“Just barely. I had to carry Haimeric down the slope, while the chaplain and the boy managed on their own. Hugo held off the vanguard of the troops until we were all safely on our way. If the descent hadn’t been so steep I’m sure they would have followed us at once.”
I glanced toward Hugo. For one moment he managed a triumphant grin. “Saying I ‘held them off’ may go a little far,” he said with quite unconvincing modesty. “I put my shield and sword arm between Ascelin and the troops, and with a few lucky strokes I intimidated them just long enough-then when they rushed me I went down the valley wall on my belly!”
I looked up toward the edge of the valley with a far-seeing spell and could see the white turbans and glittering curved swords of the emir’s soldiers. It was a large troop, at least a hundred men, and their swarthy faces looked angry and frustrated. Apparently sharing salt with us only meant that the emir would not kill us inside his palace-either that or he planned to capture us alive, which didn’t sound much better.
But if they didn’t want to come cascading down the nearly vertical descent after us, we were safe for the moment. As I watched they settled themselves, apparently intending to wait us out. “What about the horses?”
Ascelin shook his head. He flicked his eyes toward the king, then back toward the sand. “At this point,” he said in a low voice, “it would take the Ifrit to get them back. And all our supplies and food are gone with them. Even if we elude the emir’s men and get out of this valley alive, I don’t know how we’ll ever get home.”
I didn’t answer. If we somehow escaped from the Ifrit and the emir, there were still hundreds of empty miles between us and Xantium, much less Yurt. Sir Hugo’s party might have been in the same situation, and they had never come home either.
“Where’s Dominic?” Ascelin asked then, looking up.
“Down in the Wadi. It is a dry watercourse. So far,” I went on, remembering I had news of my own, “we’ve found the bottle the Ifrit was imprisoned in.”
This took some of the despair from Ascelin’s face. “Where is the Wadi?”
I looked around and could not see it. I had no idea what level of existence we were actually on, but at the moment it did not include the Ifrit, the Wadi, or Dominic.
Before I could try manipulating the spell again, King Haimeric stepped up beside me. Everything about him seemed old-his frail body, his wispy white hair, his wind-wrinkled cheeks-except for his eyes. They were bright and excited. “I’m not sure what you’ve been able to see, Wizard,” he said, “but just before we got on that flying carpet I saw the blue rose.”
I turned my attention fully toward him. “You saw the blue rose?” I repeated idiotically.
“There wasn’t time to say anything then, but it’s here in the valley. I always knew it was. That’s why the emir didn’t want us to come here.”
I hesitated only a second. If we had lost everything, even our waterskins, we wouldn’t live long enough for a second chance to find the king’s rose. Dominic and Kaz-alrhun between them could take care of Warin while I was gone. I didn’t think King Haimeric had yet realized we would never get home, but he might as well die with his own quest fulfilled.
“Rest a little longer,” I said to Ascelin and the others. “I’ll take you to the Wadi shortly.” Then I turned to the king. “Let’s find your rose, sire.”
III
King Haimeric and I walked across the valley floor, leaving the others behind. Even without any visible landmarks, the king seemed to know exactly where we were going. I murmured spells that made the air around us shimmer with a kaleidoscope of shifting images, including again the silk caravan. But I did not see the group of people who might have included a red-headed wizard-assuming I had ever seen them at all.
“There it is,” said the king, stopping short.
We stepped into a flowering garden and out of the layer of reality in which we had been. The garden was surrounded by a low wall and was filled entirely with rose bushes.
We walked silently among them. The green, glossy leaves looked completely out of place in the barren desert, and even the air around us was slightly damp. We passed enormous, showy red blooms; tiny pink buds no bigger than my littlest fingernail; and soft yellow blossoms whose scent threatened to overwhelm us. We saw no humans, but someone, I thought, must tend these bushes daily, for there were no insect borers, no faded blooms, and no weeds.
The garden was much bigger than it at first looked. We walked half a mile, and the colors began to change. Here were maroons, rich violets, like what we had seen in the emir’s garden outside Bahdroc but somehow brighter and more vivid. The king walked faster and faster, until I was hard pressed to keep up with him.
But then he stopped so abruptly that I, following behind, almost knocked him over. Standing up from where he had been digging was the emir’s swarthy rose grower.
I tried at once to shape a protective spell for King Haimeric, but I need not have bothered. After a surprised second, he sprang forward, and he and the grower clasped hands in delight at their meeting.
“I had in truth hoped that even a western wizard might be able to find the magic to bring you here,” said the grower, a smile splitting his face.
“Won’t the emir be furious with you?” asked the king in concern.
“He gave me no specific instructions concerning you. I did most carefully obey his orders, and I never explicitly told you or any other man how to find this garden.”
He smiled again and added, “The emir considers this his garden, of course, but while emirs rise and fall, the roses endure. All the attention, the rivalry, and the weight of authority fall on the emir himself. As long as I am just his grower, I am free to do my crosses and to do what is most important in this life: to grow better roses.”
“Are you working with the Ifrit?” I managed to ask.
“Of course. It was just last year, once stories of the blue rose began to spread, that the emir decided he must break part of my garden away from the rest, and transport it entire to someplace no one else would find it. Nothing but an Ifrit would have the power to do that, or to carry me quickly back and forth.”
“A bronze bottle with an Ifrit in it was taken to the emir as something different and new,” I said with sudden inspiration, “and the Ifrit agreed to help him in return for being released.”
The grower smiled and nodded. For a second I even dared hope I was teaching him respect for western magic.
But the Ifrit himself had told me that a mage had freed him from Solomon’s enchantment, and I was quite sure the grower didn’t know any magic. Besides, the Ifrit had been freed for five years, and the grower had just said this had only happened last year. But I didn’t have a chance to work it out.
King Haimeric, showing no interest in Ifriti, had moved away, looking intently at the roses. The grower led us down the final pathway between the bushes. “Here,” he said in a low voice.
The king drew in his breath but did not speak. This was it at last. A bush stood by itself, bearing a single blossom: an enormous, sapphire-blue rose. The three of us stood looking at it in silence. I probed quickly and surreptitiously with magic, but I already knew. At least where we were at the moment, this was no illusion but real.
It was as big across as a saucer, yet its stem easily held it upright. The petals were beaded with dew. From deep within the rose came a scent, both sweet and spicy, subtle yet unforgettable once caught. This was the blue rose the king had sought, and suddenly I understood why it was worth it.
“You’re the first and only outsider to find the blue rose,” said the grower to the king after a minute. “Do you wish a root cutting?”
“I would like a root cutting beyond all things.”
The grower produced his trowel. “I have started several plants from seed in containers which the emir hopes to have in his palace in a few years, but you do not want a root-bound container plant for your garden. You need a piece from the adult far-spreading root.”