At first I thought he was staring at Naurag, who had come over the wall, but it was not the flying beast who had surprised him. It was me. Two jeweled birds, which had just begun singing in the branches above us, stopped short, teetered for a second, then crashed to the pavement. "Daimbert," said Kaz-alrhun slowly. "I had heard that you were dead."
IV
When Kaz-alrhun at first seemed to have nothing more to say—either overcome with joy to see me alive after all or, more likely, shocked at the inefficiency of his information network which had given him such faulty information, Gwennie and Hadwidis gave each other quick glances. A princess and a castle constable always have resources, even in awkward social situations. After only the briefest hesitation they stepped forward to give formal curtseys. I realized that everyone who knew I was alive was here in this courtyard— that is, everyone except my daughter. "Greetings, Mage," said Gwennie politely. "I know it's a shock that our wizard won't stay dead," she added confidentially. "He startled me too, appearing like an apparition at dawn last week."
Kaz-alrhun shook himself and slowly started to smile then, showing a gold tooth. "Daimbert plays a subtle game," he said with what I trusted was approval. "If even his friends believe him dead, then his enemies must be quite baffled."
"I certainly hope so," I said, remembering his love for intrigue. The mage smiled again and sent his automatons whizzing off in search of refreshments. Soon we were all seated around a shaded table, eating iced lemon sherbert and candied almonds. Naurag happily settled in a corner with a pile of melons. The air was heavy with the scent of the flowering vines over our heads, and the tinkling fountains made a steady, gentle background of sound that distanced us from the noises of the street. Maffi maneuvered himself into the seat between Gwennie and Hadwidis; the latter turned away shyly and carefully adjusted the scarf over her stubbly head. It struck me as impolite to start immediately asking questions about an Ifrit, so I asked instead after the Lady Justinia, the governor's granddaughter here in Xantium, who had spent some time in Yurt half a dozen years earlier.
"Did you not observe the turmoil here in the city?" inquired Kaz-alrhun. "Half of Xantium is busy preparing for her upcoming wedding." The city hadn't seemed any more tumultuous to me than usual as we flew in, but then I didn't know it very well.
"Who is she marrying?" asked Gwennie brightly. When in Yurt Justinia had caught King Paul's eye—though I personally had always doubted whether he had caught hers.
"The heir to one of the largest merchant families," Maffi answered her. "The fair Lady Justinia will need all her new husband's wealth and influence in years to come, for she may soon become the governor of Xantium in her own right."
"That is, if the other great families and the bishop will accept a woman as governor," commented Kaz-alrhun.
I had enough intrigues of my own to worry about without getting involved in Xantium's. "Then if she's so busy I'm afraid she won't have time to visit with old friends from Yurt," said Gwennie in ill-disguised relief.
"But you, Daimbert," said Kaz-alrhun suddenly, leaning his elbows on the table until it creaked in protest, "have not come to my house to inquire after the governor's granddaughter. It has been twenty years and more since you were here. And you would not have put out such a plausible rumor of your own death if your mission here now were one you wished to share with the world. Will you yet share it with me?"
With Kaz-alrhun I always had the feeling that he was maneuvering me, using my own activities to further some long-range goals of his own. My instinctive reaction therefore was to say nothing. But if I said nothing then he would not be able to help me. I shook my head mentally and gave him a straight answer. "I'm looking for an Ifrit." Kaz-alrhun's eyebrows went up sharply. "It's the only thing I can think of that will give me the power to overcome the West's best wizard."
"You have decided at last, then, to pit your resources against those of the wizard Elerius," said the mage, leaning forward with interest, so that the table creaked even more alarmingly, and Gwennie had to rescue a sliding bowl of almonds. He was nothing, I thought, if not well-informed about my friends and my enemies.
But he had not heard of the death of the old Master of the school. I filled him in quickly on how Elerius had made himself regent of the West's wealthiest kingdom, put himself first in line to head the school, and had when last seen been running for mayor of the West's largest city, after having just influenced the election of its new bishop. "All went well," I concluded, "until one tiny miscalculation. He tried to tell Zahlfast, the man who has for years been second in command at the school, that he would soon be Master himself, and instead he ended up in an open breach with Zahlfast—and, I presume, the other faculty members at the school. This had just happened as I started east."
Gwennie and Hadwidis followed my account with great interest, because I had so far given them very few details. Hadwidis took in a sharp breath when I first mentioned her kingdom as being run by Elerius but made no comment. Kaz-alrhun, however, seemed to notice her reaction and be adding it to his store of interesting tidbits. I left young Prince Walther completely out of my account as irrelevant; the Cranky Saint might have decided to make queen the unsatisfactory nun who had been given his name, but first I had to deal with Elerius.
Gwennie, however, picked up on a different aspect. "You seem strangely well-informed about what happened at your funeral," she told me, eyes narrow. "I know I told you a little about it, but you speak as though you saw it. Don't tell me you let us all sit there being sad and saying nice things about you, watching and chuckling at us the whole time!"
"Well, not chuckling—" I mumbled lamely.
"You let your wife be devastated. You let the bishop speak sorrowfully of all your admirable qualities. And you just stood there invisible, reveling in it all!"
"No, I didn't revel in it, you need to understand—"
Gwennie snorted and turned away with a sharp scrape of her chair, to present me an indignant back. "If you die again," she said without turning around, "I'm not going to any funeral unless I see the body—and drive a pin into it too!"
Kaz-alrhun, however, was impressed. "Perhaps I should let a rumor of my own death spread through Xantium. Then were a service held for me, I might discover the true nature of others' feelings."
Maffi had been trying to distract Gwennie with illusory golden eggs, which hatched forth extremely tiny purple dragons, though Naurag seemed more interested in them than she was. Now Maffi leaned past her shoulder to comment to the older mage, "If you would discover others' true feelings for you, sir, I can start by obliging you with mine any time you like!"
Kaz-alrhun laughed and waved him away with an enormous hand. "But why do you seek an Ifrit, Daimbert? You will need no assistance against Elerius but your own magic. What you term a tiny miscalculation on his part suggests rather that his plans had not yet matured when he suddenly needed to put them into effect. If your school has turned against Elerius, than the city merchants and the priests will not listen to him either, and I expect the kingdom he rules will shortly cast him out as well."
"They won't cast him out," said Hadwidis gloomily but with certainty, speaking for the first time in a while. She blushed and went silent when we all looked at her.
"She's right," I said hastily, to distract the others from her confusion. "The rest of the school faculty may take a second look at Elerius—though I fear many will still support him— but that doesn't mean he will have no resources. And even worse, I'm afraid war is brewing in the west. Some of the kings are already deciding to attack the wizards, and they won't make distinctions between those wizards who do and don't support Elerius."
"Then perhaps you do need an Ifrit after all," said Kaz-alrhun thoughtfully. "Your western armies would be no trouble for one. And I presume, Daimbert, that you have come to Xantium in the expectation that I would help you master one?"
The tone of his voice gave me sudden hope. "Could you? Do you know where one is? I remember you ma
naged to paralyze one once, so I thought—"
He chuckled, which set his mighty belly quivering. "Not one of my most successful spells, as it proved—poor taste to remind your host of that event, Daimbert!" He was right; the Ifrit had soon cast off the spell, taken away the mage's magical abilities for a period, and come close to killing him. I looked at Kaz-alrhun imploringly—hadn't he figured out in the last twenty years where his spell had gone wrong?
"But I may be able to assist you in some modest way," he continued, giving a small smile. Which meant that he was going to expect something in return from me. "Indeed, there are rumors among all the mages of Xantium that it may soon be possible to capture an Ifrit as we never have before ... But enough of this. Tomorrow shall be time to discuss these matters. For the rest of today, accept the hospitality of my house and take refreshment from your journey."
I didn't dare push him for immediate details though I was wild with curiosity, for he spoke with a note of complacency. Instead I stood beside Naurag, stroking his neck reassuringly, while Kaz-alrhun and Maffi examined him, both with their eyes and with their spells. "I have often heard of these flying beasts," said Maffi, who I recalled would never admit not having heard of something. "But never have I seen one before." I wondered with a cold touch at the back of my neck if the mage would want to keep Naurag in return for his help.
Presumably the Ifrit—if we mastered one—would take us wherever we wanted to go, but how could I leave the flying beast behind?
Kaz-alrhun, however, seemed less interested in acquiring Naurag for himself than in learning how I had tamed him.
"Melons," I said. "I fed him melons all one afternoon, and he became my friend."
"And said spells, I might assume?" the mage inquired. "For no wild creature, much less a wild creature from the land of magic, will tame with a few melons."
I rubbed the bony ridge over Naurag's eyes. He was awfully tame now that I thought about it, especially for a creature that looked like a small dragon. But I didn't see how a few air cart spells could have had anything to do with it.
Late in the afternoon, after we had all taken turns in the hot, lemon-scented bath where automatons scrubbed our backs, and as the smell of roasting lamb was just beginning to emerge from Kaz-alrhun's kitchens, I took Hadwidis and Gwennie out again. We walked to the huge church dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of Solomon, to give thanks to God for our safe arrival in Xantium. Joachim would have wanted us to go.
Maffi led the way, through a maze of twisting streets where I quickly lost track of all direction. The day was still hot. Stone walls edged the streets, pierced by doorways opening onto flowering courtyards.
Hadwidis looked around eagerly, at the heavily-veiled women surrounded by body guards as big as Kaz-alrhun but a lot more muscular; at the shadowed shops from which voices emerged, promising love-potions; at the black-robed clerks arguing intently with each other as they walked; at the dark-eyed children playing half-naked in the gutters. I wondered uneasily if she was still planning to become a thief here and was seeing all this as her future habitat. I didn't want to have to explain to the Cranky Saint, if I ever made it back to Yurt, that I'd left her in Xantium.
But she became subdued once we reached the church. Golden candelabra gleamed throughout, sending light flashing across the enormous mosaic depiction of the Last Judgment. We made our way across an onyx floor that was shot with gold, between porphyry columns, to the main altar. A group of pilgrims and purple-robed priests were already there; we knelt briefly in prayer at the edge of their group.
As we rose and stepped quietly back, Hadwidis asked in a whisper, "Do they have nuns here in Xantium?"
"Well, I'm sure they do," I said in surprise. Maffi and Gwennie were walking slowly around the circumference of the church, looking at the mosaics. "But if they're like the nuns in Yurt, I never would have seen them because they'd never come out of the nunnery."
"Just wondering," she said, not looking at me. "In case I got tired after a while of being a thief and a tavern wench here."
I didn't answer but reached up to readjust her head scarf, which had slid down over one ear. She was, I reminded myself, not much older than Antonia. She had never been very successful as a nun, and she was frightened of being forced into being a queen, but her reckless decision to find instead something else wild and irresponsible to do kept worrying her enough that she wanted an escape route.
I wouldn't have minded an escape route myself, but I didn't think I was going to find one.
V
It was still dark when the door to my room creaked open. "Come, Daimbert," came Kaz-alrhun's voice, cheerful with a note I had learned to distrust. "If you would meet with an Ifrit, it were best to do it before dawn."
I rolled out of bed, grabbing my clothes. There had been too many pre-dawn risings lately to suit my taste. "So the Ifrit is near here?"
"Very near, yet very far," he said with a chuckle. "Going may be for you and me the work of ten minutes, yet you may find that days pass in the journey."
The mage set a lamp on the table, which cast just enough light that I could see my buttons, though leaving his face in shadow. "How about my companions?" I demanded in the middle of tying my shoes. "I can't leave two young women alone here."
"Maffi need not accompany us. He will guard them and keep them from boredom."
That was what I was afraid of. "No. I brought them along because I want to keep them safely under my eye. They'll have to come with us."
"Is one perhaps your daughter?" asked Kaz-alrhun in interest. "If so, you should have introduced her as such. I observed you closely, and I would say most definitely that neither is your lover."
"Almost my daughter," I said vaguely. "I'll get them."
"There is one difficulty, Daimbert," said the mage with another chuckle. "The Ifrit's wife has recently left him, having tired of a wild life in the desert and desiring to live her mature years among humans again. I understand that he is searching for a new woman to make his wife ..."
Well, he certainly wasn't going to make either Gwennie or Hadwidis his wife, if I had anything to say about it. "Maybe I could turn them invisible—" I suggested uncertainly.
"I have a better plan, Daimbert," Kaz-alrhun announced. "Leave this to me. Rouse them now, but make haste."
In a few minutes, still rubbing the grit from my eyes, I followed Kaz-alrhun out through the heavy doors of his house. Gwennie and Hadwidis walked close on either side. There was no sign of Maffi. "King Paul has been talking for ages about coming to Xantium," Gwennie said in my ear. "He's going to be madly jealous when I tell him all my adventures." She didn't sound sympathetic at all.
The mage carried a torch that flared and hissed as he walked, which he did with remarkable speed for one so old and so heavy. A massive hammer swung from his other hand. I hoped he would say more about the new methods for capturing an Ifrit at which he had hinted the day before, but he did not speak. The streets that had been jammed with humanity yesterday were nearly empty now, and most of the other people we spotted faded away down alleyways as we approached.
But the first morning clatterings emerged from shuttered windows as we reached the city walls, and yellow streaked the eastern sky. The back gates of Xantium's massive walls were locked and barred, but at a few quick words from the mage the bars lifted, and with a loud click the locks came open. The hinges creaked as the gate slowly swung ajar.
We slipped through, then I stopped in sudden doubt. We had emerged into a broad field dotted with low structures. In the dim dawn light I recognized them as domed sepulchres.
But Kaz-alrhun motioned us to hurry after him. "You must be below ground before the sun clears the horizon, Daimbert," he said, leading the way in and out between the low white domes. All had gaping doorways, leading into empty, paved rooms. Gwennie was frowning next to me; she may have been reconsidering how jealous this adventure was going to make Paul.
The mage stopped at one tomb that looked the same to me as all t
he rest but which clearly was significant to him. He handed me the torch, said a few words under his breath, and swung the hammer against the paving under the dome. On the first stroke it bounded back, but on the second stroke the stones splintered. We jumped to avoid the shards, then, at a sign from Kaz-alrhun, stepped forward cautiously.
Under the paving was not the coffin I expected but rather a flat stone with an enormous iron ring set into it. "Pull up the trapdoor, Daimbert," Kaz-alrhun ordered, his face inscrutable. Half the sun's disk had risen over the horizon, making the torch's light pale.
I checked with a quick spell. There was enough wild eastern magic here to confuse a dozen school-trained wizards, but I was fairly sure no Ifrit lurked immediately under the stone. Slowly I pulled it back, adding a lifting spell to my arm's strength when the stone proved even heavier than I had expected. Below was a dark staircase, smelling of damp earth and disappearing down.
"You will need the torch, Daimbert," said Kaz-alrhun, his gold tooth flashing. "When you reach the bottom, you shall see a black cat with a white tip to its tail. Burn three of those white hairs, and then you shall see a great marvel. Proceed now down these stairs, and your 'daughters' may follow you, but in a form that will make them safe."
"And you?"
"It may be minutes, and it may be days, but when you return I shall be intrigued to hear of your encounter with the Ifrit."
"Wait a minute," I said harshly. "You said you were coming with me."
"And I have. But I come no further."
"What am I supposed to do with an Ifrit? You're the eastern mage. You're the one who's supposed to know how to master Ifriti."
"Your spells will serve you well," said Kaz-alrhan, with much more confidence than I felt. "Hurry, for if the sun should rise any higher before you descend, this gate will be closed to you until tomorrow."
Gwennie took a deep breath, then spoke in the voice of Yurt's castle constable. "I may enjoy an adventure, Wizard, but Hadwidis is just a young girl. I cannot agree to sending her down there."
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