by Mage Quest
The chaplain and I exchanged glances and both shook our heads. King Haimeric was as excited to see an eastern rose garden as Joachim had been to see the churches of the Holy City. The king's age and frailty had all dropped away, and his naked interest in roses was a much more powerful protection here against harm than any spell I could have cast.
The huge rose-grower's scowl turned into a wide smile. "Come, and I shall show you what I have. I work for the emir, of course. He has roses of his own inside the palace, but there are several of us outside the city who also cultivate cuttings and do crosses for him. For two years now, he has announced to rose-growers throughout the East that he has a blue rose. And the rose he has is mine!"
Maffi tugged at my arm. "If this man really is a grower for the emir of Bahdroc," he said in a low voice, "then he is a powerful man indeed."
The rest of us tied our horses to the fence and made our way cautiously amidst the roses' spiny branches. The king and the grower chattered away on topics ranging from soil acidity to aphids to crosses that just wouldn't breed true as they slipped between the bushes, far more easily than we did.
"Now this section is what I call my blues," the man continued from the far end of the garden. He and the king had pushed past glorious reds and yellows without slowing down. The bushes at this end seemed rather spindly to me, and the blossoms drooped in spite of a soil watered so heavily it was spongy under foot. "This was my first attempt."
The flowers in question were more green than anything, a rather sickly shade and with an unpleasant odor.
"But then I decided to try to try to approach blue from the direction of the deep reds instead," the man continued. He showed us several maroon blooms of the same color as ones the king had already spotted. "But we come now to the best of all."
I don't know what I expected, something enormous and showy probably, a sapphire blue that would take our breaths away. What we were shown instead was a rose with few and rather tattered petals, of a violet that could only be called blue if one overlooked the rather pinkish cast.
"I see," said King Haimeric, fighting disappointment with what I considered remarkably good grace. "And this is the blue which is exciting rose growers throughout the East?"
The huge man's smile split his face. "It is of a certainty! But I remain unsatisfied, as does the emir. We may have the first blue rose ever grown, but we want to make it better yet! You may notice it has but little scent . . ."
That was the least of its problems, I thought, but said nothing.
"I wonder if it would be possible to meet the emir," said the king, his enthusiasm back as if it had never gone. "Did I mention I'm a king myself, back in the western kingdoms?" I froze, but he did not mention Yurt directly. "It would be a great honor to meet such a renowned leader and grower."
"You are a king, are you?" said the grower with an incredulous chuckle. "Well, they do have some odd customs, I hear, out in the west. You might interest the emir at that; he says that he likes to hear or see at least one new thing each day, but it is sometimes hard for him now that he is too old to travel. This time of day he generally holds open court for plaintiffs, so I am sure he would be happy to hear you, and, I assume, your party." He looked Ascelin up and down, gave the rest of us a glance, shrugged, paused to lock the little gate in his low wall, then led us along the palm-lined road toward the city.
III
In the fields closer to the city a tangle of rather sickly trees was being uprooted. We all stopped to stare in amazement at the creature doing the uprooting. It looked roughly like a horse with enormous, sail-like ears, but was far bigger. A very small man, or at least small by comparison, armed only with a stick, seemed to be directing it. Most surprising of all, the appendage like an arm with which the creature seized the tree trunks appeared to be its nose.
"What mage could have made—" I started to say and stopped. This wasn't the product of magic. An aura of spells sparkled in a rather unfocused manner over the emir's city, but this was an ordinary, living animal.
"Do you not recognize an elephant?" said Maffi loftily. "They are extremely strong and indeed enjoy work like this, but you can't keep them alive in the depths of the desert, because it's too dry."
"Don't try to pretend you know more about such creatures than we do," said Hugo reprovingly. "You know you've never been out of Xantium before."
"But I saw one once in Xantium," the boy protested, "near the governor's palace. I think someone sent it to him as a gift."
Just outside the emir's city we had to retreat to the edge of the road as a great mass of armed men emerged through the gates. The one in the lead carried, unsheathed, the most enormous sword I had even seen. In the center of a crush of turbaned heads I saw one man who walked bare-headed. His eyes passed over us, but he did not see us. Hugo stared at him as though fearing it might be his father, realized what he was doing, and looked away.
"A condemned criminal, of course," said the rose-grower in response to a question from the king. "He will be beheaded out at the edge of the desert, where the desert wind will come, cleanse away the blood with blown sand, and repurify. Do you not have a similar custom in the west?"
The king didn't answer, and we followed our guide on through the city gates. Our route took us past the spice warehouses, where sharp mixed smells, both savory and sweet, struck us on every side. The iron doors were guarded both by armed men and by shadowy forms that reeked of magic, but the grower led us at too rapid a pace for me to probe properly. At a small open-air market, set between unwindowed bulks of warehouses, a ragged, dark-haired woman was buying for a single coin a bag of peppercorns that would have cost her a year's wages back in the west. The cooking smells that greeted us when we emerged into the residential part of town indicated that all cooks here used spices enthusiastically.
The emir's palace was in the very center of the city, built on a steep rocky pinnacle that rose above the crowded streets. We had to leave our horses at the bottom, in what appeared to be stables reserved for those visiting the emir, and climb narrow, white-washed stairs built half into the rock itself. Maffi gave Hugo a low, running commentary on the history of Bahdroc as we climbed, but I missed most of it.
At the top, a vizier gorgeously robed in satin met us and started to demand our business, but after a few words with the grower he motioned us on through open gates. The grower led us without hesitation down a maze of airy arcades. Men with curved swords eyed but did not challenge us. I tried without success to keep track of the turnings and glanced back at Ascelin, who from the concentration on his face was trying to do the same thing.
We emerged at last into a sunny courtyard with a fish pond in the center. A campaign chair, empty, stood in the center. Both floor and pool were paved with gleaming white marble. Swords, spears, and shields hung from white marble walls. No one was there, and the grower kept walking. "This is the courtyard of the emir's youth," he said over his shoulder.
But when he noticed that I had stopped he stopped as well. I stood staring into the pond where brilliant red, blue, and gold fish, unlike anything I had ever seen before, swam about. They looked at me almost imploringly—maybe they wanted to be fed. But I was not particularly interested in the fish. I stared instead at a shadowy figure at the bottom of the pool, something low and flat with a number of legs. The legs were scrubbing busily at the marble, getting off the algae.
"It's a magic creature," I said to no one in particular, "but I've never seen anything like it before. What is it? It moves as though it was alive, but a mage must have created it."
The creature finished cleaning the marble and crawled out. It was a uniform gray and no more recognizable in full sunlight than it was in the depth of the pool. It went, dripping, across the courtyard and settled itself into the corner.
"It's an automaton, of course," said Maffi. "Don't you have them where you come from? You saw Kaz-alrhun's ebony horse."
"But I didn't realize a mage could make something that didn't even look li
ke a living creature."
"Well, it's modern magic, of course," said Maffi good-naturedly. "I know you're a little old-fashioned in the west."
And I had thought the east old-fashioned! The rose grower led us on through another series of arcades to a second courtyard.
Here stood an enormous throne, sheltered by striped awnings. I expected to see the emir at last, but this courtyard too was empty, and as we watched a white peacock hopped up onto the throne's stone seat and gave a shriek. Trees and bushes with flowers the color of blood grew all around. I saw birds hopping in the branches, and was caught by the metallic gleam from the feathers. One fixed me with a jewel eye.
"More automatons?" I asked as casually as I could.
"Of course," said the grower. "This is the courtyard of the emir's maturity, where he commanded great armies and reveled in great luxury." As we headed out the far side, the automaton birds behind us began to sing, a song of such intense sweetness that I stumbled.
But the grower kept on walking. I had completely lost track of the turnings. Finally we reached a third courtyard, also open to the sky but lined on three sides with shady arcades. More flowers bloomed riotously in the center. In the distance beyond the lower, fourth wall we could see sunlight glinting on the Dark Sea. Here fountains played and an old man, turbaned and dressed in dazzling white, sat on a bench by the fountains, watching us approach.
It was not precisely the image of the East I had had back in Yurt, but it was close. Another of the strange automaton shapes, radiating magic, stood behind the old man. The rose grower knelt before him and kissed the pavement between his hands. "Oh, glorious one, live forever! I have brought you something new and strange, a great wonder, travelers from a distant land who say that they have heard of your blue roses! One of them is a normal boy, but the rest claim to be westerners. Their skin may be pale and their accents strange, but their enthusiasm for roses is unfeigned."
I had thought that our skin had become quite dark after months of travel, but we could still not match the swarthiness of the men here. The emir motioned with one hand. When he moved I could see that his white robes were sewn all over with pearls.
I got a better look at the automaton behind him, shadowed by an arcade. As I watched, and indeed the entire time we were in the courtyard, it spun about very slowly and deliberately, and without a sound. It had five sides, five eyes, and five arms, and each of its five hands clutched a long knife to protect the emir. Two enormous spotted cats on leashes, real animals these, reclined beside him. They gave us bored looks and looked away.
"These do indeed appear to be something both new and strange," said the emir, although I would have thought we rather paled in comparison. "Approach, then, travelers from afar!"
There were rose bushes growing in the courtyard, but a surreptitious glance found no blue flowers. The king stepped forward at once, but Ascelin gripped my arm. "Something's wrong," he hissed into my ear.
The others were following the king forward. "You've been doing this ever since we reached Arnulf's house," I hissed back. "If you don't want to be here, fine, go back to the horses, but we can't let the king miss his opportunity to find his rose, or probably for Hugo to find his father."
Ascelin bit his lip and flashed me a look from blue eyes that I had to admit looked surprisingly strange when the eyes of everyone around us were black. But he took a long, slow breath and stepped forward as well, without enough hesitation to provoke comment.
Since King Haimeric knelt before the emir, the rest of us did too. "This one says he is a western king," commented the rose-grower.
"But I come to you not as someone claiming equality," said the king, sitting back carefully on his heels, his first movement in the last hour that looked as though it might pain him. "Rather, I come as a suppliant. I have dreamed all my life of a blue rose, a true blue, one that would rival sapphires in color and the most expensive perfumes in scent." So my expectations were also his. "And we have heard in the west that you have grown such a thing."
The emir made a slight motion of his hand, and a man stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the courtyard to bring the king a pillow, on which he settled himself gratefully.
"You then ask to see such a rose?" asked the emir. One of his spotted cats gave a long yawn, full of teeth, as though in disdain. I looked toward the grower, worrying that he might be offended by the king's implied insult to his best blue, but he only beamed as though proud to have brought the emir such an amusing guest.
"I seek even more, glorious one," said King Haimeric. "Even we in the west know that an emir's power, to help or to harm, to raise up and to cast down, is unlimited. I would like the rootstock of such a rose for my own."
At this the emir began to laugh, in what looked to me genuine amusement. "And this is your only request?"
"I do have other requests, glorious one," the king continued, undaunted. "We would like to inquire if you have perhaps seen friends of ours, a group of four westerners including a wizard. The wizard has red hair." The emir's smile disappeared abruptly.
There was a brief, very tense moment in which I could have sworn the air crackled. Ascelin nudged me with his foot and let his hand rest, as though casually, on his hilt. I kept my eyes on the silent automaton behind the emir and put together the first words of a lifting spell, to transport the king up and out of here.
But then the emir smiled again. It did not look to me like the same smile. "I am delighted to help such amusing guests. And you will be my guests, won't you? I have rooms where you shall stay. Refreshment will be brought to you at once." For some reason, I could feel Ascelin start to relax. "We can talk more in the cool of the evening."
IV
The emir clapped his hands once, and half a dozen young women darted into the courtyard. Their faces were veiled so that only their eyes showed, but the rest of their clothing was very brief, and their loose, silken trousers did nothing to hide their legs. They whisked us to our feet with gentle touches under the elbow and escorted us, wordless but giggling, out of the courtyard, down more passageways, and into a low-ceilinged outer room whose single window led to a balcony looking down over the sun-drenched city and the Dark Sea. An open doorway led to a white-tiled room where hot water was already beginning to steam. The women left us for a moment but were back almost immediately with a tray of fresh fruit, a hot pitcher of what I assumed was tea, bread, and salt.
Ascelin plunged his finger into the salt and licked it off. Maffi joined him. "It's all right now," Ascelin said in a low voice when King Haimeric opened his mouth to reprove him. "They wouldn't share salt with us if they meant to kill us."
"But why should they want to kill us?" asked the king.
"The emir has seen my father," said Hugo in a tight voice.
"We were greeted as something to amuse a bored old man," said Ascelin, "but everything changed as soon as you mentioned Sir Hugo."
Maffi nudged Ascelin. "Not in front of the slave girls, my masters," he murmured.
The slave girls stood across the room, watching and whispering to each other. "Thank you," said the king to them. "We'll call if we need anything else." They trooped out, giggling again, and one winked over her shoulder at Hugo.
"They are slaves?" said Joachim to Maffi. "I fear I did not recognize them as such. I wonder what sort of 'duties,' degrading and debilitating to the soul, they are expected to perform in a place like this."
Ascelin closed the door carefully behind them. I poured a cup from the pitcher. It neither looked nor smelled like tea.
I hesitated, but Maffi took the cup out of my hand. "It's coffee, my masters," he said with a grin. "We of the desert were drinking coffee long before traders to the far East began bringing back tea. Tea is such an insipid brew in comparison; I'm not sure why you westerners ever took it up."
He began an explanation of where coffee came from, somewhere far to the south of the desert where dry sand gave way to wet jungles, but I was not listening. Instead I stood quietly
to one side, probing with magic. Even though I had snapped at Ascelin, I trusted his hunter's instincts more than I trusted anyone in the emir's employ.
I could find no one actively working magic in the palace, though the presence of the automatons made it hard to make sense of all the magical currents. But outside, either in the city or perhaps even beyond the city, I sensed a disturbance in the forces of magic, suggesting someone—or something—of enormous power. I came back to myself with a start, not wanting to let whoever or whatever was there knew I had spotted them. Either Kaz-alrhun, I thought, or an Ifrit.
"Is my father here?" asked Hugo in a low voice at my shoulder.
Since I had never met his father, I would not recognize his mind even if I touched it, but I knew his wizard. I let myself slide along the surface of the forces of magic, slipping past the minds of all those in the palace, a long process as there seemed to be a remarkable number of people here. But I did not find Evrard. "Not here," I said at last.
Hugo nodded glumly. "I hadn't expected it would be that easy. At first I hoped that if the emir liked King Haimeric he'd be willing to assist us, to command his dependents to help us investigate their disappearance. But as soon as the king mentioned the red-haired wizard and I saw the emir's face change, I knew he did know who they were, but there was no chance he was going to help us find them. If they'd just been held prisoner here, at least we could have tried to rescue them . . ."
The king sampled the coffee and declared it strong, quite unlike tea, and much better than he expected. I tried some as well and agreed with his assessment. The aroma slipped into the consciousness as delicately as a distant melody, and a long hot swallow made one feel rather abruptly awake. I wondered if King Haimeric was planning to take home to the queen some of the leaves or berries or whatever it was brewed from.
The sun had set, touching the Dark Sea with fingers of gold, when the emir sent for us. I had spent the afternoon making further desultory and unsuccessful attempts to unravel the spell on the onyx ring. Back in the emir's courtyard of old age, candles had been lit inside paper lanterns, giving everything a fairy glow. The air was no longer hot but still warm, and lay on our arms like a sensuous touch.