The Exotic Enchanter (13 page)

"Alas!" Malambroso cried, and scuttled back into his house, his face in his hands.

"I never thought I would feel sorry for the man," Chalmers murmured.

The procession moved on, but Shea turned back in his saddle to watch the end of the domestic crisis. Malambroso appeared again in the window and explained, "Shobhani, I have said and done all that is possible, but it avails me naught with the Rajah. Now, then, we die—for I shall not outlive you!"

"Father, you must not!" Shobhani/Florimel cried, taking his hands.

"You are dearer to me than life itself, and I made plans weeks ago for the manner in which I would slay myself if anything brought about your death."

"You must not!" she cried again, "but I must! I must follow my husband and die when he dies!" And she darted away from the window. Malambroso stood a moment in shock, then ran after her, crying, "No, Shobhani! Stop!"

But Chalmers was trembling. "Husband? How can Florimel have another husband? Even if Shobhani is only Florimel's analog, how can she be married to a thief?"

Shobhani darted from the house to take up her place by the side of Charya's camel.

"Away!" snapped a guard, riding up beside her.

"I cannot," she replied. "I fell in love with him at first sight."

The guard drew back, aghast, and Randhir moaned faintly. 'The poor child!"

Malambroso burst from the house to fall on his knees in front of Shobhani. "No, my child! Come back inside!"

"Away, old man!" The soldier raised his spear-butt, threatening. "How dare you dissuade her from her pious duty!"

"Pious duty? What is he talking about?" Chalmers demanded, white showing all around his eyes; but Shea, more practical and less involved, leaned down to catch Malambroso by the arm and haul him up to his saddle. "Okay, Malambroso! Explain—and it better be good!"

The enchanter looked up at him, then stared in shock. "Harold Shea!"

"And Reed Chalmers." There was a note of incipient mayhem in Chalmers' voice, and Shea realized with a shock that even the gentle Reed might be capable of a crime of passion. "Explain what we have seen! Is that Florimel, or not?"

"She is, she is!" Malambroso yammered. "I enchanted her body into the coloring of the local people, I enchanted her mind into forgetting that she was Florimel, to believe instead that she was the maiden Shobhani, reared out of sight of men, never being allowed outside the high walls of the garden, because her old nurse, who died when she was only five, gave me, her father, a solemn warning—that Shobhani should be the admiration of the city, but should die a
sati
-widow before becoming a wife. A harmless piece of nonsense, surely—but reason enough for her father, who kept her as a pearl in a casket."

Chalmers stared in horror. "Ritual suicide when her husband dies? Letting herself be burned alive on his funeral pyre?"

Malambroso shuddered. "That is one of the ways, yes."

"You mean she's following that scoundrel to his execution because she's planning to die when he does?" Shea cried, aghast. "But how can she think he's her husband if you've got her hypnotized into believing she isn't even married?"

"It is this confounded belief in reincarnation," Malambroso groaned, "and in the events of one life affecting the next life! Having begun life anew in this universe, she is reincarnated in its terms—but the only previous life she has had was the one we all know, in which Reed Chalmers was her husband!"

"
Is
her husband," Reed said in an iron tone.

"Not in this universe! By its rules, this is a new life!"

"But she's been in half a dozen universes!" Shea protested. "Was each of them a previous life?"

"Yes, as far as this universe is concerned," Malambroso moaned, "and in each of them, Chalmers was her husband! But here in Chandrodoya, Chalmers' analog is the robber chieftain, so she fell in love the moment she set eyes upon him."

Shea stared. "You mean that, in Hindu terms, the robber chieftain was her predestined husband?"

"Yes, unless she had seen Chalmers first! Oh, how I wish I had not kept her so well hidden!"

"But why does she
have
to commit
sati
?" Shea demanded. "Nobody would have known if she had just kept quiet! She could even fly in the face of convention and stay alive even now! They weren't married—no one would blame her!"

"
She
would," Malambroso told him. "As a good Hindu maiden,
sati
is part of her
dharma
, the obligation of the role in life to which she was born; to refuse to commit
sati
would load her soul with bad karma—the wages of sin, in our terms—so when she did die, she would be reborn in a lower caste. But if she does commit
sati
, her soul will gain a great deal of good karma—I suppose the closest equivalent we have is grace—and she will be reborn in a higher caste. She even had the gall to recite Hindu proverbs at me—that there are thirty-five millions of hairs on the human body, and the woman who ascends the pyre with her husband will remain so many years in heaven before she's reborn—and that, as the snake-catcher draws the serpent from his hole, the wife who commits
sati
will rescue her husband from hell and will rejoice with him; though he may have sunk to a region or torment, be restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be exhausted and afflicted and tortured for his crimes, her act of self-sacrifice will save him."

Chalmers stared in horror. "And she really
believes
this?"

"No other effectual duty is known for virtuous women at any time after the death of their lords, except casting themselves into the same fire," Malambroso sighed. "As long as a woman in her reincarnation after reincarnation shall refuse
sati
, she shall not escape from being reborn in the body of some female animal. Her only road to rebirth in a higher caste, and to eventual nirvana, is to commit
sati
when her husband dies!"

Chalmers gave him a very black look. "You have a great deal to answer for, Malambroso, you and your in-depth hypnotic spell! Certainly you have placed entirely too much knowledge of Hindu dogma in her mind. Whatever possessed you to impose such an asinine scheme of disguise? Your daughter indeed! Oh, I will admit it was far easier than to believe that she was your wife, since you're such a relic—but how did you think you were going to be able to marry your own daughter?"

"When I was sure you had come and gone, I was going to remove the enchantment from her mind so that she would know I was not her father, then feed her a love phyltre," Malambroso snapped, "and who are you calling a relic, you antique?"

"Antique! I'll have you know . . ."

"I'll have you
both
know that we only have a few minutes," Shea interrupted. "We're almost to the city gate! If you don't nail down a solution to this dilemma before they nail down the robber, we're going to be dealing with a barbecue, not a woman!"

"Yes, quite so!" With a visible effort, Chalmers throttled his anger and wrenched his mind back into analytical mode. "So love at first sight was her recognition that the robber was her fated husband," he summarized, "and because he dies, she must die! Oh, blast and flay you, Malambroso! You have really made a thorough mess of it this time!"

"I know, I know!" Malambroso groaned, "but curse me later if you must! For now, only aid me in finding some way to save her!"

By now, they had come out of the gate, and the robber chieftain saw the scaffold standing upright, waiting for him. His steps faltered, but the guards pricked him with their spears, and he gave them a look of disdain before he marched up proudly and firmly to stand before the giant wooden X. He lifted his arms, holding them out to his sides, and the executioners stepped up with hammer and nails.

"If you can do anything to prevent this, do it now!" Malambroso pleaded.

"The invisible shield we put over the rajah when they were fighting?" Shea suggested.

"I have no grass," Chalmers answered, watching the scene with narrowed eyes, "and Randhir would know in an instant who had done it. No, we must concoct an effect that could be mistaken for something valid, within their own religion."

The three men stood silent for a long moment as the executioners threw a rope around the thief's waist and tied him firmly to the middle of the X.

"Iron skin," Shea said suddenly.

"Of course! From the elbows to the fingers, and from the knees to the toes! Quickly, Malambroso! You take the arms! Harold, take the right leg! I will take the left!"

Malambroso cast a quick look of confusion at Chalmers, then shrugged and turned to business. He drew a few odd objects from beneath his robe, began to manipulate them, and muttered a verse in Arabic. Chalmers took a small knife from his thief's finery and leaned down to rub it against his shin, muttering. Shea, realizing how his boss was applying the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, drew his own knife and stropped it against his thigh, muttering,

"Joe Magarac was born in Iron Mountain,

And therefore as he grew, he turned to steel.

Let our bandit chief bathe in his fountain;

Turn his skin to iron, so he'll no longer steal!"

Malambroso and Chalmers finished their verses in a dead heat with his—and just in time. The executioner placed a huge spike against the bandit's wrist, drew back a hammer, then drove it forward with all his might.

The spike struck the robber's skin and glanced off, burying itself in the wood. The executioner stared in amazement, then shook himself, obviously thinking he had missed his stroke. He placed the spike again, struck again—and watched it skid again.

The robber, watching, grinned. "What is the difficulty? Is my skin too strong for your weak muscles?"

But the other executioner was having the same problem with the other wrist. The first firmed his lips into a straight fine, placed the spike, and, with great determination, drove his hammer as hard as he could. The spike skidded again and flew out of his grasp.

The robber chieftain gave a low, mocking laugh.

The executioners each snatched up another nail and hammered at them with fury. They couldn't even dent the bandit's skin. His laughter grew louder and louder as their frustration mounted. Finally, they threw down their spikes, crying, "He is bewitched!"

At the word "bewitched," Randhir's eyes automatically swiveled to Shea and Chalmers—but Harold only returned a gaze of blank innocence, while Chalmers stood with head bowed. Of course, his head was bowed to keep the king from seeing his lips move as he chanted a verse while he pulled a thread from his cuff and stretched it between his hands until it snapped.

The rope fell from the robber's waist. He looked down in surprise, then grinned and stepped forward, holding up unmarked wrists in a gesture of triumph.

"The gods have spoken!" cried a woman in the crowd. "The God of the Golden Spear protects him!"

"Or perhaps the Goddess of Brides," another woman countered.

"Yes, it would seem that the gods have given their judgment, and that the thief is to live." Randhir looked as though he had bitten down on a rotten nut, but he managed to force the words out.

"Praise Heaven!" Malambroso cried, going limp—then straightening in alarm as Florimel gave a cry of delight and ran to throw her arms around the thief's neck. Grinning, he caught her up and whirled her about. "He cannot marry her!" Malambroso cried.

"I did not say that he would," Rajah Randhir grated, "for though he shall live, he shall not go unpunished. He shall be a common soldier in my army, and I shall send him to the border, so that when my greedy neighbor invades, this robber chieftain shall be the first whom arrows strike! If the gods still protect him then, if he comes home from the battle alive and well, I may permit him to pay court to the maiden—or I may find more tasks for mm to do, many more, until he has proved his worth and made amends, at least in part, for all the misery he has caused."

The thief put down Shobhani and turned to salaam to the Rajah. "Whatsoever you wish, O Diamond of Justice, I shall do! Indeed, if I had known virtue might win me the hand of so beauteous a maiden as this, I would have forsaken my evil ways long ago!"

Shobhani threw her arms around him again, and the people cheered as Malambroso moaned—in harmony with Chalmers.

"Stand away, maiden!" the Rajah commanded. "He must go forthwith to the border, this very night! Soldiers! Take him to your barracks and equip him for the journey!"

The soldiers surrounded the bandit and marched him off, back into the city.

"I wonder how many beatings he will sustain between the city and the border?" Chalmers muttered.

"Accidents will happen," Shea said virtuously. "Hey, its gotta be better than dying, Doc—and he's proved he can take it."

As the crowd moved off, cheering the same man they had cursed only an hour before, the Rajah turned on Shea and Chalmers. "Well enough, magicians! I cannot prove it, and I certainly do not know why you did it—but I could swear his escape was your doing, and not the work of the gods at all!" He gave Malambroso a narrow glance. "He is one of you too, is he not?"

"I assure you, O Gem of Insight," said Malambroso, "that I have no wish to see my daughter Shobhani marry a thief!"

"No, but you would rather that than see her commit
sati
, would you not? Come, Shea, admit it!"

"Okay, we're guilty," Shea sighed.

"Harold!" Chalmers snapped in alarm.

"Fear not," Randhir said grimly, "I have already spoken, and I shall not reverse my judgment again. However, it is not my judgment you need fear now, but that of Shiva—for it is with his justice that you have interfered!"

"Perhaps," Shea said slowly, "or perhaps I have been sent here by another god, whether I knew it or not. Who knows but that I may have been the instrument of Heaven?"

"Oh? And what god would choose a foreigner for his tool?" Randhir said, not quite sneering.

"Oh . . . one who likes to see handsome young men sporting with beautiful young women," Shea said slowly.

Randhir frowned. "Krishna, you mean?" At that point, Shea was open to all suggestions. He shrugged. "He loved playing with the milkmaids himself, didn't he?"