I found my way through the narrow streets to the Church of the Holy Wisdom at noon, as a wailing from the minarets again called the faithful People of the Prophet to prayer. I did not expect to see Maffi, or, if so, assumed I would find him ready with some woeful story why he couldn’t find the ring I wanted. It was because I doubted he would even be there that I had refused Ascelin’s offer to accompany me. But the way Maffi leaned against the door frame of the great church, waiting, exuded confidence.
“You found it?” I asked in amazement.
But he just gave me a mysterious smile. “Maybe. Come and look for yourself.”
As I hurried after him, I wondered how many powerful magic rings were circulating through the east, in search of how many significant magic objects. There was Dominic’s ruby ring for starters, then the ring Arnulf had sent with us, the ebony flying horse, then the Black Pearl, whatever Dominic’s father had found in the Wadi Harhammi, and now whatever Kaz-alrhun hoped to discover with the ring from Arnulf.
I looked at the boy darting down the street in front of me, sandals slapping on the paving, and felt foolish to have pitied him. Whether he had a family or not he did not need anyone to look after him. He seemed without any difficulty to have found a ring I had not been completely sure even existed.
I was beginning to recognize the narrow streets that led down the far side of Xantium’s hill toward the Thieves’ Market, but the sounds and smells of the Market struck me afresh as we came out among the striped awnings. “Over this way,” said Maffi confidently. He slipped easily around booths, under tables, through knots of men who looked at me impassively from under folded headdress that hid most of their faces. I caught up with the boy in the far corner of the Market.
It was slightly quieter here. I felt a prickle of unease. An ebony chess piece, a rook, was lying on the ground, and it looked strangely familiar. “Wait,” I said, “before we go any further. Who is this person who has the ring? Did he tell you how he obtained it, or how much he wants for it?”
“It’s the right ring, all right,” said Maffi with a grin. “He’ll tell you how much he wants himself.” He gestured toward a booth whose striped awning was drawn shut, though a sandaled foot showed beneath it. “Go ahead!”
I still hesitated, but he turned at once and disappeared into the crowd. Oh well, I thought. If he didn’t even wait to be paid, it wasn’t my fault. I could always find my own way back to the inn by flying high enough to see the harbor and then locating it from there. I stepped resolutely up to the booth.
I expected the awning to be pulled back, but instead the foot disappeared. I pushed the fabric aside myself and looked into shadows so dark that it was impossible to make out any detail, although I thought I saw a pair of shining dark eyes.
“Hello? I heard you have a ring for sale?”
“Come in, come further in,” said a muffled voice. “I have it here at the back.”
I entered slowly, letting the awning drop behind me. “I can’t see anything,” I protested. “If you’ve really got a ring I’d be interested in, let’s look at it in daylight.”
The air crackled, giving me half a second’s warning: not nearly enough to resist the binding spell that abruptly held me tight. I toppled over with a painful thump.
“Push back the awning,” said the muffled voice. “Let us see what he has brought.”
I lay, paralyzed from the collar bone down, on the filthy paving stones of the Market with several men bent over me. Someone let in a little daylight, and in a moment my eyes grew accustomed enough to the dim light so that I could make them out. As I should have expected, one of them was the enormous black shape of Kaz-alrhun.
“Let him keep that eagle ring,” he said, “but see what else he has.”
Hands reached into my pockets. They pulled the knife from my belt and the piece of parchment from inside my jacket.
“A piece of paper with an eggplant recipe, a smooth stone, and what looks like a buckle off a harness,” said one of the other men, examining what had come from my pockets.
But Kaz-alrhun was looking at the piece of parchment, reading Prince Dominic’s letter to his family, and his black eyes grew round. “Well, Daimbert, I knew you had brought more with you to Xantium than you cared to say. Your party is dressed as pilgrims, but I see that your goal lies far beyond the Holy Land. If you had told me you had this at once, all this trouble might have been unnecessary! Tell me, where did you obtain the parchment?”
“It was magically concealed inside a ring,” I said in resignation.
“Well, since you cooperated at the last, Daimbert,” Kaz-alrhun said with a chuckle, “even if not entirely voluntarily!” he paused for another laugh, “I have a mind to let you live. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” I said cautiously. Even though I could not move, I could feel all sorts of damp things soaking through my clothes, and my shoulders were sore and stiff. I tried a spell to lift myself off the ground and found that this binding spell not only held me physically, but also blocked my access to all but a few words of the Hidden Language. The only bright spot was imagining turning Maffi into a frog the next time I saw him, preferably a frog about to be eaten by a water-snake.
“But you attempted to mock me, Daimbert,” the mage said, “coming to the Thieves’ Market with the ruby ring and then trying to buy my horse with a different ring entirely.” His laughter was gone now. “I do not like to be mocked.”
It sounded as though he thought I knew far more than I in fact did. I wondered resignedly what it was.
“And I do not wish you to cause me any more problems at once,” Kaz-alrhun added thoughtfully. “I think you will just leave town, immediately. Perhaps in a few days you shall have determined, even with your western magic, how to break my binding spell!”
“What do you mean, leave town?” I said, trying to keep panic out of my voice.
“On a trade caravan, of course. Laugh at your fate, Daimbert! No man can in dread change the day of his death, but he can with laughter chase dire dread away.”
One of the men with Kaz-alrhun scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder. I didn’t feel like laughing, even to chase dire dread away.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I said. “My friends knew I was coming here today.” This was not strictly true, but Ascelin would certainly come to the Thieves’ Market if I didn’t return to the inn. “They’ll be very cautious when I don’t return, and you’ll never be able to steal the ruby ring.”
“But you and I both know that none of them is a mage,” said Kaz-alrhun in a good-natured bellow. “You do not have the pieces to win this phase of the game, Daimbert. When your tall swordsman friend seeks you here, there will be nothing to see.” He nodded to the man who held me. “There should be a caravan leaving from the north gate within the half hour.”
The man darted out of the dimness of the booth into the brilliant sun, with me slung over his shoulder. He turned quickly from side to side for a moment, then set off at a trot.
I opened my mouth to say something, to try to negotiate with him, and found my vocal chords frozen. I was hanging upside down on his back, and a glance at my upper body showed that I had been covered with illusion to look like some sort of paper-wrapped parcel.
And what would the mage do to Dominic? While we hurried along the less crowded streets through the back of Xantium, I tried probing the spell that held me. I had new sympathy for the castellan and knights I had made stand in binding spells all night. Parts of my body felt numb and others itched almost unbearably, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I lost track of where we were long before I had any idea how this spell worked. We came suddenly under the arch of a stone gate, and by stretching my neck around, the only part of my body not held motionless, I could see a small collection of mule-drawn carts.
Turbaned men were tying down the loads and shouting to each other. The man carrying me stepped up to the last cart and said something I didn’t catch, though I heard a clink of coins. The next moment, I had been dumped amidst bales of what felt like cloth and had a tarpaulin pulled across me. I was still struggling unsuccessfully to find a way to unravel Kaz-alrhun’s spell when I heard a shout, the cart beneath me creaked, and the caravan began to move.
There wasn’t much air beneath the tarpaulin, and in the sun it almost immediately grew extremely hot. I breathed shallowly, sweat running down my face, trying to imagine what my companions would do when I didn’t return-and when the mage appeared among them with a flash of light and demanded Dominic’s ring.
Kaz-alrhun’s spell twisted and turned beneath my probing almost as if it were alive. I recognized the shape of the spell from Melecherius’s book, but I still could not unravel it. Several times I thought I had it, and each time it eluded me. I reminded myself grimly that I had wanted to see eastern magic.
I soon felt as though I was caught not just by a spell but by a nightmare. As breathing took more and more effort, I gave up even trying to undo the spell that held me. I hovered on the edge of consciousness, between dreaming and hallucinating. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably closer to three hours, when the cart beneath me stopped moving.
“Well,” said a voice, “shall we look at what Kaz-alrhun sent with us?”
The tarpaulin was jerked off, letting in sun-baked air that tasted deliciously refreshing as I sucked it desperately into my lungs.
I blinked my eyes then and looked up at the two men bending over me. They were Arnulf’s agents.
I tried to speak and discovered my voice had returned. A glance downward showed that the illusion that made me into a parcel had also worn off. “I’ve been put in a binding spell,” I croaked. “Help me up and give me something to drink.”
“It’s- It’s a man!” said one of them. Maybe the sun was slowing his reasoning powers as badly as it affected me.
They pulled me into a sitting position and offered me water out of a leather bag. It was lukewarm and absolutely delicious, even if it did dribble down my chin. I was too grateful to accuse them of taking part in a plot to kill innocent wizards. By now, I thought, the mage must have seized Dominic’s ring-and maybe even Dominic himself. I would have to formulate a plan of action as soon as I could act-or, for that matter, think clearly again.
“It is- Are you not the mage who was with Arnulf?” asked one of the turbaned men.
“Yes,” I said, giving up the effort of persuading them that Joachim was not his brother. I glanced at the long, curved swords at their sides, but they showed no sign of drawing them. “And your friend Kaz-alrhun wanted to get rid of me.”
“But why?” they said in what appeared to be real distress. “Has he broken his agreement?”
I shook my head and made a new effort to understand the magic that held me. “We didn’t give him the ring he demanded in return for his ebony horse.”
“But Arnulf told us before he came that he would have it!”
For a moment I had thought I understood at last, that Kaz-alrhun wanted the ruby ring to get into the Wadi himself, but this ring Arnulf had sent with us to buy the flying horse seemed to be something entirely different.
“I was carrying a magical parchment,” I said, “which seemed to please Kaz-alrhun, though I certainly hadn’t meant to give it to him. This binding spell appears to be his punishment for riding his horse without any intention of giving him what he wanted.”
“But if he has the parchment, now,” said one of the agents, “and if he thinks it will do just as well as the ring, then Arnulf should be able to take the horse! Kaz-alrhun may work out of the Thieves’ Market, but we have found that he honors his bargains.”
I couldn’t even begin to agree, but it was too complicated for an argument. I glanced up while struggling anew with the spell and saw a dark shape, not quite a cloud, scuttling low through the sky. “An Ifrit!” I cried involuntarily, panicked because of my helplessness. Back in Yurt, I had said I wanted to see an Ifrit-all my wishes were coming true with a vengeance.