by Mage Quest
I left him trying to work through this and hurried back to the others. It sounded as though someone powerful might still appear at any minute, even if the Ifrit did refuse to grant the mage's second wish. I was in time to get some of the melon and settled myself again to look at the onyx ring. Now that I knew what kind of spell Elerius had put on it, I might have some chance of unraveling it.
"I keep thinking about that boy and my stallion," said Dominic, sitting down beside me. "Do you think he was simply trying to escape the Ifrit, or was he going to alert someone after having led us into a trap?"
"It just looked like panicked flight to me," I said. "I don't know where he'd go. The emir's city wouldn't be safe for him, and it took us many weeks of travel to get here from Xantium."
"It wouldn't take him nearly as long to get back, riding Whirlwind all out, especially if he didn't detour to the Holy City. I'm beginning to wonder, Wizard, if we should start expecting that mage."
"It would certainly take Maffi much longer than two days to reach Xantium," I said, "even on Whirlwind. And the Ifrit's just told me he's not answering any magical calls from the mage." I stopped speaking abruptly to concentrate more fully at the onyx ring.
While talking to Dominic, I had been teasing at it delicately with little tendrils of magic. Suddenly I saw the whole spell as clearly as though it had been written out, step-by-step, in a book of wizardry. I could see exactly which words of the Hidden Language Elerius had used, the complicated and quite inventive way he had combined a spell of discovery with a spell of sight, his elegant means of attaching the spell to the onyx so that it was permanently latent in the stone yet would need someone with fairly powerful magic—or at least the right powerful spell—to put it into action.
I knew at once which words to say, and for a second the valley again flickered with other mirage-like images, even if no one could see them but me.
But this was wrong. I had never been able to visualize a spell like this in my life, even my own. I knew I wasn't this good. In fact, I didn't think anyone was.
I looked up, startled, toward the Ifrit. Had he given me his magical abilities instead of my own?
No, because with this strange clarity I now had, it was quite plain that I had nothing more than the mix of school magic, herbal magic, and improvisation I had always had, and the Ifrit had his own enormous fund of powerful though unfocused magic. But the difference now was my ability to recognize a spell and all its attributes.
"I think I see the difference at last," I said excitedly to Dominic, who didn't have the slightest idea what I was talking about. "Wes tern magic is organized scientifically. There's very little scientific about eastern magic. That's why Melecherius had so much trouble explaining it, even if he understood it himself. Instead it's an art."
"Do you and this scientific art know how to get us out of here?" asked Dominic.
"I'm working on it," I said. If this clarity only lasted, I should be able to discover the spell on Dominic's ruby ring as well. Maybe if the Ifrit wanted to take a nap, and he took his wife off with him somewhere while he did so, then I could try to use the onyx to locate Sir Hugo's party, and we could—
"What's that?" said Dominic sharply.
I looked up quickly, putting together far more easily than I ever had before a scientific far-seeing spell.
It was a flying carpet, soaring over the steep edge of the valley and approaching us rapidly. Seated on it were Maffi and the massive black bulk of Kaz-alrhun.
PART EIGHT - THE WADI HARHAMMI
I
I wrapped my magic firmly around me and stood up to meet Kaz-alrhun. He hopped off the carpet as soon as it had set down gracefully on the sandy soil. "If you are here to gloat over us," I said with dignity, "and to watch your Ifrit kill us, you might at least let us know first why everyone in the East seems to find the mention of Yurt so exciting."
But he ignored me. "Ifrit!" he shouted. "In the name of God, the all-compassionate, I adjure you not to harm the tiniest hair on the heads of these people!"
My suppositions shifted wildly, but I had nothing with which to replace them. I had steeled myself to face a mage who was about to order the Ifrit to kill us, and instead he had just commanded the Ifrit to spare us.
An enormous bare foot was suddenly between Kaz-alrhun and me as the Ifrit stepped forward. He picked up the mage to peer at him. "They do have rather tiny hairs," he agreed, running a clawed hand through his own thick locks. His voice was about ten octaves lower than the mage's. "But I am guarding this valley, and they came tumbling in. So did you, for that matter. Are you from Yurt?"
"Do you want me to bind you by the name of the Most High, as King Solomon once bound you?" Kaz-alrhun demanded. He was putting a paralysis spell together, one which I would never have been able to duplicate, full of eastern tricks and connections unlike anything I'd ever seen before but which I could observe as clearly now as though it were a picture before my eyes. I wasn't sure it really would bind an Ifrit, but it looked as though it had greater potential than anything of mine.
"All right," replied the Ifrit sulkily. He bent to put the mage back down on the ground. "I wasn't going to make them die an evil death anyway, or at least not yet."
I expected Kaz-alrhun to accept this agreement, but he abruptly smiled, flashing a gold tooth, and threw his paralysis spell onto the Ifrit. With a stunned and rather puzzled look, the Ifrit subsided onto the sand, as majestically and inexorably as a piece of a mountain breaking free and tumbling toward the valley. His hand opened, and the mage hopped out.
"Now!" cried Kaz-alrhun. "Onto the carpet! All of you, if you value the life God gave you!"
None of this made any sense. "But I thought you had set your Ifrit to capture us!"
His gold tooth flashed again as he smiled widely. "But this is not my Ifrit."
I had no time to create new assumptions, but my old ones were irretrievably gone. "We're never all going to fit on a little carpet like that," I said, the one thing I thought I could say with certainty.
"Watch and learn, Daimbert!" He said a few quick words, gave a great flourish, and the carpet twitched, shivered, and grew until it was indeed big enough for all of us, even the horses. "Come!" he said when I hesitated. "Do you not wish to escape the Ifrit?"
I shook myself into action and herded the rest of our startled party onto the carpet with Maffi. The Ifrit, stretched out with his eyes shut, snorted as though he might soon awaken from the paralysis—and awaken furious. I had never flown on a magic carpet and had no reason to trust Kaz-alrhun's, but we didn't have much choice.
It lurched up from the ground, and we all clutched at each other. The horses neighed desperately as it seemed we must slide off the carpet's edge, but it straightened itself as it began to climb. We rotated twice, then sailed slowly up and over the rim of the valley.
From the air we could see for scores of miles across the sere desert landscape, and I thought I could spot the glittering spires of Bahdroc in the distance and the uneven line of rocky hills beyond. I caught a flash of light reflected from the Dark Sea and, for one moment, saw what might have been the spires of the once ensorcelled city. The carpet turned around again, a quarter mile above the ground, then plunged downward to light on the steep hillside outside the circular valley.
I tumbled more than stepped off the carpet, glad to feel the solid ground beneath my feet again. For the brief moment we had been up in the air, the carpet's flight had seemed strong and smooth, but I could see it would take me a while to get used to the rough takeoffs and rapid landings.
"This is good fortune indeed," said Kaz-alrhun, straightening the odd-shaped pieces of silk that covered his enormous bulging body. "I have never before ventured to bind an Ifrit. Even you, Daimbert, were able to find a way out of one of my spells. I cannot be sure how long my magic will hold such a creature."
"But are we safe, this close?" asked Ascelin. He seemed to be rallying, though Hugo still looked too exhausted to care.
&nbs
p; "Of course not," said Kaz-alrhun cheerfully.
"You wouldn't have come all the way from Xantium just to rescue us from the Ifrit," I said. "Why are you here?"
"My reason is the same as yours, Daimbert," said the mage. "I wish to enter the Wadi."
This entire trip I had had to keep adjusting my expectations, as everything turned out to be not quite what it seemed, as I looked for aid one moment to those whom at another point I considered my enemies. A very short time ago, I had feared Kaz-alrhun's arrival. Now quite irrationally I found myself thinking of him as an ally.
"You can have the onyx ring Maffi stole from you," I said, pulling it off. "Don't be too hard on him."
This set the mage into a paroxysm of laughter. "He told you he stole it?" He gave the boy a buffet on the side of the head, still laughing. "And you believed him?"
There were a number of things I needed to find out at once, but one took precedence. Maffi still stood on the carpet, carefully not meeting my eye. I took him firmly by the arm. "So Kaz-alrhun sent both you and this ring with us on purpose," I said, putting it back on my finger since the mage apparently didn't want it. "I should have realized, ever since you first offered to escort us to the Thieves' Market in Xantium, than you were working for him. Did you enjoy spying on us all the way from Xantium? Were you sending back messages from every oasis by means of the deep pools? And you made me believe that you wanted to 'learn' magic!"
Maffi looked as subdued as I had ever seen him, but he still managed a grin. "I do want to learn magic, my master! The communications spell was all Kaz-alrhun would teach me." He promptly created a large pink illusory spot on the front of my shirt, as though hoping this would placate me.
"First you need to learn to play chess," said Kaz-alrhun to the boy, "before I could begin to teach you magic."
"But don't forget," Maffi continued to me, "if it hadn't been for me, the mage wouldn't have known to come save you!"
Dominic stepped up at this point. "Where is my stallion, boy?" he demanded.
"At the first oasis north of the emir's city," said Maffi with another grin. "That really is a magnificent horse. I would never have been able to bring help so quickly if I'd been riding any other steed."
So when Maffi had escaped, he had ridden like the wind to the first place from which he could send a message to Xantium, and Kaz-alrhun had come swooping across the desert on his flying carpet. But if the mage had been using the boy to keep an eye on us, and thought he had to come rescue us, then someone else had set the Ifrit here, someone who might himself appear at any moment.
"The Wadi's down there in the circular valley," I said to Kaz-alrhun, "but it's hidden—or only visible for a few seconds. The Ifrit isn't going to let us get to it if he can help it. Why did you let him out of the bottle in the first place?"
Kaz-alrhun smiled slowly. "It was not I."
"He said it was a mage—" But there must be many mages in the East, most of whom I hadn't met.
"That mage," said Kaz-alrhun enigmatically, "hoped that an Ifrit would help him find the Wadi's secret. He was mistaken."
"Then you and I and Prince Dominic need to get in before that mage gets here." I wondered briefly why a mage with the power to master an Ifrit couldn't find the Wadi's secret, but I pushed the issue aside. There were still too many other things I didn't understand. "But tell me first, Mage. What is in there?"
He looked at me thoughtfully. "You like a challenge, do you not?" I abruptly began to fear him again as irrationally as I had felt a moment ago that I could trust him. "You are on a quest for something, but you do not know what it is. I too am on a quest, but its nature is such that I dare not hint to you what I hope to find . . ."
"You don't know what's there either," I said with much more confidence than I felt. "Good. We'll look for it together. We'd better get back to the valley immediately, before the Ifrit breaks your spell."
The mage unexpectedly put a massive hand on my shoulder, making me shiver. "I can warn you and prepare you, even if I do not tell you." His black eyes met mine, completely serious for once. "I will not urge you to go. For if you proceed, you will be proceeding into dangers you cannot expect or even imagine."
"Prince Dominic," I called. "Are you ready to face unimaginable dangers to get into the Wadi?"
Dominic had been trying to get more details from Maffi about his stallion, what condition it was in, who was supposedly taking care of it now, and not getting answers he liked. But he turned toward me at once, the ruby of his ring still pulsing with light. "I have been ready since we reached my father's tomb."
I tried quickly to probe the spell attached to his ring and discovered that the clarity of vision I had had for a short time was gone. Either it was operative only within the valley, or else it was just a short-term effect of having my magic restored by the Ifrit. Or I had imagined it, easily possible in this world of mirages and shifting expectations.
"I have never understood why you wizards of the west bind yourselves to king and princes," Kaz-alrhun commented. I noticed him gazing fixedly at the ruby. "Your own magic should be strong enough that you do not need a prince with you."
"This is his quest, and his is the ring from Yurt you actually wanted, Kaz-alrhun," I replied. "You didn't want the onyx ring at all."
"I have always known the onyx was not the ring I sought," said the mage good-naturedly.
"Then why were you willing to sell your flying horse for it?" I demanded.
"But it was not you who bought my horse."
I gave him up. At some point the shadows and mirages might settle down again. "Let's get to the Wadi before the Ifrit gets loose."
We left the others sitting in the sparse shade some larger rocks afforded. Ascelin looked away to the north, searching for signs of the emir's troops. Kaz-alrhun, Dominic, and I again rose into the air on the flying carpet and swooped over the valley wall.
The Ifrit's enormous form still lay stretched out below us. His wife, sitting beside him, looked up at us and waved. Kaz-alrhun said a few words to the carpet, and it descended slowly to hover near the Ifrit, who stared at us with unseeing eyes. "I have not done my spells amiss," said the mage complacently. "There are not many who can master an Ifrit, even for an hour's span."
"Watch," I said. "This onyx ring is good for one purpose."
I stretched out my hand and put the words of the Hidden Language together. The air of the valley shimmered with the magic that allowed people and objects to be hidden from each other. "Right there," I said, pointing to the dry watercourse. "That's where we're going." Suddenly, gloriously, I had the clarity of vision back again, and I knew exactly what spell to say next. It was a spell I had never used, and one which I was quite sure even Elerius had not known, but it came to me as easily as though another mind were guiding me. As the heavy syllables of the Language rolled from my tongue, the shimmering resolved itself, and the watercourse became clearer and clearer, while everything else faded.
The carpet dropped abruptly to the ground, tumbling us off. My spell, coupled with Elerius's spell on the onyx, had allowed us not only to see other layers of reality, but to pass into them as easily as the Ifrit apparently could. Dominic rubbed a bruised knee as he picked himself up but managed not to scowl; I was afraid he trusted me to know what I was doing. The Ifrit was gone.
Kaz-alrhun laughed. "Most excellent, Daimbert! How did you do that? I could never find any sensible spell on that ring—which is why I sent it with the boy. I realize I should have tested it more thoroughly before giving up a good automaton for it, but I had faith that you would be able to do something with it."
"It's western school magic," I said.
"Then your school may have something to offer after all," said the mage in pleased surprise. "When I last spoke to a master from your school, a great many years ago when it first opened, he seemed rather constrained and bookish. What was his name? Melecherius, I believe. I am glad there are also wizards like you there."
"I think we're going
to need both eastern and western magic for this," I said.
But eastern spells could not get the flying carpet to rise again, and I had nothing to offer. The sun beat down on the three of us as we hurried on foot across the valley floor toward where a deep rift now appeared. The Ifrit was able to create and change reality here, I thought, and armed with the onyx ring I could do nearly the same thing. I didn't like to think what long-term effects this kind of magic would have on the local physical structure of the earth; it was with good reason that Ifriti were considered highly dangerous. At least, I thought, when we left the reality where our friends were, where the flying carpet worked, we had also left the Ifrit behind.
He stopped us before we had crossed half the distance to the Wadi.
Kaz-alrhun opened his mouth, then froze. For the first time since I had met him he looked disconcerted, and sweat made rivulets in the dust on his dark skin.
"By what form of slaughter shall I slay you?" asked the Ifrit, glaring down with his arms folded. "I do not like little mages who try to tie me up. Solomon may have bound me, but you are not Solomon. And I do not even think you are from Yurt."
Kaz-alrhun's magic was gone, I realized, snatched from him as mine had been when I first reached the valley. Though I still had my magical abilities for the moment, I didn't dare use them against the Ifrit for fear of drawing attraction to them. I wondered wildly if this was the mage's unimaginable danger: probably not, because I could imagine quite vividly what the Ifrit was about to do to us.
"Listen, Ifrit," I said recklessly. "I have a proposition to make."
The Ifrit shifted his eyes from Kaz-alrhun and leaned down toward me. "What kind of proposition?"
"If you let us go, I can help you with your wife."
Kaz-alrhun recovered his equilibrium as soon as the Ifrit turned his attention from him, and he looked intrigued by this new development.