C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 03

by Mage Quest

  "Thank you!" cried the king, pulled his mare around, and started along the track the grower had indicated. The huge man lifted a hand in solemn farewell.

  Ascelin caught up with the king a quarter mile along and took hold of his saddle leather. "Don't you think we've followed this track far enough to put him off the scent?"

  "Why put him off the scent?" asked the king in surprise. "It will be easiest to follow this way around the city."

  "Because he's going to set the emir's guards on us!"

  "And you think me a silly old fool?" said King Haimeric good-naturedly. "In fact, he has neither betrayed the emir's trust nor betrayed us. He told us the direction to take to the Wadi Harhammi but without ever mentioning its name. And did you notice he carefully didn't warn us against what we would find there?"

  "But why do you think you can trust him, Haimeric?" Ascelin demanded.

  "He loves roses," said the king. "Come on."

  We found the path away from the main south road on the morning of the fourth day. It was well marked at the beginning, but it quickly became so faint we might never have been able to follow it for long without the sight of the gate in the line of mountains ahead of us. We needed the path, however, because it seemed the only way through a rough, dry land of crevices, bare eroded slopes that led down to exitless ravines, and tumbled boulders. Ascelin, bent low to the ground, led us as the path wound around and up, a way marked by little more than the occasional darker stone which an earlier foot had turned over, a different shade than the tawny color of stones exposed for centuries to the desert sun.

  "No Ifriti have followed us, anyway," I commented, looking back north toward the emir's city.

  "What are Ifriti?" Hugo asked me as we paused to rest our horses on a level part of the path. "You've been talking about them all trip, and Arnulf's books mentioned them, but I'm still not sure."

  "They're magical creatures," I answered, "created when the world was first formed. In fact, it is said that they were used for some of the more difficult parts, such as digging the rivers or pushing up the mountains. They're supposedly immortal, and over the millennia they've taken on something of a human shape, though they're far, far bigger."

  "You think, then, sire," said Dominic to the king, "that the Wadi my father wanted us to find lies beyond that line of mountains?"

  "It certainly looks that way on the map," said the king.

  "And there we'll find something wonderful and marvelous," said Dominic eagerly.

  But there imagination failed us. "My father?" said Hugo without much hope.

  "The Black Pearl?" said Ascelin. "But no. Even if it was once there, too many other people will have been there before us, from King Warin to the mage Kaz-alrhun."

  "It might be Noah's Ark," put in the chaplain, "if the rumors Sir Hugo's party supposedly heard in the Holy Land last year were true. We know the Ark came to rest on a mountain, but Noah and his sons left it behind when they came back down to repopulate the land."

  "The blue rose," said the king confidently.

  Maffi and I had no suggestions.

  Ascelin with his hunter's eyes and I with my far-seeing spells kept looking behind us, but the long day passed as had the three days before, with no sign of pursuit. Ascelin looked relieved, but I began to wonder if, on the contrary, the emir had not bothered to pursue us because he knew we would be captured by whatever lay ahead.

  The path came in late afternoon to a last steep ascent up to the saddle between the peaks. "Shall we pass the night here," asked Ascelin, "or try to get through the 'gateway' before dark?"

  "We can't stop now," said Dominic, his face alight. "We're so close! And look at my ring!"

  The ruby was doing something I had never seen a precious stone do before. It was pulsing with an inner red light.

  I pulled off my riding glove to look at the onyx ring Maffi had stolen from Kaz-alrhun. I never had been able to find the secret of the spell attached to it. It sat on my finger lifeless and dead.

  "Follow me!" cried Dominic. He kicked his stallion who attacked the slope, rushing up the final half mile, hooves sure in spite of the loose stones underfoot. Maffi, riding behind him, held on desperately. "This is it!" called Dominic from the top as we all hurried to catch him.

  At the pass we dismounted to rest our horses and look ahead. From here we looked down into a circular valley, five miles across. We stood on the rim, I realized, of an ancient volcano, whose huge throat had partially filled through the millennia with rubble and earth. The floor was still far below us, and the walls were so steep I could not tell how one was supposed to get down. The valley, which must catch any moisture from the sharp mountains ringing it, was just on the green side of brown. It appeared perfectly empty.

  "I don't see any place for a rose garden," commented the king.

  "Is this whole valley called the Wadi Harhammi," asked Ascelin, "or is that only one corner of it? How will we find the place where—"

  He stopped, and we all froze, following his pointing hand. A whirlwind rose from the valley floor, coming rapidly toward us. It grew bigger and bigger, and, as I realized how far away it still was, bigger yet.

  In the center of the whirlwind was a dark green, almost human figure, a heavily-fleshed man like Kaz-alrhun but taller, five times, a dozen times taller.

  "That—" gasped Maffi.

  "That," I said, "is an Ifrit."

  PART SEVEN - THE IFRIT

  I

  There didn't seem much point in trying to escape, so we stood shoulder to shoulder and watched it come.

  That is, all but Maffi. He was still on Whirlwind's back, and he gave a shout, a tug on the reins, and was gone, scrambling wildly back down the way we had just come. Dominic started to say something and changed his mind.

  I heard Joachim murmuring, just at the edge of audibility. I turned toward his profile. He looked very calm, but I recognized what he was saying. It was the litany for the dying and the dead.

  I took a deep breath, trying to rally what little magic I knew that might possibly help against an Ifrit, but I never got a chance to use it. The world rose, fell, and flipped around us.

  It felt as though we were standing not on a rocky pass but on a tablecloth, and an unimaginably huge giant had seized the cloth's corners and shook. We were thrown into a void without light, with neither up or down. I whirled blind, reaching out for Joachim and Hugo, who had been next to me until a second ago, and found nothing.

  I opened my mouth to yell, and it filled with sand. By the time I finished coughing and spitting, the world around me had settled down a little. It was now completely silent except for a tiny background noise of trickling sand. I rubbed grit from my eyelids and tried opening them. I could see a little now but still heard nothing.

  "Joachim?" I said tentatively. "Sire?"

  In answer I heard a deep, echoing chuckle somewhere far above me.

  I grabbed for my spells and looked slowly up. My magic was gone, stripped away as though I had never known any. It would not have mattered anyway. I was sitting in the Ifrit's gigantic hand.

  "And what are you?" he said, peering at me with an eyeball the size of my head. His deep voice vibrated, seeming to come from all around. Except for his size and his color—he was a green the shade of the sea during a storm—he looked almost human, but his ears were pointed, and the nails on the hand that held me narrowed into sharp claws. His body blocked most of the view, but I thought he was standing in the bottom of the circular valley.

  "I am a wizard," I said, though I had never felt less like a wizard since my first day at the school. "What have you done with my friends?"

  "A mage?" inquired the Ifrit, his tone suggesting he was pleased and delighted something so small knew how to talk.

  "A wizard," I said firmly. I felt I had had enough eastern magic to last me a long time. "What have you done with the others?"

  He poked me delicately with the forefinger of the other hand; the thrust nearly knocked me backwards. "The
y're around," he said vaguely. "You seem remarkably bold, little man." In fact, I was so terrified that even struggling and shrieking seemed superfluous. "If you're a wizard, do a trick for me."

  "I can't do a trick. Your magic has defeated mine. Let me have my spells back, and I'll do some very charming tricks for you." I wondered desperately what an Ifrit might find charming.

  "So you don't know magic after all," said the Ifrit in disgust. His hand started slowly to close around me. "I ought just to crush you."

  I closed my eyes and muttered a scrap of the psalms between my teeth.

  But then the hand opened again. "On the other hand, humans can be very amusing sometimes. Do you think you could be amusing if I kept you alive for a while?"

  A second ago, death with dignity had seemed the best alternative. Abruptly life without dignity seemed much more attractive. "What a good idea," I said.

  The Ifrit turned his hand this way and that to get a look at me from different angles. His stubbly beard was very close. "I think it's because you humans always know you're going to die someday," he said after a minute. "That's what makes you so amusing—you act as though everything was important and had some sort of meaning."

  "You could be amused a lot more," I suggested, "if you brought all my friends here." My voice sounded tiny and squeaky in comparison to his deep rumble. "By the way, here's an idea. I'll bet you were imprisoned in a bottle once, but it's hard to imagine how you managed to fit your entire body inside. Do you think you could show me?"

  At least the Ifrit chuckled rather than crushing me at once. "Nice try, little man, but I won't be fooled that easily again. King Solomon, the son of David—may they both be revered!—bound me by the name of the Most High and imprisoned me in a bottle for over two thousand years. I'd still be in it if that mage hadn't let me out. But I'm certainly not going back in there again."

  I had known all along it wouldn't work. But I would now never have a chance to tell Maffi, "I told you so."

  "Did you know King Solomon?" inquired the Ifrit. "But that's right," he said before I could answer. "I keep forgetting what a short time you humans live. Even Solomon only lived for a few centuries. Maybe it would be a kindness just to kill you and get it over with."

  "But then you'd be all by yourself again," I said, "with no one to talk to and no one to amuse you."

  The Ifrit frowned, a creasing of his blue-green forehead like the violent erosion of a hillside. "I know what I can do," he said after a moment, his forehead clearing. "I can take all these friends of yours that you keep worrying about and set them tests. Humans talk about setting tasks for Ifriti, but it would be much more interesting to test humans."

  "What kind of tests?" I asked cautiously.

  "Tests of all the things humans worry about, honor, love, life itself. I already told you I've noticed how seriously you take things."

  "And if we pass your tests—"

  "Then I'll have had an amusing few days," said the Ifrit.

  "And then you'll let us go?"

  The Ifrit seemed more amused by this than anything else I'd said. "Of course not. You came here to my valley, and I'm under orders to guard it, so you'll all have to die."

  Under orders. That meant, I thought, Kaz-alrhun, the only person I'd met in the east who could possibly master an Ifrit. "But none of them are dead yet?"

  A few more days of life seemed a glorious reprieve—but then I didn't know yet what the Ifrit's tests might entail.

  "I'm hungry and soon I'll be ready for a nap," he said, not answering my question. He lifted me up and put me on his shoulder. "Hold onto my hair." I took hold of three strands of greasy hair, the size of cables, and as he rose from the ground I grabbed onto his ear lobe as well. He flew swiftly, pausing once to swoop down and scoop up something from the sand.

  I could see a little better now; we were indeed in the circular valley. Ahead of us were a group of palms, doubtless marking a spring, though I could not remember seeing them from the pass in the valley wall. The afternoon sun had dipped low. When we reached the far side of the valley, the Ifrit landed on the ground again and reached up to pluck me from his shoulder. He placed me by his foot, then opened his other clawed hand to set something next to me. It was Joachim.

  The chaplain sat up slowly, looking dazed. I staggered toward him.

  The Ifrit bent to smile down on us, showing a row of enormous yellow teeth. "Do you want something to eat too, little men?"

  "There's plenty!" came a completely unexpected woman's voice.

  Gripping each other by the arms, Joachim and I turned toward the voice. We saw the last thing I had expected, a slim young human woman, wearing a big white apron and tending a fire. Three sheep carcasses were broiling over it.

  She had black hair and eyes but very white skin, full breasts, and wore a gold necklace above the apron. Strung along the necklace were a number of rings.

  She gave us a sharp, appraising glance. While we stared at her dumbfounded, she pulled one of the carcasses away from the fire and sliced off a large portion. "I'm having some myself," she said. "You'd better take some while you have a chance. The Ifrit doesn't need to eat very often, and he sometimes forgets that humans do."

  "Thank you," said Joachim gravely. I found I had nothing to say.

  "You're a priest?" she asked, handing him a plate. "That should make it more interesting." For some reason she started to laugh.

  "Have you seen the others?" Joachim asked me in a low voice.

  "No one but you," I answered. "I don't even know if Maffi was able to get away while the Ifrit was distracted by the rest of us."

  The mutton tasted surprisingly good. The nose and mouth could still appreciate fresh hot food, even if we were about to die.

  The Ifrit crossed his legs and sat down, bringing him closer to our level but not by much. He tossed down a handful of melons as though they had been currents, then picked up a whole sheep carcass on its spit and bit into it. Greasy juice ran down his chin, and he licked it off with a wide pink tongue.

  "You didn't say thank you!" the woman shouted up at him, giving him a rap on the knee with a poker.

  He bobbed his head. "Thank you my dear." She smiled, satisfied, and he continued chewing.

  "So, how do you like my wife?" he asked when he had finished the first batch of mutton and was reaching for the second. "Isn't she fine? Best cook I've ever had, and the sweetest body."

  I was too horrified to answer.

  "She's so delicate and graceful, and so pure," the Ifrit continued, pausing to wipe his jaw with an arm. "She keeps me amused. I like to call her my wife because she was going to be some human's wife when I captured her. She probably doesn't perform quite the services for me that she would for a man, but she keeps me happy!" Both the Ifrit and the woman laughed long and loud at this.

  "I was a maiden pure, ready for my marriage to a prince," she said to us. "Not that I wanted to marry him! But this Ifrit came to the wedding like a hurricane. The prince had boasted that everyone who heard his voice must obey his command, that he could have ordered even Ifriti to attend the wedding if he had wanted. But I think he got more than he expected! The Ifrit scattered the decorations and killed half the guests—including the prince." From her tone, it had not bothered her very much. "Me, however, he treated very carefully, putting me onto his shoulder when he flew away. And I've been with him ever since."

  The Ifrit finished the last of the mutton and stretched. "That was a good meal, my dear. Now I think I'll take my little nap. Come here and scratch my head while I fall asleep."

  She took off the apron; she wore nothing else but her necklace and nearly transparent trousers. Joachim immediately offered her his goat's-hair robe, but she waved it away with a laugh.

  The Ifrit lay down on the sand, and she sat by him. He took a silver chain, heavy-linked though it was tiny in his hand, and clipped one end to her necklace. The other end he wrapped around one pointed ear.

  "In case she gets some idea of trying to es
cape while I'm asleep," he explained with a wide smile. "When I'm asleep is the only time that I'm not fully aware of what my dear wife does, no matter where I am. Though you never have tried to escape, have you?" giving her what I hoped was an affectionate squeeze with his enormous hand.

  She plunged her arms into his hair and started to scratch his scalp. "Here's the first test," the Ifrit said sleepily, closing his eyes. "I took her away from her wedding because I wanted to keep her pure and keep her for me. Isn't she lovely? A lot of men have desired her. While I nap, you may desire her yourself. But if you try to take her, I'll feel the tug on my ear and wake up and kill you."

  He opened an eye and fixed me with it. "What sort of test is this supposed to be?" I asked, since some comment seemed called for.

  "Just a first test, little mage," he said, closing his eyes again. "If the urgings of your body so overcome you that you don't worry about death, then I'll know you wouldn't be very amusing for my next tests." In a minute, he began to snore.

  The young woman slowly stopped scratching and withdrew her hands. The snoring never ceased. Then she gave us a wink, reached up, and unhooked the silver chain from her necklace. It drooped from the Ifrit's ear with nothing attached to it.

  "There," she said, standing up and giving a sensuous stretch, as though showing off her body for us. "He'll be sound asleep for hours now. As long as I reattach the chain before he wakes, he never knows."

  "Then you'll be able to escape with us," said Joachim. "Daimbert, do you think you could carry both of us and fly out of here?"