I passed a hand over my forehead. This really would have been much easier with functioning magical abilities. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’d like to be able to help you and your fish people, but you’ll have to tell me first what has happened.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as though gathering his memories or his strength, then looked at me fully. “Know then that I, thanks be to God, was once the prince of this city, and had married a wife, a princess beautiful as the full moon rising, whose eyes were the shadows of evening lamplight and mouth the sweetest of honeys. I married her knowing she was a witch and not caring, for I thought she loved me too.”
My blood went cold, and I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder. Even in the west, wizards were suspicious of witches and their half-learned spells, always hovering on the edge of black magic. They tended to deal with the old magic of the earth, knowing little of the Hidden Language, and were rumored to create monsters in their wombs. I didn’t like to think what witches were like here in the east.
“But when we had been married a year, she began to come in the evening to this garden, to sit in the pavilion. At first I accompanied her, but then she said that she preferred to be alone, to feel the evening breezes and think her evening thoughts. I trusted her, for I loved her, and I had not yet heard the saying, ‘Whatso woman willeth, the same she fulfilleth, however man nilleth.’
“But after another year had passed, when it seemed she came here almost every night and often did not return to our sleeping mat until near the break of day, I became suspicious. When I tried to ask her to sleep by my side instead of in the garden, she first burst into tears and said that I was cruel, then darkened her forehead at me and said that I was a tyrant. She refused to listen to my entreaties but shut herself up with her handmaidens.
“And that night, as I watched in secret and followed her in silence, she went again into this garden. And in the pavilion, the worst of my fears and even worse than my fears were realized, for I found her lying in delight in the arms of my vilest slave!”
“So what did you do?” I asked quietly, when the horror of the memory seemed to have silenced him.
“They had left a lamp burning outside the pavilion, and I could see their heads close together, their lips locked in kisses. And I thought that with a single stroke of my sword I could cut off both their heads together. For I had feared something of this and brought my sword with me.
“But as I drew the blade, she must have heard the sound, for she pulled sharply away, and I, distracted by her motion, did not strike true. I missed her completely, and I cut the slave’s neck only halfway through.”
Just because we in Yurt never hung anyone, I reminded myself, did not mean that the rest of the world did not assess the death penalty. But I still thought that he had been much too precipitate. I had started to feel sympathetic for this pale young prince, but now I felt sympathy only for the slave.
But the prince was not waiting for my sympathy. “When she saw what I had done, she cursed me with the deepest and blackest of witches’ curses. Her hand she thrust straight into the lamp’s flame, and she hurled fountains of fire and spells at me that would have destroyed me if they had touched my head. But instead-”
He paused and lifted his black cloak with his left elbow. From the waist up he was still human, but everything below the waist, including his left hand and right arm, which was stretched along his leg with the sword still in his grip, had turned to stone.
“And so you see me, traveler,” he continued. “But even this was not enough for her. She turned with a cry of despair when she saw her slave lover almost dead and tried to revive him with her wicked spells and the potions she always carried with her, sobbing and calling him tender names she had never once called me. When she could not heal him immediately, she wrapped him most tenderly, both in blankets and in her perverted magic, and left him in the pavilion.
“Then she went down into the city like the force of vengeance and called on the dark powers that lurk beneath the waves. And in answer to her call the nameless creatures of night rose up from the deep and swallowed the city. The breakers rolled across it and drowned it, even as you see it now.”
“But the fish?” I asked.
“The people might have swum to safety even in the drowning of their city, for we are a sea people and used to swimming, but that would not have satisfied her. So she turned them all into different kinds of fish, red for those who follow the Prophet, gold for the Children of Abraham, and blue for those who follow the Nazarene. When they are lifted from the water they can still speak like men, at least a few phrases, but in the sea they are fish, and fish they must remain.”
I wondered if they still knew who they really were. Someone transmogrified by western magic would still keep his original identity, inside. The brightly-colored fish I had seen in the emir’s palace-doubtless brought there as a marvel-must think themselves in harsh captivity.
I realized the prince had been silent for several minutes and turned toward him. His deep eyes looked at me in entreaty. “Whoever you may be, traveler, you are the first to enter my garden in the two years since this happened. Are you perhaps sent in answer to my prayers to save me and avenge me upon my wife?”
“I might be,” I said slowly. I couldn’t see the Ifrit from where we were sitting, but he must still be only a short distance away. I knew it was useless to ask him again for my magic back, though I had no idea how I was going to dissolve a transformations spell without it. Even without the knowledge that he was testing me-and might keep my friends buried in the sand forever if I did not pass-I felt sorry for the fish.
“Does your wife ever come back to gloat over you?” I asked. Maybe I could somehow persuade her to break her own spell.
“Of course. She comes every evening, feeds me just enough to keep me alive, and then whips me until I sob with pain, to punish me again for what I did to her lover. I would have died from the blows many months ago-and often I wish I could-but she then salves my wounds with wicked magic, so that I may heal by the next day and be beaten again. Then she crawls into the pavilion with the slave-that is why I warned you not to go in, for fear she would realize some one had been there. She calls on him tenderly and caresses him and begs him to be healed quickly. So far he has never answered her.”
I put my head in my hands. The slave must be long dead, if he did not respond to magic which could heal the wounds from a whipping in a day. His body must only kept from decay by some variation of the spell that held together the body of the wizard of the eastern kingdoms.
When I lifted my head again, the prince was almost smiling. “Are you perhaps a mage?”
“No.” It was too complicated to explain. “But I think I have an idea.”
I sat on the bench beside him all afternoon. He told me more about his city before all its people became fish. I was able to deflect his rather desultory questions about where I had come from-for him, the chief interesting thing about me was that I might save him. Late in the afternoon, somewhere in the distance, I began to hear singing.
“It is my people,” said the young prince softly. “When they were still human, they used to sing as the sun set, and even now that they are fish they rise to the surface each day at this time to salute the day’s passing.”
The singing died away with the coming of twilight, and not long thereafter the prince whispered to me, “The witch usually comes at about this time, so make your preparations.”
“Do not fear, for you will be a free man tonight.” I stood up, hoping this was going to work.
I slipped quietly down to the little round pavilion and found my way in by feel. Slowly I groped my way across the floor until my hand found another hand, very cold.
I jerked back, just managing to stay quiet. If this was the slave, he seemed quite dead. I felt forward again and found his body, lying amid a heap of pillows and blankets on a sleeping mat. I lifted him up as well as I could, just as glad I could not see his slashed throat, and carefully carried him out the far side of the pavilion. There had already been too many slashed throats for me on this trip. I slid the slave under a bush and went back into the pavilion just as a bobbing light appeared at the garden gate.
I lay down on the mat where the dead slave had lain, but the light did not immediately approach. Instead, it was set down on the bench by the young prince. In the light of her lamp I could see the prince’s witch wife. If eastern witches could touch someone’s mind and tell who they were, she would know in a second that I was here. To the prince, she might have been as lovely as the full moon rising. To me she looked terrifying.
But she did not seem to have any immediate suspicions. First she fed the prince and gave him water to drink out of a skin, laughing mockingly at his inability to move more than his head and left elbow. Then she pulled out a whip and stepped back, her face dark with fury.
“For wishing to kill me,” she shouted, “for almost killing my beloved, you deserve death and worse than death! As long as he hovers on the edge of life, you will pray to God each day that you might die!”
The young prince stood it for about five lashes, then started to whimper. When he began to cry out in pain, and then to beg the witch by the love they had once shared, by her love for the slave, and by the love of God not to hit him again, her blows only intensified.
Lying where the slave had died, I put my hands over my ears. Without magic, there was no way I could oppose a witch with a whip in her hand and probably the supernatural forces of darkness in her spells. I had to wait for her to tire and to rub her salves into the prince’s wounds. Even with magic, I certainly could not heal him overnight myself.
She seemed satisfied at last and put her whip away. The prince had slumped as much as he could being half stone, and he no longer seemed conscious. But when she brought out little pots that glowed with a green light and rubbed the salve onto his back, he slowly revived and straightened again. “Until tomorrow night, husband?” she murmured in triumph.
But then her whole manner changed. She lifted up the lamp and approached the pavilion, slowly and almost shyly. I took a deep breath, tried to imagine how a slave might address a princess who was also his lover, and called out to her.
“Mistress, dear mistress, don’t bring that light here, by the love we long shared!”
She was so startled she dropped the lamp, and it smashed on the pavement by her feet.
Good. The spells of fire were no longer available to her. “It hurts my eyes, dearest daughter of the stars, and it has been so long since I’ve had my eyes open!”
She came toward me again with an indrawn breath of delight. “Is it then true, my darling, my pomegranate, my own? Are you alive again at last? You seem somehow-different!”
“Stay back, my precious one!” I said in a weak voice. If she crawled in here with me, even without the lamp, I wouldn’t deceive her for long. And I was quite sure that after she had whipped me near or even to death, she would not put her magic salves on me. “I only seem different because it has been two years since we last lay together. But don’t approach me yet. Even your delicate touch might set back my healing.”
“But it’s been so long since I heard your dear voice!”
And you won’t hear it again until you meet your lover in hell, I thought. This was even harder than I’d expected. “My healing was slowed, my sweet,” I gasped, “by all the noises I must endure.”
“Noises?”
“The singing of the fish,” I said. “The sounds of an ordinary city I could bear quite easily, but the sad wail of men and women made fish makes my heart break anew each evening.”
She was silent for a moment, while I hoped she was thinking over my comment and feared she was beginning to suspect me. Her witch-magic, I thought, did not give her the ability to touch another mind, or she would have long since realized the slave was dead, but if I al ready seemed ‘different’ I would not be able to stall her much more.
“All right, then, my sweet,” she said in abrupt decision. “Anything to make you more comfortable. I’ll turn the fish back to themselves.”
The moon was brightening, and I could see the witch return to the materials she had brought with her to the garden. I wondered briefly if the dark powers she commanded through fire and potions might be playing with her, allowing her as a subtle and demonical form of torture to think her lover was still alive.
She poured some liquid into a dish, murmured low words over it until silver sparks cascaded upwards, then cried aloud and clapped her hands. The ground shifted below us, from the bottom of the hill came a massive roaring of water, and abruptly the city rose again from the bay.
I lay flat until the earth stopped moving. I didn’t think anybody in the west had command of forces like this. When I lifted my head again it was to hear voices, human voices, babbling together in surprise and joy. Out the far side of the pavilion, I saw lights flicking on in the city below the garden. The emir would have quite a shock the next time he visited his fish pond. The prince’s people were people once again.
The witch did not give me time to appreciate my success. “Are you satisfied now, dearest one?” she asked from just outside the pavilion.
“Thank you, my own, that is much better. But there is still another noise which has long hindered my healing.”
“And what is that?”
I was tempted for a moment to leave the prince turned half to stone. But if Joachim didn’t feel he could judge eastern priests, I shouldn’t judge someone for murdering his wife’s lover-especially since in the last two years he had been punished cruelly. “It is the prince, your husband,” I said. “His moans and cries at night keep me from healing sleep, and even in the day I feel so much for his pain that I am almost mad.”
“Then he shall be restored as well,” she said comfortingly. Again she poured liquid in a dish and spoke words over it. This time, when the silver sparks rose and she clapped her hands, the stone of the prince’s lower half split with a crack, and he slowly rose to his feet.
“But now I can bear it no longer, dearest slave!” she cried and rushed into the pavilion before I could stop her. She seized me wildly and pulled me toward her.
We both froze as the white moonlight fell on my face. The witch slowly pushed herself backwards. “You- You are not-” But before she could blast me with magic, she turned and saw the prince behind her.
I had forgotten he still, after two years, held the sword with which he had killed the slave. But he had not forgotten. He roared almost as loudly as the waters pouring from the streets of his city and rushed at his wife. She shrieked and fled, kicking over her magic bowls and potions as she went. As I crept, trembling, out of the pavilion, I could hear their cries retreating in the distance.
A shadow was between me and the moon. I looked up and saw the Ifrit descending into the garden. He broke several flower bushes with his gigantic feet as he landed.
“Not bad, little mage,” he said with a chuckle. “You have freed the ensorcelled city. I think I have tested you enough to provide plenty of amusement and can start now on the rest of your friends.”
“What about the prince of this city? Is he going to kill his wife?”
“As God wills, so it happens,” said the Ifrit without interest. “We could follow them, or would you rather have me find those other humans you were with when I first saw you?”
“My friends, of course.” At this point, I no longer cared whether the prince killed his witch wife or she turned him to stone again-or even whether they made peace with each other. “But first, could you help me bury this body?”
The Ifrit scraped a deep hole under the bushes with a finger, and I lowered the slave into it. “He is dead, isn’t he?” I asked in sudden doubt.
“Of course,” said the Ifrit in surprise. “He’s been dead since the first day after the prince attacked him. I thought all you humans knew how easily you die. It must be strange,” he added thought fully, pushing the dirt over the body.