Mage Quest

Warin, or Arnulf, or someone else entirely? Whatever we had stumbled onto must be something much more complicated than the disappearance of Sir Hugo’s party.

Even though the school had heard nothing of the Pearl’s reappearance, the lord of the red sandstone castle was ready to turn bandit for something hidden in a shipment of luxury silks, perhaps one of the “parcels” Arnulf’s agents had been willing to transport for Kaz-alrhun. Our arrival in King Warin’s kingdom had been intriguing enough for him to set real bandits on us, and our passage through the eastern kingdoms had led Prince Vlad to set in motion extensive troop movements and even wars, for the purpose of bringing us to his castle. We had heard of very strange rumors coming out of the East, but it seemed instead that everyone else, except for us, felt that something very strange was coming out of Yurt.

“Tell Arnulf to go himself to talk to Kaz-alrhun,” said one of the agents as we reached the west gate of the city. “We certainly tried to negotiate fairly for the horse.”

“And reassure Arnulf that we had nothing to do with your kid napping,” added the other. “Kaz-alrhun likes to have a little fun sometimes, but he means no real harm.”

I didn’t like to think what the mage did when he actually meant real harm, but I was footsore and hungry, with painful ribs and a bad headache.

But then my eye was caught by a small form under the gate. As I spotted him he saw me and turned to run.

With new energy I flew under the gate after him. A frog was too good for him. I started putting together the first words of the Hid den Language to transmogrify him into a deformed cockroach.

“I found him, my masters, I found him!” I heard Maffi shouting.

And suddenly Ascelin stood before me, his sword out and a grim expression on his face. Maffi hid behind him, peeking at me past his leg.

I dropped to the ground in surprise as Hugo stepped out of a side street. Both his and Ascelin’s expressions changed at once, to relief tempered with exasperation. “There you are, Wizard!”

“Where are the others? Has Dominic been attacked?”

“Everyone’s looking for you,” said Hugo, “and no one has been attacked.” That was a real relief. “Where have you been all day? Didn’t you realize we’d be afraid that now our party too was going to start disappearing?”

I glanced behind me and saw no sign of Arnulf’s agents. “I was kidnapped,” I said, “thanks to that boy there.”

“I told you I’d find him!” cried Maffi, still not coming out from behind Ascelin.

The prince sheathed his sword, reached down, and dragged him forward by the collar. “You didn’t tell us you’d led the wizard into ambush,” he said coldly.

“But I didn’t!” the boy protested. It was his absence of fear or even respect that was perhaps the most irritating. “I led him to the Thieves’ Market, just as he asked, to someone who had the ring he wanted to buy.”

“He led me to Kaz-alrhun, who took the parchment I’d found in Dominic’s father’s ring,” I said. “Don’t tell me the boy then offered to help you find me.”

“At least we didn’t pay him yet,” said Hugo.

“And you didn’t pay me yet, either, Mage!” said Maffi, turning his bright eyes toward me.

Ascelin shook his head, lifted the boy off the ground, and tossed him away. Maffi landed in a heap but sprang up at once. “I’ll be around if you want to hire me again!” he called and scampered off.

I sighed. “I’d been about to turn him into a cockroach, but it’s too much effort.”

“Since we’re leaving Xantium tomorrow,” said Ascelin, “we shouldn’t have to see him again.”

“The king and Dominic have been trying to get in to see the governor,” said Hugo as we started walking through the narrow city streets, “and the chaplain’s gone to talk to the bishop, but none of them thought they’d have much success. We were all going to meet back at the inn in a little while. Ascelin and I had been trying- without any luck-to get some sense out of the people in the Thieves’ Market when Maffi found us.”

I was touched that they had all been concerned for me. But if the king was having trouble getting to see the city’s governor to tell him about the very real disappearance of a wizard, then there was no hope for the vague plan I had made on the way back to Xantium, of enlisting the governor’s help to deal with what might be a political plot so vague I couldn’t even explain it to myself. “We may-though probably not-now own the ebony horse. I’ll tell you about it once I have something to eat.”

VI

The sun-drenched road from Xantium to the Holy Land led southeast across a tawny landscape. I could see I would have to revise upwards my ideas of far, dry, and hot. Away to our left, we could see the trade route along which silk from the Far East came after a journey of thousands of miles to this end of the Central Sea, after being transferred to several or even dozens of different caravans.

Hugo pushed back the hood of his cloak to let the wind ruffle his hair. “It’s good to be on the road again!” he said. “Once we find my father, let’s keep on going, right across the desert, down to the jungles of the ultimate south, or else off to the far east where they eat nothing but spices!”

Whirlwind was nervous and restless after two days in the stables of the inn and two weeks before that on board ship. After trying unsuccessfully to hold his chestnut stallion in, Dominic finally said, “I’ll be back!” and took off at a gallop.

Ascelin, being on foot, did not need to keep to the road. For the first mile he was almost as full of restless energy as the stallion, ranging ahead, climbing up on the rocks on either hand for a better look into the distance, stooping to examine an odd print. But then he came back to the pace the king had set with his mare and strode beside me.

“I’m wondering about something,” I said to him, looking off toward the trade route. “Arnulf’s agents suggested that an Ifrit had attacked a silk caravan east of Xantium, but Arnulf himself told us that it was specifically his caravans that were attacked. I would have thought they weren’t his caravans until his agents in the city had bought the silk from whoever transported it from the east.”

“I haven’t believed anything Arnulf told us yet,” said Ascelin.

“But the agents did confirm his story about a caravan’s disappearance,” I objected, “even if they did say it was only one caravan.”

Before I could pursue this further, Hugo called out. “Wizard, come look! I think there’s something very strange in here!”

He had stopped abruptly, looking back at the pack horse he was leading. I swung down from my mare and approached slowly, probing with magic. There was certainly something alive in one of the packs.

And I thought it was human. Ascelin and I carefully unbuckled the straps that held the tents, then abruptly let them drop to the ground. A startled cry came from within their folds. Ascelin poked at the canvas with his foot. It unrolled further, and a shaggy black head emerged.

“Greetings, my masters!” said Maffi, looking at us with shining eyes. “May God be praised, it is good to be out in the air again.”

“I thought we’d seen the last of you,” said Ascelin in disgust.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you when we met yesterday evening,” said Maffi to me, ignoring the prince, “but I found the ring you wanted!”

“Liar,” muttered Ascelin.

But I said, “Wait,” as he reached for the boy. “Maffi, are you trying to say that the ring Kaz-alrhun told me he wanted for his flying horse actually exists?”

“Of course it does,” he said with a bright smile, putting his hand into his pocket. “And here it is!”

I took the ring from him slowly. It was an onyx in a plain gold setting. Most startling at all, carved into the stone in tiny but clear letters was the word “Yurt.”

I probed it with magic. There was certainly some kind of spell attached to the onyx. It seemed virtually new,