The Complete Compleat Enchanter (45 page)

The figure on the bed rolled over and glared at him with furious eyes from under a disordered mop of graying hair, grunting through its gag.

“Eeek!” shrieked Medoro from above. “ ’Tis the Amir himself! We are surely at the last hour. There is no god but God.”

And in fact it was indeed the Amir Agramant, Commander of the Faithful, Protector of the Poor, just and merciful Lord of Hispania, trussed, bound, and gagged with his own turban.

“By the mass! More magic!” said Belphegor’s voice. Shea turned and saw her poised to spring at him, dagger in hand.

“Stop!” he said. “I’m Harold. Don’t you know me?”

“A horned demon the lord of Shea! Nay but—and yet the voice—”

“Come on, you know me. This is just a gag; a magical gag. The other spook, up there on the rug, is your boyfriend Medoro. Now do you get it? We’re here to save you.”

“Nay, ’tis assuredly some trick. Come not nigh, or man or monster, your weasand will be slit.”

“Medoro,” called Shea. “She won’t believe we’re us. Make a poem for her, will you, chum?”

To judge by Medoro’s expression, his muse was not the best of fettle, but he valiantly cleared his throat and began in a whining voice:

“We are not lost to prudence, but indeed

Stand here bewildered. What shall be our rede?

Since none will aid us from this tent to flee,

By spells of great Lord Harr must we be free;

But ah! my heart is lost and passion-spent;

To none by Allah come we trust in need.”

“Nay, I begin to trow,” said Belphegor, her mouth losing its hard line. “This is Medoro’s veritable voice which comes from the shaping. But what is now your counsel friends?”

“We’re going out of here on that flying carpet, the way we came in,” said Shea.

The girl stood on tiptoe and reached. “But how to attain it?”

“More turbans needed,” said Shea, practically. “Where would they be?”

Belphegor leaped across the tent. “This chest—” and flung it open. Sure enough, it was filled with fine silk turban cloths, neatly folded. He linked three of them together with solid square knots and tossed one end up to Medoro, who caught it on the second try and braced himself while Belphegor swarmed up it, light as a squirrel. Then Shea took a firm grip on the lowest knot and began to climb, but he had barely cleared the ground when the turban rope went slack and he came down on his behind, the rope on his head.

“Hey!” cried Shea, stepping on the Amir and he stumbled to his feet. He saw Medoro, his jinn eyes shifting as he crouched at the edge of the carpet and muttered. The edge of the carpet fluttered and it shifted position a little.

Shea would have said something else and more vigorous, but before he could get the words out, Belphegor leaned over the edge, with: “Throw up your end!” She caught it neatly, took a turn round her waist and called: “Mount, Sir Harold!”

Shea hesitated, afraid of pulling the girl off, for though he did not doubt her strength, he weighed a hundred and sixty. But just at this moment a troop of eunuchs flung aside the curtain and came waddling into the room, pointing, yelling and waving scimitars at least a foot wide. He swarmed up the turban rope clumsily but effectively as a thrown dagger tumbled past him.

“Get over and let a man run this thing!” he said to Medoro. He spoke to the carpet and they slid through the gap in the tent wall, out into the rapidly descending twilight. The fire at one side of the camp was still burning; figures appeared to be dancing before it.

Shea jockeyed the carpet up to what he judged was an altitude safe from arrow shot and turned to Medoro. “Well, what’s the alibi? You better make it damn good.”

“I—I—but friend Harr, let the shield of our bread and salt turn aside the sword of your anger. Truly is it said by al-Qa’sun that he who sees into the hearts of many can seldom see into his own. Ah, most miserable of men!” He bent his head and the jeweled bracelets flashed as he beat his breast. “Your servant had no other thought but that when the end of the bond was lost, so much was lost that I should regret it to the end of days. But there is no might save in Allah, who has preserved you to be the delight of our eyes.”

“You damn twerp,” said Shea, through his teeth. “So you thought you’d sneak off and leave me and then make a poem about it. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”

“Nay, I am but a reed in the wind of your displeasure, and my breast is straitened, my brother,” said Medoro, and reaching to the hem of his robe at the chest, gave it a little rip. (Shea noticed that it appeared to have been resewn several times; it was evidently a habit with the young man.) “Now there is no help for it but I must die.” Two big tears rolled down his cheeks and stood gleaming on the tusks.

Belphegor put her arm around his shoulders. “Ah, unhappy wight, grieve not! Sir Harold, I charge you straightly that you shall not overbear him, for he is a troubadour, and I hold it somewhat less than knightly to treat him as less than one who has sustained you throughout this deed.”

“Okay, okay,” said Shea. “He’s a hero and a pet. I just don’t know why we bothered rescuing you at all. You were doing all right when we came in.”

It was Belphegor’s turn to be hurt, as Shea observed with a touch of vindictive relish. “Fie, for shame!” she said. “If you’ll magic me with your enchantments into the most ungrateful of wenches, I’ll have my favor back.”

Her nostrils moved and Shea, feeling suddenly wretched, turned to the business of navigation. It had been a splendid exploit, and they should all have been elated. Instead of which . . .

After a moment he got a grip on himself, realizing that he was being pretty immature in getting sore at Medoro, who was merely one of those schizoid types who can no more help disintegrating under stress than he, Shea, could help pulling himself together under similar circumstances. Aloud he said: “All right folks, I think we’ve done enough quarrelling for one night.” (He realized that he had done most of the quarrelling, but he was also captain, and an apologetic attitude would undermine the position.) “Are we for Castle Carena?”

“My bow,” said Belphegor. “I am undone without it. Perchance ’twill be at the inn where we were taken. Will you do me the grace to see, Sir Harold?” The voice was still chilly.

“Good idea,” said Shea, trimming the carpet a trifle in the direction of the town. “I’d like to take a poke at that innkeeper myself, and now I have the equipment.” He stroked his tusks appreciatively.

Behind him he felt the girl shift herself gingerly on the yielding surface to a sitting position on the rolled-up rug that was Roger. A sound somewhere between a groan and a growl emerged; Belphegor leaped to her feet, making the carpet tip perilously. “What’s here! Do carpets speak as well as move in your enchantments?”

Shea grinned over his shoulder. “That’s your old boyfriend, Roger of Carena. We’re taking him back to Uncle.”

“Verily?” She pulled back an edge of the rug and stared in the fading light, then gave a peal of silvery laughter. “Nay, this joys me much, and for this joy you are restored to favor as my true knight, Sir Harold. But I’d have one of the great bear’s ears as a trophy.” She whipped out her small hunting knife and the carpet heaved as Roger strove to wriggle in his bonds. Medoro’s jinn face took on a greenish cast. Shea said: “Cut it out, will you, girlfriend? We’re getting there.”

The town was below them, lemon-colored gleams picking out the windows of the inn. Shea circled the carpet round the structure and carefully maneuvered it up to one of the windows that lighted the upstairs dormitory, peering in. There seemed to be no sleepers, only a feeble oil-lamp on a low table.

“I don’t see it,” he said. “Where did you leave it?”

“I deemed I had laid it upon the bed next to my own, with my quiver,” she said.

“Not there now. Medoro, you and I will have to do a little searching. Beautiful, you stay here and see that the carpet doesn’t drift away from the window, because we may come back running and dive through. You can move it by pulling gently on the fringe here, but don’t do it if you don’t have to. If Roger makes a fuss you can have
both
his ears.”

Medoro said: “Oh, my lord and brother, is it not more meet that I should wait, both as one who can defend this carpet from attack, and because I know not one bow from another?”

“No!” said Shea. “Come along.”

He let himself carefully through the window, reaching up a hand to help Medoro. They scoured the dormitory from end to end, peering under carpets and in corners, but not a trace of archery tackle.

“Inshallah!” said Medoro. “It was ordained from the beginning of the world that we should not . . .”

He broke off at the sound of approaching horses, and then of voices downstairs. Shea tiptoed to the head of the stairs. A voice was just saying: “Uncle, are there within your caravanserai certain fugitives from the justice of the Commander of the Faithful?”

“My head be your sacrifice!” came the voice of the innkeeper. “Were there such, I had long since delivered them to the servants of the Prince, straightly bound. But are there not other inns than mine?”

The owner of the other voice replied: “By Allah, our breasts are narrowed, and an enchantment lies upon this expedition for the abatement of the Nazarenes! For behold, Lord Dardinell must bring home to the camp a damsel with hair of ill-omen, a very Frank, who indeed aroused the jealousy of the sons of Satan the stoned. For with the setting of the sun what should befall but there came into the camp an army of furious Jann, each taller than a tree and pinioned with four wings of brass, who spurned over our tents as though they had been toys. By the grace of Allah, few were slain, though many ran in panic, and we have come to recall those who fled, lest they be taken later and fire be applied to their feet so they may flee no more.”

The innkeeper apparently turned around to show them into the lower rooms, for his voice became inaudible and there was a sound of feet. But a moment later he picked up again “. . . the apartments for sleeping, which be untenanted.”

Medoro jerked at Shea’s arm and cast an imploring glance toward the window. Shea got out his sword and pulling his lips closed to his fellow jinn’s ear, murmured: “Draw, and we’ll scare the living bejesus out of them after that story he told. When I jump and yell, you do the same.” He waved the weapon; Medoro produced and waved his own, though with somewhat uncertain gestures. The footsteps started up the stair; Shea leaped with a whoop, in time to see three soldiers, with the innkeeper behind them.

He must have looked a hundred feet tall, coming down from above, and behind him Medoro emitted a shrill yell that was even more bloodcurdling than his own. An answering scream came from the men below, mingled with a clatter of dropped weapons and the sound of heavy bodies hurling themselves any old way toward escape. For a few seconds the bottom of the stair was a confused mass of trunks and limbs; then the soldiers fought their way loose and raced out the door.

The last one to get to his feet was the innkeeper, who as low man had been trampled by all three others. He was a little too slow on the getaway as hoofbeats diminished into the distance. Shea noted that he had both hands up for the formal tearing of his garments and his mouth open for a scream, but that both his motor nerves and his vocal seemed paralyzed.

He was not quite up to cutting the fellow down in cold blood, so he gave him a stiff left to the nose. The innkeeper dropped like an English heavyweight and rolled over, burying his face in his arms and awaiting the end.

“Look for that bow while I play footsie with this guy,” said Shea, digging his toe into the innkeeper’s ribs.

Medoro sidled past, his eyes rolling as though he expected Shea to begin carving steaks off the unfortunate man at any moment, but the latter contented himself with goosing the fellow tentatively with the point of the sword, until the young Saracen returned, waving the bow and saying: “By the omnipotence of Allah, it is indeed found!”

“Uncle, or whatever your name is,” said Shea, “if you want to stay alive a little longer, lie where you are till you count slowly up to one hundred. Then you may get up and tell anybody you like about how the Jann spared your life. Okay, Medoro.”

###

As the carpet resumed its slightly undulating flight, Medoro inched forward and patted one of Shea’s feet. “Know, O auspicious Lord Harr,” he said, “that this is a deed worthy to be written in the most divine verse on tablets of silver with letters of gold. It is given to poets, in the name of the Prophet, on whose name be blessings, to know all that passes in the minds of men, and had I but a lute, I would compose verses—”

“Too bad you haven’t got the lute,” said Shea. “But right now I’m more interested in figuring out the shortest way to the Castle of Carena.”

Belphegor pointed. “Sir Harold, it lies almost under the star of the Lion, thitherward. Behold that triad of bright stars; the lowest lies under the pole. And for your help in aiding Medoro to find my weapon, much thanks. It was knightly done to accompany him.”

Shea, looking down at the broken ground where the shadows were now deep, guessed that they were making twenty to thirty miles an hour. As the rolling highlands gave way to swollen, solid peaks of mountain, he had to put his vehicle into a climb to avoid the crests. All three began to shiver in their light clothes, and Medoro’s teeth rattled. Shea envied Roger the rug.

That gave him an idea. They must be far enough from Agramant’s camp so that over those stony mountains it would take days for the Amir’s men to catch up. Why not rest comfortably through the remainder of the night? He put the carpet into a glide toward a low rounded peak and set it down, murmuring (under his breath so that Medoro would not hear) a spell to keep it there.

The Roger-rug grunted again as the carpet touched a stone. It occurred to Shea that there was no particular reason why the big man should be comfortable while Belphebe-Belphegor was cold that night, so the prisoner was unrolled from his rug; and then it occurred to him that it would be interesting to hear what Roger had to say, so he removed the gag.

The prefect chevalier had plenty to say, beginning by calling them offsprings of Marids and one-eyed sows, then running up and down the chain of their ancestry and remarking that his uncle would have them pickled in brass bottles under the seal of Solomon. With academic interest Shea noted that the invective had a certain weakness toward the end. The slow brain of the big lummox had evidently not quite been able to resolve the contradiction of Jann who spoke with the voices of Shea and Medoro.