The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea

by L Sprague De Camp; Fletcher Pratt

  It was Belphegor’s turn to be hurt, as Shea observed with a touch of vindictive relish. “Fie, for shame!” she said. “If you’ll magic me with your enchantments into the most ungrateful of wenches, I’ll have my favor back.”

  Her nostrils moved and Shea, feeling suddenly wretched, turned to the business of navigation. It had been a splendid exploit, and they should all have been elated. Instead of which …

  After a moment he got a grip on himself, realizing that he was being pretty immature in getting sore at Medoro, who was merely one of those schizoid types who can no more help disintegrating under stress than he, Shea, could help pulling himself together under similar circumstances. Aloud he said: “All right folks, I think we’ve done enough quarrelling for one night.” (He realized that he had done most of the quarrelling, but he was also captain, and an apologetic attitude would undermine the position.) “Are we for Castle Carena?”

  “My bow,” said Belphegor. “I am undone without it. Perchance ’twill be at the inn where we were taken. Will you do me the grace to see, Sir Harold?” The voice was still chilly.

  “Good idea,” said Shea, trimming the carpet a trifle in the direction of the town. “I’d like to take a poke at that innkeeper myself, and now I have the equipment.” He stroked his tusks appreciatively.

  Behind him he felt the girl shift herself gingerly on the yielding surface to a sitting position on the rolled-up rug that was Roger. A sound somewhere between a groan and a growl emerged; Belphegor leaped to her feet, making the carpet tip perilously. “What’s here! Do carpets speak as well as move in your enchantments?”

  Shea grinned over his shoulder. “That’s your old boyfriend, Roger of Carena. We’re taking him back to uncle.”

  “Verily?” She pulled back an edge of the rug and stared in the fading light, then gave a peal of silvery laughter. “Nay, this joys me much, and for this joy you are restored to favor as my true knight, Sir Harold. But I’d have one of the great bear’s ears as a trophy.” She whipped out her small hunting knife and the carpet heaved as Roger strove to wriggle in his bonds. Medoro’s jinn-face took on a greenish cast. Shea said: “Cut it out, will you, girl-friend? We’re getting there.”

  The town was below them, lemon-colored gleams picking out the windows of the inn. Shea circled the carpet round the structure and carefully manoeuvred it up to one of the windows that lighted the upstairs dormitory, peering in. There seemed to be no sleepers, only a feeble oil-lamp on a low table.

  “I don’t see it,” he said. “Where did you leave it?”

  “I deemed I had laid it upon the bed next to my own, with my quiver,” she said.

  “Not there now. Medoro, you and I will have to do a little searching. Beautiful, you stay here and see that the carpet doesn’t drift away from the window, because we may come back running and dive through. You can move it by pulling gently on the fringe here, but don’t do it if you don’t have to. If Roger makes a fuss you can have both his ears.”

  Medoro said: “Oh, my lord and brother, is it not more meet that I should wait, both as one who can defend this carpet from attack, and because I know not one bow from another?”

  “No!” said Shea. “Come along.”

  He let himself carefully through the window, reaching up a hand to help Medoro. They scoured the dormitory from end to end, peering under carpets and in corners, but not a trace of archery tackle.

  “Inshallah!” said Medoro. “It was ordained from the beginning of the world that we should not …”

  He broke off at the sound of approaching horses, and then of voices downstairs. Shea tiptoed to the head of the stairs. A voice was just saying: “Uncle, are there within your caravanserai certain fugitives from the justice of the Commander of the Faithful?”

  “My head be your sacrifice!” came the voice of the innkeeper. “Were there such, I had long since delivered them to the servants of the Prince, straitly bound. But are there not other inns than mine?”

  The owner of the other voice replied: “By Allah, our breasts are narrowed, and an enchantment lies upon this expedition for the abatement of the Nazarenes! For behold, Lord Dardinell must bring home to the camp a damsel with hair of ill omen, a very Frank, who indeed aroused the jealousy of the sons of Satan the stoned. For with the setting of the sun what should befell but there came into the camp an army of furious Jann, each taller than a tree and pinioned with four wings of brass, who spurned over our tents as though they had been toys. By the grace of Allah, few were slain, though many ran in panic, and we have come to recall those who fled, lest they be taken later and fire be applied to their feet so they may flee no more.”

  The innkeeper apparently turned around to show them into the lower rooms, for his voice became inaudible and there was a sound of feet. But a moment later he picked up again “… the apartments for sleeping, which be untenanted.”

  Medoro jerked at Shea’s arm and cast an imploring glance toward the window. Shea got out his sword and pulling his lips closed to his fellow-jinn’s ear, murmured: “Draw, and we’ll scare the living bejesus out of them after that story he told. When I jump and yell, you do the same.” He waved the weapon; Medoro produced and waved his own, though with somewhat uncertain gestures. The footsteps started up the stair; Shea leaped with a whoop, in time to see three soldiers, with the innkeeper behind them.

  He must have looked a hundred feet tall, coming down from above, and behind him Medoro emitted a shrill yell that was even more bloodcurdling than his own. An answering scream came from the men below, mingled with a clatter of dropped weapons and the sound of heavy bodies hurling themselves any old way toward escape. For a few seconds the bottom of the stair was a confused mass of trunks and limbs; then the soldiers fought their way loose and raced out the door.

  The last one to get to his feet was the innkeeper, who as low man had been trampled by all three others. He was a little too slow on the getaway as hoofbeats diminished into the distance. Shea noted that he had both hands up for the formal tearing of his garments and his mouth open for a scream, but that both his motor nerves and his vocal seemed paralyzed.

  He was not quite up to cutting the fellow down in cold blood, so he gave him a stiff left to the nose. The innkeeper dropped like an English heavyweight and rolled over, burying his face in his arms and awaiting the end.

  “Look for that bow while I play footsie with this guy,” said Shea, digging his toe into the innkeeper’s ribs.

  Medoro sidled past, his eyes rolling as though he expected Shea to begin carving steaks off the unfortunate man at any moment, but the latter contented himself with goosing the fellow tentatively with the point of the sword, until the young Saracen returned, waving the bow and saying: “By the omnipotence of Allah, it is indeed found!”

  “Uncle, or whatever your name is,” said Shea, “if you want to stay alive a little longer, lie where you are till you count slowly up to one hundred. Then you may get up and tell anybody you like about how the Jann spared your life. Okay, Medoro.”

  As the carpet resumed its slightly undulating flight, Medoro inched forward and patted one of Shea’s feet. “Know, O auspicious Lord Harr,” he said, “that this is a deed worthy to be written in the most divine verse on tablets of silver with letters of gold. It is given to poets, in the name of the Prophet, on whose name be blessings, to know all that passes in the minds of men, and had I but a lute, I would compose verses—”

  “Too bad you haven’t got the lute,” said Shea. “But right now I’m more interested in figuring out the shortest way to the Castle of Carena.”

  Belphegor pointed. “Sir Harold, it lies almost under the star of the Lion, thitherward. Behold that triad of bright stars; the lowest lies under the pole. And for your help in aiding Medoro to find my weapon, much thanks. It was knightly done to accompany him.”

  Shea, looking down at the broken ground where the shadows were now deep, guessed that they were making twenty to thirty miles an hour. As the rolling highlands gave way to swolle
n, solid peaks of mountain, he had to put his vehicle into a climb to avoid the crests. All three began to shiver in their light clothes, and Medoro’s teeth rattled. Shea envied Roger the rug.

  That gave him an idea. They must be far enough from Agramant’s camp so that over those stony mountains it would take days for the Amir’s men to catch up. Why not rest comfortably through the remainder of the night? He put the carpet into a glide toward a low rounded peak and set it down, murmuring (under his breath so that Medoro would not hear) a spell to keep it there.

  The Roger-rug grunted again as the carpet touched a stone. It occurred to Shea that there was no particular reason why the big man should be comfortable while Belphebe-Belphegor was cold that night, so the prisoner was unrolled from his rug; and then it occurred to him that it would be interesting to hear what Roger had to say, so he removed the gag.

  The prefect chevalier had plenty to say, beginning by calling them offsprings of Marids and one-eyed sows, then running up and down the chain of their ancestry and remarking that his uncle would have them pickled in brass bottles under the seal of Solomon. With academic interest Shea noted that the invective had a certain weakness toward the end. The slow brain of the big lummox had evidently not quite been able to resolve the contradiction of Jann who spoke with the voices of Shea and Medoro.

  The poet plucked at Shea’s sleeve. “O brother,” he said, “shall we not rather release him for the night; for it is contrary to the law of the Prophet that a man shall not be allowed to take his relievements. As is said by Abu Nowas—”

  “As is said by myself, nothing doing,” replied Shea. “I don’t want to sit up guarding this big lug all night, and if Bradamant gets hold of him, he’ll forget all about the law of the Prophet, anyway.”

  He was astounded to hear the big lug groan, and see a glistening tear on his eyelids in the star-shine; and even more astounded when Roger shut up completely.

  Belphegor and Medoro moved a little apart and sat on a rock, talking softly and looking at the bright, near stars. Shea saw his arm go round the girl’s waist and guess he didn’t dare try anything at this stage, and under the circumstances, there didn’t seem to be much point in building a campfire. He pulled a twig from the top of a scrubby bush and bit down on it, trying to pretend that it was a pipe and recalling the ad for some brand of tobacco—“A gentleman’s solace.”

  Solace! That was what he needed. What was the use, anyway, of this running across a parade of universes not even real and having nothing to show for it? What he ought to do was go back to Garaden, finish getting his doctor’s degree, become a big-shot psychiatrist, consulted by alcoholics and the affluent screwy, and make money. With money you could have everything—even affection. He recalled a statistic that Garaden had itself gathered, to the effect that something over sixty per cent of women could be happy and affectionate with any really good provider.

  It wasn’t really as simple as that, though. That red-haired spearshaft of a girl over there was his wife, none genuine without this signature, and just any girl who wanted a good provider wouldn’t take her place. Anyway, he had a responsibility. He had married her and promised to keep her safe—particularly from such things as the Medoro menace. He had seen the thing so often in case-histories: women of her forceful type, thoroughly competent as long as sex was left out, falling for good-looking weaklings whom they felt the impulse to mother, and unhappy because of it. They usually ended up by despising the men in question.

  Well, what? He couldn’t very well murder Medoro, that was not in the limits of his own ethos, and it would probably have the contrary effect on the girl than the one he wanted. It would fix the love-image in her memory forever as something desirable and lost. Moreover, he had no desire to bump off Medoro. The guy was perfectly frank about his own weakness as a fighter or man of action of any kind, no sham about him. He was only miscast as a Saracen warrior, like one of the Marx brothers trying to play Hamlet. With the right kind of stage-manager …

  The whole problem was one to pass on to Chalmers, that very well-integrated personality, who didn’t mind tearing other people’s lives apart to mend the details of his own.

  Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to get some sleep. Medoro was supposed to watch Roger during the early part of the night. He hoped the idiot would not do anything stupid, like turning the perfect cavalier loose, but consoled himself with the thought that if Medoro did that, Roger would probably fall on the poet first and make enough racket to wake the other two up.

  A wolf howled in the distance. Everybody moved, rustlingly at the sound. Another howl answered it. The howlers set up a duet, the howls became shorter and closer together, then they ceased. About that time Medoro began to croon in a minor key, presumably a poem of his own.

  Lucky stiff, thought Shea, meaning the wolf.

  Fourteen

  “Now where the hell are we?” demanded Harold Shea.

  Below the edge of the carpet nothing was visible but rocky peaks, pine-clad slopes, and steep gorges, with now and then a metallic flash of water in them. “We’ve been flying for hours, and all we get is more of the same. I think we ought to stop at a gas station and ask.”

  A little frown came between Belphegor-Belphebe’s lined brows. “As oft erst, Sir Harold, I wot not—right well—what you would say.”

  “It’s like this; we seem to be a long time getting nowhere, and I could do with something to eat.”

  She looked at him, then glanced quickly sidewise and down. “I marveled that you are so eager to end this, our adventure; yet since you will have it so, there lies a road now below us which, an I mistake not, will lead us to Carena.”

  “You have the damnedest eyes, kid. Where?”

  She pointed. It was a mountain track like two or three they had glimpsed already, sneaking down one side of a gorge, across a stream by stepping-stones, and up the opposite slope.

  Shea banked and spiralled down toward the track. Belphegor indicated four dots ahead on the road which, as they approached, resolved into a man leading three laden asses. Shea slid in toward him, and just above head level, called: “Hi, there!”

  The man looked up, his whole face seemed to dissolve, he gave a squawk of terror and began to run, the asses rocking behind him. The carpet zipped past a hairpin turn and came round in a long curve as Shea brought it back, crying to the girl: “You talk to him!”

  “Nay, hold rather,” she said. “He is so sore affrighted with your grim aspect that an you clip him close, he’ll but leap a cliff and take the known death rather than the terror unknown.”

  “Allah upon you if you do!” said Medoro. “This is most excellent sport to see a merchant so buffooned.”

  “No, she’s right,” said Shea, slanting the carpet upward and away. “But it leaves us with a problem. How are we going to get close enough to anybody to ask questions, looking the way we do?”

  “What need of question?” asked Belphegor. “I have given you the direction general; you have but to wait for night, then put this strange steed of yours aloft and to its pace, seeking for that ring of flame around the castle.”

  Shea glanced down to be sure he was following the road. “It isn’t just finding the palace,” he said. “We’ve got to consider tactics, too. Duke Astolph is somewhere around with that damn hippogriff, and this thing’s slow freight by comparison. I don’t want to be enchanted down in flames, especially with you aboard, kid.”

  “Grammercy for your thought of me, fair sir,” said the girl: “but I charge you that while we keep this quest, you shall no longer treat me as a woman par amours, but as a full companion.”

  The words were sharp enough, but did he imagine it, or had she said them in a tone anything but sharp? There was not time to make a decision, for peering over the carpet’s leading edge, Shea caught sight of a little fan of detritus at the side of a mountain which might be a mine entrance. “I’m going to land there,” he told the others. “Belphebe—that is, Belphegor, suppose you go first and smoo
th out anyone inside.”

  The carpet slanted smoothly down to a landing in front of the mineshaft, which did not appear to be a mineshaft after all when one got close to it. As Shea stood up to stretch cramped muscles, a man appeared at the low entrance. He was old, he was whiskery, and a dirty brown robe was gathered around his waist by a piece of cord.

  For a moment he looked at the visitors with widening eyes, then took a step backward, and planting his feet firmly, lifted his right hand with two fingers upraised: “In the name of St. Anthony and the Virgin Mary,” he said in a high voice, “depart, cursèd enchantments!”

  Shea felt the muscles of his face relax into different patterns and reached a hand up to find that his tusks were gone. He looked at Medoro; the poet had lost his, too.

  “Nothing to worry about, Father,” he said to the old man. “We’re really not enchantments ourselves, just had some put on us, and we’re looking for directions.”

  The old man beamed. “Surely, surely, my son. There be many great and good men of your race, some of whom draw nigh unto God, though in strange wise. And all respect the hermit who has nought but his poverty. Whither wish you to go?”

  “Castle Carena,” said Shea, the thought flashing through his mind that even if this were the holiest hermit in Spain, his protestation of poverty was laid on with a trowel.

  “By the road before you, my children. Over the next pass lies the valley of Pau; beyond it, the village of the same name, wherein stands the church of St. Mary of Egypt, whose vicar is an Austin friar. Beyond that again, a fork in the route—”

  “Uh-huh,” said Shea. He turned to Belphegor. “That must be the valley where my partner went hunting for Roger just before I met you and Duke Astolph.” He turned back to the hermit. “Have you seen any Christian knights going in that direction?”

  The old man’s face took on a troubled expression. “Nay, children,” he said. “I know naught of warlike men or their contentions. These be vanities, even as gold.”