Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (24 page)

“On a trade caravan, of course. Laugh at your fate, Daimbert! No man can in dread change the day of his death, but he can with laughter chase dire dread away.” One of the men with Kaz-alrhun scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder. I didn’t feel like laughing, even to chase dire dread away.

“You’l never get away with this,” I said. “My friends knew I was coming here today.” This was not strictly true, but Ascelin would certainly come to the Thieves’ Market if I didn’t return to the inn. “They’l be very cautious when I don’t return. You’l never be able to steal the ruby ring.”

“But you and I know that none of them is a mage,” said Kaz-alrhun in a good-natured below. “You do not have the pieces to win this phase of the game, Daimbert. When your tal swordsman friend seeks you here, there wil be nothing to see.” He nodded to the man who held me. There should be a caravan leaving from the north gate within the half hour.” The man darted out of the dimness of the booth into the briliant sun, with me slung over his shoulder. He turned quickly from side to side for a moment, then set offatatrot.

I opened my mouth to say something, to try to negotiate with him, and found my vocal chords frozen. I was hanging upside down on his back and a glance at my upper body showed that I had been covered with ilusion to look like some sort of paper-wrapped parcel.

And what would the mage do to Dominic? While we hurried along the less crowded streets through the back of Xantium, I tried probing the spel that held me. I had new sympathy for the castelan and knights I had made stand in binding spels al night. Parts of my body felt numb and others itched almost unbearably, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I lost track of where we were long before I had any idea how this spel worked. We came suddenly under the arch of a stone gate, and by stretching my neck around, the only part of my body not held motionless, I could see a smal colection of mule-drawn carts.

Turbaned men were tying down the loads and shouting to each other. The man carrying me stepped up to the last cart and said something I didn’t catch, though I heard a clink of coins. The next moment, I had been dumped amidst bales of what felt like cloth and had a tarpaulin puled across me. I was stil struggling unsuccessfuly to find a way to unravel Kaz-alrhun’s spel when I heard a shout, the cart beneath me creaked, and the caravan began to move.

There wasn’t much air beneath the tarpaulin; in the sun, it almost immediately grew extremely hot. I breathed shalowly, sweat running down my face, trying to imagine what my companions would do when I didn’t return—and when the mage appeared among them with a flash of light and demanded Dominic’s ring.

Kaz-alrhun’s spel twisted and turned beneath my probing almost as if it were alive. I recognized the shape of the spel from Melecherius’s book, but I stil could not unravel it. Several times I thought I had it and each time it eluded me. I reminded myself grimly that I had wanted to see eastern magic.

I soon felt as though I was caught not just by a spel but by a nightmare. As breathing took more and more effort, I gave up even trying to undo the spel that held me. I hovered on the edge of consciousness, between dreaming and halucinating. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably closer to three hours, when the cart beneath me stopped moving.

“Wel,” said a voice, “shal we look at what Kaz-alrhun sent with us?”

The tarpaulin was jerked off, letting in sun-baked air that tasted deliciously refreshing as I sucked it desperately into my lungs.

I blinked my eyes then and looked up at the two men bending over me. They were Arnulfs agents.

I tried to speak and discovered my voice had returned. A glance downward showed that the ilusion that made me into a parcel had also worn off. “I’ve been put in a binding spel,” I croaked. “Help me up and give me something to drink.”

“It’s—it’s a man!” said one of them. Maybe the sun was slowing his reasoning powers as badly as it affected me.

They puled me into a sitting position and offered me water out of a leather bag. It was lukewarm and absolutely delicious, even if it did dribble down my chin. I was too grateful to accuse them of taking part in a plot to kil innocent wizards. By now, I thought, the mage must have seized Dominic’s ring—and maybe even Dominic. I would have to formulate a plan of action as soon as I could act—or, for that matter, think clearly again.

“It is—are you not the mage who was with Arnulf?” asked one of the turbaned men.

“Yes,” I said, giving up the effort of persuading them that Joachim was not his brother. I glanced at the long, curved swords at their sides, but they showed no sign of drawing them. “Your friend Kaz-alrhun wanted to get rid of me.”

“But why?” they said in what appeared to be real distress. “Has he broken his agreement?”

I shook my head and made a new effort to understand the magic that held me. “We didn’t give him the ring he demanded in return for his ebony horse.”

“But Arnulf told us before he came that he would have it!”

For a moment, I had thought I understood at last, that Kaz-alrhun wanted the ruby ring to get into the Wadi himself, but this ring Arnulf had sent with us to buy the flying horse seemed to be something entirely different.

“I was carrying a magical parchment,” I said, “which seemed to please Kaz-alrhun, though I certainly hadn’t meant to give it to him. This binding spel appears to be his punishment for riding his horse without any intention of giving him what he wanted.”

“But if he has the parchment, now,” said one of the agents, “and if he thinks it wil do just as wel as the ring, then Arnulf should be able to take the horse! Kaz-alrhun may work out of the Thieves’ Market, but we have found that he honors his bargains.”

I couldn’t even begin to agree, but it was too complicated for an argument. I glanced up while struggling anew with the spel and saw a dark shape, not quite a cloud, scuttling low through the sky. “An Ifrit!” I cried involuntarily, panicked because of my helplessness.

Back in Yurt, I had said I wanted to see an Ifrit—al my wishes were coming true with a vengeance.

The two men whirled, but then they relaxed and laughed. That is not an Ifrit. It’s just a bit of a sandstorm. The wind wil pick up sand and dust and carry it some distance. Sand demons, they are sometimes caled.”

I didn’t like this talk of demons, but if we were, at least momentarily, safe from IfritL, I wanted to get free of the binding spel before the next danger appeared. Suddenly I saw how it went together, with an ingenious twist I had never seen before, though Melecherius hinted at it. In a few more seconds I was able to dissolve the spel and finaly stretch my cramped arms.

Arnulfs agents stepped back abruptly as I moved and I realized they might be as frightened of my anger as I was irritated with them. If Arnulfs negotiations had al gone amiss, then both he and and “his” wizard would have good reason to be furious with the agents who had sent him word that everything was ready.

I took another pul of water and massaged my temples. I looked around, at the mule-drawn carts whose drivers were now sitting off the road in the shade, at the dusty and empty road itself, and at the sage-covered hilside leading down to the sun-flecked Central Sea. Xantium was a dark mass in the distance.

“So, do you normaly transport Kaz-alrhun’s victims out of Xantium when you’re not plotting to betray your employer?” I asked conversationaly. If the mage had attacked Dominic to get his ruby ring, the prince might be on the next caravan. But if Kaz-alrhun had wanted a different ring, Arnulfs ring, badly enough to give his flying horse for it, then Dominic’s ring might not have any real interest for him after al.

“No, no!” the agents said together. “We have never done anything against Arnulfs interests!” When I frowned, one added, “We did not realize the mage’s parcel was a man.” I stood up slowly. “Perhaps Arnulf wil appreciate that, in Xantium, you have to put a powerful mage’s interests ahead of his,” I said with deliberate sarcasm. “Are you heading north now?”

“No,” said one of the agents. “We were about to return to Xantium. Whichever market Arnulfs caravans make for, we always travel with them the first ten miles or so out of the city, until they are out of easy range of city-based thieves. Certainly if Kaz-alrhun pays us to add an occasional parcel to the load, we are wiling to accommodate him, but that does not mean we’re working against Arnulfs interests!” He paused for a moment, then added, “You wil explain to him, wil you not, that we never meant any harm to you?”

“We’l see,” I said gravely. At least they hadn’t asked me yet to pay them for their trouble. The drivers took my standing up as the signal to start again. They remounted the wagons and snapped their whips over the mules’ backs. With shouts and creaks, the caravan started off along the dusty road.

By this time, Dominic’s ring would be gone beyond easy recovery. I felt too tired for the concentration flying required, so I started walking with’ Arnulfs agents. They were eager now to be helpful and pleasant.

“I’ve heard that a number of Arnulfs caravans had been captured by an Ifrit,” I said. “Is that part of the reason you don’t accompany them very far?” They looked at each other in surprise. “I do not know where you could have heard such a story,” said one. “Only one caravan has disappeared completely, off to the east of here. And we cannot be absolutely sure its disappearance was due to an Ifrit because no one saw it. The drivers described a whoosh of air, then they and their mules were left standing and the carts were gone. If caravans realy were disappearing in large numbers, al the mages in Xantium would bend their magic to prevent it.”

I wondered if there was any truth at al in Arnulfs story. “It did seem fairly unlikely to me. And wouldn’t it be odd for an Ifrit to leave the sign of the cross?” The agents looked at each other again. “We had not heard anything about the sign of the cross,” said one in distaste.

Then the entire account of Ifriti capturing caravans, I thought, was Arnulfs invention, an excuse to bring Joachim into his affairs. I stil had no firm sense whether his story of the Black Pearl reappearing was real or an additional invention, but I tended toward the latter. I was distracted from this speculation by another thought. “You aren’t Christian?”

“Of course not,” with dignity. “We folow the teachings of the Prophet.”

Since Xantium was, at least in its government, a Christian city, I was intrigued that Arnulf should employ non-Christians as his agents here. Maybe that was why he had no chaplain: he didn’t want someone piously trying to introduce religion into sound business decisions. “I know almost nothing about the Prophet,” I said. “Could you tel me a little as we walk?” By the time the wals of Xantium rose before us at the end of the day, I had learned much more comparative religion than I had ever imagined. I had not realized before that the People of the Prophet had been pagans before the Prophet came to them, nor that he had incorporated what he considered the best elements of the rather inadequate religions—as he saw it—of Abraham and of Christ. I had to be fairly noncommittal in my responses to conceal the fact that these men also knew much more about Christianity than I did.

But as we talked, I was also thinking. The bit of sandstorm, the sand demon, might in fact have been Kaz-alrhun on his magic ebony horse, off to the Wadi Harhammi. I remembered Ascelin commenting, back in the eastern kingdoms, that a number of events seemed to have been managed for our benefit. Could the mage have been behind them al?

Or was the shadowy and rather ominous figure I thought I sensed, manipulating and maneuvering us, King Warin, or Arnulf, or someone else entirely? Whatever we had stumbled onto must be something much more complicated than the disappearance of Sir Hugo’s party.

Even though the school had heard nothing of the Pearl’s reappearance, the lord of the red sandstone castle was ready to turn bandit for something hidden in a shipment of luxury silks, perhaps one of the

“parcels” Arnulfs agents had been wiling to transport for Kaz-alrhun. Our arrival in King Warm’s kingdom had been intriguing enough for him to set real bandits on us, and our passage through the eastern kingdoms had led Prince Vlad to set in motion extensive troop movements, even wars, for the purpose of bringing us to his castle. We had heard of very strange rumors coming out of the East, but it seemed instead that everyone else, except for us, felt that something very strange was coming out of Yurt.

“Tel Arnulf to go himself to talk to Kaz-alrhun,” said one of the agents as we reached the north gate of the city. “We certainly tried to negotiate fairly for the horse.”

“And reassure Arnulf that we had nothing to do with your kidnapping,” added the other. “Kaz-alrhun likes to have a little fun sometimes, but he means no real harm.” I didn’t like to think what the mage did when he actualy meant real harm, but I was footsore and hungry, with painful ribs and a bad headache.

But then my eye was caught by a smal form under the gate. As I spotted him, he saw me and turned to run.

With new energy I flew under the gate after him. A frog was too good for him. I started putting together the first words of the Hidden Language to transmogrify him into a deformed cockroach.

“I found him, my masters, I found him!” I heard Mafi shouting.

And suddenly Ascelin stood before me, his sword out and a grim expression on his face. Maffi hid behind him, peeking at me past his leg.

I dropped to the ground in surprise as Hugo stepped out of a side street. Both his and Ascelin’s expressions changed at once, to relief tempered with exasperation. “There you are, Wizard!”

“Where are the others? Has Dominic been attacked?”

“Everyone’s looking for you,” said Hugo, “and no one has been attacked.” That was a real relief. “Where have you been al day? Didn’t you realize we’d be afraid that now our party, too, was going to start disappearing?”

I glanced behind me and saw no sign of Arnulfs agents. “I was kidnapped,” I said, “thanks to that boy there.”

“I told you I’d find him!” cried Maffi, stil not coming out from behind Ascelin.

The prince sheathed his sword, reached down, and dragged him forward by the colar. “You didn’t tel us you’d led the wizard into ambush,” he said coldly.