Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (38 page)

But that needn’t mean my own soul was in danger, a voice in the back of my mind pointed out. King Warin was not the devil, only a human king, even if he did give every appearance of wanting supernatural knowledge not meant for humans. Elerius, after al, had served there for years without plunging into black magic. Maybe I could even function as a force for good within the kingdom.

Elerius had left, and I was no priest.

“You’re wasting your time,” I told King Warin. “If you don’t want to tel me what you know about the Wadi—assuming you know anything—that’s fine, but you must realize it would be a lot easier if we al worked together. I’d prefer in fact to be here without you, even if you did have some little piece of information we could use. I certainly have no intention of spending the rest of my life in your kingdom.” Dominic startled me by breaking into a broad smile and clapping me on the shoulder. It had never occurred to me he might miss me.

“If that is settled,” said Kaz-alrhun, let us see what else is in this watercourse.”

But before we had walked more than a dozen yards, I caught distant voices brought faintly by the wind. I rose up from the rift in the earth to be able to see. The rest of the party from Yurt, MafB with them, was coming across the valey on foot.

I flew to meet them. Al of them were scratched and dusty. Ascelin looked exhausted, the king disoriented, and Hugo strangely pleased.

“It was the emir’s men,” said Ascelin, dropping to the ground as I reached them and wiping his forehead. “They must have been in hiding somewhere among the rocks and gulies, because they appeared almost as soon as you’d left.”

And the mage had distracted me from probing for soldiers with his talk of unimaginable dangers. “But you al got away—“I said, looking from one to the other. Joachim tried to smile, but I noticed he was absently rubbing his scar with one thumb.

“Just barely. I had to carry Haimeric down the slope, while the chaplain and the boy managed on their own. Hugo held off the vanguard of the troops until we were al safely on our way. If the descent hadn’t been so steep, I’m sure they would have folowed us at once.”

I glanced toward Hugo. For one moment he managed a triumphant grin. “Saying I held them off may go a little far,” he said with quite unconvincing modesty. “I put my shield and sword arm between Ascelin and the troops. With a few lucky strokes, I intimidated them just long enough. Then, when they rushed me, I went down the valey wal on my bely!” I looked up toward the edge of the valey with a far-seeing spel and could see the white turbans and glittering curved swords of the emir’s soldiers. It was a large troop, at least a hundred men, and their swarthy faces looked angry and frustrated. Apparently sharing salt with us only meant that the emir would not kil us inside his palace—either that or he planned to capture us alive, which didn’t sound much better.

But if they didn’t want to come cascading down the nearly vertical descent after us, we were safe for the moment. As I watched, they settled themselves, apparently intending to wait us out. “What about the horses?’

Ascelin shook his head. He flicked his eyes toward the king, then back toward the sand. “At this point,” he said in a low voice, “it would take the Ifrit to get them back. And al our supplies and food are gone with them. Even if we elude the emir’s men and get out of this valey alive, I don’t know how we’l ever get home.” I didn’t answer. If we somehow escaped from the Ifrit and the emir, there were stil hundreds of empty miles between us and Xantium, much less Yurt. Sir Hugo’s party might have been in the same situation.

They had never come home, either.

“Where’s Dominic?” Ascelin asked then, looking up.

“Down in the Wadi. It is a dry watercourse. So far,” I went on, remembering I had news of my own, “we’ve found the bottle the Ifrit was imprisoned in.” This took some of the despair from Ascelin’s face. “Where is the Wadi?”

I looked around and could not see it. I had no idea what level of existence we were actualy on, but at the moment it did not include the Ifrit, the Wadi, or Dominic.

Before I could try manipulating the spel again, King Haimeric stepped up beside me. Everything about him seemed old—his frail body, his wispy white hair, his wind-wrinkled cheeks—except for his eyes.

They were bright and excited. “I’m not sure what you’ve been able to see, Wizard,” he said, “but just before we got on that flying carpet, I saw the blue rose.” I turned my attention fuly toward him. “You saw the blue rose?” I repeated idioticaly.

There wasn’t time to say anything then, but it’s here in the valey. I always knew it was. That’s why the emir didn’t want us to come here.” I hesitated only a second. If we had lost everything, even our waterskins, we wouldn’t live long enough for a second chance to find the king’s rose. Dominic and Kaz-alrhun between them could take care of Warin while I was gone. I didn’t think King Haimeric had yet realized we would never get home, but he might as wel the with his own quest fulfiled.

“Rest a little longer,” I said to Ascelin and the others. “I’l take you to the Wadi shortly.” Then I turned to the king. “Let’s find your rose, sire.”
Ill

King Haimeric and I walked across the valey floor, leaving the others behind. Even without any visible landmarks, the king seemed to know exactly where we were going. I murmured spels that made the air around us shimmer with a kaleidoscope of shifting images, including again the silk caravan. But I did not see the group of people who might have included a red-headed wizard—assuming I had ever seen them at al.

“There it is,” said the king, stopping short.

We stepped into a flowering garden and out of the layer of reality in which we had been. The garden was surrounded by a low wal and was filed entirely with rosebushes.

We walked silently among them. The green, glossy leaves looked completely out of place in the barren desert; even the air around us was slightly damp. We passed enormous, showy red blooms, tiny pink buds no bigger than my littlest fingernail, and soft yelow blossoms whose scent threatened to overwhelm us. We saw no humans, but someone, I thought, must tend these bushes daily, for there were no insect borers, no faded blooms and no weeds.

The garden was much bigger than it at first looked. We walked half a mile, and the colors began to change. Here were maroons, rich violets, like what we had seen in the emir’s garden outside Bahdroc but somehow brighter and more vivid. The king walked faster and faster until I was hard pressed to keep up with him.

But then he stopped so abruptly that I, folowing behind, almost knocked him over. Standing up from where he had been digging was the emir’s swarthy rose grower.

I tried at once to shape a protective spel for King Haimeric, but I need not have bothered. After a surprised second, he sprang forward; he and the grower clasped hands in delight at their meeting.

“I had in truth hoped that even a western wizard might be able to find the magic to bring you here,” said the grower, a smile splitting his face.

“Won’t the emir be furious with you?” asked the king in concern.

“He gave me no specific instructions concerning you. I did most carefuly obey his orders, and I never explicitly told you or any other man how to find this garden.” He smiled again and added, “The emir considers this his garden, of course, but while emirs rise and fal, the roses endure. Al the attention, the rivalry and the weight of authority fal on the emir himself. As long as I am just his grower, I am free to do my crosses and to do what is most important in this life: to grow better roses.”

“Are you working with the Ifrit?” I managed to ask.

“Of course. It was just last year, once stories of the blue rose began to spread, that the emir decided he must break part of my garden away from the rest and transport it entire to someplace no one else would find it. Nothing but an Ifrit would have the power to do that or to carry me quickly back and forth.”

“A bronze bottle with an Ifrit in it was taken to the emir as something different and new,” I said with sudden inspiration, “and the Ifrit agreed to help him in return for being released.” The grower smiled and nodded. For a second I even dared hope I was teaching him respect for western magic.

But the Ifrit himself had told me that a mage had freed him from Solomon’s enchantment, and I was quite sure the grower didn’t know any magic. Besides, the Ifrit had been freed for five years and the grower had just said this had only happened last year. But I didn’t have a chance to work it out.

King Haimeric, showing no interest in Ifriti, had moved away, looking intently at the roses. The grower led us down the final pathway between the bushes. “Here,” he said in a low voice.

The king drew in his breath but did not speak. This was it at last. A bush stood by itself, bearing a single blossom: an enormous, sapphire-blue rose. The three of us stood looking at it in silence. I probed quickly and surreptitiously with magic, but I already knew. At least where we were at the moment, this was no ilusion but real.

It was as big across as a saucer, yet its stem easily held it upright. The petals were beaded with dew. From deep within the rose came a scent, both sweet and spicy, subtle yet unforgettable once caught. This was the blue rose the king had sought. Suddenly, I understood why it was worth it.

“You’re the first and only outsider to find the blue rose,” said the grower to the king after a minute. “Do you wish a root cutting?”

“I would like a root cutting beyond al things.”

The grower produced his trowel. “I have started several plants from seed in containers which the emir hopes to have in his palace in a few years, but you do not want a root-bound container plant for your garden. You need a piece from the adult far-spreading root”

We didn’t need a piece of root but a way to get out of this valey, guarded against us by the Ifrit and by the emir’s men. Even if we got out, a cutting would quickly dry up in the desert air and be worthless long before we died of thirst, trying to get back to Xantium on foot But I said nothing.

The grower knelt down and began digging again. I looked out, away from the wel-irrigated garden. The dry land beyond could have been seen through a pane of glass.

The grower packed the piece of root carefuly in damp earth and paper. “It should last a few days,” he said, frowning for the first time. “But it realy should be planted as soon as possible.” King Haimeric frowned as wel. For a few moments, his expression had been beyond joy or happiness, but the grower’s comment brought him back to reality—or whatever one might cal this. “I’l see what I can arrange.”

He turned to me. “Thank you, Wizard. Its sily, I know, but I would not have wanted to the in this valey, having come this close to the blue rose, without first seeing it” Then he understood our situation after al. “Now we should try to find Dominic and the Wadi Harhammi, to see if he can find what/je has been seeking.”

“You want the dry watercourse?” asked the grower. “We are at this moment in it, although you might never know it. The Ifrit insisted that if he took my garden away from Bahdroc, this is where he would take it. If you leave the garden through that little gate over there, you shal find yourself in the Wadi.”

I paused with my hand on the gate, wondering again if this rose garden could have been what the elder Prince Dominic had heard was in the Wadi. But the prince had been dead fifty years and, if we were to believe the grower, this garden had only been brought here very recently. With something so precious to him here, no wonder the emir’s mood had changed when we mentioned we were seeking the Wadi and no wonder that part of the agreement he had extracted from the Ifrit had been to guard it closely.

This was the same sort of gate through which we had entered, with apparently nothing but the valey floor beyond. But I had given up assuming that what I thought I saw had any relation to what I would discover. We opened the gate and stepped through.

We were immediately sliding down the steep side of the Wadi, raining pebbles on those beneath. The garden where we had been a second before was gone.

Dominic jumped out of our way. Kaz-alrhun sat to one side, apparently enjoying the experience.

“Where’s King Warin?” I asked at once.

“He left right after you did,” said Dominic, “saying he would find the Wadi’s secret by himself—though why he should be able to find it now when he hasn’t before, I cannot say,” he added in disdain. “I think he didn’t want to have to answer my case against him.”

King Haimeric was quite incurious about Warin. He turned eagerly to Dominic. “I’ve seen it,” he said. “The blue rose. And I have a cutting.” Dominic managed to smile in spite of his own concentration on whatever might wait ahead. “That’s excelent news, sire.” He turned to me again. “We waited for you to go on.” I could understand Dominic waiting for me, but Kaz-alrhun was something of a surprise. He seemed remarkably deferential for someone who wanted to know the Wadi’s secret himself, I thought as we continued. The ground underfoot was broken and patches of soft sand made walking difficult. Boulders were scattered in our path, none obstructing our passage, but placed such that it was hard to see more than fifty yards ahead.

As we walked, we started occasionaly to notice something hard and white that was not stone, half-buried in the sand. I reached down to loosen a piece and realized it was human bone.

“What’s here?” I said, dropping the bone abruptly and turning to the mage. “Is this the unimaginable danger you warned us against?’

“I know not whose bones these may be,” said Kaz-alrhun in interest, “nor why they are here, though I would guess they are from earlier seekers after the Wadi’s secrets.” As we continued, the king picking his way carefuly so as not to step on any, the bones became more frequent I kept probing with magic, finding nothing but scurrying desert creatures. Some of the bones were made into neat stacks. They al seemed fairly old, though I realized I was looking hopefuly for fresh ones from Warin.

We came around a boulder and found a cave cut into the side of the dry watercourse. We were now at least thirty feet below ground level. The low cave entrance was blocked by a latticework gate of white marble, which looked as though it should be in the emir’s palace rather than here in this sandy wash. But while the others clustered around it, I staggered and leaned against a stone for support because I felt a wave of magic pouring out of the cave toward me.