The Feline Wizard

CHAPTER 4

“Oh, you'll go on living for a while,” Matt said, “at least ten minutes, probably ten days, maybe ten years—possibly even the rest of your life. Exactly how long I can't say—that's up to Prester John. But I have a notion it will have something to do with how helpful you are about finding the princess.”

“I shall help! Ask me what you will!”

“Fair enough.” Matt grinned. “Now, we know you had help from a lady named Corundel…”

Sikander's face closed.

“Don't worry, I'm not trying to trap you,” Matt said. “A lady named Chrynsis happened to mention that Corundel had filled in for her on the bedtime committee, and the other courtiers put two and two together.”

“Have they indeed!” Sikander's face was still a mask at the thought that Corundel might yet betray him and paint herself as his victim and unwilling dupe. “How interesting. What fable has she told you?”

Matt smiled, amused. If courtiers knew one thing better than any, it was how to lie—but this one wasn't very intelligent. After all, you had to be pretty dumb to commit a kidnapping on spec. “All Corundel told us was the name of the shaman who arranged the kidnapping with you—but for her to know that much, she had to have been in on the whole operation. In fact, she had to have been the one who set the whole thing up.”

This last was more a guess than a deduction, but it worked. Sikander said angrily, “It was my idea as much as hers!”

Pride, or a last ditch attempt to shield a lady? Matt gave the man credit for a scrap of gallantry and said, “No point in trying to protect her now. We know the outline of what happened. You might help undo some of your damage, though, if you told us the details.”

Sikander deflated with a sigh and started singing like a star tenor. Matt encouraged him with understanding noises and monosyllables, keeping the information flowing. When Sikander ran out of words and sat slumped in dejection, Matt said, “Well, I can't deny that you made a pretty thorough mess of things, but there's a chance we might be able to straighten them out. Did the horseman say anything at all about where the shaman was sending Balkis?”

Sikander shook his head. “He said little but ‘thank you’ and ‘good-bye.’ I would guess he was openly a hireling.”

“Sure,” Matt said. “Why should the shaman risk getting caught with the princess in his own hands? A lot easier to pay somebody else to do the dangerous stuff.”

Sikander looked up, startled, wondering if he had been someone else's dupe. Perhaps the prince had wanted Balkis to disappear after all.

Matt rose to go. “Well, thanks for your cooperation. I'll tell the king that you've seen the error of your ways and are trying to help.”

Sikander gave him a sardonic smile. “What will that net for me? A quick death instead of a slow one?”

“Well, it should save you from the torture chamber, at least— unless there's something you haven't told me?”

“No!” Sikander declared, sitting bolt-upright.

Matt nodded. “Nothing more to learn, no reason for torture— except simple revenge, of course, and I don't think that's Prester John's style. I'll recommend he keep you alive until we know whether to charge you with murder, or just kidnapping. With any luck, you'll still be alive to face Princess Balkis someday.” He turned thoughtful then. “Not sure that I wouldn't prefer the quick death, though … Well!” He forced a bright smile. “Let's hope for the best, shall we?”

Then he was gone, and the cell door crashed behind him. Sikander doubled over, head in his hands, and spent half an hour wishing he had never been born.

Corundel was more defiant but had even less to tell; like Sikander, all she knew was that the horseman had taken Balkis away. When Matt pointed out that she was under sentence of death and that the only questions were when, how, and at the hands of the royal executioner or of Balkis, Corundel caved in and told him that she had opened doors to lead Sikander to the horseman, and that the two of them watched him ride away, then went back into the palace to celebrate. She didn't say that talking to the shaman had been her idea, but she didn't say that Sikander had forced her into being his pawn, either. Matt left the jail with a scrap of respect for each of them, though it was buried under a thick pile of contempt.

He briefly wondered why the guards hadn't noticed the horseman approach, then realized that a sorcerer who could provide the drug and the means of sending Balkis away could no doubt manage a spell of invisibility easily enough.

Matt reported back to Prester John. “The shaman's name is Torbat,” he told him, “and his shop is in the northeastern quarter where the Radial Avenue of the Second Hour meets the Twelfth Ring Road.”

Prester John, who sat at his desk, was impressed. “You are persuasive.”

“Oh, I just recited a little spell before I went into each cell,” Matt told him. “I also hinted that you might give them each a quick death instead of a slow and painful one.”

John frowned, affronted. “You made no promises in my name, I trust.”

“No, just hinted,” Matt said, “though I did come out and say my report might influence you into keeping them alive until we could bring Balkis home.”

“Why should I be so merciful?” John asked.

“So you would know whether to charge them as accessories to murder or only as kidnappers,” Matt said. “Besides, if we do bring Balkis home none the worse for wear, we can just sentence them each to spend half an hour alone with her and see what happens.”

Prester John looked surprised, then chuckled. “Yes, that would be appropriate.”

“But for now let's concentrate on getting her back.”

“Yes, quite so.” Prester John frowned. “How shall you search?”

“Well, we know the shaman's name now, not just his address,” Matt said. “Sure, it's only his public name, not his private one, so I can't make him break out in boils or drop dead from a heart attack—but it should be enough to bring me to him, wherever he is.”

Prester John gazed off into space, correlating the idea with what he knew of barbarian magic, which was substantial. Finally he nodded. “Yes, that should suffice. Let us repair to the workroom, Lord Wizard.”

As Balkis, in the form of a cat, slept, small figures stepped forth from burrows under the roots of the pines, stretching and yawning. They wore robes, turbans, and sandals, but their skin was nut-brown. In the Allustria where she had grown up, they would have been called “brownies.” They looked around them in surprise.

“What could have waked us at so unseemly an hour, Hurree?” one asked.

Hurree spread his arms, starting to answer, but a white-bearded sprite spoke first. “It was the spirit of the grove. What moves?”

“Nothing, now,” said an aged and creaky voice. The air seemed to thicken near one of the pines, then turned into a translucent figure that became more opaque with each step it took until it was solid, showing itself to be a stooped, wrinkled crone, leaning heavily on a knobbly stick. She gave of her life energy to her poor little trees, and though they gave back what little they could, it wasn't very much at all, so she was as stunted and twisted as they, her skin wrinkled and creased as bark. She was robed in garlands of brown needles that rustled as she hobbled forth. “That which moved now sleeps, by my blessing,” she told her brownies, “but she is wounded in head and side, and has need of your aid.” She pointed with her stick.

The brownies looked, and saw a miserable bundle of fur rippled by the breeze that sifted through the boughs of the pines.

Hurree caught his breath. “That cat is thick with magic!”

The dryad nodded. “Dryad-magic, nixie-magic, brownie-magic—it would seem that magic has rubbed off on her from half the sprites in the world.”

Hurree knelt beside the cat, small hand tracing the rent in her side. “How came she here?”

“By more magic, surely,” the dryad told him. “I felt the tingling of it, I looked out into the meadow—and lo! There she was, not a cat but a maiden fair, and sick to her stomach, poor thing!”

A brownie-woman parted the veil from her face to ask, “A maiden?”

The dryad nodded. “Even so, Lichi. The cows sensed that feeling of magic, too, and took fright. They moved toward the young woman, lowing to urge one another to defend—but the maiden, looking up, saw them, and lo! In an instant she had changed into a cat!”

Hurree's breath hissed in. “Surely you needed no further proof she was magical!”

“And surely that transformation must have disturbed the cows even more,” Lichi exclaimed.

“It did, but the cat was better able to dodge their hooves than the woman would have been,” the dryad said.

“Not able enough.” Hurree placed a hand lightly on the cat's head, feeling the swelling.

“Well,” said the dryad, “the cat is alive, where the woman might have been trampled to death.”

“True enough.” Lichi joined Hurree, passing her hands over the stiffened fur on the cat's side. She called to another brownie-woman, “Aid me, Alii!”

Alii came to join her magic to Lichi's, mending the wound as two more brownie-men came to rest their hands on Hurree's shoulders, lending him their own magical energy as he healed the head-swelling, both inside and outside Balkis' skull.

The dryad nodded, satisfied. “Find her some of those mice who keep gnawing at the roots of my trees,” she said, “and show her where the rocks have caught rainwater. When she is recovered, find her better shelter than this.”

“We will, O Wise One,” Alii assured her.

“Thank you, little friends.” Nodding in satisfaction, the dryad stepped back into a twisted trunk and disappeared.

The brownies gathered around the sleeping cat, each giving a modicum of energy to mend bruised and torn tissue as Balkis' breathing deepened into a healthy and healing sleep.

Matt expected a gloomy, windowless dungeon filled with arcane equipment and bottles of noisome concoctions. Instead he found a wide and airy chamber with tall windows and a worktable against one wall. Fragrant bunches of dried herbs hung over the workbench, and shelves above it did indeed contain bottles, but they held very ordinary things such as pebbles, iron pellets, salt, charcoal, and sulfur. The most exotic item he saw was a silvery liquid that had to be mercury. Oh, the workbench held a rack of vials, different sizes of flasks, an alembic, a crucible, and a mortar and pestle, but Matt knew them all from freshman chemistry.

Of course, none of Prester John's subjects had taken that course. No doubt they found the workroom impressive enough.

The chamber was fragrant with the aroma of sandalwood. Matt looked around for its source and saw a brazier with a feather of smoke rising. He wondered if Prester John had a servant who refueled it periodically to keep the room filled with its scent. Somehow that reminded him of the perpetual fires of Zoroastrian temples, which struck him as a good sign.

In the center of the room was a rectangle of sand, neatly boxed and recessed so that it was level with the floor. Prester John gestured to it, saying, “Stand in the center, Lord Wizard.”

When Matt was in place on the sand, Prester John surrounded him with a dozen symbols, inscribed with a polished wooden stick three feet long. It reminded Matt of a magic wand, especially since it had symbols of its own inlaid with ivory and ebony, some of them identical with the ones on the floor.

Prester John went over to the brazier and fanned its smoke, blowing the smell of the incense across the sand-floor while he chanted a verse. Matt didn't recognize the language, but his translation spell gave him the meanings of the words anyway; the emperor was sending him to confront the sorcerer. Matt dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword for reassurance, then reached behind his shoulder to touch the butt of his own magic wand. He never went traveling without it anymore, though he rarely had occasion to use it—he usually went in for broadcast spells, not narrowly focused ones.

Mist rose up from the sand, surrounding him. It thickened, obscuring his view of the workroom, then hiding it completely. Suddenly there was nothing about him but fog. Dizziness struck Matt, then fled as quickly as it had come; he felt a moment's panic before recognizing the difference in the quality of the mist. Instead of the damp, clinging fog of the wetlands in the real world, this was dry, a mist of indeterminacy, the smeared electron shells of quantum physics, the blur of probabilities, of states of existence not yet determined, and Matt knew he was in the Void Between the Worlds.

His alarm abated; he had been here before. He turned about slowly, feeling for the Wind that Blows Between the Worlds to direct him toward Torbat. Prester John had included the sorcerer's name in the spell, and even if it were his public name, there ought to be some sort of direction-finding.

There! Matt felt the faintest of pushes. He took a step forward and felt the force strengthen, pushing him steadily ahead. He strode into the mist, with the Wind that Blows Between the Worlds at his back.

There he was, dimly visible through the mist—Torbat! Prester John's spell had been very accurate, placing Matt only a few dozen yards from the man. He stepped up until he was ten feet away, his steps soundless in the fog, then drew his sword, shouting, “Torbat!”

The shaman spun, eyes wide in shock—and Matt lunged at his right shoulder, trying to disable the man with pain. Torbat was fast, though; he slipped aside and raised a hand, fingers crooked in an odd sign, calling out a verse in his own language, and Mart's sword turned into a snake.” Here, take it!” he shouted, and threw the serpent at Torbat.

Torbat sidestepped again, chanting a different verse, and the snake stiffened, turning back into a sword. That gave Matt time to draw his wand and chant a verse of his own:

But he hadn't made it through a couplet when Torbat reached into his sleeve, produced a wand of his own, and swept it in a horizontal arc, shouting a staccato rhyme. Matt felt a blow strike his own wand aside, as though Torbat's stick had actually knocked against his instead of being five feet away. It was enough to ruin his aim; as he finished the final line, an expanding cone of frigid air shot out from the end of his wand, locking the mist of undetermined atoms into lattices of crystal—snowflakes that drifted off into the grayness.

Torbat shouted out another verse, stabbing his wand straight at Matt, who barely had time to riposte, crying,

Torbat's wand spat a line of fire. Matt's wand locked atoms into molecules of air, a stiff, narrow breeze that blew Torbat's fire aside. Matt riposted both physically, with the wand, and verbally:

Again Torbat flourished his wand and ruined Matt's aim. Matt hoped there hadn't been anything human and male lurking out in the mist, because if there had been, it would have become a silicate sentient. He made a quick frantic circle with his wand, hoping to bind Torbat's, but the sorcerer swung his stick high with a laugh.

He'd left himself wide open. Matt lunged, crying,

He hoped George Canning wouldn't mind his verse being mixed with one of Josh Billings' sayings.

A blow from an unseen hand sent the shaman sprawling on the invisible plane that served as a floor. Matt came after him, glowing with victory—but Torbat jabbed with his wand, calling out his own equivalent of Matt's freezing verse.

Matt slowed as the chill bit. He struggled to hurry, but could feel his feet turning into blocks of ice, his ankles stiffening, the chill rising up his calves as the spell drained the heat from his body…

Heat drain! Matt remembered an old friend—well, associate—who would be perfect for this environment. He called out, quickly, before his jaw froze solid,

With an explosive snap like a carbon arc lighting up, a spark so intense that it hurt the eyes appeared near Matt, humming like a transformer. “What besets you, mortal?”

“A sorcerer who's playing with the Laws of Thermodynamics!” Matt pointed at Torbat. “He's trying to freeze me one minute and burn me the next!”

“Does he dare?” the demon buzzed. It shot over to Torbat, and a ring of fire roared up about the shaman. Torbat cried out and covered his eyes.

“Uh, could you thaw me out now?” Matt asked.

The demon swooped back over to him. “Thaw … ? Why, he has gelled you quite, from toe to waist! A moment, mortal.” The spark of light swept down over Matt's legs, and he felt them loosen up.

With a sigh of relief, he stumbled, caught himself, and stood straight. “Thanks, Max. I appreciate the break.”

“You did not break, but thaw,” the demon corrected, “but I cannot criticize your inversion of logic, since that is what I enjoy about your company. Who is this primitive, and why did he plague you?”

“Aieeeee!” Torbat cried, shielding his eyes from the glare as he huddled into a little ball. “I yield me, I surrender! Only quench your blaze before it crisps me quite!”

“Crisps you?” Looking up, Matt saw the ring of fire contracting, moving inexorably closer to the shaman on all sides. “Yeah, that is a problem. Could you douse the fire, Max? I think he'll behave now.”

“I shall give him the chance, at least,” Maxwell's Demon hummed. As the flames died, it added, “Yet advise him that I understand perversity.”

“What… why does he say that?” Torbat quivered with superstitious fear.

“Because he knows that people have a way of going back on their word,” Matt explained. “Betrayal is perverse—it may get you what you want in the short term, but it works against you in the long term, as people stop trusting one another and, just when they need help the most, discover that they can't depend on anyone—not even for mercy.”

Torbat stilled, watching Matt with narrowed eyes. Reluctantly, he nodded. “I shall abide by my plea. What would you have of me?”

“Information,” Matt said. “Where did you send the princess you kidnapped?”

“It was not I who kidnapped her…”

“No, you just received stolen goods!” Matt found himself getting angry. “I thought you said you'd keep your word.”

“Betrayal?” Max's hum rose in pitch with keen interest.

“Yes, I took her from her kidnapper!” Torbat cried. “Yes, I attempted to send her to this Void, beyond it to some other world where she would be happy but never come to trouble us again!”

“Tried?” Matt fastened on the word. “Your spell didn't work?”

Torbat ground his teeth, but admitted, “It did not. She retained some glimmer of consciousness and managed to cast a spell of her own that kept her in this world.”

“Where?”

“I know not.”

Max's hum shot up in pitch till he was screaming like a band saw as he drifted closer and closer to the cowering shaman.

“In truth I know not!” Torbat cried. “Withhold your familiar! I truly do not know!”

Matt knew the value of panic during an interrogation. “Well, it's not exactly mine to command…”

“I know nothing more! I swear by Ahriman!”

“How delightful a paradox,” Max keened. “He swears by the Prince of Lies that his words are true!”

“Then I swear by the Thunderer and by the Imperial Dragon! I speak truth—I know nothing more! What more do you want of me? Is it not enough that I must fear Kala Nag? Must I fear you, too?”

Matt stiffened, alert to new information. “Be patient, Max— we have a whole new line of possible paradoxes here. Tell me, Shaman Torbat—who is Kala Nag?”