The Crusading Wizard

CHAPTER 17

Ramon stared. “You mean he went to another world?”

“Not a world,” Lakshmi said. “I doubt an underling could have that much power. He has gone between worlds, the quicker to transport himself to his master.”

Saul turned away, cursing.

Jimena stared after him. “It is not like him to give up so easily.”

Ramon touched her arm, frowning. “He has not. He searches for something.”

“There!” Saul pointed.

Spreading between two trees, a huge spiderweb reflected sunlight.

Lakshmi paled. “You do not mean to call upon the Spider King!”

Saul nodded. “This is just the kind of stunt that would appeal to his mordant sense of humor. Keep dinner warm for me.” He stepped forward, directly into the spiderweb. For a moment his outline wavered, then it disappeared.

“Let us follow!” Jimena stepped forward.

“I dare not!” Lakshmi paled. “The Spider King is a spirit who could confound even a Marid!”

“He transported you before,” Ramon pointed out, “to our world.”

“He did not! I did that myself, following Matthew!”

“Who was taken there by the Spider King,” Ramon said, with appreciation of the irony, “who would therefore resent your intrusion on his domain. Well, I shall follow Saul, if I may.”

Jimena called out in alarm, but Ramon was already stepping toward the spiderweb.

He bounced off.

He bounced hard enough to knock him down. He sat on the ground, staring up in disbelief. “I knew spider silk was strong, but not so strong as that!”

“I think you are being denied passage,” Jimena said with relief. She stepped forward, groping toward the web—and saw it begin to glitter with sunlight, a glitter that seemed to fill her eyes, wrapping about her. Dazzled and confused, she blundered forward—and disappeared.

Ramon cried out, leaping to his feet and charging after her, but again he bounced off the web and stood, fists clenched, raging and cursing in American English.

Lakshmi frowned, wondering about the meanings of the foreign words, though she thought she could tell the essence of them. She stepped forward, touching his arm. Ramon whirled to her, face contorted with anger, then saw her and forced himself to calm. “Your pardon, Princess.”

“Given,” she said. “It would seem neither of us shall follow, Lord Mantrell—I by my choice, and you by the Spider King’s.”

“If ever I meet him, I shall have bitter words to say about this,” Ramon said, his eyes turning glacial.

“Calm your soul,” the djinna advised. “The Spider King is shrewd as well as intelligent, and very, very knowledgeable. If anyone understands what we are fighting, it is he—and if he let the Witch Doctor and the Spellbinder go, it is because they alone have the talents to forestall this rogue priest. We would burden them.”

“How could we?” Ramon asked, frowning.

“Why, by lumbering them with concerns for our safety,” Lakshmi said. “Let them go, my lord, and trust to their own powers. After all, the Spider King does.”

The dazzle slackened, the dizziness passed, and Jimena looked about her in astonishment. She stood in a landscape shrouded by fog so thick that she could see nothing but grayness, though here and there a bare, dark, and dripping branch reached out of the gray wall like a skeletal hand. She shuddered and looked down to find that even the ground was hidden, so thick was the mist.

But here and there a hoofprint glowed, burning away the mist enough to show the bare and barren ground about it.

Fear paralyzed her for a minute, but Jimena called to mind the faces of her grandchildren and stepped forward to brave the fog, following the glowing hoofprints.

She had gone about ten minutes, and knew not how much distance, before the shouting broke out ahead. She stared a moment, then caught up her long brocade skirts and hurried forward, though still with a wary eye on the trail of hoofprints.

The mist parted enough to show her Saul, standing rigid with his fists clenched and face red, shouting verses at a mounted man in midnight-blue robes who chanted in a sonorous tone, gestures weaving complicated patterns as he tried to outshout the Witch Doctor.

Jimena stopped, watching, mind clicking into analytical mode as she waited for the effects of the spells, and for the sorcerer’s companion to show himself.

There he was, sitting his horse a yard or two beyond his master, a darkness within the fog—no doubt also wearing the midnight color of Ahriman. His gestures, though, did not mirror those of the sorcerer, and his voice was a low mutter droning between the sorcerer’s words.

Saul’s final phrase jumped out clearly at her: “… with a scorpion!”

The sorcerer’s form fluxed, flowed, and gelled. He had a shell for a face, with yard-long antennae atop a man’s body—if you didn’t count the pincers where his hands had been, or the tail he had suddenly grown, complete with stinger. His companion blanched and sidestepped his horse away, spell forgotten, but the sorcerer, not realizing anything had happened, finished his gestures with his pincers and chanted the last few words in a high-pitched rasping voice.

The mist thickened, formed into snakes, and swarmed up Saul’s legs, intertwining with one another and tightening. He fell with a shout, and more snakes started on his arms.

Jimena said quickly,

The snakes dissolved; Saul’s thrashing arm shoved him halfway back to his feet. He gave a single wild glance about him, saw Jimena, grinned, and scrambled to his feet.

“My lord, you are transformed!” the sorcerer’s assistant cried.

The scorpion-sorcerer astride the horse looked down at himself in astonishment. He shrilled in anger, lashing his tail. It lashed far enough to come into his eyesight. He froze, staring at it, then turned his horse with a vengeful chittering and thrust the stinger at Saul.

Saul· leaped aside in the nick of time. “Uh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

The stinger stabbed again. Saul dodged, barely evading it, leaping toward the horse’s head—and the sorcerer swung a pincer and caught his neck from behind. Saul howled with pain, then shouted,

The sorcerer’s pincer suddenly sagged open, as though it had no strength left. He chittered angrily, but seemed to have lost the pattern of words.

His assistant, however, had recovered, gesturing and intoning a verse. He finished with a flourish, and something huge and dark flapped out of the mist to wrap itself around Saul, whose voice gargled off in mid-verse.

Jimena spread her hands, chanting,

The wings shriveled, the central body absorbing them as the creature turned into a giant caterpillar, its mouth probing for Saul. He shoved it away with an oath, then intoned,

Sure enough, a shoot shot and grew, developing into a sapling that budded and opened abundant leaves.

With both hands, Saul forced the creature’s head around. “Look! Dinner! Yummy!”

The caterpillar dropped off him and hurried over to the sapling, as much as a caterpillar can hurry. It climbed up, munching as it went, until its whole length clung to the stout sprout.

Saul chanted,

Then he turned away and forgot the giant larvum. It munched away, busy with its own defoliation campaign.

But the sorcerer’s apprentice had been busy while he’d had Saul distracted with the insect kingdom, and he had his master almost back to human status. The tail with its stinger was gone, as were the pincers and all of the exoskeleton except the head—which chittered angrily, as though to chide the henchman for not giving him back the power of speech. All things considered, the apprentice should have started from the top and worked his way down, but the habits of subordination took their toll.

That left Jimena free to take her time. She crafted the verse slowly, remembering how she’d come into this weird place and weaving explicit instructions. As she did, a multitude of spiders came scuttling out of the mist and up the legs of the sorcerer’s horse to its rider, where they began to spin busily.

The sorcerer, intent upon regaining human form, didn’t notice what was happening right under his nose. Of course, at the moment, he didn’t have a nose, but his assistant was working on it.

The spiders, however, had been working on the assistant, too.

The mist deepened about the sorcerer’s head, then dissipated, showing his face as it had been before Saul had begun work. “Aha!” he shouted triumphantly.

Jimena too shouted her final instruction to the arachnids: “… and pull your webbing tight!”

Spider silk wrenched fast, binding both men’s arms tight to their bodies in gray tubes. They cried out in shock, then tried to lash their arms free—but all they succeeded in doing was weaving their bodies about so sharply that they fell from their horses. The animals whinnied and went.

Both men tried to scramble to their feet, but Jimena shouted another command, and the horde of spiders went busily to work casting loops about the men’s legs. They toppled again, swearing in languages Jimena didn’t know, and lay helpless on the ground.

Saul stepped over beside her, watching the little spinners do their work. “Quite a sight, milady. Never knew you were an entomologist.”

“More of an etymologist, really,” Jimena told him, “but any boy’s mother becomes far better acquainted with spiders than she wishes to be.”

The sorcerer stopped struggling and started shouting—rhythmical shouting, with rhymes thrown in. Quickly, Saul called out,

Something round and solid filled each of Saul’s hands. He glanced down at them and was glad the caterpillar hadn’t seen it first.

As he lay on the ground, the sorcerer ranted on in his own language, leaving Saul no doubt that if he ever finished, this would be a spell to end all spells—or at least to end him. So Saul stepped up beside the man, waited until his mouth was open its widest, then leaned down and jammed the apple in between his teeth. The sorcerer stared, stunned. Then his face darkened and he began to gargle sounds that probably would have been dire curses, if he could have managed a few consonants.

Saul turned to the assistant, who looked up at him with wide eyes. Tossing the other apple in the air, the Witch Doctor asked, “Need one?”

The man swallowed heavily, shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. Saul strolled back to Jimena. “I think we’ve caught them, Lady Mantrell.”

“Yes, we have.” Jimena frowned as visions of torture rose up in her mind. She shoved them aside by sheer willpower. “But what shall we do with them?”

“Why, question them, of course.” Saul turned back to the assistant. “Ready to answer a few questions, fella? Or would you prefer the fruit course?”

The caterpillar, having run out of leaves, raised its snout, weaving about, centering on the aroma of apple.

“On second thought,” Saul said, “your boss might be on the menu himself—unless you decide to talk.”

The assistant swallowed and shook his head. “I will speak,” he said with a very thick accent.

The sorcerer shouted with alarm.

“Hey, it could be worse.” Saul looked down, met the sorcerer’s eyes and narrowed his own, gazing directly into the pupils. “A lot worse. Believe me.” His voice sank low. “Oh, you really had better believe me. It could get very, very bad indeed.”

The coldness of his tone froze the sorcerer, whose own gaze became murderous, but Saul called up his reserves of outrage, and the man had to look away. Then the sorcerer saw the caterpillar peeling itself off the stalk and squalled in alarm.

Of the apprentice, Saul demanded, “Where are the children?”

“I know not!” he protested. “As soon as we had come within this mist, my master chanted a verse that transported them back to him who sent us! They may be with him, or he may already have hidden them!”

Jimena gave a cry of alarm, quickly muffled by her hands.

“Oh, very nice,” Saul said, with complete sarcasm. “No blame, no shame—you just followed orders. What is this master of yours?”

He meant to add “animal, vegetable, or mineral?” but before he could, the assistant asked, “You do not know?” in amazement.

A cagey look came into his master’s eyes, and Saul knew he had better tread very carefully—and quickly, since the caterpillar was already treading in its own way.

“I can guess,” Saul said. “Confirm it for me.” He tossed the apple again. “Of course, if you don’t want to talk, there’s no reason to leave your mouth free.”

“He is a priest,” the assistant said quickly, “a high priest.”

Saul froze for a moment. Then he said slowly, “Which means your boss here is one of the lower-ranking, run-of-the-mill priests, and you’re his apprentice?”

“Acolyte!” the assistant snapped, suddenly brave in vanity. “I am his acolyte, for he is a priest of Ahriman!”

Saul stared. Then he said, slowly and carefully, “There ain’t no such thing.”

“No,” Jimena agreed. “The Zoroastrians were monotheists. Ormuzd was their only god. Ahriman was a demon.”

“Is a demon!” the assistant snapped.

So did Saul. “You want mercy?” He strode up right next to the man and held up the apple, his knuckles white. “You want us to go easy on you, spare you torture, maybe even get you out of here before the immature moth arrives? You come here and steal our prince and princess, you suborn their nurse and carry off a couple of perfectly innocent babies, and on top of all that you have the gall to tell us this demon of yours actually exists? And your boss is so deep into devil worship he actually calls himself a priest?”

The assistant tried to shrink away within his bindings and wailed, “It is not he who calls himself such, but Arjasp who has declared him so!”

The sorcerer gargled in outrage and threat.

Saul froze, looking down at the apprentice as though measuring him for a coffin. “Who,” he demanded, “is Arjasp?”

“He is the high priest of Ahriman! It is he who had the genius to realize that Ahriman is a god, not a demon only! The genius to begin the worship of the Dark God! It is Arjasp who has given the gur-khan his victories!”

The sorcerer groaned.

Saul stood very still, mind working at express speed, considering alternatives and realizing the need to be very, very careful. Finally he said, “So Arjasp is a magus?”

The sorcerer howled protest.

Saul turned to him, then glanced at Jimena to make sure she was on guard. She gave him a small nod, so he stepped over, pried the apple out of the sorcerer’s mouth, and tossed it to the caterpillar. “Was there something you meant to say?”

“Arjasp is no magus!” the sorcerer ranted. “Accursed be the magi, who led their people only to doom and degradation! Who lost them their empire and found them only a small piece of the world in which to hide, and that pestilential with heat and humidity! Nay, Arjasp is not one of those craven priests!”

He seemed to be overlooking the fact that if any priests had helped the ancient Persians win their empire, it must have been those same magi. Thinking as deviously as he could, Saul shrugged and said, “So this barbarian from the steppes is an improvement?”

“Arjasp is no barbarian!” the sorcerer exclaimed indignantly. “He is a true son of the old Persians, come from the purity of the mountains to lead the remnants of that noble race to triumph—and with them, we who are so enlightened as to join them! He has gathered a score of different peoples to the worship of Angra Mainyu, and the Dark God shall lead us to victory, aye, to dominion over all the world!”

“Oh. So that’s why he needs to send you to steal babies and run his other little cowardly errands?”

“Arjasp is no coward!” The sorcerer’s body convulsed with anger; he actually managed to sit up. “He is courageous and mighty! The power of Ahriman is great within him! If he stays in the center of Asia, there is no cowardice in it, but only the need to continually inspire the gur-khan and the chiefs of all the peoples, and to assure that all work together to hold the conquered lands in subjugation and teach them the worship of Ahriman while the hordes press toward the West to conquer more and more of the world! He shall retake the lands the Arabs stole from his fathers, he shall triumph in every corner of the world, and Ahriman shall have dominion over all!”

He made it sound as though the barbarians had already overrun China and India. Saul devoutly hoped not. “And you? What are you going to get for being his errand boy?”

The sorcerer gave him a nasty grin. “I shall be vizier to the chieftain given governance of a conquered province—shall we say, Merovence?”

“Not when he finds out how you bungled it.”

The sorcerer, realizing Saul’s intention, opened his mouth for a scream of outrage—and Saul pushed the other apple in, to hold his teeth apart.

Jimena began to mutter to herself:

While she was chanting, the sorcerer gargled in fury. Saul, grinning, shoved his toes under the man’s hip, pried and lifted, and rolled him, howling, to jar against his assistant. Then he spread his hands and chanted,

But priest and acolyte, mouths free now, had been chanting in unison; they turned translucent, then solid again. The priest grinned, stabbed a finger at Saul and began intoning another verse in his native tongue.

Jimena called out the last line of her verse:

Still howling, the sorcerous duo turned into mist and blew away, joining the vapor around them.

Saul turned and came grimly back to Jimena. “Thanks for the save.”

“What would you have done here without me?” she asked simply.

Saul nodded. “Yeah, it was smarter to gang up on them.”

Jimena looked puzzled. “Two against two?”

“That’s what I meant. Sounds like we’re up against worse than we knew, milady.”

“Yes.” Jimena shivered. “Let us return to our own place and time, Saul, while we discuss this. I feel strangely vulnerable here.”

“Not strange at all,” Saul said. He looked around. “Which way did we come in?”

A giant spiderweb spread into sparkling life against the mist.

“I think we are being given a hint,” Jimena said.

“Seems so.” Saul proferred his arm. “Milady, shall we walk?”

Jimena took his arm, and together they stepped into the spiderweb.

The caterpillar, having finished the apple, started to follow them. The six-inch spider eyed it hungrily.