“And reassure Arnulf that we had nothing to do with your kid napping,” added the other. “Kaz-alrhun likes to have a little fun sometimes, but he means no real harm.”
I didn’t like to think what the mage did when he actually meant real harm, but I was footsore and hungry, with painful ribs and a bad headache.
But then my eye was caught by a small form under the gate. As I spotted him he saw me and turned to run.
With new energy I flew under the gate after him. A frog was too good for him. I started putting together the first words of the Hid den Language to transmogrify him into a deformed cockroach.
“I found him, my masters, I found him!” I heard Maffi shouting.
And suddenly Ascelin stood before me, his sword out and a grim expression on his face. Maffi hid behind him, peeking at me past his leg.
I dropped to the ground in surprise as Hugo stepped out of a side street. Both his and Ascelin’s expressions changed at once, to relief tempered with exasperation. “There you are, Wizard!”
“Where are the others? Has Dominic been attacked?”
“Everyone’s looking for you,” said Hugo, “and no one has been attacked.” That was a real relief. “Where have you been all day? Didn’t you realize we’d be afraid that now our party too was going to start disappearing?”
I glanced behind me and saw no sign of Arnulf’s agents. “I was kidnapped,” I said, “thanks to that boy there.”
“I told you I’d find him!” cried Maffi, still not coming out from behind Ascelin.
The prince sheathed his sword, reached down, and dragged him forward by the collar. “You didn’t tell us you’d led the wizard into ambush,” he said coldly.
“But I didn’t!” the boy protested. It was his absence of fear or even respect that was perhaps the most irritating. “I led him to the Thieves’ Market, just as he asked, to someone who had the ring he wanted to buy.”
“He led me to Kaz-alrhun, who took the parchment I’d found in Dominic’s father’s ring,” I said. “Don’t tell me the boy then offered to help you find me.”
“At least we didn’t pay him yet,” said Hugo.
“And you didn’t pay me yet, either, Mage!” said Maffi, turning his bright eyes toward me.
Ascelin shook his head, lifted the boy off the ground, and tossed him away. Maffi landed in a heap but sprang up at once. “I’ll be around if you want to hire me again!” he called and scampered off.
I sighed. “I’d been about to turn him into a cockroach, but it’s too much effort.”
“Since we’re leaving Xantium tomorrow,” said Ascelin, “we shouldn’t have to see him again.”
“The king and Dominic have been trying to get in to see the governor,” said Hugo as we started walking through the narrow city streets, “and the chaplain’s gone to talk to the bishop, but none of them thought they’d have much success. We were all going to meet back at the inn in a little while. Ascelin and I had been trying-without any luck-to get some sense out of the people in the Thieves’ Market when Maffi found us.”
I was touched that they had all been concerned for me. But if the king was having trouble getting to see the city’s governor to tell him about the very real disappearance of a wizard, then there was no hope for the vague plan I had made on the way back to Xantium, of enlisting the governor’s help to deal with what might be a political plot so vague I couldn’t even explain it to myself. “We may-though probably not-now own the ebony horse. I’ll tell you about it once I have something to eat.”
VI
The sun-drenched road from Xantium to the Holy Land led southeast across a tawny landscape. I could see I would have to revise upwards my ideas of far, dry, and hot. Away to our left, we could see the trade route along which silk from the Far East came after a journey of thousands of miles to this end of the Central Sea, after being transferred to several or even dozens of different caravans.
Hugo pushed back the hood of his cloak to let the wind ruffle his hair. “It’s good to be on the road again!” he said. “Once we find my father, let’s keep on going, right across the desert, down to the jungles of the ultimate south, or else off to the far east where they eat nothing but spices!”
Whirlwind was nervous and restless after two days in the stables of the inn and two weeks before that on board ship. After trying unsuccessfully to hold his chestnut stallion in, Dominic finally said, “I’ll be back!” and took off at a gallop.
Ascelin, being on foot, did not need to keep to the road. For the first mile he was almost as full of restless energy as the stallion, ranging ahead, climbing up on the rocks on either hand for a better look into the distance, stooping to examine an odd print. But then he came back to the pace the king had set with his mare and strode beside me.
“I’m wondering about something,” I said to him, looking off toward the trade route. “Arnulf’s agents suggested that an Ifrit had attacked a silk caravan east of Xantium, but Arnulf himself told us that it was specifically his caravans that were attacked. I would have thought they weren’t his caravans until his agents in the city had bought the silk from whoever transported it from the east.”
“I haven’t believed anything Arnulf told us yet,” said Ascelin.
“But the agents did confirm his story about a caravan’s disappearance,” I objected, “even if they did say it was only one caravan.”
Before I could pursue this further, Hugo called out. “Wizard, come look! I think there’s something very strange in here!”
He had stopped abruptly, looking back at the pack horse he was leading. I swung down from my mare and approached slowly, probing with magic. There was certainly something alive in one of the packs.
And I thought it was human. Ascelin and I carefully unbuckled the straps that held the tents, then abruptly let them drop to the ground. A startled cry came from within their folds. Ascelin poked at the canvas with his foot. It unrolled further, and a shaggy black head emerged.
“Greetings, my masters!” said Maffi, looking at us with shining eyes. “May God be praised, it is good to be out in the air again.”
“I thought we’d seen the last of you,” said Ascelin in disgust.
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you when we met yesterday evening,” said Maffi to me, ignoring the prince, “but I found the ring you wanted!”
“Liar,” muttered Ascelin.
But I said, “Wait,” as he reached for the boy. “Maffi, are you trying to say that the ring Kaz-alrhun told me he wanted for his flying horse actually exists?”
“Of course it does,” he said with a bright smile, putting his hand into his pocket. “And here it is!”
I took the ring from him slowly. It was an onyx in a plain gold setting. Most startling at all, carved into the stone in tiny but clear letters was the word “Yurt.”
I probed it with magic. There was certainly some kind of spell attached to the onyx. It seemed virtually new, even its tiny crevices free of dust. I held the ring carefully on my palm and looked across it to Maffi.
“So did I do well, my masters? Will you reward me handsomely?”
“Tell me where you got this,” I said evenly. All my previous assumptions were crumbling. It had seemed unlikely all along that the bandits who had stolen Claudia’s package from us would sell it to someone who would bring it to the Thieves’ Market in Xantium. It now seemed more unlikely than ever.
“I stole it from Kaz-alrhun last night,” said Maffi with a grin.
“Kaz-alrhun told me he wanted a ring which in fact he already had,” I replied, “and which, completely by coincidence, he had acquired through the thieves’ network. And you stole it, after leading me to him so he could ship me out of the city. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Dominic came galloping back at this point, his stallion damp with sweat but not breathing particularly hard. He started to speak but stopped when he saw the boy. “Good,” said Maffi, glancing up at him. “I was afraid you’d decided to leave one of y
our party behind in Xantium. That would not have been a good idea. Nice horse, by the way.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I persisted.
“You’re from Yurt, aren’t you? That’s why I thought you’d want this ring. Give me something to drink, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
While Ascelin gave him a waterskin, I probed the ring again. Because magic is a natural force, a spell is often hard to recognize unless it is actually in action. But the onyx seemed imbued, unexpectedly, with school magic. It was powerful magic, too, the work of a master wizard.
“If you stole this ring from Kaz-alrhun,” I tried again, “do you know when he acquired it?”
Maffi gave me a mischievous look. He was enjoying this. But for a change he gave me a straight answer. “He acquired it yesterday morning, about an hour before I met you at the church of the Holy Wisdom.”
I wondered if this could possibly be true. “Yet when you took me to buy the ring, you didn’t tell me that I’d be buying it from Kaz-alrhun …” But I didn’t have time to pursue the issue of how thoroughly Maffi had deceived me. Apparently I was not alone. “Who did he acquire the ring from?”
“I don’t know his name,” said the boy, taking another pull of water and looking troubled for the first time. “I’d never seen him before. He was richly dressed in the western style, even though he wore a dark cloak that he probably thought would mislead thieves. He had iron gray hair and a look about him that somehow, well, suggested a mage. Not like you, my master!” he added brightly.
I didn’t have time to wonder if this last comment was meant as an insult. “King Warin,” I said.
“You can’t mean that!” said King Haimeric unhappily. “That would mean he really did set those bandits on us.”
But this was not news to any of the rest of us, even if Warin did feel more comfortable preserving some of his prestige among his fellow kings by hiring out his dirty work. “So Arnulf did send a ring with us to buy the magic horse,” said Ascelin, “and King Warin, wanting the horse himself and knowing the price was the ring, stole it from us. This seems to be a ring destined to be stolen, if this boy stole it from Kaz-alrhun after Warin gave it to the mage.”
“Then if the mage was still in Xantium when he lost the ring last night,” I said, “it could not have been him, leaving Xantium on a flying horse, that I thought I saw yesterday afternoon in the sandstorm. It must have been Warin.”
“But how would Warin have heard about the flying horse?” asked Dominic.
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” said Hugo. “If Arnulf’s agents here heard about it, then King Warin’s agents must have as well.”
“Why would Warin have agents in Xantium?” protested the king, but no one was listening.
“Did Arnulf’s agents tell Warin’s agents to steal the ring from us?” suggested Dominic darkly.
“So Warin followed us east,” said Ascelin, “and arrived just after we did. Does he have the flying horse now, boy?”
“Kaz-alrhun does not have it any more,” said Maffi cryptically and gave another grin. “How about some food? When I realized Kaz-alrhun wasn’t going to take the loss of his ring with his usual good humor, I had to come to your inn so quickly I didn’t have time for dinner-or for breakfast!”
Dominic gave him bread and dried fruit. “Does King Warin have the ebony horse?” Ascelin demanded again.
“I already told you he did,” said Maffi ingenuously.
I hoped briefly but improbably that Kaz-alrhun had not told Warin the secret of the different pins and that the king had been unable to work it out for himself. Instead I tried to concentrate on the question of how King Warin had learned there was a flying horse for sale, and that the price was a magic ring from Yurt-or, at least, a ring carved with the kingdom’s name. The onyx ring was heavy in my hand.
“I think I understand,” said Dominic suddenly. “Arnulf had somehow heard about my ruby snake ring, and because he knew he had no way of getting it, he had this ring made by a goldsmith and hoped to pass it off to the mage instead of mine.”
“But the onyx ring can’t have the same magic properties yours does,” objected Hugo.
“Perhaps you all are right,” the chaplain said slowly, “and my brother did send that ring with me, by way of his wife, because he was ashamed to tell me openly what he wanted. I shall forgive him the deception, but I now find myself less eager to stop and visit him again on the journey home.”
“Wait,” said Ascelin, flicking his eyes sideways toward Maffi, who was peacefully finishing off his dried fruit. “Are you sure we should be discussing this, when …”
But Dominic shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what the boy hears or what he guesses, because he’s going with us. He won’t dare go back to Xantium after his latest theft, and we need to keep him under our eyes ourselves.”
Ascelin immediately objected, but I did not listen. I was rather thinking about the chaplain’s brother Arnulf.
Someone-the mage, King Warin, perhaps Arnulf himself-had started the search for a magic ring from Yurt by looking among the disordered bones in Dominic’s father’s tomb. But when it became clear that the real magic-imbued ring was not readily available, Arnulf had had the nearest wizard cast the spells for a substitute magic ring.
He and his family had never kept a wizard. Therefore, when Arnulf heard that an ebony flying horse was for sale, one that would allow him to fly to wherever the Black Pearl was concealed and get away again, and that the price was a magic ring, he had had to go in search of a wizard-perhaps the same wizard he had already hired a decade earlier to install his magical telephone system.
The wizard he found was the royal wizard of a kingdom not very far away, a kingdom located in the foothills of the eastern mountains. Arnulf had had the onyx ring made for him by Elerius.
I stared at the ring in my hand, not liking this at all. There was nothing unusual in a royal wizard performing such a task for someone without a wizard in his service, as long as it did not interfere with his own responsibilities. It had been a piece of luck for Arnulf that the nearest wizard just happened to be the one who was probably the finest graduate the school had ever produced. Arnulf must have offered him something quite extraordinary in return. I wondered uneasily what.
And Elerius would certainly have told his master, King Warin, what he had done. At the time, the king might not have found it significant. By the time he realized he wanted a magic ring himself, Elerius had moved on. So Warin had waited, knowing that sooner or later the onyx ring would make its way toward the east. He had, I remembered, written to King Haimeric about the blue rose and urged the king to stop and visit him on his trip. He had known there was something special about Yurt, and that it had something to do with the ring Arnulf had requested from his wizard. It must have seemed an answer to a prayer when we stopped by directly from Arnulf’s house.
Or perhaps not a prayer, I said to myself, remembering Evrard’s veiled warning that he had seen the king engaged in the black arts, but something much more ominous.
I mentally shook off this thought. Elerius had taken the same oaths to help mankind as did all wizards, and the best pupil the school had ever had was not going to dabble with demons or assist his master in crime. After all, I reminded myself, he had been off to a new post many kingdoms away by the time Warin set his bandits on us. I did not feel as reassured by this as I would have liked.
Ascelin stood up, breaking my train of thought. “Then if the boy’s coming with us, we’d better start on our way again.”
“First,” said Dominic, “I want to show you something I found, just a little way down the road.”
We followed him for a half mile, then he pulled up his stallion and pointed. Cut deeply into the stone by the side of the road was a sign, that could have been an X and could have been a cross.
“This then must be where my brother’s caravan disappeared!” said Joachim.
“And look at this,” said Dominic, pointing. Cut be
low the cross, rather shakily, was something much smaller, that might have been the letter Y. “Is this for Yurt?”
Ascelin stood with his hands on his hips, looking back toward Xantium. “Whatever it is, we’d better move on quickly. Kaz-alrhun will soon guess what happened to his ring if he doesn’t already know. Hugo, take the boy up behind you on your horse.”
“I’m sure if the mage pursues us,” said the king, “our wizard will be able to protect us, but it would be better not to give him the trouble.”
“Of course, of course, good thinking,” I said, sliding the onyx ring onto my finger and glancing back toward the city. I very much doubted I could protect anyone from Kaz-alrhun.
PART SIX — HOLY CITY AND EMIR’S CITY
I
“The Church of the Sepulchre is the most holy spot in Christendom,” read Joachim from his guidebook. “Every year on Good Friday all the lamps and candles here, and indeed in all the Christian churches of the Holy City, are extinguished. On Easter morning fire from heaven kindles the lamps. Then all the bells in the churches of the city are rung, and the holy flame is used to relight the lamps in all those churches.”
I looked around, impressed in spite of myself. Normally I would have doubted a story of fire from heaven, as a tale for the credulous or else the work of an unacknowledged wizard. But in this small circular church, whose porter had waited to let our group in until the previous group of pilgrims had gone, it was impossible to doubt. Between the columns that ringed the church were mosaic depictions of the crucifixion and resurrection, and written all the way around at the top of the wall, in the old imperial language, was the message, “Grave, where is thy victory? Death, where is thy sting? For as in Adam all shall die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
The church with its mosaics, altars dedicated by the various eastern and western groups of Christians, and silken hangings, was not the rough cave I had expected. In the center there was no roof, only a wide, circular opening through which the chaplain told us the fire from heaven descended. The hot air from the opening made the flames of the silver lamps sway, their light dancing on the precious stones of the altars.
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