Mage Quest woy-3

by C. Dale Brittain

  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 emir 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. T
he 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.”

  “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. I
t 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.