed past my ears, and clouds rapidly approached my startled eyes. I was flying straight up on a magic horse into the sky above Xantium, with no way to stop it and no way to get off.
III
"You knew all along he was putting a spell on you," my brain told me accusingly. "Now the horse will toss you off at some likely spot and fly back to its master. Didn't you wonder why no else wanted to get near?"
At least, I answered myself grimly, if I got tossed off I knew how to fly. The thought gave me the strength to try to find some way to control this animal.
Melecherius was no use here. I had already determined that turning the little pin to the right had no effect, and giving it further turns to the left only made the animal rise faster. But then, on the opposite side of its neck, I spotted a second pin.
A hard twist here, and the magic horse slowed its ascent and leveled off. In a moment I thought I knew how to master it. The process was a little tricky, because the reins still kept my left hand imprisoned, but by reaching from the pin on one side of its neck to the pin on the other, from the one that made it rise to the one that made it fall, I was able to control our flight.
Once the fear drained away, it was unexpectedly exhilarating. My hat was long gone, and the wind blew back the hair from my hot forehead. The land below, the city, Xantium harbor, the Central Sea, could have been a highly detailed and contoured map—the magic map of Prince Vlad. I flew far higher than I had ever dared go on my own, with none of the hard work that comes with flying and yet with an ease of motion and a quickness never found in the school's air cart.
It was only because I knew my friends from Yurt would be worried that I made myself turn the horse around and aim it, as well as I could, toward the Thieves' Market.
I wondered how hard it would be to maneuver the last bit, but here the ebony horse's own spells seemed to take over, for it landed lightly and exactly where it had begun, at Kaz-alrhun's stall. He had been standing at the chess board and looked up with a wide smile, having apparently just solved his puzzle.
The horse went instantly as still as wood again, and my feet and hands were released. I scrambled down, and the crowd that had slowly moved up around the mage in my absence surged back again.
I flashed a reassuring smile toward my companions. "Well," I said to Kaz-alrhun, "I'm enormously impressed. A horse like this could command any price you asked from King Solomon himself. And its motion won't keep you from heaven on Judgment Day!"
"Do you think your master will wish to buy it?" he answered with a proud chuckle.
He'd been testing me, I thought, and so far I hadn't failed too badly. And I had been thinking fast during the five minutes while the ebony horse brought me back down again. "Your price is a bag of money, I believe?" I said cautiously. "And, oh yes," as though I'd almost forgotten, "some sort of ring." I tugged on my eagle ring. "Will this one do?"
The mage threw his head back and burst into a great laugh. "No, it will not, Daimbert!" A flash of light touched my hand, and I yanked at the ring in good earnest as it instantly became scorching hot.
I had it off after what seemed an hour, though it was probably only a few seconds. In my other hand, the ring was again its normal cool self. I sucked at the back of my finger while glaring at Kaz-alrhun. "And what was that supposed to prove?"
"That is not the ring I desire," he said with another laugh.
I slid the ring back on, as though nonchalantly, watching for any sign of returning heat. "Does the name Arnulf mean anything to you?" I asked cautiously.
"That is the name of your master?" replied Kaz-alrhun. "To me it is a mere name. Do you intend to tell me he is a mage whose magic will outmatch mine?"
