The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  The reunion with Alisande was touching and brief. The children did most of the touching, to the point at which they had to be pried loose when it was time for Mama to go—and it had to be brief because Mama was raging to go back to join the Caliph’s forces and get in her licks of revenge on the barbarians. Her knights were just as eager, but by the time they got to Damascus, Tafas and the Caliph had chased the barbarians back to Baghdad, and by the time they reached Baghdad, the allies had chased the steppe-horsemen halfway to Maracanda. They were nearing the city’s walls when the Caliph caught up with them.

  It was quite a sight, and Matt was aloft with Marudin and Lakshmi to direct his magic wherever it was needed. The barbarian sorcerers were putting up some resistance, but their power was tremendously weakened—apparently Arjasp had been their source, or conduit, if he actually had managed to tap the energy of the Prince of Lies.

  The battle-line turned gradually into a bow as Tafas and Alisande outflanked the barbarians and started pushing in. The bow bent farther and farther, but the barbarians managed a counterattack, and the bow developed recurves. The recurves deepened, and for half an hour it looked as though the barbarians might actually manage to hold their ground.

  Then troops came riding around the city walls to take the barbarians in the rear, troops with Prester John at their head.

  Matt stared down. “He sure finished off Arjasp’s reinforcements from the east fast!”

  “He caught them at a pass in the Tien Shan Mountains.” Lakshmi, quite happy with Balkis as babysitter, had left her cave and gone east to see if her help had been needed. She shrugged. “It was brief and bloody, but most of the barbarians had the good sense to surrender.”

  “And Prester John marched his army halfway across Asia in a month.” Matt shook his head in admiration.

  Below on the plain, the bow’s center crumbled, the recurves fell apart, and the barbarians surrendered.

  “Their strength was only in their magic,” Prince Marudin said, shaking his head in wonder.

  “Not entirely.” Matt remembered Genghis Khan’s conquests in his own world. “If they had met our armies one at a time, we would have fallen to them piecemeal.”

  Marudin nodded. “But when all the armies of Islam and Christendom joined together, they could not hold against us.”

  Matt shrugged. “The Mongols are excellent horsemen, but so are the Arabs. Okay, so several light cavalry can chop one European knight to pieces, but nothing can stand against fifty of them charging in a body. Then too, Arjasp made the classic mistake of fighting a war on two fronts. Which reminds me, we’ll have to tell Prester John to go back and check for garrisons along the Great Wall.”

  The monarchs met with reserve and wariness that quickly turned into temporary friendship as they sat together to judge Arjasp’s field-sorcerers and priests of Ahriman. They were unanimous in agreeing that the only ones of his temples that could stay open were those that had not advocated treason against the local government, and since all of them had, the priests were given a simple choice: repent and return to farming under close military supervision, or die. Most saw a great deal of virtue in following the plow.

  The sorcerers and shamans were another matter. The sorcerers, threatened with death and a face-to-face meeting with the Prince of Lies, decided on conversion and denunciation of their former profession. The shamans were quick to admit their mistake in having believed Arjasp’s claims. Convinced of the sincerity of their devotion to their totems, Prester John sent them back to their peoples, only requiring that they leave with him the talismans Arjasp had given them. Tafas, the Caliph, and Alisande were content to follow his lead in the matter, since shamans were outside their experience.

  When the tribunal was over, Matt and Balkis drew Prester John aside and pressed a small leather-bound trunk into his hands.

  “What is this?” he asked, frowning.

  “Leather bound around a silver box,” Matt told him. “Inside the silver box is a brooch with a huge crystal of rose quartz carved with the Seal of Solomon, and inside the crystal is Arjasp.”

  Prester John smiled slowly. “The Seal of Solomon? Then he cannot come out!”

  “I did sort of have that in mind,” Matt admitted. “Of course, if you want him out—for, say, a military tribunal or some other sort of trial—I suppose you could pry it out of its setting and loose him out the back.”

  “We could at that.” John turned the brooch over and saw the seal engraved on the back of the metal as well. “Of course, it might be kinder to leave him within, especially since he is secure as long as the stone remains set.”

  “To leave him within for eternity?” Balkis protested. “Surely that is too harsh a punishment for anyone!”

  “It would be more harsh to execute him, and let him confront the demon he has worshiped,” John said grimly. “Be easy in your heart, young one—his fate is not so harsh as you might imagine.”

  “Ask Prince Marudin about it,” Matt advised. “He’s gone through it, sometimes for centuries at a time.”

  She did, and Marudin told her, “A crystal, lamp, or bottle with a spell that can hold a djinn makes time move far more slowly than it does for us outside. We spent months searching for the children, but only two days passed for them.”

  “Still, eternity …!”

  “Someone will be foolish enough to let him out eventually,” Marudin said evenly. “That is why it would be better if it were Prester John who did so, for he has the magic to control the madman and slay him if he will not repent—which I am sure he will not; he is so mad as to think he is right.”

  “But until he does …”

  “Not much time will pass at all—for him,” Prince Marudin assured her. “Time within the crystal seems to be keyed to the prisoner‘s mood in some way. That is why I am still young even though I have been locked in prison for centuries of sleep—time was bottled with me, always just a little more than I could tolerate.”

  “It’s a sort of waking stasis,” Matt explained, but that didn’t seem to make things any clearer for either of them.

  “Think of Prince Kaprin,” Marudin explained. “Angel that he was, he took responsibility for the younger ones, trying desperately to keep them amused so that they would not be afraid. Since he had them enjoying themselves by the games he made up, mere days passed for them—they would have been content to stay much longer.”

  “Kaprin, however, was definitely near the end of his tether,” Matt said, smiling. “He was running out of ideas for keeping them happy, so he was more than ready to get out.”

  “By that token,” Balkis said thoughtfully, “Arjasp should be ready to exit only moments after going in, for he will surely be raging at his imprisonment.”

  “Yes, and it serves him right,” Matt said, seething. “Fortunately, it could be a year or more in this outside world before Prester John is ready to deal with him. He very easily may step out to find himself surrounded by Prester John and his priests, about to deliver judgment.”

  “I hope he fumes and frets every second of that year,” Prince Marudin said, “but I fear it will be the reverse—that it will seem only seconds to him.”

  “I thank you, Prince.” Balkis seemed quite relieved. “It is not so harsh a punishment, then.”

  “Not a scrap of what he deserves,” Marudin said grimly.

  Maracanda was a free city again, ruled by a monarch, perhaps, but a monarch of its own people. Guests of the Crown, Alisande and Matt walked the terrace of the palace in the dusk, gazing out over the lights of the city and inhaling the fragrance of exotic blooms.

  “I rejoice that the three younger children seem to have emerged from the gem unharmed,” Alisande said, but sadness tinged her face. “I fear, though, that our boy will be scarred by the experience.”

  “Doesn’t seem all that bad to me.” But Matt was concerned because she was.

  “Have you not noticed how much more solemn he has become?” Alisande protested. “He is far too respons
ible for his age!”

  “Oh, I think he’ll recover, given his normal ration of playtime,” Matt said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Besides, an overdeveloped sense of responsibility might not be a bad thing, for a boy who’s going to grow up to become a king.”

  “Well, that is so,” Alisande admitted. “But that is all the more reason to ensure that he has much time to play while he may!”

  “We’ll get a tutor who knows how to ration the lessons,” Matt agreed. “One good result you can’t deny, though—he’s made a real hit with the djinn twins. Our children and Lakshmi’s will be fast friends all their lives.”

  “That is surely so.” Alisande smiled, gazing into his eyes. “Trust you to find the bright side of the coin, my love.”

  Later that night Prester John took Matt aside and asked, “The young one, the maiden who is a wizard—has she emerged from these trials unscathed? For surely I know that the hearts of the young are most vulnerable when they must witness human cruelty.”

  “She seems to be coping pretty well,” Matt said. “In fact, she was a little worried that Arjasp’s fate might be too harsh.”

  “She is sound, then, and has a good heart indeed.” John’s smile became brittle. “Even so, I do not think she would have been so merciful if she had witnessed the barbarians’ taking of the city sixteen years ago.”

  “Sixteen years,” Matt said slowly. “Balkis is sixteen.”

  “Then you have noticed?”

  “Noticed what?” Matt asked.

  “She is of our breed.”

  Matt stared at Prester John a moment while he sorted it out and made sense of it. Then he said softly, “Of course. That’s why your people seemed to have a familiar look. That’s why you thought she was our local guide.”

  Prester John nodded.

  “And that,” said Matt, “is why she kept having the feeling that she’d been here before.”

  “Because she has,” John affirmed. “Let us bring her to my gardens.”

  The moonlight made Prester John’s garden a place of magic, tranquil and mystical, the only sounds the susurrus of leaves and the tinkling of the brook that ran through it, turning model mill wheels and tugging at miniature boats moored for the night at fanciful tiny boathouses. The breeze that stirred the leaves wafted the perfume of exotic blossoms to the three wizards. Around them, flowering trees took fanciful shapes, the product of dozens of years of patience. Wind chimes filled the night with music. The turquoise lawn seemed deep green in the moonlight, bejeweled with dew. Topiary shrubs in sculpted forms framed an ivory gazebo of ornate screens.

  “This … this all seems …” Balkis pressed a hand to her forehead. “Lord Wizard, is this another of those déjàs you mentioned?”

  “I think it’s a bit more than that.” Matt watched her closely, concerned.

  “There is a way to be sure,” Prester John said softly. “Call upon the spirits who surround you.”

  Balkis began to tremble. “They will be angry if I trouble them to no purpose!”

  Matt noticed that it never occurred to her that she couldn’t do it.

  “It will be to a purpose, and a good one,” John assured her. “If they bear you goodwill, they will be pleased. Maiden, call.”

  Balkis cast a look of desperation at him, then stepped out into the garden and called out, “O Spirits of Water and Tree! Phantoms of Earth and Wind! If any of you know me, come forth now, I beg of you, and tell me who I am!”

  There was only silence, the wind whispering condolences.

  Balkis bowed her head, her shoulders sagging. “There is nothing. It is to no purpose.”

  “Give them time,” John said, reassuring her.

  There was a splash in the river, too large for a trout or even a sturgeon. There was another splash.

  Balkis looked up, hope lighting her eyes. Then she ran.

  Matt and Prester John had trouble keeping up with her.

  Balkis dropped to her knees on a little pier, looking down into the water. “Whoever you are who has come in answer to my call, show yourself, I beg you!”

  Matt braced himself in case the answer was unpleasant.

  But it was very pleasant indeed. Seaweed seemed to rise from the water, but it framed a greenish face, and Matt saw that it was hair. The spirit rose farther, and he saw a gentle roundness that he thought was a bust but saw an instant later was a cluster of lotus. Lily pads formed the flatness of a belly, and below it glistened the scales that might have covered a tail, but might just as easily have covered legs.

  Another rose behind the first, and—gasped. “See, Sister Shannai! Her aura!”

  “I see indeed, Arlassair!”

  John and Matt both turned to Balkis, inspecting, seeing nothing. She herself turned, looking first over one shoulder than over the other. “Aura? What … what is that?”

  “The color of light that glows about you, silly mortal!” Shannai laughed. “No two are the same! Each soul makes a different pattern! You cannot see it with your poor weak eyes, but we can! Can we not, Arlassair?”

  “Of course we can—and we know it, too, do we not?”

  “Certainly, sister! However could we forget the baby set adrift in the trunk?”

  “Trunk?” Balkis stared. Then her words tumbled over one another. “A little chest crafted of ivory? Bound with straps of gold?”

  “Like that? Do you think it was like that, sister?” Shannai asked.

  Arlassair screwed up her face, considering—and dragging the moment out until Balkis looked as tense as a cat sensing a storm. At last the sprite relented. “Yes. The trunk was exactly like that. And there can be no doubt—you are the very babe who was in it.”

  Balkis cried out and held out her arms. “Bless you, good spirits!”

  Arlassair laughed. “We are not so good as all that, but we remember you, yes. Your poor mother! Those horrible horsemen who chased her down and carried her off to sacrifice! But she called on us to protect you, oh yes, and we did, didn’t we, Shannai?”

  “We did indeed, sister.” Then to Balkis, “We nudged your trunk down the stream as far as we could, then called upon the dryads to care for you. Since you are alive and well, it would seem that they did.”

  “Well, then! We have finished the task we never promised to complete!” Arlassair flirted her flukes above the water. “And since we have, there is an end to it! Feed the fish if you would show thanks, mortal, for they feed us!”

  “Farewell, and be good to the river!” Shannai called. Then both nixies turned, splashed in dives, and were gone.

  Balkis knelt on the pier, face in her hands, sobbing.

  “Come, be comforted.” John came up and gently took her by the shoulders. “You have come home now, maiden, to the place where you were born, and where you belong.”

  “But … but who am I?” Balkis raised tearful eyes to him.

  “You are the daughter of the Princess Kanachai, my own niece,” John said. “We thought she had died in the invasion, and now we know it.”

  “What … what was my name?”

  “Balkis, even as the Franks call you,” John told her, “and her title now is yours: the Princess of the Dawn Gate.”

  “So Balkis was indeed my name!” the girl cried. “I did not know why, only knew that it was!” She turned to Matt accusingly. “It was you who named me Balkis.”

  “Then it’s no accident that she came home, is it?” Matt asked quietly. To Balkis, he said, “Remember why you came with me when I started east?”

  “Yes—because something pushed me, something within me insisted I come.”

  “Tearing yourself away from a really cushy place you had just made for yourself in a royal palace.” Matt turned to Prester John. “The flip side of the spells the nixies and dryads wove to protect her?”

  “I would so conjecture,” John agreed. “Mind you, there is always a link between a mortal soul and its native soil, but when magic has been woven there, the link would be forged into a ge
as.”

  “A magical compulsion.” Matt turned back to Balkis. “You may not have sent me east, but something within you knew you had to come.”

  “I can only thank you so very, very deeply for bringing me home,” the princess whispered.

  “And I can only thank you for getting me here alive,” Matt returned. He looked up at Prester John. “Just don’t let her claw the furniture, okay?”

  Finally Matt and Alisande were able to close the door and be alone in the guest room John had assigned them. Matt took his wife in his arms. “It’s nice having the kids back, but it’s nicer having a babysitter for them.”

  “It is good of Balkis to still serve them so.” Alisande sighed, resting her head on his chest.

  “She’s just forging future diplomatic relations,” Matt said. “After all, she might need Kaprin’s help someday, when you’ve retired and he’s become king.”

  “Retired … an interesting thought …” Alisande looked up at him as the other shoe dropped. “But why might Balkis need his help?”

  “Well, the horde is still out there,” Matt said, “several of them, in fact—and now they know what they can do if they all band together.”

  Alisande smiled and rested her head on his chest again. “We need not worry. They have been beaten; they will be too wise to attempt it again.”

  But Matt wasn’t so sure. The khans knew now that they needed to attack the Western nations one at a time—and that they needed to find a source of magic that would be stronger than that of Islam and Christendom put together. Not very likely, of course, but they were no doubt burning for revenge. All they lacked was a leader.

  “Retired …” Alisande returned to the new idea he had given her. “A novel notion.” She looked up at him again. “But if I were to retire, what should I do with all my time?”