whirling sand had again settled, the Ifrit’s wife stood in the middle of our confused group.
“Do you think you have enough food for our guests, my dear?” asked the Ifrit.
It took a while to introduce everyone, to try to explain to the scandalized king exactly how this nearly-naked woman could be called the Ifrit’s wife. By the time that she had assured the Ifrit that the onyx ring was indeed carved with the name of the kingdom of Yurt, the noon sun had passed over, and I had been able to come up with a plan that might-maybe-work.
“Now, I can’t perform the magic spell attached to this ring as long as you won’t let me have my abilities back,” I said, neglecting to mention I still had no idea what kind of spell it was. “But I can tell you what you can do with your own magical powers. Try a fairly generalized spell, one that will put any sort of nearly-complete spell into action.”
To my surprise, the Ifrit frowned. “I’ve never been very good at spells.”
“But how do you work magic?” I demanded, shocked.
“I don’t know, I guess I just do it,” he said as though embarrassed.
I looked at his lowered green head and considered this. As a magical creature, perhaps even an immortal one, he did not need to learn the Hidden Language as did humans. Western magic had been channeled and rationalized by generations of wizards, but magic here, as I already knew, was far less focused. Magic for the Ifrit must be more like breathing than thinking.
“All right,” I said. “Don’t worry about doing any spells of your own if it seems too complicated. Just look at this ring”-I didn’t dare give it to him for fear it would be so tiny in his hand that he would lose it-”and command it by whatever magic comes to you naturally to work its spell.”
The Ifrit raised his eyes to me and gave me a terrible glance. He might be stupid, but I could not let myself forget for a second how dangerous he was. “You don’t need to patronize me, little mage,” he said coldly.
He grabbed my hand, ring and all, and pulled it up to eye level, the rest of me dangling painfully. He muttered syllables that might have been the Hidden Language-if I could still recognize it. The onyx ring trembled on my finger and buzzed.
His lips parted in a grin of triumph. “All right, ring of Yurt, let’s see what your secret is.”
The air around us began to tremble and glitter, as though again we were about to be shaken off a tablecloth, but this time the earth stayed still. But as I looked around wildly the empty valley near us began to fill up: first another oasis, a short distance away; then a tangle of flowering bushes; then a rocky watercourse cutting across the valley floor; then a rider on an enormous black steed; then briefly a collection of baggage wagons; and suddenly, and just for a few seconds, a small group of men in the middle distance.
The Ifrit gave a roar and shook me and the ring violently, and the empty valley resumed its calm existence. But in those few seconds I thought I saw that one of the group of men, beneath his desert headdress, had red hair.
“Mirage,” I said aloud as the Ifrit dumped me unceremoniously back on the ground. “It’s a ring that creates mirages.”
“Or lets you see things I do not want you to see,” said the Ifrit grumpily. “I should kill you right now for seeing them.”
I sat up, rubbing an elbow. Prince Vlad in the eastern kingdoms had told me he had put a special spell on the ruby ring, a spell we would need in the Wadi Harhammi. When Elerius set out to make a substitute magic ring for Arnulf, he must have chosen a spell that would reveal that which was magically hidden-as images reflected from the desert sky revealed cities and lakes far ahead in mirages. I could tell from its effects that it was a good spell, one I could not have duplicated even if I had my magic and my books. If the Wadi Harhammi still kept its secrets after fifty years, and if Kaz-alrhun was trying to get in, it was exactly the sort of ring he would want.
This explained, then, why Kaz-alrhun had not pursued us from Xantium. He knew exactly where we were going and thought he might play with us by letting us think we had gotten away. But we, with his onyx ring, would arrive just as surely at the Wadi, where the Ifrit would watch over us until the mage arrived.
But was the red-haired man I had glimpsed really Evrard, and if so, who was the rider on the black horse? “Did you capture some other travelers in the valley recently?” I asked casually.
“I don’t think this is a very interesting secret,” said the Ifrit, scowling at the ring and not answering my question.
“Have you seen someone on a flying horse?” I tried again.
This got the Ifrit’s attention. “The person on the flying horse was not very amusing,” he said.
Then if the man on the black horse was real, then the other group was also real, which might mean that Sir Hugo’s party was right here in the valley with us, even though hidden by the Ifrit’s magic.
I glanced toward Hugo. He was trying to sit up enough to eat. The Ifrit’s wife seemed taken with him and bustled around, offering him choice tidbits of fruit. But in the meantime I didn’t dare say anything to him about his father; he had had his hopes raised too often already.
It could have been either Arnulf or King Warin with the ebony horse, come to try to find the secret of the Wadi Harhammi but caught by the Ifrit before he could fly away again. If it was King Warin, I abruptly found myself hoping the Ifrit would protect us from him.
It was ironic, I thought wryly, to be seeking safety in an unpredictable creature who had planned to kill us- and still might.
“This is just the first part of the secret, Ifrit,” I said. “So far I’ve proved to you that I’m not bluffing. But the man who commanded you to capture us might not want even you to know the rest, at least not yet, so I’d better wait until he comes. In the meantime, you promised to let me have my magical powers back.”
He had in fact promised nothing of the sort, but he did not contradict me. “They’re probably around here someplace,” he muttered.
He said nothing more, only set me down on the ground again. But slowly at first, like the first trickle of water in a dry stream bed, then more and more rapidly, I could feel knowledge of the Hidden Language coming back. It was as though blinders had been removed from my eyes and plugs from my ears. The world around me seemed much more real, much more visible and intense, when I could experience it with magic as well as normal human senses.
Even knowing we would all be dead shortly, I felt filled with unbounded delight. I was so grateful to the Ifrit for restoring my abilities, even though he had taken them away originally, that I could have kissed his stubbly cheek.
But I knew even more intensely than I had already guessed that my own knowledge of magic was trivial and indeed useless for combating the Ifrit.
“Thank you!” I called up to him with my best smile. My mind seemed suddenly to be working much more clearly. “Could you tell me a little more about the man who commanded you to watch for us? I want to be ready when he comes.”
The Ifrit frowned. “I am furious with him,” he said after a moment. I didn’t know if this was good or bad. “He was the mage who first freed me from Solomon’s spell.”
Kaz-alrhun, I thought. “And why are you furious with him?” I prompted.
“I granted his first wish, but he then betrayed me,” said the Ifrit grumpily. “I let him have two wishes for letting me out of the bottle, of course, although he made me agree to come grant them whenever he called, wherever he might be. He finally called for his first wish last year, ordering me to guard this valley and keep my captives alive, especially people from Yurt.”
Everyone in the East except us, I was now convinced, knew something special about Yurt.
“But one of the people from Yurt put me back into the bottle,” continued the Ifrit.
For a second I had a nightmare sense that either I had met this Ifrit before without remembering it, or there was some other kingdom of Yurt somewhere that I ought to know about.
“The mage must have given him the bottle on purpose,” added the Ifrit with wounded dignity. “Therefore I do not think I will answer when he summons me a second time.”
I looked up at the Ifrit’s furrowed brow. “In that case,” I said craftily, “if the mage is not coming, and you’re supposed to keep us safe until he does, then you’ll have to keep us alive forever.” As long as we were still alive, I intended to escape well before forever came.
The Ifrit seated himself slowly on an enormous boulder and thought this over. “But the other man,” he said,
