“The Ifrit brought me and my dogs here,”
I said apologetically. “I had no intention of interfering with your flocks. I’m afraid that when your dogs attacked mine, mine fought back.”
“Flea-bitten old thing,” said the first man dismissively, aiming a kick. He was, I thought, so thoroughly frightened of the Ifrit that he was taking out his fear on his wounded dog.
The small pile of precious stones by the Ifrit’s foot might, in these men’s eyes, belong to them. “I got carried up to the roc’s nest,” I continued, still apologetic. “That’s what I took, those stones over there. I thought they might mollify the Ifrit but they didn’t. Do you want them?”
But fear of approaching the Ifrit was far stronger than any greed. “No, no, anything you gathered, you can keep.
We’ll be back some other day.” And, whistling the dogs to them, the men hastened away back over the hill.
I should have asked them if we were anywhere near Xantium, I realized. All the landmarks were unfamiliar—no telling how far the Ifrit had brought us. Somehow I was going to have to either evade the Ifrit and get back to Xantium, or else persuade him that keeping people from Yurt safe meant following me back to the West to oppose Elerius.
In the meantime, what did I have in my pocket?
Down at the bottom I still had the diamond ring Paul had tried to offer both Gwennie and the Princess Margareta, but on top of it was the strange oversized signet I had found in the roc’s nest.
Heartlessly I turned my back on the Ifrit and the dogs, whom he was still stroking with a massive fingertip, to give the thing a better look.
It was a signet all right, carved with letters and symbols that I could not read. But something about it teased at my memory. I was sure I had seen a bottle somewhere, sealed in lead, with this exact imprint in it. It had been—It was a bottle in which this Ifrit was once imprisoned. I was holding the dread seal of Solomon, son of David.
“I’ll threaten the Ifrit with this, and he’ll have to obey me,” was my first triumphant thought. I might not have been able to get the Dragons’ Sceptre, but if I could command the Ifrit with this the effect would be the same. The certainty that this seal was exactly what the Ifrit was hoping to find in the roc’s nest made my triumph all the sweeter.
But in the next minute I began to have doubts that it could be this easy. If the seal of Solomon itself conferred authority over Ifriti, then the royal Sons of David wouldn’t have had nearly as many problems, what with the Great Captivity, the Empire, and the followers of the Prophet, over the last few millennia. It might well have been stolen from them at some point and been wandering around the East ever since, but if anybody had been able to use it to command Ifriti, I should have heard about it.
King Solomon had, it was true, imbued his Black Pearl with some of his greatest powers many, many centuries ago, but the Pearl was now lost beyond recovery in the Outer Sea. Solomon was unlikely to have imbued two different artifacts with his magic. The seal might have the power to keep an Ifrit closed up in a bottle, but to get the effect one would have to capture an Ifrit and imprison it in the first place.
“I think I’ll keep these dogs,” announced the Ifrit in his rumbling voice. “They remind me of my wife. The only problem with dogs,” he added thoughtfully, “is that they die as easily and senselessly as you humans. I’ve seen it.”
“They’re really my dogs,” I objected, stuffing the signet back in my pocket. “They would miss me if they stayed with you.” I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up, distracting the Ifrit from killing me or demanding impossible things, while trying to keep an eye on him so he didn’t accidentally crush the dogs he claimed to like so much. My leg was hurting worse than ever. And there was no telling when the baby rocs would become hungry again.
“You could stay here too,” conceded the Ifrit, “though if you don’t stop wiggling out of everything I ask I shall cease finding you amusing.”
“I’ve heard,” I said cunningly, “that you were once imprisoned in a bottle. Can this be true? Can a creature as large as you have ever fit in a bottle? I can’t believe it. You’ll have to show me.”
“Nice try, little mage,” growled the Ifrit. “That’s one of the oldest tricks there is.”
Something was flying toward us. The roc again? But this didn’t look big enough to be the roc. And it was purple.
A trumpeting call reached me. I sprang up with delight, which brought a stab of pain to my leg. It was Naurag. But something was chasing him, something that resolved itself as it came closer into a flying carpet: dark red and carrying two people. Kazalrhun had decided to join us after all.
I threw my arms around Naurag’s neck as he landed, and the two black dogs, escaping the Ifrit while his attention was diverted, jumped around him, barking in welcome. Naurag didn’t know what to make of the dogs.
No telling whether Naurag and the mage had come together or whether the flying beast had escaped from Kazalrhun’s house and sought us out while hotly pursued. The flying carpet landed a short distance away, and Maffi and Kazalrhun stepped off, the first almost lazily, the second with a bounce.
The older mage was carrying a bottle: a bronze bottle shaped like a cucumber.
Unsealed, I saw. And I certainly didn’t have any lead to heat to try to make an impression of the signet. I would have to improvise.
Kazalrhun and the Ifrit eyed each other, both giving massive frowns. “I kept our agreement and did not summon you,” said the mage firmly, as fury seemed to be building in the Ifrit’s green face.
“You humans always like to wiggle out of things,” said the Ifrit darkly. “You sent this other mage instead.”
Now was my chance, while neither one was paying attention to me. I snatched the bottle from Kazalrhun’s hand before he could protest. Into it I tossed a pebble, then shook it so it rattled. “All right, Ifrit!” I shouted up to him. “It’s time for me to confess. I found something else in the roc’s nest, something you’d be very interested in. I’ve got it in here!”
The Ifrit turned his full attention from Kazalrhun to me, an evil glint in his enormous eyes. “This is a trick, little mage!” he announced—totally accurately, I could have told him. “You said you found nothing but those worthless jewels.”
Maffi, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, had spotted the jewels and was picking them up, rubbing off the filth on his sleeve and eyeing them appreciatively.
“And this!” I said, shaking the bottle again. “If you don’t believe me, have a look.”
“You’re just trying to trick me into there,” said the Ifrit. Right again, I thought. “But the joke’s on you, little mage! This bottle has no stopper—not that even a stopper would hinder me!”
I continued holding the bottle up toward him, trying not to tremble. With a shrug, the Ifrit suddenly started going misty around the edges. “I’ll see what you have in there, and if this is all a trick, this time I really will slay you!” His face lit up in a fierce grin. “Painfully, too. Though perhaps you should thank me. This way you will not have to live the rest of your miserable human existence!”
His voice faded out as his enormous frame finished dissolving into smoke. The smoke, a dark green smudge in the clear air, shot into the bronze bottle. And I slapped the great seal of Solomon across the opening.
“What is this? This is just a pebble!” came the Ifrit’s voice from inside, tiny now, not much more than an insect’s whine. But he was rattling the seal, in spite of my best effort to hold it tight to the mouth of the bottle. “Do you think you can hold me inside? Well, prepare to die, for—”
Kazalrhun’s voice drowned out whatever else the Ifrit was saying, speaking heavy syllables I did not recognize—close to the Hidden Language, but certainly not the Language I had learned at the wizards’ school. King Solomon’s seal burned hot for a second, and light flashed from the gold. I held on grimly in spite of the sharp pain in my hand. Kazalrhun stopped speaking, and the seal ceased to
rattle across the bottle’s mouth. The Ifrit too was silent.
Then the mage said, “You need not clutch the bottle quite so tightly, Daimbert. The seal shall not separate itself while my spell holds.”
“And the Ifrit—”“Is bound there until someone shall loosen the seal to free him.”
But I didn’t loosen my grip, not yet. “What was that spell you just said?”
“The activating spell for Solomon’s seal. I know you western wizards are a little backwards in your knowledge, but I had expected you, Daimbert, to know his seal when you saw it!”
Oh, I did all right. “I know what else I recognize when I see it.” I glared at him, furious, forgetting my leg, forgetting my burned hand in my anger. “I recognize you maneuvering me. You had heard this seal was in a roc’s nest and that the Ifrit was searching for it. So you sent me after it, conveniently showing up just in time with a bottle. Now you’re going to expect me to hand the Ifrit over to you, being properly grateful for your spell.”
Maffi turned toward us, hands full of jewels. “And are you not properly grateful? Is this not what you came to the East to find, a captive Ifrit who would do your bidding?”
I held the bottle toward him so he could hear better. “He doesn’t sound likely to do anybody’s bidding.”
“—first your feet, then your calves, and then your thighs!” the Ifrit was shouting in his tiny insect-whine voice.
But Kazalrhun looked thoughtful. “You may retain the bottle—and the binding seal—at your need, Daimbert. And I do not even ask for your thanks in restoring your companions.”
He said a few quick words in the language that was not quite the Hidden Language, and the two black dogs immediately turned back into Hadwidis and Gwennie: exhausted, bleeding, and ragged, but thoroughly young women again. I shook my head in admiration for the mage’s abilities. He had transformed them into dogs and transformed them back, and I still didn’t have the slightest idea how his spells had worked. Maffi was at once all solicitation.
He had the women sit down, salved and bandaged the dog-bites with an emergency kit he produced from his pocket, and presented them with the jewels, saying that the stones for which I had nearly been pecked to death by nestling rocs were intended as compensation for their troubles. The two appeared dazed, though Gwennie took the jewels in her lap.
Hadwidis put both arms around her. “You saved my life,” she murmured. “Those dogs would have killed me.
Thank you.” Both turned to glower in my direction, as though this were my fault.
Other than making sure they were not badly injured, I had no time yet for them. I was not through with Kazalrhun. “You’re not answering me,” I said, low and hard, “because you can’t deny what I’m saying. You just wanted me to do your messy work for you. But your plans won’t succeed, because I’m keeping this Ifrit, and Solomon’s seal.”
The mage chuckled then, not insulted in the slightest. “I fear I may be learning the true nature of your feelings for me, Daimbert, without even the necessity of planting rumors of my death! But do not let your rage build so; it is too hot here for that. If you think that my information was so good as to know exactly where Solomon’s seal was to be found and how to trick you into finding it for me, you imagine more than even I have ever accomplished.
“Of course I knew,” he continued, “that the chances might now be excellent for finding the golden seal you now clutch so tightly to you. I told you as much yesterday. It has been treasured, stolen, lost and found, bought and sold, all over the East for over two thousand years. At only a few points in its history has it fallen into the hands of a mage who knew even a fraction of Solomon’s magic, enough to activate the great binding spells inherent within it. But the rumors have been building these last months, in Xantium and all around the Central Sea.”
“Rumors that it was in a roc’s nest,” I muttered.
“Not that specific, Daimbert,” with a flash of his gold tooth. “But I calculated that if we mages had heard of it, then an Ifrit would also have done so. He would be just as interested as we—although for different reasons. I only knew for certain how to contact one Ifrit, but I also knew for certain that if I contacted him I did so at peril of my life. When you said that you sought to meet with an Ifrit I realized how dangerous it would be. As you recall, I attempted to talk you out of it.”
My own recollections were somewhat different, but I let it pass.
“My hope was that the Ifrit would know where the seal was located, even though I did not. Thinking of your own resourcefulness, I also hoped that you might be able to trick him into leading you to it. You succeeded even more quickly than I had anticipated. Perhaps I should have thought to check all the rocs’ nests within five hundred miles of Xantium, though the prospect were daunting.”
“Um, where are we exactly?” I said, not wanting to give up righteous indignation just yet. But between my relief at being alive and his matter-of-fact answers, I was finding it harder and harder to keep the fury going. “Nearly two hundred miles east of Xantium, I would calculate. Not where I would have looked first for a roc. But you have succeeded, Daimbert! It was my confidence in you that made me decide, when your purple beast abruptly took off from my house, following you wherever you had gone, that I should bring a bottle as I came in pursuit.”
“You can’t have your bottle back,” I said. “Not as long as there’s an Ifrit in it.”
“Of a certainty, Daimbert,” he said with another chuckle. “What would I do with an imprisoned Ifrit? At the moment he would seem to be threatening to tear you apart rather than grant you wishes for freeing him again, but perhaps you may teach him better manners back in your little kingdom of Yurt. I have some lead at my house; it would be best to have the bottle properly sealed.”
“I’m still keeping Solomon’s signet,” I said stubbornly.
III
Off in the distance, I saw a dark shape with an enormous wing-span, moving majestically toward us. “The roc’s chicks must be hungry again,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before it arrives.” With me astride Naurag and the rest of them riding Kazalrhun’s flying carpet, we headed back toward Xantium. Gwennie and Hadwidis were ignoring me pointedly.
Our shadows rippled below us over miles of rocky scrub, with the occasional village or meandering stream to break up the sameness of the landscape. I had the Ifrit’s bottle in my pocket, where he was just barely audible. From the occasional word I caught, he seemed to be making up new and imaginative tortures to apply to me before finishing me off.
I tried unsuccessfully to arrange my leg in a comfortable position and stroked Naurag’s neck. I told him what a good flying beast he was, and how he could have all the melons he wanted as soon as we got back to Xantium. If he hadn’t come after us, pursued by the mage, I might still be dodging between Ifrit and roc.
For that matter, if Kazalrhun hadn’t known the spell to activate Solomon’s seal, I might be dead already. To distract myself from the pain in my leg, I speculated in a rather desultory way about all the different forms of magic. The mage’s spells were different from mine, and also different from Theodora’s fire magic, or the terrifying magic of blood and bone practiced by the dark wizards of the Eastern Kingdoms, or the herbal magic which had been more prevalent in the West before the advent of the school, much less the magic of the Ifrit, who did not seem to use spells at all, but could transport us hundreds of miles in a few excruciating seconds. School magic, I was beginning to think, was only one of a myriad possible ways to move through magic’s four dimensions, and must have been given the form we now took for granted by the old wizard Naurag.
Was there anything in these other forms of magic I might possibly use against Elerius—ignoring for the moment the detail that I didn’t really know any of them very well? By the time we got home it would be over two weeks since my funeral. I wondered uneasily what had been happening while I was gone and what I would have to do about it. Aiming the Ifrit’s bottle at Elerius, pryin
g off the seal, and then standing back struck me as one appealing strategy.
Elerius would be hampered by no longer being able to operate out of the school, but he still had his kingdom—Hadwidis’s kingdom. No telling how many of the various wizards from around the Western Kingdoms would follow him. I suspected that he had been working on gaining their support for years. The school had always been the focus for wizardry, even since its foundation some two centuries ago, but that had never meant that we wizards were inclined to line up all on the same side.
And meanwhile, what was happening in the City? Presumably Elerius was no longer in the running for mayor, but that only meant that the mayoral election would have become suddenly much messier. The City had always taken the presence of the wizards for granted, but how would a rift among the school wizards be affecting those who lived below the school’s white spires? And since Elerius’s candidate for bishop had been elected just before my funeral, then I guessed that a bitter divide was developing there as well, as the cathedral priests looked with new suspicion at the man they had chosen as their spiritual leader.
And what of the armies I had seen in Caelrhon? Who was planning to invade whom, and what part did Elerius intend his undead soldiers to play? I had a feeling I was not going to like the answers.
It was dark by the time we reached Xantium, but the lights flickered like fairy-land as we banked over the city. It was quieter now than during the day, and through the distant bursts of song, sudden arguments, and children’s shouts, I could hear the waves splashing gently in the harbor. The flying carpet dove downward toward Kazalrhun’s house, and I followed more sedately on Naurag.
Is This Apocalypse Necessary? Page 21