As I hurried after him, I wondered how many powerful magic rings were circulating through the east, in search of how many significant magic objects. There was Dominic’s ruby ring for starters, then the ring Arnulf had sent with us, the ebony flying horse, then the Black Pearl, whatever Dominic’s father had found in the Wadi Harhammi, and now whatever Kaz-alrhun hoped to discover with the ring from Arnulf.
I looked at the boy darting down the street in front of me, sandals slapping on the paving, and felt foolish to have pitied him. Whether he had a family or not he did not need anyone to look after him. He seemed without any difficulty to have found a ring I had not been completely sure even existed.
I was beginning to recognize the narrow streets that led down the far side of Xantium’s hill toward the Thieves’ Market, but the sounds and smells of the Market struck me afresh as we came out among the striped awnings. “Over this way,” said Maffi confidently. He slipped easily around booths, under tables, through knots of men who looked at me impassively from under folded headdress that hid most of their faces. I caught up with the boy in the far corner of the Market.
It was slightly quieter here. I felt a prickle of unease. An ebony chess piece, a rook, was lying on the ground, and it looked strangely familiar. “Wait,” I said, “before we go any further. Who is this person who has the ring? Did he tell you how he obtained it, or how much he wants for it?”
“It’s the right ring, all right,” said Maffi with a grin. “He’ll tell you how much he wants himself.” He gestured toward a booth whose striped awning was drawn shut, though a sandaled foot showed beneath it. “Go ahead!”
I still hesitated, but he turned at once and disappeared into the crowd. Oh well, I thought. If he didn’t even wait to be paid, it wasn’t my fault. I could always find my own way back to the inn by flying high enough to see the harbor and then locating it from there. I stepped resolutely up to the booth.
I expected the awning to be pulled back, but instead the foot disappeared. I pushed the fabric aside myself and looked into shadows so dark that it was impossible to make out any detail, although I thought I saw a pair of shining dark eyes.
“Hello? I heard you have a ring for sale?”
“Come in, come further in,” said a muffled voice. “I have it here at the back.”
I entered slowly, letting the awning drop behind me. “I can’t see anything,” I protested. “If you’ve really got a ring I’d be interested in, let’s look at it in daylight.”
The air crackled, giving me half a second’s warning: not nearly enough to resist the binding spell that abruptly held me tight. I toppled over with a painful thump.
“Push back the awning,” said the muffled voice. “Let us see what he has brought.”
I lay, paralyzed from the collar bone down, on the filthy paving stones of the Market with several men bent over me. Someone let in a little daylight, and in a moment my eyes grew accustomed enough to the dim light so that I could make them out. As I should have expected, one of them was the enormous black shape of Kaz-alrhun.
“Let him keep that eagle ring,” he said, “but see what else he has.”
Hands reached into my pockets. They pulled the knife from my belt and the piece of parchment from inside my jacket.
“A piece of paper with an eggplant recipe, a smooth stone, and what looks like a buckle off a harness,” said one of the other men, examining what had come from my pockets.
But Kaz-alrhun was looking at the piece of parchment, reading Prince Dominic’s letter to his family, and his black eyes grew round. “Well, Daimbert, I knew you had brought more with you to Xantium than you cared to say. Your party is dressed as pilgrims, but I see that your goal lies far beyond the Holy Land. If you had told me you had this at once, all this trouble might have been unnecessary! Tell me, where did you obtain the parchment?”
“It was magically concealed inside a ring,” I said in resignation.
“Well, since you cooperated at the last, Daimbert,” Kaz-alrhun said with a chuckle, “even if not entirely voluntarily!” he paused for another laugh, “I have a mind to let you live. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” I said cautiously. Even though I could not move, I could feel all sorts of damp things soaking through my clothes, and my shoulders were sore and stiff. I tried a spell to lift myself off the ground and found that this binding spell not only held me physically, but also blocked my access to all but a few words of the Hidden Language. The only bright spot was imagining turning Maffi into a frog the next time I saw him, preferably a frog about to be eaten by a water-snake.
“But you attempted to mock me, Daimbert,” the mage said, “coming to the Thieves’ Market with the ruby ring and then trying to buy my horse with a different ring entirely.” His laughter was gone now. “I do not like to be mocked.”
It sounded as though he thought I knew far more than I in fact did. I wondered resignedly what it was.
“And I do not wish you to cause me any more problems at once,” Kaz-alrhun added thoughtfully. “I think you will just leave town, immediately. Perhaps in a few days you shall have determined, even with your western magic, how to break my binding spell!”
“What do you mean, leave town?” I said, trying to keep panic out of my voice.
“On a trade caravan, of course. Laugh at your fate, Daimbert! No man can in dread change the day of his death, but he can with laughter chase dire dread away.”
One of the men with Kaz-alrhun scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder. I didn’t feel like laughing, even to chase dire dread away.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I said. “My friends knew I was coming here today.” This was not strictly true, but Ascelin would certainly come to the Thieves’ Market if I didn’t return to the inn. “They’ll be very cautious when I don’t return, and you’ll never be able to steal the ruby ring.”
“But you and I both know that none of them is a mage,” said Kaz-alrhun in a good-natured bellow. “You do not have the pieces to win this phase of the game, Daimbert. When your tall swordsman friend seeks you here, there will be nothing to see.” He nodded to the man who held me. “There should be a caravan leaving from the north gate within the half hour.”
The man darted out of the dimness of the booth into the brilliant sun, with me slung over his shoulder. He turned quickly from side to side for a moment, then set off at a trot.
I opened my mouth to say something, to try to negotiate with him, and found my vocal chords frozen. I was hanging upside down on his back, and a glance at my upper body showed that I had been covered with illusion to look like some sort of paper-wrapped parcel.
And what would the mage do to Dominic? While we hurried along the less crowded streets through the back of Xantium, I tried probing the spell that held me. I had new sympathy for the castellan and knights I had made stand in binding spells all night. Parts of my body felt numb and others itched almost unbearably, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I lost track of where we were long before I had any idea how this spell worked. We came suddenly under the arch of a stone gate, and by stretching my neck around, the only part of my body not held motionless, I could see a small collection of mule-drawn carts.
Turbaned men were tying down the loads and shouting to each other. The man carrying me stepped up to the last cart and said something I didn’t catch, though I heard a clink of coins. The next moment, I had been dumped amidst bales of what felt like cloth and had a tarpaulin pulled across me. I was still struggling unsuccessfully to find a way to unravel Kaz-alrhun’s spell when I heard a shout, the cart beneath me creaked, and the caravan began to move.
There wasn’t much air beneath the tarpaulin, and in the sun it almost immediately grew extremely hot. I breathed shallowly, sweat running down my face, trying to imagine what my companions would do when I didn’t return-and when the mage appeared among them with a flash of light and demanded Dominic’s ring.
Kaz-alrhun
’s spell twisted and turned beneath my probing almost as if it were alive. I recognized the shape of the spell from Melecherius’s book, but I still could not unravel it. Several times I thought I had it, and each time it eluded me. I reminded myself grimly that I had wanted to see eastern magic.
I soon felt as though I was caught not just by a spell but by a nightmare. As breathing took more and more effort, I gave up even trying to undo the spell that held me. I hovered on the edge of consciousness, between dreaming and hallucinating. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably closer to three hours, when the cart beneath me stopped moving.
“Well,” said a voice, “shall we look at what Kaz-alrhun sent with us?”
The tarpaulin was jerked off, letting in sun-baked air that tasted deliciously refreshing as I sucked it desperately into my lungs.
I blinked my eyes then and looked up at the two men bending over me. They were Arnulf’s agents.
I tried to speak and discovered my voice had returned. A glance downward showed that the illusion that made me into a parcel had also worn off. “I’ve been put in a binding spell,” I croaked. “Help me up and give me something to drink.”
“It’s- It’s a man!” said one of them. Maybe the sun was slowing his reasoning powers as badly as it affected me.
They pulled me into a sitting position and offered me water out of a leather bag. It was lukewarm and absolutely delicious, even if it did dribble down my chin. I was too grateful to accuse them of taking part in a plot to kill innocent wizards. By now, I thought, the mage must have seized Dominic’s ring-and maybe even Dominic himself. I would have to formulate a plan of action as soon as I could act-or, for that matter, think clearly again.
“It is- Are you not the mage who was with Arnulf?” asked one of the turbaned men.
“Yes,” I said, giving up the effort of persuading them that Joachim was not his brother. I glanced at the long, curved swords at their sides, but they showed no sign of drawing them. “And your friend Kaz-alrhun wanted to get rid of me.”
“But why?” they said in what appeared to be real distress. “Has he broken his agreement?”
I shook my head and made a new effort to understand the magic that held me. “We didn’t give him the ring he demanded in return for his ebony horse.”
“But Arnulf told us before he came that he would have it!”
For a moment I had thought I understood at last, that Kaz-alrhun wanted the ruby ring to get into the Wadi himself, but this ring Arnulf had sent with us to buy the flying horse seemed to be something entirely different.
“I was carrying a magical parchment,” I said, “which seemed to please Kaz-alrhun, though I certainly hadn’t meant to give it to him. This binding spell appears to be his punishment for riding his horse without any intention of giving him what he wanted.”
“But if he has the parchment, now,” said one of the agents, “and if he thinks it will do just as well as the ring, then Arnulf should be able to take the horse! Kaz-alrhun may work out of the Thieves’ Market, but we have found that he honors his bargains.”
I couldn’t even begin to agree, but it was too complicated for an argument. I glanced up while struggling anew with the spell and saw a dark shape, not quite a cloud, scuttling low through the sky. “An Ifrit!” I cried involuntarily, panicked because of my helplessness. Back in Yurt, I had said I wanted to see an Ifrit-all my wishes were coming true with a vengeance.
V
The two men whirled, but then they relaxed and laughed. “That is not an Ifrit. It’s just a bit of a sandstorm. The wind will pick up sand and dust and carry it some distance. Sand demons, they are sometimes called.”
I didn’t like this talk of demons, but if we were, at least momentarily, safe from Ifriti, I wanted to get free of the binding spell before the next danger appeared. Suddenly I saw how it went together, with an ingenious twist I had never seen before, though Melecherius hinted at it. In a few more seconds I was able to dissolve the spell and finally stretch my cramped arms.
Arnulf’s agents stepped back abruptly as I moved, and I realized they might be as frightened of my anger as I was irritated with them. If Arnulf’s negotiations had all gone amiss, then both he and “his” wizard would have good reason to be furious with the agents who had sent him word that everything was ready.
I took another pull of water and massaged my temples. I looked around, at the mule-drawn carts whose drivers were now sitting off the road in the shade, at the dusty and empty road itself, and at the sage-covered hillside leading down to the sun-flecked Central Sea. Xantium was a dark mass in the distance.
“So do you normally transport Kaz-alrhun’s victims out of Xantium, when you’re not plotting to betray your employer?” I asked conversationally. If the mage had attacked Dominic to get his ruby ring, the prince might be on the next caravan. But if Kaz-alrhun had wanted a different ring, Arnulf’s ring, badly enough to give his flying horse for it, then Dominic’s ring might not have any real interest for him after all.
“No, no!” the agents said together. “We have never done anything against Arnulf’s interests!” When I frowned, one added, “We did not realize the mage’s parcel was a man.”
I stood up slowly. “Perhaps Arnulf will appreciate that, in Xantium, you have to put a powerful mage’s interests ahead of his,” I said with deliberate sarcasm. “Are you heading north now?”
“No,” said one of the agents. “We were about to return to Xantium. Whichever market Arnulf’s caravans make for, we always travel with them the first ten miles or so out of the city, until they are out of easy range of city-based thieves. Certainly if Kaz-alrhun pays us to add an occasional parcel to the load, we are willing to accommodate him, but that does not mean we’re working against Arnulf’s interests!” He paused for a moment, then added, “You will explain to him, will you not, that we never meant any harm to you?”
“We’ll see,” I said gravely. At least they hadn’t asked me yet to pay them for their trouble. The drivers took my standing up as the signal to start again. They remounted the wagons and snapped their whips over the mules’ backs. With shouts and creaks, the caravan started off along the dusty road.
By this time, Dominic’s ring would be gone beyond easy recovery. I felt too tired for the concentration flying required, so I started walking with Arnulf’s agents. They were eager now to be helpful and pleasant.
“I’ve heard that a number of Arnulf’s caravans had been captured by an Ifrit,” I said. “Is that part of the reason you don’t accompany them very far?”
They looked at each other in surprise. “I do not know where you could have heard such a story,” said one. “Only one caravan has disappeared completely, off to the east of here. And we cannot be absolutely sure its disappearance was due to an Ifrit, because no one saw it. The drivers described a whoosh of air, then they and their mules were left standing and the carts were gone. If caravans really were disappearing in large numbers, all the mages in Xantium would bend their magic to prevent it.”
I wondered if there was any truth at all in Arnulf’s story. “It did seem fairly unlikely to me. And wouldn’t it be odd for an Ifrit to leave the sign of the cross?”
The agents looked at each other again. “We had not heard anything about the sign of the cross,” said one in distaste.
Then the entire account of Ifriti capturing caravans, I thought, was Arnulf’s invention, an excuse to bring Joachim into his affairs. I still had no firm sense whether his story of the Black Pearl reappearing was real or an additional invention, but I tended toward the latter. I was distracted from this speculation by another thought. “You aren’t Christian?”
“Of course not,” with dignity. “We follow the teachings of the Prophet.”
Since Xantium was, at least in its government, a Christian city, I was intrigued that Arnulf should employ non-Christians as his agents here. Maybe that was why he had no chaplain: he didn’t want someone piously trying to introduce religion into sound busi
ness decisions. “I know almost nothing about the Prophet,” I said. “Could you tell me a little as we walk?”
By the time the walls of Xantium rose before us at the end of the day, I had learned much more comparative religion than I had ever imagined. I had not realized before that the People of the Prophet had been pagans before the Prophet came to them, nor that he had incorporated what he considered the best elements of the rather inadequate religions-as he saw it-of Abraham and of Christ. I had to be fairly noncommittal in my responses to conceal the fact that these men also knew much more about Christianity than I did.
But as we talked I was also thinking. The bit of sandstorm, the sand demon, might in fact have been Kaz-alrhun on his magic ebony horse, off to the Wadi Harhammi. I remembered Ascelin commenting, back in the eastern kingdoms, that a number of events seemed to have been managed for our benefit. Could the mage have been behind them all?
Or was the shadowy and rather ominous figure I thought I sensed, manipulating and maneuvering us, King Warin, or Arnulf, or someone else entirely? Whatever we had stumbled onto must be something much more complicated than the disappearance of Sir Hugo’s party.
Even though the school had heard nothing of the Pearl’s reappearance, the lord of the red sandstone castle was ready to turn bandit for something hidden in a shipment of luxury silks, perhaps one of the “parcels” Arnulf’s agents had been willing to transport for Kaz-alrhun. Our arrival in King Warin’s kingdom had been intriguing enough for him to set real bandits on us, and our passage through the eastern kingdoms had led Prince Vlad to set in motion extensive troop movements and even wars, for the purpose of bringing us to his castle. We had heard of very strange rumors coming out of the East, but it seemed instead that everyone else, except for us, felt that something very strange was coming out of Yurt.
“Tell Arnulf to go himself to talk to Kaz-alrhun,” said one of the agents as we reached the west gate of the city. “We certainly tried to negotiate fairly for the horse.”
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