As I hurried after him, I wondered how many powerful magic rings were circulating through the east, in search of how many significant magic objects. There was Dominic’s ruby ring for starters, then the ring Arnulf had sent with us, the ebony flying horse, then the Black Pearl, whatever Dominic’s father had found in the Wadi Harhammi, and now whatever Kaz-alrhun hoped to discover with the ring from Arnulf.
I looked at the boy darting down the street in front of me, sandals slapping on the paving, and felt foolish to have pitied him. Whether he had a family or not he did not need anyone to look after him. He seemed without any difficulty to have found a ring I had not been completely sure even existed.
I was beginning to recognize the narrow streets that led down the far side of Xantium’s hill toward the Thieves’ Market, but the sounds and smells of the Market struck me afresh as we came out among the striped awnings. “Over this way,” said Maffi confidently. He slipped easily around booths, under tables, through knots of men who looked at me impassively from under folded headdress that hid most of their faces. I caught up with the boy in the far corner of the Market.
It was slightly quieter here. I felt a prickle of unease. An ebony chess piece, a rook, was lying on the ground, and it looked strangely familiar. “Wait,” I said, “before we go any further. Who is this person who has the ring? Did he tell you how he obtained it, or how much he wants for it?”
“It’s the right ring, all right,” said Maffi with a grin. “He’ll tell you how much he wants himself.” He gestured toward a booth whose striped awning was drawn shut, though a sandaled foot showed beneath it. “Go ahead!”
I still hesitated, but he turned at once and disappeared into the crowd. Oh well, I thought. If he didn’t even wait to be paid, it wasn’t my fault. I could always find my own way back to the inn by flying high enough to see the harbor and then locating it from there. I stepped resolutely up to the booth.
I expected the awning to be pulled back, but instead the foot disappeared. I pushed the fabric aside myself and looked into shadows so dark that it was impossible to make out any detail, although I thought I saw a pair of shining dark eyes.
“Hello? I heard you have a ring for sale?”
“Come in, come further in,” said a muffled voice. “I have it here at the back.”
I entered slowly, letting the awning drop behind me. “I can’t see anything,” I protested. “If you’ve really got a ring I’d be interested in, let’s look at it in daylight.”
The air crackled, giving me half a second’s warning: not nearly enough to resist the binding spell that abruptly held me tight. I toppled over with a painful thump.
“Push back the awning,” said the muffled voice. “Let us see what he has brought.”
I lay, paralyzed from the collar bone down, on the filthy paving stones of the Market with several men bent over me. Someone let in a little daylight, and in a moment my eyes grew accustomed enough to the dim light so that I could make them out. As I should have expected, one of them was the enormous black shape of Kaz- alrhun.
“Let him keep that eagle ring,” he said, “but see what else he has.”
Hands reached into my pockets. They pulled the knife from my belt and the piece of parchment from inside my jacket.
“A piece of paper with an eggplant recipe, a smooth stone, and what looks like a buckle off a harness,” said one of the other men, examining what had come from my pockets.
But Kaz-alrhun was looking at the piece of parchment, reading Prince Dominic’s letter to his family, and his black eyes grew round. “Well, Daimbert, I knew you had brought more with you to Xantium than you cared to say. Your party is dressed as pilgrims, but I see that your goal lies far beyond the Holy Land. If you had told me you had this at once, all this trouble might have been unnecessary! Tell me, where did you obtain the parchment?”
“It was magically concealed inside a ring,” I said in resignation.
“Well, since you cooperated at the last, Daimbert,” Kaz-alrhun said with a chuckle, “even if not entirely voluntarily!” he paused for another laugh, “I have a mind to let you live. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” I said cautiously. Even though I could not move, I could feel all sorts of damp things soaking through my clothes, and my shoulders were sore and stiff. I tried a spell to lift myself off the ground and found that this binding spell not only held me physically, but also blocked my access to all but a few words of the Hidden Language. The only bright spot was imagining turning Maffi into a frog the next time I saw him, preferably a frog about to be eaten by a water-snake.
“But you attempted to mock me, Daimbert,” the mage said, “coming to the Thieves’ Market with the ruby ring and then trying to buy my horse with a different ring entirely.” His laughter was gone now. “I do not like to be mocked.”
It sounded as though he thought I knew far more than I in fact did. I wondered resignedly what it was.
“And I do not wish you to cause me any more problems at once,” Kaz-alrhun added thoughtfully. “I think you will just leave town, immediately. Perhaps in a few days you shall have determined, even with your western magic, how to break my binding spell!”
“What do you mean, leave town?” I said, trying to keep panic out of my voice.
“On a trade caravan, of course. Laugh at your fate, Daimbert! No man can in dread change the day of his death, but he can with laughter chase dire dread away.”
One of the men with Kaz-alrhun scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder. I didn’t feel like laughing, even to chase dire dread away.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I said. “My friends knew I was coming here today.” This was not strictly true, but Ascelin would certainly come to the Thieves’ Market if I didn’t return to the inn. “They’ll be very cautious when I don’t return, and you’ll never be able to steal the ruby ring.”
“But you and I both know that none of them is a mage,” said Kaz-alrhun in a good-natured bellow. “You do not have the pieces to win this phase of the game, Daimbert. When your tall swordsman friend seeks you here, there will be nothing to see.” He nodded to the man who held me. “There should be a caravan leaving from the north gate within the half hour.”
The man darted out of the dimness of the booth into the brilliant sun, with me slung over his shoulder. He turned quickly from side to side for a moment, then set off at a trot.
I opened my mouth to say something, to try to negotiate with him, and found my vocal chords frozen. I was hanging upside down on his back, and a glance at my upper body showed that I had been covered with illusion to look like some sort of paper-wrapped parcel.
And what would the mage do to Dominic? While we hurried along the less crowded streets through the back of Xantium, I tried probing the spell that held me. I had new sympathy for the castellan and knights I had made stand in binding spells all night. Parts of my body felt numb and others itched almost unbearably, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I lost track of where we were long before I had any idea how this spell worked. We came suddenly under the arch of a stone gate, and by stretching my neck around, the only part of my body not held motionless, I could see a small collection of mule-drawn carts.
Turbaned men were tying down the loads and shouting to each other. The man carrying me stepped up to the last cart and said something I didn’t catch, though I heard a clink of coins. The next moment, I had been dumped amidst bales of what felt like cloth and had a tarpaulin pulled across me. I was still struggling unsuccessfully to find a way to unravel Kaz-alrhun’s spell when I heard a shout, the cart beneath me creaked, and the caravan began to move.
There wasn’t much air beneath the tarpaulin, and in the sun it almost immediately grew extremely hot. I breathed shallowly, sweat running down my face, trying to imagine what my companions would do when I didn’t return-and when the mage appeared among them with a flash of light and demanded Dominic’s ring.
Kaz-alrhun’s spell twisted and turned beneath my probing almost as if it were alive. I recognized the shape of the spell from Melecherius’s book, but I still could not unravel it. Several times I thought I had it, and each time it eluded me. I reminded myself grimly that I had wanted to see eastern magic.
I soon felt as though I was caught not just by a spell but by a nightmare. As breathing took more and more effort, I gave up even trying to undo the spell that held me. I hovered on the edge of consciousness, between dreaming and hallucinating. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably closer to three hours, when the cart beneath me stopped moving.
