The Feline Wizard

CHAPTER 2

Even as the dragon flies, it was a three-day journey. The first night, Matt bought a bullock from a farmer for Stegoman. Apparently he paid more than the beast was worth, for the dragon complained that Matt had given him a bum steer— old, tough, and no longer good for anything but leather. The second night, though, the dragon was able to hunt and bagged an elk.

They were on the same latitude as the Holland of Mart's universe, and as they flew over the broad, flat plains of Russia, Matt realized that Prester John's realm had to be at the southern edge of the Siberia of his own world and wondered how it could be anything but a frozen wasteland, let alone so warm and fertile as the land he had seen when he visited. He had come up from the south then, flying in the arms of a genie princess, so he hadn't been able to see much, but the glimpses he had gained made it seem quite natural to go from the heat of India and the dryness of Afghanistan into the moderate climate of Maracanda, Prester John's capital city. Coming from the west, though, he was far more aware of the steppes, and when Stegoman gave him a culinary review on a dinner of raw musk ox, Matt realized they had come into tundra.

The next day, though, they flew over a lake that was so huge Matt thought it was a sea until the far shore came in sight. When they were finally over dry land again, he could see the eastern horizon glitter with a sheen that could only be another vast lake. Between the two bodies of water, the land fairly glowed with the green of rich farms and was tidy with the neatness of fields diligently tended. The same climactic shift that had kept the England of this universe joined to the rest of Europe had also created a lush realm in the very heart of the Asian plains.

A climactic shift, or enchantment. Matt looked down at Prester John's kingdom and wondered how much magic had gone into the creation of this realm. If it had, then magic must also sustain it, and what would happen if there were no Prester John, no heir to the title, to keep that magic flowing? Matt did not doubt that Prester John prized Balkis because she was his long-lost niece, but he began to wonder if it was also because she was a powerful wizard, only in her teens, with the promise of learning even more.

Looking off toward the north, Matt saw the green fade into the tan of steppeland again. Looking southward, though, he saw the richness of field and orchard die away in the desert into which Prester John had fled to escape the horde. He thought he saw more greenery beyond, but it was so dim with distance that he couldn't be sure.

Then alabaster towers appeared on the eastern horizon. Half an hour later they were flying over the steeples and minarets of Maracanda.

Matt had better sense than to try to land in the middle of the city—people were already crowding into the streets and squares, pointing up at dragon and rider and exclaiming in excitement and fear; he could hear the buzz of talk even a hundred feet up. “Better land outside the walls, Stegoman.”

“That would seem prudent,” the dragon agreed, and circled outside the wall to land in the center of a grove a quarter mile away. As Matt climbed down, Stegoman said sternly, “None of this creeping off in the night to spare me danger, now!”

“Not a bit,” Matt promised. “If we march and I have to ride with them, I'll let you know.”

“March?” Stegoman reared back his head. “Would this Prester John truly take an army to search for a missing child?”

“Doesn't seem likely,” Matt admitted, “though the rumors about him make you think he never goes anywhere without a few thousand troops. But we've met before, and I think I can talk him into letting me go alone.”

“Not alone!”

“Present company excepted, of course. I'll call you when I leave. In the meantime, take a well-earned rest. Lie around a little. Have a cow.”

The drug was not as effective as it might have been; a creature so saturated with magic as Balkis could not be held unconscious for long. She regained awareness with the jolting of a horse beneath her, saw the buildings of Maracanda passing stark against a starry sky, and wondered what manner of dream this was.

Then the horse stopped. A man slid from its back, pulled her down into his arms and carried her through a darkened doorway into a darker house. Balkis would have screamed, would have clawed at her captor's face, but though her mind was aware and her eyes open, a strange lassitude gripped her; she was too weak to move even a finger. Fear stabbed; she would have recited a spell to defend herself, but not even her lips would move.

The rider bore her down a narrow corridor past doorways closed by thick, richly decorated blankets, then through one final portal that held an actual wooden door, quite thick. She saw a ceiling of tree-trunk beams, stone walls darkened by dampness and lit by the glow of a brazier, and a rack of shelves containing clay jars and wooden boxes. The acrid reek of the place assaulted her nostrils—brimstone, saltpeter, smoke, and mold. Her stomach knotted as she recognized it for a sorcerer's workroom.

Her fear accelerated to panic as an old face loomed into her vision, a wrinkled and wind-burned face squinting down at her and nodding with satisfaction. He wore the headdress of a barbarian shaman. He spoke; Balkis recognized the language as Khitan and, thanks to the silent translation spell the Lord Wizard had taught her, understood it as well.

“Yes, that is she,” the old man said. “That is one of the pair who can prevent the gur-khan from rising again. Without her, Maracanda will lie open to him when he has reunited his forces.”

“Kill her, then?” the rider asked.

Panic lent Balkis strength; she managed to crook her fingers; her lips trembled—but nothing more.

“Would that we could.” The shaman's eyes burned. “She aided his defeat, after all! But Prester John has mighty magic and can learn quickly if she has died, though he may not be able to discover who killed her, or where. No, we must send her away, send her so far away that she can never come back!”

Balkis' panic ebbed; anger replaced it. She used its energy to try to make her mouth move. She strained, fought to shape the words, but her lips only quivered.

“Lay her on the stone.” The shaman gestured to his work-table. The rider laid her down while the shaman turned to throw incense on the coals in the brazier. An acrid aroma filled the room as the shaman set a variety of fetishes about the princess, chanting a spell.

Panic surged again as Balkis realized that wherever the shaman meant to send her would be as good as a prison—a very pleasant prison perhaps, but a prison nonetheless. She labored with all her strength to make her recalcitrant lips and tongue obey.

The shaman stepped back, hands passing over Balkis' body, and finished the incantation.

In desperation, Balkis thought the words, mind flinging them like darts even as the room began to blur about her:

She floundered, beset by her old handicap—the final line! She had always had great difficulty ending a spell—why, she did not know.

“Why” did not matter—only the spell did! What rhymed with “stray?” What syllables could precede it, produce it?

At the last instant her mind found the words and hurled them after the rest.

“And never shall be torn away!”

The room turned to mist, vertigo seized her, she felt herself whirling through a void that was not of her world—but distant and fading, she heard the shaman's howl of rage, and knew that, even unspoken, her spell had frustrated his, though not cancelled it completely. She sailed through emptiness to a destination unknown both to herself and to the shaman who had launched her—unknown, but of her world.

The guards at the gates of the city had trouble believing this unprepossessing person in stout traveling clothes could really be an emissary from a foreign queen, let alone a lord. But those garments were outlandish, as were the round brown eyes and the pale skin, so his claim seemed possible, if unlikely.

“You have no entourage,” the older guard pointed out, “no phalanx of soldiers to guard you, no minor lords in attendance.”

“I prefer to travel light,” Matt explained. “You learn more that way. Take my advice, boys, pass the buck. Call the captain of the guard.”

The captain came out, and Matt showed him Prester John's letter. The two guards recognized the seal and turned pale. The captain stared, then flicked a glance from Matt to the letter, then back again, clearly unable to believe that this merchant-without-a-caravan could really be a lord. Nonetheless, he decided to get out of the middle and pass Matt along to his boss. He gave him a chariot ride and an honor guard of half a dozen soldiers. Matt rode the jolting vehicle over the ocher cobbles, very much aware that the guards could seize him as well as protect him.

The guards turned him over to the chamberlain, and the man stared in amazement, recognizing Matt from his last visit. Then he recovered his poise, clearly resolving not to make the mistake he had made then, when he treated Matt and his party as common travelers. He bowed and said, “I am amazed that you could come so quickly, Lord Mantrell.”

“Your king's letter made it seem urgent,” Matt said, “and I had air transport available.”

The chamberlain stared. “That dragon who flew over the city… was that…”

“Me on its back? Yes, but I didn't want to take a chance on landing in the plaza in front of the palace. Your sentries take their duties very seriously, and it never pays to underestimate a crossbow.”

The chamberlain smiled, pleased at the compliment to his fellow citizens. “Will you follow, my lord?” He turned to snap a phrase to a page, and the boy stared at Matt, then took off running.

Possibly as a result, Matt only waited a few minutes in the antechamber before the chamberlain ushered him into Prester John's private study.

“Lord Wizard!” Prester John advanced, arms wide in welcome. “How good of you to come—and how quickly!”

“Glad to be back.” Matt bowed, then straightened to survey the man closely. Prester John had lost weight; beneath the black beard, his cheeks had grown gaunt. His eyes were shadowed and haunted, and his golden skin had faded to parchment. He was taking the loss of his newfound niece very hard indeed. “Of course I'm glad to help any way I can,” Matt assured him. “Any progress in finding Balkis?”

“Come and see.” Prester John turned to the window in a whirl of gorgeous robes.

Matt stepped up and looked down through an elaborately carved screen at a courtyard full of soldiers milling about. He stared. “Is this your idea of a search party?”

“Of course,” Prester John said, surprised. “Her rank merits nothing less. Balkis is Princess of the Eastern Gate, Lord Wizard.”

“Well, yes, but a smaller force might be less noticeable and find her faster. Has there been any word of her? Maybe a beggar delivering a discreet note demanding that you-sur-render half your kingdom if you want to see her again?”

Prester John stared at him in horror. “No, not a word. Are such things common?”

“I've heard of them happening,” Matt said in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

Old anger seeped through, though, making Prester John frown with concern. “Of course! Your own children were stolen last year.”

Matt nodded. “And Balkis helped me find them, if you recall, so it's time to return the favor—but if there's no word of her, we also have no clues, no hints as to where she might be.”

“None, save the man who spirited her away—but even he had no notion where the man to whom he gave her might have taken her.” Prester John glared out at the army in the courtyard, his face dark with dread. “I very much fear she may be already dead, Lord Wizard.”

Matt could see the grief welling up beneath the scowl. Alarmed, he said, “I very much doubt that, Your Majesty. Remember, she's a cat whenever she wants to be, and cats have nine lives. I suspect that a cat who is also a human wizard would have nine times nine.”

Prester John turned to him with the ghost of a smile. “Eighty-one lives? Perhaps—if she transformed herself to a cat in time.”

“Not much that could stop her,” Matt assured him, then turned away toward the comfortable-looking chairs in the corner. “But I need to know everything that happened. How about you sit down and tell me about it?”

“Perhaps I have been pacing too long,” the king admitted. He proved it by pacing over to the corner and sitting with a sigh. “Yes, that is welcome.” He frowned at the still-standing wizard. “But you too must sit, Lord Wizard!”

“In the presence of a sovereign? Perish the thought!”

“You are not my subject, but the emissary of my fellow sovereign, the Queen of Merovence, and her consort! Come, sit!”

Matt bowed and sat. The chair was a welcome rest. “Now tell me how it all happened. Right from the top.”

Prester John frowned. “The ‘top’?”

“The beginning,” Matt explained. “How long did it take Balkis to get used to Maracanda?”

“At once, and not at all,” Prester John sighed. He gazed off into space, seeing the events as he spoke of them. “My niece loved the palace and the people instantly, and they rejoiced in her presence. Still, there were moments of melancholy…”

Prester John's voice trailed off. Matt tried to be reassuring. “That's normal enough in a teenager far from her own land, Your Majesty. There's bound to be the occasional bout of homesickness.”

Prester John's smile was tight with irony. “But this is her own land, though she never knew it till you brought her here. Still, I cannot be surprised that she thinks of your Frankish land of Allustria as her home, since she grew up there.”

Matt didn't think the Germanic people of Allustria would have appreciated being called “Frankish,” but they'd had to suffer it during the Crusades of his own universe, too. “She would kind of miss the dense forest and the hundred-year-old oaks—and the mountains.”

“She did indeed, and she yearned for—” Prester John broke off abruptly with a guilty glance at Matt, who smiled covertly.

Matt had been aware of Balkis' crush on him. He found himself hoping that wherever she'd been taken, she would find a gentle, handsome young man. “I hope you made sure she wasn't lonely.”

“I did indeed,” the king averred. “I surrounded her with young men and women of noble birth and set my own son Tashih to entertaining her when I could not. But if I could be with her, I was.”

His eyes shone with the memory, with besotted fondness, and Matt, watching closely, saw that Balkis hadn't just been the great-niece returned to him by Fortune—she'd been the daughter he had never had, too. “Did the other young folk like her, or belittle her as subtly as they could?”

“Ah, they adored her. You would expect as much of the young men, for she is very beautiful. However, the women made her one of them instantly.” He shrugged. “Who would not? She is not only beautiful, but also witty, spirited, and gentle. The older people were as entranced as the young, and she soon became the darling of all my courtiers.”

Matt frowned. “That kind of instant popularity is bound to make someone jealous.”

Prester John looked up, startled, then turned away, abashed.

“Someone did get jealous?” Matt asked, his voice low.

“My son Tashih,” the king admitted, “he who is to become Prester John after me. Oh, he never spoke of it, but I could see it in his eyes when he watched her in the center of a knot of young men and women, chatting and laughing.”

Matt dreaded the next question, but it had to be asked. “Just how jealous do you think he is?”

Prester John leaned back and closed his eyes with a weary sigh. “He might perhaps have worried that Balkis could gather a strong enough following to displace him when I die, Lord Wizard. I do not believe that is true, but it is possible.”

He said it as though Matt had pulled it out of him with pincers, and the wizard felt himself tense at the thought. He knew enough of palace intrigues to believe that the crown prince might very well have wished to rid himself of a potential competitor. It wouldn't have been the first such abduction.

He couldn't say that to Prester John, of course. “But there was no real sign that he might take action?”

“Not truly, no.” Prester John looked down at his knees, frowning. “Matters came to a head at dinner one evening a few days ago. It was no state banquet, but our daily informal affair—only my three thousand regular courtiers, and a few casual guests—say a thousand…”

Matt's head reeled with the numbers. He wondered if Prester John used his dining room as a parade ground when he wanted to drill his troops in bad weather. “I seem to remember such an affair. Each courtier finds a small bag next to the plate with the money for the next day's expenses, right?”

“It is the most unobtrusive way to deliver their stipends,” Prester John said. “Of course, I must not care only for the wealthy. Twenty-seven thousand of the poor, the lame, and the blind eat in halls throughout the city, as well as widows with children and old-age pensioners.”

“Their tables aren't quite as magnificent as your own, though, if I remember rightly,” Matt said with a smile.

Prester John returned the smile. “Well, perhaps not.”

“Any particular reason why you turned the top of your high table into precious emerald and its legs into amethyst?”

“Of course,” Prester John said, surprised. “The magic of the stone prevents anyone sitting there from falling into drunkenness, Lord Wizard. Did you not know?”

“I'll make a note of it,” Matt assured him. “Let's see—as I remember, you dine with Prince Tashih at your right hand and the Archbishop of Maracanda at your left.”

“Well recalled,” Prester John said with a smile. “Now, however, Princess Balkis sits at my left.”

“Of course,” Matt said, chagrined. “How'd the archbishop take to losing his place?”

“With Christian patience,” Prester John said, still with a smile. “He may have hidden indignation at first, but Balkis soon charmed him.”

Matt didn't doubt it. Still, he knew that with some men, ambition outweighed personal feelings. He added the archbishop to his list of suspects. “Next to him sits the Patriarch of St. Thomas, then the Protopapas of Samarkand, right?”

“You remember the order well,” Prester John said with surprise. “It is so, and on my right, next to the prince, sit twelve more archbishops. The discussion thus engendered is both lively and enlightening.”

Matt felt deep sympathy for Balkis, and for the first time wondered whether her disappearance was really a kidnapping. But he smiled bravely and said, “The lively part I can believe, with the heads of three different Christian sects there to argue about which one has a monopoly on truth.”

“Oh, I have made them understand the need for tolerance,” Prester John said with a satisfied smile. “We do discuss points of doctrine now and then, but for the most part we discuss the ways of the people in each prelate's district, and the strange and wonderful sights to be seen there.”

Matt revised his opinion of the dinner table conversation. “How can they do a decent job of managing their dioceses when they're here, so far away?”

“Each of them returns to his dwelling every month in his turn, and another ecclesiastic takes his place.”

So Balkis wasn't even hearing about the same old marvels every night. Matt decided she might not have been bored at all. “Doesn't the hum of conversation from the other four thousand diners make it a little hard to hear?”

“They are sufficiently distant, and have the courtesy to keep their voices low. Then, too, the lower tables at which they dine are some of gold and some of amethyst; the columns supporting them are of ivory.”

Matt smiled, remembering that gold was an excellent conductor. “So each table holds a spell for muting noise?”

“That, and for restraining any other sort of rude behavior,” Prester John acknowledged.

“So if everybody's being so polite, what happened on this one particular evening?”

The king shook his head. “Balkis' sorrow was so deep that she could not hide it.”

“Is that all?” Matt asked in surprise.

“It was enough,” Prester John answered, and explained. He told Matt of his own ill-conceived idea that Balkis should travel the land and come to know the people, and of Prince Tashih's jealousy, then of the two naive courtiers' foolish attempt to curry favor with Tashih by kidnapping Balkis, and of the aftermath.