“None at all!” But cynicism rose behind the fright in her eyes. “If you can discover that, you will use me as a weapon, will you not?”
“Not a weapon, no,” Matt said slowly, “but as an ally. Can you honestly say the Caliph is using Queen Alisande as a weapon?”
“There would be some truth to it,” Balkis said slowly, “but you might as easily say she uses him. I take your point.”
Amazingly quickly, Matt thought, and with no explanation. “What I had in mind goes beyond that, though. It’s a matter of common interests. If stopping the horde helped you regain your homeland and your heritage, wouldn’t you want to foil their plans?”
“Yes!” Balkis’ eyes burned with sudden fervor.
Matt nodded. “Not a weapon, then, but someone who shares a common goal with me.”
“I see why you seek to learn more about this enemy,” Balkis said slowly, “but was that he, the man in midnight-blue robes who appeared in front of you?”
“And held my attention long enough for the Thuggee to sneak up behind me and knock me out, yes,” Matt said sardonically, looking away. “I really should have been more aware of my surroundings.”
“With a surprise like his appearance, it would be a wonder if you had been,” Balkis said dryly.
Matt looked back at her with surprised gratitude—but Balkis seemed unaware that she had made an excuse for him, only that she was dealing in facts. “Why did he not smite you with magic himself?”
“Good question,” Matt said, “and the obvious answer is that he couldn’t.”
“He is no magician, then?”
“Oh, he definitely is, if he could appear out of nowhere that way,” Matt said, “but I suspect he’s cautious, too. He seems to have some idea who I am, so he would have been wary of my magic.”
“That was why he bade the Thuggee strike you unconscious!”
“Good point,” Matt said. “How did they catch you?”
“As one struck your head, another pounced on me where I lay behind a basket and held some foul-smelling rag over my nose.”
“A drug,” Matt frowned. “So Arjasp knows how to make ether or chloroform or some such, and knew where you were. Difficult to do, if he wasn’t there.”
“But he was!”
“No, his image was,” Matt explained. “If he’d been there himself, he could have hit us with major magic, and would have. But if he were a thousand miles away, just projecting a sort of picture-in-the-round of himself, he couldn’t do much here—not too many spells work over long distances, and the ones that do take a lot of energy and concentration. He was probably using up half his resources just sending his image.”
“Why not come himself, if such a sending were so tiring?” Balkis asked, frowning.
“Because he would have arrived already tired, and being considerably older than me, he’d tire more easily,” Matt explained, “whereas I would have been full of energy.”
“And you might have struck him low with your magic!”
“Yes.” Matt nodded. “Definitely safer to stay home and send instructions to the Thuggee. Of course, there’s the little question of why they obeyed him, but what I said about common goals might have something to do with that.”
“At the very least,” Balkis said, ”they would have had assistance in finding two victims for sacrifice.”
“Good point.” Matt wondered how long it would take her to learn everything he knew. “And it should have worked. I shouldn’t have woken up quickly enough to get us out of that temple, and he probably didn’t suspect that I knew who Kali was, or could understand Hindi and Sanskrit.”
“How did you know that goddess?” Balkis eyed him askance.
“It’s called a good liberal arts education,” Matt told her. “That’s also how I’d know Arjasp was a magician even if he hadn’t appeared out of nowhere.”
“By these ‘liberal arts’ of yours?” Balkis frowned.
“By history, anyway,” Matt said. “He was talking about Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god of light, and Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian god of darkness—from which I would guess he’s a Zoroastrian.”
“There is sense in that.” Balkis nodded. “What is a Zoroastrian?”
“A person who believes the religion preached by a prophet named Zoroaster,” Matt said, “though it had been around a long time before him; he just gave it its final form. The priests were called ‘magi,’ and they had so great a reputation for spells and supernatural power that people based the word ‘magic’ on them.”
Balkis shivered. “Powerful wizards indeed! But who was this Ahriman that Arjasp spoke of?”
“Just a more modem name for Angra Mainyu,” Matt said, “just as the more recent name for Ahura Mazda is Ormuzd. Before Zoroaster, the Mazdaeans believed that the world is a battleground between Ahura Mazda, the god of goodness, and Ahrirnan, the god of evil. They were equal in power, so humanity had to decide the issue by rallying to support Ahura Mazda and giving him more power by living good lives and doing good to one another.”
“Then Ahriman must tempt people to hurt one another and live evil lives,” Balkis said slowly.
“You understand quickly,” Matt told her.
“But if Arjasp is a … what is one of the magi?”
“A magus,” Matt said, “at least, in Latin.”
“What is Latin?”
“The language of an empire that has seen its day and fallen apart,” Matt sighed. “But the magi in the pictures I’ve seen wore white robes and hats. I think Arjasp is a magus who has decided to turn his coat and become a priest of Ahriman.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?” Balkis cried.
“You heard him,” Matt said. “He’s dreamed up the idea that Ahriman has to win the fight and conquer the whole world before Ahura Mazda can begin to win it back. Then, presumably, the god of light will win more and more battles until he conquers the world and Right and Goodness prevail. Of course, the Zoroastrians never believed any such thing.”
Balkis frowned, beginning to understand. “So if this Arjasp is devoted to Ahura Mazda, he must do all he can to see that Ahriman wins the whole world as quickly as possible?”
Matt nodded. “That’s how I figure him.”
“Then his mind is crazed!” Balkis cried. “It is split into fragments as surely as the glaze of a pot that has baked too long in the kiln!”
“Crazy he is,” Matt confirmed.
“What could have thrown him so far from good sense?”
“Who knows?” Matt shrugged. “I’m not a psychiatrist—a doctor of the mind. Maybe he came into contact with a Chinese merchant and learned about the Taoists—they believe that the world goes through cycles from bad to better to good, then to worse and to bad again. Or he could have heard about it from the Germans, with their belief in an endless winter followed by a war of gods that engulfs the whole world and destroys it so that a whole new world can . be born. Or maybe something just went wrong with hisbiochemistry or something broke inside his brain, and he brooded about his own sufferings and the unfairness of life, and decided the only way to cure it was to hurry up and get the battle between Angra Mainyu and Ahura Mazda over with, so that Ahura Mazda could start winning again and punish Angra Mainyu for him.” He spread his hands, at a loss. “No way we can really know, Balkis. All we can be sure of is that he was one of the magi, but went wrong somehow and turned against his own kind and Ahura Mazda.”
Balkis shuddered. “It is horrible to think that a man could be so twisted as that!”
“Yes, using the magic of goodness for evil purposes,” Matt agreed. “One way or another, he certainly seems to have recruited a military genius and made a gur-khan of him.”
“Yes, and convinced whole peoples of their right to conquer!”
“We’ll have to set them straight about that, won’t we?” Matt flashed her a grin.
Balkis stared, startled by his optimism. Then, slowly, she returned the smile.
“But before we can co
nvince them, we have to find them.” Matt turned toward the end of the street and offered her his arm.
Tentatively, she slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow, but her smile faded. “You do not truly mean to beard the horde by ourselves!”
“No, but the closer we get to them, the more we’ll learn,” Matt said. “When we know enough, we’ll turn west and travel till we meet my wife’s army. Then we’ll tell her what we’ve learned and let her deal with the horde—her, her allies, and about fifty thousand soldiers.”
Balkis’ smile came back, and they walked together between the rows of hovels. “What lies north?”
“More of this land of Hind—India, some people call it—a lot more. Beyond that, though, there’s a range of huge mountains, and on the far side of that range, Central Asia begins.”
“Central Asia!” Balkis’ eyes widened. “Is that not where you said I was born?”
“That’s my guess, yes.”
“Might we not also learn some more of my homeland?”
“That’s possible,” Matt conceded. He didn’t tell her he’d been planning on it.
“Only possible.” She seemed crestfallen.
Matt shrugged. “The horde is off in the west fighting the Arabs. We’ll be going through conquered territory, so it should be peaceful, as long as we don’t attract the attention of the garrisons the barbarians have left to oversee the local government. When we find a land where all the people look like you, we’ll know.”
Balkis walked silently beside him for a while, digesting the idea. When she spoke, it was about a much more immediate issue. “How shall we pass the gates? For surely so vast a city as this must be walled.”
“I expect it is,” Matt agreed, “but I didn’t notice any walls along the waterfront. Of course, I couldn’t see much, running away from my erstwhile owner. We’ll just follow the water until we’re out of town.”
“Will the city’s wall not come down to the shore?” Balkis asked doubtfully.
Matt nodded. “But you can change into a cat, and I’ll boost you up to the top. Then I’ll swim around and catch you as you jump.”
“I trust you are skilled at such catching,” Balkis said with asperity.
Matt dismissed the problem with an airy wave. “Just keep your claws in when you leap. Besides, don’t cats have nine lives?”
“I am not eager to test the notion,” Balkis said dryly.
Actually, Matt wouldn’t have minded a few extra lives now and then; he’d heard about the crocodiles in Indian waters. He consoled himself with the idea that he wouldn’t be in very long, but just in case, he started working up an anti-croc verse.
Either the spell worked or the giant lizards were taking the night off. Luck or good planning, he collected Balkis from the wall, catching her as promised—though he suspected it was due more to her skill than his. Once in cat form, she decided to stay that way, riding his shoulders with indolent ease.
The heat rose with the sun, but it was bearable, and Matt was enchanted by the land itself. The air was fragrant with exotic blossoms, and the peasants at work in the fields seemed picturesque and happy. The soft air caressed him, the breeze in the tamarinds and deodars sang to him, and every Kipling story he’d ever read came alive again in his mind.
By mid-morning, though, the sun was beating down with a fiercer heat than he had ever known, and it was heavy going. Matt found a stream and followed its banks, shielded by the low trees that grew there, and managed to keep on until noon with a sleeping cat on his shoulders. When the sun was directly overhead, though, even the leaves couldn’t stop the heat, and Matt found a stand of underbrush to crawl into. Balkis woke as he sat, and he whinnied as her claws came out to hold on. “Velvet paws, velvet paws!” he pleaded, and she withdrew her miniature scimitars, meowing, “You might have warned me.”
“Didn’t want to wake you,” Matt told her. “A nap is the best shield from this heat. Go back to sleep.”
Balkis looked around her, then back at him. “You will sleep, too?”
“You bet,” Matt said, and closed his eyes. He felt her curl up on his stomach, and did manage to recite a brief warding spell before he fell asleep.
He woke to find the sun much lower in the sky and an evening breeze already stirring the jacarandas. Groggily, he lifted his head—and saw Balkis lying on his stomach like a little sphinx, head up and eyes open. He stared. “Have you been awake this whole time?”
“Someone had to stand guard.” Her mew sounded leaden.
“You poor thing!” Matt lifted her as he sat up, then set her on the ground. “You must have broiled!”
“There was shade,” Balkis said. “Still, let us find somewhere cooler to sleep tomorrow, shall we?”
“Good idea.” Matt shoved himself to his feet, then lifted her to his shoulders. “Your turn to sleep, then.”
The cat hung herself around his neck and promptly dozed off.
Matt walked slowly, waiting for his body to work its metabolism up to cruising speed. All in all, he decided, it was definitely better for Balkis to travel as a cat—she might prove all too interesting to any passing nobleman, and they had no patron to protect them from being seized.
She also might prove all too interesting to himself, he had to admit. She was, after all, a very beautiful sample of teenage womanhood.
Oddly, though, he found that his appreciation of her good looks was entirely aesthetic. He wondered about that. Weren’t men supposed to respond to feminine beauty, whether they were married or not? Of course, he hadn’t felt any great lust for Lakshmi the djinn princess, except on the rare occasions when she had assumed human size and deliberately tried to be sultry—but it was hard to feel desire toward a woman as tall as a house, no matter how voluptuous she was.
As tall as a house, or as small as a child?
Matt considered that possibility. Maybe there was something about being thirty-four and having been a teaching fellow, plus being married to a very beautiful woman in her thirties. He’d had a few students rather obviously fall in love with him, but hadn’t felt any answering surge of emotion, though he knew some faculty members who had. He had put it down to his hopelessly romantic nature, with his vision of the ideal woman before him in his loneliest hours—and, against all odds and the logic of his home universe, he had found her. More amazingly yet, she had fallen in love with him, and thanks to some spells cast on him in his first few months in Merovence, he had even become handsome enough and courageous enough to believe himself worthy of her and to be able to love her. Sayeesa the lust-witch, and the ceremony of knighting, conferred by a legendary emperor and his descendant, had raised his self-esteem to the point at which he could dare to love a queen, and a very beautiful one at that.
Little Balkis couldn’t hold a candle to Alisande, though of course he didn’t tell her that. But she was a pleasant child.
At sunset they came into a village. The smells of cardamom and curry made Matt’s mouth water, and he knew he would have to take a chance on conjuring up some money. Accordingly, he went back to the edge of town, gathered a few pebbles, then chanted,
“Even pebbles share in beauty’s bliss.
Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded,
But on the hungry stranger be awarded,
Their virtue known by gold and silver’s kiss.”
Balkis watched every gesture, wide-eyed, soaking up the words of the verse. When the pebbles flattened and grew shiny, turning into coins, she sucked in her breath and asked, “Dare I work that spell?”
“You? Yeah, you know the basics, and it’s pretty simple, no built-in booby traps.” Matt gathered a few more pebbles. “Go ahead and try.”
Balkis recited the verse word-perfect in her meowing voice. The pebbles glimmered and turned into coins.
Matt caught his breath. She had heard the words once, only once, and already knew them by heart. She might forget them as quickly as she’d learned them, but somehow he doubted that.
They went back into the village and bought some chappatis and curry with a single coin. The couple who sold it gave them a look that said plainly they must be insane to pay so much for so little. Warmed by the thought that they might have made life a little easier for the baby in the woman’s arms, Matt and Balkis ate their dinner in the village square.
“Shall we travel at night?” Balkis asked, dilating her slit pupils.
“Maybe early night,” Matt said doubtfully, “but I’d rather not find out the bard way what kinds of supernatural long-legged beasties inhabit the Indian countryside.”
“Do you fear them, then?” Balkis asked in surprise.
“Let’s just say that I’m rather cautious,” Matt told her. “After all, we’ve just worked some magic, no matter bow minor, and if Arjasp is on the lookout for us, even that little bit could be enough to tell him where we are.”
Balkis shivered, a ripple that began at her shoulders and went in a wave down to her tail-tip. “Would not the land be filled with such minor spells sung by village witches?”
“That’s our only hope,” Matt said, “and yes, I expect that’s true, which is why I took the chance of making money.”
Balkis cocked her head on one side, frowning at him. “You have not looked at me once while you have talked,” she pointed out. “You have only gazed at that mud-brick building on the western side of the square.”
“Yes,” Matt said. “Odd, don’t you think? So much bigger than the others, and with so many people coming in and going out.”
Balkis shrugged—cat-style; a toss of the head. “A temple to their local god, like as not.”
“Yes, but what god is that?” Matt asked, and stood up. “I see a few villagers going in. Let’s join them.”
The Crusading Wizard Page 14