The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  Even Prester John’s soldiers needed stern commands to keep them from fleeing, especially as the monster emerged again, looking about, frustrated and angry. Seeing John’s party, he strode down toward them with a roar.

  Lakshmi bellowed back as she grew to half again his height and strode to meet him. Marudin was only a step behind her and half a head slower in growing. The afrit took one look at them and disappeared with a howl.

  “I told him to come to his master’s men,” Matt explained. “He assumed he was supposed to protect them, but they didn’t know that.”

  Prester John stared as his officers barked orders and calmed their men, though they themselves looked distinctly spooked. Finally, the king asked, “Are your friends so terrible, then, that one mere look at them is enough to send even an afrit packing?”

  “Not their looks, no. But they’ve met before, you see,” Matt explained, “and the afrit found out the hard way that he was no match for two Marids.”

  John decided that the ridge made a good campsite, and his soldiers filled the groves and the hillside with their tents. The next morning, though, three Mongols came riding up to them carrying a white flag. John frowned, donned his robes of state over his armor, and stepped forth to meet them with twenty men at his back. After the formalities that even the barbarians required, he demanded, “What is your leader’s message? If it is anything but surrender, save your speech.”

  “It is a message not for you, O King, but for your companions, the Frankish wizard and the djinn.” The Mongol turned to them, and if there was any fear in him, it was hidden behind a face of stone. “Arjasp, high priest of Ahriman and lord of us all in the gur-khan’s absence, commands that you leave this overweening prince on the instant, or he shall destroy your children.”

  Lakshmi cried out in distress, and Marudin advanced on the Mongol with a snarl. The horseman set a hand on his sword and braced himself, but Prester John held up a hand between the Marid and the Mongol. “Remember the flag of truce.”

  “I am a Marid!” Marudin snapped. “What care I for the customs of you puny mortals?”

  “Have a care for your children, then.”

  That brought Marudin up short. He stood, hulking and seething, glaring at the messenger with unconcealed loathing.

  If the Mongol felt any shame at hiding behind children or at the prospect of slaying them, he showed not a trace of it. His visage was still of stone.

  Lakshmi advanced, her face drained of color, her hands crooked to claw.

  Matt hurried to catch up, muttering, “The kids. Don’t jeopardize the kids.”

  Lakshmi drew to a halt beside Marudin, seething and flexing her hands. Then she spat, “Begone!”

  The Mongol bowed his head, whether in mockery or respect, Matt couldn’t tell, then turned his horse and rode away, his companions with him. The farther they went, the faster they rode.

  When they were out of sight, Lakshmi bowed her head. Suddenly she seemed to sag, all the fight going out of her, and turned to Marudin. He gathered her in, her head upon his chest, and sobs racked her body.

  Prester John stood watching in grave silence, and when the worst of the spasm had passed, he said gravely, “We shall fare mightily without you. I have the key to the city, after all, and we must be a thousand to their one.”

  “But they have the power of Arjasp’s magic, and all his priests!” Lakshmi raised a tear-stained face.

  “That will not aid them until we come near the city,” Prester John told her, “and I have some magic of my own and spirits to counter his, now that I know the manner of his spells. Still, it would greatly aid my cause if you could find and free your children, so that you are there at the end, within the city, to help me defeat the Priest of Lies.”

  “Lies!” Lakshmi stared at him, then up to Marudin, fierce with hope again. “The children may not be so much within his power as he makes us to believe!”

  “And we may indeed be able to find and free them,” Marudin exclaimed, catching her fire.

  Prester John nodded. “Then go and seek them.”

  Doubt made Lakshmi sag again. “But how?” she wailed.

  “With this.” John lifted Balkis’ hand; she looked up at him, startled, but the huge emerald winked in the morning sunlight. “When first I saw this lass, I noticed that her gem always glowed,” he said, “but when the afrit appeared, it fairly blazed. Will it glow if you are not near?”

  “No,” Lakshmi whispered, eyes round.

  “Then if you come nigh your children, it shall again light within,” John told them. “Ask it, and it shall lead you.”

  Balkis gave Lakshmi a long, steady look. The djinna came forward and threw her arms around the teenager.

  They asked the ring. With a little help from Matt on the final couplet, Balkis remembered her verse commanding the ring to show them where the children were. Then she held the ring out at arm’s length and turned from one point of the compass to another—but she had barely started before the gem glowed as she faced due east.

  “Toward the city of Maracanda,” Prester John breathed. “They are in my capita!!”

  “Of course!” Matt said. “With such valuable hostages, Arjasp would want them where he could keep tabs on them. They’re in his city, under his thumb!”

  “I shall slay him,” Prince Marudin said, and gathered himself to leap into the air.

  “Oh, no!” Matt reached out a restraining hand. “He has probably given standing orders to their guards that if he dies or is captured, they’re to slay the children!”

  Prince Marudin turned a frown on him. “How can a mortal slay a djinn?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said, exasperated, “but he can certainly recite a spell that will pull them into a bottle, pop the cork in, wax it with the seal of Solomon or some such, and bury it where it will never be …” His voice trailed off and his eyes lost focus.

  “Of course!” Lakshmi cried. “Why did I never wonder how he held them?”

  “We just assumed that anybody who had enough magic to kidnap a couple of djinn would have enough magic to hold them,” Matt said. “Well, he does, all right—the old tried-and-true magic.” Matt’s pulse quickened with the thrill of victory. “What kind of prison could hold djinn?”

  “A bottle or a lamp, of course,” Lakshmi said, and Marudin almost managed to suppress a shudder.

  “Just an ordinary old bottle?”

  “Yes,” Marudin said, “quite common—but one with the Seal of Solomon impressed on the wax that holds the cork.”

  “The Seal of Solomon?” Matt stared. “Stamped on by a devil worshiper? That doesn’t quite seem to fit.”

  All five magic-workers looked at one another for a minute. Finally Prester John said, somewhat tentatively, “Perhaps Arjasp does not limit himself to the magic of Ahriman.”

  “Good point.” Matt pursed his lips in thought. “Sure—he’s not particular. He’ll use any magic as long as it works. After all, he’s not really committed to Ahriman, is he? He’s committed to himself!”

  Prester John shrugged. “I would guess that any magic can be turned to Ahriman’s use. After all, it is only a matter of the symbols one uses, and the intent that shapes them.”

  “So the seal is a parody of Solomon’s,” Balkis deduced, “and since the djinn are but babes, it suffices to hold them in their bottle.”

  “That makes sense.” Matt turned to Marudin. “How big a bottle would he need—four feet high?”

  “Four inches, rather!” the djinn said with a sardonic smile. “Any size would do. The spell that entraps them shrinks them so that there is room to spare. I doubt not that he has made all four children so small that their prison seems a virtual palace to them!”

  “Well, they won’t be the first bottle babies the world has seen,” Matt mused. “How else do you hold a djinn, except in a lamp or bottle or some other vessel?”

  “In a ring,” Prince Marudin suggested.

  Lakshmi’s gaze went to the ring on Balkis�
� finger.

  Matt shook his head. “Can’t be in there, or it would be glowing like a coal all the time. Besides, when we found it, it was very far from Arjasp—and he never would have let some other magus get his hands on it. Blast!” Matt struck his fist into his palm. “Now we know where the kids are, we’re within a day’s ride of them—but if Arjasp sees us corning, he’ll project the bottle off someplace where we’ll never find it!”

  “Do you say we cannot go to steal them back?” Lakshmi asked, her face thunderous.

  “That’s right,” Matt said, and the words tasted like wormwood. “We can’t.”

  “But I can,” Balkis said.

  CHAPTER 29

  The other three turned to stare at her.

  “I must go,” she insisted. “I cannot leave four kittens—I mean, children—torn away from their mothers.”

  Matt could see the fear in her eyes, but also the determination. “Are you sure?” he asked. “This isn’t really your fight.”

  “But it is,” Balkis said. She passed a hand over her forehead, closing her eyes, and wavered for a moment, as with a passing dizziness. Lakshmi leaped forward to help, but Balkis recovered and waved her off, explaining, “Somehow, deep in my bones, I know it is my battle as well as yours. The fairies told me I came from the East, after all, and the caravans took me from the East into Europe. Whoever set me on my course had probably suffered from this zealot’s armies.” Her eyes burned with anger. “He robbed me of my life, whether he knew it or not, and the fact that the spirits gave me a new life that was good and rich does not pardon him. He may not know he has hurt me, there may be hundreds of thousands whom he does not know he has hurt, but that is all the more reason to punish him!”

  Prester John listened, gaze intent on her face.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “Just make sure you don’t get punished yourself.”

  “I will not,” Balkis assured him, but her voice trembled. Nonetheless, she waved her hand, forearm swooping like the bottom of a curtain in front of her, and the air thickened and clouded about her. Then the small calico cat stepped out of the cloud.

  “Come, little one.” Lakshmi held down a hand. “Let me send you to the high priest’s chamber.”

  “Take some care,” Prester John warned.

  “I shall use a spell that will return her to us in half an hour’s time.” Lakshmi picked up Balkis, set the cat on her palm, and recited a spell. A small whirlwind blew up from her palm, churning two feet high, then died down and disappeared. Her hand was empty.

  “Brave kid,” Matt said, feeling his stomach go hollow.

  Balkis felt the world tum solid, saw the whirlwind about her cease, and stumbled, head still whirling. She fought to steady herself, feeling so vulnerable as to be on the verge of panic. When the floor stopped tilting, she took a step without staggering, and could finally pay some attention to her surroundings.

  She stood on a Persian carpet in the center of a very large room. To her right stood a high bed with a golden coverlet. To her left, chairs and tables stood around the room, padded with cushions and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory. More cushions were heaped about the floor surrounding low tables. There was one high table littered with books and pieces of parchment, one huge tome lying open. True to her word, Lakshmi had sent the little cat to Arjasp’s private chamber.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t there at the moment. There wasn’t too great a chance that he would be, during the daytime—Arjasp was probably the de facto governor of Maracanda as well as the brains behind the whole barbarian onslaught—but it was still a relief.

  Her heart quailed within her, but Balkis forced herself to study the room more closely. Despite the carpet and the cloth-of-gold, it was nowhere nearly as luxuriously furnished as she would have expected. So much the better—there were fewer hiding places. She looked down at the ring on her foreleg.

  It was so bright it dazzled her.

  She tore her eyes away with a surge of elation—the children were near! Then she began to prowl, letting her natural feline curiosity take its course. She seemed to remember having heard, sometime in the past, about the effects of curiosity upon cats, but ignored it—she wasn’t idly inspecting, she was searching.

  She searched for most of her half hour, her heart thudding in her breast every minute for fear of detection. She found no trace of the bottle, though the ring was so bright it rivaled the sunshine that spilled through the carved screen over the window. She inspected the lamps closely, but the ring was no brighter near them than farther from them.

  Finally she stood in the center of the room, faced the door, and turned slowly about, watching the ring for changes in brightness. She had turned a half-circle when she heard footsteps approaching the door.

  Balkis looked about her, heart in her throat, searching for a hiding place. It was a choice between the piles of cushions and the bed. She chose the bed.

  The cloth-of-gold coverlet came down to the floor. She scampered under it, feeling well hidden in the gloom—and the ring flared.

  Balkis stared at it a moment; it was so bright that it lit up the under-bed space so that she could see every knot in the ropes that held up the mattress. But where was the bottle? The ring was telling her that the little djinn were nearby, but where? She padded about under the bed quickly, looking into every corner, but found no bottle, no lamp, no ring other than the one she wore. She heard the door open, though her own heartbeat threatened to drown it out, and looked up at the mattress in desperation, waiting and dreading to hear a body lie down on it.

  There, hanging from the knotted ropes, hung a brooch with a huge crystal of rose quartz.

  Slow footsteps moved from the door to the desk—she heard parchment rattle. A rasping, quavering voice said, “They cannot prevail so without their wizards! Has this self-proclaimed Mahdi such excellent magicians as to stifle the best efforts of our best sorcerers?”

  “Master, he must have djinn to aid him,” a quavering fruity voice answered. Balkis instantly saw a fat middle-aged man in her mind’s eye, multiple chins trembling at Arjasp’s agitation.

  “The djinn are banned!” Arjasp ranted. “We have bid them leave the struggle on pain of the deaths of their children! Even if they seek the brats, they would have left the sultan’s force!”

  “Perhaps they have left lesser members of their kind behind,” the aide suggested.

  “And who would control them? Again, wizards! I am certain it cannot be the Lord Wizard of Merovence—I did not forbid him to seek his children, so I have no doubt he is attempting to do so! Much good may it do him,” Arjasp added as an afterthought, reveling in the notion.

  “Perhaps he has left junior sorcerers behind,” the aide suggested.

  “They could not be so adept as to foil the ones whom I have trained! And now, to make it worse, Prester John has broken out of his prison! We must have protection!”

  “Surely our barbarians can hold him back,” the aide protested, “and if not, there are the city’s walls …”

  “We shall call the horsemen in, not risk them against his army. They are only a garrison, after all—but all of them manning the city’s walls should hold us secure until help can come.” A chair scraped, parchment rattled—Arjasp sitting down at the desk. “This Tafas bin Daoud has too many soldiers, and they ride too well! We dare not chance the Caliph using him to chase our horsemen back to their steppes! We must have more warriors.”

  Balkis heard a pen scratching.

  “Take this letter to the general who commands the troops attacking China,” Arjasp ordered. “Have him withdraw all but enough to hold the men of Han at the Great Wall! He must bring his force to exterminate Prester John and his army once and for all! Then without delay they can go to the front in Persia, before we lose all we have gained!”

  “Excellency, it shall be done!”

  “Of course it shall be done!” Arjasp roared. Metal tinkled, and he said, “Give this chain and amulet to the courier who will bear the message
! It will protect him from djinn and afrits as he travels.”

  “Must we forego the conquest of China, then?” the aide asked, voice quavering still.

  “No, but we must delay it! Their emperor is so decadent, and his government so rotten, that a fraction of our barbarian army can easily hold them until Prester John has been buried and the Caliph fully defeated. When all is secure in the West, we may tum east again! Then the horde can ride back to finish the conquest of China. Now go and see it done!”

  Hurried footsteps padded to the door; it swung open and closed.

  The chair scraped, and Arjasp’s slower steps scuffed the rug as he paced back and forth, muttering to himself.

  Balkis crouched in the ring-lit world under the bed, waiting for him to leave. Then she began to feel a very queer sensation, as though invisible fingers were pulling at her, not up or down or sideways, but in some direction that was neither. Her fur stood on end; she barely managed to keep herself from arching her back and spitting. In the nick of time she realized that she was feeling the pull of the spell that would return her to Lakshmi.

  There wasn’t a moment to spare. Balkis stood up and began to worry at the brooch with her teeth, trying to pull the pin loose from the rope. The return spell pulled more strongly—but some warding spell of the high priest’s began to tug at her, too, and she felt stretched between them with her middle in a void.

  The footsteps stopped with an exclamation of surprise. Then they began again, approaching the bed.

  Fear pierced Balkis as she realized the tug-of-war between the two spells could tear her apart—and that the tension had alerted Arjasp to a presence within his private chamber. If he saw her, what would he do?