C. Brittain - Mage Quest

“Nonsense,” replied the mage. “I already told you I would let your wizard borrow my carpet. It is late in the season for as long a journey as you still have before you, especially for an old man. And you know you shall need to plant your rootstock very soon if you wish to grow a blue rose yourself.”

When King Haimeric did not look cheered by this thought either, the mage leaned back and spread out his hands on the table. “I spent much of my career searching for King Solomon’s Pearl, first trying to find the secret of its location and then attempting to maneuver others into uncovering it in a way that would not bring its potential curse down on me. I found it at last, but I lost it almost in the moment of finding, and never even held it in my hands. Life is a game, and you play as well as you can as long as you can, yet you must be prepared not to win every time. Dominic fared much better on his quest than I on mine, and yet you do not see me bewailing my fate.”

None of us tried to answer. I was seated next to Joachim, who paid no attention to the rest of us or even to his dinner, as though his mind was already on his duties in the cathedral.

When the automata began clearing the plates from the lamb course, Kaz-alrhun rose to his feet. “Come with me, Daimbert. I want to show you something.”

I followed him up narrow, dark stairs to a balcony at the very top of the house. The last light was fading from the sky above us. We looked out across the city where fairy lights gleamed, and out across Xantium harbor. Voices and snatches of song rose faintly toward us.

The mage leaned on the railing for a moment, then shifted his massive bulk to look at me in the dim light. “This is what I wanted to show you,” he said, “Xantium, my city, where there are many religions and many conflicting forms of political organization, but only one supreme mage, myself. Are you not the supreme wizard in your own kingdom of Yurt?”

“I’m the only one,” I said. I wasn’t sure what point the mage was trying to make, but if he was saying that it was good to have one’s own home even without the Pearl, well, the Pearl had never been my goal anyway.

“I want to ask you something,” I said. “During the long flight here I was trying to make sense of what happened. Was it indeed you who started the rumors that King Solomon’s Pearl had been found again?”

“That indeed was I,” he said, “as you know well. When I decided to try again for the Pearl, I hoped that widespread-though false-stories of its discovery would bring you to the East if you ever planned to seek it yourselves. But I could not be sure what, if anything, the elder Prince Dominic had told you in Yurt of his quest. It had after all been fifty years since his death. It was even possible, I thought, that you knew neither the ruby ring’s powers nor of the very existence of the Black Pearl. So while broadcasting the general rumors of the Pearl, I also arranged for a separate rumor, one that might bring the ruby ring to me even if those of Yurt knew not its powers.

“I made sure that two separate stories followed the trade routes to your western kingdoms, separate because I did not wish that anyone should realize I was the author of both. The second was sent very secretly, that my ebony horse was on sale in exchange for a magical ring from Yurt. This news I sent only to a few, those whom I already knew were sometimes unscrupulous.” That, I thought, certainly described both Arnulf and Warin. “One of them, I hoped, would bring the ruby ring to me in Xantium without necessarily knowing its true value.”

He cocked his head at me. “When you first approached my stall in the Thieves’ Market, flaunting the ruby ring on your prince’s finger but attempting an elaborate charade of buying my horse with some other ring from Yurt, I realized you knew full well that I was the author of both rumors, and that in mocking me you sought to establish yourself as a worthy opponent.”

If he had thought me a worthy opponent, I didn’t plan to tell him how little I had understood when we first reached Xantium.

“I would also ask you something, Daimbert,” he continued. “Ever since I renewed my search for the Black Pearl, I have sensed another player in the game, but I have never been able to see him. He is a wizard or mage, of a certainty, but he has kept himself well back from events, as though knowing the danger of the Pearl’s curse, and as though playing a long-term game where he felt no urgency to win at once. At first I thought it had to be you.”

“Not me,” I said, startled. “I knew nothing of the Pearl until this year.”

“I realized it was not you when I met you, unless you had erected a highly skillful facade.” I was afraid this wasn’t a compliment.

“He and I seemed to be working in parallel,” the mage continued. “He traced the ruby ring from the caliph’s court as I had fifty years ago, and he found the trail less thoroughly cold than it had been for me, because of my own earlier search. Like me, he initially reached a dead-end at the elder Prince Dominic’s tomb. And like me, when he finally learned the ring was in Yurt, he knew better, because of the threat of the curse, than to use violence to obtain it.”

“Or he recalled,” I said in a low voice, “the oaths all western wizards take on magic itself, to help and not injure mankind. It was Dominic’s ring. Another western wizard couldn’t have taken it from him by force any more than I could.” It was now full night, and the mage was only a silhouette against the slightly lighter sky.

“Do you know then who this wizard might be?”

I shook my head, reluctant to voice my suspicions, although I didn’t think he could see the gesture.

“Have you turned your thoughts, for example, to who might have freed the Ifrit from his bottle in the first place?”

I was silent for several moments before answering. Down in the harbor a ship was coming in, lamps hung from its mast and along the rails.

“I have thought,” I said at last, “that the ‘mage’ whom the Ifrit said originally freed him must have been Elerius, a western wizard, the best wizard in fact the school has ever produced. The chief reason I think so is that King Warin was his employer, and Warin seemed remarkably well informed about the East. I also think it must have been Elerius who appeared, in disguise, to Sir Hugo’s party in the Holy City, urging them to go the Wadi. The only two people from whom I have heard the highly unlikely story of Noah’s Ark being found are Evrard, who said a ‘traveler’ told it to them at the same time as he sold them the Ifrit’s bottle, and Elerius, who said he thought they must have heard such a story.”

“Why would this wizard have freed an Ifrit?” When the mage shifted, the balcony made somewhat alarming creaking sounds, but it held firm under our weight.

“I think he freed the Ifrit originally in the hope of using him to break through the Pearl’s magical defenses, and when he discovered that wouldn’t work, he reserved the two wishes he had earned until he might need them for something else.”

“An excellent strategy,” said Kaz-alrhun approvingly. “Do not waste anything; if a move does not profit when you take it, reserve it until it may.”

“Last year,” I said, “he used his first wish to order the Ifrit to guard the Wadi against anyone from Yurt. But he may have outmaneuvred himself in giving Evrard the Ifrit’s bottle.” Some of this I was still working out as I spoke. “It was an excellent ploy. He had the Ifrit waiting to capture people from Yurt, then sent Sir Hugo’s party to the emir with a bottle that would most certainly gain them admittance to his presence, as well as a request to guide them to the Wadi that would result in their being imprisoned-where they would serve as bait for those of us from Yurt. By the way, I expect he told them specifically to eat the emir’s salt before asking about the Wadi, because he intended to keep them alive.” Unlike you, I thought, who didn’t care. “But because Evrard met the Ifrit before they reached Bahdroc, and was able to trick him temporarily back into his bottle, Elerius’s link with the Ifrit was broken.”