“Now!” cried Kaz-alrhun. “Onto the carpet! All of you, if you value the life God gave you!”
None of this made any sense. “But I thought you had set your Ifrit to capture us!”
His gold tooth flashed again as he smiled widely. “But this is not my Ifrit.”
I had no time to create new assumptions, but my old ones were irretrievably gone. “We’re never all going to fit on a little carpet like that,” I said, the one thing I thought I could say with certainty.
“Watch and learn, Daimbert!” He said a few quick words, gave a great flourish, and the carpet twitched, shivered, and grew until it was indeed big enough for all of us, even the horses. “Come!” he said when I hesitated. “Do you not wish to escape the Ifrit?”
I shook myself into action and herded the rest of our startled party onto the carpet with Maffi. The Ifrit, stretched out with his eyes shut, snorted as though he might soon awaken from the paralysis-and awaken furious. I had never flown on a magic carpet and had no reason to trust Kaz-alrhun’s, but we didn’t have much choice.
It lurched up from the ground, and we all clutched at each other. The horses neighed desperately as it seemed we must slide off the carpet’s edge, but it straightened itself as it began to climb. We rotated twice, then sailed slowly up and over the rim of the valley.
From the air we could see for scores of miles across the sere desert landscape, and I thought I could spot the glittering spires of Bahdroc in the distance and the uneven line of rocky hills beyond. I caught a flash of light reflected from the Dark Sea and, for one moment, saw what might have been the spires of the once ensorcelled city. The carpet turned around again, a quarter mile above the ground, then plunged downward to light on the steep hillside outside the circular valley.
I tumbled more than stepped off the carpet, glad to feel the solid ground beneath my feet again. For the brief moment we had been up in the air, the carpet’s flight had seemed strong and smooth, but I could see it would take me a while to get used to the rough takeoffs and rapid landings.
“This is good fortune indeed,” said Kaz-alrhun, straightening the odd-shaped pieces of silk that covered his enormous bulging body. “I have never before ventured to bind an Ifrit. Even you, Daimbert, were able to find a way out of one of my spells. I cannot be sure how long my magic will hold such a creature.”
“But are we safe, this close?” asked Ascelin. He seemed to be rallying, though Hugo still looked too exhausted to care.
“Of course not,” said Kaz-alrhun cheerfully.
“You wouldn’t have come all the way from Xantium just to rescue us from the Ifrit,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“My reason is the same as yours, Daimbert,” said the mage. “I wish to enter the Wadi.”
This entire trip I had had to keep adjusting my expectations, as everything turned out to be not quite what it seemed, as I looked for aid one moment to those whom at another point I considered my enemies. A very short time ago, I had feared Kaz-alrhun’s arrival. Now quite irrationally I found myself thinking of him as an ally.
“You can have the onyx ring Maffi stole from you,” I said, pulling it off. “Don’t be too hard on him.”
This set the mage into a paroxysm of laughter. “He told you he stole it?” He gave the boy a buffet on the side of the head, still laughing. “And you believed him?”
There were a number of things I needed to find out at once, but one took precedence. Maffi still stood on the carpet, carefully not meeting my eye. I took him firmly by the arm. “So Kaz-alrhun sent both you and this ring with us on purpose,” I said, putting it back on my finger since the mage apparently didn’t want it. “I should have realized, ever since you first offered to escort us to the Thieves’ Market in Xantium, than you were working for him. Did you enjoy spying on us all the way from Xantium? Were you sending back messages from every oasis by means of the deep pools? And you made me believe that you wanted to ‘learn’ magic!”
Maffi looked as subdued as I had ever seen him, but he still managed a grin. “I do want to learn magic, my master! The communications spell was all Kaz-alrhun would teach me.” He promptly created a large pink illusory spot on the front of my shirt, as though hoping this would placate me.
“First you need to learn to play chess,” said Kaz-alrhun to the boy, “before I could begin to teach you magic.”
“But don’t forget,” Maffi continued to me, “if it hadn’t been for me, the mage wouldn’t have known to come save you!”
Dominic stepped up at this point. “Where is my stallion, boy?” he demanded.
“At the first oasis north of the emir’s city,” said Maffi with another grin. “That really is a magnificent horse. I would never have been able to bring help so quickly if I’d been riding any other steed.”
So when Maffi had escaped, he had ridden like the wind to the first place from which he could send a message to Xantium, and Kaz-alrhun had come swooping across the desert on his flying carpet. But if the mage had been using the boy to keep an eye on us, and thought he had to come rescue us, then someone else had set the Ifrit here, someone who might himself appear at any moment.
“The Wadi’s down there in the circular valley,” I said to Kaz-alrhun, “but it’s hidden-or only visible for a few seconds. The Ifrit isn’t going to let us get to it if he can help it. Why did you let him out of the bottle in the first place?”
Kaz-alrhun smiled slowly. “It was not I.”
“He said it was a mage-” But there must be many mages in the East, most of whom I hadn’t met.
“That mage,” said Kaz-alrhun enigmatically, “hoped that an Ifrit would help him find the Wadi’s secret. He was mistaken.”
“Then you and I and Prince Dominic need to get in before that mage gets here.” I wondered briefly why a mage with the power to master an Ifrit couldn’t find the Wadi’s secret, but I pushed the issue aside. There were still too many other things I didn’t understand. “But tell me first, Mage. What is in there?”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “You like a challenge, do you not?” I abruptly began to fear him again as irrationally as I had felt a moment ago that I could trust him. “You are on a quest for something, but you do not know what it is. I too am on a quest, but its nature is such that I dare not hint to you what I hope to find …”
“You don’t know what’s there either,” I said with much more confidence than I felt. “Good. We’ll look for it together. We’d better get back to the valley immediately, before the Ifrit breaks your spell.”
The mage unexpectedly put a massive hand on my shoulder, making me shiver. “I can warn you and prepare you, even if I do not tell you.” His black eyes met mine, completely serious for once. “I will not urge you to go. For if you proceed, you will be proceeding into dangers you cannot expect or even imagine.”
“Prince Dominic,” I called. “Are you ready to face unimaginable dangers to get into the Wadi?”
Dominic had been trying to get more details from Maffi about his stallion, what condition it was in, who was supposedly taking care of it now, and not getting answers he liked. But he turned toward me at once, the ruby of his ring still pulsing with light. “I have been ready since we reached my father’s tomb.”
I tried quickly to probe the spell attached to his ring and discovered that the clarity of vision I had had for a short time was gone. Either it was operative only within the valley, or else it was just a short-term effect of having my magic restored by the Ifrit. Or I had imagined it, easily possible in this world of mirages and shifting expectations.
“I have never understood why you wizards of the west bind yourselves to king and princes,” Kaz-alrhun commented. I noticed him gazing fixedly at the ruby. “Your own magic should be strong enough that you do not need a prince with you.”
“This is his quest, and his is the ring from Yurt you actually wanted, Kaz-alrhun,” I replied. “You didn’t want the onyx ring at all.”
“I have always known the onyx wa
s not the ring I sought,” said the mage good-naturedly.
“Then why were you willing to sell your flying horse for it?” I demanded.
“But it was not you who bought my horse.”
I gave him up. At some point the shadows and mirages might settle down again. “Let’s get to the Wadi before the Ifrit gets loose.”
We left the others sitting in the sparse shade some larger rocks afforded. Ascelin looked away to the north, searching for signs of the emir’s troops. Kaz-alrhun, Dominic, and I again rose into the air on the flying carpet and swooped over the valley wall.
The Ifrit’s enormous form still lay stretched out below us. His wife, sitting beside him, looked up at us and waved. Kaz-alrhun said a few words to the carpet, and it descended slowly to hover near the Ifrit, who stared at us with unseeing eyes. “I have not done my spells amiss,” said the mage complacently. “There are not many who can master an Ifrit, even for an hour’s span.”
“Watch,” I said. “This onyx ring is good for one purpose.”
I stretched out my hand and put the words of the Hidden Language together. The air of the valley shimmered with the magic that allowed people and objects to be hidden from each other. “Right there,” I said, pointing to the dry watercourse. “That’s where we’re going.” Suddenly, gloriously, I had the clarity of vision back again, and I knew exactly what spell to say next. It was a spell I had never used, and one which I was quite sure even Elerius had not known, but it came to me as easily as though another mind were guiding me. As the heavy syllables of the Language rolled from my tongue, the shimmering resolved itself, and the watercourse became clearer and clearer, while everything else faded.
The carpet dropped abruptly to the ground, tumbling us off. My spell, coupled with Elerius’s spell on the onyx, had allowed us not only to see other layers of reality, but to pass into them as easily as the Ifrit apparently could. Dominic rubbed a bruised knee as he picked himself up but managed not to scowl; I was afraid he trusted me to know what I was doing. The Ifrit was gone.
Kaz-alrhun laughed. “Most excellent, Daimbert! How did you do that? I could never find any sensible spell on that ring-which is why I sent it with the boy. I realize I should have tested it more thoroughly before giving up a good automaton for it, but I had faith that you would be able to do something with it.”
“It’s western school magic,” I said.
“Then your school may have something to offer after all,” said the mage in pleased surprise. “When I last spoke to a master from your school, a great many years ago when it first opened, he seemed rather constrained and bookish. What was his name? Melecherius, I believe. I am glad there are also wizards like you there.”
“I think we’re going to need both eastern and western magic for this,” I said.
But eastern spells could not get the flying carpet to rise again, and I had nothing to offer. The sun beat down on the three of us as we hurried on foot across the valley floor toward where a deep rift now appeared. The Ifrit was able to create and change reality here, I thought, and armed with the onyx ring I could do nearly the same thing. I didn’t like to think what long-term effects this kind of magic would have on the local physical structure of the earth; it was with good reason that Ifriti were considered highly dangerous. At least, I thought, when we left the reality where our friends were, where the flying carpet worked, we had also left the Ifrit behind.
He stopped us before we had crossed half the distance to the Wadi.
Kaz-alrhun opened his mouth, then froze. For the first time since I had met him he looked disconcerted, and sweat made rivulets in the dust on his dark skin.
“By what form of slaughter shall I slay you?” asked the Ifrit, glaring down with his arms folded. “I do not like little mages who try to tie me up. Solomon may have bound me, but you are not Solomon. And I do not even think you are from Yurt.”
Kaz-alrhun’s magic was gone, I realized, snatched from him as mine had been when I first reached the valley. Though I still had my magical abilities for the moment, I didn’t dare use them against the Ifrit for fear of drawing attraction to them. I wondered wildly if this was the mage’s unimaginable danger: probably not, because I could imagine quite vividly what the Ifrit was about to do to us.
“Listen, Ifrit,” I said recklessly. “I have a proposition to make.”
The Ifrit shifted his eyes from Kaz-alrhun and leaned down toward me. “What kind of proposition?”
“If you let us go, I can help you with your wife.”
Kaz-alrhun recovered his equilibrium as soon as the Ifrit turned his attention from him, and he looked intrigued by this new development.
The Ifrit growled low in his throat. “And what are you trying to imply, little mage, about my beautiful, my pure young wife?”
“Just this,” I plunged on. “In another ten years, her litheness and slenderness will begin to go. Twenty years after that, her white skin will be wrinkling and her black hair turning gray.” I paused to let the Ifrit consider this. “But I can keep that from happening.”
“But if I keep her with me, she will not have to die the way all you humans do,” the Ifrit protested.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. Even with my magic, she won’t live longer than King Solomon did. And without my spells, she won’t live longer than any ordinary human. But I can promise to keep her young a long, long time.”
“Then you’d better do your spells right away,” said the Ifrit, deeply concerned.
“No, because I don’t trust you. First let us continue our explorations, and then I’ll cast my spells. We aren’t trying to escape, because we’ll always be right here in the valley. This may take a day or two, but we’ll never be far away. When we’ve found what we’re looking for, then I shall cast the spells to give your wife long life.”
“Maybe I do not trust you. If you play me false, then God shall play you false. If you don’t come back and make my wife stay young and pure, then I’ll crush all your friends.”
If we didn’t find a way to get away from the Ifrit soon, before whoever had ordered him to watch for us appeared, we’d all be dead anyway. Rapid crushing would have to be better than undergoing any more of the Ifrit’s fatal “tests.”
“Of course,” I said as firmly as I could.
I turned on my heel and started walking without giving him a chance to change his mind. Kaz-alrhun and Dominic were right behind me. As we hurried on, the mage commented with a small smile, “It has been two centuries since I was last without access to magic. This should be a novel experience.” Then he added, as though in disapproval, “That was a noble display of generosity, Daimbert. I thought even wizards of the west knew better than to prolong life wantonly.”
“We do. I would never artificially lengthen the lives of anyone at the royal court of Yurt.” This was for Dominic’s benefit. “But I think the Ifrit’s own magical abilities could have prolonged her life anyway, even though he doesn’t know it.”
And then I realized the mage was smiling. He had not disapproved of my proposition after all. “I did not know that woman was the Ifrit’s wife,” was all he said.
We seemed to move at a snail’s pace across the valley floor. The noon heat surrounded us so thoroughly that it felt it must be visible. The sun’s glare made it hard to see. The mage was soon wheezing, and I slowed my pace to his; he was twice my bulk as well as at least two hundred years older. Dominic would have been wheezing even worse at the beginning of our trip, though he now moved almost as easily as Ascelin.
When we finally reached the boulders that marked the head of the dry watercourse, my first thought was to sit down in their shadow. But I stood up again after a moment, while the mage was still panting, to look down into the Wadi Harhammi.
It had been our goal since the eastern kingdoms, but now that we were here it seemed almost an anticlimax. For a place of unimaginable danger, it seemed very quiet. The watercourse appeared empty, although a curve hid most of its length. I still had
no idea what Dominic’s father had thought was in the Wadi fifty years ago or what might be here now-or even what Kaz-alrhun thought was here.
It was time to find out. I lifted the onyx ring and said the words to reveal what was hidden.
We scrambled backwards as the ground beneath our feet started to drop away, rocks rolling and sand sliding. In a few seconds, the narrow watercourse had grown to cover most of the center of the valley.
“Greetings,” said King Warin. “I knew you’d be here sooner or later.”
II
Dominic and I stopped dead, but Kaz-alrhun did not seem perturbed. “I wish to inquire of you about that onyx ring you gave me for my flying horse,” he said. “It was not the ring I required.”
King Warin fixed us with his dead cold eyes, making me shiver in spite of the desert sun. “And your flying horse is not the help you led me to believe it would be.” The enormous black horse stood, completely still, beside him.
“You should always beware when bargaining in the Thieves’ Market,” said the mage. “Did I make any guarantee of my automaton’s power against Ifriti?”
Dominic interrupted them. “King Warin,” he said formally, “I accuse you before these witnesses of treating us falsely. When we return to the western kingdoms, I intend to assemble a court of our royal brothers to judge you for the crimes of theft and attempted murder.”
“He obtained the onyx ring by stealing it from you?” said Kaz-alrhun with a smile of comprehension. “God’s ways are secret ways, and all of us and the ring are now here together.”
“So is this,” I asked the mage with a nod toward Warin, “the danger against which you didn’t feel you could warn me?”
“Not at all,” said the mage. “I did not expect him here, although I always knew his entry into the game at this point was possible.”
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