The Feline Wizard

CHAPTER 9

“I?” Anthony turned to Balkis in alarm—but not, she saw, in surprise. “They are my family!”

“Family!” Balkis scoffed. “What manner of family love is this, to scorn you and mock you and beat you and rejoice at your humiliation?”

“There is a better side to them,” Anthony said, but he did not meet her eyes.

“If there is,” she told him, “I have not seen it. You are no youth in his teens, but a man grown and able to make your own way in the world—and they have cast you out into the snow! Truly, Anthony, there is no reason why one so good-hearted as yourself should stay to be degraded and beaten by your own family.”

“But… where else should I go?” His gaze wandered. “I know nothing but farming, after all—surely not enough to make my way in a strange world.”

“I do,” Balkis told him. “I began my life with a caravan and took up my travels again only two years ago, when my foster parents died.”

“Truly?” Anthony asked, wide-eyed. “But how could such journeying have been safe for so young a maiden?”

“It was not,” Balkis admitted, “but it was safe enough for a cat.”

This time Anthony's grin came slowly. “Of course! You need only appear as a woman when you wish it!”

“Which is not often, when I travel,” Balkis said, “only with someone I trust.” Her gaze met his, and the feeling of contact, of mind meeting mind, shook her so that she looked away quickly.

“You honor me,” Anthony said softly.

“You have been a kind friend,” Balkis said, still studying the hay.

“Yes. I never pulled your tail.”

“And you had better not!” Balkis fixed him with a glare, but his grin was infectious, and she felt her lip quirk into a smile, then laughed. He joined her, and they leaned together, laughing. Then Balkis looked up at him, her expression serious. “I must journey again ” she said. “I must go home. I would feel much safer with a companion.”

Anthony met her gaze again, and his grin faded into the slightest of smiles. “Still you honor me, beautiful maiden.”

Balkis looked away uncomfortably. “I trust you, as I said— you have a good heart. You have defended me—now I will defend you, and helping one another, we might well come unscathed to the land of Prester John.”

“Prester John!” Anthony breathed. “Is his kingdom your homeland?”

She saw the wonder and longing in his face, and said, “It is the land of my birth, yes.” Later she might explain that she had grown up far to the west, in Allustria, but that could wait. “I know not the way, though—I was sent here by magic.”

“Magic! You have sorcerous enemies, then?”

“It would seem so,” Balkis admitted, “though I had not thought I had offended anyone.” No one but thegur-khan and his chief priest, said a small voice within her mind, but she ignored it—surely the men of the horde would have slain her, not exiled her. “Travel with me,” she urged, “and I shall find a way for you to cope with whatever trials we meet. When our journey is done, you shall see the land of Prester John.”

“The enchanted kingdom!” Anthony said, staring off into space at his own dreams. Then he came back to earth and frowned. “I could not leave my father and brothers to worry, though.”

“Then leave them a note,” Balkis suggested.

“A note?” Anthony said in surprise. “But I am only a peasant! I cannot write!”

“I can.” Balkis felt a surge of annoyance. Really, did the boy know nothing?

Only what mattered: how to be kind and gentle—and how to defend a friend.

“If you could write a note for me,” Anthony said slowly, “Father could take it to the priest to read…”

“Then let us do so.” Balkis looked about her. “Charcoal will do for the writing, and a clean board will serve for parchment.”

“I shall fetch them.” Once decided, Anthony had no hesitation. He descended the ladder, found charcoal at the forge and scrubbed a board clean, then dictated the letter. He choked over the words, and Balkis feared he would change his mind and stay, but when the message was written, Anthony fetched a coil of rope and two waterskins, then led her out to the smokehouse and gathered a dozen sausages. Balkis changed into a cat and leaped up to his shoulder, and equipped only with food, water, and rope, they set off down the hillside.

Anthony hesitated only as the sun rose before them. “The cows…”

“Your brothers will milk them when they come looking for you,” Balkis meowed at him. Or for me, she thought.

Anthony looked up at her in surprise. “You can talk in that form, then?”

“Try to stop me,” Balkis retorted. “Have you heard anyone say where the land of Prester John lies?”

“North,” Anthony answered.

“North let us go, then”

Anthony nodded, turning so that the sun was on his right, and set off diagonally across the hillside. Balkis looked back, wary that his brothers might try to track him and make him come back. She murmured a verse in Allustrian and a small whirlwind blew up, following them and obliterating their tracks with blown snow.

Satisfied, Balkis turned and looked forward again. For a moment her conscience hurt—it was good for her to have a road companion, but was this leave-taking good for Anthony?

Then she remembered the beating, and it firmed her resolve—this couldn't be worse, surely. If Anthony had been a boy in his teens, not yet ready to face the world on his own, it might have been different—but he was a man who would have already married and left home if there had been more women in his country. He was ready to go out into the world on his own, past ready—and if he didn't like Prester John's country, he could always come home. In fact, she could make sure he had a horse and a mounted escort—and money enough to set his father and brothers in his power for a change. She relished the thought as Anthony finished traversing the hill and struck a set of icy ruts that served as a road leading northward. “We have begun our journey, Kit!” he said, exulting. “I mean, Balkis.”

“We have begun indeed, son of men,” she agreed, “and begun well.”

The road stretched out before them, all the way home to Maracanda.

The road may have led toward the north, but it also led downward. Toward evening it rose again for a mile to a ridge that fell away to a valley floor. As they descended, the road slanting toward the stream below, Balkis noticed that the drifts by the roadside scarcely came to Anthony's knees, and saw dripping icicles on the bare branches whenever they passed a stand of birches.

As they strode lower, though, the sun hid behind the peak at the western end of the valley and the dripping lessened, then stopped as the air chilled, leaving the icicles frozen again. It was the mountains' height that had brought them snow, Balkis realized, and the lower they went, the warmer it would be, as she expected from a southern climate. “When we come out of the mountains to the plains,” she asked, “will there still be snow?”

“I doubt it,” Anthony said. “The flatlands are always oven-hot when we visit them in the summer, and they must be warm enough for crops to grow even now.” He made a face. “The air is thick with heat and moisture, though. It will be painful to breathe.”

Balkis hid a smile. She didn't doubt Anthony's words—for a man raised to breathing the thin, dry air of the mountains, the lowland air must indeed seem like soup.

The ground leveled about them, and they were so far below the ridge that the land lay in twilight. Suddenly a partridge burst from cover almost beneath Anthony's nose.

“Good hunting!” Balkis cried, and leaped down off Anthony's shoulder.

“Good indeed,” he said, and she heard a hissing. She looked up to see a circular blur above his raised hand; then his arm whipped down and the partridge gave one raucous cry and fell out of the sky.

Shaken, Balkis stared up at her gentle Anthony as he wrapped the strings of the sling around its leather pouch and tucked it back in his belt. “I think we shall have fresh meat for dinner,” he said, “not merely boiled jerky.”

“It would seem so,” Balkis replied. “Do you always carry that with you?”

“Of course,” Anthony said. “You never know when dinner will spring up before your eyes. Do not people carry slings in your homeland?”

“Not in the cities,” Balkis said, “but we find our dinners in the marketplace there.”

“Ah.” Anthony nodded, understanding, and went to fetch the partridge.

Balkis decided that perhaps he didn't need quite so much help as she had thought.

They ate in companionable silence. Balkis changed back into a woman for the occasion, reasoning that her larger stomach could hold more food, which would sustain her longer. She told herself it had nothing to do with Anthony's admiring glances—but she did relish them. She was beginning to enjoy the strange, warm sensation those looks raised in her. Besides, the feeling was less intense in human form.

As she wiped her fingers on a tuft of dead grass, Anthony said, “Shall we play the old game, then?”

“What?” Balkis stared at him, trying to decide whether or not to feel insulted.

“The game,” Anthony explained. “You saw us at it last night, did you not? I have played at telling the old tales in verse as long as I can remember.”

“Oh! The old tales,” Balkis said, relieved. “It is not a game with which I am familiar, Anthony. Besides, I may not know your tales.”

“How diverting!” Anthony exclaimed. “A new tale! Make up whatever comes to your mind, then.”

“I—I do not know if I can.” But Balkis realized what a rare treat this must be for him, to start not only the verse but also the whole saga, with no one to object. She couldn't disappoint him. “I shall try, though…”

“And you shall succeed!” Anthony assured her. “Here, I shall begin it.” He stared into the fire; his face became blank, then his eyes began to glow as he intoned, “Rustam woke and … No, he sprang from his bed … No, the meter is off with that… Rustam op'd his eyes and … Drat!” He broke off with an embarrassed laugh. “I have never begun the lay before! Once it is under way, I have no difficulty with the middle lines and certainly not with the last—now and again, even a first line will come to me—but the first line of a whole saga? Your pardon, for this will take some time.”

Balkis' heart ached for Anthony, frustrated when he finally had the chance to begin. If she could start him, though, he would be able to keep the tale going, at least. “Let me try, then.” Balkis was quite sure of herself with beginnings and middles. “What does Rustam do?”

“Why, he wakes, says his morning prayer to the sun, and equips himself for the hunt,” Anthony said, as though it should have been obvious. Then he reddened and gave an embarrassed laugh. “Your pardon; already I have forgotten that you said you do not know the tale.”

Balkis' resentment faded as quickly as it had come; she appreciated his understanding of his own gaffe. She did hope, though, that he wouldn't be asking her pardon every time she turned around. “It is enough to know how the lay begins. Let me see, now… Rustam woke and blessed the dawn…”

“See! You are quite able!” Anthony said, his enthusiasm restored. “Prayed to dawn and took his bow…”

Bow? What next? Then Balkis remembered what one did to prepare a bow. “Bent the stave with easy brawn…”

“Dawn and brawn! Good!” Anthony approved, then added, “Strung it and chose well his arrow… Finish the verse now.”

Balkis' heart sank at the prospect of finding the end-line. Arrow? What went with an arrow? And rhymed with “brawn”? Balkis stammered, “He shot at … I mean, he pulled the feathers … Confound it, Anthony, for confounded I am! I have never been able to end a verse!”

“I can, be sure,” Anthony said with a wry smile and chanted, “Slung his quiver and upon … There, now, begin a new verse.”

New verse? Knowing only that Rustam had “upon'ed something? Upon? Upon what? Was Anthony mad? But Balkis remembered that she did not have to make this line rhyme; she could end it with whatever word she chose, and the rhyming would be Anthony's problem. With a wicked grin, she said, “Out upon… the grass he… he stepped…”

“To seek the spoor and stalk a doe!” Anthony cried. “You see? It is easy!”

Easy for you, Balkis thought, but she returned his smile, caught up in his enthusiasm. Then she remembered that she had to rhyme her own first line. Stepped? What rhymed with “stepped”?

Leapt! “A stream he found, and o'er it leapt…”

“Long he sought…” Anthony said, diving into the second verse.

Balkis kept up with him as well as she could, which was quite well on the first and middle lines—but the final rhyme always defeated her. After bailing her out three more times, Anthony said charitably, “Take the second line this time.”

“Oh, no!” Balkis protested. “You have had so little chance!”

“I've had small enough chance with the mid-lines, either,” Anthony pointed out, “and I will be quite happy with the third line and the last. After all, I am the clean-up boy, am I not?”

“You are far more than that!” Balkis cried in anger.

Anthony looked deeply into her eyes, his gaze almost seeming to devour hers. She felt a fluttering inside and an impulse to turn away, but stood her ground, gazing back at him. “Never try to outstare a cat,” she warned.

Anthony laughed with sheer delight, and the sound was balm to her heart. “I was staring, wasn't I?” he said. “Forgive, beautiful lady! But it is very good of you to think of me so— and if you say I am, I shall be so!”

After all, Balkis decided, the first lines were the prize he had been so long denied—and once the poem had been started, what was the difference between the middle lines of a verse and the first, save that the first could establish a new rhyme, and was therefore even easier to craft?

“Well enough, then, lad. You take the first line, and send Rustam off on the hunt.”

“Then you take the second,” Anthony said with a grin, “and lead him where he has never gone before.”

Thus the evening passed, and when she lay down to sleep, warmed only by her cloak and the campfire, Balkis was surprised to realize that she was nonetheless quite content.

Stegoman thundered into the air and found a thermal to lift him higher. Matt scanned the sky but saw no sign of a slender red dragon. Then he looked ahead and saw beyond the mountains a vast expanse of beige.

“Southern desert ahead,” he pointed out to Stegoman.

“I shall gain altitude while I can,” the dragon said. “The air over that wasteland will not be rising until midday.”

Matt took the hint—no landing until noon, unless it was an emergency.

Stegoman flew high indeed, enough so that the desert looked like corrugated iron—until Matt remembered that those corrugations were rows of sand dunes. After an hour or so, they crossed a long, pale line that snaked its way from the southern horizon to the northern mountains. “Follow that strand!” he called to Stegoman. “It's a road!”

“Who would have need of a road on so flat a land?” Stegoman asked, but banked to follow the track anyway. Matt bit back comments about quicksands, jagged rocks, and slippery footing and contented himself with, “Thanks.”

As the sun rose higher and the land warmed, Stegoman settled lower, confident in the ability of the heated, rising air to take him aloft again. It was nearly noon when Matt spotted the cluster of dots on the roadway. “People!” he called to Stegoman.

“You wish to land and question them, I assume,” the dragon sighed.

“You don't mind, do you?”

“Not at all—if they have a spare goat nearby.” Stegoman wheeled back, then came in for a landing.

With his usual caution about public appearances, Stegoman slid to earth behind a sand dune a quarter mile from the road. It only took Matt ten minutes to hike in, but even so, the sun baked him so thoroughly that he arrived feeling dehydrated.

The travelers were riding camels and leading others laden with goods—all rather skittish, having seen a dragon overhead. The people stopped to stare at Matt. They wore loose coats and trousers of off-white, unbleached muslin, long enough to protect them from the sun, loose enough and light enough to be cool—or as cool as they could be in the desert.

“Hail!” Matt raised a hand and decided to start with the language of Maracanda.

“Hail,” a graybeard answered, raising his own hand in return.

“I'm looking for a young woman.”

“Most men your age are.” The graybeard's eye twinkled.

Matt grinned in answer. “Not that way—I'm her teacher, and she's disappeared.”

“She did not like your teaching?” a young man asked with a grin.

Just what Matt needed—a whole caravan full of comics. “Seems to have decided she knew enough to strike out on her own—and maybe she does, but I'm concerned anyway. You haven't seen a lone girl, have you?”

“We have not,” the young man said, and another assured him, “We would have noticed.”

“Noticed, but nothing more,” said the young woman beside him, with a dagger-glance, “at least, if you wished to sleep easily.”

“Let your heart be light.” The young man caught her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I would have noticed her and called you to talk with her, nothing more.”

The young woman's glance was somewhat mollified, but she was still suspicious.

So was Matt, suspicious enough to realize that Balkis would have been very foolish to try hiking in her human form. “She had a pet with her,” he said. “I don't suppose you've seen a cat?”

“A cat?” The young men stared.

“Yeah.” Matt was about to mention color, then realized he didn't know what robe Balkis had been wearing for her kidnapping. He hoped it wasn't blue or purple or green. “You know, small furry animal, long tail, whiskers, retractable claws?” Matt pantomimed as he talked.

The nomads stared at him as though he were mad.

“This is poor country for cats,” the young woman told him.

An older woman nodded. “There is little to hunt, and less to drink.”

Well, Matt wasn't entirely sure of that—he saw clumps of scrub brush here and there and knew it probably supported small colonies of mice who knew how to find the catch basins that watered it. Still, he wasn't about to contradict the locals. “If you do see one, could you take her in?”

“The cat, or the woman?” the second young man asked.

“Right,” Matt answered. “I'll try to check back with you later.”

“Be sure that I shall help her.” The young woman gave her young man another whetted glance.

“We shall, us women together,” the older woman confirmed.

“Thanks.” Matt smiled. “I'd appreciate it. Have a good trip.” He waved as he turned to start back to Stegoman.

“Beware, stranger,” the graybeard called after him. “There was a dragon flying overhead not long ago.”

“I'll keep an eye out for him,” Matt said with a backward glance. “Thanks.”

“It was not perchance your dragon, was it?”

“Mine? No, we're just friends. Take care, now.” And Matt plodded back to Stegoman, oblivious to the stares at his back.

Each day's travel took Balkis and Anthony lower and lower; each noon's sun was warmer and warmer, though the nights stayed chill. By the end of the week they had come down into flat land, and Balkis found it was desert. The days were warmer than was comfortable, but not really hot; it was winter, after all. In her northern cloak, though, Balkis sweltered. She took it off, folded it flat, and slung it over her shoulder, retying her sash to hold it to her waist.

“Beware the sun's rays,” Anthony warned her. “They can burn.”

“I shall chance it,” Balkis told him. “The sun is my summer friend.” She doubted that the Central Asian winter could be that much worse than an Allustrian summer, which tanned her golden skin to bronze. She looked at Anthony with concern. “But your fair skin worries me.”

“I have a hood.” Anthony pulled it up to demonstrate. “Oh, my woolens are too warm for comfort, but I should be able to trade for a cotton robe as soon as we meet other travelers.” He took a shiny stone from his pocket. “We find these in the streams now and then. It should do for trade.”

Balkis glanced at the stone, then stared. It was gold. “Yes,” she said, “that might even buy robes for both of us—and a dozen more.”

“So small a stone as this?” A shadow crossed Anthony's face. “I wish we could find many of these, for then my father and brothers could cease this lifelong toil that makes them grow knobbed and bowed.” Then he brightened. “Still, with this one, perhaps we can buy food—and water, too.”

Balkis almost said that there was no sense in paying for water, but she looked at the desert stretching before them and said instead, “Could anyone spare water here, even for gold?”

“Some bring huge skins of it to trade, for it is dear in this waste,” Anthony said, “Nonetheless, there is water for those who know where to look.”

Balkis looked up at him in surprise, then remembered. “Yes, you have been here before, you said.”

Anthony nodded. “During the hot months, we bring down livestock and grain to sell to the caravans. It is only a few miles, but it has taught us some knowledge of desert ways.”

Balkis had dim memories of having traveled with a caravan as a cat during her human infancy, but not enough to do much good. “How shall we travel, then?”

“By night.” Anthony flashed her a grin. “Come, let me show you a cave where my family shelters when we travel.”

He turned to go, but Balkis stayed him with a hand on his sleeve. “Will they not think to look for you there?”

“Do you truly think they will look for me?” Anthony asked, with a sad and weary smile that seemed to accept every dagger Fate threw at him.

He seemed so forlorn that Balkis spoke without thinking. “Of course they will! You are theirs, after all.”

“A possession, you mean?” But Anthony's eye gained a gleam, even if it was only a sardonic one. “Perhaps they will at that—when several days have passed and they are convinced I will not come crawling back for food and shelter and they will have to do their own milking and mucking out. If they do follow, we will be gone long before they arrive. Let us find shelter.”

The shelter turned out to be a hollow in the bank of a ravine which was plainly a dry watercourse.

“If it should rain, we will move to higher ground,” Anthony explained, “and that quickly, for this gully will hold a raging torrent. There is a hidden pool; I know where to dig to find it.”

“Has it rained so recently, then?” Balkis looked at the arid land around her.

“No,” Anthony said, “but we came through melting snow, and some of it sinks down into a stream that pools out below-ground here. Even when there is no rain, this watercourse stays damp.”

Balkis had a vision of all that runoff filling the gully and shuddered.

The cave was a rough semicircle twelve feet deep. Anthony led the way to six pallets of straw at the back of the cave. “It is scarcely fresh, but is so dry that it will still do for beds—and will surely be more comfortable than the bare earth.”

“It will that,” Balkis said fervently, and spread her cloak over the pallet farthest to the side. Anthony spread his over the pallet at the back, with two between them, so they lay down as they always did, ten feet apart. Balkis wondered how she would feel if he tried sleeping closer, and was shocked to realize that she wished he would.

They rose in the sunset and sat awhile talking as the day cooled into night—talked of the Mazdans, who prayed to the sun as a symbol of Ahura Mazda, the god of light, then of the religions in which each had been raised. Anthony's ancestors had worshiped the old Greek gods, brought eastward by Alexander's armies, until Christianity had penetrated even the forgotten villages of their mountains. He learned quickly that she was a different kind of Christian than he, and listened to the Roman rubrics with knitted brow, clearly not understanding—but Balkis realized that he was trying for her sake, and the thought warmed her against the night's chill.

And it was chill; she was amazed to realize it as she shook out her cloak and wrapped herself in it. “Perhaps those cotton robes will not be needed, after all.”

“Well, at least to sleep in,” Anthony said. “Besides, will we not need them in your homeland? It should be cool enough to travel by daylight there.”

The memory of Allustria in winter flashed through Balkis' mind; then she remembered that Maracanda was her home now. Even so, Prester John's city had certainly been cool enough when she had seen it last. “We will,” she assured him. “Where shall we travel tonight?”

“To the oasis where we trade with the caravan drivers,” Anthony answered. “There we can find water without having to dig-That struck Balkis as a good beginning. She looked up at the wall of the ravine. “I think I can manage that in human form.”

“But your beautiful garments will be ruined!” Anthony protested.

Balkis shrugged. “We were going to buy new robes anyway, and my sleeping chemise is scarcely priceless.”

Anthony stared. “You wear so lovely a gown only for sleeping?”

Balkis found the comment oddly pleasing. She smiled and said, “I do not think my cloak will bear much damage from the climb—not if I wear it in this wise, at least.” She belted the flat folds back into place over her shoulder again, then turned to climb the slope. Anthony followed her quickly.

The angle wasn't so steep that they needed to use their hands more than once or twice, but they were breathing hard by the time they came out onto the desert floor. Balkis stood a moment to catch her breath, then asked, “Now! Where is this oasis of yours?”

“We need only follow the ravine,” Anthony said.

Balkis nodded and set off, preferring to travel beside him in her human form, though cat-guise would have been more convenient.

The sun was halfway up the sky before she saw palm trees appear, seemingly out of the sands. “I did not see these from the mountains,” she said. “Have we come so far as that?”

“Oh, we could have seen them, surely,” Anthony said, “but they would have seemed too small to notice.”

It sounded right, but Balkis glanced back at the mountains to see if they looked much smaller—and gasped. “Anthony! What is that moving fire?”

“Moving fire?” Anthony turned back in alarm, and saw a flaming shape moving toward them. “I know not—but it follows us! Run!”

Balkis ran.