Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (33 page)

“And that night, as I watched in secret and folowed her in silence, she went again into this garden. And in the pavilion, the worst of my fears and even worse than my fears were realized, for I found her lying in delight in the arms of my vilest slave!”

“So what did you do?” I asked quietly, when the horror of the memory seemed to have silenced him.

“They had left a lamp burning outside the pavilion; I could see their heads close together, their lips locked in kisses. And I thought that with a single stroke of my sword, I could cut off both their heads together. For I had feared something of this and brought my sword with me.

“But as I drew the blade, she must have heard the sound for she puled sharply away and I, distracted by her motion, did not strike true. I missed her completely and I cut the slaves neck only halfway through.”

Just because we in Yurt never hung anyone, I reminded myself, did not mean that the rest of the world did not assess the death penalty. But I stil thought that he had been much too precipitate. I had started to feel sympathetic for this pale young prince, but now I felt sympathy only for the slave.

But the prince was not waiting for my sympathy. “When she saw what I had done, she cursed me with the deepest and blackest of witches’ curses. Her hand she thrust straight into the lamp’s flame, and she hurled fountains of fire and spels at me that would have destroyed me if they had touched my head. But instead—”

He paused and lifted his black cloak with his left elbow. From the waist up he was stil human, but everything below the waist, including his left hand and right arm, which was stretched along his leg with the sword stil in his grip, had turned to stone.

“And so you see me, traveler,” he continued. “But even this was not enough for her. She turned with a cry of despair when she saw her slave lover almost dead and tried to revive him with her wicked spels and the potions she always carried with her, sobbing and caling him tender names she had never once caled me. When she could not heal him immediately, she wrapped him most tenderly, both in blankets and in her perverted magic, and left him in the pavilion.

“Then she went down into the city like the force of vengeance and caled on the dark powers that lurk beneath the waves. And in answer to her cal, the nameless creatures of night rose up from the deep and swalowed the city. The breakers roled across it and drowned it, even as you see it now.”

“But the fish?” I asked.

“The people might have swum to safety even in the drowning of their city, for we are a sea people and used to swimming, but that would not have satisfied her. So she turned them al into different kinds of fish, red for those who folow the Prophet, gold for the Children of Abraham, and blue for those who folow the Nazarene.

When they are lifted from the water, they can stil speak like men, at least a few phrases, but in the sea they are fish, and fish they must remain.” I wondered if they stil knew who they realy were. Someone transmogrified by western magic would stil keep his original identity inside. The brightly colored fish I had seen in the emir’s palace—doubtless brought there as a marvel—must think themselves in harsh captivity.

I realized the prince had been silent for several minutes and turned toward him. His deep eyes looked at me in entreaty. “Whoever you may be, traveler, you are the first to enter my garden in the two years since this happened. Are you perhaps sent in answer to my prayers to save me and avenge me upon my wife?”

“I might be,” I said slowly. I couldn’t see the Ifrit from where we were sitting, but he must stil be only a short distance away. I knew it was useless to ask him again for my magic back, though I had no idea how I was going to dissolve a transformations spel without it. Even without the knowledge that he was testing me—and might keep my friends buried in the sand forever if I did not pass—I felt sorry for the fish.

“Does your wife ever come back to gloat over you?” I asked Maybe I could somehow persuade her to break her own spel.

“Of course. She comes every evening, feeds me just enough to keep me alive, and then whips me until I sob with pain, to punish me again for what I did to her lover. I would have died from the blows many months ago—and often I wish I could—but she then salves my wounds with wicked magic so that I may heal by the next day and be beaten again. Then she crawls into the pavilion with the slave—that is why I warned you not to go in, for fear she would realize someone had been there. She cals on him tenderly and caresses him andbegs him to be healed quickly. So far he has never answered her.” I put my head in my hands. The slave must be long

C. Dak Brittam dead if he did not respond to magic which could heal the wounds from a whipping in a day. His body must only be kept from decay by some variation of the spel that held together the body of the wizard of the eastern kingdoms.

When I lifted my head again, the prince was almost smiling. “Are you perhaps a mage?”

“No.” It was too complicated to explain. “But I think I have an idea.”

I sat on the bench beside him al afternoon. He told me more about his city before al its people became fish. I was able to deflect his rather desultory questions about where I had come from—for him, the chief interesting thing about me was that I might save him. Late in the afternoon, somewhere in the distance, I began to hear singing.

“It is my people,” said the young prince softly. “When they were stil human, they used to sing as the sun set; even now that they are fish, they rise to the surface each day at this time to salute the day’s passing.”

The singing died away with the coming of twilight, and not long thereafter the prince whispered to me, “The witch usualy comes at about this time, so make your preparations.”

“Do not fear, for you wil be a free man tonight” I stood up, hoping this was going to work.

I slipped quietly down to the little round pavilion and found my way in by feel. Slowly I groped my way across the floor until my hand found another hand, very cold.

I jerked back, just managing to stay quiet. If this was the slave, he seemed quite dead. I felt forward again and found his body, lying amid a heap of pilows and blankets on a sleeping mat. I lifted him up as wel as I could, just as glad I could not see his slashed throat, and carefuly carried him out the far side of the pavilion. There had already been too many slashed throats for me on this trip. I slid the slave under a bush and went back into the pavilion just as a bobbing light appeared at the garden gate.

I lay down on the mat where the dead slave had lain, but the light did not immediately approach. Instead, it was set down on the bench by the young prince. In the light of her lamp I could see the prince’s witch wife. If eastern witches could touch someone’s mind and tel who they were, she would know in a second that I was here. To the prince, she might have been as lovely as the ful moon rising. To me she looked terrifying.

But she did not seem to have any immediate suspicions. First she fed the prince and gave him water to drink out of a skin, laughing mockingly at his inability to move more than his head and left elbow. Then she puled out a whip and stepped back, her face dark with fury.

“For wishing to kil me,” she shouted, “for almost kiling my beloved, you deserve death and worse than death! As long as he hovers on the edge of life, you wil pray to God each day that you might the!” The young prince stood it for about five lashes, then started to whimper. When he began to cry out in pain, then to beg the witch by the love they had once shared, by her love for the slave, and by the love of God not to hit him again, her blows only intensified.

Lying where the slave had died, I put my hands over my ears. Without magic, there was no way I could oppose a witch with a whip in her hand and probably the supernatural forces of darkness in her spels.

I had to wait for her to tire and to rub her salves into the prince’s wounds. Even with magic, I certainly could not heal him overnight myself.

She seemed satisfied at last and put her whip away. The prince had slumped as much as he could being half stone and he no longer seemed conscious. But when she brought out little pots that glowed with a green light and rubbed the salve onto his back, he slowly revived and straightened again. “Until tomorrow night, husband?” she murmured in triumph.

But then her whole manner changed. She lifted up the lamp and approached the pavilion, slowly and almost shyly. I took a deep breath, tried to imagine how a slave might address a princess who was also his lover, and caled out to her.

“Mistress, dear mistress, don’t bring that light here, by the love we long shared!”

She was so startled she dropped the lamp and it smashed on the pavement by her feet

Good. The spels of fire were no longer available to her. “It hurts my eyes, dearest daughter of the stars, and it has been so long since I’ve had my eyes open!” She came toward me again with an indrawn breath of delight “Is it then true, my darling, my pomegranate, my own? Are you alive again at last? You seem somehow—different!”

“Stay back, my precious one!” I said in a weak voice. If she crawled in here with me, even without the lamp, I wouldn’t deceive her for long. And I was quite sure that after she had whipped me near or even to death, she would not put her magic salves on me. “I only seem different because it has been two years since we last lay together. But don’t approach me yet. Even your delicate touch might set back my healing.”

“But it’s been so long since I heard your dear voice!”

And you won’t hear it again until you meet your lover in hel, I thought. This was even harder than I’d expected. “My healing was slowed, my sweet,” I gasped, “by al the noises I must endure.”

“Noises?”

“The singing of the fish,” I said. “Hie sounds of an ordinary city I could bear quite easily, but the sad wail of men and women made fish makes my heart break anew each evening.” She was silent for a moment, while I hoped she was thinking over my comment and feared she was rinning to suspect me. Her witch-magic, I thought, did not give her the ability to touch another mind or she would have long since realized the slave was dead, but if I already seemed “different” I would not be able to stal her much more.

“Al right, then, my sweet,” she said in abrupt decision. “Anything to make you more comfortable. I’l turn the fish back to themselves.” The moon was brightening and I could see the witch return to the materials she had brought with her to the garden. I wondered briefly if the dark powers she commanded through fire and potions might be playing with her, alowing her as a subde and demonical form of torture to dink her lover was stil alive.

She poured some liquid into a dish, murmured low words over it until silver sparks cascaded upwards, then cried aloud and clapped her hands. The ground shifted below us, from the bottom of the hil came a massive roaring of water and, abrupdy, the city rose from the bay.

I lay flat until the earth stopped moving. I didn’t dink anybody in the west had command of forces like this. When I lifted my head again it was to hear voices, human voices, babbling togedier in surprise and joy. Out the far side of the pavilion, I saw lights flicking on in the city below the garden. The emir would have quite a shock the next time he visited his fish pond. The prince’s people were people once again.

The witch did not give me time to appreciate my success. “Are you satisfied now, dearest one?” she asked from just outside the pavilion.

“Thank you, my own, that is much better. But diere is stil anodier noise which has long hindered my healing.”

“And what is that?”

I was tempted for a moment to leave the prince turned half to stone. But if Joachim didn’t feel he could judge eastern priests, I shouldn’t judge someone for murdering his wife’s lover—especialy since in the last two years he had been punished cruely. “It is the prince, your husband,” I said. “His moans and cries at night keep me from healing sleep. Even in the day I feel so much for his pain that I am almost mad.”

“Then he shal be restored as wel,” she said comfortingly. Again she poured liquid in a dish and spoke words over it. This time, when the silver sparks rose and she clapped her hands, the stone of the prince’s lower half split with a crack, and he slowly rose to his feet.

“But now I can bear it no longer, dearest slave!” she cried and rushed into the pavilion before I could stop her. She seized me wildly and puled me toward her.

We both froze as the white moonlight fel on my face. The witch slowly pushed herself backwards. “You—you are not—” But before she could blast me with magic, she turned and saw the prince behind her.

I had forgotten he stil, after two years, held the sword with which he had kiled the slave. But he had not forgotten. He roared almost as loudly as the waters pouring from the streets of his city and rushed at his wife. She shrieked and fled, kicking over her magic bowls and potions as she went. As I crept, trembling, out of the pavilion, I could hear their cries retreating in the distance.

A shadow was between me and the moon. I looked up and saw the Ifrit descending into the garden. He broke several flower bushes with his gigantic feet as he landed.

“Not bad, little mage,” he said with a chuckle. “You have freed the ensorceled city. I think I have tested you enough to provide plenty of amusement and can start now on the rest of your friends.”

“What about the prince of this city? Is he going to lol his wife?”

“As God wils, so it happens,” said the Ifrit without interest. “We could folow them, or would you rather have me find those other humans you were with when I first saw you?”

“My friends, of course.” At this point, I no longer cared whether the prince kiled his witch wife or she turned him to stone again—or even whether they made peace with each other. “But first, could you help me bury this body?”

The Ifrit scraped a deep hole under the bushes with a finger and I lowered the slave into it. “He is dead, isn’t he?” I asked in sudden doubt.

“Of course,” said the Ifrit in surprise. “He’s been dead since the first day after the prince attacked him. I thought al you humans knew how easily you the. It must be strange,” he added thoughtfuly, pushing the dirt over the body.