“Then you can’t make my warriors fight to the death,” said the king firmly.
“I guess not,” said the Ifrit glumly. “You, little warriors there! Stop killing each other.”
Both Hugo and Ascelin collapsed where they stood, dropping their shields and swords and reaching up for their helmets with trembling fingers.
“How did the king do that?” I said to the chaplain as we rushed toward them. “I couldn’t have changed the Ifrit’s mind even if I had all my magical abilities. Maybe I’ve been using magic as a crutch all these years.”
Joachim gave me what might have been a smile. “If so then I’ve been using religion the same way. Each of us has to use the abilities we are given, and Haimeric is a king and born to command.”
Dominic and I helped the fighters remove their armor, and Joachim found the bandages and Ascelin’s salves. The two were bruised all over and nicked and bleeding on the parts of their bodies not protected by mail. None of the cuts were deep, but there were enough that I thought they both would have an impressive collection of scars-that is, if they lived long enough for the cuts to heal. Hugo fell asleep while we were still bandaging him.
“Christ,” said Ascelin, his head between his knees. “That kid’s good. Why wouldn’t he let me kill him cleanly?”
“Be glad he wouldn’t,” said Dominic. “At least you’re both still alive-for the moment. Stop twitching and let me get this bandage tight.”
“I remember now,” said the Ifrit slowly. “You people of Yurt have a secret. I’m supposed to make you tell me. Or maybe you’re supposed to give something to me.”
“What kind of secret?” the king asked.
“That’s what I’m asking you!”
It was hard enough trying to deal with an unpredictable and enormously powerful magical being without dealing with a stupid one as well. “If you let me have my magical powers back,” I called up, “I think I could tell you.”
The Ifrit lowered the king abruptly to the ground, where Dominic caught him, and lifted me up instead. “Tell me first,” he said avidly.
I looked into his terrifying huge eyes, weighing my words carefully. If the Ifrit wasn’t supposed to kill us, it was certainly because Kaz-alrhun-or even some other powerful mage-thought we had a secret and wanted it. Once we gave up that secret, there would be no reason to keep us alive. My only hope was to satisfy the Ifrit for the moment. Then maybe we could find some way to escape-perhaps while he was asleep-before whoever had the power to master an Ifrit arrived to tell him he could kill us at his leisure.
In the meantime, it again seemed that everyone else knew something about Yurt that we did not.
“So what’s the secret?” asked the Ifrit eagerly.
Since I had no idea what the real secret was, I had to stall him with something plausible. “It’s this ring,” I said, showing him the onyx. “See, it’s even carved with the word Yurt.”
“I can’t read,” said the Ifrit, frowning. “That other mage also wanted me to read.”
“Your wife will read it for you,” I suggested.
The Ifrit smiled at this, showing his enormous yellow teeth. “I’m sure she’d enjoy meeting you all.”
Again the earth turned under us, and what seemed a dozen suns raced across the valley’s sky. When the whirling sand had again settled, the Ifrit’s wife stood in the middle of our confused group.
“Do you think you have enough food for our guests, my dear?” asked the Ifrit.
It took a while to introduce everyone, to try to explain to the scandalized king exactly how this nearly-naked woman could be called the Ifrit’s wife. By the time that she had assured the Ifrit that the onyx ring was indeed carved with the name of the kingdom of Yurt, the noon sun had passed over, and I had been able to come up with a plan that might-maybe-work.
“Now, I can’t perform the magic spell attached to this ring as long as you won’t let me have my abilities back,” I said, neglecting to mention I still had no idea what kind of spell it was. “But I can tell you what you can do with your own magical powers. Try a fairly generalized spell, one that will put any sort of nearly-complete spell into action.”
To my surprise, the Ifrit frowned. “I’ve never been very good at spells.”
“But how do you work magic?” I demanded, shocked.
“I don’t know, I guess I just do it,” he said as though embarrassed.
I looked at his lowered green head and considered this. As a magical creature, perhaps even an immortal one, he did not need to learn the Hidden Language as did humans. Western magic had been channeled and rationalized by generations of wizards, but magic here, as I already knew, was far less focused. Magic for the Ifrit must be more like breathing than thinking.
“All right,” I said. “Don’t worry about doing any spells of your own if it seems too complicated. Just look at this ring”-I didn’t dare give it to him for fear it would be so tiny in his hand that he would lose it-”and command it by whatever magic comes to you naturally to work its spell.”
The Ifrit raised his eyes to me and gave me a terrible glance. He might be stupid, but I could not let myself forget for a second how dangerous he was. “You don’t need to patronize me, little mage,” he said coldly.
He grabbed my hand, ring and all, and pulled it up to eye level, the rest of me dangling painfully. He muttered syllables that might have been the Hidden Language-if I could still recognize it. The onyx ring trembled on my finger and buzzed.
His lips parted in a grin of triumph. “All right, ring of Yurt, let’s see what your secret is.”
The air around us began to tremble and glitter, as though again we were about to be shaken off a tablecloth, but this time the earth stayed still. But as I looked around wildly the empty valley near us began to fill up: first another oasis, a short distance away; then a tangle of flowering bushes; then a rocky watercourse cutting across the valley floor; then a rider on an enormous black steed; then briefly a collection of baggage wagons; and suddenly, and just for a few seconds, a small group of men in the middle distance.
The Ifrit gave a roar and shook me and the ring violently, and the empty valley resumed its calm existence. But in those few seconds I thought I saw that one of the group of men, beneath his desert headdress, had red hair.
“Mirage,” I said aloud as the Ifrit dumped me unceremoniously back on the ground. “It’s a ring that creates mirages.”
“Or lets you see things I do not want you to see,” said the Ifrit grumpily. “I should kill you right now for seeing them.”
I sat up, rubbing an elbow. Prince Vlad in the eastern kingdoms had told me he had put a special spell on the ruby ring, a spell we would need in the Wadi Harhammi. When Elerius set out to make a substitute magic ring for Arnulf, he must have chosen a spell that would reveal that which was magically hidden-as images reflected from the desert sky revealed cities and lakes far ahead in mirages. I could tell from its effects that it was a good spell, one I could not have duplicated even if I had my magic and my books. If the Wadi Harhammi still kept its secrets after fifty years, and if Kaz-alrhun was trying to get in, it was exactly the sort of ring he would want.
This explained, then, why Kaz-alrhun had not pursued us from Xantium. He knew exactly where we were going and thought he might play with us by letting us think we had gotten away. But we, with his onyx ring, would arrive just as surely at the Wadi, where the Ifrit would watch over us until the mage arrived.
But was the red-haired man I had glimpsed really Evrard, and if so, who was the rider on the black horse? “Did you capture some other travelers in the valley recently?” I asked casually.
“I don’t think this is a very interesting secret,” said the Ifrit, scowling at the ring and not answering my question.
“Have you seen someone on a flying horse?” I tried again.
This got the Ifrit’s attention. “The person on the flying horse was not very amusing,” he said.