The Complete Compleat Enchanter (46 page)

The poet plucked at Shea’s sleeve. “O brother,” he said, “shall we not rather release him for the night; for it is contrary to the law of the Prophet that a man shall not be allowed to take his relievements. As is said by Abu Nowas—”

“As is said by myself, nothing doing,” replied Shea. “I don’t want to sit up guarding this big lug all night, and if Bradamant gets hold of him, he’ll forget all about the law of the Prophet, anyway.”

He was astounded to hear the big lug groan, and see a glistening tear on his eyelids in the starshine; and even more astounded when Roger shut up completely.

Belphegor and Medoro moved a little apart and sat on a rock, talking softly and looking at the bright, near stars. Shea saw his arm go round the girl’s waist and guess he didn’t dare try anything at this stage, and under the circumstances, there didn’t seem to be much point in building a campfire. He pulled a twig from the top of a scrubby bush and bit down on it, trying to pretend that it was a pipe and recalling the ad for some brand of tobacco—“A gentleman’s solace.”

Solace! That was what he needed. What was the use, anyway, of this running across a parade of universes not even real and having nothing to show for it? What he ought to do was go back to Garaden, finish getting his doctor’s degree, become a big-shot psychiatrist, consulted by alcoholics and the affluent screwy, and make money. With money you could have everything—even affection. He recalled a statistic that Garaden had itself gathered, to the effect that something over sixty percent of women could be happy and affectionate with any really good provider.

It wasn’t really as simple as that, though. That red-haired spearshaft of a girl over there was his wife, none genuine without this signature, and just any girl who wanted a good provider wouldn’t take her place. Anyway, he had a responsibility. He had married her and promised to keep her safe—particularly fro such things as the Medoro menace. He had seen the thing so often in case histories: women of her forceful type, thoroughly competent as long as sex was left out, falling for good-looking weaklings whom they felt the impulse to mother, and unhappy because of it. They usually ended up by despising the men in question.

Well, what? He couldn’t very well murder Medoro; that was not in the limits of his own
ethos,
and it would probably have the contrary effect on the girl than the one he wanted. It would fix the love-image in her memory forever as something desirable and lost. Moreover, he had no desire to bump off Medoro. The guy was perfectly frank about his own weakness as a fighter or man of action of any kind, no sham about him. He was only miscast as a Saracen warrior, like one of the Marx brothers trying to play Hamlet. With the right kind of stage-manager . . .

The whole problem was one to pass on to Chalmers, that very well-integrated personality, who didn’t mind tearing other people’s lives apart to mend the details of his own.

Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to get some sleep. Medoro was supposed to watch Roger during the early part of the night. He hoped the idiot would not do anything stupid, like turning the perfect cavalier loose, but consoled himself with the thought that if Medoro did that, Roger would probably fall on the poet first and make enough racket to wake the other two up.

A wolf howled in the distance. Everybody moved, rustlingly at the sound. Another howl answered it. The howlers set up a duet, the howls became shorter and closer together, then they ceased. About that time Medoro began to croon in a minor key, presumably a poem of his own.

Lucky stiff, thought Shea, meaning the wolf.

Fourteen

“Now where the hell are we?” demanded Harold Shea.

Below the edge of the carpet nothing was visible but rocky peaks, pine-clad slopes, and steep gorges, with now and then a metallic flash of water in them. “We’ve been flying for hours, and all we get is more of the same. I think we ought to stop at a gas station and ask.”

A little frown came between Belphegor-Belphebe’s lined brows. “As oft erst, Sir Harold, I wot not—right well—what you would say.”

“It’s like this: we seem to be a long time getting nowhere, and I could do with something to eat.”

She looked at him, then glanced quickly sidewise and down. “I marveled that you are so eager to end this, our adventure; yet since you will have it so, there lies a road now below us which, an I mistake not, will lead us to Carena.”

“You have the damnedest eyes, kid. Where?”

She pointed. It was a mountain track like two or three they had glimpsed already, sneaking down one side of a gorge, across a stream by stepping-stones, and up the opposite slope.

Shea banked and spiraled down toward the track. Belphegor indicated four dots ahead on the road which, as they approached, resolved into a man leading three laden asses. Shea slid in toward him, and just above head level, called: “Hi, there!”

The man looked up, his whole face seemed to dissolve, he gave a squawk of terror and began to run, the asses rocking behind him. The carpet zipped past a hairpin turn and came round in a long curve as Shea brought it back, crying to the girl: “You talk to him!”

“Nay, hold rather,” she said. “He is so sore affrighted with your grim aspect that an you clip him close, he’ll but leap a cliff and take the known death rather than the terror unknown.”

“Allah upon you if you do!” said Medoro. “This is most excellent sport to see a merchant so buffooned.”

“No, she’s right,” said Shea, slanting the carpet upward and away. “But it leaves us with a problem. How are we going to get close enough to anybody to ask questions, looking the way we do?”

“What need of question?” asked Belphegor. “I have given you the direction general; you have but to wait for night, then put this strange steed of yours aloft and to its pace, seeking for that ring of flame around the castle.”

Shea glanced down to be sure he was following the road. “It isn’t just finding the palace,” he said. “We’ve got to consider tactics, too. Duke Astolph is somewhere around with that damn hippogriff, and this thing’s slow freight by comparison. I don’t want to be enchanted down in flames, especially with you aboard, kid.”

“Grammercy for your thought of me, fair sir,” said the girl: “but I charge you that while we keep this quest, you shall no longer treat me as a woman
par amours,
but as a full companion.”

The words were sharp enough, but did he imagine it, or had she said them in a tone anything but sharp? There was not time to make a decision, for peering over the carpet’s leading edge, Shea caught sight of a little fan of detritus at the side of a mountain which might be a mine entrance. “I’m going to land there,” he told the others. “Belphebe—that is, Belphegor, suppose you go first and smooth out anyone inside.”

The carpet slanted smoothly down to a landing in front of the mineshaft, which did not appear to be a mineshaft after all when one got close to it. As Shea stood up to stretch cramped muscles, a man appeared at the low entrance. He was old, he was whiskery, and a dirty brown robe was gathered around his waist by a piece of cord.

For a moment he looked at the visitors with widening eyes, then took a step backward, and planting his feet firmly, lifted his right hand with two fingers upraised: “In the name of St. Anthony and the Virgin Mary,” he said in a high voice, “depart, cursèd enchantments!”

Shea felt the muscles of his face relax into different patterns and reached a hand up to find that his tusks were gone. He looked at Medoro; the poet had lost his, too.

“Nothing to worry about, Father,” he said to the old man. “We’re really not enchantments ourselves, just had some put on us, and we’re looking for directions.”

The old man beamed. “Surely, surely, my son. There be many great and good men of your race, some of whom draw nigh unto God, though in strange wise. And all respect the hermit who has nought but his poverty. Whither wish you to go?”

“Castle Carena,” said Shea, the thought flashing through his mind that even if this were the holiest hermit in Spain, his protestation of poverty was laid on with a trowel.

“By the road before you, my children. Over the next pass lies the valley of Pau; beyond it, the village of the same name, wherein stands the church of St. Mary of Egypt, whose vicar is an Austin friar. Beyond that again, a fork in the route—”

“Uh-huh,” said Shea. He turned to Belphegor. “That must be the valley where my partner went hunting for Roger just before I met you and Duke Astolph.” He turned back to the hermit. “Have you seen any Christian knights going in that direction?”

The old man’s face took on a troubled expression. “Nay, children,” he said. “I know naught of warlike men or their contentions. These be vanities, even as gold.”

Medoro plucked Shea’s sleeve. “Of a truth,” he said, “there is no truth in this man, and he has evidently seen more than he has told. Let us question him more nearly.” He fondled the hilt of his dagger.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shea saw Belphegor’s fine features take on a look of distaste. He said: “Nothing doing. You don’t know Christian hermits, Medoro. Roughing them up only makes them more obstinate; and besides, it wouldn’t look good. Anyway, now we’re rid of those Jann disguises we can find out what we want to know anywhere. So long.”

He flipped a hand at the hermit, who lifted his two fingers again and said: “The blessing of God on you, my son.”

The three took their places on the carpet and Shea recited:

“By warp and by woof,

High over the roof

Of mountain and tower

You shall fly in this hour.”

Nothing happened.

Shea repeated the verse, and then tried several variations in wording. Still no result. The hermit smiled benignly.

The girl said: “Methinks I can unriddle this, Sir Harold. This religious has not only blessed us, but pronounced an exorcism against enchantments, so that whatever virtue the carpet possessed by your magic is departed, nor may return in his presence. ’Tis not the first such wonder of holy men, nor the last, belike.”

“Are you a holy man?” asked Shea.

The hermit folded his arms complacently. “In my humble way, my son, I strive to lead the sinless life.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Shea. “Now I suppose we’ll have to walk.”

Said the hermit: “It were better for your soul to mortify the flesh by walking a thousand miles with bleeding feet than to travel at ease for one.”

“No doubt,” said Shea, “but right now there are a couple of things more important to me than my soul, and one of them is getting a good friend of mine out of a jam.” He was talking over his shoulder as he unbound Roger’s legs and made a loop in the knotted turbans to serve as a halter.

Something made a gruesome noise in the cave. Shea cocked his head. “You got an ass, Father?”

The old man’s complacency gave way to a look of apprehension. “You would not rob me of my stay and sole companion, my son?”

“No. I told you we were on the square. I just wondered if you’d be interested in selling him.”

With surprising alacrity the hermit disappeared into the shaft, to return presently with the ass; a big, tough-looking animal that would help them a good deal in the marching that evidently lay ahead. Shea asked how much; the hermit replied that the service of God could hardly be accomplished on less than five bezants, a figure at which Belphegor made a little round O of her mouth.

Shea felt at his belt, then remembered that the innkeeper had picked him clean and he had forgotten to repossess the money. “Damn,” he said. “You got any money, Medoro?”

The Moor spread his hands. “Oh, my lord and brother, had I but a piece of copper, it were at your service. But it was ordained that my monies should be left in my casket, which is in the camp of the Commander of the Faithful, the blessed.”

“Hm,” said Shea. “Okay, then, let’s have one of those bangles,” indicating Medoro’s jeweled bracelets.

Medoro looked sour. “It is not to be concealed, O friend Harr, that such a jewel is worth a dozen such vile, scrawny beasts as that which stands before us. Has not your Nazarene imam pronounced that gold is vanity to him?”

“That’s his risk,” said Shea, folding the carpet into a saddle pad and slinging it on the back of the animal.

“It will be devoted to the increase of holiness,” said the hermit, unbinding the rope around his waist and helpfully installing it as a cinch. Shea turned to Roger, who had not said a word: “Okay, big boy, you get the ride.”

The direct address seemed to touch off a spring within whatever nest of complexes served the big man for a brain. “Vile cozener!” he shouted. “May Allah descend on me if I separate your bones not one from another. Yet since you do me at least the honor to give me the better place, I will accord it in my mercy that you die before these others. Alhamodillah!”

“Nice of you,” said Shea, firmly, tying Rogers feet together under the animal’s belly. “But that’s not quite the idea. It’s just that you’re less likely to get loose and massacre us while you’re in this position.”

They set out. The track had never been intended for wheeled traffic and was so narrow that no more than two could go abreast, a distinctly less comfortable method of travel than the flying carpet. Shea took the lead, one hand on the ass’ rope. It was an hour later when he held up a hand to halt the others. “People ahead,” he said.

Belphegor came up to join him, bow bent and arrow nocked. The people turned out to be three asses, biting the tops off weeds at the cliffside and a stout, weather-beaten man, sitting in the shade and resting. The man scrambled up at their approach, hand to knife, then relaxed as Shea said: “Good morning, mister. How’s business?”

“Peace and good luck to you, friend,” said the man. “Business have I none at the moment, but count that at sundown I shall have much; for look you, I am bound for Pau, where they are holding an auto-da-fé on a paynim sorcerer the day beyond tomorrow. Now that is thirsty work; and I have the wine to slake it.” He gestured toward the asses, and Shea perceived that they were laden with skin bags that gurgled liquidly.

Shea thought of Votsy and Dr. Chalmers and didn’t quite like the sound of that “paynim sorcerer.” But before he could question further, Belphegor burst out: “No more on this. Behold, Medoro, why I still love the free wild-wood, when men will still do such things to each another. Have you other tidings, sirrah?”