He looked at me thoughtfully. “You like a challenge, do you not?” I abruptly began to fear him again as irrationally as I had felt a moment ago that I could trust him. “You are on a quest for something, but you do not know what it is. I too am on a quest, but its nature is such that I dare not hint to you what I hope to find …”
“You don’t know what’s there either,” I said with much more confidence than I felt. “Good. We’ll look for it together. We’d better get back to the valley immediately, before the Ifrit breaks your spell.”
The mage unexpectedly put a massive hand on my shoulder, making me shiver. “I can warn you and prepare you, even if I do not tell you.” His black eyes met mine, completely serious for once. “I will not urge you to go. For if you proceed, you will be proceeding into dangers you cannot expect or even imagine.”
“Prince Dominic,” I called. “Are you ready to face unimaginable dangers to get into the Wadi?”
Dominic had been trying to get more details from Maffi about his stallion, what condition it was in, who was supposedly taking care of it now, and not getting answers he liked. But he turned toward me at once, the ruby of his ring still pulsing with light. “I have been ready since we reached my father’s tomb.”
I tried quickly to probe the spell attached to his ring and discovered that the clarity of vision I had had for a short time was gone. Either it was operative only within the valley, or else it was just a short-term effect of having my magic restored by the Ifrit. Or I had imagined it, easily possible in this world of mirages and shifting expectations.
“I have never understood why you wizards of the west bind yourselves to king and princes,” Kaz-alrhun commented. I noticed him gazing fixedly at the ruby. “Your own magic should be strong enough that you do not need a prince with you.”
“This is his quest, and his is the ring from Yurt you actually wanted, Kaz-alrhun,” I replied. “You didn’t want the onyx ring at all.”
“I have always known the onyx was not the ring I sought,” said the mage good-naturedly.
“Then why were you willing to sell your flying horse for it?” I demanded.
“But it was not you who bought my horse.”
I gave him up. At some point the shadows and mirages might settle down again. “Let’s get to the Wadi before the Ifrit gets loose.”
We left the others sitting in the sparse shade some larger rocks afforded. Ascelin looked away to the north, searching for signs of the emir’s troops. Kaz-alrhun, Dominic, and I again rose into the air on the flying carpet and swooped over the valley wall.
The Ifrit’s enormous form still lay stretched out below us. His wife, sitting beside him, looked up at us and waved. Kaz-alrhun said a few words to the carpet, and it descended slowly to hover near the Ifrit, who stared at us with unseeing eyes. “I have not done my spells amiss,” said the mage complacently. “There are not many who can master an Ifrit, even for an hour’s span.”
“Watch,” I said. “This onyx ring is good for one purpose.”
I stretched out my hand and put the words of the Hidden Language together. The air of the valley shimmered with the magic that allowed people and objects to be hidden from each other. “Right there,” I said, pointing to the dry watercourse. “That’s where we’re going.” Suddenly, gloriously, I had the clarity of vision back again, and I knew exactly what spell to say next. It was a spell I had never used, and one which I was quite sure even Elerius had not known, but it came to me as easily as though another mind were guiding me. As the heavy syllables of the Language rolled from my tongue, the shimmering resolved itself, and the watercourse became clearer and clearer, while everything else faded.
The carpet dropped abruptly to the ground, tumbling us off. My spell, coupled with Elerius’s spell on the onyx, had allowed us not only to see other layers of reality, but to pass into them as easily as the Ifrit apparently could. Dominic rubbed a bruised knee as he picked himself up but managed not to scowl; I was afraid he trusted me to know what I was doing. The Ifrit was gone.
Kaz-alrhun laughed. “Most excellent, Daimbert! How did you do that? I could never find any sensible spell on that ring-which is why I sent it with the boy. I realize I should have tested it more thoroughly before giving up a good automaton for it, but I had faith that you would be able to do something with it.”
“It’s western school magic,” I said.
“Then your school may have something to offer after all,” said the mage in pleased surprise. “When I last spoke to a master from your school, a great many years ago when it first opened, he seemed rather constrained and bookish. What was his name? Melecherius, I believe. I am glad there are also wizards like you there.”
“I think we’re going to need both eastern and western magic for this,” I said.
But eastern spells could not get the flying carpet to rise again, and I had nothing to offer. The sun beat down on the three of us as we hurried on foot across the valley floor toward where a deep rift now appeared. The Ifrit was able to create and change reality here, I thought, and armed with the onyx ring I could do nearly the same thing. I didn’t like to think what long-term effects this kind of magic would have on the local physical structure of the earth; it was with good reason that Ifriti were considered highly dangerous. At least, I thought, when we left the reality where our friends were, where the flying carpet worked, we had also left the Ifrit behind.
He stopped us before we had crossed half the distance to the Wadi.
Kaz-alrhun opened his mouth, then froze. For the first time since I had met him he looked disconcerted, and sweat made rivulets in the dust on his dark skin.
“By what form of slaughter shall I slay you?” asked the Ifrit, glaring down with his arms folded. “I do not like little mages who try to tie me up. Solomon may have bound me, but you are not Solomon. And I do not even think you are from Yurt.”
Kaz-alrhun’s magic was gone, I realized, snatched from him as mine had been when I first reached the valley. Though I still had my magical abilities for the moment, I didn’t dare use them against the Ifrit for fear of drawing attraction to them. I wondered wildly if this was the mage’s unimaginable danger: probably not, because I could imagine quite vividly what the Ifrit was about to do to us.
“Listen, Ifrit,” I said recklessly. “I have a proposition to make.”
The Ifrit shifted his eyes from Kaz-alrhun and leaned down toward me. “What kind of proposition?”
“If you let us go, I can help you with your wife.”
Kaz-alrhun recovered his equilibrium as soon as the Ifrit turned his attention from him, and he looked intrigued by this new development.
The Ifrit growled low in his throat. “And what are you trying to imply, little mage, about my beautiful, my pure young wife?”
“Just this,” I plunged on. “In another ten years, her litheness and slenderness will begin to go. Twenty years after that, her white skin will be wrinkling and her black hair turning gray.” I paused to let the Ifrit consider this. “But I can keep that from happening.”
“But if I keep her with me, she will not have to die the way all you humans do,” the Ifrit protested.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. Even with my magic, she won’t live longer than King Solomon did. And without my spells, she won’t live longer than any ordinary human. But I can promise to keep her young a long, long time.”
“Then you’d better do your spells right away,” said the Ifrit, deeply concerned.
“No, because I don’t trust you. First let us continue our explorations, and then I’ll cast my spells. We aren’t trying to escape, because we’ll always be right here in the valley. This may take a day or two, but we’ll never be far away. When we’ve found what we’re looking for, then I shall cast the spells to give your wife long life.”