The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  “Spare us, O Fairest of the Djinn!” the captain of the guard pleaded.

  “Yes, spare us, Princess Lakshmi, I beg of you!” Ramon cried. “Of which limb of Satan do you speak?”

  “Your son, wizard, and do not think to cozen me with your handsome face and fair words! I speak of Matthew Mantrell! Bring him forth to me on the instant, or all your lives are forfeit!”

  Infantry marched before them, clearing a way through the people who thronged the boulevard, salaaming and acclaiming the Caliph. He rode on a white mare, Matt following him on a brown, side by side with a suspicious-looking man with the indefinable aura of a wizard.

  Matt tried for professional rapport. “What spells have you tried against these unbelievers?” “Everything we can think of,” the wizard snapped, and turned away, glowering.

  Matt sighed and reined in his horse as the Caliph did, then dismounted and followed him up the steps to the parapet on the city wall. Somewhere along the way he had lost Balkis. He told himself not to worry, that she was as adept at survival as he was, if not more so—but he couldn’t help a trace of anxiety all the same.

  Outside the city, drums began to throb—not the rattle of snare drums, but the deep grumbling of tympani. They climbed the wall to see a dark mass surging toward them in the deepening dusk. The parapet too was dark, with only an occasional torch to relieve the gloom.

  “You learned that light on the wall only blinded you to what your enemy was doing, eh?” Matt asked.

  The Caliph looked up in surprise. “Even so, Lord Wizard. Have you fought at night before?”

  “Not against an army,” Matt said, “but hand-to-hand was bad enough.”

  Several people glanced at him, startled, the Muslim wizard among them, and Matt realized they had heard about his battle with the evil giant. The wizard quickly looked away, mouth thinning, but the others eyed Matt warily—the fact that he hadn’t boasted about it outright made him even more formidable.

  Matt didn’t tell them that he knew about eyes adapting to darkness from junior high school science, or that the giant would have crushed him if a stronger titan, Colmain, hadn’t come to his rescue.

  On the other hand, it had been his magic that waked Colmain … both giants, in fact …

  The mass of barbarians rolled closer and closer. Along the wall captains cried, “Nock arrows! Draw!”

  Suddenly, the darkness at the base of the wall seemed to become deeper, totally lightless for a space of fifty feet out, embracing the front ranks of the barbarians. They disappeared into it.

  “First spell, wizard!” the Muslim magus snapped. “How shall you counter it?”

  Scaling ladders slammed against the parapet, and with bloodcurdling shrieks the barbarians came swarming out of the darkness at the foot of the wall.

  “Light!” a captain cried, and soldiers lit fire-arrows. “Loose!”

  The flaming arrows lanced down into the dark cloud. For a minute or so they gave enough light to show stocky silhouettes moving toward the bases of the ladders; then the darkness seemed to fold in on them and they were gone.

  But the light had lasted long enough for the archers to take aim. “Loose!” the captain cried again, and hundreds of arrows lanced half the Tartars. They fell backward cursing, and knocked other dozens off as they plunged.

  The other half came howling over the wall.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Muslim soldiers met them with scimitars and shields, and for a few hectic minutes it was slash and parry. More and more barbarians crowded onto the parapet, ganging up on the Muslim soldiers three to one.

  Matt couldn’t understand how the defenders had ever lasted a single night of such slaughter. Time to think about it later; for now, he chanted,

  “Not by eastern windows only

  When it is needed, comes the light,

  In shadow globes now wax, not slowly,

  So where we look, the dark’s made bright.”

  Light blossomed inside the gloom at the foot of the wall—blossomed, brightened, and swelled, seeming to shove the darkness back physically. The barbarians stood in a merciless glare, waiting their turns at the ladders.

  The few Muslim bowmen who were free of enemy soldiers shouted with glee and started picking off individual targets. Turks, Manchus, and Kazakhs screamed and died.

  But the glare didn’t stop there. It shot upward in rays, illuminating the whole of the top of the wall, showing the Muslims their enemies as clearly as by daylight. Afghans and Khitans faltered, looking about them nonplussed, and Arab swords ran them through. The barbarians turned back to the business of slaughter with shouts of vengeance, but a third of them had fallen.

  Vast voices roared in rage, and huge shapes rose from the back of the army, humanlike forms but with staring eyes, tusks for teeth, and arms knobbed and burled with muscle. There were two of them, but three more came plummeting from the skies.

  “Djinn!” the soldiers wailed, cowering away.

  “Worse—afrits!” the Arab wizard cried.

  The barbarians laughed with delight and swung their swords. Some Arab soldiers woke from supernatural dread in time to parry; some did not.

  “Not that much of a problem!” Matt raised his arms. “I’ll just command them back into their lamps and rings!”

  “Lamps?” The Arab turned to stare at him. “These are no creatures propelled by sorcerers’ wishes, foolish Frank—they are wild afrits, far more powerful and dangerous than any djinni, and they have come of their own will, not that of others!”

  “Converts!” Matt groaned. “Arjasp persuaded them to back his play!” Then he brightened. “But if they aren’t captives, they can be soon enough!” He started a verse.

  As one, the afrits all cupped their hands and windmilled their arms. Fog gathered in their cupped palms, thickened, and solidified into huge boulders which the great humanoids hurled at the city.

  Matt dropped the spell-in-progress in favor of a more immediate need.

  “The afrits’ angry glare

  Made their stones burst in air,

  Giving proof in the night

  That their boss was not there!”

  The hurtling boulders exploded like gargantuan grenades. Silicate shrapnel sprayed the barbarians. Men howled in pain and fell. The Arabs ducked down behind their wall, and most of the fragments went whizzing over them. A few men cried out in pain as a shard struck here and there on the parapet; more cried out from the city below; but most of the dead and wounded lay among the men for whom the afrits fought.

  Matt went back to his first verse.

  “These afrits need a shell of quiet

  With rations of immortal diet

  In a flask of meditation,

  Not poured out as a libation,

  But bottled for all time‘s duration!”

  With a howl of surprise and anger, one of the afrits went shooting toward the city. The Arab soldiers ducked involuntarily as it shot overhead—then down toward them, where an empty water bottle lay against the wall. The soldiers near it dove for cover, but the afrit shot tail-first, bellowing with pain and anger, into the neck of the bottle. It roared a curse that made all the Arabs blanche, and for once, Matt was sorry he understood the language—the afrit had promised a lingering and painful death for the presumptuous mortal who dared to imprison it.

  “Drive a cork in that bottle and cover it with melted wax!” Matt told the Arab wizard. “Then trace the Seal of Solomon onto that wax and chant a spell to make it hold till the end of time!”

  “The end of time?” The Arab stared. “What nonsense!”

  “Not really,” Matt said. “Would you rather have that afrit come shooting out looking for revenge?”

  The wizard shuddered and hurried away.

  Matt looked up and saw the other afrits, howling for vengeance, winding up their windmill swings again. Quickly, he repeated the bottling verse, but he only spat the first two lines before the afrits all howled with rage and sprang into the air, droppin
g their half-formed missiles. They shot up into the sky, going faster and faster, dwindling into tiny dots, then disappearing. Matt wondered about escape velocity and what this universe’s people would find if they ever developed space travel.

  “They are fled!” The wizard was beside him again, staring at the stars above.

  Matt nodded. “They recognized the reference and didn’t want to get themselves into a jam by being jarred.”

  “Don’t you mean bottled?” the Arab asked, puzzled.

  “Bottle, jar, lamp, ring—I’ll stuff them into whatever’s close to hand.” Matt wiped his brow, then stared at his hand, amazed to see it was shaking. “You know, I think those afrits scared me more than I knew.”

  “Only because when you saw them, you did not stop to think,” the Arab wizard said with a knowing smile.

  Gongs began beating on the plain below, and the barbarians took up an angry and determined chant that gathered strength and volume as they marched toward the walls again.

  Matt stiffened. “What now?”

  “Surely it will be only soldiers’ boasts!” the wizard protested. Then fog billowed in over the parapets.

  Men shouted in alarm and anger—but all men, not the Arabs alone. High-pitched voices cried out in Arabic to kneel, and all the Muslim soldiers did just that. The barbarians’ flailing blades hissed over the Arab soldiers’ heads and bit into other nomads. They shouted with pain and dismay.

  The barbarian sorcerer had outsmarted himself, and Matt was tempted to leave bad enough alone. But he knew the Central Asians were shrewd, and would realize soon enough where their foes were. Matt called out,

  “Some beams of light on Arab soldiers fall,

  Strike through and make a lucid interval,

  Barbarian’s mist of night can’t forestall rays,

  His rising fogs will fall without delay.”

  The fog thinned and dissolved, leaving a sheen of moisture on every blade; the Arab burnooses hung thick and heavy. But the Muslims could see their targets now; they shouted their war-cries as they sprang to their feet, felling another third of the attackers with their Damascus blades.

  The archers, no longer beset by invaders, went back to shooting unhorsed barbarians at the base of the wall. Realizing that their concealment was gone, the barbarians scattered, leaving their scaling ladders behind—and as quickly as it had begun, the assault was over. Here and there, Arab soldiers finished off a last barbarian or two and threw their corpses down for their fellows to gather.

  “Well done, my soldiers!” the Caliph cried. “Well have you struck blows for Islam this day!”

  The soldiers cheered, but the Caliph turned to a sharif and said, “They may come back—they may always come back. Bid all our men to stay vigilant.”

  The captain nodded and turned away to carry the word. Soon lieutenants were going among the soldiers, relaying the command.

  The Caliph turned to another sharif. “See that the fallen are taken away for burial and the wounded tended. Call for more arrows and have all archers restock their quivers.”

  The man nodded and hurried away.

  “Are these uncouth sorcerers so easy for you to defeat, then?” said a voice at Matt’s side. Turning, he saw the Arab wizard, face hard with hostility.

  “They are truly unlettered barbarians,” Matt said in as agreeable a tone as he could muster, “and to defeat them, one need only memorize spells from written books.”

  The Arab stared, startled by the thought. Then his eyes narrowed again. “But these verses you have recited, they all pit light against darkness.”

  “Ahriman’s servants work by the concealment of night and the confusion of fog,” Matt told him. “There will be others, when they seek to work by lies and clouding of the facts, by illusion and partial honesty, and we only need appeal to truth to make itself shown—but their spells are pretty basic, yes, and not hard to defeat at all, once you know how they’re founded.”

  The wizard frowned. “Then what force is there in these barbarians, that we should fear them?”

  “Not much,” Matt answered. “Most of their impact comes from having so very many warriors, all of whom can ride swiftly, and from sheer, brutal violence and total lack of mercy to any city that dares resist them.”

  “Well, our caliph has spared the cities that, at least,” the wizard said, “since he has defended them with his army, and given them no choice to fight or not to fight themselves.”

  “A wise policy.” Matt nodded. “But their sorcerers aren’t really doing much at all.”

  “Then the power of their Satan-inspired verses is one of their illusions?”

  “Just gossip,” Matt confirmed, “just rumor—and a rather nasty sort, too, not really lies, just gross exaggeration. Partial truth can be more effective than an outright falsehood.”

  “So the tale of their strength has grown as it passed from one careless mouth to another,” the wizard inferred.

  Matt nodded. “Their spells are very weak, really—nothing to trouble any of the faithful for more than a minute. They only have power if you believe they do.”

  “But the afrits?” the wizard asked, face lined with concern. “What magic has it taken to bind them to the service of these monstrous invaders?”

  “Only the charms of a silver tongue, I’m afraid,” Matt said, “plus the afrits’ natural cruelty. They enjoy making people suffer, so of course they’d be inclined to believe anything Arjasp told them about the worship of Ahriman—probably that the Prince of Lies would give them even more power to torment their victims.”

  “Can he do so?” the wizard asked, staring.

  “I said he was the Prince of Lies, didn’t I? Hey, these afrits are powerful enough as it is!” Matt shook his head. “Don’t worry about the barbarians’ verses, O Wise One—the monsters out of your own legends are a lot more dangerous than the spells of their shamans.”

  A trumpet blew. The Arab wizard turned toward the western gate, staring. “What comes?”

  Voices cried out in jubilation, drowned by the clash of arms, the howls of battle-cries, and the screams of the dying. Soldiers ran to pull the twelve-foot bar from the gates; other soldiers hauled them wide open.

  “The fools!” the wizard cried. “Will they welcome an army into their midst?”

  Through the gate pounded a huge white horse bearing on its back a figure in gilded armor. It bore a bloodied sword in its right hand, and on the left arm wore a shield quartered with the lilies of Merovence and the double crown of Hardishane. Behind crowded an army of archers with steel helmets and leather cuirasses, and behind them rode a hundred knights.

  “This army they will welcome!” Matt told the Arab wizard, “and so will I! If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go say hello to my wife!”

  ● ● ●

  Jimena stared. “My Matthew? What could he have done to offend you?”

  The djinna turned to her in fury. “Are you his wife, then? You seem too old!”

  “Old enough to be his mother,” Jimena said, with anger of her own. “I am his mother indeed, and quite proud of it!”

  “Proud!” Lakshmi cried, and the battlements trembled. “Proud of a kidnapper, of a thief in the night?”

  “My son, a kidnapper?” Jimena stared in outrage. “You lie!”

  “No, she is mistaken.” Ramon held up a hand to forestall his wife. “Matthew is not here, O Fairest of the Djinn. He is gone to the Holy Land, to help in fighting off the forces of Evil that seek to seize all the East. He has been gone more than a month. Why would you think him to be a kidnapper, and of which children?”

  Lakshmi still glared at him, but there was uncertainty in her eyes. “No matter where he lies, he could still steal my babes from me!”

  “Babes?” Ramon stared. “More than one? How wonderful for yourself and your prince! But Highness, you did not tell us!”

  “Your son found out nonetheless! Two babes have I borne, twin darlings, and when I came to their cradle this morning t
o give them suck, both were gone! Vanished! Their cradle was empty, and who but a wizard could have stolen a child of the djinn from its father’s palace?”

  “They charge the wall!” a sentry cried.

  The night was cool, the stars filled the firmament, mocking the torches that stood along the walls of Damascus—but the shrilling of the barbarian horde drove all peace from their light and brought the Arabs to the walls, to bend their bows and fire at random.

  Alisande leaned from her horse to kiss Matt. “If I die in battle,” she said, “I shall have that to have lived for!”

  “You won’t die in battle.” Matt fastened her helmet into place. “I want more kisses, a lifetime more. You’ll have to come back.”

  Her eyes flashed with amusement, but not with desire she knew well that he spoke of more afternoons like the one they had shared that day, not only of the kisses that had adorned it. “Guard me well!” she told him, then turned her horse and spurred toward the eastern gate. With a shout, her knights rode after. Their footmen followed at a run.

  The Caliph watched her go, then gave Matt a critical gaze. “How can you let a woman go in your place?”

  “It’s her place, not mine,” Matt corrected. “She’s the queen by birth and inheritance. But if you mean why aren’t I riding beside her to protect her, the answer is that I could, I’m a knight, but I’m also a wizard, and I can ward her better from the wall.” He shrugged. “It galls me, but it’s the course of wisdom.”