Mage Quest woy-3

by C. Dale Brittain

  “He betrayed my father by withholding information,” said Dominic darkly. “Even after fifty years, that betrayal must be avenged.”

  “I avenged your father without meaning to,” I said. “I never even imagined that the wizard’s physical body was only held together by spells that would dissolve in daylight. At least I know why he’s never come to Yurt after the ruby ring.”

  “I should have avenged my father myself,” Dominic muttered. “The one useful thing we’ve learned is that whatever he wanted us to find in the Wadi is probably still there-and involves my ring. All the business with Arnulf and Warin and the bandits must be something entirely separate.”

  “Unless King Solomon’s Pearl is real,” I said in a low voice, “and that’s what’s in the Wadi. If it really will give someone his heart’s desire, that wizard is hoping it will give him the ability to rebuild his body properly.”

  There was another long pause. “You realize,” said Hugo to me at last, “that we never saw anything-not the hill, not the castle, not even the wolves.”

  “It’s all real,” I said, making myself roll around and sit up. “It’s concealed by magic, but it’s still there. That’s why I know he’s still alive-the spells are much too complicated to be maintained without an active mind behind them. Keeping those spells going will take all his energy for a long, long time.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Ascelin. “The further we are from real wolves the better.” He offered me a hand to pull me up. “So he admired my ability to leave no tracks, you say?” he added with a grin.

  We sat on the terrace outside an inn, eating grilled fish and salad with dark-cured olives and drinking white wine. A trellis covered with climbing flowers shaded us from the afternoon sun. Off in one direction we could see sage-covered hills, scattered with gray-green olive trees, and in the other sunlight flashing on the Central Sea. Red sails leaned in the wind as ships large and small headed in or out of harbor. We didn’t recognize the kind of fish we were eating or most of the herbs in the salad, and none of us cared.

  Joachim came back to the table and sat down. I lifted my eyebrows interrogatively. “I was finally able to talk to Claudia on the telephone,” he said. “It was hard to hear her; I don’t think the telephone’s spells were working very well. She never did say what had been in the package. She just said she was sorry it had been stolen, but that it didn’t really matter.”

  “Did you say that bandits had nearly killed you in order to steal it?” asked Hugo.

  “Of course not,” said the chaplain in surprise. “I’ve already told you, I’m sure they wounded me by accident. And at any rate I wouldn’t want to worry Claudia.”

  “I’ll try to telephone the queen after dinner,” said the king.

  “And I’ll try Diana,” said Ascelin.

  “I hate to tell you this, Ascelin,” said Hugo, his mouth full and motioning to the waiter, “but this is a lot better than your cooking.”

  “Are you ready for the roast lamb?” asked the waiter. “It will be out in a just a moment. Let me refill your wine glasses.”

  We hadn’t had any wine since we left King Warin’s castle. The local vintage had a flinty undertone and tasted wonderful.

  “Success,” said Ascelin, lifting his glass as though in salute. “All the way down through the eastern kingdoms to the sea, without being killed, without being captured, without even being in battle. Next time, Haimeric, I will stick with the main routes, but even with all the delays we’re as far along as we would have been if we’d stayed west of the mountains.”

  “But isn’t our slow progress due in part to the rest of you having to wait for me?” asked the king.

  “No, having to wait for me on foot,” said Ascelin with a smile. “If you all had stallions like Dominic’s, you’d have been in the Holy Land weeks ago.”

  “So how you think we should go from here?” asked Dominic. “Along the coast, or out to sea?” He finished the last of his salad and poked Ascelin with his elbow. “I ask, of course, knowing that whatever you suggest, we should do just the opposite.”

  The waiter came out at this point with a steaming platter, lamb scented with garlic and rosemary. I felt my capacity to keep eating was unlimited.

  “Pilgrims normally follow the coast road,” said Ascelin. “It’s a safe route, and it goes by a number of pilgrimage churches, including all those dedicated to the martyrs killed back in the days of the wars between Christians and the People of the Prophet. Those were the wars which drove most Christians, except those of Xantium, into the west. Even pilgrims with no intention of going as far as the Holy Land often follow part of that route.”

  “That’s the way my bishop went,” put in Joachim.

  “But traders stick to the sea,” Ascelin continued. “It’s certainly faster and a lot easier for anyone with heavy goods. The most dangerous part of the sea voyage is west of here, through the shoals and islands, and we’ve already skipped that part.”

  “Even if we are on pilgrimage ourselves,” said Hugo, “our principal goal is still to find my father and his party. I think we should try to get to the Holy Land as quickly as possible and start searching for them from there.”

  “We’ll be able to book sea passage to Xantium from here,” said Ascelin. “All routes in and around the Central Sea pass through Xantium. That’s where your brother’s agents will have their offices,” with a glance at Joachim, “and that’s where the last overland route to the Holy Land begins.”

  The king nodded. “You’ve taken us safely so far, Ascelin. I’ll trust you to continue to guide us. Tomorrow we’ll book our passage.”

  There were three couples at the next table, talking and eating and apparently enjoying themselves nearly as much as we were. The women wore yellow or blue cotton dresses, printed all over with flowers. “We never get fabric like that at home,” commented the king. “Maybe I should buy some to take home for the queen.”

  “I’ve already told you, sire,” said Hugo with a grin, “don’t load up the luggage now. Wait until we’re on our way home.”

  I had been too busy eating to join in the conversation, although to my surprise I found myself slowing down on my third helping of lamb. I dipped a piece of bread in the juices on my plate and wondered where the palm trees I had expected might be.

  The terrace where we were sitting was high above the harbor, and off in the distance I could see marshy land bordering the sea, but no palm trees swayed anywhere in sight. I swallowed my bread and asked about them.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ascelin. “You’ll see plenty of palms when we get to the East.” I wondered if we would also see the dancing girls that Hugo had imagined with his father. “There are even some in the marshy areas near here. It will probably be a few days before we sail, so we can look for them if you like.”

  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 As
celin 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.”