by Mage Quest
V
"Have you been taking tips from your bandits, Warin?" asked Dominic as the golden box was slowly taken from him. He did not stir a muscle, but his face turned dark red. "I shall add this to my bill of complaints against you once we're home again."
If we ever got home. I did not dare try a spell. If Warin took Dominic with him as a hostage, he would be able to get back to the ebony flying horse, threaten the Ifrit with the Pearl's power until the horse could fly again, and escape, leaving us to face the Ifrit and the emir's soldiers.
King Warin's hand closed around the Black Pearl as he backed slowly up the Wadi, Dominic necessarily backing with him as the edge of the king's knife pressed against his neck. "Stay where you are," he said warningly, but none of us had dared move.
"I tried to warn you to beware of him," Evrard muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
A hundred feet from us Warin lifted his left fist, the Pearl in it, and held his arm straight toward us. His face lit up with triumphant joy. From his lips came words of the Hidden Language.
It was a paralysis spell, short and awkward, with half the words mispronounced. But with the Pearl in his fist and the correct form of the words in our minds, Evrard, Kaz-alrhun, and I were frozen where we stood.
I would have gone stiff even if the spell had not worked. It was in the Hidden Language, that controlled eastern as well as western magic, but its form was indubitably that of a school spell.
"You can't stop me without your wizard, Haimeric!" Warin shouted mockingly. "And your nephew's not going to be a lot of help against the Ifrit!" He gave Dominic an abrupt blow with the golden box on the back of the head, sending him sprawling on his face in the sand. Warin stood over him, the knife still in his hand. "Should I finish him now and save the Ifrit the trouble?"
Then he laughed, a long and evil laugh. "But why should I waste my time with any of you? You'll never live anyway to challenge me. I shall rule all the western kingdoms, including the pitiful kingdom of Yurt, with the powers the Black Pearl will give me!" He gave Dominic a sharp kick and turned abruptly to run up the Wadi.
That is when Ascelin dropped on him.
Warin must have caught a glimpse of the prince coming over the rim of the watercourse from the corner of his eye, because he tried to whirl toward him, but it was too late. Ascelin landed on him with the full force of a thirty-foot drop. Warin's knife went flying in one direction, the Black Pearl in another.
I struggled desperately against the paralysis spell, as Warin recovered from his surprise and fought back with what looked like inhuman strength. He yanked the prince from his feet, and when Ascelin rolled and recovered, Warin threw himself on top of him. He tried to hold the prince down with one arm, as with the other hand he reached out, groping closer and closer to where the Black Pearl lay in the sand. At the last moment he thrust Ascelin away from him, snatched the Pearl with both hands, and leaped back up.
Dominic, a dozen yards from them, pushed his face out of the dirt. "Don't let him get away alive!" he shouted hoarsely. "Don't let him escape with the Pearl!" In the middle of that shout, Ascelin made a dive for Warin's legs. As the king lost his balance the prince's long hunting knife slid smoothly upwards, between Warin's ribs and into his heart.
I broke the paralysis spell on me and on Kaz-alrhun. "School magic," I told him when he seemed surprised I could work any spell faster than he could. "It's easier to break than your spells if you know the trick." Evrard already had himself free.
Joachim's and Hugo's dark heads appeared over the rim of the Wadi, joined in a moment by Maffi and by the Ifrit's wife. "You'll have to go around to the top end of the watercourse and come down that way," Ascelin called up to them, then sat down abruptly, his breathing ragged. He pulled his knife out of Warin's body and slowly and mechanically started cleaning it, like the good hunter he was.
Dominic pulled himself shakily to his feet and went to retrieve the Black Pearl. It was spattered with Warin's blood, which he wiped off carefully on his tunic.
Kaz-alrhun stood motionless for a moment, almost as though still paralyzed. Then he shook himself and flashed his gold tooth at me again. "God gives and God takes away," he said with a shrug. It was a strange reaction, I thought, considering that he should be delighted that the Pearl was safe. But then something I did not have time to analyze began to nag at me as well.
King Haimeric sat down by Warin's head and tried to listen for his breathing, but it was quite clear that he was dead. The body began to age before our eyes. In life Warin had looked middle-aged, no older than Dominic, but as we watched in horror his iron-gray hair whitened, his cheeks wrinkled, and the veins of his hands became pronounced. Within two minutes his shriveled body looked older than King Haimeric, indeed far older.
From further down the Wadi, where we had not gone, I suddenly heard voices. I whirled toward this new threat and saw three armed men coming around a boulder toward us, two young knights and one middle-aged lord.
They stopped abruptly, seeing us. "Don't be concerned," Evrard called to them. "It's the forces of Yurt at last, come to rescue us!"
I had almost forgotten about Sir Hugo and his knights.
From up the Wadi came an abrupt cry, of joy so intense it was almost pain. Young Hugo pounded past us, barely slowing down to avoid Warin's body, and threw himself into his father's arms. Sir Hugo fell flat from the force of the onrush, and for a moment the two rolled together, laughing and shouting and crying all at once and pummeling each other.
The older man recovered first and eased himself to a sitting position. "Careful, there, Hugo, I'm not as young as you are! But what's this? Who have you been fighting to get wounded like this?"
"I held off the emir's men while our party escaped," said Hugo proudly. I noticed he did not mention his fight with Ascelin.
"Then you did better than we ever did!"
Joachim came up to stand by Warin's shriveled body. "I'd better say the rites for him."
"I'm not absolutely certain," I said, "but I think he'd sold his soul to the devil."
Joachim fixed me with his enormous dark eyes. "Only God can judge him. The church's rituals are to help us all, living and dead, saved and damned, in a fallen world where all of our salvations are uncertain."
The Ifrit's wife met the two knights who had accompanied Evrard and Sir Hugo and greeted them like very old friends.
Dominic had recovered the golden box and brushed the sand off the velvet before putting the Pearl carefully back into it. He sat down next to Ascelin. "You saved the Pearl, and you probably saved my life," he said. "Yurt owes you more than I know how to repay. Ask whatever you will from me."
Ascelin had been sitting with his face resting on his arms. Now he looked up, a slight smile crinkling the tanned skin around his eyes. "I thank you, Dominic, but the kingdom of Yurt has already given me more than I could ever have asked. You yourself might not be able to give me what I desire above all, but the Pearl may be able to do so. My heart's desire is to see the duchess and our daughters again before I die."
I stood to one side, listening to the faint, not quite intelligible voice of the Black Pearl. For reasons I could not define, the voice sounded different.
Joachim finished the litany for the dead and went over to Ascelin. The tall prince glanced up, then nodded without speaking. He pushed himself to his feet and walked slowly away down the Wadi with the chaplain, listening to him with his head bowed.
While they were gone, I told Evrard the highlights of our quest to the east to find him. "I'm flattered, Daimbert," he said with a grin. "So finding me was your heart's desire?"
I shook my head and smiled. "‘What you seek and what you find, will oft-times be of different kind.’ I wouldn't go so far as to say you're my heart's desire, but I am delighted to have found you."
But even as I spoke I realized that the sense of boundless happiness, along with the Pearl's voice at the back of my brain, had altered, become less intense, or perhaps taken on a more somber
hue.
Evrard looked thoughtful for a moment, and I wondered if he had been briefly contemplating the triumphs of the reign of Evrard the All-merciful. "The school's going to want the Pearl."
"I know. When I first heard the rumors it had been found, I told Zahlfast about it, and he said an object that powerful and dangerous would have to be controlled by highly skilled wizards—which I presume excludes you and me. We know it has enormous power, but Zahlfast is right that if that power is going to be channeled we'll first have to find out how it works. I hope the masters of the school have the wisdom to realize how quickly it could become accursed if someone tried to appropriate all its powers to himself." Evrard met my eyes. He knew exactly what I meant.
"But it's Dominic's Pearl now," I added, looking toward where he sat by himself, fifty yards away. "Neither we nor the school can take it from him."
"I almost forgot to tell you," said Hugo from where he was sitting with his father. "The reason we came over to the watercourse after you was that the emir's men had finally gone around to the far side of the valley, where the wall's not as steep, and come down into it. They were still several miles off, but I think they're headed this way."
With two school-trained wizards and a mage, I thought, we should be able to resist—or at least avoid—armed soldiers, even without yet mastering the Pearl. I flew up to the rim of the Wadi but couldn't see them. I tried the onyx ring and saw the emir's rose garden again but not his soldiers. I came back down feeling less complacent. A warning would help, as would any reassurance that the Ifrit was not about to reappear and take our magical powers away again.
"Now that Warin's dead," asked Hugo, "who's going to rule his kingdom?"
"I don't think he had any children," I said without interest, "but he's probably got a cousin or a nephew somewhere. If not, the aristocrats of the region will elect one of their number king. A wealthy kingdom like that won't lack a king for long, once they realize Warin won't be back." I didn't like to think how close I had been to becoming the Royal Wizard of a kingdom now without a king, or what I might have had to do to protect my new lord.
"If I'm not your heart's desire," Evrard asked me, "what is?"
"Magic," I said slowly. "After all these years I think I've finally gotten passable at western magic, and now I've learned a great deal of eastern magic as well. Maybe not even particular spells, but an orientation, a knowledge, that there are other ways than school ways to contact the universe's forces." I held Evrard's light blue eyes with my own. "And I know this will sound strange from someone who's been practicing magic his entire adult life, but I think I've also realized that there are important powers and abilities in this world that have nothing to do with magic."
Ascelin and Joachim came back at this point, interrupting our conversation, although neither said anything but sat down on either side of Warin's body.
The tall prince, I thought, might be the only one who had not found his heart's desire on this quest, as well as the only one with a death on his soul. I had discovered eastern magic, Hugo his father, the elder Sir Hugo and his party had found the rescue they had long awaited, King Haimeric the blue rose, Joachim the Holy Land, and Dominic his father's unfulfilled quest for the Black Pearl. Even Kaz-alrhun had won his game by locating the Pearl at last.
Trying to understand the not quite clear and definitely darker voice of the Pearl at the edge of my mind, I thought that even my new understanding of magic might not be the "heart's desire" of the old stories, because there were still plenty of gaps and room for improvement—but then even Joachim had not found all his spiritual yearnings fulfilled in the Holy Land.
The Ifrit's huge green face appeared abruptly above us, blocking out the sky. "So I see that another one of you has died," he said conversationally. "I keep trying to remind you how easily and senselessly humans die, but you never seem to understand."
"Please help us bury him," said Evrard imperiously. I wasn't at all sure the Ifrit would continue to obey him, or if Dominic would have to threaten him with the Pearl. But maybe it had become a habit. The Ifrit shrugged and nodded, then reached down a hairy arm and picked up King Warin. For a few minutes the Ifrit disappeared, then he put his head back over the head of the Wadi.
"Did you know, by the way," he said to Evrard, "that there are a whole troop of soldiers coming this way? They are only about a hundred yards off." This brought me abruptly to my feet. "Do you think they are from Yurt, or should I kill them?"
"No," said Joachim before Evrard could answer. "Let's not have any more killing."
"This is the one you found amusing, isn't it, my dear?" said the Ifrit to his wife. "Well, I won't kill them yet, anyway. But I'd better get all of you away from the soldiers. For one thing, little mage," to me, "you still haven't worked your magic on my wife."
Before she could ask what he meant, the Ifrit stretched out his hand, and the quiet air shimmered and whirled. We were caught up in a wind that swept us, and a great deal of rock and sand, into the air. I caught a brief glimpse of startled faces beneath white turbans, then somersaulting and gasping we were carried across the valley and set down in the oasis where we had first met the Ifrit's wife.
The air around us immediately became again still and hot as we tried to recover our equilibrium. Kaz-alrhun's flying carpet and ebony flying horse waited under the palm trees. Dominic still held the gold box with the Pearl inside, and the enameled cabinet he had found in the cave rested at an angle by his foot.
Maffi had spoken very little, but he suddenly took the Ifrit around the ankle. "I know what I want to be," he called up. "I want to become an Ifrit."
The Ifrit picked him up, a smile splitting his bristly face. "And what makes you think you could become one?"
"I wanted to apprentice myself to a mage," said Maffi, matching the Ifrit's grin with one of his own, "or even a western wizard, though none of them seemed to want me. But I realize now that to apprentice myself to you would be much more rewarding."
The Ifrit put him back down with a chuckle. "Ifriti are very old," he said, "and you are very young. Come talk to me again when you have lived longer than Solomon."
Maffi picked himself up and dusted himself off. "I never said you could not be my apprentice, boy," said Kaz-alrhun. "But you must realize it is possible to be too young for a mage, as well as too young for an Ifrit. The experiences of this trip may teach you something, however. Ask me again when we have returned to Xantium."
The boy's assumed dignity vanished at once, and he turned to the mage with shining eyes. "I already know one spell," he said eagerly, "one out of western school magic. Let me show you—would you like some illusory color on your chest? I figured out on my own how to do both pink and purple at the same time. Will this make magery easier?"
So even Maffi, I thought, might have his heart's desire.
"What's this spell the wizard is supposed to put on me?" demanded the Ifrit's wife.
I had promised this and now had to carry it out. "I can slow down natural aging," I told her. "It won't make you any younger than you now are, but it will keep you youthful much longer. The Ifrit couldn't bear the idea of his beautiful wife becoming old."
She whirled away from me and smacked the Ifrit on the foot. "So just because I'm your wife, you think you can make my decisions for me?" The Ifrit frowned, puzzled, but she didn't give him time to answer. "I like being human! I don't want to live for centuries like some mage! And what makes you think I'd want to live longer than normal if I had to spend all the extra time with you?"
"But I thought you liked me, my dear," the Ifrit protested in a small voice—or what would have been a small voice in anything but such a large being.
She relented and smiled up at him, her hands on her hips. "Of course I like you, and I'm sorry I scolded. But don't make arrangements about me without consulting me!"
The Ifrit nodded. "But now that I've consulted you—"
She laughed. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need anyone's spells but you
rs, my dear."
Pleased, the Ifrit picked her up and planted a kiss on top of her head that left her wiping saliva off her hair.
"All of you probably want some food," said the Ifrit, frowning and trying to count us. "How many of you are there, thirteen? It's hard to keep track of such little beings." I myself counted and, with Sir Hugo's party, our party from Yurt, plus Kaz-alrhun, Maffi, and the Ifrit's wife, got the same answer. "Well, get the fires started, my dear, and I'll bring you a few more of the emir's sheep."
As the desert evening came on, cooling the clear air, I licked meat juices from my lips and looked across a valley that now had no sign of the emir's soldiers in it. The Ifrit and his wife sat off to one side, apparently trading funny stories with each other, but the rest of us were gathered around the dying embers of the cooking fires.
"I guess all there is to do now is to get safely home," said Hugo. He and his father sat together, their shoulders touching. "It's strange, because the whole trip was painful and dangerous and frustrating, but now that it's almost over I find myself wishing we could go on forever."
I pictured the original six of us as we had set out in early spring, all the equipment which was now in the hands of the emir's soldiers carefully packed on our horses, when our worst danger was the lord of the red sandstone castle, and when I had not yet discovered school magic in the spells of an evil king. I agreed with Hugo; I wished our trip was not ending but would continue forever.
But the thought of Yurt and the king's garden, where he would soon be planting his new rose, was also abruptly sweet. The forested hills of Yurt would be turning yellow and red, and the air would have the tang of fresh apples.
"It's going to be a long trip, even with a flying carpet," commented Ascelin.
"Do you think you can get all of us onto your carpet?" Dominic asked Kaz-alrhun. "With it we'll be able to cross the desert even without our horses and supplies. Let's stop at that oasis, however, and see if my stallion is still where the boy left him! If we leave the two of you in Xantium, we can then fly on to the western kingdoms. I'm certain our wizard will be able to work the carpet's spells."