The Complete Compleat Enchanter (47 page)

“Why, not such as you would name tidings, now that you ask,” said the man, unabashed. “A small thing only, that will serve as a tale when tales are told. If I were a timorous man, the tale would doubtless be longer and have an unhappy ending, but—”

Belphegor’s foot tapped.

“To make a long matter short, as I was taking the short route over the mountain from Doredano, I was set upon by flying demons with horns and great tusks—doubtless a sending of that same sorcerer who will be so finely cooked tomorrow. Had I not fought my way through the press with this single blade, you would not see me here and I should have lost my profit. ’Ware them on the way. To what lord do you take your prisoner?”

“We’re taking him to a lady,” said Shea, firmly. “He has four black children and won’t pay alimony. But she’ll probably need a bodyguard who isn’t afraid of anything, and we’ll tell her you applied for the job. So long.”

Heedless of Roger’s howls of anger, he set out again.

It took them all day to reach the pass. The rests at Medoro’s request became more and more frequent, and he finally developed a blister, which had to be examined by Belphegor, to Shea’s intense disgust. She pronounced the infliction so bad that he would have to ride, and this time there was nearly a quarrel. Shea insisted on the danger from the big man’s strength and skill with weapons, the girl equally insistent that Medoro was a third of their fighting strength and they would be in poor shape against any attack if he were eliminated.

She won, of course; Medoro mounted the ass, while Roger’s feet were unbound and Shea made a slip-noose of turban for his neck, so that any sudden jerk would cut off the big man’s wind. They declared a kind of tacit truce; Shea began to talk to him, and for a time wished he hadn’t, since the only thing Roger wanted to discuss was broken heads and spilled guts. In desperation he turned to the subject of Bradamant, which had previously produced so strange an effect on the big bruiser. The effect was all that could be asked. Roger looked at the ground and tittered.

“What’s she like?” asked Shea. “I’ve never seen her.”

Roger appeared to be undergoing an internal revolution. Finally, with a masterful effort, he produced: “There is no blessedness but in Allah and his Prophet. Her arms are like ashtrees and her buttocks like full moons. Should chance bring union between us, I will contest with you in arms in celebration. But it is to be remarked that your death will not make me master of your Frankish slavegirl with the ill-omened hair; for I would liefer consort with the uttermost daughters of Eblis.”

The tables were neatly turned, decided Shea, and let well enough alone till they had crossed the pass and a mile or two down found a camping spot beside a stream. It was not yet twilight, but Belphegor declared that there would be little chance of game later, so she and Medoro went off hunting, while Shea built a fire.

Half an hour later they came back laughing, with four rabbits. She displayed her well-remembered skill at skinning and cooking them; Shea thought he had never tasted anything better, nor for that matter seen anything more pleasant than the spectacle of Medoro inserting morsel after morsel of meat into Roger’s mouth, which the latter gulped with a rapidity that suggested he was trying to snap the fingers off.

After the meal, all felt better; Roger almost genial in spite of the fact that he had to be led behind a bush, and Medoro positively brilliant. He improvised comic rhymes; he effectively parodied Dardinell’s parade-ground manner; he did a superb imitation of Atlantès working a complicated spell, including his dismay when the spell produced the wrong results. It came close enough so Shea laughed loud and carefree—whereupon Medoro suddenly went serious.

“Lord Harr,” he said, “now that your breast is broadened, I would seek unto your advice, as that of an uncle or a learned man in the law. According to the most excellent book of the Prophet of God, on whose name be grace, which is the Book of the Cow, it is lawful for a Muslim to take unto wife what woman he desires. Yet it is written also that one wife is insufficient, whereas two quarrel with each other, and if there be three, the two will combine against the third, so that there is no safety but in a fourth. Yet this woman whom I would wed will have me as single wife only.”

Shea smiled wryly. A delicious question to ask him! However, he thought, let’s roll with the punch. He said: “It’s a tough case. If you marry her that way, you violate your religion, and if she marries you any other way, she violates whatever religion she has, if any. I suggest you both become Zoroastrians. That can’t be far from either one.”

Belphegor said: “Who be these Zo-ro-astrans?” She tumbled over the word.

“Oh, they seem to have a pretty sound theology, for my money. They hold the existence of equal and opposed powers of good and evil, Ormazd and Ahriman. Gets around the difficulty of the doctors of theology. If good is omnipotent, how come there’s evil?”

Said the girl: “ ’Tis not far—” and stopped at the gasp of horror from Medoro.

His mouth was flapping open and shut, rather like that of a carp in a pool. When he found words, it was to say: “The Ghebers! To be a fire-worshipping alchemist! Why, they are filthy cannibals, who dance naked and eat the limbs of human beings! Why, I’d not union with the Queen of the Diamond Isles, had she all wisdom and the bed-arts of the Ethiopians, were she a Gheber! Nay, were she the most beauteous of mortal women to outward seeming, I would know her for the foulest of harlots by such token, who dined only on broiled rats’ bones and hired Negro slaves to do her service.”

Belphegor drew in a long breath. “My Lord Medoro,” she said, “that is somewhat ungentle of you. I would pray you to think more deeply on’t while we make our couches.” She was on her feet, all one graceful movement. “I’m for a tree.”

###

Next morning they breakfasted on the proceeds of the girl’s hunting, Medoro slightly querulous over the lack of salt and Roger grumbling that there was no Imam to call the proper hour of prayer. Shea said: “The way I figure it out, I doubt whether we can make the castle today, unless we get some animals to carry us in Pau.”

Medoro looked at the girl. “By Allah, if we reach that castle never, it were soon enough for me, unless there be a good Kazi with witnesses there to marry us at once.”

Shea opened his mouth, but the girl beat him to it. “Nay, fair Medoro,” she said, “let us think not so fast on marriage. For behold, I am as bound by my plighted word as ever knight was, to stand by Sir Harold till this quest be fully accomplished. Whatever faith holds, one must keep faith.”

The dampening of Medoro’s spirits was only temporary. By time they were ready to start, he was gay and cheerful again, and when Shea led Roger to the ass with the intention of repeating the previous day’s arrangement, the poet darted ahead and mounted it at once.

“Hey!” said Shea. “You had your turn yesterday. Now look here—”

Medoro looked down from his seat. “Now Allah burn my liver if I ride not this ass today,” he said. “O, son of shame—”

Smack!
It was a long reach but Shea landed right on the side of the jaw and Medoro landed with a plunk on the ground. He heaved himself up on one elbow as Shea looked at his own tingling knuckles, wondering what had made his own temper depart to the region where the woodbine twineth.

When he raised his eyes Belphegor was between them, hand on her little belt-knife. “De Shea,” she said, in a grating voice, “this passes bearing; a most vile peasantish discourtesy. You are no more my knight, nor I your lady, till you make full apology, nor will I hold communion with you else.”

Medoro rode the ass. Shea, trudging along in the dirt and stones, with his hand on Roger’s halter, wondered whether the light of his life were exactly bright.

Proceeding grumpily under the pillar of disagreement that kept them all silent, they were still well short of Pau when afternoon drew in and Belphegor announced shortly that if they were to sup, she would have to hunt. This time Medoro did not accompany her, but as he got down from the ass, he suddenly shaded his eyes against the sun and pointed:

“Inshallah!” he said. “Lord Harr, look on a marvel. That tree is surely of peach, such as they have in the land of Circassia, and as the Prophet is the Witness, we shall have fruit to our repast.” He skipped off with no sign of blister or limp and in a few moments was back with his arms full of ripe peaches.

It was at that moment that inspiration descended on Harold Shea. “Sit down and take care of Roger while I prepare them for eating,” he said. Medoro wrinkled his eyes round a glance that might have been one of suspicion. “Listen, take it easy,” said Shea. “I’m sorry I got sore at you this morning.”

The poet’s face broke out in a beatific smile. “Of a truth, Lord Harr, it is said that the Franks are in fury uncontrollable, but if one bear with them in friendship generous.” He took the slip-knot turban and led Roger to one side.

Shea took off his helmet, stuck it in the ground on its spike; it made a magnificent punchbowl. Four of the peaches went into it. Shea scratched the letters C, H and O with his knifepoint on the remaining peaches and arranged them as Doc Chalmers had done when he so unexpectedly produced the Scotch whiskey in Faerie. Accident that time, Shea told himself; but this time whatever happened would be on purpose. He leaned over the helmet and with one eye cocked in the direction where Medoro was rather languidly holding to Roger’s noose as the latter recounted one of his tales of assault and battery, repeated softly what he could remember of Doc’s spell:

“So frequently as I with present time

The earlier image of our joy compare,

So frequently I find our less than prime,

And little joy than that we once did share:

Thus do I ask those things that once we had

To make an evening run its magic course,

And banish from this company the sad

Thoughts that in prohibition have their source:

Change, peaches! From the better to the worse.”

For a moment he had the dreadful fear that this would give him a mess of rotten peaches, but when he opened his eyes, the helmet was brimmed to overflowing with a golden liquid in which peach pits and deflated peachskins floated. Shea fished one of the latter out and tasted the surplus. It was peach brandy all right, of a magnificent flavor, and now that he caught it at the back of his palate, a potency rarely equaled in his own cosmos—about 120-proof, he would judge.

“Hey!” he called. “Bring him over here, Medoro. I’ve made some peach sherbet for you.”

The poet got to his feet, jerking the prisoner along. He leaned over the helmet and sniffed. “By Allah, it has a noble perfume, Lord Harr. You are the best of shahbands; but it should be cooled with snow for fair sherbet.”

“I’ll trot right over to one of the mountains and get some,” said Shea.

Medoro knelt and thrusting his face down to the edge of the helmet, took a long pull. “Allah!” he said. “Of a truth, snow is sorely needed, for this sherbet burns like fire. If this be poison—” he glared at Shea.

“Then I’ll be poisoned, too,” and Shea took a drink for himself. It certainly did warm the gullet going down.

“Give me some of this sherbet, I pray, in the name of Allah,” begged Roger. Shea cautiously disengaged the spike of the helmet from the ground and held it for him, as he took a sip, then a drink.

When he lifted his face from the cup, Medoro said: “Oh lord and brother blest and to profit increased, I would have more of your Frankish sherbet; for the eve is chill, and it does provide a warmth interior.”

The helmet went round, and then again, Shea not stinting when it came his turn. Belphegor’s anger with him began to fade a little into the background. She’d get over it as soon as she realized her real identity, and he could think of a dozen, twenty, thirty schemes to produce that desirable result, only requiring slight details to be filled in. He could take care of that any time; in the meanwhile, Medoro was one of the most fascinating conversationalists he had ever met, and even Roger was not so bad a guy when you got to know him. The Saracen paladin was telling a tale of his adventures in Cathay, which Medoro was weaving into a ballad of immensely complicated rhythm-scheme, but he kept missing the rhyme at the third line of each stanza, and Shea was correcting him when Belphegor suddenly stood in the center of the little group, a brace of black-plumed birds in her hand.

Medoro looked up, and his mouth fell open. “Now may Ifrits remove me to the outermost depths of the sea an I futter not this damsel,” he shouted, and lurched halfway to his feet, then sat down. His brows contorted with effort; he tried to get up again and made it. Belphegor dropped the birds.

“I love you for your exceeding loveliness and surpassing beauty,” said Medoro, “and you shall grant me the desire of the body, as Ali bin-Hayat says:

“Man craving pardon will uplift their hands;

Women pray pardon with their legs on high:

Out on it for a pious, prayerful work!

The Lord shall raise it in the depths to lie.”

He giggled at the girl’s horror-filled face, hiccupped, spread his arms and ran at her.

Smack!
Medoro sat down abruptly. Shea cried triumphantly: “A most vile peasantish discourtesy!”

The young Moor heaved himself up again, his handsome features contorted. “By Allah!” he said. “You foulest of tribades and filthiest of harlots, that would reject the love of one of the house of Hassan for base-born Negroes! Farewell! I seek the camp where there are boys a thousand times lovelier and more faithful.” Before any of them could guess his intention, he took three staggering steps to the ass, was on its back and belaboring it to a gallop in the direction whence they had come with his scabbarded scimitar.

Belphegor stood at gaze a second, then snatched up her bow and sent an arrow after him—too late.

“Shurr Harol’,” said Roger with owlish gravity, “ish even as I have shaid. Thish red Frankish hair ish ill-omened. You had better be drowned in the shee if you sell not that slave.”

Shea ignored him to take the helmet over to Belphegor. “Here, take a drink of this,” he said.