The Crusading Wizard

CHAPTER 23

A huge hand slid into his field of view, horny palm up and wide enough to park a truck. Matt squirmed, trying to writhe away from it, but the huge palm followed him. He smacked into it and saw stars again. He just had time for the crazy thought that he should qualify as an astronomer when his body sent his brain the message that it was one big ache—but his brain forgot that message in panic as huge fingers closed over him and the whole world rang with a very nasty laugh.

His stomach could tell he was going up; then the fingers opened to show him the ugliest face he’d ever seen. Huge eyes bulged beneath a grimy turban with scarcely any forehead separating them. The nose would have looked nice making furrows in a field, and the grinning mouth was mostly notable because of the two huge tusks where lower eyeteeth should have been, tusks that stabbed upward and a jaw that sank downward, opening a maw like the back of a garbage truck, both in size and smell. The hand holding Matt swung him toward that mouth …

“Unhand him!” cried Lakshmi’s voice, and slender fingers slipped between mouth and man to catch Matt as he slid. The djinna’s fist closed about him, swinging him aside, but he could see between her knuckles as she backhanded the ugly djinn with her right. He flipped backward and kept flipping as Lakshmi tucked Matt against her bosom, as usual, and dove earthward with Balkis sinking her claws into Matt and yowling every inch of the way.

Lakshmi swung down for a landing somewhat rougher than customary, telling them, “It is a monster of an afrit, and an unbeliever, one who still worships only himself and has not come to believe in Allah. But he knows not what he has set upon. We shall put him to rights soon enough.” Then she shot back up into the sky.

Watching, Matt saw that Prince Marudin and the afrit had squared off against each other and were trading blows—boulders, fireballs, thunderbolts, all conjured from nowhere. But the afrit was clearly getting the worst of it—each of Marudin’s blows sent him reeling backward in the sky, sometimes flipping toes over turban, whereas Marudin advanced upright and steadily.

Then Lakshmi hit the afrit, and hit him hard.

He was just finishing a flip caused by a giant toadstool. Lakshmi caught him by the heels and began to swing him around. The creature bawled with terror as she swung him faster and faster, a virtual blur, and it must have been his own imagination, Matt thought, but he could have sworn the afrit was beginning to come apart in the middle.

Marudin floated nearby, watching judiciously. Just as it seemed the afrit was about to be subdivided, he pronounced, “Enough.”

Lakshmi let go, and the afrit went flying, to slam spread-eagled against a mountainside. Marudin and Lakshmi were instantly upon him, materializing bronze spikes and hurling them to strike deep into the rock at either side of wrist and ankle, pinning the afrit in place.

Prince Marudin wiped a hand across a bleeding mouth, and the wound healed. “How shall we punish this fool of an unbeliever, my love?”

“For the audacity of attacking two Marids?” Lakshmi answered. “Shred his essence and scatter it to the winds! Let him be a century putting himself back together, if he can.”

“A good thought.” Marudin drifted closer to the rock, hands out to shred.

“Punish me not at all!” the afrit bleated. “I had no choice in what I did! I am set here by a magic greater than my own, to stop all who may seek to pass the Hindu Kush! “

“No, wait.” Lakshmi reached out to stay her husband’s hand. “I have suffered such a fate myself. If ‘tis true, ‘tis not his fault.”

Marudin frowned, drifting in to inspect the afrit closely. His nose wrinkled. “It is true; I smell the stench of foul magicks even here!”

“Who stationed you so?” Lakshmi demanded.

“A mortal clad all in dark blue,” the afrit told them. “He bound me by the power of a ring!”

Lakshmi frowned. “Was he old or young?”

“Old, very old! White hair and beard!”

“Was he Hindu, Arab, Persian, or Afghan?”

“An Arab, most clearly!”

“I think he is dead,” Lakshmi informed the afrit. “At least, one such sorcerer is gone to his doom.” She turned to Marudin. “Let us leave him here; he will work his way loose soon enough. We shall bid the wizard free him from his binding to these mountains.”

“But what shall protect me from more of these mortals’ spells?” the afrit protested.

“Islam,” Lakshmi replied, “surrender to Allah. Become a believer, and the minions of the Prince of Lies shall lose all magical power over you.” She turned away and dove down toward the earth.

Marudin lingered long enough to say, “Never again be such a fool as to attack a Marid.” Then he followed his wife.

They shrank to human size as they landed, to find Matt bemused and awed.

Balkis, on the other hand, had found a pool of water in the rocks, fed by the last rain, and was washing her face—in human form.

“What make you of this, Lord Wizard?” Lakshmi demanded.

“A narrow escape,” Matt said fervently. “I’m just glad I was traveling with you two.”

“That, of course,” Lakshmi said impatiently, “though you should have known we would never let you come to harm.”

“Oh, I do! It’s just a little hard to remember when you’re in free fall.”

“Be mindful of my debt to you, when next you fear,” Marudin advised. “What say you of this afrit, though? Why was he set here to stop all who sought to cross these mountains?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Matt asked, surprised. “Arjasp is afraid of magic workers coming anywhere near his barbarians.”

“So I thought, too,” Lakshmi said with grim satisfaction. “We go not only toward our children, but also toward the center of these invaders—the throne, and the power behind it.”

“It also tells us that Arjasp isn’t all that sure he can win against us,” Matt said. “At the very least, this gives him warning we’re coming.”

“How can he know that it is we who come?”

Matt shrugged, and Balkis said, “He knows it is folk whose magic can match his own. Who else could it be?”

“Very true.” Matt looked down at the teenager. “Though to be honest, I don’t think he knows about you.”

Balkis stared at him in alarm. “Do not think that I can do more than I can!”

“We shall not,” Lakshmi promised her, “but I take his point: that sometimes even a small magic may win a battle, if it is sent at the right time and place, and the enemy knows nothing of it.”

But Balkis still looked scared. At least, being in human form, her fur wasn’t standing on end.

Back in the air, with the Hindu Kush unreeling below them again, Lakshmi confided, “I expected fretting and anxiety mixed in with the joys of parenthood, but never such as this!”

“I know what you mean,” Matt sighed. ” ‘He who hath a wife and babes, gives hostages to Fortune.‘ “

Balkis looked up sharply. “ Is that where the babies are? With Fortune?”

“Uh … well, not literally,” Matt tried to explain. “The first part is a metaphor, you see—ascribing the characteristics of one thing to another. The second part is a personification, pretending ‘Fortune’ is a person, not a thing, and—”

“Nonsense!” Lakshmi declared. “If you can ascribe it, then Fortune can indeed be a person, not a pretense! Does she not govern all our lives? Or at least weight them heavily. Nay, let us go and find her!” She raised her voice. “Marudin! A new trail! Follow!”

“Don’t be so literal!” Matt cried. “Fortune’s a concept; not a person!”

But Lakshmi said, “Not in this world. Let us go to find this Fortune.” Again she called out, “Husband, aid me!” Then she spun into a whirlwind, chanting a verse in Arabic, voice rising higher and higher. Nearby, Marudin’s voice underscored hers with the same words.

“No, wait!” Matt protested. “It was only a figure of speech, a—” Then he broke off, clamping his jaws shut against nausea.

Djinn and djinna chanted, and the world whirled about Matt and Balkis. They were lost inside a multicolored tornado. Balkis, becoming a cat again, yowled and sank in her claws. Matt was glad he’d thought to wrap his robe about his arm this time. Then all he could think of was trying to hold down his last meal as the tornado churned about him, rising, rising interminably …

… then suddenly fell. The whirling slowed and stopped, the scenery steadied around them, and Matt was glad somebody had taken the overdrive off the merry-go-round. Even more slowly, his stomach stopped churning and settled back into place.

Even through his queasiness, habit and caution made him survey his surroundings. They were mostly a blank, gray, curving wall, though as he turned farther, he saw stalactites and stalagmites, some joining to form pinch-wasted pillars. At least he knew he was in a cave.

Then he heard the singing.

“I think I’d better get down,” he whispered to Lakshmi.

“Can you stand?” she asked.

“Only one way to find out.”

Lakshmi let him down by shrinking down to human size, spilling him out of her arms as she went. Balkis abandoned ship, took a few wobbling steps that grew steadier with every paw-padding, and prowled ahead toward the light that came through the assortment of stone icicles and columns ahead of them. Matt tried to follow, but stumbled. Lakshmi caught his elbow and held him up; someone else caught his other elbow. He looked up, surprised, to see Prince Marudin smiling down at him. Matt tried to grin back, took another step, and within ten paces was walking unaided.

As quietly as they could, they followed the sound of singing and the light.

The contralto was singing in several minor keys, which made things interesting if painful to hear. Matt reminded himself that scales and modes were cultural variables and tiptoed ahead, following a curve in the cave. As he came around it, he stopped, staring in astonishment.

The cave opened out into a large chamber, perhaps thirty feet by sixty. An older woman with a head of wild, light-colored curls stepped forward to a multitude of spinning disks fixed to the wall. She stopped half a dozen of them, drew out darts, then set them each spinning again. She backed away, surveying the collection. The whole wall was filled with such disks, all spinning, though Matt couldn’t make out the markings on them. With a nod of satisfaction, the woman raised a dart and sighted along it. She was perhaps in her fifties, and heavy enough to have a double chin and jowls. She wore a great deal too much makeup, cheeks very obviously rouged, eyelashes even more obviously false. Her frowzy hair was so bright a yellow that it seemed to owe more to chemistry than to Nature, and the way the curls were coming undone and straggling spoke of a similar debt to curling papers and irons. She wore cloth draped in a style that might have been Greek or Roman, but might also have been a hodgepodge of ancient fashions, and her singing was sometimes tuneless, sometimes wordless, sometimes bewitching in its loveliness, sometimes filled with poetry and wonder, sometimes completely empty.

The beldame hurled the dart. It struck one of the disks with so sharp a sound that it was clearly going to stay. She clapped her hands, exclaiming with delight, then picked up another dart and sighted for another throw.

“Can this be the dame herself?” Lakshmi hissed in disbelief.

“It can,” Matt said with resignation. “Fortune isn’t what it used to be, you know.”

When she had thrown all the darts, Fortune strode over to the disks to inspect her handiwork more closely. She nodded, chuckling, pleased with the results, then suddenly frowned and clucked her tongue, shaking her head. With a shrug and a sigh, she started choosing darts to pull out and darts to leave in—but as her hand touched one that had lodged in a rather small disk, she looked, then looked again and stared, mouth dropping open. She shut it with a snap and whirled, setting her hands on her hips and staring directly at Matt. “How dare you seek to spy out the workings of Fortune!”

“I have to,” Matt said. “I’m in politics.” He frowned and stepped out from the maze of stalactites. “How could you tell I was here just by looking at your targets?”

“You are one of the folk in this complex!” Fortune pointed to the little wheel. “I could see that a chance remark had made you come visit me!”

A chance remark? Well, yes, he supposed that line from Shakespeare fitted that description.

“How did you think to find me?” the dame demanded.

“We did not think,” Lakshmi said, “only acted.”

The beldame frowned in thought, then nodded. “That is a way to find me, yes—in fact, you’ll find little else by such deeds, save perhaps Doom and Disaster.”

Matt shuddered. “I’d rather not make their acquaintances, if you don’t mind.”

“Would you not?” Fortune asked in surprise. “But you have come close to them so often.”

Matt shuddered; she confirmed what he had suspected. “Uh, any ideas on how to avoid their company?”

“Do you truly wish to?” Fortune’s gaze strayed, becoming misty-eyed and nostalgic. “The dear lads! We were so close once—still are, really … Well!” She turned back to Matt, and to the moment. “Avoid them? Then avoid me! Or build a stout hedge between yourself and myself, if you can!”

“If,” Matt said with a shiver. “How do you recommend I do that?”

“Oh … become a boon companion of Prudence and Forethought.” Fortune made a face at the mere thought of the two. “A dull pair indeed! You know the ways—save money and goods; invest wisely in the present so that you may build a fortune in the future; make friends, doing favors for one another, so many friends that you become a community …”

“Find security,” Matt summarized, then bit his tongue. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to mention your enemy.”

“Oh, Security is no enemy of mine.” Fortune dismissed the remark with a wave. “Indeed, Security is not a person, but a sort of castle you mortal folk seek to build, and I have the most delightful time trying to knock it apart, which I sometimes can. Of course, those who become bosom friends with Prudence have her strength to buttress their walls, and though I can shake their castles, I can knock down very few of them …”

“But you have pulverized mine,” Lakshmi said, face darkening, “shattered my walls and stolen my children! Where are they, rapacious one? Tell, or we shall measure the power of the djinn ‘gainst those of Chance!”

“No, not Chance.” Fortune shook her head with certainty. “You would not want to meet him; he lives in a cavern nearby, and has the teeth of a shark and the tentacles of an octopus; even I cannot stand against him, and you? Or any creature of the waking world? No, no, poor lass! Do not so much as think of it!”

Lakshmi’s head snapped back in shock; then her eyes brimmed with tears. “Where are they, then? If ‘tis you who have sundered them from me, then ‘tis you who can tell me where they are! Do, I pray thee, or I shall have to confront this Chance of whom you speak.”

“Not Chance, never Chance, never.” Fortune came fluttering toward her, arms out to embrace. “Poor dear, poor bereaved lass!” She folded the unwilling djinna into her arms. “Courage, though, for you have regained the husband who was stolen from you already. Ah, if I could tell you where your babes are, I would, but even I know only that Arjasp has spirited them away to Central Asia, and there hidden them—but where I cannot say, for ‘twas done with Shrewdness and Care, whose cloaks shield all from even my eyes!”

She released Lakshmi, plucking a handkerchief from her bosom and offering it. Lakshmi took it and dabbed at her eyes, pleading, “Tell me, then, since you can see what is to be—will my babes still be in that same hiding place when I find Arjasp?”

“You will not find him—he will find you, for he summons you through your little ones,” Fortune said regretfully. “As to seeing the future, no, I cannot. I have some role in making it, but I cannot see it, for I throw my darts blindly and know not where they will land until I hear them bite into my targets—and it will be some time yet ere I throw the darts for the balance of your quest. I cannot even yet say whether you will come to Arjasp’s court with your companions.” At the concluding word, her gaze drifted and her eyes filled; she took another handkerchief from her bosom and pressed it to her nose as she sniffled. “Companions! Ah, would I could have some! ‘Tis a lonely life, you know, being Fortune.”

“Surely there must be some among those whom you have blessed who would be delighted to visit with you, at least!” Lakshmi protested.

“Few.” The tears were running freely now. “Those whom I have most favored believe in me least—and even those who do, have not the magic to come to me. You, now, you have the magic, but I may not favor you, for my wheels spin and the darts land where they will, so in a few weeks time you, too, may hate me!”

“Surely you could take better aim,” Lakshmi argued.

“I can take aim, yes.” Fortune nodded. “Sometimes that aim holds true. But there are sudden gusts through my cave, from the cavern next to mine—the Winds of Chance—and no matter how carefully I choose, Chance may deflect my darts whenever he wishes.”

“Try, at least,” Matt urged. “If we aren’t too sunk in gloom at the end of our quest—” He let the sentence hang while he gave Lakshmi a questioning glance; she nodded. Matt turned back to Fortune and finished the sentence. “—we’ll stop and visit on our way back, if we’re not too glum to be good company.”

“You will? Oh, bless you, my friends!” The tears dried on the instant, and Fortune seized a throw rug from its place between two stalactites. She gave it a shake, letting it float to the ground. “Come, let us share a bite and a sip before we part!”

The rug landed in place, revealing a silver service laid out for tea, with small trays of tempting biscuits and sandwiches—cucumber, cheese and tomato, and chicken salad. Fortune glanced up at them and misinterpreted their amazement. She clapped her hand over her mouth, then took it away to say, “Oh, my! I had forgotten! Arabian, not English!” She seized the rug, gave it a shake. It snapped in a wave, and when it settled, the service had changed to a small brass pot with a wooden handle protruding from its side, brazen demitasses, and a collection of small brass plates holding little squares of Turkish Delight and baba-au-rhum.

Lakshmi gave a glad cry, and Matt closed his eyes as he inhaled the fragrance—but Balkis shied away, eyeing the service warily.

“Do you not like it?” Fortune asked anxiously. “Love it!” Matt dropped down cross-legged next to the rug. “You just got yourself a guest!”

Fortune smiled with relief and sat gracefully across from him—and Matt realized that she must have lost twenty pounds at least, her gown seemed to have stabilized along classical Greek lines, and her frowzy curls had settled into a neat coiffure. She poured, asking, “What do you think of the weather over the Hindu Kush?”

“Over it is fine,” Matt said. “On it is another matter. The southern slopes seem to be getting a lot of rain, which is fine for India, but the Afghans could probably use a bit more moisture on the northern side.”

“Ah, the poor Afghans!” Fortune sighed, handing a cup to Lakshmi. “Try as I may to hurl my dart toward rain for them, Chance always blows it aside!”

“They survive, though,” Matt said. “A very hardy people. And how has the weather been in Baluchistan this year?”

So it went, a very pleasant half hour, but when they were done and Fortune was lifting the rug to shake the service away, Matt asked, somewhat tentatively, “I don’t suppose you could tell me if my children are with Lakshmi’s?”