Mage Quest

creature.”

“But are we safe, this close?” asked Ascelin. He seemed to be rallying, though Hugo still looked too exhausted to care.

“Of course not,” said Kaz-alrhun cheerfully.

“You wouldn’t have come all the way from Xantium just to rescue us from the Ifrit,” I said. “Why are you here?”

“My reason is the same as yours, Daimbert,” said the mage. “I wish to enter the Wadi.”

This entire trip I had had to keep adjusting my expectations, as everything turned out to be not quite what it seemed, as I looked for aid one moment to those whom at another point I considered my enemies. A very short time ago, I had feared Kaz-alrhun’s arrival. Now quite irrationally I found myself thinking of him as an ally.

“You can have the onyx ring Maffi stole from you,” I said, pulling it off. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

This set the mage into a paroxysm of laughter. “He told you he stole it?” He gave the boy a buffet on the side of the head, still laughing. “And you believed him?”

There were a number of things I needed to find out at once, but one took precedence. Maffi still stood on the carpet, carefully not meeting my eye. I took him firmly by the arm. “So Kaz-alrhun sent both you and this ring with us on purpose,” I said, putting it back on my finger since the mage apparently didn’t want it. “I should have realized, ever since you first offered to escort us to the Thieves’ Market in Xantium, than you were working for him. Did you enjoy spying on us all the way from Xantium? Were you sending back messages from every oasis by means of the deep pools? And you made me believe that you wanted to ‘learn’ magic!”

Maffi looked as subdued as I had ever seen him, but he still managed a grin. “I do want to learn magic, my master! The communications spell was all Kaz-alrhun would teach me.” He promptly created a large pink illusory spot on the front of my shirt, as though hoping this would placate me.

“First you need to learn to play chess,” said Kaz-alrhun to the boy, “before I could begin to teach you magic.”

“But don’t forget,” Maffi continued to me, “if it hadn’t been for me, the mage wouldn’t have known to come save you!”

Dominic stepped up at this point. “Where is my stallion, boy?” he demanded.

“At the first oasis north of the emir’s city,” said Maffi with another grin. “That really is a magnificent horse. I would never have been able to bring help so quickly if I’d been riding any other steed.”

So when Maffi had escaped, he had ridden like the wind to the first place from which he could send a message to Xantium, and Kaz-alrhun had come swooping across the desert on his flying carpet. But if the mage had been using the boy to keep an eye on us, and thought he had to come rescue us, then someone else had set the Ifrit here, someone who might himself appear at any moment.

“The Wadi’s down there in the circular valley,” I said to Kaz-alrhun, “but it’s hidden-or only visible for a few seconds. The Ifrit isn’t going to let us get to it if he can help it. Why did you let him out of the bottle in the first place?”

Kaz-alrhun smiled slowly. “It was not I.”

“He said it was a mage-” But there must be many mages in the East, most of whom I hadn’t met.

“That mage,” said Kaz-alrhun enigmatically, “hoped that an Ifrit would help him find the Wadi’s secret. He was mistaken.”

“Then you and I and Prince Dominic need to get in before that mage gets here.” I wondered briefly why a mage with the power to master an Ifrit couldn’t find the Wadi’s secret, but I pushed the issue aside. There were still too many other things I didn’t understand. “But tell me first, Mage. What is in there?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “You like a challenge, do you not?” I abruptly began to fear him again as irrationally as I had felt a moment ago that I could trust him. “You are on a quest for something, but you do not know what it is. I too am on a quest, but its nature is such that I dare not hint to you what I hope to find …”

“You don’t know what’s there either,” I said with much more confidence than I felt. “Good. We’ll look for it together. We’d better get back to the valley immediately, before the Ifrit breaks your spell.”

The mage unexpectedly put a massive hand on my shoulder, making me shiver. “I can warn you and prepare you, even if I do not tell you.” His black eyes met mine, completely serious for once. “I will not urge you to go. For if you proceed, you will be proceeding into dangers you cannot expect or even imagine.”

“Prince Dominic,” I called. “Are you ready to face unimaginable dangers to get into the Wadi?”

Dominic had been trying to get more details from Maffi about his stallion, what condition it was in, who was supposedly taking care of it now, and not getting answers he liked. But he turned toward me at once, the ruby of his ring still pulsing with light. “I have been ready since we reached my father’s tomb.”

I tried quickly to probe the spell attached to his ring and discovered that the clarity of vision I had had for a short time was gone. Either it was operative only within the valley, or else it was just a short-term effect of having my magic restored by the Ifrit. Or I had imagined it, easily possible in this world of mirages and shifting expectations.

“I have never understood why you wizards of the west bind yourselves to king and princes,” Kaz-alrhun commented. I noticed him gazing fixedly at the ruby. “Your own magic should be strong enough that you do not need a prince with you.”

“This is his quest, and his is the ring from Yurt you actually wanted, Kaz-alrhun,” I replied. “You didn’t want the onyx ring at all.”

“I have always known the onyx was not the ring I sought,” said the mage good-naturedly.

“Then why were you willing to sell your flying horse for it?” I demanded.

“But it was not you who bought my horse.”

I gave him up. At some point the shadows and mirages might settle down again. “Let’s get to the Wadi before the Ifrit gets loose.”

We left the others sitting in the sparse shade some larger rocks afforded. Ascelin looked away to the north, searching for signs of the emir’s troops. Kaz-alrhun, Dominic, and I again rose into the air on the flying carpet and swooped over the valley wall.

The Ifrit’s enormous form still lay stretched out below us. His wife, sitting beside him, looked up at us and waved. Kaz-alrhun said a few words to the carpet, and it descended slowly to hover near the Ifrit, who stared at us with unseeing eyes. “I have not done my spells amiss,” said the mage complacently. “There are not many who can master an Ifrit, even for an hour’s span.”

“Watch,” I said. “This onyx ring is good for one purpose.”

I stretched out my hand and put the words of the Hidden Language together. The air of the valley shimmered with the magic that allowed people and objects to be hidden from each other. “Right there,” I said, pointing to the dry watercourse. “That’s where we’re going.” Suddenly, gloriously, I had the clarity of vision back again, and I knew exactly what spell to say next. It was a spell I had never used, and one which I was quite sure even Elerius had not known, but it came to me as easily as though another mind were guiding me. As the heavy syllables of the Language rolled from my tongue, the shimmering resolved itself, and the watercourse became clearer and clearer, while everything else faded.

The carpet dropped abruptly to the ground, tumbling us off. My spell, coupled with Elerius’s spell on the onyx, had allowed us not only to see other layers of reality, but to pass into them as easily as the Ifrit apparently could. Dominic rubbed a bruised knee as he picked himself up but managed not to scowl; I was afraid he trusted me to know what I was doing. The Ifrit was gone.

Kaz-alrhun laughed. “Most excellent, Daimbert! How did you do that? I could never find any sensible spell on that ring-which is why I sent it with the boy. I realize I should have tested it more thoroughly before giving up a good automaton for it, but I had faith that you would be able to do something with it.”

“It’s western school magic,” I said.

“Then your school may have something to offer after all,” said the mage in pleased surprise. “When I last spoke to a master from your school, a great many years ago when it first opened, he seemed rather constrained and bookish. What was his name? Melecherius, I believe. I am glad there are also wizards like you there.”

“I think we’re going to need both eastern and western magic for this,” I said.

But eastern spells could not get the flying carpet to rise again, and I had nothing to offer. The sun beat down on the three of us as we hurried on foot across the valley floor toward where a deep rift now appeared. The Ifrit was able to create and change reality here, I thought, and armed with the onyx ring I could do nearly the same