Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (41 page)

Dominic, a dozen yards from them, pushed his face out of the dirt. “Don’t let him get away alive!” he shouted hoarsely. “Don’t let him escape with the Pearl!” In the middle of that shout, Ascelin made a dive for Warm’s legs. As the king lost his balance the prince’s long hunting knife slid smoothly upwards, between Warm’s ribs and into his heart.

I broke the paralysis spel on me and on Kaz-alrhun. “School magic,” I told him when he seemed surprised I could work any spel faster than he could. “It’s easier to break than your spels if you know the trick.” Evrard already had himself free.

Joachim’s and Hugo’s dark heads appeared over the rim of the Wadi, joined in a moment by Maffi and by the Ifrit’s wife. “You’l have to go around to the top end of the watercourse and come down that way,” Ascelin caled up to them, then sat down abruptly, his breathing ragged. He puled his knife out of Warm’s body and slowly and mechanicaly started cleaning it, like the good hunter he was.

Dominic puled himself shakily to his feet and went to retrieve the Black Pearl. It was spattered with Warm’s blood, which he wiped off carefuly on his tunic.

Kaz-alrhun stood motionless for a moment, almost as though stil paralyzed. Then he shook himself and flashed his gold tooth at me again. “God gives and God takes away,” he said with a shrug. It was a strange reaction, I thought, considering that he should be delighted that the Pearl was safe. But then something I did not have time to analyze began to nag at me as wel.

King Haimeric sat down by Warin s head and tried to listen for his breathing, but it was quite clear that he was dead. The body began to age before our eyes. In life Warin had looked middle-aged, no older than Dominic, but as we watched in horror his iron-gray hair whitened, his cheeks wrinkled, and the veins of his hands became pronounced. Within two minutes his shriveled body looked older than King Haimeric, indeed far older.

From further down the Wadi, where we had not gone, I suddenly heard voices. I whirled toward this new threat and saw three armed men coming around a boulder toward us, two young knights and one middle-aged lord.

They stopped abruptly, seeing us. “Don’t be concerned,” Evrard caled to them. “It’s the forces of Yurt at last, come to rescue us!” I had almost forgotten about Sir Hugo and his knights.

From up the Wadi came an abrupt cry of joy so intense it was almost pain. Young Hugo pounded past us, barely slowing down to avoid Warm’s body, and threw himself into his fathers arms. Sir Hugo fel flat from the force of the onrush and, for a moment, the two roled together, laughing and shouting and crying al at once and pummeling each other.

The older man recovered first and eased himself to a sitting position. “Careful there, Hugo, I’m not as young as you are! But what’s this? Who have you been fighting to get wounded like this?”

“1 held off the emir’s men while our party escaped,” said Hugo proudly. I noticed he did not mention his fight with Ascelin.

“Then you did better than we ever did!”

Joachim came up to stand by Warin’s shriveled body. “I’d better say the rites for him.”

Tm not absolutely certain,” I said, “but I think he’d sold his soul to the devil.”

Joachim fixed me with his enormous dark eyes. “Only God can judge him. The church’s rituals are to help us al, living and dead, saved and damned, in a falen world where al of our salvations are uncertain.”

The Ifrit’s wife met the two knights who had accompanied Evrard and Sir Hugo and greeted them like very old friends.

Dominic had recovered the golden box and brushed the sand off the velvet before putting the Pearl carefuly back into it. He sat down next to Ascelin. “You saved the Pearl and you probably saved my life,” he said. “Yurt owes you more than I know how to repay. Ask whatever you wil from me.”

Ascelin had been sitting with his face resting on his arms. Now he looked up, a slight smile crinkling the tanned skin around his eyes. “I thank you, Dominic, but the kingdom of Yurt has already given me more than I could ever have asked. You yourself might not be able to give me what I desire above al, but the Pearl may be able to do so. My heart’s desire is to see the duchess and our daughters again before I the.”

I stood to one side, listening to the faint, not quite inteligible voice of the Black Pearl. For reasons I could not define, the voice sounded different.

Joachim finished the litany for the dead and went over to Ascelin. The tal prince glanced up, then nodded without speaking. He pushed himself to his feet and walked slowly away down the Wadi with the chaplain, listening to him with his head bowed.

While they were gone, I told Evrard the highlights of our quest to the east to find him. “I’m flattered, Daimbert,” he said with a grin. “So finding me was your heart’s desire?” I shook my head and smiled. “What you seek and what you find, wil ofttimes be of different kind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re my heart’s desire, but I am delighted to have found you.” But even as I spoke I realized that the sense of boundless happiness, along with the Pearl’s voice at the back of my brain, had altered, become less intense, or perhaps taken on a more somber hue.

Evrard looked thoughtful for a moment and I wondered if he had been briefly contemplating the triumphs of the reign of Evrard the Al-Merciful. The school’s going to want the Pearl.”

“I know. When I first heard the rumors it had been found, I told Zahlfast about it. He said an object that powerful and dangerous would have to be controled by highly skiled wizards—which I presume excludes you and me. We know it has enormous power, but Zahlfast is right that if that power is going to be channeled we’l first have to find out how it works. I hope the masters of the school have the wisdom to realize how quickly it could become accursed if someone tried to appropriate al its powers to himself.” Evrard met my eyes. He knew exactly what I meant.

“But it’s Dominic’s Pearl now,” I added, looking toward where he sat by himself, fifty yards away. “Neither we nor the school can take it from him.”

“I almost forgot to tel you,” said Hugo from where he was sitting with his father. The reason we came over to the watercourse after you was that the emir’s men had finaly gone around to the far side of the valey, where the wal’s not as steep, and come down into it. They were stil several miles off, but I think they’re headed this way.” With two school-trained wizards and a mage, I thought, we should be able to resist—or at least avoid—armed soldiers, even without yet mastering the Pearl. I flew up to the rim of the Wadi but couldn’t see them. I tried the onyx ring and saw the emir’s rose garden again but not his soldiers. I came back down feeling less complacent. A warning would help, as would any reassurance that the Ifrit was not about to reappear and take our magical powers away again.

“Now that Warin s dead,” asked Hugo, “who’s going to rule his kingdom?”

“I don’t think he had any children,” I said without interest, “but he’s probably got a cousin or a nephew somewhere. If not, the aristocrats of the region wil elect one of their number king. A wealthy kingdom like that won’t lack a king for long, once they realize Warin won’t be back” I didn’t like to mink how close I had been to becoming the Royal Wizard of a kingdom now without a king, or what I might have had to do to protect my new lord.

“If I’m not your hearts desire,” Evrard asked me, “what is?”

“Magic,” I said slowly. “After al these years I think I’ve finaly gotten passable at western magic and now I’ve learned a great deal of eastern magic as wel. Maybe not even particular spels, but an orientation, a knowledge, that there are oilier ways than school ways to contact the universe’s forces.” I held Evrard’s light blue eyes with my own. “And I know this wil sound strange from someone who’s been practicing magic his entire adult life, but I think I’ve also realized that there are important powers and abilities in this world that have nothing to do with magic.” Ascelin and Joachim came back at this point, interrupting our conversation, although neither said anything but sat down on either side of Warm’s body.

The tel prince, I thought, might be the only one who had not found his heart’s desire on this quest, as wel as the only one with a death on his soul. I had discovered eastern magic, Hugo his father, the elder Sir Hugo and his party had found the rescue they had long awaited, King Haimeric the blue rose, Joachim the Holy Land, and Dominic his father’s unfulfiled quest for the Black Pearl. Even Kaz-alrhun had won his game by locating the Pearl at last

Trying to understand the not quite clear and definitely darker voice of the Pearl at the edge of my mind, I thought that even my new understanding of magic might not be the “heart’s desire” of the old stories, because there were stil plenty of gaps and room for improvement—but then even Joachim had not found al his spiritual yearnings fulfiled in the Holy Land.

The Ifrit’s huge green face appeared abruptly above us, blocking out the sky. “So I see that another one of you has died,” he said conversationaly. “I keep trying to remind you how easily and senselessly humans the, but you never seem to understand.”

“Please help us bury him,” said Evrard imperiously. I wasn’t at al sure the Ifrit would continue to obey him or if Dominic would have to threaten him with the Pearl. But maybe it had become a habit. The Ifrit shrugged and nodded, then reached down a hairy arm and picked up King Warin. For a few minutes the Ifrit disappeared, then he put his head back over the head of the Wadi.

“Did you know, by the way,” he said to Evrard, “that there are a whole troop of soldiers coming this way? They are only about a hundred yards off.” This brought me abruptly to my feet. “Do you think they are from Yurt, or should I kil them?”

“No,” said Joachim before Evrard could answer. “Let’s not have any more kiling.”

“This is the one you found amusing, isn’t it, my dear?” said the Ifrit to his wife. “Wel, I won’t kil them yet, anyway. But I’d better get al of you away from the soldiers. For one thing, little mage,” to me, “you stil haven’t worked your magic on my wife.”

Before she could ask what he meant, the Ifrit stretched out his hand, and the quiet air shimmered and whirled. We were caught up in a wind that swept us, and a great deal of rock and sand, into the air. I caught a brief glimpse of startled faces beneath white turbans, then somersaulting and gasping we were carried across the valey and set down in the oasis where we had first met the Ifrit’s wife.

The air around us immediately became stil and hot as we tried to recover our equilibrium. Kaz-alrhun’s flying carpet and ebony flying horse waited under the palm trees. Dominic stil held the gold box with the Pearl inside, and the enameled cabinet he had found in the cave rested at an angle by his foot.

Maffi had spoken very little, but he suddenly took the Ifrit around the ankle. “I know what I want to be,” he caled up. “I want to become an Ifrit.” The Ifrit picked him up, a smile splitting his bristly face. “And what makes you think you could become one?”

“I wanted to apprentice myself to a mage,” said Maffi, matching the Ifrit’s grin with one of his own, “or even a western wizard, though none of them seemed to want me. But I realize now that to apprentice myself to you would be much more rewarding.”

The Ifrit put him back down with a chuckle. “Ifriti are very old,” he said, “and you are very young. Come talk to me again when you have lived longer than Solomon.” Maffi picked himself up and dusted himself off. “I never said you could not be my apprentice, boy,” said Kaz-alrhun. “But you must realize it is possible to be too young for a mage, as wel as too young for an Ifrit. The experiences of this trip may teach you something, however. Ask me again when we have returned to Xantium.” The boy’s assumed dignity vanished at once and he turned to the mage with shining eyes. “I already know one spel,” he said eagerly, “one out of western school magic. Let me show you—would you like some ilusory color on your chest? I figured out on my own how to do both pink and purple at the same time. Wil this make magery easier?” So even Maffi, I thought, might have his heart’s desire.

“What’s this spel the wizard is supposed to put on me?” demanded the Ifrit’s wife.

I had promised this and now had to carry it out. “I can slow down natural aging,” I told her. “It won’t make you any younger than you now are, but it wil keep you youthful much longer. The Ifrit couldn’t bear the idea of his beautiful wife becoming old.”

She whirled away from me and smacked the Ifrit on the foot. “So just because I’m your wife, you think you can make my decisions for me?” The Ifrit frowned, puzzled, but she didn’t give him time to answer. “I like being human! I don’t want to live for centuries like some mage! And what makes you think I’d want to live longer than normal if I had to spend al the extra time with you?”

“But I thought you liked me, my dear,” the Ifrit protested in a smal voice—or what would have been a smal voice in anything but such a large being.

She relented and smiled up at him, her hands on her hips. “Of course I like you. I’m sorry I scolded. But don’t make arrangements about me without consulting me!” The Ifrit nodded. “But now that I’ve consulted you—”

She laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need anyone’s spels but yours, my dear.”

Pleased, the Ifrit picked her up and planted a kiss on top of her head that left her wiping saliva off her hair.

“Al of you probably want some food,” said the Ifrit, frowning and trying to count us. “How many of you are there, thirteen? It’s hard to keep track of such little beings.” I myself counted and, with Sir Hugo’s party, our party from Yurt, plus Kaz-alrhun, Maffi, and the Ifrit’s wife, got the same answer. “Wel, get the fires started, my dear, and I’l bring you a few more of the emir’s sheep.” As the desert evening came on, cooling the clear air, I licked meat juices from my lips and looked across a valey that now had no sign of the emir’s soldiers in it. The Ifrit and his wife sat off to one side, apparently trading funny stories with each other, but the rest of us were gathered around the dying embers of the cooking fires.

“I guess al there is to do now is to get safely home,” said Hugo. He and his father sat together, their shoulders touching. “It’s strange because the whole trip was painful and dangerous and frustrating, but now that it’s almost over I find myself wishing we could go on forever.”