Inos frowned, not comprehending.
“The spell would have been directional,” he explained with a trace of impatience. “It was cast against the fleeing refugees. We all came safely into Thume. We might not go out so easily.”
“Turned to stone?”
“Maybe not. It may be too weak for that now, but it might still cripple us, or kill us. No, I would not try to go that way for all the gems in Kerith. ”
Inos shot another glance at Azak, and now he was looking marginally more interested and less murderous.
“I have other means,” Elkarath explained, deflecting the next question before it was asked. Again Inos wondered if he was less confident than he wished them to think. “You have led me a merry dance these last few days, but I enjoyed it.” He raised his goblet in salute to Kade.
“And how did you catch us, Greatness?”
“Oh, it wasn’t hard to follow your trail. Compared to a mage, a lionslayer is a blind kitten.”
Azak bared his teeth in fury and the old man smiled softly at the fire.
“Did you truly expect to escape me, ak’Azakar?”
“I was hoping that you would not dare exert your foul ability so close to Ullacarn.”
“Ah! Well, that was a consideration, I admit, but of course I must accomplish my mission, and I had to take the risk. First, though, I had to make arrangements for the rest of my goods and people. I did not set out until yesterday at dawn.”
“Then you made excellent time,” Kade said approvingly. Elkarath nodded to his hands in smug agreement. “This is a very pleasant evening, is it not? I hope you have noticed that magic is efficacious in deflecting mosquitoes?” He glanced benignly across at Azak. “You are quite sure you will not dine with us, Lionslayer?”
Again Azak angrily refused hospitality. Angry or not, he must be starving, so he was letting his sense of failure make him act very childishly. Why must some men be stubborn, so pigheaded? Inos felt herself oppressed by a strange nostalgia that she could not place.
“It was not difficult to follow you,” the mage said mildly. ”Although it became a little harder this side of the mountains.”
“When the trail was warmer?” Azak growled skeptically. Using his arms, he levered himself back, moving his feet farther from the fire.
“When sorcery was interfering with it.”
“I saw no signs of people.”
“But obviously there are people.” The old man glanced out at the darkness, and Inos instinctively did the same. Shapes moved in the gloom and she thought her heart had stopped forever, until she saw that they were the horses and mules, all returned, silent as ghosts, a cordon of mute spectators. She shivered.
“I also saw places with occult shielding,” Elkarath said, “or rather I did not see them. My farsight was blocked, and I suspected that my eyesight was being deceived also and that what seemed to be woods were otherwise. Sometimes your tracks vanished altogether, and sometimes they made no sense. Thume is inhabited!”
“Then how did you find us, Greatness?” Kade inquired, licking her fingers with panache, although she had probably never done so in her life before she came to Zark.
“I had some assistance.” The old man stretched out a hand, letting firelight flicker on his jewels.
“The ring?” Azak said. “That was not all pigswill you threw at us?”
“No.” The old man’s voice dropped half an octave. “But I lied when I said it was a family heirloom. Her Majesty created it specially for me.” He peered thoughtfully at his fingers. “It isn’t showing anything very much at the moment . . . Normally it lets me detect sorcery as a full sorcerer can, but Thume does not seem to influence it. There is nothing indicated from along the valley there, where the people are. And yet they are approaching very swiftly.”
“Could Thume magic be different?” Inos was definitely uneasy now.
The mage shrugged. “Possibly. Earlier today, though, it was flickering green all the time; jumpy as fleas on a dead dog.”
“And how did that help?” Azak asked sharply.
“I followed you with it.”
For a moment the other three stared blankly at one another. The mage sipped his wine in silent amusement. Then he peered obliquely at Inos, his gaze guarded below his brows. “You inherited a word of power, child. Her Majesty was quite puzzled that it had not yet manifested itself in some special talent. She told me to watch out for it, and she gave me this device to detect it. Today, for the first time, I saw the gadget react.”
“I . . . I was using magic?” Inos hoped that this was some complicated Zarkian joke. She had never told Azak about Inisso’s word of power, and she dared not look to see how he was reacting to the news. Azak detested magic in any form.
“One of you was,” the mage said. “Green light means one word, a genius. The areas I thought might be occult enclaves did not register. If I was right, then they are very well shielded. No, the power came from you. One of you, and if not you, who else?”
“I couldn’t have been! Aunt—did you see me doing anything unusual? Azak?”
Kade shot a worried glance at Azak, then told Inos, “No, dear.”
The old man stroked his beard. “I am puzzled, I admit. It was merely an occult talent at work; no moving of mountains. You weren’t . . . well, taking tracking lessons from First Lionslayer, perhaps? Pathfinding? Singing? Sensing magic, maybe?”
Inos shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve done anything today that I haven’t done a thousand times before. Except nearly being raped, of course. ”
“No—earlier than that. On your way here.”
Kade would always seek to break an awkward silence. She coughed softly to gain attention. “In the Impire, Greatness, they have a saying about frying pans and fires. You know it?”
“In Zark we talk about `dodging the lion and rousing the lioness.’ The same idea?”
“Exactly. I am beginning to think that my niece has an occult talent along those very lines.”
He chuckled. “I do believe you have solved the mystery!” Kade smiled thinly. “But even if this magic finder pointed in our direction, sir,” she said, “is it not conceivable that it was seeing someone else? Might there have been someone following us closely, and that person was the source of the magic?”
“I suppose . . .” The mage nodded thoughtfully. “Invisibility, for example? If you had an invisible companion . . . but no. That would require a higher grade of power than I detected. Magic, at least.”
Azak made an angry growling sound. “I had not been informed of this word of power. It explains many things.” He glared at Inos with a red intensity that shocked her.
“You have another explanation?” inquired the sheik. “The four who ambushed me?”
Elkarath shook his head. “They came from the north. They found your trail and tracked you. Quite separate from what I had been seeing.”
Azak grunted. “But have you considered why they might have trailed us?”
Elkarath just shook his head. “Only that possibly all visitors to Thume are hunted down as fair game.”
“I thought their purpose was quite evident,” Inos snapped. Azak snapped back: “Exactly!”
She began to feel her own anger rising to deflect whatever accusation he was about to make. “They called me an outsider. I think that was what they said. As if it were a dirty word, like . . . like vermin.”
Hastily Kade interjected, “This would explain the mystery, the disappearances—”
But Inos was glaring back at the smolder in Azak’s eye. “You have another idea?”
“I mean that the four might have been reacting to magic, also.”
“I don’t think I quite grasp your Majesty’s meaning,” Kade said sharply.
“It is clear enough. Your niece is very attractive, like a lodestone! That might explain why the four curs were drawn here.”
“Azak!” Inos cried. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying that mayhap you bewitched me, woman, and mayhap you bewitched those others today.”
“No! No! I—”
“Oh, maybe you don’t know you’re doing it,” Azak roared. “But why should four young men out on a hunt suddenly turn into ravening rapist monsters?”
And why should a djinn sultan fall in love?—but he did not go so far as to say that.
Had he slapped her, he could not have shocked her more. She cowered back. The idea was unthinkable—that she might have used occult mastery on Azak, as Andor had once used it on her? Yes, of course she had tried to impress him, but not that way. Horrible! Odious! That she might be a sort of occult mermaid, luring innocent youths and inciting them to attack her, and thus provoke their deaths at the sheik’s hands . . . No! Inconceivable!