My Son, the Wizard

Chapter Thirteen

“What mortals dare to challenge the djinn by venturing in the element of air!” the voice bellowed.

“Good question,” Matt called to Stegoman. “Head for the ground!”

The dragon had already begun to pull out of his dive. “Art thou afraid?” he demanded in disbelief.

“Damn straight I’m scared! But more to the point, why fight this spirit in his own element? On the ground, we can call up a few forces he might not know!”

“I might have known ‘twas strategy, not cowardice!” Stegoman exulted, and dove again. The huge voice shouted angrily behind him.

“Still there?” Matt called over his shoulder.

“Of course, as you know well,” his father snapped. “It was a hair-raising experience, though.”

“There are lots of bad moments like this,” Matt said apologetically.

“I always yearned to be a part of the epics I read,” Papa told him. “At last I have my wish!” He sounded more resigned than overjoyed, though.

Stegoman pulled up sharply, and they jarred to a stop on the ground. Papa winced. “More like a fighter plane than a passenger liner.”

“Look out!” Matt scrambled down and ducked under Stegoman. His father stared a second, then followed.

The dragon spread his wings and roared defiance at the huge being who swooped down upon them… roared fire, and the genie’s clothing burst into flame. Away the spirit sprang, with a shriek that echoed off the hillsides.

Matt stared out from under Stegoman’s belly plates. “It can’t be!”

“Why not?” Papa squirmed up beside him, then stared up. His eyes widened. “It is!”

“I didn’t really believe they came in both genders,” Matt said.

“You should have,” Papa reminded him. “You watched that TV show enough when you were little.”

“Yeah, but not even Barbara Eden was built like that!”

The spirit came storming back, smoldering clothing reknitting itself into bolero jacket and gauzy harem pants even as she swooped down on them. Her face was oval, her eyes slanted and furious, her lips full and cherry red, her hair a lustrous black waterfall. “For that, you shall roast in your own flame, dragon!”

She drew back a hand to throw a whammy.

Matt chanted quickly.

The whammy hand stayed poised. The slanted eyes narrowed and lost some of their fury. “What nonsense is this you speak?”

“No nonsense at all,” Matt said smoothly. “You are indeed a most fair damsel, of perfect proportion and radiant features, lovely to behold in every way.”

“Of course I know that, but why would you waste breath saying it?” Even so, the whammy hand lowered, and she tossed her head. “Nevertheless, say it again.” Suddenly, she shrank, and when she stepped down to the ground, she was a half-head shorter than Matt. “If you still wish to.”

Matt caught his breath; so did Papa. At normal human size, her proportions seemed even more spectacular, her face even more perfect in its beauty.

Stegoman watched with a cold reptilian eye, his lip curving in silent laughter. He didn’t have to worry about his hormones… it wasn’t a female of his kind.

“Can you not speak, now that I am of your own size?” the spirit demanded. “Do I only appear attractive to you when I am gigantic?”

“Not at all,” Matt said quickly.

The spirit woman’s eyes became slumberous; her lips curved in a sensuous smile. “You have great audacity, mortal, to so address a woman of the djinn.”

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” Matt pointed out.

“True,” she agreed, “but I enjoy the extravagance of your terms.”

“Surely you must be the most beautiful of genies!”

Her laughter chimed like finger cymbals. “I should think so, for a djinni is a male, and though some may be handsome, none have any great beauty. I am Lakshmi, a djinna, ignorant mortal, and there are many of my kind more beautiful than I.”

“Then your kind must be amazingly attractive indeed,” Matt said, pitching his voice low and throaty.

The djinna tilted her head to the side, considering him. “You are a flatterer,” she decided, “but you may prove all the more amusing for it.” She stepped closer, swiveling her hips and moistening her lips. “Do you frolic as well as you flatter?”

Matt caught his breath; the djinna exuded raw sexuality, her movements so lithe and sensuous as to be a declaration. “No man alive could help but dream of such a frolic with so amazing a female… but if he had a wife, he really shouldn’t do anything more than dream.”

The djinna swayed closer yet, tongue-tip flicking out to pass over her lips. “You have a wife? What a shame! Still, we are here and she is there, and need never know what transpires between us. This companion of yours will surely not tell her.”

“I am his father,” Papa said, almost apologetically.

The djinna stilled, then turned to Papa with a slight frown, as though trying to solve a puzzle. If anything, her sensuality increased. “You should rejoice to see him so bedded.”

“Ah, but I have a grandchild now,” Papa said, “his child.”

“Is this so great a matter among your kind?”

Well, actually, no… it was the marriage that mattered; the baby just made the relationship between Matt and Alisande that much deeper. Somehow, though, he knew he couldn’t say that, especially not to a woman who could cause an earthquake if she thought she was being scorned.

Papa thought so, too. “Among our kind, sweet lady, those who fall in love feel deeply betrayed if their partners sleep with other companions.”

“Have you a wife?” the djinna asked, advancing.

“Yes, and she is my greatest reason for wishing to live,” Papa answered.

“But she, too, need not know.”

“She would.” Papa shook his head, smiling. “Don’t ask me how, but she would. What matters more, though, is that I would know.”

A trace of contempt showed in the djinna’s smile. “Are you so enfeebled by these things you mortals call ’consciences’?”

” ‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all,’ ” Papa quoted.

Matt agreed. “Conscience is part of it, but most of it is that I would be betraying myself.”

The djinna turned, frowning. “I do not understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, myself,” Matt confessed. “I only know it’s true. If I betrayed Alisande, I would betray the strongest, truest impulse inside me, and be maimed in spirit forever after.”

“What strange creatures you are!” the djinna exclaimed, but her smile stayed broad and inviting. “Why should I not try to maim you, though?”

Matt swallowed hard, thinking fast, then said,

A shadow of concern crossed Papa’s face. “That last line… “

“What have you done, mortal?” The djinna’s eyes had misted over. “You have taught my heart to weep!”

Matt breathed silent thanks. Aloud, he said, “It is only growth, fair lady, for if you have never wept, your soul is incomplete.”

“Weeping for myself, I can understand… but to weep for another? And for harms he has not even suffered yet?”

“Ah, but to think of the harm he might suffer because of your actions is to care for him,” Matt said.

Papa looked up with surprised approval.

The djinna frowned, head tilted. “I think that you have infected me with one of these consciences of yours, mortal man.”

“People with consciences do less harm,” Matt told her, “and more good.”

“Why should I care about your puling race, for good or for ill?”

“Why,” Matt said, “because magicians of our feeble kind can enslave and compel you by their spells.”

Lakshmi stilled, eyes narrowing, and Matt could feel her anger rising.

“Who enslaved you,” he asked her softly, “and by what token? I may be able to free you from his compulsions.”

She stared. “Are you a wizard, then?”

“I am,” Matt confessed.

“So that is why your flattery lit the fires of desire within me!”

“Uh, sorry ‘bout that,” Matt said, shamefaced. “I was just trying to keep you from wiping us out.”

Her stare turned into disbelief. “Can you really feel sorrow for inflaming a woman with desire?”

“Well, if she didn’t want it… yes.”

“Most strange indeed!” she marveled. “Such human males as I have dealt with before would never have scrupled so!”

“My son is a rare man indeed,” Papa said proudly. “Rare and strange,” Lakshmi agreed. “Dare you truly free me from the bonds of these Moorish magicians, mortal man?”

“Of course I dare! Do you expect me to believe you’re going to turn on me the minute I liberate you?” In fact, Matt would have believed exactly that, if he hadn’t just given her a conscience.

“A mortal might well believe that of a djinna, yes.” Her eyes were calculating now, evaluating him.

“You would trust me, then?”

“I would. Is that so foolish?”

“Perhaps,” Lakshmi allowed, “but your flattery was most persuasive.” She came to a decision. “Well enough, then. He who enslaved me was a Persian magus, one Haziz al Iskander, and the token in which he bound me was a bracelet with a moonstone inset.”

“Persian?” Matt stared. “How long ago was this, anyway?”

The djinna shrugged. “I have slept long and often since then, within the prison of the gem… but from what free djinn have told me when I have been awake and done with whatever task my new master set for me, it has been perhaps three hundred of your years. Is Kaprin still King of Merovence?”

“I’m afraid not,” Matt said, then remembered that she might not have meant Alisande’s father. “Which Kaprin? There have been four of them.”

“Four?” The djinna stared. “I only know of one! How much time has been stolen from me? How long since the first Kaprin died?”

“About two centuries.” Matt braced himself for hysterics.

They didn’t come, but Lakshmi began to look very angry. “Five hundred years since Haziz enslaved me, then. I have slept through much of my life, mortal man. If you can free me, I shall be as grateful as a djinna can be.” For a moment, her sensuality gleamed its promise again.

Matt forced his mind back to the problem. “So you were bound into the moonstone by a Persian? Well, let me think.” He bowed his head.

The djinna’s eyes flashed with anger. She started to speak, but Papa forestalled her with a raised palm.

“Peace, milady. He makes magic.”

The djinna stared and bit off her rebuke.

Matt raised his head, eyes unfocused, and recited,

Lakshmi fairly glowed with allure, and stepped forward, hips swaying. Matt shot the next verse in quickly:

He ended, looking up at the djinna expectantly.

She frowned, gazing off into space, and moved her arms experimentally, then shook her head. “The ties still bind me. They are weakened, but still there.”

“I was afraid of that,” Matt sighed. “I can’t do anything more without knowing your name.”

“My name?” The djinna stared. “I told you… it is Lakshmi!”

“No, no! Not your public name… your true name, your secret name, the one that only your mother knew until you came of age, and she told it to you!”

Warily, Lakshmi demanded, “How did you know of secret names among the djinn?”

Matt could have answered that most primitive peoples had such names, and kept them secret specifically so that sorcerers couldn’t use them to cast hurtful spells over the people… but it was more tactful to say,

“Because your people have been around for a very long time.”

“What need have you of my secret name?”

“The magus used it to bind you to the moonstone, didn’t he?”

Fear touched the djinna’s eyes. “How did you know that?”

“It’s not your body that’s bound, really,” Matt explained, “it’s your inner self. There’s nothing outside of you that forces you to return to the moonstone or obey the wishes of the one who carries it… it’s a compulsion laid in your heart of hearts. The magus used your true name to bind you, and I can’t free you without it.”

“But if you know my true name, you will be able to work foul magics upon me, and will have power over me in any way you choose!”

“I know,” Matt said apologetically, “but that’s how it works. He bound you by your secret name, so I can’t free you without saying it. You’ll have to trust me.”

The djinna’s eyes hardened. “Can I trust you to forget the name as soon as you have said it?”

“Good thought!” Matt said, and chanted,

Papa nodded, eyes bright with understanding. “You may tell him your name now, sweet lady. He cannot remember it after he has spoken it once.”

She still looked doubtful, but she snapped at Papa, “Cover your ears and turn away your eyes.”

Papa did.

Lakshmi stepped very close to Matt, all business now… but the sheer impact of her sensuality still hit him like a hammer. Dazed and tingling with desire, he forced himself to focus on the single word she spoke, then nodded and snapped, “Step away.”

Anger lit in her eyes, but she stepped back anyway.

Matt drew a ragged breath as her effect diminished enough for him to remember his verse. He recited the song of separation again, but included the name she had given instead of the pronoun. Then he looked up, startled.

“What troubles you?” she snapped.

“Something’s missing,” Matt said. “From my memory, I mean.”

“Of course… my name!”

“Is that all?” Matt frowned, attention turned inward. “Yes, I can remember reciting the verse that told me to forget your name as soon as I used it, I can remember using it… but I can’t remember what it was!”

“That is good.” The djinna smiled. “You are a man of your word.” Then she frowned. “If you speak truly, that is.”

“Hey, you gotta trust me some,” Matt said, affronted. “How’re you feeling? Any strings attached?”

Lakshmi lifted her arms again, gazing off into space. Then her face lit with delight. “They are gone! The constraints and compulsions are gone! You have freed me indeed! I am no longer bound to the mission on which he sent me!”

“Great!” Matt smiled, elated. “What was your mission, by the way?”

“To slay a wizard named Matthew Mantrell.”

Matt stared. So did Papa. Then as one, they drew a deep breath.

The djinna frowned. “This troubles you?”

“You might say that,” Matt agreed. “You see, my name is Matthew Mantrell… and for once, I’m very, very glad I was willing to help out a stranger!”

“Are you truly he?” Lakshmi swayed closer again, hitting Matt with a sensual blast twice as strong as anything she’d dealt before. “Of course I shall not kill you… but perhaps I can remove you from this conflict by other means. What say you, mortal… will you spend a month or so with a djinna? I promise you pleasures of which you can barely dream, ecstasy so intense as to make you think you have died.”

Matt swallowed hard, wondering how his spells had backfired. “Look, you don’t really have to show that you’re grateful… “

“I do not,” she breathed, lips only inches from his own. “I am entirely selfish in this. I seek my own pleasure, but I assure you it shall result in your own. Do not fear this conscience of yours; you shall die to remorse, only to come alive again to delights only spirits can know.”

“Exactly… only the spirit can know true ecstasy.” Matt clung to the idea, like Ulysses lashed to the mast.

“That means that the real thing, the fullest intensity of it, is only for those in love.”

“Perhaps among your kind,” she said, “not mine.” Her breasts brushed his chest.

Matt fought the urge to step back, knowing how that would end. He had to convince her, not avoid her… and had to do it with his body screaming at him to stop being an idiot and take what was offered. “You wouldn’t want to take your pleasure knowing I wasn’t really enjoying it as much as I could, would you?”

The djinna stilled. “If that is true of you, mortal man, you are the only male of such persuasion that I have ever met.”

“No, the others just don’t admit it, even to themselves,” Matt told her. “That, or they’ve never known what it is to be really in love with someone who’s in love with them.” For a moment, a wave of sorrow swept him, pity for all the poor people who had never known the intoxication of being in love. He remembered what Saul had told him once, and said it again now:… If you’re not in love, it’s nothing. It’s a long, tantalizing climb, but when you get to the top, there’s nothing but ashes.”

Lakshmi stepped back an inch, tears on her lashes. “What is this heaviness that drags at my heart of a sudden? O wicked magician, you have made me sad again!”

Matt realized that his pity for the untold millions had engulfed her. “It’s just the sorrow that comes over me when I realize that so many people have never really been in love. It happens whenever I remember how lucky I am, to love and be loved.”

Even as he said it, joy flooded through him. The djinna felt it, too; astonishment swept her face. “What an amazing feeling! Can mortals truly know such bliss?”

“The lucky ones, yes.”

“I could almost begin to believe that some things may be sacred.” Lakshmi stepped farther away, face becoming stern with the effort of pulling her allure back in. “I could not intrude on something so precious. No, Wizard Matthew, I’ll not beguile you with dalliance. How, then, may I thank you for freeing me from the sorcerer’s bonds?”

Matt heaved a silent sigh of relief. “You could tell me some more about the sorcerer who sent you after me, and the army he’s helping conquer Ibile. Where did they come from? How did they get this far into Merovence?”

“As to how they came in, your border guards made no effort to keep them out,” she said, surprised.

“They admit all who claim to have business here.”

“Yes, the disadvantage of an open border.” Matt had recommended the policy himself. “On the other hand, why bother closing the roads when they could walk in through the fields so easily?”

“As thousands of folk from Ibile do even now,” Lakshmi told him. “I have seen them from the air, when I have gone about the errands on which my master sent me.” She grinned. “My former master, now.”

For a second, Matt imagined he saw pointed teeth. He hid a shudder and wondered what kind of spirit he had loosed on the world. “I hadn’t realized we were absorbing a flood of refugees. I’ll have to send word to the queen so she can have support services ready.” He wondered why they hadn’t had any word from her reeves in the provinces. “How long has this been going on?”

“Perhaps a week.”

Allow a few days for the reeves to realize something big was afoot, another day for them to decide they should report it, three more days for the messengers to arrive… yes, Matt could see why word hadn’t arrived till Alisande had left the castle. “So the Mahdi’s big offensive only started a couple of weeks ago?”

“It did,” the djinna confirmed. “Of course, for half a year he has been biting off one province at a time, but the folk who fled that war only needed to go to a province he had not yet conquered. There have been some coming through the mountains for several months, but the steady outpouring did not come till the Mahdi made his rule among the borderlands completely sure, then struck north against King Rinaldo.”

“And Christians were told to convert or get out?”

“Not forced,” she said slowly, “but encouraged.”

“So he’s not killing or torturing unbelievers, only taxing them and keeping them out of the big-money industries.” Matt nodded. “Well, I can accept that. Even the early Christians had to place their faith above worldly success. Doesn’t mean I’m willing to let him keep doing it, but at least I don’t have to think of him as being evil.”

Lakshmi frowned. “How is this? Would you rather fight a good man than a bad?”

“No, but if my enemy deserves respect, I’d like to know it. It has something to do with whether or not I pull my punches.”

“Pull your punches?” the djinna frowned.

“How much mercy he shows,” Papa clarified.

“You mortals worry about such silly things!”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Matt felt a chill down his spine. “Where do they come from, this Mahdi and his men?”

“From Morocco, across the strait by the great rock. Many are Arab, but most are Berbers or Rifs.”

“What started them moving?”

“Holy men arose among the hill folk, the Rif, and preached that they had found a sheikh who could lead the faithful to victory… that the time had come for a jihad to conquer Ibile.”

“Holy men.” Matt frowned. “They didn’t work magic, did they?”

“No, but my master and those like him were the ones who persuaded the holy men that the time had come, that they were seers who had seen the birth of a general who could bring Islam to Europe.”

So the sorcerers had fired up the holy men, and Nirobus had started the sorcerers. “That pretty much confirms what we guessed, and tells us a bit more.”

“What?” She frowned.

“Who we’re really fighting,” Matt said, “and where to hit them. Thanks, Lakshmi. You’ve been a big help.”

“I would be an even greater aid.” For a minute, allure blazed forth again, and she took a step closer to Matt. “Are you sure there is no other way in which I can serve you?”

“Not right now, thanks,” Matt said quickly. “In fact, you can go anywhere you want. You’re free.”

“I thank you.” She didn’t sound as though she meant it. Then the other side of her freedom must have occurred to her, because her lips curved into a secret smile. All she said, though, was “If you ride your dragon again, you will seek to fly, will you not?”

“We will,” Stegoman replied.

But Matt was finally picking up on hints. “Any reason we shouldn’t?”

“There is,” the djinna told him. “The sorcerers have set other djinn about the queen’s army, and between her and the mountains, to watch for Matthew Mantrell and smite him down if they can, chase him away from Ibile if they cannot.”