“Never!” the sorcerer snapped.
“ ‘Never’ is such an absolute term,” Matt sighed. He brandished the ham, chanting,
“The southern end of a northbound sow
Will delight your tastebuds now.
You’ll crave it, rave it, cry for more,
Once you’ve scented our roast boar!”
The sorcerer’s mouth began to water. “What corrupted magic do you seek to practice on me?” he wailed.
“Only the transformations any good cook can bring about,” Matt answered. “Never knew pig meat could be so good, did you?”
The aroma of the meat drew Achmed into lifting his head closer to the ham bone. “This is most immoral of you! To make me lust after forbidden food!”
“Hey, it’s not a sin in my religion.” Matt turned to the guard and called, “Light a little fire. Let’s warm this roast up a little and let Achmed get a whiff of its full aroma.”
The soldier grinned and called to a groom, “Bring some hay and some sticks!”
“You are the cruelest torturer of all!” Achmed groaned. “Others twist a man’s limbs—but you would distort my soul!”
“Would you like some wine with that ham?” Matt gestured to the soldier who was lighting the fire. The man nodded to the groom, who ran off toward the kitchens.
“You know it is forbidden! I shall never drink of the fruit of the vine, unbeliever!”
“But there are Muslims who do,” Matt pointed out. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Omar Khayyám, but his verses go like this:
“And lately, by the Tavern Door agape
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
Bid me taste of it; and ’twas—the Grape!
Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry,
But fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by and by.
And much as Wine has played the Infidel,
And robb’d me of my Robe of Honour—Well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One-half so precious as the stuff they sell!”
“How can this be?” Achmed cried. “I lust for this wine you speak of now—and I have never tasted of it!”
“Probably won’t be as good as you’re imagining,” Matt consoled him. “But then, what ever is?”
The soldier held the ham bone over the little fire, and the first trace of a delightful aroma filtered through the air.
“You shall regret this corruption of one of the Faithful, minion of Shaitan!” Achmed cried. “You may doom my soul, but Nirobus shall give my colleagues enough magical power to set you aflame like the Hell to which you would send me!”
Matt went very still. “Nirobus? I think I’ve heard that name before. But he’s very far away—too far to send you any reinforcements.”
“He can and he will! Already he has given us the power to strengthen the arms and the swords of the Moors!”
“Really?” Matt said, bright with sarcasm. “And what piffling little service does he expect you to perform for this power? Conjuring demons? A little contract in blood, maybe?”
“Only what any good Muslim would do if he could—inspire a jihad, a holy war to spread the faith of Islam to enlighten the whole world!”
“Light a fire that will sweep through all of Europe, huh? Won’t work, Achmed. You can inspire men to fight, but all you’ll have then is a mob. You have to have a general if you want to make them into an army.”
“Do you think me a fool?” Achmed said, his voice acid with contempt. “We have such a Mahdi, a young man of devout faith and burning zeal, a veritable genius at stratagems and battles! He needed only a little persuasion to make him see that he could conquer all Europe for Allah, and the Moors needed even less to acclaim him as their Mahdi!”
“Sounds like the only power Nirobus needed to give you was finding that military genius and starting rumors of invincibility,” Matt commented. “How old is this Mahdi, anyway?”
“Perhaps twenty-five. Soon all the world shall know his excellence!”
“Twenty-five,” Matt repeated, deadpan. “A really tried and proven soldier, huh?”
The sarcasm went right by Achmed. “He has fought five great battles already, and has driven the Christian knights into a strip of land along the northern coast of Ibile! His arm is strong with the might of Allah, his sorcerers bold with the power of Nirobus!”
“Oh,” Matt said. “The armies win by magic, huh?”
“The armies triumph over the cumbersome, bulky knights of Christendom as his sorcerers defeat the weak magic of the Christian wizards! You cannot stand against him! Yield, and he will treat you with kindness!”
“As long as we convert to Islam, that is.”
“Nay! He will not force you, only encourage you to see the benefits of Islam, of surrender to the will of Allah!”
“Only encourage us,” Matt said, nodding. “Of course, Christians will have to pay heavier taxes than Muslims, and Christian dukes and earls will have to give up their castles and lands to Muslim aristocrats, and the Muslim judges will tend to decide in favor of Muslims who are suing Christians—but that’s just the fortunes of war, right?”
“Even those mild punishments need not be yours, if you surrender to Allah.”
“So you’re not just promising your soldiers victory—you’re promising them loot from Christians who won’t convert. Tell me, just how did you manage to defeat King Rinaldo’s wizards?”
Achmed seemed to expand with pride, his eyes burning with arrogance. “Nirobus does indeed send us power from his distant land, unbeliever—a new sort of power, that strikes deep into a sorcerer’s soul and swells him with strength. There is no feeling like it! When I draw on Nirobus, I feel as though I were more intensely alive than ever before, filled with the strength of three, four, five lives, even more!”
“Matthew,” Papa said, “the new drug in the neighborhood—while they are under its influence, the boys go limp, with foolish grins. Indeed, some must stand guard while the others are under its influence. And even when they are sober, they seem to be weaker, slower, less vital...”
“So that’s why they weren’t fighting as well as they used to!” It was galling for Matt to realize that his victories might not all have been due to his new strength and skill. “How do you think the addiction will end, Papa? With each of them completely drained of his life force, dying as a shriveled husk of his former self?”
Achmed frowned. “Of what do you speak? Nirobus would never leach the souls of the living!”
“Not their souls, maybe, but their vitality.” Matt held up a hand to forestall the sorcerer’s protest. “Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t doubt that your Mahdi is a good man, or even that you and your fellows aren’t sorcerers at all, but good and virtuous men by the tenets of your Faith, wizards who mean only to draw on the powers of Goodness.”
“Then what is this talk of weakening young men?”
“I think Nirobus has pulled off the world’s biggest con,” Matt said, his face somber. “That means a cheat, a fraud. I think he’s managed to persuade you all that he’s a holy and righteous man who’s only trying to advance the cause of your Faith.”
“Assuredly he is!”
Matt shook his head. “Afraid not. At best, I think your Nirobus might be out to advance the cause of himself, to let your Mahdi conquer the world for you, then kill him off and Nirobus himself become emperor of all.”
“It cannot be!” But doubt shadowed Achmed’s eyes.
“Oh,” Matt said. “You don’t want to know the worst, then?”
“I do not!”
“I’ll tell you anyway,” Matt said softly. “Who is the Father of Lies, Achmed? Who is the Sultan of Fraud? The worst of it might be that Nirobus isn’t trying to conquer for himself at all. He might have a master, a very evil master.”
Achmed
writhed and gyrated, trying to shrug off his bonds. “Free my hands to cover my ears! I shall not hear your blasphemy!”
“It’s not blasphemy to say that you and your fellow sorcerers are credulous fools who have let an amoral predator convince you of what you want to believe,” Matt said, “that you have let yourselves be convinced that Nirobus wants to bring all the world to Allah...”
Achmed began to scream, thrashing about in his bonds.
“But he doesn’t want the world for Allah!” Matt shouted. “The master he really serves is Satan, and he really wants to put us all into the power of Hell!”
“I did not hear you!” Achmed cried. “I did not hear the words of blasphemy!”
But they both knew he had, and knew that it wasn’t God that Matt was indicting.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“He is so ruthless now, Ramón!” Mama huddled within the circle of her husband’s arms, head against his chest, both taking and giving comfort. “When he tortured that Moor, I scarcely knew him for my own gentle son!”
“I know, I know, mi corazón,” Papa soothed. “But remember that he did not actually torture the man, only subjected him to the pain of temptation, which relied on the man’s having pleasure.”
“I know, I know, but he was straining the man’s soul! Could my little boy have been so careless of another man’s beliefs?”
They sat on the bed in their suite, it being the only piece of furniture wide enough for two people side by side. The sunshine of late afternoon turned the paneling and the tapestries to gold.
“He honored the Muslim’s faith, in his way,” Papa said. “He did not force a morsel of pork between Achmed’s teeth, after all, nor even sustain the temptation to the man’s breaking—only used it to upset Achmed to the point at which his anger and pride impelled him to speak.”
Mama’s shivering stilled.
Papa took note, and pressed his consolation. “He has remembered our teachings, Jimena, and is slow to give hurt and quick to give help.”
“Yes, but, Ramón!” Mama looked up into his eyes. “He would have hurt that man if he had to, I know it!”
“Certainly he would have, if the man had struck at him.” Papa smiled sadly down at her. “He would have struck faster and harder, if the sorcerer had offered harm to his Alisande.”
“Well... I can understand that, certainly...” Mama lowered her gaze.
Papa felt a knot of concern loosen in his breast. He rested his cheek against her hair and mourned, “He has become a man, mi corazón.” But fierce pride glowed in him, too, pride in this man who had been his boy.
In the queen’s solar, Matt sat at the table with Alisande, his hand covering hers. “Achmed didn’t tell us all of it, dear—and oh, was he furious when he realized how much he had said!”
“He let slip one or two more bits of knowledge, then, when you led him to his, ah, chamber?”
“Your most comfortable dungeon,” Matt assured her, “the one you put me in when I tried to leave for Allustria by myself. It even has a writing desk and a real bed.”
Alisande shuddered at the memory of the event, if not the space. “What more did he say?”
“Only that this ‘Mahdi’s’ name is Tafas bin Daoud, and that he knows about the sorcerers but ignores them. Apparently he’s convinced that his victories are a matter of destiny and the will of Allah, so whatever the sorcerers are doing doesn’t matter to him.”
“But that leaves the sorcerers free to use him by talking people into fighting for him, then making sure of victory with their magic!”
“Which is fueled by the new magical power that Nirobus is channeling in. Yes.” Matt nodded.
“Did you truly speak with this man Nirobus?” Alisande asked.
“Yes—and in my home universe, too!” The words tasted badly on Matt’s tongue. “He’s a smooth operator, no question. He pretended sympathy, pretended to want to help me out, even coaxed me into telling him who I was and how I was trying to get home. Then he blocked my transportation spell.” He simmered in embarrassment.
“You could not have known.” Alisande caressed his hand with hers now. “Did he not resemble a man of your world completely?”
“Down to the last detail,” Matt assured her. “He’s been there awhile, that’s for sure. So he’s managed to convince the sorcerers that they’re using the power he gives them without having to do anything they didn’t want to do anyway.”
“And they, in their turn, are certain they can use this Mahdi as their figurehead to conquer Europe for them, while they use their magics to gain the true victories.”
“Yes, and that’s what Achmed didn’t say,” Matt said grimly. “They may be real genuine religious fanatics, or they may be a bunch of greedy, self-serving powermongers—but whatever they are, they’re sure they can manipulate their Mahdi when he’s won Europe for them.”
“And believe they can thus carve up Europe between them, becoming the Mahdi’s governors and ruling as they will. Yes.” Alisande glowed with anger. “Do they not see that this Nirobus intends to serve them as they would serve the Mahdi?”
“Oh, once he proves he can kill them in agony, I think they’ll be quick enough to accept whatever administrative posts he gives them,” Matt said. “After all, Governor of Ibile wouldn’t be a bad settlement.”
“No, it would not,” Alisande said grimly, “nor would Governor of Merovence. Husband, I think we must settle their ambitions before they seek to settle us.”
“They’re already seeking,” Matt said dryly. “Achmed didn’t deny that their genie attack was intended to soften us up for the Mahdi’s conquest. What he didn’t say was that it’s also supposed to keep us from going to help King Rinaldo.”
“Let us disappoint him, then,” Alisande said. “How shall we begin our campaign?”
“That’s for you to say—you’re the military genius. But for the larger picture, I think it might be a good idea if I had a little talk with this Mahdi—show him how he’s being used, maybe even persuade him that Allah doesn’t want his servants fighting, and definitely doesn’t want us trying to convert each other by the sword. Not easy, considering that’s what Emperor Hardishane did, but that was five hundred years ago.”
“To do that, though, you would have to go to this young Mahdi yourself!”
“Yes.” Matt nodded grimly. “I would. We know where he is, though—Achmed said he’s in his southern capital, Avordoca, consolidating his forces and training them for the big offensive to push Rinaldo and his army into the sea.”
“But Avordoca is a hundred miles and more past the mountains! To speak with Tafas bin Daoud, you would have to travel through all that distance of hostile countryside!”
“Sure.” Matt gave her a sardonic smile. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?”
“Not when a whole countryside was up in arms against you! I cannot hear of it!” Alisande cried.
“Oh, they were all against me then, too, everyone who was loyal to King Gordogrosso or feared him. They just didn’t know I was coming.”
“But they will know now! You must not go this time! Think, husband—someone else can travel in your place!”
Something hardened inside Matt. “You know I can’t think like that—that I’ll never send someone to face dangers that should be mine.”
“They need not be yours! You rob other men of their chance for glory!”
“Who else is qualified?” Matt asked. “I’m the only knight who also happens to be a wizard. No one else stands as good a chance of coming back alive.”
“Then I shall send two men, a wizard and a knight to guard him! Oh, husband!” She clasped his hand with both of hers, eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “Do not leave me again!”
Shaken, Matt returned the clasp and gazed into her eyes. “You know I can’t bear the thought of an enemy king throwing you into his dungeon.”
“Then stay and guard me! But if you will not stay for me, then stay for our son!”
Her wo
rds conjured a vision of enemy soldiers beating down the nursery door and slashing at the baby with scimitars. Matt shuddered and said, “No! I can’t let them get that close to you! I’ll leave Saul and my parents! Between them all, you’ll be at least as safe as though I were with you—and I actually might be able to keep the enemy from invading!”
“Your parents are no substitute for...”
The knock at the door was very heavy, emphatic.
“We must have been louder than we thought—they’re trying to stop us.” Matt kept hold of Alisande’s hand, but stood up to face the door.
Alisande dashed the tears from her eyes, squeezed his hand, then let it go as she sat up straight, leaning a little against the back of her chair, the invisible mantle of authority settling over her once again. “Enter!”
The door opened and a guard stepped in to bow. “Majesty, there is a courier come hot from King Rinaldo.”
“From the king!” Alisande was on her feet. “Show him in on the instant!”
The guard stepped aside and a small man stepped into the room, dressed like a caravan guard, still covered with the dust of the road. His whole body seemed to droop with fatigue; his face was gray with weariness, but he fought to hold himself erect. He pulled a scroll from a pouch at his side and presented it to Her Majesty with a bow—and almost fell over. Matt stepped forward, straightening him with a clap on the shoulder. “You’re a brave man, to bring word through against such odds.”
Alisande looked up from the scroll. “There is nothing here but what I already knew—that the Moors have broken out from their enclave in the south and marched against the king and his armies.”
“Yes, Majesty,” the courier said, every word weighted by weariness. His accent was thick enough to make him hard to understand. “The scroll was only for men to read, if I was captured. The true message is on my tongue.”
“Speak, then!” the queen ordered.
“Tafas bin Daoud has launched a lightning attack on the North,” the courier said. “His men charged out from every direction, numberless as the blades of grass on the plain. He has conquered half the province of Vellese in one day, with five battles twenty leagues apart. His horsemen are lightly armored, but they came against the king’s knights five to one and worried at them like hounds at a bear until they brought the knight down.” His voice broke; he dropped to one knee. “Oh, Majesty, ride quickly! For if you do not come straight to the king’s aid, all of Ibile will be lost!” He tottered and nearly fell, but Matt reached out and caught him in time. One of the guards stepped forward and pulled the man to his feet.
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