by Mage Quest
"Do not concern yourself with that!" said Kaz-alrhun as I desperately started over again creating some sort of magical shield. "Everyone, onto the carpet!" He had increased its size again.
King Haimeric didn't want to go. "He was still so young," he said, the tears streaming unchecked down his cheeks as he stared into the empty sky. "My own life is nearly at an end, but there was so much Dominic could still have done! Now we won't even be able to visit his grave."
"He fulfilled both his life and his quest," I said, helping the king onto the carpet. I had to pick up and give him his carefully wrapped rootstock or he would have left it behind.
"I never had a chance!" cried Hugo in genuine distress, sounding more like a boy than a blooded warrior. "I never asked him to forgive me for putting ribbons in his stallion's mane!"
"Come!" called Kaz-alrhun impatiently. "In pouring forth tears there is little profit."
The Ifrit's wife wouldn't go. "I'll be fine," she said. "The soldiers won't find my oasis." She thumbed the rings on her necklace and smiled at Sir Hugo's party and then, somewhat less jauntily, at Joachim, as she stepped back under the palms.
We lifted into the evening sky on the carpet, piled as closely together in the center as we could, only twenty yards ahead of the turbaned soldiers. A few arrows hit the bottom of the carpet but bounced away harmlessly. I leaned cautiously over the edge and watched the Ifrit's oasis wink away into safety, to another level of reality or to non-existence.
EPILOGUE
Fountains sparkled in the glow of the magic lamps in the courtyard of Kaz-alrhun's house in Xantium. The evening air was still warm, and even here, in the middle of the city, little stray breezes found us, scented with the tang of the sea and with desert sage. Automata, simple self-propelled serving carts on wheels, rattled over the flagstones to bring us a variety of hot and cold dishes.
"So you do not grow eggplants in Yurt?" the mage asked King Haimeric. "Take some from Xantium for your queen. The market will also have every kind of cotton fabric you might desire. And certainly buy coffee beans as well, but remember you will first have to grind them to a sandy consistency to brew the beverage." When the king did not seem as pleased at this suggestion as Kaz-alrhun apparently expected him to be, he added, "You can buy all the presents for your queen in the government-regulated market if you prefer, rather than the Thieves' Market."
The king tried to smile. "She'll be happy with anything I bring her, but none of it will make up for coming home without Dominic."
The mage laughed, startling one of his automata, though it was able to recover without dumping its load of spiced lamb. "Is that it?" he asked, looking around the table at the rest of us. "Is this the reason you have all had long faces since we left the Wadi?" None of us answered. "I would expect at least you, Daimbert, to know better."
"We shouldn't have let him do it," said Ascelin.
"I would not say you 'let' him do it," replied the mage with a chuckle. "If so, what do you do when you do not wish someone to go? I saw you try to hold him back. Or do you regret not wrestling the Ifrit as well? Your Prince Dominic played his game brilliantly at the end. He lifted the Pearl's curse and sent the rest of you home safely on my flying carpet."
"We have just enough money left to book sea passage from here back to the western kingdoms," said the king. "Whirlwind should be able to carry Ascelin for the rest of our trip, so we'll make good time."
"Nonsense," replied the mage. "I already told you I would let your wizard borrow my carpet. It is late in the season for as long a journey as you still have before you, especially for an old man. And you know you shall need to plant your rootstock very soon if you wish to grow a blue rose yourself."
When King Haimeric did not look cheered by this thought either, the mage leaned back and spread out his hands on the table. "I spent much of my career searching for King Solomon's Pearl, first trying to find the secret of its location and then attempting to maneuver others into uncovering it in a way that would not bring its potential curse down on me. I found it at last, but I lost it almost in the moment of finding, and never even held it in my hands. Life is a game, and you play as well as you can as long as you can, yet you must be prepared not to win every time. Dominic fared much better on his quest than I on mine, and yet you do not see me bewailing my fate."
None of us tried to answer. I was seated next to Joachim, who paid no attention to the rest of us or even to his dinner, as though his mind was already on his duties in the cathedral.
When the automata began clearing the plates from the lamb course, Kaz-alrhun rose to his feet. "Come with me, Daimbert. I want to show you something."
I followed him up narrow, dark stairs to a balcony at the very top of the house. The last light was fading from the sky above us. We looked out across the city where fairy lights gleamed, and out across Xantium harbor. Voices and snatches of song rose faintly toward us.
The mage leaned on the railing for a moment, then shifted his massive bulk to look at me in the dim light. "This is what I wanted to show you," he said, "Xantium, my city, where there are many religions and many conflicting forms of political organization, but only one supreme mage, myself. Are you not the supreme wizard in your own kingdom of Yurt?"
"I'm the only one," I said. I wasn't sure what point the mage was trying to make, but if he was saying that it was good to have one's own home even without the Pearl, well, the Pearl had never been my goal anyway.
"I want to ask you something," I said. "During the long flight here I was trying to make sense of what happened. Was it indeed you who started the rumors that King Solomon's Pearl had been found again?"
"That indeed was I," he said, "as you know well. When I decided to try again for the Pearl, I hoped that widespread—though false—stories of its discovery would bring you to the East if you ever planned to seek it yourselves. But I could not be sure what, if anything, the elder Prince Dominic had told you in Yurt of his quest. It had after all been fifty years since his death. It was even possible, I thought, that you knew neither the ruby ring's powers nor of the very existence of the Black Pearl. So while broadcasting the general rumors of the Pearl, I also arranged for a separate rumor, one that might bring the ruby ring to me even if those of Yurt knew not its powers.
"I made sure that two separate stories followed the trade routes to your western kingdoms, separate because I did not wish that anyone should realize I was the author of both. The second was sent very secretly, that my ebony horse was on sale in exchange for a magical ring from Yurt. This news I sent only to a few, those whom I already knew were sometimes unscrupulous." That, I thought, certainly described both Arnulf and Warin. "One of them, I hoped, would bring the ruby ring to me in Xantium without necessarily knowing its true value."
He cocked his head at me. "When you first approached my stall in the Thieves' Market, flaunting the ruby ring on your prince's finger but attempting an elaborate charade of buying my horse with some other ring from Yurt, I realized you knew full well that I was the author of both rumors, and that in mocking me you sought to establish yourself as a worthy opponent."
If he had thought me a worthy opponent, I didn't plan to tell him how little I had understood when we first reached Xantium.
"I would also ask you something, Daimbert," he continued. "Ever since I renewed my search for the Black Pearl, I have sensed another player in the game, but I have never been able to see him. He is a wizard or mage, of a certainty, but he has kept himself well back from events, as though knowing the danger of the Pearl's curse, and as though playing a long-term game where he felt no urgency to win at once. At first I thought it had to be you."
"Not me," I said, startled. "I knew nothing of the Pearl until this year."
"I realized it was not you when I met you, unless you had erected a highly skillful façade." I was afraid this wasn't a compliment.
"He and I seemed to be working in parallel," the mage continued. "He traced the ruby ring from the caliph's court as I ha
d fifty years ago, and he found the trail less thoroughly cold than it had been for me, because of my own earlier search. Like me, he initially reached a dead-end at the elder Prince Dominic's tomb. And like me, when he finally learned the ring was in Yurt, he knew better, because of the threat of the curse, than to use violence to obtain it."
"Or he recalled," I said in a low voice, "the oaths all western wizards take on magic itself, to help and not injure mankind. It was Dominic's ring. Another western wizard couldn't have taken it from him by force any more than I could." It was now full night, and the mage was only a silhouette against the slightly lighter sky.
"Do you know then who this wizard might be?"
I shook my head, reluctant to voice my suspicions, although I didn't think he could see the gesture.
"Have you turned your thoughts, for example, to who might have freed the Ifrit from his bottle in the first place?"
I was silent for several moments before answering. Down in the harbor a ship was coming in, lamps hung from its mast and along the rails.
"I have thought," I said at last, "that the 'mage' whom the Ifrit said originally freed him must have been Elerius, a western wizard, the best wizard in fact the school has ever produced. The chief reason I think so is that King Warin was his employer, and Warin seemed remarkably well informed about the East. I also think it must have been Elerius who appeared, in disguise, to Sir Hugo's party in the Holy City, urging them to go the Wadi. The only two people from whom I have heard the highly unlikely story of Noah's Ark being found are Evrard, who said a 'traveler' told it to them at the same time as he sold them the Ifrit's bottle, and Elerius, who said he thought they must have heard such a story."
"Why would this wizard have freed an Ifrit?" When the mage shifted, the balcony made somewhat alarming creaking sounds, but it held firm under our weight.
"I think he freed the Ifrit originally in the hope of using him to break through the Pearl's magical defenses, and when he discovered that wouldn't work, he reserved the two wishes he had earned until he might need them for something else."
"An excellent strategy," said Kaz-alrhun approvingly. "Do not waste anything; if a move does not profit when you take it, reserve it until it may."
"Last year," I said, "he used his first wish to order the Ifrit to guard the Wadi against anyone from Yurt. But he may have outmaneuvred himself in giving Evrard the Ifrit's bottle." Some of this I was still working out as I spoke. "It was an excellent ploy. He had the Ifrit waiting to capture people from Yurt, then sent Sir Hugo's party to the emir with a bottle that would most certainly gain them admittance to his presence, as well as a request to guide them to the Wadi that would result in their being imprisoned—where they would serve as bait for those of us from Yurt. By the way, I expect he told them specifically to eat the emir's salt before asking about the Wadi, because he intended to keep them alive." Unlike you, I thought, who didn't care. "But because Evrard met the Ifrit before they reached Bahdroc, and was able to trick him temporarily back into his bottle, Elerius's link with the Ifrit was broken."
"In any game," said Kaz-alrhun, "one should prepare for all contingencies, even the most unexpected. Do you think, then, that Elerius is also the wizard who made the onyx ring? He must have persuaded Arnulf and King Warin it would do to buy my horse—though he knew well it would not—with the intention of making me reveal my hand, just as I played along with King Warin in the hope of making your Elerius reveal his hand."
"He guessed your plans just as you sensed his," I said in agreement, "and wanted to precipitate them. I've wondered for a long time what payment Arnulf could have offered him in return for making a substitute 'magic ring from Yurt,' and I realize now that it was to be informed when we reached Arnulf's house. Arnulf said something about the school checking up on us, which I should have realized was highly unlikely—it could only have been Elerius. And then, at Elerius's urging, Arnulf directed us along the road to the mountain passes that went through Warin's kingdom. In case Arnulf couldn't persuade us to bring the onyx ring to you in Xantium, Elerius wanted to be sure Warin had it instead."
"A fine strategist, your Elerius. He knows the most subtle and effective form of maneuvre is to allow others to think they are acting in their own self-interest."
"He is not 'my' Elerius," I replied, mostly under my breath. I thought, but did not like to say, that he seemed willing to use even the self-interest of a man who had given himself to the powers of darkness—to the point of teaching him a little school magic. He had also almost certainly been in contact with Warin's chancellor's friend, Prince Vlad, who was now doubtless absorbed in rebuilding his body with the magic of blood and bone. "The most discouraging aspect of it is, Elerius surely thought of himself as acting from the purest of motives."
"And he is the best of your school-trained wizards," said Kaz-alrhun in satisfaction. "A worthy opponent, then. When both he and I directed you toward the Wadi, both of us even using your friends as bait, you never had a choice. Was he trying to obtain the Black Pearl for himself or so that your school could use its powers?"
"I don't know," I said slowly. "But I suspect he never hinted to the school about any of his plans, intending to keep them entirely secret unless he succeeded."
"If a western wizard could resist boasting even about mastering an Ifrit," said Kaz-alrhun, "then he must indeed keep his own counsel."
"If he wanted the Pearl for the school, he would have had to betray his employer, who certainly wanted it for himself." But Elerius had left Warin's kingdom. Had he intended to get the Black Pearl for his own use, telling Warin just enough about it to send the king on the hunt for it, shielding himself from the Pearl's curse but knowing he could always obtain it from Warin later—or obtain it after the king died of whatever curse he was bound to bring down on himself?
"Once your school learns what has happened," commented Kaz-alrhun, "they may not be pleased with you, Daimbert, for sinking the Pearl beyond recovery in the Outer Sea."
I had thought about that at some length. Evrard and I would have to make sure our stories matched as we tried to explain delicately to Zahlfast what had happened to the most powerful manmade object out of the old magic.
"I'll have to tell the school about the Pearl," I said, "but I don't intend bringing any accusations against Elerius. I have no proof of any of this, only guesses, and if he denied it they'd certainly believe the best graduate they ever had rather than me."
"I would say he has maneuvred you as well," said the mage thoughtfully. "Even if you did wish to accuse him, what accusations could you bring? It comes to mind, Daimbert, that he may at some point seek to use your abilities—or even seek your friendship. You will need to sharpen your own strategies for when you and he meet again in the future."
"And had you prepared all your strategies," I asked, "for the Pearl being cursed almost as soon as we found it, and for it now lying at the bottom of the Outer Sea?"
A low chuckle came out of the darkness. "You have outmaneuvered both the East's greatest mage and your own western school's best graduate. Find satisfaction in this! It seems to me, Daimbert, that you have played the game better than any of us."