L. Camp - The Exotic Enchanter

Shea looked up, affronted, but Chalmers murmured, “She means the thieves, Harold, not necessarily us.”

“You, too!” the woman said. “If you are with the Rajah, you must be his guards, or at the least, men of goodwill. Do you run away as fast as you can, Majesty, or they will surely kill you when they awake.”

“Many thanks for kind wishes, woman,” Randhir answered, his voice as low as hers “but I do not know the way; this cave is a veritable maze, and I could not say how to find the trapdoor. In which direction am I to go?”

“Follow me!” the woman hissed, and stood up, hands full of dirty goblets. She threaded her way through the confused mass of snorers, The Rajah followed, walking as lightly and deftly as a tiger. Shea followed, trying to put his feet exactly where Randhir had, with Chalmers behind him. An inch to the left or right, and he would have stepped on the sleepers, who were likely to resent being awakened so suddenly and unpleasantly. He had a notion that they would show their resentment with knives or clubs, and wasn’t eager to try to reason with them about channeling their aggressions.

The woman pulled the curtain aside, and they stepped into the robing-room again. There stood the ladder, rising up from the floor to lean against the foot-thick rim of the hole.

“Here stands your escape.” the woman whispered. “Go now, my Rajah. and quickly?”

“I shall remember you for this,” Randhir promised her. “You shall be rewarded.”

“The only reward I crave is rebirth in a higher caste, my rajah, and to that I bend my efforts as well as I may. Forget your lowly handservant, and go!”

“May this good deed bring you great karma,” Randhir said, and climbed up the ladder, Shea followed, reflecting that the woman was clearly a slave; she was doing the best she could to fulfill her dharma , her role in the order of the universe, but certainly had no choice in being maidservant to a sang of thieves.

Randhir crowded himself up against the trapdoor, hunched over, Shea wondered, but as the Rajah straightened with a grunt, heaving up, he saw the sense in the man’s strategy; the heavy stone trapdoor swung up ever so slowly — but the ladder dipped and swayed, and Shea clung for dear life, thinking that the rung on which the rajah stood had to snap, it couldn’t possibly hold against such pressure. . . .

It did hold, though, and with a final thrust, Randhir straightened. The door shot up, then fell open with a thud that made Chalmers wince, Randhir climbed up and out of the hole, then turned to heft the trapdoor closed . . .

. . . and saw Shea’s head just above the opening. “What” he hissed, “are you still here?”

“And just as eager to get out of here as you are.” Shea sidled over to the edge of the ladder, lifting one foot off to leave as much free room as possible, and beckoned to Chalmers, below the rim where Randhir couldn’t see it. “We need to get out in a bad way, because if those bad men find out we’re not bad too, then we’re going to be in bad trouble.”

Chalmers squirmed up past him.

“You put me in a dilemma,” Randhir said, scowling. “If you are truly thieves, you could raise the alarm and bring down an ambush upon me, for surely there must still be guards about!”

“If I were a thief,” Shea retorted, “I would have raised the alarm long ago, and they would have killed you while they had you in their hall.”

“There is some sense in that,” Randhir allowed, “Still, I cannot Ho! Stop, you!”

But Chalmers threw himself over the rim of the hole and rolled out from beneath the trapdoor.

“Tricked!” Randhir snapped. “By Indra, if I suffer you to . . . Pah!”

The last was said in disgust as Shea rolled free, too, then rose, dusting off his hands. “Can I help you lower that thing? It won’t do any of us any good if It goes ‘boom’ as it falls.”

Rhandhir stood a moment irresolute, Shea’s offhanded offer taking him by surprise. Then he sighed and accepted the fait accompli . “Aye, it is well thought. Aid me, then, for the trap has grown heavy during this chatter.”

Shea laid hold of the iron ring too, and together they lowered the trapdoor until it closed with a muffled thud. Then Randhir cast about him, doubled over, searching. Shea was just about to ask what was going on when the Rajah straightened with a soft exclamation of satisfaction, holding the plug of grass in his hand. He tamped it carefully back over the iron ring.

“He does replace his divots,” Chalmers muttered to Shea.

“Sure he does,” Shea whispered back. “He owns the whole golf course!”

“Come — away!” Randhir whispered, and turned to plunge back into the woods.

Shea hurried to catch up with him and said, keeping his voice low, “I think you said something about there maybe being guards still posted?”

“We shall deal with them when we must.” Randhir drew his dagger. “If we are going to travel together, we must know one another. I am Matun.”

Shea held his face neutral for a moment, thrown by the alias — then realized that a man in disguise certainly wasn’t about to use his own name. “I’m Shea, and my friend is Chalmers.”

“Shea and Chalmers — well met.” Randhir gave them each a curt nod. “Let us hurry, now! We would be well advised to be clear of this wood while it is still dark!”

“And the sentries sleepy. You are very brave,” Chalmers said, coming up on his other side, “this this very night, we have learned an incantation that makes people invisible.”

Randhir halted. “Why, so we have! Indeed, I made shift to memorize it as soon as I heard it! But can I remember it now?”

“We should be able to, between the three of us,” Shea said, “but will it work if we don’t cover ourselves with oil?”

“The coconut oil was to aid the robbers in slipping through tight places,” Randhir told him, “and to prevent a man of the Watch from gaining a hold on them. Still, you may be right; we can only attempt it.”

“There were gestures that went with it,” Chalmers informed him, “like this” He made a circle above his head, then drew his hand flat down in front of his face, palm toward his eyes, and on down along his whole body. “Do that as we recite!”

They all pantomimed as they chanted the words together. They were meaningless. incomprehensible, but Shea felt sure that if he had ever learned Sanskrit, they would be poetry of the highest order. He looked up at Chalmers and Randhir . . .

Just In time to see their forms waver, glow transparent and disappear. “I can’t see you at all!”

“Nor I you,” Chalmers’ voice answered out of thin air, “nor His Majesty.”

Shea looked closely at the space where the rajah had been. Sure enough, he was completely invisible. No, wait . . . there was a gleam of light, a ray, a straight line. . . .

The horsehair. Randhir really ought to do something about that.

* * *

Dawn was breaking as they came to the city gate, so they didn’t have to wait long until it opened. The invisibility spell had worn off after the first couple of horns, so Shea had no trouble seeing Randhir as he said, very casually, “It would be nice if there were somebody here who could simply command the porters to open the gate for us.”

“It would,” the Rajah agreed in a wooden tone.

“But there isn’t, of course,” Shea sighed. If the guards recognized the “thief” of the night before and heard him issue a royal command, they would run for their lives the second the king was through the gate — and probably keep on running all the way to the ken and warn all the other thieves, too. The king was out to capture them, not just inconvenience them.