by Mage Quest
Freshly bathed, dressed not in our goat's-hair desert robes but in the cleanest clothes from the bottom of our packs, we reclined on padded benches while the slave girls brought us iced sherbet and almonds. The last place we had had an iced dish had been at King Warin's castle, tucked into the foothills below icy peaks. I tried to calculate the nearest place from which the emir could obtain ice, and how expensive the transportation would be, and gave it up.
A tune then arose from within the arcaded shadows beyond the light of the lanterns, and the girls began to dance, swaying back and forth, twirling around each other in a complicated pattern that I couldn't quite follow. Their bare feet moved quickly and surely, and dark eyes flashed at us from above their veils. Then the music paused and again they served us, this time with diced lamb and pickled eggplant.
"If the old man is a prisoner somewhere," commented Hugo to me with a grin in his voice, "I hope he's got entertainment like this."
At last the emir spoke. "So you have come all this way in search of a blue rose, western travelers? I would have thought it would have been simpler to send a message to your agents in Xantium than to make such a difficult journey yourselves."
If any of the western kings kept agents in Xantium, the royal court of Yurt certainly never had. But King Haimeric did not respond to this part of the emir's remark. "Agents and messages are no use when one wants to see a blue rose oneself. It was messages and rumors that told me there might be such a thing here, but if you have really developed a blue rose I thought it unlikely that you would be willing to sell the rootstock, or even if the rootstock would survive transportation."
"And are you satisfied, now that you have seen my roses?"
In spite of the emir's friendly manner, I would have been very careful to be as flattering and diplomatic as possible. Someone accustomed to having people kiss the ground at his feet might not like to be reminded that his best blue rose was rather inadequate.
But King Haimeric surprised me. "No, I am not satisfied, glorious one," he said in a good-natured tone, "as I'm sure you would have guessed even if I lied to you. The roses your grower showed us out at the edge of the city are an excellent start toward blue, closer than anything I've seen in the west, but they are not the true, sapphire blue which I had heard rumored you'd grown. I expect you have something much better hidden away in the palace, and have that rose garden at the entrance to town, where anyone can find it easily, to distract all but the most knowledgeable rose fanciers."
The emir was silent for a moment, either considering his reply or deeply insulted. There might in the morning be six more headless bodies on the edge of town, waiting for the desert to purify them. On either side of me, I could hear Ascelin and Hugo take determined breaths, though neither had worn his sword to the emir's dinner.
But the emir said in a mild tone, "You can see all the roses I have in my palace here in the courtyard. Do any of them seem finer to you?"
In the dancing shadows of the lanterns all the roses looked gray to me. "These are fine roses but they are not your true blues either, glorious one," said the king. "If you have blue roses in the palace, you have concealed them well."
"But what good would a blue rose be if no one but I could see it?"
"You would know you had succeeded where no one had ever succeeded before," said the king. "Is the personal satisfaction enough?"
The emir did not answer. The girls now brought us a salad of lentils, onions, and olives, and when the melody struck up again from back in the shadows they resumed their dance. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to give it proper attention.
Since so many of my sudden convictions turned out to be wrong, I didn't know whether to doubt myself, but I now felt suddenly convinced that I knew what the older Prince Dominic had found in the Wadi Harhammi. "Something wonderful, something marvelous," he had called it. Ever since the eastern kingdoms, I had wondered if it was the Black Pearl. Now I felt sure that it was a blue rose.
When the slave girls paused in their dancing, King Haimeric spoke again. "You are not sure whether to trust me with your secret, glorious one, and doubtless with good reason. I would not trust foreigners with the secret of a blue rose myself." In fact, King Haimeric would have told anyone interested in his roses anything they wanted to know, but I let this pass. "Perhaps instead I can ask again what I asked before. Did a group of pilgrims come through here, four men, one of them a wizard with red hair? Their leader, Sir Hugo, is a cousin of my wife."
The emir did not answer for a moment, and the only sound was the quiet chirping of a bird somewhere along the eaves—a real bird, this time.
"Very few Christian pilgrims come down to Bahdroc from the Holy Land," the emir said at last from out of the shadows. "And I presume that most of those who reach my city never come to the palace. No, I cannot say that I have ever seen your friends." He paused for a moment, then added, "Perhaps my vizier may know more." He clapped once, and a slave girl darted away.
In a few minutes the vizier we had seen briefly before came into the courtyard, panting and arranging his satin robes as though he had been summoned from the bath or from bed. I wondered how this man, who I presumed wielded enormous power of his own within the city, reconciled himself to being virtually the slave of the quiet old man in the pearl-embroidered raiment.
He stood stiffly before the emir, his hands at his sides. "No, of course I have seen no pilgrims such as you describe. If any such people did come to Bahdroc, I would most certainly have been informed. Two months ago several western women were here, looking, they said, for the bones of some holy saint who had lived as a recluse in the desert even before the days of the Prophet. I found it all quite unlikely. They would not be the pilgrims you were seeking? I thought not."
The emir dismissed his vizier with a slight movement of one hand. The slave girls brought us bowls of yogurt and cucumber and little cups of strong coffee.
"Then if our friends did not come to your city," said King Haimeric, "I must apologize for troubling you about them. But let me ask you something else." The king was nothing if not persistent. "Have you heard the rumors that King Solomon's Pearl has been found again?"
The emir was silent again. But when he spoke it was as though there had been no pause. "I am surprised, travelers from the West, that you have heard the old legends. I have not heard anyone speak of the Black Pearl for many years. It was sunk beneath the Outer Sea centuries ago and could scarcely have been found again."
"Then I have one final request," said the king. "We believe that our friends were on their way to the Wadi Harhammi."
We believed no such thing, but I kept quiet.
"Tomorrow could you have someone direct us on the right road toward it?"
This time the emir's pause was much longer. For a second the courtyard was dead still, then I heard a low growl from one of his big spotted cats. "Again, you seem to have been listening to the old legends," the emir said at last. "If you had listened better, however, then you would have realized there really is no such Wadi, that even in the legends its position is constantly shifting. The old slave women tuck the children into bed with stories of the fairies who live in the Wadi Harhammi, but that is all. By the way, I am not sure you ever mentioned it, but what is the name of your kingdom in the west?"
"Yurt," said King Haimeric.
The emir did not answer but clapped again at once. "Show our guests to their quarters," he said to the slave girls. "They will be staying with us all this week."
They helped us up from the couches with light hands and giggles. Hugo held the hand of his slightly longer than necessary. "I wonder if we're going to find out more about these degrading and debilitating duties the slaves have to perform," he whispered to me. "I notice there's a girl for each of us, not counting Maffi, but he's too young anyway."
But the king dismissed the girls as soon as we reached our room. I rather hoped the look of disappointment they gave us was not feigned.
"I am afraid the e
mir lied to us," said King Haimeric as soon as the door shut behind them. "Perhaps he didn't have his wife join us for dinner because he didn't want her involved in this, or because he was afraid of what she might let slip. It was clear both he and his vizier knew perfectly well whom I meant when I asked about Sir Hugo's party."
"And he recognized the name Yurt," I said. "I wish you hadn't mentioned it, sire. It seems to have meaning here in the east. There has to be a reason it was carved on the onyx of Arnulf's ring."
King Haimeric dismissed this. "No one east of the mountains has heard of Yurt; even a lot of the other western kings don't recognize the name."
"That may be," I persisted, "but it was when he heard us mention Yurt that he told us we'd be staying. I even wonder now if Sir Hugo's party might not have been captured specifically as bait for us, because they knew he and his party had a connection to Yurt."
"I didn't have a slave woman to raise me," put in Maffi, "but I certainly never heard fairy-stories about the Wadi Harhammi. I would guess the emir knows exactly where it is."
"The mapmaker knew where it was," said Ascelin, "even if he didn't mark the road. But the emir doesn't want us leaving the city to find it. He calls us his guests, but if we tried to leave we'd find the doors barred against us."
"And what is he planning to do with us?" said Hugo. "The wizard says that if my father's party was ever here, they aren't here now." He paused for a long moment, and when he continued his voice was low and rough-edged. "Does that mean they're all dead?"
V
The slave girls woke us in the morning with flat, chewy bread and more coffee. After they had checked to make sure we had enough clean towels, and the king had told them politely that we could dress ourselves, they opened the door to slip away.
But one girl stayed behind. Her black eyes darted back and forth between us. "Be careful, westerners," she murmured, more to Hugo than to anyone else. I realized I had not heard any of the slave girls actually speak before. "This is not a good place for men of pale skin. The desert has been known to eat those who displease the emir."
"But how can we get out of here?" asked Ascelin. "The emir has said—you must have heard him—that we will be staying a week, which means whether we want to or not."
She glanced quickly toward the closed door through which the other girls had gone. "Just past noon, everyone will be asleep. The palace gate is guarded at all times, but I think I can distract the guard today. Once you reach the city streets, if you move quickly you should have no problems."
I saw Ascelin struggle successfully not to ask, "But why should we trust you?" Instead he said, "We are deeply grateful for your warning, but what can we, men you've barely seen, offer you in return for this aid?"
"It is not you," she said, still in that very low voice that made me wonder who might be listening at our window. "It's the mage in that other group of westerners, the friends you mentioned. The mage with the strange orange-colored hair."
Hugo bit off a shout. "Then my father's here after all!"
She shook her head at the delight and excitement in his face. "They were here for a week, close to a year ago. The mage—he was good to me. But they are not here now." She looked at both the palms and the backs of her hands. "I never told them what I have just told you, to try to make their way out during the noon period of slumber. And now— Now the desert has eaten them."
Hugo froze, his eyes wide open. The girl darted away without saying more. The door closed almost soundlessly behind her.
"Then they are dead," said Hugo in a very strained voice.
King Haimeric looked at him worriedly. "She didn't say that," he said, "and we don't know anyway whether to believe her."
"I believe her enough to want to escape today," said Ascelin. "I never knew your friend that well, Wizard, but if a slave girl still remembers him fondly a year later, I must have missed a lot."
"It may all be a trap," said Dominic.
"If she was sent to us as a trap," replied Ascelin, "so that the emir could set all his guards on us as we tried to leave his palace, then we'll see what western steel can do against them."
Hugo, sitting with his head in his hands, looked up and almost smiled. "If they did kill my father, then I'd be happy to help send the whole lot of them to hell."
The palace was quiet all morning. No one sent for us or came to our room. Several times Ascelin and Dominic went out strolling, as though casually; Hugo, at Ascelin's orders, stayed behind. Slaves—men this time—turned the princes back from the emir's courtyard and from the main palace gate where armed guards also stood. But for the most part they were allowed to wander freely.
The third time they went out, shortly before noon, they came back grinning. "I think we found where the emir keeps his wife—or rather his wives," said Ascelin. "There's a separate wing of the palace with only one corridor leading to it. The air—somehow it smelled different. And I heard voices, including a number of women's voices and the voices of children, such as I have not heard anywhere else here."
"But they certainly didn't let us in for a better look," said Dominic. "I just hope the front gate isn't guarded by men like that when we try to escape! That's why we think it must be the emir's wives in there. The first row of guards, all of them with those curved swords, never even let us get close to the second row. And they were even bigger, almost Ascelin's size," with a punch for the tall prince's shoulder. "But they looked somehow—I don't know, not soft, because they had plenty of muscle, but effeminate. I wonder how many women the emir actually has!"
The chaplain looked shocked, Hugo intrigued in spite of his misery. "We don't have time to worry about why the emir would want more than one wife," said King Haimeric. "If we trust that slave girl, it is time for us to go."
Dressed again in our desert robes, we slipped out into the hallway. The whole palace was still except for the sound of our own breathing. As quietly as we could, we followed the network of passages which Ascelin and Dominic had determined led to the main gate. I went first, probing with magic. Twice I waved those behind me to a stop, but the person I had sensed turned another way. Most of the minds in the palace around us were dozing or asleep.
"There's the main palace gate up ahead," whispered Ascelin. We all peered carefully around the corner. The last passage led straight for a hundred yards to an open gateway. No one blocked our way. "Now's the time to find out," the prince added grimly, "how much that slave girl really liked Sir Hugo's wizard."
We went on soundless feet down a passage which seemed suddenly to have grown to five times its original length. I would have lifted myself from the floor for even quieter flight except that I needed my attention to watch for the approach of hostile minds. The doorways on either hand were all shut, except for the last one.
It was, I guessed, a guard room. In it were two minds, not asleep, a man and a woman. I cautiously peeked around the doorframe. The room was dark, its window shuttered, but I could hear on the far side soft voices and a sudden giggling.
We went past the doorway one at a time on tiptoe. The king was the lightest on his feet of all. The open gate was just beyond, and then brilliant midday sunshine beat on our suddenly freed heads. We descended the steep stairs from the pinnacle on which the palace was built, first slowly and quietly, then more and more quickly, as final escape seemed less and less likely as it came closer and closer.
The stables at the bottom of the stairs stood open. The stable boys were stretched out asleep on bales of hay. We saddled our horses with fingers made clumsy by haste and stilled inquisitive whinnies with hands across the horses' nostrils. The sound of hooves on the flagstone floor as we led them out sounded as though it should wake the dead.
It did wake the stable boys. They half sat up, but Maffi smiled and nodded and said something I did not catch, and they stretched out again. We led our horses a short distance through the narrow, deserted streets, then mounted. Trying not to look as though we were running away, we moved through the streets,
back in the direction from which we had first entered the city.
"They'll be expecting us to leave through the south city gates," said Ascelin, who was leading. "That's where they'll send guards when they find we're gone. We can go out into the fields and groves on the north side of town and cut around."
The north city gates stood wide open, unguarded, unwatched. We rushed through, then paused to catch an easy breath for the first time since we had slipped out of our room.
"There are narrow tracks between the fields," said Ascelin. "I think if we start this way—"
"Look," said the king. "There's my friend the rose-grower."
The enormous grower stood in our path, arms akimbo. King Haimeric rode directly up to him, ignoring Ascelin's warnings. "Thank you for taking us to the emir," he said. "We learned a number of useful things from him. And I'm glad to have a chance to see a fellow rose enthusiast again before we leave Bahdroc."
"And what sorts of things did you discover?" the grower asked. His manner toward the king seemed friendly, but he was still employed by the emir. I heard the quiet hiss of a sword being drawn by Ascelin behind me.
The king gave the grower a shrewd look. "Let me answer that question with another. Could you direct us to where the emir really grows his blue roses?"
The king seemed to have lost all sense, but there was nothing I could do about it.
To my surprise, the huge swarthy man put back his head and laughed. "You were very polite about it," he said after a moment, "but I could tell you were not fooled by my roses. Did you expect the emir to have the real blues in his palace?"
"It had been a thought," said King Haimeric. "Where are they in fact?"
The rose grower said nothing for a moment, instead making ruminative hums and grunts. "Go around to the south side of the city," he said at last, as though in sudden decision. "This track should take you much of the way. Ride south on the main highway for three days—the road that would eventually lead you to the pilgrimage sites. But on the fourth day stop and look off to your right for two rocky peaks in the distance, forming a gate, with a saddle of land between them. You will find a little path leading toward the peaks. The path will lead you up all the way up to the pass, and beyond the pass— Well, if you do not find your blue rose, you will be closer than you are here."
