Horrorstruck, she turned to appeal to Elkarath.
He was frowning and stroking his beard. “You are a very beautiful woman, Queen Inosolan, and I am not surprised that Sultan Azak is smitten by your charms, occult or not. But that you could summon four strangers, sight unseen, and enrage them into a mating frenzy . . . I suppose anything is possible to the occult. But you do not provoke riots wherever you go! Why should it only have happened today?”
Azak curled his bushy red mustache in a sneer. “Perhaps pixies are especially susceptible.”
Again Inos recoiled from the thought. Four young men bewitched unknowingly by her and then executed by the sheik because of it? And now there was an even larger band of men hastening up the valley to find her? No, no! Madness! Filthy madness! “You mean I’m a sort of bitch in heat, summoning all the dogs in town?”
The two men avoided her eye. Kade bit her lip and colored. The sheik sighed. ”Well, I shall report the event to my mistress and let her draw conclusions. Meanwhile—” He peered up at the stars. “—it would be about the second hour of the night, I think?”
“About,” Azak agreed.
“Then we can be on our way. Lionslayer, I have summoned the mounts. Go and strip off their harnesses; we shall give them their freedom. And bring me the saddlebags from my pony.”
Azak’s jaw snapped closed. “To hear my lord is to obey!” He accompanied the words with a glare of hatred. Scrambling to his feet, evidently now cured of his paralysis, he marched off into the dark. As he went, he adjusted the hang of his scimitar, perhaps dreaming of what he would like to do to a merchant who treated him as a flunky.
“Your Highness,” Elkarath said, “is there anything in your baggage that you wish to retain? We can take little with us, but any special things?”
“Oh!” Kade glanced in the direction of the little windbreak that Azak had built. “Well, my breviary . . .”
“Then perhaps you would fetch that now, ma’am? Here!”
Elkarath gestured, and then held out to Kade a large ball of bluish light.
Kade said, “Oh!” again. “Take it. It is not hot.”
Kade rose stiffly. She took the globe uncertainly in both hands. Holding it well away from her, she plodded off through the long grass.
Inos poured a small amount of wine into her goblet, and sipped it while she waited to see whether she was to be given secrets or a scolding.
For several minutes, though, the old man merely toyed with his bejeweled fingers, seeming to study the sparkles as he moved them in the firelight.
At length he said, “I do not speak as a mage now. Nor as a votary of the sultana, although I could not speak at all if I thought my words would hurt her interests. I speak only as a very old man to a very young woman. I seek no good but yours, Queen Inosolan. Can you accept, just for a few minutes, that sometimes the elderly do indeed possess wisdom?”
“I shall try, sir,” Inos said with Kinvale sweetness. It was to be a scolding, obviously.
“That is all I ask. Listen carefully, then. I am very old. Much older than you perhaps suspect. If I tallied up my years . . . well, just say that I have spent as many of them, in total, in desert lands as you have been upon this earth. At least. And there is something in the desert that breaks away the husks from people. Desert light is very strong, very revealing.”
Inos said nothing and he did not look up to appreciate her carefully crafted smile of interest.
“And I have spent many more years—in total—in Ullacarn, and Angot, and other outposts of the Impire. I probably understand the imps and their ways better than any other man in Arakkaran; or any woman either. I realize that you are not one of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects, but your background and the ways in which you were raised are closer to those of an imp than they are to anyone else’s. Is this not so, my dear?”
“Of course, Greatness.”
He sighed. “And I say that he is not for you. Oh, he is besotted with you, and you may think you are in love with him. No, hear me out, child! He is a fine man, in his way. He is a perfect sultan for Arakkaran, unless he survives long enough to become bored with accomplishment. Then he will wade the red path of war. They always do, his kind. Fortunately for us humbler folk, sultans rarely live that long. Physically, of course, he is unmatched . . .”
“And what he is to my mistress I do not even begin to understand. The purposes of sorcerers are cryptic and obscure. She has come by strange ways to her power. She seeks to punish men long dead, I fear.” He sighed again and reached for his goblet.
Inos waited politely. There was more lecture to come.
“If he would only compromise. . .” Elkarath droned. “Bow the knee just once! Say the words she wants to hear! I think she then would gladly be to him whatever he wanted: lover, mother helper. . .”
“She would see through his lies at once,” Inos muttered, disgusted.
“Perhaps,” the old man said softly. “But he would have said them! And I think she might then be content. I expect a sorceress can deliberately deceive herself, just as any of us can. We all believe what we want to believe, not questioning, lest we lift scabs from unhealed wounds. We all seek happiness. Who knows what she seeks—now, after such a lifetime? Might not one kind word won be counted a triumph?”
He drank and the goblet faded from his hand. Then he raised his face to peer at the stars, or perhaps the restless treetops, and she had a clear view of his blood-red eyes and the haggard folds of his neck.
“But even without the dangers from Sultana Rasha, child, I tell you that you are making a grievous error. Even if the two of you flee to your kingdom at the far end of the world, you shall not find happiness with Azak ak’Azakar. Yes, he has promised. I am sure he has promised. He lusts after you and cannot have you, so he will persuade himself of anything. Yet many a good marriage has sprung from that seed! No, it is his background that is wrong. He loves you? Meaning he wishes to possess you and breed sons with you, and, yes, I suppose he wishes to make you happy. But he is not capable of making you happy, no matter how sincere he is.”
“I entirely agree.”
“I am serious, child.”
“So am I, Greatness. Perhaps my Imperial ways have deceived you, and I do fear they may have misled His Majesty. It is not unknown within the Impire for men and women to be merely friends.”
“When I told you that he had not been killed by the pixies—”
“I was delighted, yes. Naturally! Azak and I have much in common, from our royal birth to our problems with sorcery. It is natural that we should find grounds for friendship. I admire him, enjoy his company, appreciate his invaluable help. On my side, at least, there is nothing more.” So there!
The mage studied her sadly, in the longest straight gaze he had ever given her, firelight chasing odd shadows over the desert landscape of his face. Then he sighed deeply and looked away.
“There may be more than you think already,” he said. “And how long can you resist his wooing? To be sought after by a man of his power and presence—it is very flattering.”
“Very!” Inos said through clenched teeth. First Kade, now him! Could the old never learn to trust the young? “But Sultan Azak is my friend and political ally. Nothing more.”
The mage sighed again, and looked away. An elderly djinn . . .
Silly old man.
Azak emerged from the darkness holding a bulky leather bag. “Ah!” The old man sprang to his feet with youthful agility. “The newcomers are advancing very rapidly. We must depart before they draw any closer. Now, let me see . . .”
He fumbled with the bag’s fastenings and then pulled out a bundle that glittered like cloth of gold. He turned to study the ground nearby and wandered off with his head bent as if in search of something. Azak tossed away the bag and folded his arms. He scowled after the sheik, ignoring Inos.
Kade came stumping wearily back across the meadow, still holding the blue light. Inos walked over to meet her, and they exchanged worried smiles. Kade put the light down on the grass as carefully as if it were fine crystal. She straightened and took her niece’s hand. Her fingers trembled slightly. Or maybe that was Inos herself.