The Christening Quest

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  Carole sat tapping her fingertips against her cheek for a time after the maid left. The bottles might or might not be dangerous. At the present time, she was inclined to think that they were. Otherwise, why leave a lot of valuable and potent magic lying around free for the taking? Not that under ordinary circumstances she was one to appropriate random bits of other peoples magic, but if the bottles were like the one by the river, perhaps they were just what she needed to execute her task. On the other hand, they might be just what the Miragenians needed to execute her. If the bottles did contain entities such as the one she had previously encountered, they had no doubt been set to watch her, to prevent her escape, even if they wouldn’t actually explode. The maid’s warning was clearly aimed at making the firm’s involuntary guest reluctant to experiment. Nor did Carole merely wish to escape. Not without Rupert and the child. She stared into the waterfall, considering.

  As she stared, she noted that some of the faces floating past were familiar ones. Surely that was the woman in the marketplace appearing briefly in a widening of the waters spill over an ornamental stone, only to narrow back into nothingness as the strand of water containing her thinned and dropped into the stream. And there, on the other side, wasn’t that Mashkent himself? And the woman with the mirrors? Yes, no mistaking that dull countenance so badly in need of help from its own merchandise. When Rupert’s dreaming visage tumbled over the artfully carved rocks, she had all the confirmation she needed.

  She whistled a long, low note and held it. Rupert hung there for a moment, suspended with his chin in the narrow part of the rivulet, his dozing eyes and peaceful brow with the yellow curls broadening out over the rock. As she lost the note he drained away.

  Having spotted him once, she recognized glimpses of his face at other points in the waterfall and tried to whistle them to a stop. If she aimed badly, she stopped another face. That of the old merchant, she noticed during one such mishap, was still awake, and contained a thoughtful expression that made her wish she knew what was behind it. Trying to outguess strands of water was slippery going, and she found she had trouble puckering fast enough to stop the one she wanted, tending instead to be in the middle of inhaling just as Rupert slid down the wall.

  How was she to slow down the images in the stream long enough to sort them out? Perhaps if she could think of a tune that would call to Rupert’s image particularly.… Her magic supplied it from a snatch of a love song she had heard him sing for the entertainment of the ladies at Castle Killgilles. She hummed it slowly, like a dirge. The water backed up, as if dammed, flooding the tiled banks from where she sat back to the waterfall, water lapping the edges of the costly rugs before she could find what she sought in its depths. That wouldn’t do. Water gushing out the door would attract the Miragenians’ notice. She stopped humming and the water flowed back into its course.

  Taking one of the candles in hand, she examined the pool at the foot of the waterfall. The sides of it were built up slightly so that one might sit beside it. If she didn’t hum quite so slowly, perhaps they’d contain the initial flow of water long enough for her to locate what she needed. She hummed a bit of a lullaby at what she hoped was an appropriate speed. The waters slowed and an infant appeared: a child crowned with dark red ringlets outlined against water. A tall, glittering structure rose in the background like a huge pile of coins, mist encircling its base. The child was wrapped in the arms of a girl whose hair was straight and light brown. They seemed to be sitting in a boat of some sort, and the baby was bawling lustily. The scene flowed past. Carole allowed the water to resume its original level before she hummed the love song again.

  Rupert’s image dutifully slowed down to where she could observe it in all its slumbering glory. Why in the Mother’s name was he sleeping his life away when for all he knew she was still alone in the Miragenian marketplace and the baby still remained missing?

  Maybe the Miragenians with whom he was staying had looked into a similar pool to assure him that both cousin and baby were well. Maybe. But did they have such pools elsewhere? It occurred to her that perhaps the water with which she was presently dealing was the runoff of the pools in the courtyard, carrying the visions, which continued to flow even when they were no longer being examined. It made sense to her. Time and events flowed on no matter who was watching, so why not the images? Anyone lacking Carole’s talent would have been unable to understand what the waterfall and stream contained, so it probably seemed to the Miragenians perfectly safe to have the water running free for anyone occupying the room to observe if only they could look quickly enough.

  Old Mashkent flashed by again and Carole whistled him to a dribble with a song that resembled not so much a song as a chant of the back-and-forth bicker of the marketplace, the buy-and-sell, too-high-too-low cadence she had been hearing all afternoon, unaware until her magic plucked it from her memory. The old merchant climbed onto a hovering rug that rose above the shop to soar across the city. As soon as the image died she caught another, and kept track of the rooftops the rug passed, feeling sure that his trip was somehow connected with her own.

  The rug approached a dome composed of stone carved so intricately it resembled heavily starched lace. At its base, the dome’s skirt scalloped up in curving arcs above a garden. In this garden, the merchant was met by a lady swathed in a pink-and-gold gown like the one Carole had worn at Castle Killgilles. Though the gown was a different color, the luxuriant hair and the set of the head made Carole certain that this was the same woman Rupert had pursued from the marketplace.

  The merchant asked a sharp question. The lady gave him a quick answer that failed to satisfy him. He scowled and asked another question. The lady shrugged, looking smug, and pillowed her cheek on her hands, eyes closed.

  So. Now Carole knew where Rupert was. She had only to find the house with the carved dome. Simple enough, if she could first free herself from Mashkent’s hospitality.

  She eyed the bottle-decked lattices thoughtfully. If she could not touch the bottles, perhaps she could dance them from their niches. If she stood on the far side of the room while doing so and the bottles exploded, so much the better. They would open the windows for her. Otherwise, she would have to hope a piece of the lattice was loose enough that she could jiggle it out, making a space large enough for her to fit through. Fortunately, years of walking and swimming the Blabbermouth had kept her somewhat on the stringy side of the usual sturdy Brown witch build.

  She danced the first three rows of bottles out with the first bar of her song, but as she took a breath, she heard them clamoring. Even though her song was now directed at their counterparts remaining in the lattices, they continued to bounce about on the thick layers of carpet on which she had been careful to land them. The lot on the floor were colored violet, periwinkle, and fuchsia, and from them arose a collective whimper when she whistled them to stop. As she returned her attention to the deep ruby row still lining the next tier of lattices, one of the ruby bottles cried out. Carole cast a furtive glance at the door. She was trying to whistle loudly enough to move bottles from across the room but not so loudly as to disturb guards posted by her door.

  “Shhh,” she hissed at the ruby bottle. “Stop complaining. No one’s hurting you.” As the bottle danced down, it twisted. Within, she saw the glitter of accusing eyes.

  “Not hurt us, indeed? What do you call keeping us locked up in here while you jounce us around as if you were trying to make butter if you don’t call it being hurt?”

  “Confined,” Carole said reasonably, allowing the troublesome object to drop beside its fellows on the carpet.

  “How would you like being confined then?” asked another protestor, this one from the jade row beneath the ruby one.

  “I am, you know, and I don’t care for it at all,” she replied when that bottle, too, rolled onto the carpet.

  “Is that why you’re taking it out on us?” whined the ruby complainer on the floor.

  “I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Carole h
issed back. “I’m just trying to… none of your business.”

  Finishing the jade row, she started the row of robins-egg blue. “We could do business together,” the first of these wheedled, winking at her. “You won’t get through the window without my help, you know. I propose a fair deal. You get me out and I get you out.”

  “Don’t listen to that one!” the ruby vessel cried. “If you free me I won’t cheat you out of the other two miraculous wishes you’re entitled to by terms of the oral contract.”

  Carole danced the last robins-egg blue bottle down and frowned at the crystal-strewn carpet.

  “Look who’s calling who a cheat,” the robins-egg blue vessel scoffed. “Maybe it is three wishes, but I naturally assumed that this honest and warmhearted lady would not insist on more than a simple trade, since she shares our predicament. Of course, if she’s going to be as greedy as our present masters, I suppose there’s no—”

  “Listen,” Carole said, “I am absolutely not interested in your wishes right now. I have plenty of other trouble on my hands without the kind that would come from your magic. If the maid wasn’t making the whole thing up about fiery explosions. Neither do I want to be accused of theft.”

  “Just what do you want?” the ruby bottle asked. “If you free us all, you’re entitled to three wishes from each of us. I wouldn’t dismiss it so lightly if I were you.”

  “I don’t, but I certainly haven’t the time to sit around thinking of wishes all night, nor do I have the pocket space to carry all of you or even one of you. If I open one, can’t that one free the others?”

  “If that is your wish.”

  “That’s one of them. The others are to get me out of this room and to help me free Prince Rupert and the baby.” So saying, she approached the bottles, took a deep breath, pulled the stopper on the ruby one and waited for it to explode.

  “That was four wishes,” the ruby one said. “I’ll give you the first three.”

  The room exploded in a mass of popping stoppers and spraying colored mist, through which Carole hurtled, covering her head as she reached the window, only to find herself passing harmlessly through it as though it were no more than illusion. The world blurred around her, a spinning confusion of garden and crescent moon, stars, and spires, streets with closed stalls, and arched doorways, all stirred with ruby mist, until she sat down sharply in front of an elegant edifice topped with the intricately carved stone dome. In less than a heartbeat, a ruby dust devil swirled from above, bearing something large and solid, which thumped down beside her.

  “I wish you had been a little more patient,” Rupert complained, rubbing his backside. “I was going to come for you as soon as I had all the information.”

  Morning was breaking and Carole and Rupert fled Mlle. Mukbar’s mansion for the cover of a ruined wall, behind which they hid, watching the marketplace come to life. In a very short time, the shops were besieged by blue-corded agents of Mukbar, Mashkent, and Mirza. Rupert, watching through a peephole as the guards briskly searched the street, shook his head, smiling with a hint of pride. “Those Mukbar girls have taken quite a fancy to me,” he said. When Carole looked puzzled, he gave her a carefully worded explanation of how he had fared since he left her.

  His cousin took her turn at the peephole as he talked and now stepped aside, pointing, so that he could look.

  “I wouldn’t like to undermine your self-confidence, Your Highness,” she said, “but I think those colored clouds might have more to do with the abundance of the Company’s minions than does the devotion of your fiancées.”

  In the street, four guards were now running headlong through the piles of fruit being thrown at them as they were chased by streaks of violet, ruby, and jade. Evidently, the protection they had been given against magic was only proof against Carole’s or else had worn off after a short time and had not been renewed, because after a spirited melee in which the guards definitely came out the losers, the street in front of the ruined wall was clear of both guards and colored streaks. Angry fruit vendors cursed and gesticulated graphically to the departing disruption before stooping to retrieve their bruised goods.

  “Were those bright streaks what I think they were?” Rupert asked Carole. She nodded.

  He groaned. “How could you? I thought you were going to make things easier here. Instead, the moment I trust you by yourself while I attend to more urgent business, you run off with the private property of the very people with whom we need to negotiate, thereby managing with considerable imagination to violate the only sort of violatable law in this entire anarchy, making us fugitives, no doubt with a price on our heads.”

  “I didn’t run off with anything,” she said. “They ran off by themselves, and I can’t say that I blame them. They’re some sort of intelligent magical creatures with minds of their own. From what I can tell, no one has any business claiming them as property.”

  “That’s your opinion and according to your customs, not theirs,” Rupert said stubbornly.

  “It is also my opinion that you’ve little room to criticize when you’ve done nothing more constructive than sleep through my efforts to help the child after you abandoned me to—”

  “I wasn’t abandoning you. I was researching.” Witches! Pah! They were more trouble than their so-called powers were worth. His rear still smarted from his cousin’s idea of rescuing him from a danger that was far preferable to the conditions he now endured. “It may interest you to know that the child is not here in Miragenia, but in a land called Gorequartz. Had you not put us in a position requiring us to hide ourselves, we would need only to stand out in the open long enough for the dragon to find us and we could have her take us there.”

  Carole was watching the peephole again and made a gratified sound. “There’s the scroll seller again. Perhaps she can tell us how to get to this Gorequartz place.”

  She quickly rounded the edge of the ruined wall, Rupert right behind her.

  “No,” she said, fixing him with a stare that promised him a dancing lesson if he didn’t cooperate. “You’re too noticeable. She knows me. I’ll be right back.” With that, she darted out into the street. She crossed quickly, holding her borrowed veil close to her face as she dodged horses and dromedaries to reach the scroll seller. The woman spoke a few words with her, nodded to the northwest corner of the street, and shrugged.

  A sudden flash, further down the street, caught Rupert’s eye. A hag hunched over a pile of shining mirrors beckoned to a newly arrived blue-corded company agent. She pointed in Carole’s direction. The agent tossed a coin in the air, where it caught the reflected glimmer of a mirror before landing in the woman’s hand, from there going straight to her teeth. The mercenary turned backwards and called to someone behind him.

  Rupert bounded around the wall and into the street, promptly tripping on an overturned barrow formerly containing melons. When he lifted his face from the street, three blue-corded guards swept past him to close on Carole. She trilled once, tentatively, and again, confidently. When he stood the mercenaries were reeling backwards, cursing their masters for the unprofitable planned obsolescence of their protective spells. Their curses were to no avail. They danced helplessly an arm’s length or so away from Rupert, whirling slowly at times or kicking out with little hopping leaps, but basically doing a two-step that kept them well out of reach of his cousin, who was whistling for all she was worth. Rupert held his rowan shield before him as he walked around the dancers to Carole’s side. He used his shield gallantly to protect both himself and the poor friendly merchant woman, who had been gracefully two-stepping all over her spilled scrolls.

  The dance company grew larger as curious merchants from adjoining booths edged forward to see what was happening and were caught by Carole’s whistle. The street resembled a somewhat sedate block party. Many of the merchants trampled their own wares or those of their immediate neighbors. No doubt the loss of the trampled goods would be another crime to be balanced against his and Carole’s account, Rupe
rt thought grimly. Nonetheless, the sight of the merrily dancing feet of the merchants topped by their fiercely scowling faces was so humorous he couldn’t help grinning.

  His grin died as a street musician arrived playing a set of pipes with a high skirling tone that totally drowned out Carole’s song, setting everyone free. Rupert drew her back behind his shield as the crowd closed in on them. An almond flew through the air and struck him a blow on the left shoulder. It was followed immediately by a clay pot, smashing against his exposed elbow, causing the shield arm to drop numbly to his side. He collapsed against the wall.

  Carole fell on top of him. The merchant woman behind them shrieked. Rupert hitched himself up, spilling his cousin into the crook of his knee as he used his right arm to support his lifeless left arm. No sooner had he raised the shield than a sword crashed down on it. The blade banged off the wood, rebounding to its owner, one of the blue-corded mercenaries, who jumped backwards to avoid its bite.

  The shield would protect them as long as he had the strength to maneuver it, for it would repulse any magic and surely, in a magic-proud land such as Miragenia, most of the blades would have some little cheap enchantment on them.

  Suddenly a violet haze shimmered above him, causing him momentarily to imagine he had been hit harder than he had first thought. Then the haze was joined by a ruby one and a jade, and the three colors gathered into a malignant rainbow, attacking the merchants with their own wares, the mercenaries with their own weapons.

  The shield before them, Rupert and Carole ran down the street, dodging missiles, merchants, and mists. Rupert’s long legs fairly flew over the pavement. Carole trailed him at an ever-increasing distance until he reached back with his large paw to catch her up and jerk her forward at arm’s length. She was still a good five paces behind him. He dragged her around a corner and almost collided with a raggedy figure who suavely blocked their path.