L. Camp - The Exotic Enchanter

On the right Shea recognized other scenes, from the New Testament — Christ walking on the water, performing the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, and on the cross. Above the two wings was the Holy Trinity — and Shea couldn’t tell if the Holy Spirit was intended to be incorporeal or if the artist hadn’t known how to draw.

The whole iconostasis and many of the individual icons’ frames were gold or silver or at least gilded or silvered wood. Elaborate carvings or castings, inlaid ivory and jewels, tapestry-work that made any formal-dress brocade look drab — the iconostasis outshone even the elaborately painted walls and ceiling of the basilica.

The only way to make that thing any brighter , Shea thought, would be to set it on fire . Then he hastily chased the irreverent thought out of his mind. This was a place that could almost make one believe in blasphemy.

It did make Shea remember Sunday school, and discreetly kneel.

The Patriarch returned, leading Chalmers, who was wearing a dun-colored penitent’s robe. Facing the iconostasis, the Patriarch pointed out one just over halfway up the New Testament side. “Judas’ kiss, the betrayal of Our Lord to His enemies. Meditate upon that, my erring son.”

They watched Chalmers prostrate himself on the floor. The Patriarch turned to Shea.

“We must leave now.”

The priest extinguished the basilica lamps and picked up their lantern. It penetrated the darkness but feebly, but it got them out, leaving Chalmers with only the sanctuary light.

“Let us pray that though be lie in darkness, God will lead him to the light,” the Patriarch said. He began to pray, loudly enough not to notice that Shea was only mouthing words.

The problem wasn’t that prayer might not work. Here the problem was that it might.

* * *

Shea had finally worked up an appetite for breakfast the next morning, when Chalmers entered their chamber. The older man still wore his penitent’s robe, but he had the first smile on his face that Shea had seen in weeks.

“My penitence seems to have worked,” he said. “I cast a small spell, and it worked. I changed wine into water.”

Shea swallowed a chunk of dry bread. “I suppose the other way around might have been in bad taste.”

Chalmers’ smile turned into a grin. “Who cares about bad taste? Now that we can follow Florimel, all I want to do is leave this world. I have never been in one I shall be so happy to see the last of!”

His ending a sentence with a preposition told Shea just how excited his colleague was. Nor did he disagree — although there was no point in even thinking about returning to Ohio. not with Chalmers in this mood.

It took them barely ten minutes to dress and pack. Five minutes more and they were standing hand in hand, one on each side of a large puddle on the floor, the result of a leak opened by last night’s storm.

“By the power of saints, and the might of princes, by the strength of men and the wit of women, may all the powers of the sky above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth grant that if there is P, and there is Q, then P equals not-Q. and Q equals not-P. . . .”

They were off.

Part II:

Sir Harold And

The Hindu King

Christopher Stasheff

The lights faded, the ground jolted up under their feet, and Shea and Chalmers found themselves alone in the dark. Shea had a confused impression of single-story houses with curving adobe walls and thatched roofs, with bigger buildings of stone looming behind them in the moonlight. A world of aromas filled his head, sharp and pungent, some familiar, most not; the only one he could name was something that smelled like curry. The ground beneath him was just that — ground, the packed earth of an unpaved street. He seemed to be in a sort of expanded intersection, not big enough to call a plaza.

And hot. The heat beat all about him, stifling. By the time his head stopped spinning Shea was already sweating. “Whew! If this is what its like at night, I’d hate to be here at noon.”

“Brace yourself,” Chalmers said grimly. “We probably will still be here.”

“Where are we, Doc?”

“To judge by the heat, I would say it must be somewhere In the tropics.” Chalmers swayed.

Shea caught his arm to steady him. “Only a minute, Doc — Then you’ll stabilize.”

“I shall recover,” Chalmers muttered. “Am I growing weaker, Harold? Syllogismobile travel has never struck me so hard before!”

But Chalmers lurched bumping against Shea, who might have toppled himself, if it had not been just at that moment that someone bumped into him from the other side. “Oh, excuse me!” he said. Just to be on the safe side, he stepped quickly away, right hand dropping to his sword hilt — but with his left still holding to Chalmers just in case he was still woozy. He could have sworn the other party muttered something about a stupid beggar, but he must have been wrong, because the man said, softly but exuberantly. “Brother! Comrade in thievery! How are your pickings tonight?”

Shea stared, taken aback — and looked the man over in one quick glance. He wore a dark-colored cloth wrapped about his hips, sandals, a sword, and a forked beard with moustaches that curved up to the corners of his eyes. Besides that, he had a very flat nose — but the real distinguishing characteristic was the turban. They were in India!

No wait a minute — there were other countries where people wore turbans, from Arabia through Persia. . . .

But they didn’t eat curry.

Not exactly conclusive evidence, but the aroma, the heat, and the turban all added up, so Shea decided to operate as though this were India until proven otherwise. The syllogismobile had made him a natural speaker of the local language, so she he said, “Sorry, friend — the darkness must be deceiving you. We’re not thieves, we’re foreigners. We, uh, were traveling late — decided we were so close to the town that we might as well keep pushing until we arrived.”

“Foreigners? Well, that does explain your outlandish clothing.” Flat-nose eyed them suspiciously, “But how did you come into the city after the gates closed?”

A straight-line gleam caught Shea’s eye and, looking more closely he saw that the man had a thread tied over his nose and around his head. No wonder his nose was flat! For a wild second, he thought it was a fly-fishing leader, then realized that, in a pre-industrial town it must be something less exotic — horsehair, say, or catgut. But why the disguise? “After the gates closed? We didn’t.”

Chalmers nodded, muttering, “Quite true, quite true,” Shea hoped he was only indulging in irony, not shock.

“We’ve, ah, just been wandering around, trying to find a good hotel.”

“Wandering? Yes,” Chalmers agreed.

Shea noticed he didn’t commit himself to the questionable part of the statement. “Would you know of a good inn, kind sir?”

“An inn? Not if you have no money! And you do not, from the look of you.”

Obviously, the man still thought they were thieves — or at the best, beggars. Unfortunately, his comment hit home — they didn’t have any money, at least not in local currency. “What can you recommend, then?”

“To get out of sight! As quickly as possible! There is a gang of thieves plaguing this city, and if you run afoul of them, they may kill you rather than risk your bringing witness against them!” Flat-nose shouldered past them with a hasty, “May you have good fortune!” and disappeared into the night.

Shea’s blood chilled; he had heard of such things, but had not thought they happened until the 1920s. “You don’t think there really is a gang working the town, do you, Doc?”