Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (36 page)

An enormous bare foot was suddenly between Kaz-alrhun and me as the Ifrit stepped forward. He picked up the mage to peer at him. “They do have rather tiny hairs,” he agreed, running a clawed hand through his own thick locks. His voice was about ten octaves lower than the mage’s. “But I am guarding this valey and they came tumbling in. So did you, for that matter. Are you from Yurt?”

“Do you want me to bind you by the name of the Most High, as King Solomon once bound you?” Kaz-alrhun demanded. He was putting a paralysis spel together, one which I would never have been able to duplicate, ful of eastern tricks and connections unlike anything I’d ever seen before but which I could observe as clearly now as though it were a picture before my eyes. I wasn’t sure it realy would bind an Ifrit, but it looked as though it had greater potential than anything of mine.

“Al right,” replied the Ifrit sulkily. He bent to put the mage back down on the ground. “I wasn’t going to make them the an evil death anyway or, at least, not yet.” I expected Kaz-alrhun to accept this agreement, but he abruptly smiled, flashing a gold tooth, and threw his paralysis spel onto the Ifrit. With a stunned and rather puzzled look, the Ifrit subsided onto the sand, as majesticaly and inexorably as a piece of a mountain breaking free and tumbling toward the valey. His hand opened and the mage hopped out.

“Now!” cried Kaz-alrhun. “Onto the carpet! Al of you, if you value the life God gave you!”

None of this made any sense. “But I thought you had set your Ifrit to capture us!”

His gold tooth flashed again as he smiled widely. “But this is not my Ifrit.”

I had no time to create new assumptions, but my old ones were irretrievably gone. “We’re never al going to fit on a little carpet like that,” I said, the one thing I thought I could say with certainty.

“Watch and learn, Daimbert!” He said a few quick words, gave a great flourish and the carpet twitched, shivered, and grew until it was indeed big enough for al of us, even the horses. “Come!” he said when I hesitated. “Do you not wish to escape the Ifrit?”

I shook myself into action and herded the rest of our startled party onto the carpet with Maffi. The Ifrit, stretched out with his eyes shut, snorted as though he might soon awaken from the paralysis—and awaken furious. I had never flown on a magic carpet and had no reason to trust Kaz-alrhun’s, but we didn’t have much choice.

It lurched up from the ground, and we al clutched at each other. “The horses neighed desperately as it seemed we must slide off the carpet’s edge, but it straightened itself as it began to climb. We rotated twice, then sailed slowly up and over the rim of the valey.

From the air we could see for scores of miles across the sere desert landscape. I thought I could spot the glittering spires of Bahdroc in the distance and the uneven line of rocky hils beyond. I caught a flash of light reflected from the Dark Sea and, for one moment, saw what might have been the spires of the once ensorceled city. The carpet turned around again, a quarter mile above the ground, then plunged downward to light on the steep hilside outside the circular valey.

I tumbled more than stepped off the carpet, glad to feel the solid ground beneath my feet again—For the brief moment we had been up in the air, the carpet s flight had seemed strong and smooth, but I could see it would take me a while to get used to the rough takeoffs and rapid landings.

“This is good fortune indeed,” said Kaz-alrhun, straightening the odd-shaped pieces of silk that covered his enormous bulging body. “I have never before ventured to bind an Ifrit. Even you, Daimbert, were able to find a way out of one of my spels. I cannot be sure how long my magic wil hold such a creature.”

“But are we safe, this close?” asked Ascelin. He seemed to be ralying, though Hugo stil looked too exhausted to care.

“Of course not,” said Kaz-alrhun cheerfuly. “You wouldn’t have come al the way from Xantium just to rescue us from the Ifrit,” I said. “Why are you here?”

“My reason is the same as yours, Daimbert,” said the mage. “I wish to enter the Wadi.”

This entire trip I had had to keep adjusting my expectations, as everything turned out to be not quite what it seemed, as I looked for aid one moment to those whom at another point I considered my enemies.

A very short time ago, I had feared Kaz-alrhun s arrival. Now, quite irrationaly, I found myself thinking of him as an aly.

“You can have the onyx ring Maffi stole from you,” I said, puling it off. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

This set the mage into a paroxysm of laughter. “He told you he stole it?” He gave the boy a buffet on the side of the head, stil laughing. “And you believed him?” There were a number of things I needed to find out at once, but one took precedence. Maffi stil stood on the carpet, carefuly not meeting my eye. I took him firmly by the arm. “So Kaz-alrhun sent both you and this ring with us on purpose,” I said, putting it back on my finger since the mage apparently didn’t want it. “I should have realized, ever since you first offered to escort us to the Thieves’ Market in Xantium, that you were working for him. Did you enjoy spying on us al the way from Xantium? Were you sending back messages from every oasis by means of the deep pools? And you made me believe that you wanted to learn’ magic!”

Maffi looked as subdued as I had ever seen him, but he stil managed a grin. “I do want to learn magic, my master! The communications spel was al Kaz-alrhun would teach me.” He promptly created a large pink ilusory spot on the front of my shirt, as though hoping this would placate me.

“First you need to learn to play chess,” said Kaz-alrhun to the boy, “before I could begin to teach you magic.”

“But don’t forget,” Maffi continued to me, “if it hadn’t been for me, the mage wouldn’t have known to come save you!” Dominic stepped up at this point. “Where is my stalion, boy?” he demanded.

“At the first oasis north of the emir’s city,” said Maffi with another grin. “That realy is a magnificent horse. I would never have been able to bring help so quickly if I’d been riding any other steed.”

So when Maffi had escaped, he had ridden like the wind to the first place from which he could send a message to Xantium, and Kaz-alrhun had come swooping across the desert on his flying carpet. But if the mage had been using the boy to keep an eye on us and thought he had to come rescue us, then someone else had set the Ifrit here, someone who might himself appear at any moment “Hie Wadi’s down there in the circular valey,” I said to Kaz-alrhun, “but it’s hidden—or only visible for a few seconds. The Ifrit isn’t going to let us get to it if he can help it. Why did you let him out of the bottle in the first place?” Kaz-alrhun smiled slowly. “It was not I.”

“He said it was a mage—” But there must be many mages in the East, most of whom I hadn’t met.

“That mage,” said Kaz-alrhun enigmaticaly, “hoped that an Ifrit would help him find the Wadi’s secret. He was mistaken.”

“Then you and I and Prince Dominic need to get in before that mage gets here.” I wondered briefly why a mage with the power to master an Ifrit couldn’t find the Wadi’s secret, but I pushed the issue aside.

There were stil too many other things I didn’t understand. “But tel me first, Mage. What is in there?”

He looked at me thoughtfuly. “You like a chalenge, do you not?” I abruptly began to fear him as irrationaly as I had felt a moment ago that I could trust him. “You are on a quest for something, but you do not know what it is. I, too, am on a quest, but its nature is such that I dare not hint to you what I hope to find ....”

“You don’t know what’s there, either,” I said with much more confidence than I felt. “Good. We’l look for it together. We’d better get back to the valey immediately, before the Ifrit breaks your spel.” The mage unexpectedly put a massive hand on my shoulder, making me shiver. “I can warn you and prepare you, even if I do not tel you.” His black eyes met mine, completely serious for once. “I wil not urge you to go. For if you proceed, you wil be proceeding into dangers you cannot expect or even imagine.”

“Prince Dominic,” I caled. “Are you ready to face unimaginable dangers to get into the Wadi?”

Dominic had been trying to get more details from Maffi about his stalion, what condition it was in, who was supposedly taking care of it now, and not getting answers he liked. But he turned toward me at once, the ruby of his ring stil pulsing with light. “I have been ready since we reached my father’s tomb.”

I tried quickly to probe the spel attached to his ring and discovered that the clarity of vision I had had for a short time was gone. Either it was operative only within the valey or else it was just a short-term effect of having my magic restored by the Ifrit. Or I had imagined it, easily possible in this world of mirages and shifting expectations.

“I have never understood why you wizards of the west bind yourselves to kings and princes,” Kaz-alrhun commented. I noticed him gazing fixedly at the ruby. “Your own magic should be strong enough that you do not need a prince with you.”

“This is his quest and his is the ring from Yurt you actualy wanted, Kaz-alrhun,” I replied. “You didn’t want the onyx ring at al.”

“I have always known the onyx was not the ring I sought,” said the mage good-naturedly.

Then why were you wiling to sel your flying horse for it?” I demanded.

“But it was not you who bought my horse.”

I gave him up. At some point, the shadows and mirages might settle down again. “Let’s get to the Wadi before the Ifrit gets loose.” We left the others sitting in the sparse shade some larger rocks afforded. Ascelin looked away to the north, searching for signs of the emir’s troops. Kaz-alrhun, Dominic, and I again rose into the air on the flying carpet and swooped over the valey wal.

The Ifrit s enormous form stil lay stretched out below us. His wife, sitting beside him, looked up at us and waved. Kaz-alrhun said a few words to the carpet and it descended slowly to hover near the Ifrit, who stared at us with unseeing eyes. “I have not done my spels amiss,” said the mage complacently. “There are not many who can master an Ifrit, even for an hour’s span.”

“Watch,” I said. “This onyx ring is good for one purpose.”

I stretched out my hand and put the words of the

Hidden Language together. The air of the valey shimmered with the magic that alowed people and objects to be hidden from each other. “Rightthere” I said, pointing to the dry watercourse. “That’s where we’re going.” Suddenly, gloriously, I had the clarity of vision back, and I knew exactly what spel to say next. It was a spel I had never used, one which I was quite sure even Elerius had not known, but it came to me as easily as though another mind were guiding me. As the heavy sylables of the Language roled from my tongue, the shimmering resolved itself and the watercourse became clearer and clearer while everything else faded.

The carpet dropped abruptly to the ground, tumbling us off. My spel, coupled with Elerius’s spel on the onyx, had alowed us not only to see other layers of reality, but to pass into them as easily as the Ifrit apparently could. Dominic rubbed a bruised knee as he picked himself up but managed not to scowl; I was afraid he trusted me to know what I was doing. The Ifrit was gone.

Kaz-alrhun laughed. “Most excelent, Daimbert! How did you do that? I could never find any sensible spel on that ring—which is why I sent it with the boy. I realize I should have tested it more thoroughly before giving up a good automaton for it, but I had faith that you would be able to do something with it.”

“It’s western school magic,” I said.

Then your school may have something to offer after al,” said the mage in pleased surprise. “When I last spoke to a master from your school, a great many years ago when it first opened, he seemed rather constrained and bookish. What was his name? Melecherius, I believe. I am glad there are also wizards like you there.”

“I think we’re going to need both eastern and western magic for this,” I said.

But eastern spels could not get the flying carpet to rise again and I had nothing to offer. Hie sun beat down on the three of us as we hurried on foot across the valey floor toward where a deep rift now appeared. The Ifrit was able to create and change reality here, I thought, and armed with the onyx ring I could do nearly the same thing. I didn’t like to think what long-term effects this kind of magic would have on the local physical structure of the earth; it was with good reason that Ifriti were considered highly dangerous. At least, I thought, when we left the reality where our friends were, where the flying carpet worked, we had also left the Ifrit behind.

He stopped us before we had crossed half the distance to the Wadi.

Kaz-alrhun opened his mouth, then froze. For the first time since I had met him he looked disconcerted. Sweat made rivulets in the dust on his dark skin.

“By what form of slaughter shal I slay you?” asked the Ifrit, glaring down with his arms folded. “I do not like little mages who try to tie me up. Solomon may have bound me, but you are not Solomon. And I do not even think you are from Yurt.”

Kaz-alrhun’s magic was gone, I realized, snatched from him as mine had been when I first reached the valey. Though I soil had my magical abilities for the moment, I didn’t dare use them against the Ifrit for fear of drawing attraction to them. I wondered wildly if this was the mage’s unimaginable danger: probably not, because I could imagine quite vividlywhat the Ifrit was about to do to us.

“Listen, Ifrit,” I said recklessly. “I have a proposition to make.”

The Ifrit shifted his eyes from Kaz-alrhun and leaned down toward me. “What kind of proposition?”

“If you let us go, I can help you with your wife.”

Kaz-alrhun recovered his equilibrium as soon as the Ifrit turned his attention away; he looked intrigued by this new development.

The Ifrit growled low in his throat. “And what are you trying to imply, little mage, about my beautiful, my pure young wife?”

“Just this,” I plunged on. “In another ten years, her litheness and slenderness wil begin to go. Twenty years after that, her white skin wil be wrinkling and her black hair turning gray.” I paused to let the Ifrit consider this. “But I can keep that from happening.”