Azak frowned. “Not in detail. Sheik Elkarath made himself known to me some time ago and offered his services. I had toyed with the thought of going, but I was leaning toward sending Kar.” An ironic smile twisted his face, and she noticed that he had not shaved. “The prospect of your company proved an irresistible persuasion.”
Inos bowed her head in mocking acknowledgment of the compliment, thinking that she would not have dared entrust herself to Kar as protector—nor probably to Azak either, were he not defanged by the sorceress’s curse.
“You told me outside,” she asked him, “that here I should be secure from the sorceress?”
The big man scowled mightily. “I let my tongue run away like a woman’s.”
“Too late to call it back,” she said. “What did you mean?” Azak merely glanced at the sheik, who fingered his rings for a moment.
“Sorcery is a great evil,” the old man said at last. “But it is merely the strongest form of occult power. There is also magic, which is a lesser form, and—”
“I know of the words of power. Four make a sorcerer, and three make a mage, and . . .” Inos caught a fiery glare from Azak, telling her that she was not supposed to interrupt a sheik. “I beg your pardon, er . . . your Honor.” What was the correct honorific for a sheik? There had been no sheiks around Kinvale. “Do please forgive my presumption and continue.”
He frowned at his hands for a while, snowy brows hooding his eyes, but then he went on in a very soft voice. “If you already know of the words, then my task is simpler. You may not know that occult power is all about us. In my house in Ullacarn I have an actuary who is a genius with numbers. He can total a page of them at a single glance. His father served my father and was the finest doctor of sick camels in all Zark. Obviously their family cherishes a word of power.”
As hers did! Inos had not told Azak of that and she did not think it had been mentioned during her shouting match with Rasha when she first arrived.
“In fact, I am certain of this,” Elkarath said. He stretched out a hand, glittering in the sunlight. “This ring?” He pointed with a plump finger that shone just as bright.
Inos peered at the treasures. “Opal, is it not?” The stone was large, but it had a milky sheen, with little of the variegated fire for which opal was valued. The setting was of plain silver, and worn smooth. In a double handful of rubies and diamonds and sapphires, that seemed the least interesting gem by far. “It is magic?”
“Sorcerous!” the old man said dramatically. “It belonged to my great-grandfather. Where or how he acquired it I do not know.”
“It detects sorcery?”
She was probably not supposed to have guessed that—Elkarath sighed crossly. ”Yes, it does. When the actuary of whom I told you performs his wonders of ciphering, this stone will shine with green fire—and on the side closest to him. ”
“I thought the words of power could not be detected by magic?” Inos felt suddenly very uneasy. She wondered whenor how—she would provoke a green flame from this occult device, or whether she already had done so. Since she had yet to gain as much as one copper groat of benefit from the word her father had told her, it seemed unfair that it should constantly be throwing her into danger.
“Words can not be detected even by sorcery,” Elkarath agreed, ”so ‘tis said. But their use can certainly be detected.”
“Tell her of my grandfather, Greatness?” Azak suggested.
“My grandfather of blessed memory.” He turned a blandly hypocritical gaze on Inos, as if daring her to comment. “Blessed indeed.” The sheik sighed. “An increaser of the Good, deeply mourned . . . I speak with all due respect, your Majesty.”
“No offense. But should we not practice the relationships we agreed upon?”
“True, Lionslayer, then. He was a man of great powers. Your familiarity with the occult extends to comprehending the abilities of an adept?” The question appeared to be directed at Inos’s knees, which was as close as the sheik had yet come to meeting her eye.
“An expert at anything?” Inos recalled Rasha saying that. “So it seems. The late Sultan Zorazak was an adept. Oftentimes have I strolled past the palace of an evening and seen my ring flame yellow.”
Azak chuckled coarsely. “Late in the evening, I presume?” The sheik seemed to smile in his general direction. “Sometimes. His strengths were legendary. But even when he rode by on a horse, I could see the evidence of his adepthood.”
“A flawless horseman,” Azak agreed sadly. “And Rasha?” Inos demanded.
Another exasperating pause told her that she was again misbehaving. The fountain tinkled, the leaves overhead rustled busily. Somewhere in the distance a child was crying. Inos persisted. “What color does Rasha turn your ring, Greatness?”
“Red,” the old man said grumpily. “And very bright. Even here, so far from the palace, I can oftentimes tell when she is enchanting. You can understand my alarm when I first learned that there was sorcery loose in Arakkaran!”
“You said it was all around us.”
“No!” the sheik snapped. “I said the occult was all around us, not sorcery. I had never detected a sorcerer before, although my father claimed to have done so. In Ullacarn my ring flashes often—there must be several mages there, and I know of an adept or two in the interior, as well as geniuses. Even here in Arakkaran, I estimate at least three geniuses.”
Was this devious old rogue threatening her or wasn’t he? Inos wasn’t sure. He still hadn’t looked at her, so he could not have noticed her uneasiness. She said, “Then why do you not start collecting them and become a sorcerer?”
“Why do you not become a whore and grow rich?”
She stammered out her apology, annoyed by the twinkle of joy in Azak’s red eyes. Apparently her words mollified Elkarath, or else he was content with having bested her, for he chuckled. Sunlight danced in the rubies on his headband.
“The theft would be not only immoral, but also difficult. A brief flash is not enough to locate a man exactly. When I said I knew of adepts in the interior, for example, I meant only that in certain villages I often see my ring shine yellow. Who the geniuses are in Arakkaran, I do not know. There! Did you see?”
“No, I didn’t, your Greatness.”
Azak frowned and shook his head, also.
“It was subtle,” Elkarath said, “and likely distant, therefore, but a definite green flash. Downhill, toward the harbor.” He poured himself another glass of coffee in celebration.
Downhill was not toward Inos, so she had not caused the signal, if there had been one. She decided she did not like this fusty old man and his stupid magic detector. It might endanger her, if her word of power ever started to do its job. It might alienate her from Azak, who would be happier not knowing about her supposed word. She had begun to have serious doubts about the sultan and his overly complex intriguing.
“So when you told me that here I would be safe from the sorceress, then all you meant was his Greatness’s ring?” Azak scowled and nodded. “I may have overstated the situation in my overweening joy at seeing you safely arrived, your Majesty.”
Well! “But that’s all?” Inos repeated. “A magic detector!” What sort of idiocy had she got herself into? She wondered if Kade had successfully fled the palace. She might have already boarded some foul-smelling tub in the harbor. Had Rasha yet thought to inspect the spurious royal procession jogging northward from the bay?
Or was the sorceress even now rolling on the floor in merriment at the antics of these half-witted mundane conspirators?”You don’t also have a magic umbrella, do you, your Greatness?” Inos said. “Because I think that’s what we need. I can see how your ring would help in a bazaar, or bargaining in the horse market. If it flashes for you every time your opponent opens his mouth, then you will be well advised to deal elsewhere. But that’s not my—our—problem at the moment!” She caught herself starting to shout and forced some queenly dignity back into her voice. “At the moment we’re attempting to escape, to hide from the sorceress. I fail to see how your ring can help at all. Suppose we get to the ship and set sail, and then your ring flashes red? That’ll mean she’s found us, won’t it, and all the good it’ll have done us will—”
“No ship,” Azak said, pouring coffee from silver pot to crystal glass.
“No ship?”
“Too obvious. Too easy to search.”
“Then how?” Inos could think of only one alternative, and she immediately didn’t want to think about it.