The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

No prince here will ope your eyes,

  Only thugs who’d steal your breath.

  Lass, awake from certain death!”

  The girl ‘s eyes fluttered, opened—and saw the contorted face bending over her, the strong arms sweeping down to stretch the garrote across her neck. She screamed and sat up convulsively, but that only made it easier for the priest to wrap the cord around her neck and pull.

  It snapped.

  The priest stared down at the broken ends in his hand, dumb with shock, just as the younger priest jerked Matt up and wrapped his cord. There was a moment of pain, then a loud snap, and Matt spoke while he could, reciting the escape spell again. The older priest, hearing his voice, turned livid and yanked another strangling cord from someplace, but just as he was stretching it between his hands, Matt shouted,

  “… out of sight and sound of sea!”

  and the vertigo seized him again.

  This time, mist seemed to boil up, and he whirled away into it, hoping against hope that the girl was coming with him. Then a smooth, loose surface pressed up against his feet and the mist dissipated, showing him hovels all about him in the dark, and above them in the distance, a gorgeous palace.

  His knees gave way, and he sank down in the dirt of the alleyway with a silent prayer of thanks, the more so because he saw the girl in the white robe kneeling a few feet away from him, head bowed, probably trying to choke down nausea.

  The world steadied and Matt climbed to his feet, albeit shakily. He started to walk and fell heavily, managing to fall and land on his side. Of course—he’d transported them out of Kali’s temple, but their feet and hands were still bound. He wished for Balkis and her sharp teeth, but since she wasn’t there, he’d have to untie the girl’s bonds himself, then ask her to do the same for him. He just hoped the translation spell would let him speak Hindi as well as understand it.

  At least he’d fallen only a foot or so from her. He reached out his bound hands toward hers, but she yanked them back with a gasp, then saw his face and seemed to lose her fear.

  “That’s right,” Matt told her, “I’m your fellow captive. Hold still, now, and I’ll untie you. Then you can do the same for me.”

  Slowly, the girl lowered her hands and held them out. She had to be very brave or very naive, Matt decided, since she didn’t seem to be wary of him at all. He’d have to warn her about strange men, especially since there were very many a lot stranger than himself.

  He picked at the knot, pulled a rope-end loose, then untied the whole intricate mess in a minute. “The first one is always the hardest,” he told the girl. “My turn, now.”

  He held up his hands, lying on his back. She picked at the knot with slender fingers that scarcely seemed up to the task but were apparently much stronger than they looked, for she slid the rope free more quickly than Matt had.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I think I can manage the feet myself.” He sat up and started on the knot at his ankles. By the time he finished, he found her standing before him. “Quick work,” he said approvingly, and climbed to his feet. “My name is Matthew Mantrell.”

  “I am … Helga,” she said in amazingly good Merovencian. Matt stared. Then he said, “Little far from home, aren’t you?”

  “I come from the north,” she said noncommittally.

  Matt frowned; she didn’t look Allustrian-but that was her own affair. He shrugged. “Well, the first order of business is to get you home. Where do you live?”

  “The north,” Helga repeated, spreading her hands. “I cannot tell you more.”

  “Well, the road back to Allustria leads through lands I have to visit anyway,” Matt mused. ”I’m afraid it’s going to be a long trip. How did you get here, young woman?”

  “By sea,” she said.

  Not very helpful, was she? “Father a merchant?” Matt asked. “What happened to him?”

  “Pirates,” she answered.

  Matt felt a stab of sympathy for the girl and wondered if she’d been part of the spoils his Mediterranean pirates had taken from the merchant who had become his fellow galley-slave. After all, if the smuggler had bought him from the slave market, why not her?

  But he wasn’t about to ask—he didn’t want to arouse bad memories. “Well, let’s find our way to one of the city gates,” he said. “Maybe we can join a caravan going west.”

  Helga nodded without saying anything, and Matt turned away with a sigh. She wasn’t going to be much company, was she? But that didn’t lessen the responsibility he’d taken on, of returning her to her home. For a moment he had a vision of what his own little girl might look like at fifteen or sixteen—very much like Alisande, probably, but with Jimena’s bone structure. If she were lost in a foreign land, wouldn’t he want some other young father to take her home? Definitely he had to lead Helga home, even if her father didn’t manage to escape.

  He turned back to see if she was following—but she wasn’t. The slovenly street was still and empty. The girl had vanished.

  CHAPTER 9

  Matt looked around frantically, but the narrow street was completely empty. Apparently Helga had been afraid of him after all. But she couldn’t have gone far—he’d only turned his back for a few minutes. “Helga!” he called, then winced at the loudness of his own voice in the alleyway. He lowered his tone, hissing, “Helga! Where are you? I won’t hurt you, but nightwalkers might!”

  His answer was a plaintive mew from his feet.

  Matt looked down and saw a small white cat looking up at him pathetically.

  “Later, kitty,” he said. “I have a girl to find.” He set off toward the narrow space between two hovels, thinking he might find a hiding place behind. The cat followed him, mews changing from plaintive to demanding—and growing louder and louder. As they neared the hovel, Matt realized the windows were only square holes and the door nothing but a piece of rough cloth. At that pitch and volume, Small-and-Furry would wake the neighbors! He turned around to the cat and knelt, exasperated. “Look, I have to try to find someone, and you’re not helping! You’ll wake half the neighborhood, and they’ll chase me away, and I’ll never find her, and I have to keep her safe!”

  The little cat sat down and gave a determined but softer meow.

  Something about the tone seemed familiar. Matt looked more closely and recognized the outsized ears, the small and slender form. “Balkis!” he hissed.

  The cat looked at him as though he were crazy.

  “No, you can’t be,” Matt sighed. “Wrong color. Well, I’ll tell you what—you go your way and I’ll go mine, and if you find a young girl wearing a white robe, you meow loudly, okay?”

  For answer, the cat leaped onto his thigh and scooted up to his shoulders.

  “Ouch!” Matt said aloud, then cut back to an agonized whisper. “Velvet paws! Velvet paws!” He went still, remembering the last time he had said that—and reminded by his own words that Helga had been wearing a white robe.

  Purring in his left ear. He turned his head and found he was looking directly into the cat’s eyes. “You are Balkis, aren’t you? But you’re also Helga. How else did your coat change color?”

  The cat gave an indignant meow.

  “No use denying it,” Matt told her. “I’ve found you out.” Softly, he sang,

  “Sweet sixteen goes as a cat

  Just to spy on boys.

  She hisses and she purrs aloud

  At every little noise.”

  The cat meowed in outrage.

  “Let’s see her in her true form

  For a very little while,

  For she can’t hide that she’s just

  Putting on the style!”

  The cat leaped down from his shoulder, then squalled protest as her form fluxed, stretched, then steadied into Helga’s. She spat a verse in Allustrian, though, and instantly flowed back into the form of a small white cat.

  “Gotcha!” Matt whispered triumphantly. “So that’s why you’re white—you’re wearing a white robe now! What were you we
aring before, a brown dress?”

  Balkis turned about and, with great aplomb, sat with her back to him.

  “So now I’m being punished, am I? To think that all this time I’ve been traveling with a teenager! Wise of you to disguise yourself as a cat, though,” Matt said thoughtfully, “especially on a ship full of pirates. You wouldn’t want to have appeared as a pretty, voluptuous girl there.”

  The cat peered over her shoulder at him with a feline frown.

  “Oh yes, I know you’re pretty.” Matt remembered that cats were very susceptible to flattery. “A uniquely attractive cat, in fact. The touch of the exotic is fascinating, and the huge eyes and shiny coat would make any mouser yowl with envy.”

  Languidly, Balkis stood up and stretched, arching her back, then sat down again, just happening to be in profile.

  Matt saw he was making progress, but he wasn’t getting her back into human form. Transformation spells wouldn’t work—she’d proved that was one bit of magic she had down pat, probably didn’t even need to think about.

  He decided on shock tactics. “Is that why you stay in cat disguise? Because you don’t think your human form is pretty?”

  Balkis leaped up and glared at him.

  “Probably right,” Matt said judiciously. “After all, if you didn’t have any boys buzzing around you, you’d prefer the toms.”

  Balkis arched her back, spitting, even as she seemed to flow and swell and writhe into an amorphous white-and-tan giant egg that pulled in on itself to take human form, Helga’s form. “A lass might also seek refuge if she suspects the boys want only her pretty body, her father’s fields, and her mother’s house!”

  Matt caught his breath; fired by anger, she was beautiful indeed. “Quite right, too,” he said, “and I can see why they wouldn’t let you alone. You really are a beauty.”

  Balkis stared, confused by his change in direction—and suddenly wary.

  Time for a touch of fatherly reassurance, Matt decided. “I hope my little daughter will be as pretty as you when she grows up.”

  Balkis eyed him uncertainly. “You do not wish her to look like her mother?”

  “Oh, definitely I do,” Matt said. “After all, I married the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  Balkis’ eyes sparked with jealousy—but also with reassurance. “How will you manage to return to her, then?”

  “By finding out who’s threatening her, along with the rest of Europe,” Matt said, “then taking passage on a ship. Of course, I might call up a friendly dragon and hitch a ride, or even see if my transportation spells will take me halfway around the world.”

  “You have not even thought of it, then.”

  “Not really,” Matt admitted. “Not time to think of going home, you see—I haven’t found out what Alisande needs to know.”

  Balkis stared at him in frank disbelief. “You have never doubted for a moment that you can return whenever you wish!”

  Matt nodded. “I’ve had experience along those lines. How about you?”

  “What of me?” Instantly, Balkis was on the defensive. “I have had very little experience of any kind, except in dealing with bumptious males!”

  Matt took the warning even if it wasn’t needed. “Did you really come to Merovence to learn magic from me?”

  “Even as Idris advised, aye.”

  “Really must meet this Idris someday,” Matt muttered, then aloud, “Where did you come from?”

  “From Allustria, as I’ve told you.”

  Matt shook his head. “You’re too exotic. They don’t grow eyes like yours, or skin that tone, in southern Allustria. Where did you come from before that?”

  “I—I do not know.” Balkis’ voice faltered. “Idris enchanted me and drew out memories of women with skin like bark and green hair who helped me—she called them dryads—and of others whose tresses were like seaweed and whose skin was greenly tinted. She called them nixies.”

  “Water-spirits.” Matt nodded. “They have different names in different countries. They helped you?”

  “Aye, nixies and dryads both. The nixies took me to the dryads, who cared for me, gave me the power to tum into a cat, and directed me to join a caravan that took me to a place called Novgorod.”

  “Novgorod?” Matt stared. “That’s in Russia!”

  “What is Russia?”

  “A country far to the east of Merovence.” Matt frowned. “How old were you when you made this journey?”

  Balkis gazed off into space, remembering. “My mother said I was two when I came to them.”

  “Two years old?” Matt stared. “How did you survive?”

  “As a cat,” Balkis said with irritation. “With four legs, claws, and sharp teeth, I was well enough grown to make my own way when I was only a year old.”

  “Clever, clever,” Matt said, marveling. “Your dryads may have had wooden heads, but they were filled with brains.” Then another thought struck. “It was they who gave you your magical talent!”

  “Aye—or so said Idris. She guessed that I had spent most of my first year in the forest, and that the dryads had stroked my fur many times …”

  “And left a charge of static magic every time. Yes.” Matt nodded. “No wonder you can learn wizardry.”

  “Idris said I was an apt pupil, that I learned all she knew in a year.”

  Matt shuddered. “Major talent indeed. I’ll have to be careful what spells I work while you’re around.”

  “Why?” Balkis’ gaze sharpened. “Do you not want me to learn?”

  “No, I do want you to learn.” Matt sighed, remembering this same conversation with student after student when he’d been a teaching fellow. “But you have to learn to walk before you can learn to run.”

  “What does that mean?” Balkis challenged.

  “That you have to understand the intermediate spells before you try the advanced ones, because if you try to use the tougher spells right away, you’re liable to kill yourself and everyone near you.”

  Balkis shrank. “Is magic so dangerous as that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Matt said softly. “Very dangerous indeed.” He remembered the ocean roaring in over the land bridge between Merovence and Bretanglia when he’d made it sink by a spell the druids had given him, and shuddered. “You bet it can be dangerous. Ask me before you try anything you’ve heard me chant, okay?”

  “If you wish.” Balkis’ eyes were wide and frightened.

  “Hey, don’t be that put off!” Matt reached out a reassuring hand, brushed her fingers. “You shouldn’t be afraid of magic—just have a very healthy respect for it.”

  Balkis stared at him a moment longer, then relaxed enough to smile.

  “See? Caution doesn’t mean -fear.” Matt grinned, then turned serious again. “A caravan to Novgorod, you said? What kinds of animals?”

  “Tall ones, each with two humps on its back.”

  “Bactrian camels.” Matt pursed his lips. “Do you remember whether the sun was behind you when you started out in the mornings, or in front of you?”

  Balkis’ eyes lost focus as she gazed back into the very early pictures Idris had called up within her. “Behind.”

  “And the sunset was in front?”

  Again the look back into memory, again the nod. “Aye.”

  “Then you were traveling from the east toward the west.” Matt nodded. “That accounts for your skin tone and eyes—but how far east, I wonder?”

  Balkis stared. “What could the east have to do with my appearance?”

  “Because the people far to the east, in Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, China, and Japan, have golden skin, and folds at the outer comers of their eyes that make them look slanted.”

  Balkis touched her eyes. “Like mine!”

  “Yes, but your skin has only a touch of gold to it, your eyes only a hint of a tilt, and your hair is dark brown, not black like theirs,” Matt pointed out. “At a guess, your people are hybrids between the European type of people, like me, and the Mongolia
n type farther east.”

  He could see the excitement in Balkis’ eyes. “Can you say where I was born, then?”

  Matt shook his head with a smile of regret. “Only that it was somewhere in Central Asia, I’m afraid, and that’s a very big place.”

  “Oh.” Balkis lowered her gaze, crestfallen for a moment, then looked up with a brave smile. “Still, you know that I am neither from Europe nor this China you spoke of. That is a great matter, is it not?”

  “Definite progress, yes.” Matt smiled, warmed by her courage. He decided not to tell her that she’d been born where the horde came from—but that reminded him of the older priest’s words. “Did you understand what they said, the priests who tried to strangle us?”

  “Priests?” Balkis asked, wide-eyed. “What manner of priests seek to slay?”

  “Ones who worship Kali, the destructive aspect of a great goddess,” Matt explained. “Could you understand their words?”

  “Not a one! Could you?”

  Matt nodded. “Back there on the galley, I recited a spell that let me understand any language spoken near me. I’ll give you the same treatment just in case we become separated.”

  But Balkis wasn’t to be deterred from the point. “What did they say, these priests?”

  Matt took a deep breath, then gave it to her straight. “That you’re a threat to the horde’s plans for world conquest.”

  “I?” Balkis stared at him, shocked and, finally; frightened.

  She saw the implications quickly, Matt realized, and he was impressed by her intelligence. “Do you have any idea why you might be the key to stopping the horde?”