Mage Quest woy-3

by C. Dale Brittain

  “As pure as I’ve ever been,” she agreed, planting a kiss on his stubbly chin.

  “Then, little mage,” said the Ifrit to me, “I think you’ll be interesting enough for the rest of my tests. Are you sure you don’t want to show me a magic trick first? No, that’s right, I’m not supposed to let you.”

  I was afraid I knew who might-or might not-order the Ifrit to “let” someone practice magic. But I didn’t dare ask about that. “Will your tests involve the rest of my friends?” I asked instead.

  “They might, they might,” said the Ifrit in a rumble. “I know you humans can’t see in the dark very well, so you like to sleep at night. I think I’ll leave you all here now, while I go find some more sheep. I believe we ate the last this evening. Maybe I’ll get some melons as well. I’ll be back in the very early morning, before it’s light enough for your human eyes to see properly. I know my wife will be safe with you now that you’ve passed my test, especially since I can see all and know all when I’m awake.”

  Leaving us alone with her, if we had actually lusted for her, seemed quite different to me than the Ifrit falling asleep while she was-supposedly-chained to his ear. I rather doubted the Ifrit saw and knew quite as much as he thought. But I did not say so.

  “In the morning, little mage,” he continued, “while you try some of my tests, perhaps this other man can stay here and keep my wife company. She’s been complaining there are too few people in the valley. Would you like that, my dear?”

  “Yes,” she said, as though surprised at her own answer. “We’ll be able to talk. I would like that very much.”

  “Then sleep now, humans, and take your rest for tomorrow’s adventures.”

  “Just as I was waking up last evening,” said the Ifrit. “I heard you-or was it your friend? — talking about the role of sacrifice in your heretical western religion. I’ve heard you westerners have tried to alter the religion of Solomon, may God preserve his memory.”

  I again clung to his hair and ear as we flew across the valley floor, far faster than I could ever have flown myself.

  “So perhaps one of the tests I should set you and your friends is to see how willing you are to sacrifice yourselves for each other.”

  After a night of exhausted and dreamless sleep, I had wakened feeling, quite irrationally, more hopeful about our chances of living beyond the next day. But the Ifrit’s comment made my heart sink again.

  “I’ll test you alone first, however,” he continued, “before I try to find the rest of your friends-I think I remember where I left them.”

  I didn’t like the implications of “find” any better. Were they all buried beneath the sand?

  “You claim to be a mage,” said the Ifrit, “so we’ll see how you deal with a magical situation I learned about not long ago!”

  He began to fly even faster, and I held on desperately, my eyes shut against the rushing wind. If he was going to give me a magical test, then he had to allow me access to magic again, but when I tried to reach out to the forces I found an impermeable wall confining my mind. The words of the Hidden Language were as thoroughly gone as if I had never known them, and how one moved through magic’s four dimensions was but the faintest of memories.

  When I dared open my eyes again I saw white spires and an arm of the ocean. Had we come back to the emir’s city? Or were those spires some other city on the same estuary? If so, I wondered how I would ever find my way, on foot and without magic or even a map, back to the Wadi Harhammi.

  As we dipped lower, I could see that the spires below were certainly not those of Bahdroc. It did indeed look like a city, but a city which had sunk abruptly into the bay. As the Ifrit flew over it, I could look down through clear water to city streets, to courtyards and fountains, to a market place and a princely palace. But all was silent, deep beneath the water. Only the tallest towers emerged, and a walled garden on a hill behind the palace.

  The Ifrit set me down at the edge of the bay. “See what you can make of this ensorcelled city, little wizard!” he said with his deep chuckle and drew back, folding his arms and watching me with a grin.

  Without magic I couldn’t even check to see if the city really was under a spell or had sunk due to an earthquake. But I had no alternative than to try. I took off my shoes, went to the edge of the water, and waded in.

  The water was scarcely cooler than blood. Fish swam around my feet, the same brilliant blue, red, and gold I had seen in the fish pond in the emir’s palace. I had certainly never seen fish like these in the west. The scales glittered, and their protruding eyes were fixed on me, but I did not think they were automatons.

  They seemed almost tame, swimming close to my feet, barely moving out of the way as I waded deeper. The red fish greatly outnumbered the other colors. I plunged in my hands and grabbed one.

  I expected it to wiggle wildly as I drew it up for a closer look. Instead the eyes opened even farther, and the fish mouth gaped until it was as wide as a human mouth. “Beware, oh man, beware!”

  I was so surprised that I dropped it, and it swam peacefully away. I bent down to the surface of the water for a better look, and it again seemed to have an ordinary fish mouth.

  The Ifrit sat a hundred yards back, grinning at me. I tried to ignore him and reached for a gold fish.

  Again, as soon as I had it out of water it spoke with a human voice, “Beware, oh man, beware!” This time I managed to put it back in the water carefully, without dropping it. The blue fish was just the same.

  “Ensorcelled city,” I said to myself, wading back out. It was thoughtful of the fish to try to warn me, but I wished I knew what they were warning me against. Without magic I felt blind. Someone or something-perhaps the Ifrit himself-had turned the inhabitants of this city into fish. Apparently my test was to find out how, or why, and maybe even to turn them back into humans.

  In that case, the Ifrit was quite unlikely to answer questions. A question might even be the sign I had failed the test. I turned instead toward the walled garden I had spotted, which stood on what had once been a high hill behind the sunken palace but was now on the shore of the bay. A staircase had descended from the garden to the back of the palace, but its steps now led down only into water.

  The garden itself however was flourishing. Enormous bushes with purple blooms bent over half-concealed benches, and paths led between arbors and fruit trees. I came in by a side gate and wandered for several minutes along the paths, among sweet-smelling flowers and highly decorative brick work. I saw no blue roses, or roses of any color, though I looked. I found myself constantly trying to probe with magic to find whatever malignant force might lurk behind the next bush, but all I could draw on was ordinary human senses.

  In the center of the garden was a little round-topped pavilion. I was just starting cautiously toward it when a voice spoke by my elbow.

  “Beware, oh man, beware!”

  I jumped a foot and whirled, expecting to see a fish crawled up on dry land to warn me-against what I could not imagine. But instead I saw a rather pale young man, wrapped in a black cloak, sitting very still on a bench almost completely hidden under a flowering tree.

  “Are you real or a fish?” I asked, then realized how idiotic I must sound.

  But he took me quite seriously. “I am still a human,” he said, “the only inhabitant of my sad city not to be a fish. Do not approach the pavilion if you value your life.”

  I sat down next to him. The Ifrit’s test seemed to have begun. “I appreciate your warning. What is in it?”

  “The dying or dead lover of my witch wife.”

  III

  I passed a hand over my forehead. This really would have been much easier with functioning magical abilities. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’d like to be able to help you and your fish people, but you’ll have to tell me first what has happened.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, as though gathering his memories or his strength, then looked at me fully. “Know then that I, thanks
be to God, was once the prince of this city, and had married a wife, a princess beautiful as the full moon rising, whose eyes were the shadows of evening lamplight and mouth the sweetest of honeys. I married her knowing she was a witch and not caring, for I thought she loved me too.”

  My blood went cold, and I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder. Even in the west, wizards were suspicious of witches and their half-learned spells, always hovering on the edge of black magic. They tended to deal with the old magic of the earth, knowing little of the Hidden Language, and were rumored to create monsters in their wombs. I didn’t like to think what witches were like here in the east.

  “But when we had been married a year, she began to come in the evening to this garden, to sit in the pavilion. At first I accompanied her, but then she said that she preferred to be alone, to feel the evening breezes and think her evening thoughts. I trusted her, for I loved her, and I had not yet heard the saying, ‘Whatso woman willeth, the same she fulfilleth, however man nilleth.’

  “But after another year had passed, when it seemed she came here almost every night and often did not return to our sleeping mat until near the break of day, I became suspicious. When I tried to ask her to sleep by my side instead of in the garden, she first burst into tears and said that I was cruel, then darkened her forehead at me and said that I was a tyrant. She refused to listen to my entreaties but shut herself up with her handmaidens.

  “And that night, as I watched in secret and followed her in silence, she went again into this garden. And in the pavilion, the worst of my fears and even worse than my fears were realized, for I found her lying in delight in the arms of my vilest slave!”

  “So what did you do?” I asked quietly, when the horror of the memory seemed to have silenced him.

  “They had left a lamp burning outside the pavilion, and I could see their heads close together, their lips locked in kisses. And I thought that with a single stroke of my sword I could cut off both their heads together. For I had feared something of this and brought my sword with me.

  “But as I drew the blade, she must have heard the sound, for she pulled sharply away, and I, distracted by her motion, did not strike true. I missed her completely, and I cut the slave’s neck only halfway through.”

  Just because we in Yurt never hung anyone, I reminded myself, did not mean that the rest of the world did not assess the death penalty. But I still thought that he had been much too precipitate. I had started to feel sympathetic for this pale young prince, but now I felt sympathy only for the slave.

  But the prince was not waiting for my sympathy. “When she saw what I had done, she cursed me with the deepest and blackest of witches’ curses. Her hand she thrust straight into the lamp’s flame, and she hurled fountains of fire and spells at me that would have destroyed me if they had touched my head. But instead-”

  He paused and lifted his black cloak with his left elbow. From the waist up he was still human, but everything below the waist, including his left hand and right arm, which was stretched along his leg with the sword still in his grip, had turned to stone.

  “And so you see me, traveler,” he continued. “But even this was not enough for her. She turned with a cry of despair when she saw her slave lover almost dead and tried to revive him with her wicked spells and the potions she always carried with her, sobbing and calling him tender names she had never once called me. When she could not heal him immediately, she wrapped him most tenderly, both in blankets and in her perverted magic, and left him in the pavilion.

  “Then she went down into the city like the force of vengeance and called on the dark powers that lurk beneath the waves. And in answer to her call the nameless creatures of night rose up from the deep and swallowed the city. The breakers rolled across it and drowned it, even as you see it now.”

  “But the fish?” I asked.

  “The people might have swum to safety even in the drowning of their city, for we are a sea people and used to swimming, but that would not have satisfied her. So she turned them all into different kinds of fish, red for those who follow the Prophet, gold for the Children of Abraham, and blue for those who follow the Nazarene. When they are lifted from the water they can still speak like men, at least a few phrases, but in the sea they are fish, and fish they must remain.”

  I wondered if they still knew who they really were. Someone transmogrified by western magic would still keep his original identity, inside. The brightly-colored fish I had seen in the emir’s palace-doubtless brought there as a marvel-must think themselves in harsh captivity.

  I realized the prince had been silent for several minutes and turned toward him. His deep eyes looked at me in entreaty. “Whoever you may be, traveler, you are the first to enter my garden in the two years since this happened. Are you perhaps sent in answer to my prayers to save me and avenge me upon my wife?”

  “I might be,” I said slowly. I couldn’t see the Ifrit from where we were sitting, but he must still be only a short distance away. I knew it was useless to ask him again for my magic back, though I had no idea how I was going to dissolve a transformations spell without it. Even without the knowledge that he was testing me-and might keep my friends buried in the sand forever if I did not pass-I felt sorry for the fish.

  “Does your wife ever come back to gloat over you?” I asked. Maybe I could somehow persuade her to break her own spell.

  “Of course. She comes every evening, feeds me just enough to keep me alive, and then whips me until I sob with pain, to punish me again for what I did to her lover. I would have died from the blows many months ago-and often I wish I could-but she then salves my wounds with wicked magic, so that I may heal by the next day and be beaten again. Then she crawls into the pavilion with the slave-that is why I warned you not to go in, for fear she would realize some one had been there. She calls on him tenderly and caresses him and begs him to be healed quickly. So far he has never answered her.”

  I put my head in my hands. The slave must be long dead, if he did not respond to magic which could heal the wounds from a whipping in a day. His body must only kept from decay by some variation of the spell that held together the body of the wizard of the eastern kingdoms.

  When I lifted my head again, the prince was almost smiling. “Are you perhaps a mage?”

  “No.” It was too complicated to explain. “But I think I have an idea.”

  I sat on the bench beside him all afternoon. He told me more about his city before all its people became fish. I was able to deflect his rather desultory questions about where I had come from-for him, the chief interesting thing about me was that I might save him. Late in the afternoon, somewhere in the distance, I began to hear singing.

  “It is my people,” said the young prince softly. “When they were still human, they used to sing as the sun set, and even now that they are fish they rise to the surface each day at this time to salute the day’s passing.”

  The singing died away with the coming of twilight, and not long thereafter the prince whispered to me, “The witch usually comes at about this time, so make your preparations.”

  “Do not fear, for you will be a free man tonight.” I stood up, hoping this was going to work.

  I slipped quietly down to the little round pavilion and found my way in by feel. Slowly I groped my way across the floor until my hand found another hand, very cold.

  I jerked back, just managing to stay quiet. If this was the slave, he seemed quite dead. I felt forward again and found his body, lying amid a heap of pillows and blankets on a sleeping mat. I lifted him up as well as I could, just as glad I could not see his slashed throat, and carefully carried him out the far side of the pavilion. There had already been too many slashed throats for me on this trip. I slid the slave under a bush and went back into the pavilion just as a bobbing light appeared at the garden gate.

  I lay down on the mat where the dead slave had lain, but the light did not immediately approach. Instead, it was set down on the bench by the young prince. In t
he light of her lamp I could see the prince’s witch wife. If eastern witches could touch someone’s mind and tell who they were, she would know in a second that I was here. To the prince, she might have been as lovely as the full moon rising. To me she looked terrifying.

  But she did not seem to have any immediate suspicions. First she fed the prince and gave him water to drink out of a skin, laughing mockingly at his inability to move more than his head and left elbow. Then she pulled out a whip and stepped back, her face dark with fury.

  “For wishing to kill me,” she shouted, “for almost killing my beloved, you deserve death and worse than death! As long as he hovers on the edge of life, you will pray to God each day that you might die!”

  The young prince stood it for about five lashes, then started to whimper. When he began to cry out in pain, and then to beg the witch by the love they had once shared, by her love for the slave, and by the love of God not to hit him again, her blows only intensified.

  Lying where the slave had died, I put my hands over my ears. Without magic, there was no way I could oppose a witch with a whip in her hand and probably the supernatural forces of darkness in her spells. I had to wait for her to tire and to rub her salves into the prince’s wounds. Even with magic, I certainly could not heal him overnight myself.

  She seemed satisfied at last and put her whip away. The prince had slumped as much as he could being half stone, and he no longer seemed conscious. But when she brought out little pots that glowed with a green light and rubbed the salve onto his back, he slowly revived and straightened again. “Until tomorrow night, husband?” she murmured in triumph.

  But then her whole manner changed. She lifted up the lamp and approached the pavilion, slowly and almost shyly. I took a deep breath, tried to imagine how a slave might address a princess who was also his lover, and called out to her.

  “Mistress, dear mistress, don’t bring that light here, by the love we long shared!”