“Do not fear, for you will be a free man tonight.” I stood up, hoping this was going to work.
I slipped quietly down to the little round pavilion and found my way in by feel. Slowly I groped my way across the floor until my hand found another hand, very cold.
I jerked back, just managing to stay quiet. If this was the slave, he seemed quite dead. I felt forward again and found his body, lying amid a heap of pillows and blankets on a sleeping mat. I lifted him up as well as I could, just as glad I could not see his slashed throat, and carefully carried him out the far side of the pavilion. There had already been too many slashed throats for me on this trip. I slid the slave under a bush and went back into the pavilion just as a bobbing light appeared at the garden gate.
I lay down on the mat where the dead slave had lain, but the light did not immediately approach. Instead, it was set down on the bench by the young prince. In the light of her lamp I could see the prince’s witch wife. If eastern witches could touch someone’s mind and tell who they were, she would know in a second that I was here. To the prince, she might have been as lovely as the full moon rising. To me she looked terrifying.
But she did not seem to have any immediate suspicions. First she fed the prince and gave him water to drink out of a skin, laughing mockingly at his inability to move more than his head and left elbow. Then she pulled out a whip and stepped back, her face dark with fury.
“For wishing to kill me,” she shouted, “for almost killing my beloved, you deserve death and worse than death! As long as he hovers on the edge of life, you will pray to God each day that you might die!”
The young prince stood it for about five lashes, then started to whimper. When he began to cry out in pain, and then to beg the witch by the love they had once shared, by her love for the slave, and by the love of God not to hit him again, her blows only intensified.
Lying where the slave had died, I put my hands over my ears. Without magic, there was no way I could oppose a witch with a whip in her hand and probably the supernatural forces of darkness in her spells. I had to wait for her to tire and to rub her salves into the prince’s wounds. Even with magic, I certainly could not heal him overnight myself.
She seemed satisfied at last and put her whip away. The prince had slumped as much as he could being half stone, and he no longer seemed conscious. But when she brought out little pots that glowed with a green light and rubbed the salve onto his back, he slowly revived and straightened again. “Until tomorrow night, husband?” she murmured in triumph.
But then her whole manner changed. She lifted up the lamp and approached the pavilion, slowly and almost shyly. I took a deep breath, tried to imagine how a slave might address a princess who was also his lover, and called out to her.
“Mistress, dear mistress, don’t bring that light here, by the love we long shared!”
She was so startled she dropped the lamp, and it smashed on the pavement by her feet.
Good. The spells of fire were no longer available to her. “It hurts my eyes, dearest daughter of the stars, and it has been so long since I’ve had my eyes open!”
She came toward me again with an indrawn breath of delight. “Is it then true, my darling, my pomegranate, my own? Are you alive again at last? You seem somehow-different!”
“Stay back, my precious one!” I said in a weak voice. If she crawled in here with me, even without the lamp, I wouldn’t deceive her for long. And I was quite sure that after she had whipped me near or even to death, she would not put her magic salves on
“But it’s been so long since I heard your dear voice!”
And you won’t hear it again until you meet your lover in hell, I thought. This was even harder than I’d expected. “My healing was slowed, my sweet,” I gasped, “by all the noises I must endure.”
“Noises?”
“The singing of the fish,” I said. “The sounds of an ordinary city I could bear quite easily, but the sad wail of men and women made fish makes my heart break anew each evening.”
She was silent for a moment, while I hoped she was thinking over my comment and feared she was beginning to suspect me. Her witch-magic, I thought, did not give her the ability to touch another mind, or she would have long since realized the slave was dead, but if I al ready seemed ‘different’ I would not be able to stall her much more.
“All right, then, my sweet,” she said in abrupt decision. “Anything to make you more comfortable. I’ll turn the fish back to themselves.”
The moon was brightening, and I could see the witch return to the materials she had brought with her to the garden. I wondered briefly if the dark powers she commanded through fire and potions might be playing with her, allowing her as a subtle and demonical form of torture to think her lover was still alive.
She poured some liquid into a dish, murmured low words over it until silver sparks cascaded upwards, then cried aloud and clapped her hands. The ground shifted below us, from the bottom of the hill came a massive roaring of water, and abruptly the city rose again from the bay.
I lay flat until the earth stopped moving. I didn’t think anybody in the west had command of forces like this. When I lifted my head again it was to hear voices, human voices, babbling together in surprise and joy. Out the far side of the pavilion, I saw lights flicking on in the city below the garden. The emir would have quite a shock the next time he visited his fish pond. The prince’s people were people once again.
The witch did not give me time to appreciate my success. “Are you satisfied now, dearest one?” she asked from just outside the pavilion.
“Thank you, my own, that
“And what is that?”
I was tempted for a moment to leave the prince turned half to stone. But if Joachim didn’t feel he could judge eastern priests, I shouldn’t judge someone for murdering his wife’s lover-especially since in the last two years he had been punished cruelly. “It is the prince, your husband,” I said. “His moans and cries at night keep me from healing sleep, and even in the day I feel so much for his pain that I am almost mad.”
“Then he shall be restored as well,” she said comfortingly. Again she poured liquid in a dish and spoke words over it. This time, when the silver sparks rose and she clapped her hands, the stone of the prince’s lower half split with a crack, and he slowly rose to his feet.
“But now I can bear it no longer, dearest slave!” she cried and rushed into the pavilion before I could stop her. She seized me wildly and pulled me toward her.
We both froze as the white moonlight fell on my face. The witch slowly pushed herself backwards. “You- You are not-” But before she could blast me with magic, she turned and saw the prince behind her.
I had forgotten he still, after two years, held the sword with which he had killed the slave. But he had not forgotten. He roared almost as loudly as the waters pouring from the streets of his city and rushed at his wife. She shrieked and fled, kicking over her magic bowls and potions as she went. As I crept, trembling, out of the pavilion, I could hear their cries retreating in the distance.
A shadow was between me and the moon. I looked up and saw the Ifrit descending into the garden. He broke several flower bushes with his gigantic feet as he landed.
“Not bad, little mage,” he said with a chuckle. “You have freed the ensorcelled city. I think I have tested you enough to provide plenty of amusement and can start now on the rest of your friends.”
“What about the prince of this city? Is he going to kill his wife?”
“As God wills, so it happens,” said the Ifrit without interest. “We could follow them, or would you rather have me find those other humans you were with when I first saw you?”
“My friends, of course.” At this point, I no longer cared whether the prince killed his witch wife or she turned him to stone again-or even whether they made peace with each other. “But first, could you help me bury this body?”
The Ifrit scraped a deep hole under the bushes with a finger, and I lowered the slave into it. “He is dead, isn’t he?” I asked in sudden doubt.
“Of course,” said the Ifrit in surprise. “He’s been dead since the first day after the prince attacked him. I thought all you humans knew how easily you die. It must be strange,” he added thought fully, pushing the dirt over the body.
