In the center of the garden was a little round-topped pavilion. I was just starting cautiously toward it when a voice spoke by my elbow.
“Beware, oh man, beware!”
I jumped a foot and whirled, expecting to see a fish crawled up on dry land to warn me-against what I could not imagine. But instead I saw a rather pale young man, wrapped in a black cloak, sitting very still on a bench almost completely hidden under a flowering tree.
“Are you real or a fish?” I asked, then realized how idiotic I must sound.
But he took me quite seriously. “I am still a human,” he said, “the only inhabitant of my sad city
I sat down next to him. The Ifrit’s test seemed to have begun. “I appreciate your warning. What is in it?”
“The dying or dead lover of my witch wife.”
III
I passed a hand over my forehead. This really would have been much easier with functioning magical abilities. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’d like to be able to help you and your fish people, but you’ll have to tell me first what has happened.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as though gathering his memories or his strength, then looked at me fully. “Know then that I, thanks be to God, was once the prince of this city, and had married a wife, a princess beautiful as the full moon rising, whose eyes were the shadows of evening lamplight and mouth the sweetest of honeys. I married her knowing she was a witch and not caring, for I thought she loved me too.”
My blood went cold, and I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder. Even in the west, wizards were suspicious of witches and their half-learned spells, always hovering on the edge of black magic. They tended to deal with the old magic of the earth, knowing little of the Hidden Language, and were rumored to create monsters in their wombs. I didn’t like to think what witches were like here in the east.
“But when we had been married a year, she began to come in the evening to this garden, to sit in the pavilion. At first I accompanied her, but then she said that she preferred to be alone, to feel the evening breezes and think her evening thoughts. I trusted her, for I loved her, and I had not yet heard the saying, ‘Whatso woman willeth, the same she fulfilleth, however man nilleth.’
“But after another year had passed, when it seemed she came here almost every night and often did not return to our sleeping mat until near the break of day, I became suspicious. When I tried to ask her to sleep by my side instead of in the garden, she first burst into tears and said that I was cruel, then darkened her forehead at me and said that I was a tyrant. She refused to listen to my entreaties but shut herself up with her handmaidens.
“And that night, as I watched in secret and followed her in silence, she went again into this garden. And in the pavilion, the worst of my fears and even worse than my fears were realized, for I found her lying in delight in the arms of my vilest slave!”
“So what did you do?” I asked quietly, when the horror of the memory seemed to have silenced him.
“They had left a lamp burning outside the pavilion, and I could see their heads close together, their lips locked in kisses. And I thought that with a single stroke of my sword I could cut off both their heads together. For I had feared something of this and brought my sword with me.
“But as I drew the blade, she must have heard the sound, for she pulled sharply away, and I, distracted by her motion, did not strike true. I missed her completely, and I cut the slave’s neck only halfway through.”
Just because we in Yurt never hung anyone, I reminded myself, did not mean that the rest of the world did not assess the death penalty. But I still thought that he had been much too precipitate. I had started to feel sympathetic for this pale young prince, but now I felt sympathy only for the slave.
But the prince was not waiting for my sympathy. “When she saw what I had done, she cursed me with the deepest and blackest of witches’ curses. Her hand she thrust straight into the lamp’s flame, and she hurled fountains of fire and spells at me that would have destroyed me if they had touched my head. But instead-”
He paused and lifted his black cloak with his left elbow. From the waist up he was still human, but everything below the waist, including his left hand and right arm, which was stretched along his leg with the sword still in his grip, had turned to stone.
“And so you see me, traveler,” he continued. “But even this was not enough for her. She turned with a cry of despair when she saw her slave lover almost dead and tried to revive him with her wicked spells and the potions she always carried with her, sobbing and calling him tender names she had never once called me. When she could not heal him immediately, she wrapped him most tenderly, both in blankets and in her perverted magic, and left him in the pavilion.
“Then she went down into the city like the force of vengeance and called on the dark powers that lurk beneath the waves. And in answer to her call the nameless creatures of night rose up from the deep and swallowed the city. The breakers rolled across it and drowned it, even as you see it now.”
“But the fish?” I asked.
“The people might have swum to safety even in the drowning of their city, for we are a sea people and used to swimming, but that would not have satisfied her. So she turned them all into different kinds of fish, red for those who follow the Prophet, gold for the Children of Abraham, and blue for those who follow the Nazarene. When they are lifted from the water they can still speak like men, at least a few phrases, but in the sea they are fish, and fish they must remain.”
I wondered if they still knew who they really were. Someone transmogrified by western magic would still keep his original identity, inside. The brightly-colored fish I had seen in the emir’s palace-doubtless brought there as a marvel-must think themselves in harsh captivity.
I realized the prince had been silent for several minutes and turned toward him. His deep eyes looked at me in entreaty. “Whoever you may be, traveler, you are the first to enter my garden in the two years since this happened. Are you perhaps sent in answer to my prayers to save me and avenge me upon my wife?”
“I might be,” I said slowly. I couldn’t see the Ifrit from where we were sitting, but he must still be only a short distance away. I knew it was useless to ask him again for my magic back, though I had no idea how I was going to dissolve a transformations spell without it. Even without the knowledge that he was testing me-and might keep my friends buried in the sand forever if I did not pass-I felt sorry for the fish.
“Does your wife ever come back to gloat over you?” I asked. Maybe I could somehow persuade her to break her own spell.
“Of course. She comes every evening, feeds me just enough to keep me alive, and then whips me until I sob with pain, to punish me again for what I did to her lover. I would have died from the blows many months ago-and often I wish I could-but she then salves my wounds with wicked magic, so that I may heal by the next day and be beaten again. Then she crawls into the pavilion with the slave-that is why I warned you not to go in, for fear she would realize some one had been there. She calls on him tenderly and caresses him and begs him to be healed quickly. So far he has never answered her.”
I put my head in my hands. The slave must be long dead, if he did not respond to magic which could heal the wounds from a whipping in a day. His body must only kept from decay by some variation of the spell that held together the body of the wizard of the eastern kingdoms.
When I lifted my head again, the prince was almost smiling. “Are you perhaps a mage?”
“No.” It was too complicated to explain. “But I think I have an idea.”
I sat on the bench beside him all afternoon. He told me more about his city before all its people became fish. I was able to deflect his rather desultory questions about where I had come from-for him, the chief interesting thing about me was that I might save him. Late in the afternoon, somewhere in the distance, I began to hear singing.
“It is my people,” said the young prince softly. “When they were still human, they used to sing as the sun set, and even now that they are fish they rise to the surface each day at this time to salute the day’s passing.”
The singing died away with the coming of twilight, and not long thereafter the prince whispered to me, “The witch usually comes at about this time, so make your preparations.”
