“Well,” said a voice, “shall we look at what Kaz-alrhun sent with us?”
The tarpaulin was jerked off, letting in sun-baked air that tasted deliciously refreshing as I sucked it desperately into my lungs.
I blinked my eyes then and looked up at the two men bending over me. They were Arnulf’s agents.
I tried to speak and discovered my voice had returned. A glance downward showed that the illusion that made me into a parcel had also worn off. “I’ve been put in a binding spell,” I croaked. “Help me up and give me something to drink.”
“It’s- It’s a man!” said one of them. Maybe the sun was slowing his reasoning powers as badly as it affected me.
They pulled me into a sitting position and offered me water out of a leather bag. It was lukewarm and absolutely delicious, even if it did dribble down my chin. I was too grateful to accuse them of taking part in a plot to kill innocent wizards. By now, I thought, the mage must have seized Dominic’s ring-and maybe even Dominic himself. I would have to formulate a plan of action as soon as I could act-or, for that matter, think clearly again.
“It is- Are you not the mage who was with Arnulf?” asked one of the turbaned men.
“Yes,” I said, giving up the effort of persuading them that Joachim was not his brother. I glanced at the long, curved swords at their sides, but they showed no sign of drawing them. “And your friend Kaz-alrhun wanted to get rid of me.”
“But why?” they said in what appeared to be real distress. “Has he broken his agreement?”
I shook my head and made a new effort to understand the magic that held me. “We didn’t give him the ring he demanded in return for his ebony horse.”
“But Arnulf told us before he came that he would have it!”
For a moment I had thought I understood at last, that Kaz-alrhun wanted the ruby ring to get into the Wadi himself, but this ring Arnulf had sent with us to buy the flying horse seemed to be something entirely different.
“I was carrying a magical parchment,” I said, “which seemed to please Kaz-alrhun, though I certainly hadn’t meant to give it to him. This binding spell appears to be his punishment for riding his horse without any intention of giving him what he wanted.”
“But if he has the parchment, now,” said one of the agents, “and if he thinks it will do just as well as the ring, then Arnulf should be able to take the horse! Kaz-alrhun may work out of the Thieves’ Market, but we have found that he honors his bargains.”
I couldn’t even begin to agree, but it was too complicated for an argument. I glanced up while struggling anew with the spell and saw a dark shape, not quite a cloud, scuttling low through the sky. “An Ifrit!” I cried involuntarily, panicked because of my helplessness. Back in Yurt, I had said I wanted to see an Ifrit-all my wishes were coming true with a vengeance.
V
The two men whirled, but then they relaxed and laughed. “That is not an Ifrit. It’s just a bit of a sandstorm. The wind will pick up sand and dust and carry it some distance. Sand demons, they are sometimes called.”
I didn’t like this talk of demons, but if we were, at least momentarily, safe from Ifriti, I wanted to get free of the binding spell before the next danger appeared. Suddenly I saw how it went together, with an ingenious twist I had never seen before, though Melecherius hinted at it. In a few more seconds I was able to dissolve the spell and finally stretch my cramped arms.
Arnulf’s agents stepped back abruptly as I moved, and I realized they might be as frightened of my anger as I was irritated with them. If Arnulf’s negotiations had all gone amiss, then both he and “his” wizard would have good reason to be furious with the agents who had sent him word that everything was ready.
I took another pull of water and massaged my temples. I looked around, at the mule-drawn carts whose drivers were now sitting off the road in the shade, at the dusty and empty road itself, and at the sage-covered hillside leading down to the sun-flecked Central Sea. Xantium was a dark mass in the distance.
“So do you normally transport Kaz-alrhun’s victims out of Xantium, when you’re not plotting to betray your employer?” I asked conversationally. If the mage had attacked Dominic to get his ruby ring, the prince might be on the next caravan. But if Kaz-alrhun had wanted a different ring, Arnulf’s ring, badly enough to give his flying horse for it, then Dominic’s ring might not have any real interest for him after all.
“No, no!” the agents said together. “We have never done anything against Arnulf’s interests!” When I frowned, one added, “We did not realize the mage’s parcel was a man.”
I stood up slowly. “Perhaps Arnulf will appreciate that, in Xantium, you have to put a powerful mage’s interests ahead of his,” I said with deliberate sarcasm. “Are you heading north now?”
“No,” said one of the agents. “We were about to return to Xantium. Whichever market Arnulf’s caravans make for, we always travel with them the first ten miles or so out of the city, until they are out of easy range of city-based thieves. Certainly if Kaz-alrhun pays us to add an occasional parcel to the load, we are willing to accommodate him, but that does not mean we’re working against Arnulf’s interests!” He paused for a moment, then added, “You will explain to him, will you not, that we never meant any harm to you?”
“We’ll see,” I said gravely. At least they hadn’t asked me yet to pay them for their trouble. The drivers took my standing up as the signal to start again. They remounted the wagons and snapped their whips over the mules’ backs. With shouts and creaks, the caravan started off along the dusty road.
By this time, Dominic’s ring would be gone beyond easy recovery. I felt too tired for the concentration flying required, so I started walking with Arnulf’s agents. They were eager now to be helpful and pleasant.
“I’ve heard that a number of Arnulf’s caravans had been captured by an Ifrit,” I said. “Is that part of the reason you don’t accompany them very far?”
They looked at each other in surprise. “I do not know where you could have heard such a story,” said one. “Only one caravan has disappeared completely, off to the east of here. And we cannot be absolutely sure its disappearance was due to an Ifrit, because no one saw it. The drivers described a whoosh of air, then they and their mules were left standing and the carts were gone. If caravans really were disappearing in large numbers, all the mages in Xantium would bend their magic to prevent it.”
I wondered if there was any truth at all in Arnulf’s story. “It did seem fairly unlikely to me. And wouldn’t it be odd for an Ifrit to leave the sign of the cross?”
The agents looked at each other again. “We had not heard anything about the sign of the cross,” said one in distaste.
Then the entire account of Ifriti capturing caravans, I thought, was Arnulf’s invention, an excuse to bring Joachim into his affairs. I still had no firm sense whether his story of the Black Pearl reappearing was real or an additional invention, but I tended toward the latter. I was distracted from this speculation by another thought. “You aren’t Christian?”
“Of course not,” with dignity. “We follow the teachings of the Prophet.”
Since Xantium was, at least in its government, a Christian city, I was intrigued that Arnulf should employ non-Christians as his agents here. Maybe that was why he had no chaplain: he didn’t want someone piously trying to introduce religion into sound business decisions. “I know almost nothing about the Prophet,” I said. “Could you tell me a little as we walk?”
By the time the walls of Xantium rose before us at the end of the day, I had learned much more comparative religion than I had ever imagined. I had not realized before that the People of the Prophet had been pagans before the Prophet came to them, nor that he had incorporated what he considered the best elements of the rather inadequate religions-as he saw it-of Abraham and of Christ. I had to be fairly noncommittal in my responses to conceal the fact that these men also knew much more about Christianity than I did.
But as we talked I was also thinking. The bit of sandstorm, the sand demon, might in fact have been Kaz- alrhun on his magic ebony horse, off to the Wadi Harhammi. I remembered Ascelin commenting, back in the eastern kingdoms, that a number of events seemed to have been managed for our benefit. Could the mage have been behind them all?
Or was the shadowy and rather ominous figure I thought I sensed, manipulating and maneuvering us, King
