Mage Quest

by C. Dale Brittain

  Yesterday I had thought Zahlfast worried. Today he did not seem worried at all. I was also irritated with him for having sent me in search of Evrard and yet not telling me the one solid piece of information they had, that Evrard had felt his party was in danger long before they reached the Holy Land.

  But they had reached the Holy Land safely. King Warin was a dead-end for the purposes of our quest.

  “The librarian’s told me about this Black Pearl,” Zahlfast continued with another smile. “Keep your eyes open in the East. I must say it all sounds rather far-fetched, but if it is real and has been found, the school will need to acquire it. A highly-charged magical object like that would be very dangerous except in the hands of skilled and thoroughly trained wizards.”

  I heard at last the step I had been straining for. The dour-faced chancellor looked around the corner. “Excuse me, but the others are ready for dessert and wondered if you were going to eat any more of the main dish.”

  I quickly said good-bye to Zahlfast and returned to the great hall, wondering why I should believe in my bones a message which both Zahlfast and Elerius had dismissed. All I had, against the word of a wizard who had lived here twelve years, was the strange contrast I kept feeling between Warin’s surface politeness and something underneath, and the fact that King Haimeric had thought he had aged rather slowly.

  Well, King Haimeric had been sick for several years, a decade ago, so he might not be a good basis for comparison himself. And Warin had certainly put his youthful years behind him. If one were going to make a pact with the devil, I thought, it would be more sensible to ask for youth than for middle age.

  Conversation at the table had shifted in my absence to Dominic’s father, who had apparently spent a few weeks in this kingdom fifty years ago, on his way east. King Warin looked up at me as I pulled out my chair.

  “The school doesn’t know much about the Black Pearl either,” I said with my best attempt at cheerful normalcy. From what Warin had said earlier, Elerius did not seem to have passed along whatever he himself had learned about the Pearl to his employer. I therefore did not mention that he had read the school’s books on the topic several years earlier. “Thanks for waiting dessert for me.”

  “Your father was a remarkable man,” Warin said to Dominic, picking up the conversation where I had interrupted. “You look a little like him. Prince Dominic could outwrestle any man living, won the heart of every woman between the ages of twelve and eighty, and feared nothing, either in this world or the next.”

  “I didn’t know your father was named Dominic too,” said Hugo.

  “You’re named for your father,” said Dominic. “Why shouldn’t I be named for mine?”

  Dessert was iced lemon pudding, not what I would have chosen for a chilly evening even if I had been hungry. As I ate slowly, taking no part in the conversation, I wondered again how Elerius could have lived here for years and never felt what I now sensed about his king. There had been, I remembered, rather strange and contradictory stories about Elerius’s background and parentage. Could he perhaps have been a sorcerer’s son, this particular sorcerer’s son?

  I licked my spoon and pushed the thought determinedly away. I was getting as bad as Ascelin.

  III

  We prepared to leave King Warin’s castle the next morning, but just as we were saddling our horses the chancellor came into the courtyard to tell me I had another telephone call. As I followed him inside I wondered if the school had found some further information, but the face in the view-screen was that of Elerius.

  I was so surprised to see him it took me a moment to find my voice. But he spoke briskly and cheerfully. “So, you’re in my old kingdom, I hear! I gather King Warin is still waiting for a new wizard from the school. Like to change kingdoms, Daimbert?”

  He said it as a joke, which I hoped was not intended as an insult. He looked at me from tawny hazel eyes under rather disconcerting sharply-peaked black eyebrows. I took a breath and started to ask him what he knew about the Black Pearl, but he interrupted me.

  “I heard you’re looking for young Evrard,” he said, “and I realized I have some information that may help. I was in the East last year on private business, and I spotted him across a crowd although I don’t think he saw me—a red-headed wizard is hard to miss!”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the Holy City. There were rumors flying throughout the city that Noah’s Ark had been found after all these centuries, somewhere far to the south, near the emirate of Bahdroc. They must have heard the rumors. Maybe the emirate was where Evrard and his employer have gone.” An expression I could not define flitted across Elerius’s face as he spoke; I decided it must be embarrassment to admit that he himself had been in the Holy Land.

  “We know they reached the Holy City,” I said in excitement, “and their last message was that they were going south. That must be why. What do you think? Could there be any truth in the rumor? And have you heard the stories that King Solomon’s Pearl has been found?”

  “Delightful stories, but I’m afraid highly unlikely,” said Elerius lightly. “Give my regards to King Warin.” And he rang off.

  East of King Warin’s castle, the road along which his chancellor directed us became narrow and much rougher. We found ourselves climbing slowly but steadily, in great arcs across a slope where a few scattered sheep grazed but there was no sign of human habitation. At one point two rangy dogs came racing after us, but they slunk off when Whirlwind leveled a kick at them.

  I decided to try again to persuade Joachim to open his present from Claudia—that is, if his saddle-bag still contained that present, and Warin had not stolen it and substituted something else. I had had enough time to imagine several more things it might be, such as the money to pay Arnulf’s agents, which he did not dare send any other way now that bandits were becoming more frequent, or a special magic bottle designed to capture an Ifrit.

  But I had voiced none of my fears to the chaplain. In fact, I realized I had spoken to him very little since we left his brother’s house. I wanted to know why Claudia had been singing love-songs to him, and if he really thought it all as innocuous as he appeared to. Since I didn’t know how to ask this, I had said nothing else either.

  “When we’re a week away,” Joachim told me when I finally broached the question again, “then I’ll open it. Why are you so interested anyway?”

  I hesitated a minute, then decided he had the right to know. “Ascelin thinks she gave you King Solomon’s Pearl.”

  We were riding two abreast on the narrow road, our saddles creaking and my harness bells jingling. Joachim looked at me incredulously, then came very close to laughing. “No wonder you’re so curious,” he said. “But I already told you: if Arnulf had something that would grant his heart’s desire, he wouldn’t be losing his caravans. And he would certainly not allow his wife to give it to someone else.”

  “Well, I myself don’t think it’s the Pearl, either,” I said. “But what could it be? Maybe Arnulf has some complicated and dangerous transaction he needs to have taken care of in the East, and he’s sent the materials to do it along with us. Since you refused categorically to transact any business for him, maybe he’s hoping that this way you’ll be tricked into doing so. Or maybe,” I paused for a second then pushed on, “Claudia has given you a love-potion.”

  Joachim smiled. “That would make no sense. She’s known since I left for seminary that I didn’t love her. And she’s a married woman, my own sister-in-law.”

  It was a good thing, I thought, and not for the first time, that he was a priest. “But it has to be something!”

  “All right, Daimbert,” said the chaplain indulgently. “Four days’ ride may be far enough away. I’ll open it this evening, and you can help me in case it’s something dangerous and magical.”

  I was now immediately convinced that it was something completely prosaic, but I didn’t say so. I would find out for certain soon enough.

  What had looke
d like the top of the slope as we climbed upwards turned out to be, when we finally paused to rest the horses, only a short level area before stony crags began to rise again. The road before us disappeared into a defile overhung with forested cliffs.

  But Dominic was looking back in the direction we had come, not forward. “What a view!” he said.

  It was indeed quite a view of the western kingdoms, out across green hills and patches of woodland to wide pastures far beyond. The air was clear, and we could see for countless miles. The land was scattered with compact villages in the blue distance. Far below us, and finally looking small, was Warin’s royal castle.

  “This is it,” said Dominic cheerfully. “The next castles we see will be in the eastern kingdoms.”

  I realized with a start that, somehow without my noticing it, Dominic had changed. I had always thought of him as a rather hard and surly person, but I could remember no signs of surliness for the last few weeks. Maybe being in motion, rather than sitting around a royal castle where he wasn’t even royal heir anymore, was what he had needed, in which case we should all have sent him off on a quest years ago. Or maybe being clubbed on the back of the head by a bandit had knocked some good humor into him.

  This thought, however, gave me another. I looked ahead with concern. The narrow road looked like an excellent place for bandits.

  We continued onward, on a road so rough and pocked with holes that clearly no one had worked on it this spring. “King Warin has been neglecting his responsibilities,” commented Ascelin darkly. “His kingdom goes all the way up to the pass.”

  In some places we had to go single-file as the road swung sharply around a corner or climbed so steeply that a lather broke out all along our mounts’ withers. But it was beautiful in a wild way, the rocks around us shaped by water and wind into grotesque formations, dark evergreens clinging to the slope with roots like giant, deformed fingers. Repeatedly it seemed that we must have reached a dead end at last, and repeatedly the road slipped around a rock and continued on and up.

  For two hours I kept alert for bandits, probing constantly with magic but finding no other human minds. I checked behind us as well as ahead, not trusting King Warin not to send his own knights after us.

  But after two hours, worn out from constant spells, I stopped. One couldn’t live like this, on the jagged edge of suspicion. We had come out above the first, steepest area, and Ascelin told us we were making good progress toward the pass. A desolate meadow stretched relatively level for a half mile in front of us. With the road temporarily wide enough again to ride abreast, I pulled my mare even with Whirlwind.

  I was tired of thinking about the Black Pearl and the Lady Claudia. “Have you ever been in the eastern kingdoms before?” I asked Dominic. “I never have; the school’s sphere of influence really stops at these mountains.”

  “I’ve meant to come here for years, but somehow I never have either,” said Dominic. “Ever since you wizards stopped all the wars in the western kingdoms, young aristocrats have had to cross the mountains if we want to see any fighting. You know, of course, that’s how my father was killed. I grew up with my mother warning me about the horrible dangers of looking for honor that way, and by the time I was old enough to make my own decisions, I started feeling too responsible as royal heir of Yurt to follow his footsteps.”

  “Well, I certainly hope we don’t run into any wars,” I said. “We’re on pilgrimage.”

  “And that’s part of the reason I’m glad we’re coming this way,” continued Dominic. “You heard King Warin talking about how everyone always admired my father. Well, I’ve been hearing some variation of that story all my life. Maybe it was partly fear that I wouldn’t measure up to him that kept me at home, but now that I’m traveling east at last I don’t feel jealous of him so much as I want to learn more about him. My father is buried in a pilgrimage church east of the mountains. Neither Mother nor I ever visited his grave.”

  We definitely should have sent Dominic on a quest years ago.

  “I don’t think, even if we run into a war, they’ll bother some harmless pilgrims,” he said. “But I must admit it gives our trip a little excitement, a little spice even, which I’m afraid Yurt misses most of the time.”

  “I’m interested in meeting the wizards east of the mountains,” I said. “I assume they practice essentially the same magic as in the western kingdoms, rather than what the mages of the real East use. The book I brought along on eastern magic doesn’t include anything west of Xantium. But the magic of the eastern kingdoms may be closer to the old magic of earth and herbs than to modern school magic.”

  At this point the road narrowed again, and again evergreens and rocky cliffs hung above us. I dropped in behind Dominic, keeping my mare’s nose well back from Whirlwind’s heels.

  I was thinking about the eastern kingdoms, wondering why the wizards’ school had never tried to influence them, when I heard a sudden grunt before me. I looked up in disbelief as Whirlwind reared, screaming. There were not one but two men on his back.

  Someone had Dominic around the throat and was trying to wrestle him off and keep his own seat. This must be what he meant by excitement and spice.

  Hugo and Ascelin turned sharply around and raced back to Dominic’s aid, their swords out. I madly tried to shape a spell that would bind only one of the wildly thrashing men before me—if Dominic fell off, his own stallion would trample him.

  “Hang on, Dominic!” bellowed Ascelin. “I’ve got the scum now!” He had the bandit by one leg and was tugging. Hugo had seized Whirlwind’s reins and tried to hold him down.

  The men before me had sorted themselves out enough that, in two more seconds, I would have had a binding spell working, when I heard another grunt and thump.

  “Stop!” came a ringing voice. We all stopped and looked, even the bandit trying to choke Dominic. A second man was behind Joachim on the chaplain’s horse, an arm across his chest and a knife at his throat. “Drop your swords, or the priest dies.”

  Ascelin and Hugo turned very slowly and dropped their swords. The bandit behind Dominic jerked the prince’s sword from the sheath and sent it clattering to the ground.

  “All of you!” yelled the bandit at King Haimeric. “And you, Wizard, don’t even think of starting one of your spells.”

  “I am unarmed,” said the king. “I am on pilgrimage.”

  I doubted this would make much impact. I sat my horse as though paralyzed while a third bandit appeared out of the trees and yanked the king’s and my cloaks back to look for weapons. I tried to give Joachim a look of encouragement, but his eyes were cast down and his lips moving. His horse kept shifting, and he was having trouble controlling it without moving his head even slightly.

  I didn’t dare try any spells. Bound or paralyzed, the bandit behind Joachim might cut his throat as he fell from the horse, and a flash of light or a clap of thunder would make him jerk the blade. I didn’t dare try turning him into a frog for the same reason.

  I should have known at once that the lord of the red sandstone castle was not a real bandit. These men were ragged, weather-worn, and filthy, and one of them was missing an eye.

  “Get down, all of you!” said the first bandit. Dominic was now sitting slack before him, and the bandit had managed to gather up the reins. “We’re taking your horses. Move!”

  There didn’t seem to be any alternative. We all dismounted, Dominic managing to slide down on his own though rubbing his neck.

  “Where’s your money?” yelled the bandit leader.

  “There in my saddle-bag,” said King Haimeric. The bandit jerked the bag open and pulled out a small jingling pouch with satisfaction. The king didn’t mention that that was only a fraction of the money we had, as all of us had other pouches tucked into our belts.

  The third bandit, who had collected everyone’s swords, now gathered up all the reins and tied the horses together single-file. He mounted my mare. “Don’t try to follow us!”

  The leader ki
cked Whirlwind into motion. All the horses surged forward, Joachim still mounted and still held hostage.

  With a great clatter of hooves, they disappeared up the road ahead of us and around an outcropping of rock. I flew after them, not daring to let them get away while they still had Joachim.

  As I rounded the outcropping, I saw a dark figure lying stretched across the road. Paying no attention to our horses disappearing again around the next rock, I dropped to the ground beside the chaplain.

  “Joachim! Say something! Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

  The chaplain, to my intense relief, started to sit up. “I’ve had all the breath knocked out of me. The bandit said something about me not being the one they wanted after all and tossed me off.”

  “Thank God you’re alive,” I started to say, then stopped short. Joachim hesitated when almost sitting, then slumped again to the ground. A crimson stain spread rapidly across the collar of his vestments.

  IV

  The others ran up behind me. Ascelin dropped to his knees, pulled the knife from his boot, and sliced the cloth away from Joachim’s neck. A jagged cut was oozing blood.

  “It’s a vein, not an artery,” he said over his shoulder. “But he’s losing blood fast.” He held the edges of the wound together and tried to apply pressure.

  “A good thing it’s not an artery,” commented Hugo. “You can’t very well put a tourniquet around someone’s neck.”

  I found the remark distinctly unamusing, and so did Ascelin. “Start a fire,” he told Hugo, “and go find some water. You’ll have to boil it. Well, I don’t care! Use your armor if you have to.”

  Joachim lay perfectly still, his eyes closed and face white. Blood kept oozing from his neck as fast as Ascelin wiped it away. In a few minutes, though it seemed like hours, Hugo returned from having found a spring among the rocks, carrying water in his breastplate. He lit a fire with the flint and steel at his belt and, without a word but with a loud sigh, balanced the breastplate over it, to have all the shiny finish scorched and darkened.