lord.
“If I’m not your heart’s desire,” Evrard asked me, “what is?”
“Magic,” I said slowly. “After all these years I think I’ve finally gotten passable at western magic, and now I’ve learned a great deal of eastern magic as well. Maybe not even particular spells, but an orientation, a knowledge, that there are other ways than school ways to contact the universe’s forces.” I held Evrard’s light blue eyes with my own. “And I know this will sound strange from someone who’s been practicing magic his entire adult life, but I think I’ve also realized that there are important powers and abilities in this world that have nothing to do with magic.”
Ascelin and Joachim came back at this point, interrupting our conversation, although neither said anything but sat down on either side of Warin’s body.
The tall prince, I thought, might be the only one who had not found his heart’s desire on this quest, as well as the only one with a death on his soul. I had discovered eastern magic, Hugo his father, the elder Sir Hugo and his party had found the rescue they had long awaited, King Haimeric the blue rose, Joachim the Holy Land, and Dominic his father’s unfulfilled quest for the Black Pearl. Even Kaz-alrhun had won his game by locating the Pearl at last.
Trying to understand the not quite clear and definitely darker voice of the Pearl at the edge of my mind, I thought that even my new understanding of magic might not be the “heart’s desire” of the old stories, because there were still plenty of gaps and room for improvement-but then even Joachim had not found all his spiritual yearnings fulfilled in the Holy Land.
The Ifrit’s huge green face appeared abruptly above us, blocking out the sky. “So I see that another one of you has died,” he said conversationally. “I keep trying to remind you how easily and senselessly humans die, but you never seem to understand.”
“Please help us bury him,” said Evrard imperiously. I wasn’t at all sure the Ifrit would continue to obey him, or if Dominic would have to threaten him with the Pearl. But maybe it had become a habit. The Ifrit shrugged and nodded, then reached down a hairy arm and picked up King Warin. For a few minutes the Ifrit disappeared, then he put his head back over the head of the Wadi.
“Did you know, by the way,” he said to Evrard, “that there are a whole troop of soldiers coming this way? They are only about a hundred yards off.” This brought me abruptly to my feet. “Do you think they are from Yurt, or should I kill them?”
“No,” said Joachim before Evrard could answer. “Let’s not have any more killing.”
“This is the one you found amusing, isn’t it, my dear?” said the Ifrit to his wife. “Well, I won’t kill them yet, anyway. But I’d better get all of you away from the soldiers. For one thing, little mage,” to me, “you still haven’t worked your magic on my wife.”
Before she could ask what he meant, the Ifrit stretched out his hand, and the quiet air shimmered and whirled. We were caught up in a wind that swept us, and a great deal of rock and sand, into the air. I caught a brief glimpse of startled faces beneath white turbans, then somersaulting and gasping we were carried across the valley and set down in the oasis where we had first met the Ifrit’s wife.
The air around us immediately became again still and hot as we tried to recover our equilibrium. Kaz-alrhun’s flying carpet and ebony flying horse waited under the palm trees. Dominic still held the gold box with the Pearl inside, and the enameled cabinet he had found in the cave rested at an angle by his foot.
Maffi had spoken very little, but he suddenly took the Ifrit around the ankle. “I know what I want to be,” he called up. “I want to become an Ifrit.”
The Ifrit picked him up, a smile splitting his bristly face. “And what makes you think you could become one?”
“I wanted to apprentice myself to a mage,” said Maffi, matching the Ifrit’s grin with one of his own, “or even a western wizard, though none of them seemed to want me. But I realize now that to apprentice myself to you would be much more rewarding.”
The Ifrit put him back down with a chuckle. “Ifriti are very old,” he said, “and you are very young. Come talk to me again when you have lived longer than Solomon.”
Maffi picked himself up and dusted himself off. “I never said you could not be my apprentice, boy,” said Kaz- alrhun. “But you must realize it is possible to be too young for a mage, as well as too young for an Ifrit. The experiences of this trip may teach you something, however. Ask me again when we have returned to Xantium.”
The boy’s assumed dignity vanished at once, and he turned to the mage with shining eyes. “I already know one spell,” he said eagerly, “one out of western school magic. Let me show you-would you like some illusory color on your chest? I figured out on my own how to do both pink and purple at the same time. Will this make magery easier?”
So even Maffi, I thought, might have his heart’s desire.
“What’s this spell the wizard is supposed to put on me?” demanded the Ifrit’s wife.
I had promised this and now had to carry it out. “I can slow down natural aging,” I told her. “It won’t make you any younger than you now are, but it will keep you youthful much longer. The Ifrit couldn’t bear the idea of his beautiful wife becoming old.”
She whirled away from me and smacked the Ifrit on the foot. “So just because I’m your wife, you think you can make my decisions for me?” The Ifrit frowned, puzzled, but she didn’t give him time to answer. “I like being human! I don’t want to live for centuries like some mage! And what makes you think I’d want to live longer than normal if I had to spend all the extra time with you?”
“But I thought you liked me, my dear,” the Ifrit protested in a small voice-or what would have been a small voice in anything but such a large being.
She relented and smiled up at him, her hands on her hips. “Of course I like you, and I’m sorry I scolded. But don’t make arrangements about me without consulting me!”
The Ifrit nodded. “But now that I’ve consulted you-”
She laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need anyone’s spells but yours, my dear.”
Pleased, the Ifrit picked her up and planted a kiss on top of her head that left her wiping saliva off her hair.
“All of you probably want some food,” said the Ifrit, frowning and trying to count us. “How many of you are there, thirteen? It’s hard to keep track of such little beings.” I myself counted and, with Sir Hugo’s party, our party from Yurt, plus Kaz-alrhun, Maffi, and the Ifrit’s wife, got the same answer. “Well, get the fires started, my dear, and I’ll bring you a few more of the emir’s sheep.”
As the desert evening came on, cooling the clear air, I licked meat juices from my lips and looked across a valley that now had no sign of the emir’s soldiers in it. The Ifrit and his wife sat off to one side, apparently trading funny stories with each other, but the rest of us were gathered around the dying embers of the cooking fires.
“I guess all there is to do now is to get safely home,” said Hugo. He and his father sat together, their shoulders touching. “It’s strange, because the whole trip was painful and dangerous and frustrating, but now that it’s almost over I find myself wishing we could go on forever.”
I pictured the original six of us as we had set out in early spring, all the equipment which was now in the hands of the emir’s soldiers carefully packed on our horses, when our worst danger was the lord of the red sandstone castle, and when I had not yet discovered school magic in the spells of an evil king. I agreed with Hugo; I wished our trip was not ending but would continue forever.
But the thought of Yurt and the king’s garden, where he would soon be planting his new rose, was also abruptly sweet. The forested hills of Yurt would be turning yellow and red, and the air would have the tang of fresh apples.
“It’s going to be a long trip, even with a flying carpet,” commented Ascelin.
“Do you think you can get all of us onto your carpet?” Dominic asked Kaz-alrhun. “With it we’ll be able to cross the desert even without our horses and supplies. Let’s stop at that oasis, however, and see if my stallion is still where the boy left him! If we leave the two of you in Xantium, we can then fly on to the western kingdoms. I’m certain our wizard will be able to work the carpet’s spells.”
“If the carpet can get us over the mountains,” continued Ascelin, “we can go straight from Xantium to the great City and drop off Sir Hugo’s party there, and then the rest of us can continue on to Yurt. We’ll send the carpet
