Fortune s Fool

by Mercedes Lackey

  And there it was, tucked into one side of the third oven—well out of the way of any actual baking that would go on, but safe enough from someone who didn’t know where to look for it.

  “I’ve found it,” she called softly to Klava, who was instructing a bemused Yulya how to sift flour. “How do I get it out?”

  The apprentice left her pupil and came to peer into the oven, then looked around the kitchen for something. “Ah!” she said with satisfaction, and went to a rack of cast-iron implements next to the fireplace. “These will do the trick, I fancy!” At Katya’s bemused expression, she laughed. “These are called tongs. Not many fires under the sea, then?”

  “Only volcanoes,” Katya replied, and watched with fascination as Klava used the scissors-like object to deftly seize the long neck of the bottle and pull it out. She set it right in the mouth of the oven, though, where it was still very hot—

  “Let it sit there, and I’ll move it again in a little,” Klava ordered. “Taking it out right now and putting it on the floor might make it shatter, and I assume we don’t want that. I’ll come back in a bit and move it when it cools some.” She went back to the cake-making while Katya stared at the bottle, willing it to cool.

  It was not like any bottle she had ever seen before. It started with a very long, thin neck, which then widened out into a wide, squat bottom. Instead of a wooden stopper, which would in any event have probably become charcoal in the oven, there was a glass or porcelain one, still attached to the neck by a chain.

  “Klava,” she called softly, “when you saw the bottle, was it only stoppered, or was it stoppered and sealed?”

  “Stoppered and sealed,” Klava called back, interrupting her own explanation of how to beat nuts into the batter. “But the seal was plain wax, there was nothing written on it.”

  “The wax was probably bespelled,” the Horse observed, “but it shouldn’t have been a vital part of the magic to draw the Jinn into the bottle.”

  She hoped so. It would be disastrous to discover they were missing part of the magic because the wax had burned away.

  Klava came over to the oven with the first tray of cakes. She held her bare hand near the bottle and nodded. She slid the tray into the oven, then took the tongs and moved the bottle to the floor.

  “Let it cool a bit more, then you can handle it,” she said, going back for another tray.

  But regardless of the heat radiating off the bottle, Katya was already leaning forward to try and read the writing—because what she had at first thought was only a spiraling stripe was actually a spiraling line of writing, inscribed into the dark green glass of the bottle, then filled with white enamel.

  “Fire smite thee, Zephyr blight thee, Water blind thee, Earth then bind thee,” she read, and looked up. “What does all that mean?”

  “It sounds to me as if there are supposed to be all four elemental powers involved in stuffing him into the bottle,” Klava said with a frown. “The fire power to actually fight him, the air to weaken him, the water to confuse him and the earth power to bind his power and send him into the vessel. Is there any more?”

  She bent closer. “It’s written there three times, then this: ‘Iblis Afrit En Kalael, I command thee in the Names of the Law, be bound into this vessel until released by the hand of a virgin of five and fifty years.”

  Klava began to laugh. She had to put the tray of unbaked cakes she was carrying down, she was laughing so hard. Tears began to come from her eyes, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

  “What?” asked Magda, curiously. “What is being so very amusing?”

  “Oh, blasted Tradition,” Klava replied, picking up the tray and inserting it into the oven, and fishing out the first one with the set of tongs. “Honestly. I suppose you have to put a condition on these things, but I would have looked longer and harder for one, personally. Like ‘Until twelfth of never’ or some such thing. Still.” She began laughing again. “Poor master! No wonder he always had a steady supply of unicorn hair!”

  “But now we know the creature’s true name,” pointed out the Horse. “Iblis Afrit En Kalael. All we have to do now is assemble the company to fight and bind him. I will return to Sasha and the dragons. But first—” He yearned toward the tray of crisp brown cakes “—could I have one of those, please?”

  Chapter 18

  The forest they stood in was cool, verdant, flourishing. Five paces away, however, the land was all but dead. There was no sign of the trees that had once stood there; there was nothing but hard-baked earth, sand, and a little scrub. The landscape had not merely been altered, it had been erased and a new one put in its place. Not even the softening hand of night could disguise that. It made Sasha feel edgy, nervous. If the Jinn could do this, so quickly, what would he do if he had real power? “That is how matters stand,” Sergei finished, and looked from the dragons to Sasha to the Queen of Copper Mountain. “It seems that it will require some sort of magic tied to all four elements in order to bind the Jinn back into the bottle. But we do have his True Name at last. We can command him.”

  “We are clearly Fire,” said the dragon Adamant. “Ekaterina is Water.”

  “Zephyr blight thee,” mused Sasha. “How can Air blight?”

  “Weaken him?” the Horse suggested. “I haven’t anything in my scant arsenal that could do that.”

  Sasha closed his eyes for a moment in thought; so much of what he did depended on knowing The Tradition and trusting to Luck, but this was not the time to trust to Luck. Was there anything he could do as a Songweaver? “I am not a fighter,” he said, slowly, “but I could sing the strength out of him.”

  “Music is Air,” Sergei agreed. “So that is three of the four. But the key one, the one that imprisons him, Earth, must be the strongest of all.”

  The Queen frowned, but said nothing.

  Why is she so reluctant to join us? Sasha repressed anger at her recalcitrance. It would do no good to get angry with her.

  After the silence had gone on long enough to be awkward, the Horse coughed. “How goes the tunneling?”

  “One blow of a pick and my men are through,” the Queen said shortly. “You need only say the word.”

  The four friends exchanged a look. “With or without Earth,” Sasha said finally, “we must go now, and hope that something turns up.”

  “I concur,” said the Horse. The dragons nodded.

  “All right, Sergei,” Sasha said, swallowing. “Go and tell Katya to get the girls into the head of the tunnel. I will send the bird as the sign we’re going to break through. I’ll come through in the tunnel itself and join her.”

  “We’ll come down out of the sky,” Adamant said. “The bird should bring the Jinn, and we’ll trap him between us.”

  “It’s as good a plan as we’re going to get,” Sasha sighed. It felt incomplete. Well, of course it felt incomplete. It was.

  “I will tell my miners,” the Queen said abruptly, and stalked off. Rather than one of her elaborate gowns, she wore a slim, calf-length green skirt, a tunic cut away at the neckline and shoulders in a fanciful pattern, and green boots.

  Sasha would have preferred to see her in armor. But then, he had hoped that coming out to see the devastation first-hand would turn her more fully to their side.

  Alas, it appeared that such was not to be.

  “Have I left any argument out?” he asked the others, feeling obscurely like a failure. He should have been able to persuade her, shouldn’t he?

  The dragons shook their heads. “You pointed out that the Jinn is not likely to permit a rival power on his doorstep. You noted that although he might be a power of Fire, he is not going to find going underground any sort of hardship, and that he could very well call forth the Earth-fire in the form of volcanics and lava and never have to personally leave the surface to attack her. Her own advisers told her how she has lost or is losing half of her allies. I can’t think of anything more that you could have said.”

  He sighed. “Nor can I.�
�� Encourage them, Sasha. They need to think that you think we can all win. He smiled weakly. “Well, my friends, dawn approaches. Let’s get into place. Sunrise will tell us if Fortune favors us or no.”

  The ten captives were assembled in the kitchen, with the door to the root cellar open. Katya looked to the nine young women who had spent a fundamentally sleepless night until the arrival of Sergei. Her stomach was a knot, her nerves wound up tight. This was going to be, literally, the fight of her life. And she was not a fighter. She couldn’t let these girls know how frightened she was, though, or the good saints only knew what they would do. “You all heard Sergei,” she said quietly. “Get down into the tunnel, and wait. And I will, I hope, see you again when this is over.”

  They looked as if they wanted to protest, but bit their objections back. Klava stepped forward, looking more determined than Katya had ever seen her. “I’ll take care of them, Katya,” she promised. “I’ll make sure everyone gets out. You fight the Jinn. You can beat him, I know you can.”

  Katya smiled, and it wasn’t an insincere or weak smile. “Believe me Klava, that, all by itself, will make a big difference. If you all can get away, you take the power he is counting on with you. The weaker he is, the better chance we have to bind him.”

  Klava turned and went down into the root cellar.

  “I wish that I was an earth-spirit,” Marina said, bitterly. “I cannot even hope to help you. One touch from him, and I am gone.”

  Poor Marina! Given how fragile she was, it was amazing how much she had done in these past days. Her courage was amazing. Katya embraced her. “You have been more help than you think, and I am counting on you as our second line of defense if he defeats us. To do that, you have to flee. Get home. Be safe. If we don’t win, warn others, tell Father Frost. He may be able to do something where we can’t.”

  “I will,” Marina promised.

  Magda merely traced an odd pattern in the air, nodded soberly, and turned away, taking Marina by the hand. Blessing? Protection? Both? And when the gypsy had started to tell the future with those cards of hers, what had she seen?

  The Wolf and bear maidens stood uncertainly together, and Katya turned toward them. “You two can do something no one else can,” she said firmly. “You are both neutral creatures and you both lived in the forest that was destroyed. The Queen may listen to you when she listens to no one else. Muster your pleas and present them if you see her. If you can bring her in, we will win!”

  “We will,” they chorused, and took themselves down into the cellar after the gypsy.

  Yulya embraced her, and Katya heard a stifled sob, but when the swan maiden let her go, there was no sign of tears. “You will bind him,” the young woman said fiercely. “You will win, and they will tell wonderful stories about this. And I will tell my sisters that they must be more like you.”

  She turned and fled down into the darkness. Katya looked after her, touched and just a bit bemused.

  The small dark girl, and the one who spoke to animals, merely nodded and left. Katya sighed; she still didn’t know their names. Now she might never learn them. But they had been steadfast companions, and she was glad to see they were escaping.

  “I’m not leaving,” said Guiliette from behind her.

  She turned, and frowned with unease. “This isn’t wise, Guiliette. You should go with the rest.”

  But Guiliette smiled. Smiled! And there was something about that smile that made Katya take notice. This wasn’t a whim…and it was going to be important. “Let us merely say that I am going to provide a far more formidable distraction than the arrival of your paper bird. And that…it is not altogether true that I am not leaving. I am just not leaving by the tunnel. You did know that the fountain is not just a fountain, didn’t you?”

  Katya blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Ah, no?”

  “It is fed by a spring. In fact, if it were not for the fountain being there, the spring would be gushing forth with a great deal more enthusiasm than it is.” The Wili smiled again. “I think you can use that.”

  And then, suddenly, there was no more time.

  With a sound like a bee shooting past, the paper bird arrived. Katya snatched it out of the air, stuffed it into its envelope, and stuffed the envelope into the bodice of her shirt. She heard the hum of the Jinn approaching at high speed, snatched up the bottle, and ran for the door; fear making her heart hammer, determination forcing her to move faster than she thought she could.

  But Guiliette was faster still.

  She sped out the kitchen door and through the gardens with Katya on her heels. They both reached the fountain at the same time as the Jinn.

  He was already wreathed in flame, and his hands were clenched in anger. The fiery eyes were looking only at Katya, and she felt her mouth go dry with terror. “You!” roared the Jinn, his voice sounding like a thunderclap.

  “No!” shouted Guiliette, interposing herself before the Jinn could act.

  “Me!”

  “Guiliette—!” Katya cried. This was not how it was supposed to be going.

  But Guiliette was paying no attention to anything but the Jinn; she spread her arms wide, staring him down with such intensity that he actually stepped back a pace, and then she began to glow.

  Katya stopped dead, transfixed. The hair on the back of her neck rose, though not with fear. This was not like anything the Wili had done before. This was something altogether new. The glow did not come from within her, but somehow, from somewhere outside of her, and it was a pure white light that should have been blinding, but wasn’t. Guiliette looked up, and her face was transformed in a smile.

  Katya was filled with awe and wonder. She shivered, feeling that she was in the presence of something so far outside her understanding that there were no words for it.

  Guiliette’s lips parted, and she spoke; it was only in a whisper, but it echoed louder than the Jinn’s shout.

  “Rheinhardt! I forgive you!” she cried, in a voice full of incongruous happiness. “I forgive me! I forgive us both!”

  In that moment, the sky opened, and glory came.

  If the sun had turned into a column and stretched itself down to earth, that was, in the most minor way, the only thing Katya could compare to the column of white light that enveloped Guiliette then.

  It made her want to sing for pure joy.

  The Jinn cried out in pain, and flung up his arm to hide his face as he turned away.

  Katya did not. Although the light was so intense it felt as if it were burning its way into the back of her brain, she could see perfectly clearly. She saw Guiliette looking with love and gratitude straight at her. Watched as the Wili—now no longer truly any such thing—put both hands to her lips and blew her a kiss.

  Felt tears of joy sting her eyes as Guiliette dissolved into the light, still smiling, infused with the purest happiness Katya had ever seen in her life.

  And then, she was gone.

  And the column of light faded, leaving nothing of itself behind.

  That was when the dragons struck.

  Roaring down out of the sky, they came in from opposite directions, giving the still-dazzled Jinn two targets, rather than one. He didn’t make up his mind in time.

  Katya awoke from her own daze, filled with a fierce determination. It did not matter that they did not have the final Element. They would fight this creature, and they would win!

  In perfect unison, at the bottom of their dive, the dragons opened their mouths.

  Enormous gouts of flame fanned out to cover the Jinn in fire, and as they passed, each lashed out with talons at his head.

  The Jinn roared with fury; in an instant, there was a sword of fire in his hand and he struck at the bigger grey dragon.

  But he missed, and both of the dragons pulled up, shooting up into the sky, mocking laughter trailing behind them.

  The Jinn began a gesture.

  He never finished it.

  With the power that was all instinct, Katya reached
for the source of the fountain, found it, and called it with all the urgency that was in her. With an explosive force that shook the ground, the water answered her, blasting the remains of the fountain and its basin out of its path, surging for the sky. She grabbed the half-formed whirlwind that the Jinn had tried to call, infused it with her wild, untamed waters, and turned it loose on him. The whirlwind strengthened, tightened, became a white, churning column that engulfed the Jinn before he could move.

  Fight that, wretch! she thought with exultation.

  Her father’s powers ran true in her. She had created her first waterspout. And the Jinn was caught, trapped, in the middle of it.

  He shrieked, and shot up the center of it, trying to escape and clearly blinded by the whirling waterspout that had him in its grasp.

  And behind her, Sasha started singing.

  It was a mocking, painfully scathing song.

  “What a failure you are!” Sasha sang. “Look at you! A couple of half-magic creatures, a mortal and a girl are beating you! You couldn’t manage to live with your own kind, and you can’t manage to live on your own. You couldn’t conquer anything in your own land and you can’t conquer anything in this one, where you are a stranger. Can you feel it? Even the tiny power you had is trickling away! Failure, fool, you have the respect of no one, and no one fears you.”

  Blindly, Katya reached for Sasha’s hand and found it. The sense of his hand in hers made her feel stronger; she didn’t have to look at him to know he felt the same. He had no instrument, no balalaika to carry the magic; he was the instrument, and even as she controlled her own magic, she marveled at his.

  Each word was a barbed dart. It was a poisonous song. It was aimed straight at the heart of the Jinn, a probe to find the things that the Jinn himself feared.

  And it was working! He escaped briefly from the water-spout. The dragons came in for a second pass, and scored him with fire and talon again and the waterspout recaptured him. Katya dared to hope they could take him without needing the power of Earth….