Mage Quest

the Ifrit and the woman laughed long and loud at this.

“I was a maiden pure, ready for my marriage to a prince,” she said to us. “Not that I wanted to marry him! But this Ifrit came to the wedding like a hurricane. The prince had boasted that everyone who heard his voice must obey his command, that he could have ordered even Ifriti to attend the wedding if he had wanted. But I think he got more than he expected! The Ifrit scattered the decorations and killed half the guests-including the prince.” From her tone, it had not bothered her very much. “Me, however, he treated very carefully, putting me onto his shoulder when he flew away. And I’ve been with him ever since.”

The Ifrit finished the last of the mutton and stretched. “That was a good meal, my dear. Now I think I’ll take my little nap. Come here and scratch my head while I fall asleep.”

She took off the apron; she wore nothing else but her necklace and nearly transparent trousers. Joachim immediately offered her his goat’s-hair robe, but she waved it away with a laugh.

The Ifrit lay down on the sand, and she sat by him. He took a silver chain, heavy-linked though it was tiny in his hand, and clipped one end to her necklace. The other end he wrapped around one pointed ear.

“In case she gets some idea of trying to escape while I’m asleep,” he explained with a wide smile. “When I’m asleep is the only time that I’m not fully aware of what my dear wife does, no matter where I am. Though you never have tried to escape, have you?” giving her what I hoped was an affectionate squeeze with his enormous hand.

She plunged her arms into his hair and started to scratch his scalp. “Here’s the first test,” the Ifrit said sleepily, closing his eyes. “I took her away from her wedding because I wanted to keep her pure and keep her for me. Isn’t she lovely? A lot of men have desired her. While I nap, you may desire her yourself. But if you try to take her, I’ll feel the tug on my ear and wake up and kill you.”

He opened an eye and fixed me with it. “What sort of test is this supposed to be?” I asked, since some comment seemed called for.

“Just a first test, little mage,” he said, closing his eyes again. “If the urgings of your body so overcome you that you don’t worry about death, then I’ll know you wouldn’t be very amusing for my next tests.” In a minute, he began to snore.

The young woman slowly stopped scratching and withdrew her hands. The snoring never ceased. Then she gave us a wink, reached up, and unhooked the silver chain from her necklace. It drooped from the Ifrit’s ear with nothing attached to it.

“There,” she said, standing up and giving a sensuous stretch, as though showing off her body for us. “He’ll be sound asleep for hours now. As long as I reattach the chain before he wakes, he never knows.”

“Then you’ll be able to escape with us,” said Joachim. “Daimbert, do you think you could carry both of us and fly out of here?”

Before I had a chance to tell him that the Ifrit had taken all my magic, including the ability to fly, the young woman burst into laughter.

“Why should I want to escape, especially escape with you?” she said, in a voice I feared would be loud enough to wake the Ifrit, though he slept on contentedly.

“I like life with this Ifrit. He brings me whatever I want, even though he sometimes loses track of time. Why, when I told him last year I’d like some silk for new trousers, he brought me an entire silk caravan.” This then explained the disappearing caravan Arnulf had tried to multiply in the telling-though not the sign of the cross left behind. “And where else would I find a ‘husband’ who let me order him around this way? Yet I can still get whatever I want from my own kind …”

She gave us an appraising look again, then nodded abruptly. “Yes, you’ll do. Both of you. Come and lie with me.”

I had been having too many sudden shocks lately to be able to react at once. But Joachim spoke immediately and politely. “I’m sure this is a very generous offer, but I am a priest and sworn to chastity.”

“And the Ifrit-” I stammered.

“That stupid Ifrit imagines I am a maiden still,” she said scornfully. “Look at my necklace. I have here the rings of a hundred men who have lain with me while he slept, and he’s never thought to ask where the rings come from. As they say, ‘Whatso woman willeth, the same she fulfilleth, however man nilleth.’ I rather like that eagle ring of yours,” to me. “I’ll even let you keep the other one, the onyx ring. And what’s yours,” to Joachim, “a seal ring? Just a cross, not very interesting, but I have plainer rings than that.”

“I’ll give you my ring if you want it, my daughter,” said Joachim. “But as I already told you-”

She tossed her head. “What’s the matter, priest? Am I not attractive?” She strutted before us, her breasts thrust out. “I hope you can work up some enthusiasm in the next two minutes, because if you refuse to lie with me I’ll wake up the Ifrit and tell him you attacked me, and then he’ll kill you.”

II

The Ifrit grunted and rolled over. I held my breath, but his eyes never opened, and in a moment he was snoring again.

“Listen, Joachim,” I said in an undertone. “I’m sure the bishop would understand in a case like this, if-”

“I am of course sorry to die,” said Joachim in a clear voice, “but I have no choice. I made an oath before God which I cannot break.”

She turned her full attention on him, ignoring me, though at the moment I was having trouble finding her attractive myself. “Your friend will die too, in that case,” she said. “I must have you both, or I will scream and wake up the Ifrit.”

“Are you working with him in this?” Joachim asked her. “Is he in fact fully aware of what you do while he feigns sleep?”

This startled her. “May God be merciful, I hope not,” she said in an undertone, with a quick look toward the Ifrit’s gigantic back.

“I think if he’d been spying on you he’d have said something before you’d worked your way up to a hundred men,” said Joachim reassuringly. “I was merely wondering if the Ifrit’s test of us was more subtle than it first appeared.”

“Does he try this ‘test’ very often?” I asked.

“No,” she said thoughtfully. “This is the first time he’s ever dared a man to touch me. In fact-” She gave his monstrous shoulder a kick with a bare foot. The Ifrit’s snore change its note for a moment, but he did not waken. “God be praised,” she said, looking back at us. “For a minute you had me worried he was actually testing me.”

“Then where have the hundred men come from?” I asked. As long as we kept her talking, I thought, we might be able to keep her distracted from her purpose.

“I’ve been with the Ifrit for five years,” she said, “since he snatched me away from my wedding. In that time we’ve traveled all around the East, though for this last year for some reason he’s stayed close to this boring valley. But every few days he needs to eat, and after he’s eaten he likes to take his nap, and there are often men who will hide in a garden’s trees or sneak up for a closer look at a sleeping Ifrit. I’ve had my pick of kings and princes and even mages, and I don’t know why you two should feel yourselves too fine for an Ifrit’s bride!”

“I certainly can’t deny your many charms,” said Joachim, “but I am afraid I would give the same answer to the Queen of Sheba. It is not you I reject, but all sins of the flesh.”

She sat down, and the chaplain sat next to her. “But I’ve had priests before,” she said, thumbing through the rings on her necklace. “Are you trying to tell me that western priests are purer than eastern priests?”

“Not at all. I judge no man-only his conscience and God can do that. I simply know I must maintain what I am sworn to uphold.”

“So you think the flesh is sinful?” she asked, twisting to look at him coyly over her shoulder. “You do not think my body the gift of God?”

“Ever since the fall,” Joachim replied, “mankind has been sinful, both body and spirit. We cannot make ourselves pure merely by forsaking the flesh, for the spirit can sin far worse in imagination.