“I might be,” I said slowly. I couldn’t see the Ifrit from where we were sitting, but he must still be only a short distance away. I knew it was useless to ask him again for my magic back, though I had no idea how I was going to dissolve a transformations spell without it. Even without the knowledge that he was testing me-and might keep my friends buried in the sand forever if I did not pass-I felt sorry for the fish.
“Does your wife ever come back to gloat over you?” I asked. Maybe I could somehow persuade her to break her own spell.
“Of course. She comes every evening, feeds me just enough to keep me alive, and then whips me until I sob with pain, to punish me again for what I did to her lover. I would have died from the blows many months ago-and often I wish I could-but she then salves my wounds with wicked magic, so that I may heal by the next day and be beaten again. Then she crawls into the pavilion with the slave-that is why I warned you not to go in, for fear she would realize some one had been there. She calls on him tenderly and caresses him and begs him to be healed quickly. So far he has never answered her.”
I put my head in my hands. The slave must be long dead, if he did not respond to magic which could heal the wounds from a whipping in a day. His body must only kept from decay by some variation of the spell that held together the body of the wizard of the eastern kingdoms.
When I lifted my head again, the prince was almost smiling. “Are you perhaps a mage?”
“No.” It was too complicated to explain. “But I think I have an idea.”
I sat on the bench beside him all afternoon. He told me more about his city before all its people became fish. I was able to deflect his rather desultory questions about where I had come from-for him, the chief interesting thing about me was that I might save him. Late in the afternoon, somewhere in the distance, I began to hear singing.
“It is my people,” said the young prince softly. “When they were still human, they used to sing as the sun set, and even now that they are fish they rise to the surface each day at this time to salute the day’s passing.”
The singing died away with the coming of twilight, and not long thereafter the prince whispered to me, “The witch usually comes at about this time, so make your preparations.”
“Do not fear, for you will be a free man tonight.” I stood up, hoping this was going to work.
I slipped quietly down to the little round pavilion and found my way in by feel. Slowly I groped my way across the floor until my hand found another hand, very cold.
I jerked back, just managing to stay quiet. If this was the slave, he seemed quite dead. I felt forward again and found his body, lying amid a heap of pillows and blankets on a sleeping mat. I lifted him up as well as I could, just as glad I could not see his slashed throat, and carefully carried him out the far side of the pavilion. There had already been too many slashed throats for me on this trip. I slid the slave under a bush and went back into the pavilion just as a bobbing light appeared at the garden gate.
I lay down on the mat where the dead slave had lain, but the light did not immediately approach. Instead, it was set down on the bench by the young prince. In the light of her lamp I could see the prince’s witch wife. If eastern witches could touch someone’s mind and tell who they were, she would know in a second that I was here. To the prince, she might have been as lovely as the full moon rising. To me she looked terrifying.
But she did not seem to have any immediate suspicions. First she fed the prince and gave him water to drink out of a skin, laughing mockingly at his inability to move more than his head and left elbow. Then she pulled out a whip and stepped back, her face dark with fury.
“For wishing to kill me,” she shouted, “for almost killing my beloved, you deserve death and worse than death! As long as he hovers on the edge of life, you will pray to God each day that you might die!”
The young prince stood it for about five lashes, then started to whimper. When he began to cry out in pain, and then to beg the witch by the love they had once shared, by her love for the slave, and by the love of God not to hit him again, her blows only intensified.
Lying where the slave had died, I put my hands over my ears. Without magic, there was no way I could oppose a witch with a whip in her hand and probably the supernatural forces of darkness in her spells. I had to wait for her to tire and to rub her salves into the prince’s wounds. Even with magic, I certainly could not heal him overnight myself.
She seemed satisfied at last and put her whip away. The prince had slumped as much as he could being half stone, and he no longer seemed conscious. But when she brought out little pots that glowed with a green light and rubbed the salve onto his back, he slowly revived and straightened again. “Until tomorrow night, husband?” she murmured in triumph.
But then her whole manner changed. She lifted up the lamp and approached the pavilion, slowly and almost shyly. I took a deep breath, tried to imagine how a slave might address a princess who was also his lover, and called out to her.
“Mistress, dear mistress, don’t bring that light here, by the love we long shared!”
She was so startled she dropped the lamp, and it smashed on the pavement by her feet.
Good. The spells of fire were no longer available to her. “It hurts my eyes, dearest daughter of the stars, and it has been so long since I’ve had my eyes open!”
She came toward me again with an indrawn breath of delight. “Is it then true, my darling, my pomegranate, my own? Are you alive again at last? You seem somehow-different!”
“Stay back, my precious one!” I said in a weak voice. If she crawled in here with me, even without the lamp, I wouldn’t deceive her for long. And I was quite sure that after she had whipped me near or even to death, she would not put her magic salves on me. “I only seem different because it has been two years since we last lay together. But don’t approach me yet. Even your delicate touch might set back my healing.”
“But it’s been so long since I heard your dear voice!”
And you won’t hear it again until you meet your lover in hell, I thought. This was even harder than I’d expected. “My healing was slowed, my sweet,” I gasped, “by all the noises I must endure.”
“Noises?”
“The singing of the fish,” I said. “The sounds of an ordinary city I could bear quite easily, but the sad wail of men and women made fish makes my heart break anew each evening.”
She was silent for a moment, while I hoped she was thinking over my comment and feared she was beginning to suspect me. Her witch-magic, I thought, did not give her the ability to touch another mind, or she would have long since realized the slave was dead, but if I al ready seemed ‘different’ I would not be able to stall her much more.
“All right, then, my sweet,” she said in abrupt decision. “Anything to make you more comfortable. I’ll turn the fish back to themselves.”
The moon was brightening, and I could see the witch return to the materials she had brought with her to the garden. I wondered briefly if the dark powers she commanded through fire and potions might be playing with her, allowing her as a subtle and demonical form of torture to think her lover was still alive.
She poured some liquid into a dish, murmured low words over it until silver sparks cascaded upwards, then cried aloud and clapped her hands. The ground shifted below us, from the bottom of the hill came a massive roaring of water, and abruptly the city rose again from the bay.
I lay flat until the earth stopped moving. I didn’t think anybody in the west had command of forces like this. When I lifted my head again it was to hear voices, human voices, babbling together in surprise and joy. Out the far side of the pavilion, I saw lights flicking on in the city below the garden. The emir would have quite a shock the next time he visited his fish pond. The prince’s people were people once again.