C. Brittain - Mage Quest

“I’d hoped all along that if we got in trouble on this trip you’d come find me, Daimbert,” Evrard said with a grin, once he had his breath back. “It still seemed to take you long enough to get here!”

“And Sir Hugo?” asked Dominic. “Is he alive as well?”

“As well as any of us,” said Evrard. “The Ifrit brings us food and water when he remembers. Mostly we’re hungry and bored from hearing all of each others’ life stories until we know them better than our own. Even touching the latticework and flying away from the giant scorpion lost its thrill for me after a while-and the others didn’t even dare try.”

“We killed the scorpion,” I said modestly, then stopped. Something was not right. “But why are you here?” I asked. “It wasn’t you who found a way to master the Ifrit?”

Evrard laughed. “I don’t think anyone-except maybe Solomon-could master an Ifrit. I did manage to put this one back into his bottle temporarily, but at the moment we’re at something of a standoff.”

I rubbed my forehead, willing myself to understand at least something. “You didn’t let it out of the bottle originally. But you tricked it into going back in by telling it you couldn’t believe something so enormous could fit into a bottle that small.”

“That’s right,” said Evrard cheerfully. “A traveler we met in the Holy City sold us the bottle-the same traveler who told us Noah’s Ark was hidden here in the Wadi. Did you happen to meet him? No, I can’t describe him. He never did let us get a good look at him. But I had the sense he was some sort of mage, even though he spoke like a westerner.”

“Go on,” I said. Maybe once I heard it all it might make sense.

“He suggested we present the bottle to the emir of Bahdroc as something new and marvelous, and at the same time ask his assistance in reaching the Wadi Harhammi. We’d already been trying to decide if we should go on south from the Holy Land, because the mage in Xantium-” He appeared to look at Kaz-alrhun properly for the first time. “But you’ve brought him with you!”

That was one way to look at it. “So two different people directed you here,” I said. The traveler, with the same story of Noah’s Ark that Elerius had once told me, I had to dismiss for the moment as beyond comprehension. But I turned sharply to Kaz-alrhun. “Why did you tell Evrard to come here to the Wadi? Was it as bait for us?”

“Of course,” said the mage with his infuriating smile. “It is also good to note here the game the other player is playing.”

And Kaz-alrhun would not have cared, I thought, whether Sir Hugo’s party was alive or dead as long as we came looking for them. But the mage had already made it clear that it was not he who set the Ifrit watching for people from Yurt. “Why didn’t you escape from the Wadi while you had the Ifrit imprisoned?” I asked Evrard.

“We weren’t in the Wadi then,” Evrard continued, clearly enjoying having a new audience after a year of only Sir Hugo and the same two knights. “We were still north of Bahdroc. Imagine our surprise when we came over a rise and found an Ifrit asleep in the sun, and a human woman with him who claimed to be his wife!”

I suddenly felt sure of where four of the Ifrit’s wife’s rings had come from, but I didn’t say anything.

“Unfortunately, he woke up before we could get away,” Evrard continued, then paused to prolong the suspense. “First he asked if we were from Yurt! I took a chance and said we were, and it’s a good thing I did, because otherwise he might have crushed us at once in his enormous hands. But he still threatened us and said that even Solomon had feared his power so much that he’d had to imprison him. That’s when I thought of taunting him, of showing him the bronze bottle and telling him I didn’t believe he’d ever fit inside. He went back into it to show me, and I was able to slap the stopper in!”

“But the Ifrit is out now,” said the king.

“I’m afraid my plan didn’t work as well as I’d hoped,” said Evrard ruefully. “When I first gave the emir the bottle, he treated us very hospitably and fed us bread and salt. I told him too that we were from Yurt. But his manner changed as soon as I asked directions to the Wadi Harhammi.

“We stayed in Bahdroc a week, but the atmosphere was tense the entire time, and we had gone only a few miles out of the city when the Ifrit captured us. We’ve decided that as soon as we left the emir must have freed the Ifrit again, in return for a promise to take us prisoner. For some reason the Ifrit still hasn’t killed us.” But with a wild Ifrit roaring after Sir Hugo’s party, no wonder the slave girl had told us the desert had eaten them.

“Both the emir and the slave girls remembered you,” I said.

Evrard smiled reminiscently. “One of the girls was really delightful-I wished we could have taken her along.”

The emir’s second wish in return for freeing the Ifrit, I thought, had been a request to transport the garden of the blue rose into hiding. Already constrained by a command to guard the Wadi against people from Yurt, it was no wonder the Ifrit had decided to bring the rose garden here. By promising to guard the valley, the Ifrit must have felt trapped here. It must have been extremely tiresome for a creature who could easily pass from the highest mountains to the uttermost depths of the sea in half an hour: little wonder he tried to make us amuse him.

“I’ve been expecting you for months,” continued Evrard, ready to chat indefinitely. “Didn’t you get my message that we were held prisoner by the Ifrit?”

“You mean the sign of the cross cut into the rock where the silk caravan disappeared?” I said as several things fell into place.

“The Ifrit’s wife wanted a bolt of silk, and originally I was going to make the Ifrit leave a message for people from Yurt-but then it turned out he didn’t trust my messages and couldn’t read or write himself! So I hoped that a sign of the cross would do as well, as an indication that an Ifrit had Christian captives.”

Dominic had stopped listening and was peering again through the latticework into the cave. “We’ll catch up on our stories later,” he said. “This, I believe, is where what I seek is hidden.”

“What is in there, Evrard?” I asked quietly.

He looked troubled for the first time. “I have no idea. All I know is that as long as I’m here, within about fifty yards of this cave-making sure not to touch the lattice, of course-I can work spells that will intimidate an Ifrit. Not make him do anything, apparently, but scare him into thinking I will in another minute. I’ve been able to use the power that’s in there to make the Ifrit feed us and to promise not to kill anyone else from Yurt, but we haven’t dared leave the Wadi, and I’ve spent the last year not being able to learn anything more about it.”

Could Evrard, with his combination of improvised spells and pure bluff, be the danger that the mage had warned me against? Kaz-alrhun had said nothing since Evrard had appeared, but all his attention, like Dominic’s, seemed turned toward the cave.

“This is where we find out at last,” I said. Dominic again reached out his hand so that the ruby, now flashing rapidly, was in contact with the marble gate over the cave entrance. With the strange clarity of vision whatever was in this cave had given me, I found the right spell to bring the magic in the ring to full potential. The words of the Hidden Language rumbled through the rift like the sound of rocks falling.

The latticework shivered, then slowly started to dissolve into vapor, losing its solidity even while it still held its shape. The sound of rocks falling continued even when I finished speaking, and as we watched the small opening beyond the gate grew larger. Dominic kept his hand extended until the cascade of stone had stopped, leaving an opening four feet high, and the white wisps of latticework vapor dissipated in the desert air.