Mage Quest woy-3

by C. Dale Brittain

  “You’ve moved into a separate level of reality,” I said to Warin with what I hoped was a wizardly scowl. All I had to oppose the king was my magic, and I wanted to make sure he respected it. “The ebony horse won’t fly here.”

  “Do you not intend to answer my charge?” said Dominic, crossing his arms. From his manner, instead of being in a desert valley surrounded by rocks, sand, and treacherous magic, we could have been home in the west.

  Warin hesitated, flicking his eyes back and forth between us. He might have no respect for the mage and me, but Dominic disturbed him. “I do not understand what you’re talking about,” he said brusquely. “I had nothing to do with that band of bandits.”

  “So you do know that we were set upon by bandits,” said Dominic, as though making a point before a judge. “When the strange stories coming out of the east reached you, you learned there was a flying horse for sale in Xantium, and its price a certain ring …”

  “The ring you tried unsuccessfully to find in Prince Dominic’s tomb,” I suggested.

  Dominic scowled darkly. “No wonder the townspeople have become leery of the church of the Holy Twins, if its sanctuary was violated by someone who would not hesitate to practice the black arts. I shall add desecration of a grave to my charges against you.”

  King Warin seemed momentarily caught off balance. “I know nothing of a desecration of a grave,” he said with what appeared to be sincerity. But neither Dominic nor I were ready to believe him.

  “So you stole the ring you had good reason to suspect Arnulf had sent with us,” I continued. “How long did it take you to realize that the ring you gave for the horse, which you hoped would carry you safely to the Wadi and away again, was the same ring that the mage wanted in order to uncover the Wadi’s secrets?”

  Except that it wasn’t. Now I was confusing myself. I caught an amused look from the mage.

  King Warin pulled his lips back from his teeth in what might have been meant for a smile. “I told you I expected you sooner or later.”

  “We’re here now,” I said, not daring to lose whatever momentum I had. “We’ll let you watch while we uncover the old secrets you hoped to obtain by deviousness and evil.”

  I rubbed the onyx with my thumb and wondered how many layers of magical reality there might still be before us. I again spoke the words of the Hidden Language, heedless of whatever permanent damage I might be doing. If this valley was indeed an ancient volcano, leading down into the heart of the earth, maybe it had an inherent, well-grounded stability, which was why the Ifrit could apparently manipulate reality here so easily. Either that, or he and I both were disturbing the magma miles below, and molten rock was even now moving up toward us.

  As the air’s shimmering resolved itself again, I thought I saw a group of people in the distance, from the corner of my eyes. But fifty yards ahead of us, and much more intriguing, something glittered in the sand of the rift.

  I reached it first by flying, snatching it up before King Warin’s hands could seize it. It was a bronze bottle made in the shape of a cucumber.

  I hefted it cautiously. It felt empty. The mouth was closed with a lead stopper, but the stopper was loose. When I opened the bottle and shook, nothing came out.

  Kaz-alrhun held out a hand, and I gave it to him. If this was the secret of the Wadi Harhammi, I was not impressed.

  But the mage lifted his eyebrows steeply. “This is a bottle wherein an Ifrit was imprisoned, Daimbert,” he said. “Look at the seal on the stopper.”

  A seal had indeed been impressed in the lead, but I shook my head, not able to identify it.

  “Do you not recognize the graven signet of Solomon, son of David?”

  Dominic gave a low whistle.

  “This is what Prince Vlad threatened me with,” I said. “He warned me I’d find something dangerous in the Wadi, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was unless I promised to return to his principality. It was an imprisoned Ifrit.”

  “Too late now to worry about releasing him accidentally,” said Dominic.

  “Someone did release him,” I said slowly. “In fact, although the Ifrit’s story seems a little unclear, he may have been released two separate times. He said at least one of the people who released him was a mage. What mage has already been here, and what has he found?” I tried glaring at Kaz-alrhun, but he just smiled.

  “This is all that is here,” said King Warin darkly. “The secret of the Wadi was an imprisoned Ifrit, from whom your friend Arnulf hoped to obtain wishes.”

  Dominic and I looked at each other in dismay. But I recovered quickly. “No, because the rumors concerning Yurt are much more recent than five years old, and we know the Ifrit’s been out at least that long. So the Ifrit himself can’t be the whole secret.” I frowned at King Warin in an attempt to match his own icy stare. “Why are you trying to mislead us?”

  I looked at him from under my eyebrows, thinking rapidly. He didn’t answer my question, but he didn’t need to. He was trying to mislead us because he still hoped to find the Wadi’s secret without us. But if King Warin had become trapped here in the valley, then he could not be behind all the strange events, and someone else, with powerful magic, was still at large and might arrive very soon.

  I felt a sudden, completely irrational conviction that the mage who had freed the Ifrit, five years or more before, was not an eastern mage at all but a western wizard, King Warin’s former royal wizard Elerius.

  Warin interrupted my thoughts by turning his eyes on me and giving a completely unconvincing smile. These were real eyes, not the pebbles through which Prince Vlad could see in darkness, but they still were hard as stone. I tried to reassure myself that he knew no magic himself-unless he was working with a demon, whose supernatural powers could mask his abilities from someone like me who used only natural magic.

  “Well, perhaps you’re right after all, Wizard,” he said. “I know what is in the Wadi, and you do not. You will be able to deal with its dangers much more easily if you know what to expect. I’ll be happy to tell you.”

  I broke my glance away from his. While he looked at me it felt as though we were linked by a bar of cold iron. “And in return?”

  “You’ll give it to me.”

  I managed a barking laugh. “I don’t like your bargain. It’s a good bargain only for you. I’m the only person here with functioning magical abilities.” If he had had access to supernatural magic, I told myself, he wouldn’t need me. But I surreptitiously checked my knowledge of the Hidden Language to make sure it hadn’t evaporated in the last few minutes-so far, so good. “Of course it’s always better to be forewarned, but I’m not afraid.”

  King Warin actually believed this patent lie. “Perhaps I misspoke. We shall share, although in light of my superior position I should have ultimate control …” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision.

  “You’ll like this proposal, Wizard. It’s been a year since Elerius left, and that school of yours hasn’t been able to come up with anyone competent. How would you like to become my new Royal Wizard?”

  I must have stared at him unbelievingly, because he made another of his unconvincing attempts at a smile. “Elerius knew you at the school and always spoke very approvingly of your abilities.”

  I ignored this highly unlikely statement. “I’m Royal Wizard of Yurt.”

  I caught a glimpse of Kaz-alrhun rolling his black eyes at me, either in amusement at a western wizard feeling he needed an employer, or else in warning. At the same time, Dominic cleared his throat at my shoulder.

  “We would very much miss you, Wizard,” he said gravely. “But when we decided to hire a school-trained wizard we always knew there would be the possibility he would want to leave us for a bigger or wealthier kingdom. Warin’s kingdom will have opportunities for you Yurt could never offer.”

  “You’re quite right,” said Warin in apparent good fellowship. “There is still wild magic in the mountains east of my royal castle, Wizard, a
nd while most of the other lords in the kingdom keep their own magic-workers, all of them need the firm hand of a senior wizard over them. You’ll have the authority and respect you never had in Yurt. And you’ve seen my castle; I know Haimeric can offer you nothing so luxurious.”

  “I’ve been very happy in Yurt.”

  “And so you should.” His eyes glinted at me in the desert sun. “I’m sure it has served you well as a first post. Isn’t that what an ambitious young wizard does, take a first post at a small kingdom to carry him through until his abilities have matured and been demonstrated?”

  Against my will, I found myself weighing the proposal seriously. I would never be able to explain to anyone at the school why I refused it. Elerius had gotten the post in Warin’s kingdom right out of school as a reward for his supremely good abilities. The three young wizards Warin had sent back to the City in disgrace had also doubtless been near the top of their classes. I on the other hand had at several points been in danger of not even graduating, and had developed whatever skills I now possessed through a remarkable number of errors. For me to step into Elerius’s former kingdom would be a tremendous honor. It was also, I hated to admit, exactly what I needed to overcome the ennui I had felt last winter.

  For a second I tried to imagine myself constantly surrounded by liveried knights, who rose whenever I rose and arranged themselves around me whenever I was seated. I just couldn’t see it. Maybe I could substitute some of the emir’s dancing girls.

  I could feel King Warin’s eyes on me, though I assiduously did not meet them. After all, what reason was there not to take the position Warin was offering? Only the fact that I loved Yurt, and did not want to be in the employ of someone who had sold his soul to the powers of darkness.

  But that needn’t mean my own soul was in danger, a voice in the back of my mind pointed out. King Warin was not the devil, only a human king, even if he did give every appearance of wanting super natural knowledge not meant for humans. Elerius, after all, had served there for years without plunging into black magic. Maybe I could even function as a force for good within the kingdom.

  And Elerius had left, and I was no priest.

  “You’re wasting your time,” I told King Warin. “If you don’t want to tell me what you know about the Wadi-assuming you know anything-that’s fine, but you must realize it would be a lot easier if we all worked together. I’d prefer in fact to be here without you, even if you did have some little piece of information we could use. I certainly have no intention of spending the rest of my life in your kingdom.”

  Dominic startled me by breaking into a broad smile and clapping me on the shoulder. It had never occurred to me he might miss me.

  “If that is settled,” said Kaz-alrhun, “let us see what else is in this watercourse.”

  But before we had walked more than a dozen yards I caught distant voices, brought faintly by the wind. I rose up from the rift in the earth to be able to see. The rest of the party from Yurt, Maffi with them, was coming across the valley on foot.

  I flew to meet them. All of them were scratched and dusty. Ascelin looked exhausted, the king disoriented, and Hugo strangely pleased.

  “It was the emir’s men,” said Ascelin, dropping to the ground as I reached them and wiping his forehead. “They must have been in hiding somewhere among the rocks and gullies, because they appeared almost as soon as you’d left.”

  And the mage had distracted me from probing for soldiers with his talk of unimaginable dangers. “But you all got away-” I said, looking from one to the other. Joachim tried to smile, but I noticed he was absently rubbing his scar with one thumb.

  “Just barely. I had to carry Haimeric down the slope, while the chaplain and the boy managed on their own. Hugo held off the vanguard of the troops until we were all safely on our way. If the descent hadn’t been so steep I’m sure they would have followed us at once.”

  I glanced toward Hugo. For one moment he managed a triumphant grin. “Saying I ‘held them off’ may go a little far,” he said with quite unconvincing modesty. “I put my shield and sword arm between Ascelin and the troops, and with a few lucky strokes I intimidated them just long enough-then when they rushed me I went down the valley wall on my belly!”

  I looked up toward the edge of the valley with a far-seeing spell and could see the white turbans and glittering curved swords of the emir’s soldiers. It was a large troop, at least a hundred men, and their swarthy faces looked angry and frustrated. Apparently sharing salt with us only meant that the emir would not kill us inside his palace-either that or he planned to capture us alive, which didn’t sound much better.

  But if they didn’t want to come cascading down the nearly vertical descent after us, we were safe for the moment. As I watched they settled themselves, apparently intending to wait us out. “What about the horses?”

  Ascelin shook his head. He flicked his eyes toward the king, then back toward the sand. “At this point,” he said in a low voice, “it would take the Ifrit to get them back. And all our supplies and food are gone with them. Even if we elude the emir’s men and get out of this valley alive, I don’t know how we’ll ever get home.”

  I didn’t answer. If we somehow escaped from the Ifrit and the emir, there were still hundreds of empty miles between us and Xantium, much less Yurt. Sir Hugo’s party might have been in the same situation, and they had never come home either.

  “Where’s Dominic?” Ascelin asked then, looking up.

  “Down in the Wadi. It is a dry watercourse. So far,” I went on, remembering I had news of my own, “we’ve found the bottle the Ifrit was imprisoned in.”

  This took some of the despair from Ascelin’s face. “Where is the Wadi?”

  I looked around and could not see it. I had no idea what level of existence we were actually on, but at the moment it did not include the Ifrit, the Wadi, or Dominic.

  Before I could try manipulating the spell again, King Haimeric stepped up beside me. Everything about him seemed old-his frail body, his wispy white hair, his wind-wrinkled cheeks-except for his eyes. They were bright and excited. “I’m not sure what you’ve been able to see, Wizard,” he said, “but just before we got on that flying carpet I saw the blue rose.”

  I turned my attention fully toward him. “You saw the blue rose?” I repeated idiotically.

  “There wasn’t time to say anything then, but it’s here in the valley. I always knew it was. That’s why the emir didn’t want us to come here.”

  I hesitated only a second. If we had lost everything, even our waterskins, we wouldn’t live long enough for a second chance to find the king’s rose. Dominic and Kaz-alrhun between them could take care of Warin while I was gone. I didn’t think King Haimeric had yet realized we would never get home, but he might as well die with his own quest fulfilled.

  “Rest a little longer,” I said to Ascelin and the others. “I’ll take you to the Wadi shortly.” Then I turned to the king. “Let’s find your rose, sire.”

  III

  King Haimeric and I walked across the valley floor, leaving the others behind. Even without any visible landmarks, the king seemed to know exactly where we were going. I murmured spells that made the air around us shimmer with a kaleidoscope of shifting images, including again the silk caravan. But I did not see the group of people who might have included a red-headed wizard-assuming I had ever seen them at all.

  “There it is,” said the king, stopping short.

  We stepped into a flowering garden and out of the layer of reality in which we had been. The garden was surrounded by a low wall and was filled entirely with rose bushes.

  We walked silently among them. The green, glossy leaves looked completely out of place in the barren desert, and even the air around us was slightly damp. We passed enormous, showy red blooms; tiny pink buds no bigger than my littlest fingernail; and soft yellow blossoms whose scent threatened to overwhelm us. We saw no humans, but someone, I thought, must tend these bushes daily, for there were no
insect borers, no faded blooms, and no weeds.

  The garden was much bigger than it at first looked. We walked half a mile, and the colors began to change. Here were maroons, rich violets, like what we had seen in the emir’s garden outside Bahdroc but somehow brighter and more vivid. The king walked faster and faster, until I was hard pressed to keep up with him.

  But then he stopped so abruptly that I, following behind, almost knocked him over. Standing up from where he had been digging was the emir’s swarthy rose grower.

  I tried at once to shape a protective spell for King Haimeric, but I need not have bothered. After a surprised second, he sprang forward, and he and the grower clasped hands in delight at their meeting.

  “I had in truth hoped that even a western wizard might be able to find the magic to bring you here,” said the grower, a smile splitting his face.

  “Won’t the emir be furious with you?” asked the king in concern.

  “He gave me no specific instructions concerning you. I did most carefully obey his orders, and I never explicitly told you or any other man how to find this garden.”

  He smiled again and added, “The emir considers this his garden, of course, but while emirs rise and fall, the roses endure. All the attention, the rivalry, and the weight of authority fall on the emir himself. As long as I am just his grower, I am free to do my crosses and to do what is most important in this life: to grow better roses.”

  “Are you working with the Ifrit?” I managed to ask.

  “Of course. It was just last year, once stories of the blue rose began to spread, that the emir decided he must break part of my garden away from the rest, and transport it entire to someplace no one else would find it. Nothing but an Ifrit would have the power to do that, or to carry me quickly back and forth.”

  “A bronze bottle with an Ifrit in it was taken to the emir as something different and new,” I said with sudden inspiration, “and the Ifrit agreed to help him in return for being released.”