C. Brittain: Mage Quest

“And get all my friends’ horses and supplies again!” commanded Dominic.

The Ifrit sprang upwards into the air and disappeared, Dominic still in his fist. The soldiers, seeing them go, shouted and tried to shoot at them, but the arrows fell harmlessly.

“Is he gone?” said King Haimeric into the abrupt silence.

“He is not gone yet,” said Kaz-alrhun gravely.

First to appear again was a tumbling whirlwind of sand, which settled down to reveal our confused horses, their packs still on their backs. And five minutes later the Ifrit was back, with Dominic and, this time, Whirlwind.

The chestnut stallion landed unceremoniously on his side. But he scrambled to his feet at once and reared and kicked wildly until Dominic, still sitting in the Ifrit’s hand, reached down to grab a handful of mane and slap his neck. “Easy, boy, easy,” he said as though the horse could understand. “They’ll take you home.” The stallion stopped kicking and seemed to be listening. “Let someone else ride you besides me, all right?”

“Don’t forget that horse and I saved your life!” piped up Maffi.

Dominic frowned. “If I asked, Ifrit, could you turn this boy into a worm?”

“Or anything you liked, Master!”

Maffi sprang behind Kaz-alrhun’s legs, but Dominic showed no sign of requesting an immediate transformation. His face was sober, and he seemed all at once to have lost the momentum that carried him out of Ascelin’s grip.

“I realize something, little warrior,” the Ifrit said to him. “You and this western mage say you want to go to the Outer Sea, but while we’re gone all these people from Yurt are going to try to escape. I promised the first mage who freed me that I wouldn’t let them.”

“Then don’t go!” cried the king.

“Wizard?” said Dominic to me.

I glanced toward the wall of fire, wondering how long it would hold the emir’s soldiers before someone volunteered to charge through it. I didn’t want to answer Dominic because I felt that in doing so I was sending him to his death. But it was, I reminded myself grimly, his decision.

“Listen, Ifrit!” I said. “The power of King Solomon’s Pearl surpasses all other authority over an Ifrit-including wishes the Ifrit himself may have granted. Additionally, the mage to whom you promised to guard the Wadi betrayed you, by arranging for you to be imprisoned in your bottle again. His wishes have lost all validity.” I left out the emir, not wanting to confuse the issue further-besides, his wishes still had validity. “And remember you promised to keep the people from Yurt safe-their safety may in fact lie in escape!”

The Ifrit’s dark green brow furrowed as he tried to work it out, but he nodded slowly, seeming to agree.

I expected Dominic to give the order for final departure at once, but he too frowned again, looking down at us from twenty feet in the air. “You seem to know all about this Pearl, Mage,” he called to Kaz-alrhun. “What’s the limit on what I can make the Ifrit do?”

“There is very little limit,” said Kaz-alrhun, “on the powers of a man who commands the Black Pearl and has an Ifrit to obey him. Even without a working knowledge of magic, you could do much. But-” He paused for a long moment. “But you could do nothing to counter the Pearl’s curse when it began to work.”

Dominic bit his lip. “And the first workings of the curse would be that I would be tempted to make myself King Dominic of Yurt, of all the western kingdoms, of the world, and would still think I was acting for good.” He wrapped an arm firmly around the Ifrit’s thumb. “Good-bye, sire! To the Outer Sea, Ifrit! We’re going now !

“Don’t worry!” Dominic added in a joyous shout as the Ifrit sprang up into the air. “You’ll be safe from the soldiers, because the curse is being ended before it has a chance to work!” He waved, and the red of his ruby ring flashed in the evening light. “And I have found the purpose of my life at the end of it!”

When the Ifrit rose from the valley floor, the wall of flames disappeared, and the emir’s soldiers almost immediately regrouped.

“Do not concern yourself with that!” said Kaz-alrhun as I desperately started over again creating some sort of magical shield. “Everyone, onto the carpet!” He had increased its size again.

King Haimeric didn’t want to go. “He was still so young,” he said, the tears streaming unchecked down his cheeks as he stared into the empty sky. “My own life is nearly at an end, but there was so much Dominic could still have done! Now we won’t even be able to visit his grave.”

“He fulfilled both his life and his quest,” I said, helping the king onto the carpet. I had to pick up and give him his carefully wrapped rootstock or he would have left it behind.

“I never had a chance!” cried Hugo in genuine distress, sounding more like a boy than a blooded warrior. “I never asked him to forgive me for putting ribbons in his stallion’s mane!”

“Come!” called Kaz-alrhun impatiently. “In pouring forth tears there is little profit.”

The Ifrit’s wife wouldn’t go. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “The soldiers won’t find my oasis.” She thumbed the rings on her necklace and smiled at Sir Hugo’s party and then, somewhat less jauntily, at Joachim, as she stepped back under the palms.

We lifted into the evening sky on the carpet, piled as closely together in the center as we could, only twenty yards ahead of the turbaned soldiers. A few arrows hit the bottom of the carpet but bounced away harmlessly. I leaned cautiously over the edge and watched the Ifrit’s oasis wink away into safety, to another level of reality or to non-existence.

Fountains sparkled in the glow of the magic lamps in the courtyard of Kaz-alrhun’s house in Xantium. The evening air was still warm, and even here, in the middle of the city, little stray breezes found us, scented with the tang of the sea and with desert sage. Automata, simple self-propelled serving carts on wheels, rattled over the flagstones to bring us a variety of hot and cold dishes.

“So you do not grow eggplants in Yurt?” the mage asked King Haimeric. “Take some from Xantium for your queen. The market will also have every kind of cotton fabric you might desire. And certainly buy coffee beans as well, but remember you will first have to grind them to a sandy consistency to brew the beverage.” When the king did not seem as pleased at this suggestion as Kaz-alrhun apparently expected him to be, he added, “You can buy all the presents for your queen in the government-regulated market if you prefer, rather than the Thieves’ Market.”

The king tried to smile. “She’ll be happy with anything I bring her, but none of it will make up for coming home without Dominic.”

The mage laughed, startling one of his automata, though it was able to recover without dumping its load of spiced lamb. “Is that it?” he asked, looking around the table at the rest of us. “Is this the reason you have all had long faces since we left the Wadi?” None of us answered. “I would expect at least you, Daimbert, to know better.”

“We shouldn’t have let him do it,” said Ascelin.

“I would not say you ‘let’ him do it,” replied the mage with a chuckle. “If so, what do you do when you do not wish someone to go? I saw you try to hold him back. Or do you regret not wrestling the Ifrit as well? Your Prince Dominic played his game brilliantly at the end. He lifted the Pearl’s curse and sent the rest of you home safely on my flying carpet.”

“We have just enough money left to book sea passage from here back to the western kingdoms,” said the king. “Whirlwind should be able to carry Ascelin for the rest of our trip, so we’ll make good time.”