Saul, however, felt otherwise. “No danger, Mr. Mantrell—no danger at all. Well, yes, there were dangers,” he corrected himself, “but nothing she couldn’t handle easily.”
“With your aid, of course, Saul.” Jimena stepped a little away from Ramon, touching her hair back into place. “It might be more correct, my dear, to say that Saul dealt with the kidnappers while I stood guard over him.”
“Kidnappers?” Ramon’s eyes fired. “There were more than one?”
Jimena nodded. “Two, a sorcerer and his assistant.”
“The sorcerer claimed he was a priest of Angra Mainyu,” Saul amplified.
“The evil principle of the Zoroastrians?” Lakshmi cried in surprise. “I knew them when I was a child—but while I slept the ages away in my bottle, the Arabs conquered their people! Where had this so-called priest heard of Angra Mainyu?”
“From his master, whose name is Arjasp,” Jimena said. “Judging by what the kidnapper said about him, I would gather he is a renegade magus.”
“A priest of Ahura Mazda who has turned against his god?” Lakshmi stared, flabbergasted.
Ramon asked his wife, “How do you deduce that, my love?”
“Partly because the kidnapper said he came from the northern mountains,” Jimena said, “and there are still a few communities of Zoroastrians there in the hills of Persia.”
Saul nodded. “The kidnapper said Arjasp was a true son of the old Persians who had decided Angra Mainyu wasn’t just a demon, but an actual god, and converted a bunch of Central Asian tribes to his worship by promising they would conquer the world.”
“Which, of course, they are likely to do by sheer numbers, if all their tribes and nations fight as one.” Ramon’s face darkened. “And you think he was one of the magi who went rogue?”
“I do,” said Jimena. “Who else would know enough about Angra Mainyu to concoct a counterreligion centering around him? And who else would know the old magic to teach his priests?”
“Or be able to invent a twisted version of it,” Saul agreed.
“Yes, I see.” Ramon nodded, “After all, ‘magi’ is the root word of ‘magic,’ is it not?”
“Last time I read the dictionary, yes,” Saul said. “But he’s no dumb-dumb—not our boy Arjasp, no siree! Him go out on campaign and risk his neck? No way! He’s staying out there in the middle of Asia, flattering the gur-khan and coordinating the conquests!”
Ramon managed a small smile. “After all, if your fate in the afterlife was to be the eternal victim of an evil god, would you chance death?”
“Not a bit,” Saul affirmed.
“I suspect Arjasp has persuaded himself that Angra Mainyu will make him a prince over the underworld,” Jimena said darkly.
“People’s capacity for self-deception sometimes amazes me,” Saul agreed, “particularly mine.”
“Even the princes of the demons live in eternal torment,” Lakshmi said darkly.
Saul couldn’t help wondering if she was talking from personal acquaintance.
Jimena clasped Ramon’s arm. “So if we wish to have the children back, it seems we must confront the evil genius of the horde directly.”
Ramon paled for a second, then reddened with anger. “Indeed we must! But one of us must stay here, as castellan.”
“I had forgotten that,” Jimena admitted.
“Lady Mantrell ought to go,” Saul said stoutly.
Jimena blinked, surprised that this opinionated young man had spoken for her instead of her husband. “What is the matter, Saul? Do you fear I cannot protect Bordestang by myself?”
“Oh, you’ve proved that well enough,” Saul said, “when Mister—excuse me, Lord—Mantrell went off with Matt to help King Rinaldo. Now it’s his turn to be castellan.”
“Thank you for your confidence,” Ramon said dryly. “But equal opportunity is not the only reason you choose Lady Mantrell as a traveling partner, is it?”
“Frankly, no,” Saul said, and frank he was, with a disarming self-honesty. “In spite of all my efforts, I’m a sexist at heart, and I can’t help believing that women are better with babies than men.”
“So you think my wife will be more apt to find the children than I.” Ramon kept his voice carefully neutral.
“I agree,” said Lakshmi. “This is women’s work. Come with us, Lady Mantrell.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her.” Saul jerked his head toward the djinna. “She’s a sexist, too, a product of a patriarchal culture.”
“Sexist! Fool, do you dare bait a djinna?” Lakshmi shot up to twelve feet, glaring down at Saul.
Saul raised both hands. “All right, all right! After all, you’re arguing my side of the point. Idle down, lady!”
“I am not a lady—I am a princess!”
Saul sighed. “Y’know, for traveling companions, we’re not exactly getting off to a good start.”
“We are not getting off to any start! Will we argue all year about the manner of our going?”
Ramon spoke up before Saul could. “I think you are right, Saul—it had better be Jimena who accompanies you.”
Jimena took Ramon’s pack from his hand and stretched up for a lingering kiss, then clasped his hand between both of her own and gave him a smile full of promise. “Endure in patience till I come home, my husband.”
“Don’t be too long about it,” Ramon said gruffly, but his eyes filled with anxiety and, already, with longing.
A few minutes later he watched the diminishing figure in the sky that was Lakshmi carrying her traveling companions through the air. Beside him Sir Gilbert said, “Do not be offended, my lord. Seeing how attractive the princess is, I think our Saul may have wanted a chaperone.”
“Or a witness his wife would trust, to assure her he has been faithful during his travels.” Ramon nodded. “Yes. That would also explain why he is not terribly cordial to Princess Lakshmi.”
Lakshmi set the two of them down, and Saul staggered, the landscape tilting around him. “That’s … much more comfortable than tourist class,” he said, “but I think I still prefer jets.” Then the landscape stabilized and he caught his breath. “Wow! Is that the Mediterranean?”
Below them, a mountainside covered with evergreens fell away to a strip of tan and green. Beyond it, a sheet of blue rose to the sky. “How far away is that horizon—a hundred miles?” Saul asked.
“What lies to the west matters not,” Lakshmi said impatiently. “Tum toward the east, and your enemies.”
Turning, Saul looked out over the world, or so it seemed. The land stretched away to a horizon just as distant as the ocean’s rim. “Where are we? The hills of Lebanon?”
“We are, and those evergreens are its fabled cedars,” Lakshmi told him. “Here the East begins, as far as you benighted Franks are concerned. If our kidnappers’ master is in Central Asia, this should be a good vantage point to begin our search.”
“What do you mean, ‘benighted’?” Saul returned. “Matt may be a knight, but I’m quite content to be a wizard only, thank you.”
“Cease playing with words and seek out the children!”
“Oh, all right,” Saul huffed, “but playing with words is what wizards do. You’re right, though—if there’s anything to see, we should be able to see it from here—if we have one whale of a telescope.”
Lakshmi scowled down at him. “What manner of spell is that?”
Saul opened his mouth to tell her a telescope was an object, not a spell, then remembered duplicating the effect magically. “One that lets you see something clearly from a great distance.”
“How great?”
Saul thought of the huge instrument at Mount Palomar and pictures of the planets. “Very great.”
“Then conjure it up! But how will you know where to point it?”
“Ah.” Saul nodded ruefully. “That’s the hitch.”
“It is indeed,” said Jimena. “How are we to discover traces of these kidnappers?”
Lakshmi asked, “Yo
u did not bring a scrap of their clothing or anything they had touched, did you?”
“No.” Saul flushed. “I should have thought of that.”
“You were thinking of protecting yourself, and tricking them into telling more than they knew they were saying,” Jimena told him.
“I don’t suppose you can find a sight of Arjasp across a couple of thousand miles of steppe, without something to remember him by?” Saul asked.
Lakshmi stared, astounded. “What sort of spell could work thus?”
“None I know,” Saul sighed.
“Perhaps if we had a hair of his beard …”
“Remind me to talk to his barber,” Saul said sourly. “Since I can’t, what else can we use for a starting point?”
All three were quiet, thinking.
“Highness,” said Jimena, “may I see your child’s slipper?”
Both of them stared at her blankly. Then Saul grinned. “Of course!”
“I see!” Lakshmi cried. “Since whoever kidnapped my babes, stole yours also, the slipper may lead us to the thief’s master!”
“It does seem likely,” Jimena said. “May I have the slipper, Highness?”
“Of course.” Lakshmi shrank down to human size and handed over the pointed bootie.
Jimena frowned, passing her hand over it and chanting a verse in Spanish. A blue glow began on the sole and spread upward around the slipper. It lightened; forms seemed to dance within it, fuzzy at first, then beginning to clear …
Abruptly, the image died. Lakshmi cried out in grief and anger.
“A block?” Saul asked.
Jimena nodded. “Someone or something has detected my spell and cancelled it with a counterspell. I shall have to neutralize it.” She began to chant again.
“How can she forestall such a spell?” Lakshmi asked.
“She can make it turn back on itself, tie it in a sort of knot of energy,” Saul explained. “That’s her special talent—binding other people’s spells so they can’t work.”
“So that is why folk call her the Spellbinder!”
“So does Ramon,” Saul said, “but I think he has a different reason.”
Jimena held the slipper in both hands, staring at it as she chanted. Strain began to show in arms and shoulders, as though the weight of the tiny shoe were becoming greater and greater, the effort raising the dew of perspiration upon her brow.
With a sudden notion of what would happen, Saul stepped toward her—but all he saw was her body freezing, her gaze turning vacant.
Lakshmi saw, too, and cried, “What has happened?”
“Her spirit has gone adventuring,” Saul said, his voice flat and crisp. “Touch her with a fingertip and pour your own power into her, if you can!”
“We must follow!”
“How?” Saul asked.
Lakshmi gave no answer, so he touched Jimena’s hand with his forefinger and concentrated on lending her his strength.
“As I gather magical power
And send it coursing through me,
Thus I send it on to you,
Though to what use, beshrew me!”
Jimena found herself once again in the realm of mist. Cold gray fog surrounded her, above, below, before, behind. She felt its tendrils chilling her face, saw nothing but grayness. The cold seeped in beneath her robe, beneath her skin, reaching inward, iciness reaching for her heart.
But warmth spread from her hands, up her arms and into her chest. She looked down and saw that the glow around the slipper had become rosy. She frowned at it a moment, wondering how so small an object could generate so much heat—and why it would.
A heavy sound came to her, muffled by the fog, but coming again and again, regular, doubled, grace notes—footsteps. But they were footsteps of something huge and very heavy, growing louder, coming closer, and she looked up in alarm as the fog began to move, to billow, to open into a tunnel before her.
It came into sight dimly, dark against the gray of the mist, growing clearer as it came closer, an obscene pallid shape with tentacles writhing from its scalp, a leering grin splitting its face with shark’s teeth, huge goggling eyes glowing in the gloom. Spindly legs carried it forward on huge flat feet, foot-wide hands reaching out from the ends of sticklike arms as long as the creature was tall. “Come,” it crooned, “you who seek to merge your magic with me! Come within, join with me, become a part of me, be absorbed in me!”
In a rush of understanding, Jimena knew the creature for what it was—a parody of love, an embodiment of the destructive aspects of desire. The love with which Lakshmi had fashioned this tiny shoe drew the monster as a shivering beggar would come to even the smallest of fires.
A beggar who sought to eat that fire, to have its warmth within him.
She understood, too, that her own anxiety for her grandchildren was another such magnet—but she also understood the power that love could give anyone who sought to harm them.
“Avaunt, thing of emptiness!” she cried, to give it fair warning, but the monster only came closer, slobbering and crooning in a mockery of lovers’ kisses and murmurs, cold flabby hands reaching for Jimena’s warmth, and she chanted, with grim conviction,
“Unlike the wise thrush, who
Sings each song twice through,
To be sure he’ll recapture
The first careless rapture,
And hold it close, giving
His love to his living
Sweetheart entire—
But you, selfish thing,
To whom love is a liar,
And destruction entire
Who only finds leisure
For your own selfish pleasure
And seeks those whose giving
You drink for your living,
And cripple and block
Love from its true lover
Now shall you go,
And never recover,
But be gone entirely
Disintegrate gyre-ly.
Destructive love I now banish!
This monster shall vanish!”
The broad hands and long, boneless fingers reached closer and closer, touching her cheek and drawing all the warmth out, chilling her to the bone, touching also the little slipper …
And snatching away, crooning turning to screaming, the huge weal of a bum on the skin of its palm, the other hand corning quickly to cradle the first as the monster hooted and howled. But the bum spread, turning the whole hand bright red, the whole arm bright red, the whole monster swelling and reddening and whirling in a widening helix until it burst with an explosion that hurled Jimena back into the cold clinging fog, back into a dizzying, churning kaleidoscope of black and white that gained color and fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. Raucous calling filled her ears, and against it a man’s voice rose in angry song:
“Where y’ goin’, y’ flyin’ ferlie?
Stay away from our true girlie!
Ken ye not that we’ve joined battle?
Be knocked aside as with a pattie!”
Somehow, she was looking upward, seeing Saul towering over her, and some strange leather-winged creature with four legs and long sharp claws, with a face half reptilian, half human, trying to reach past him toward herself. Saul batted each grasping talon aside, though his hands dripped blood from half a dozen wounds.
But Lakshmi towered above them all, swelling huger and huger, shouting orders in Arabic which the creature ignored. At last a huge feminine hand reached down, wrapped about the hovering monster, wrapped and enveloped as the djinna’s voice thundered its commands. Something popped, and a wisp of smoke drifted up from her fist. Then it opened, showing only a darkening where something had turned to powder, darkened dust that drifted away on the wind as the djinna shrank to human size, her voice rising in pitch as she seized Saul’s hand in both of hers, commanding, “Hold still!”
“It’s all right!” Saul protested. “Just a few scratches, I’ll be—”
“Dead!” Lakshmi snapped. “I know not
that monster, but I know its kind! There was poison in those talons, and I must draw it out or you will die!” So saying, she pressed her lips against the first of the scratches on Saul’s hand.
His face went blank with surprise, then lit with delight that intensified to ecstasy. Lakshmi turned her head to spit out the contaminated blood, and Saul came out of his trance long enough to look down and say, “Don’t tell on me, Lady Mantrell.” Then Lakshmi’s lips pressed to the next wound, and the idiotic smile of rapture lit Saul’s face again.
“I will preserve your confidence.” Jimena smiled, amused. Then she realized that if Saul was looking down at her, she must be below him. She pushed herself up on one elbow, felt around, and realized she was lying on the rock of the mountaintop. How had she fallen, she wondered, and why?
Well, Saul would tell her as soon as he was able—and as soon as Princess Lakshmi was done with her healing. Jimena didn‘t even wonder how the djinna could suck out poison that had already begun to percolate through Saul’s veins, or why it would not harm her—she knew that magical creatures, such as the djinn, had inborn powers mortals could only hope to achieve through long study and practice.
While she waited, though, she picked herself up off the ground—and stumbled. She found a boulder and sat, amazed at her own weakness. She realized she must have spent a great deal of energy fighting the monster of mockery in her trance.
She looked down and was surprised to see the little slipper still in her hand.
“All right, all right, I’m cured!” Saul protested, but not very strongly.
The Crusading Wizard Page 26