The Muslim soldiers met them with scimitars and shields, and for a few hectic minutes it was slash and parry. More and more barbarians crowded onto the parapet, ganging up on the Muslim soldiers three to one.
Matt couldn’t understand how the defenders had ever lasted a single night of such slaughter. Time to think about it later; for now, he chanted,
“Not by eastern windows only
When it is needed, comes the light,
In shadow globes now wax, not slowly,
So where we look, the dark’s made bright.”
Light blossomed inside the gloom at the foot of the wall—blossomed, brightened, and swelled, seeming to shove the darkness back physically. The barbarians stood in a merciless glare, waiting their turns at the ladders.
The few Muslim bowmen who were free of enemy soldiers shouted with glee and started picking off individual targets. Turks, Manchus, and Kazakhs screamed and died.
But the glare didn’t stop there. It shot upward in rays, illuminating the whole of the top of the wall, showing the Muslims their enemies as clearly as by daylight. Afghans and Khitans faltered, looking about them nonplussed, and Arab swords ran them through. The barbarians turned back to the business of slaughter with shouts of vengeance, but a third of them had fallen.
Vast voices roared in rage, and huge shapes rose from the back of the army, humanlike forms but with staring eyes, tusks for teeth, and arms knobbed and burled with muscle. There were two of them, but three more came plummeting from the skies.
“Djinn!” the soldiers wailed, cowering away.
“Worse—afrits!” the Arab wizard cried.
The barbarians laughed with delight and swung their swords. Some Arab soldiers woke from supernatural dread in time to parry; some did not.
“Not that much of a problem!” Matt raised his arms. “I’ll just command them back into their lamps and rings!”
“Lamps?” The Arab turned to stare at him. “These are no creatures propelled by sorcerers’ wishes, foolish Frank—they are wild afrits, far more powerful and dangerous than any djinni, and they have come of their own will, not that of others!”
“Converts!” Matt groaned. “Arjasp persuaded them to back his play!” Then he brightened. “But if they aren’t captives, they can be soon enough!” He started a verse.
As one, the afrits all cupped their hands and windmilled their arms. Fog gathered in their cupped palms, thickened, and solidified into huge boulders which the great humanoids hurled at the city.
Matt dropped the spell-in-progress in favor of a more immediate need.
“The afrits’ angry glare
Made their stones burst in air,
Giving proof in the night
That their boss was not there!”
The hurtling boulders exploded like gargantuan grenades. Silicate shrapnel sprayed the barbarians. Men howled in pain and fell. The Arabs ducked down behind their wall, and most of the fragments went whizzing over them. A few men cried out in pain as a shard struck here and there on the parapet; more cried out from the city below; but most of the dead and wounded lay among the men for whom the afrits fought.
Matt went back to his first verse.
“These afrits need a shell of quiet
With rations of immortal diet
In a flask of meditation,
Not poured out as a libation,
But bottled for all time‘s duration!”
With a howl of surprise and anger, one of the afrits went shooting toward the city. The Arab soldiers ducked involuntarily as it shot overhead—then down toward them, where an empty water bottle lay against the wall. The soldiers near it dove for cover, but the afrit shot tail-first, bellowing with pain and anger, into the neck of the bottle. It roared a curse that made all the Arabs blanche, and for once, Matt was sorry he understood the language—the afrit had promised a lingering and painful death for the presumptuous mortal who dared to imprison it.
“Drive a cork in that bottle and cover it with melted wax!” Matt told the Arab wizard. “Then trace the Seal of Solomon onto that wax and chant a spell to make it hold till the end of time!”
“The end of time?” The Arab stared. “What nonsense!”
“Not really,” Matt said. “Would you rather have that afrit come shooting out looking for revenge?”
The wizard shuddered and hurried away.
Matt looked up and saw the other afrits, howling for vengeance, winding up their windmill swings again. Quickly, he repeated the bottling verse, but he only spat the first two lines before the afrits all howled with rage and sprang into the air, dropping their half-formed missiles. They shot up into the sky, going faster and faster, dwindling into tiny dots, then disappearing. Matt wondered about escape velocity and what this universe’s people would find if they ever developed space travel.
“They are fled!” The wizard was beside him again, staring at the stars above.
Matt nodded. “They recognized the reference and didn’t want to get themselves into a jam by being jarred.”
“Don’t you mean bottled?” the Arab asked, puzzled.
“Bottle, jar, lamp, ring—I’ll stuff them into whatever’s close to hand.” Matt wiped his brow, then stared at his hand, amazed to see it was shaking. “You know, I think those afrits scared me more than I knew.”
“Only because when you saw them, you did not stop to think,” the Arab wizard said with a knowing smile.
Gongs began beating on the plain below, and the barbarians took up an angry and determined chant that gathered strength and volume as they marched toward the walls again.
Matt stiffened. “What now?”
“Surely it will be only soldiers’ boasts!” the wizard protested. Then fog billowed in over the parapets.
Men shouted in alarm and anger—but all men, not the Arabs alone. High-pitched voices cried out in Arabic to kneel, and all the Muslim soldiers did just that. The barbarians’ flailing blades hissed over the Arab soldiers’ heads and bit into other nomads. They shouted with pain and dismay.
The barbarian sorcerer had outsmarted himself, and Matt was tempted to leave bad enough alone. But he knew the Central Asians were shrewd, and would realize soon enough where their foes were. Matt called out,
“Some beams of light on Arab soldiers fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval,
Barbarian’s mist of night can’t forestall rays,
His rising fogs will fall without delay.”
The fog thinned and dissolved, leaving a sheen of moisture on every blade; the Arab burnooses hung thick and heavy. But the Muslims could see their targets now; they shouted their war-cries as they sprang to their feet, felling another third of the attackers with their Damascus blades.
The archers, no longer beset by invaders, went back to shooting unhorsed barbarians at the base of the wall. Realizing that their concealment was gone, the barbarians scattered, leaving their scaling ladders behind—and as quickly as it had begun, the assault was over. Here and there, Arab soldiers finished off a last barbarian or two and threw their corpses down for their fellows to gather.
“Well done, my soldiers!” the Caliph cried. “Well have you struck blows for Islam this day!”
The soldiers cheered, but the Caliph turned to a sharif and said, “They may come back—they may always come back. Bid all our men to stay vigilant.”
The captain nodded and turned away to carry the word. Soon lieutenants were going among the soldiers, relaying the command.
The Caliph turned to another sharif. “See that the fallen are taken away for burial and the wounded tended. Call for more arrows and have all archers restock their quivers.”
The man nodded and hurried away.
“Are these uncouth sorcerers so easy for you to defeat, then?” said a voice at Matt’s side. Turning, he saw the Arab wizard, face hard with hostility.
“They are truly unlettered barbarians,” Matt said in as agreeable a tone as he could muster, “and to defeat them, one need only memorize spells from written books.”
The Arab stared, startled by the thought. Then his eyes narrowed again. “But these verses you have recited, they all pit light against darkness.”
“Ahriman’s servants work by the concealment of night and the confusion of fog,” Matt told him. “There will be others, when they seek to work by lies and clouding of the facts, by illusion and partial honesty, and we only need appeal to truth to make itself shown—but their spells are pretty basic, yes, and not hard to defeat at all, once you know how they’re founded.”
The wizard frowned. “Then what force is there in these barbarians, that we should fear them?”
“Not much,” Matt answered. “Most of their impact comes from having so very many warriors, all of whom can ride swiftly, and from sheer, brutal violence and total lack of mercy to any city that dares resist them.”
“Well, our caliph has spared the cities that, at least,” the wizard said, “since he has defended them with his army, and given them no choice to fight or not to fight themselves.”
“A wise policy.” Matt nodded. “But their sorcerers aren’t really doing much at all.”
“Then the power of their Satan-inspired verses is one of their illusions?”
“Just gossip,” Matt confirmed, “just rumor—and a rather nasty sort, too, not really lies, just gross exaggeration. Partial truth can be more effective than an outright falsehood.”
“So the tale of their strength has grown as it passed from one careless mouth to another,” the wizard inferred.
Matt nodded. “Their spells are very weak, really—nothing to trouble any of the faithful for more than a minute. They only have power if you believe they do.”
“But the afrits?” the wizard asked, face lined with concern. “What magic has it taken to bind them to the service of these monstrous invaders?”
“Only the charms of a silver tongue, I’m afraid,” Matt said, “plus the afrits’ natural cruelty. They enjoy making people suffer, so of course they’d be inclined to believe anything Arjasp told them about the worship of Ahriman—probably that the Prince of Lies would give them even more power to torment their victims.”
“Can he do so?” the wizard asked, staring.
“I said he was the Prince of Lies, didn’t I? Hey, these afrits are powerful enough as it is!” Matt shook his head. “Don’t worry about the barbarians’ verses, O Wise One—the monsters out of your own legends are a lot more dangerous than the spells of their shamans.”
A trumpet blew. The Arab wizard turned toward the western gate, staring. “What comes?”
Voices cried out in jubilation, drowned by the clash of arms, the howls of battle-cries, and the screams of the dying. Soldiers ran to pull the twelve-foot bar from the gates; other soldiers hauled them wide open.
“The fools!” the wizard cried. “Will they welcome an army into their midst?”
Through the gate pounded a huge white horse bearing on its back a figure in gilded armor. It bore a bloodied sword in its right hand, and on the left arm wore a shield quartered with the lilies of Merovence and the double crown of Hardishane. Behind crowded an army of archers with steel helmets and leather cuirasses, and behind them rode a hundred knights.
“This army they will welcome!” Matt told the Arab wizard, “and so will I! If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go say hello to my wife!”
Jimena stared. “My Matthew? What could he have done to offend you?”
The djinna turned to her in fury. “Are you his wife, then? You seem too old!”
“Old enough to be his mother,” Jimena said, with anger of her own. “I am his mother indeed, and quite proud of it!”
“Proud!” Lakshmi cried, and the battlements trembled. “Proud of a kidnapper, of a thief in the night?”
“My son, a kidnapper?” Jimena stared in outrage. “You lie!”
“No, she is mistaken.” Ramon held up a hand to forestall his wife. “Matthew is not here, O Fairest of the Djinn. He is gone to the Holy Land, to help in fighting off the forces of Evil that seek to seize all the East. He has been gone more than a month. Why would you think him to be a kidnapper, and of which children?”
Lakshmi still glared at him, but there was uncertainty in her eyes. “No matter where he lies, he could still steal my babes from me!”
“Babes?” Ramon stared. “More than one? How wonderful for yourself and your prince! But Highness, you did not tell us!”
“Your son found out nonetheless! Two babes have I borne, twin darlings, and when I came to their cradle this morning to give them suck, both were gone! Vanished! Their cradle was empty, and who but a wizard could have stolen a child of the djinn from its father’s palace?”
“They charge the wall!” a sentry cried.
The night was cool, the stars filled the firmament, mocking the torches that stood along the walls of Damascus—but the shrilling of the barbarian horde drove all peace from their light and brought the Arabs to the walls, to bend their bows and fire at random.
Alisande leaned from her horse to kiss Matt. “If I die in battle,” she said, “I shall have that to have lived for!”
“You won’t die in battle.” Matt fastened her helmet into place. “I want more kisses, a lifetime more. You’ll have to come back.”
Her eyes flashed with amusement, but not with desire she knew well that he spoke of more afternoons like the one they had shared that day, not only of the kisses that had adorned it. “Guard me well!” she told him, then turned her horse and spurred toward the eastern gate. With a shout, her knights rode after. Their footmen followed at a run.
The Caliph watched her go, then gave Matt a critical gaze. “How can you let a woman go in your place?”
“It’s her place, not mine,” Matt corrected. “She’s the queen by birth and inheritance. But if you mean why aren’t I riding beside her to protect her, the answer is that I could, I’m a knight, but I’m also a wizard, and I can ward her better from the wall.” He shrugged. “It galls me, but it’s the course of wisdom.”
The Caliph smiled. “It seems odd, when you Franks make such goddesses of your women.”
“It seems odd to me, too,” Matt told him, “but I’m getting used to it … There they go!”
The gates swung wide, and the barbarians shouted with joy and surged toward them. Alisande let them cover half the ground before she kicked her charger into motion and thundered toward the invaders, lowering her lance.
The Asians were excellent horsemen who could literally ride rings around the knights—but they were hemmed in by their own men, all crowding toward the open gate. There was scant room to maneuver, and their ponies were much smaller than the Europeans’ Clydesdales and Percherons. The knights plowed into them, and the lances did the least damage—they could only skewer one barbarian each—for the great warhorses literally trampled the barbarians underfoot. Those who veered to the side and swung their spears high fell at the hammer-blow of heavy shields; those who came at the knights from the right met blows of heavy swords. Some spears did reach past both shield and sword, but the points only glanced off the European armor.
The “Franks” plowed deep into the mass of barbarians before they ground to a halt, their momentum blunted by the sheer numbers of their opponents. Thousands more barbarians started to close in on them from behind.
Then came the Arab cavalry, as light and maneuverable as the barbarians, their horses taller, their spears as sharp. Their own battle-cry ululated above the barbarians’ as their scimitars met the Asians’ steel. Here and there a barbarian fell, and Alisande’s infantry were upon him even as he scrambled to his feet. Other infantrymen were experimenting with tactics for separating riders from horses. Two-man teams worked together, one planting his spear-butt to absorb the shock as the horse ran onto the point, the other raising a long shield to protect them both from Tartar blows.
As they did, the knights turned their horses and, hacking with broadsword and battle-axe, carved their way out of the horde in a broad arc. Clear of the press, Alisande turned her juggernaut as squires came running with fresh lances. Couching the huge spears, the knights followed their queen in another smashing charge into the barbarian line.
There was this to be said against the horde’s encircling the city—they couldn’t get out of the way of the knights.
Atop the wall, Matt was sweating profusely, chanting himself hoarse as he countered first a spell to soften the ground under the knights’ feet, another to make their armor rust, a third to weaken their horses, a fourth to make their lances overly heavy, and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh. The Arab wizard gestured and chanted beside him, equally frazzled.
There was a lull of a few minutes as the knights regrouped for another charge and no more Asian spells were in evidence. Matt lowered his arms and panted, “Any of these spells terribly strong?”
“Not a one,” the Arab wheezed. “Elementary, every one of them, even clumsy. But there are so many of them!”
Incredibly, the barbarians began to retreat from the city so the horde could break into smaller, more maneuverable groups.
“Now!” Matt called. “Multiplication spell! Make it look as though there’re a hundred knights for every real one!”
He and the Arab chanted in tandem, and suddenly the city was surrounded by a ring of European knights charging down at the separate clumps of barbarian cavalry. If anyone had read the coats of arms on those knights’ shields, of course, they would have realized that there were a hundred of each—but the Asians weren’t skilled in Western heraldry. Deep-toned trumpets blew, and the barbarian host, exhausted, retreated from the walls of Jerusalem.
Alisande drew up and turned her equally exhausted knights back toward the walls of the city and the gate that opened before them—but their illusion clones rode on, chasing the barbarians over the hills and far away.
Jimena watched her husband out of the corner of her eye, feeling the first seed of suspicion sprout within her, a seed that could grow into a choking vine named “jealousy.” Of course, she had heard Matt’s story about the luscious djinna Lakshmi, who had saved him in his travels between this world and New Jersey—but seeing her was quite another matter, and Ramon’s courtly flattery didn’t help at all.
“I am amazed that even Matthew could conjure a djinn child from its cradle,” Ramon said. “I am sure he would not, but those who oppose him might. Tell me the manner of it.”
“The manner? There was no manner! I washed them and let them play in a sea of cushions while I left the chamber to hang the washcloths on their rack. I could not have been gone a minute, surely only seconds, but when I returned, they were gone!” Tears filled the huge eyes, and Lakshmi pulled from her bodice a slipper the size of a small boat. “Only this remained, this tiny slipper that I had myself embroidered with such care! All else was gone, trousers, vests, and slippers all—and the children with them!”
“Oh, you poor dear!” Jimena cried, her heart aching with sympathy for a soul who shared her own plight but felt it even more sharply, being not grandmother, but mother.
“And you thought of Matthew,” Ramon said gravely.
“Of course I thought of your son! Is he not the mightiest wizard of the West?”
Jimena stared, amazed. Was Matthew really so skilled?
“Who else would have magic strong enough to steal away djinn, even such small ones?”
“Not even Matthew, I should think,” Ramon said. “He is not Solomon, after all.”
“Who else!” Lakshmi’s face distorted with anger, turning dark. “Who else in all the West?”
Jimena knew the anger for the other side of fear and cried, “You poor child! I know how frantic you must be, for my own grandchildren have only now been stolen away! Oh, let us share our grief, not rant at one another!”
“Your grandchildren?” The blood drained from Lakshmi’s face as she turned to stare at the little figure on the battlements. “Matthew’s babes? His offspring stolen?”
“His, and Queen Alisande’s,” Jimena confirmed. “A little boy five years of age, and a princess who has only learned to walk within this last month.”
“Can he think that I stole his children away?” Lakshmi gasped. “Can he have done this to me to retaliate?”
“He does not know of his children’s abduction, for he is halfway around the world fighting barbarians and evil magic! Surely he is too deeply enmeshed in protecting the West from a barbarian horde to have reason to kidnap children! Besides, the little ones are precious to Matthew, all of them, not his alone! He would never do such a thing!” Jimena took a breath and held out her hands, beseeching, tears in her eyes. “Princess of djinn, will you not help us to recover our lost babes? Then perhaps we can aid you in regaining your own! We must strive together, not against one another!”
Lakshmi wavered, the uncertainty in her eyes metamorphosing into longing for another woman to share her pain—but she could not give in so easily. “How can I trust you? Or you!” She turned back to Ramon. Then comprehension dawned in her eyes. “If she is Matthew’s mother, she is your wife!”
“That is my great good fortune,” Ramon acknowledged, “and she my greatest blessing.” He caught Jimena’s hand. “Lakshmi, Marid and princess of djinn, may I introduce my wife, the Lady Jimena Mantrell? Jimena, this is the Princess Lakshmi, who aided Matthew and myself so greatly in Ibile, and without whom we might not have come home to you.”
Jimena curtsied. “I am honored, Your Highness.”
But Lakshmi only darted a guilty glance at her, then back at Ramon. “Your wife? But she is not old, is not …” She ran out of words.
Just as well, for her guilt fanned the coals of Jimena’s suspicions into white-hot flames. Did the djinna feel guilty about what she had done with Ramon, or what she had only wished to do?