“I have!” Matt stepped forward, fists on hips. “Shall I call up a storm to drench and dissolve you, or chant a spell to suck you into a bottle and cork it?”
The spirit’s eyes widened; it shrank away. “You cannot!”
Matt began a singsong chant:
“I shall obey!” the dust-devil cried. “What would you have of me?”
The Caliph stared, then transferred that stare to Matt.
“Truth,” Matt replied. “Who sent you?”
“A magus all in midnight-blue, with silver hair and beard.”
“His name?” Matt demanded.
The dust-devil gave him a nasty grin, recovering some of its confidence. “What magus would give a name whereby to wreak ill upon him?”
“One who lies,” Matt retorted, “one who knows how to keep his true name secret. So he gave you no name at all, and you obeyed him without asking. What magic had he wrought to make you fear him so?”
The dust-devil turned wide-eyed and began to tremble. “Another dust-devil, like to me! He conjured it up, and made it cease to exist with a single gesture, only a couplet of song!”
Matt frowned. “You are of the elements of air and earth. To make one of you cease utterly, he must have wrapped it in a cloud of steam.”
The wide eyes stretched to take up half the spirk’s face. “How did you know!”
“I am a wizard as powerful as he,” Matt said, “and shall banish you as utterly unless you speak truth. Why did the magus send you here?”
“To—To bear a message,” the dust-devil stammered.
“Speak, then!”
The dust-devil cowered, but spoke in a trembling tone. “Your children are stolen away! You shall never see them again unless the queen turns her army about and withdraws from the defense of this city at once, and you with her!” Its voice rose to a wail. “Blame me not! It is not I who stole your babes! I only speak what I have been given to say!”
Matt’s eyes widened, and the stare he gave the dust-devil would have been enough to set a brave man trembling—but the fury that blazed forth from Alisande cast his in the shade. She didn’t speak a word, but stepped closer to the dust-devil, sword rising. Its cold iron might not have hurt an Arab spirit the way it would have burned a European, but the spirk cowered away from her rage and the wizard behind her, gibbering nonsense.
It was the Caliph who spoke, who made some sense of the message. “Who did kidnap the children?”
“I know not!” the dust-devil howled. “I know only that the blue magus commanded me to tell you of it! I know not where they are!”
“So,” the Caliph said heavily, “the high priest of Ahriman will stoop to any means to win his war, the more, evil the better.” He turned to Alisande. “We know who we fight. There is no profit in slaying this impudent creature—it bore nothing but the message.”
“There is no profit in keeping it with us, either,” Alisande said through stiff lips. “Husband, banish me this spirk!”
The dust-devil didn’t wait. With a moan that rose into a howl, it began to pirouette, spinning faster and faster until its form blurred into a funnel-cloud again. With a bound, it rose into the air, sailed out over the wall, and sank to the ground, humming and skittering toward the Moorish army.
Tafas’ chief wizard chanted a verse and pointed a wand at the dust-devil. A huge fat spark exploded at its rim. The funnel-cloud bounced high, shrieking, and went skipping and hopping away from the army, away from Damascus, and over the horizon.
The Caliph turned a somber face to Alisande and Matt, to find the queen pale, rigid, but composed, and her husband hunched and seething, his face dark with anger.
“How then, Majesty and Lord Wizard?” the Caliph asked. “How shall we deal with this news?”
“I cannot chance my children’s lives, my lord,” Alisande said through stiff lips, “I deeply regret, but I must leave your side, and all my army with me.”
“We will be safe in Damascus,” the Caliph assured her, “now that Emir Tafas has joined us.”
“But that doesn’t get us our children back,” Matt said, “and giving in to kidnappers only encourages them to try again.”
Alisande whirled to him, staring as though he had betrayed her. “You do not mean to stay!”
“Of course not,” Matt said. “On the other hand, the message didn’t say how fast you had to return to Merovence, and you don’t have to load everybody back aboard ship. You could just march your army around the Mediterranean.”
“And be nearby if the horde attacks Byzantium?” Alisande asked bitterly. “I would only receive another demand that I forgo the battle!”
“Yes, but if, in the meantime, I have managed to find the kids and rescue them, you’d still be close enough to turn back and join the attack on Damascus.”
Alisande stared at him for a long minute. Then, slowly, she began to smile, the light of battle kindling in her eyes.
“This is a grievous risk,” the Caliph said doubtfully. “Do you truly think you can save your babes?”
“If any man can, he can—and he is right that we dare not leave them hostages to a man so evil,” Alisande told him. “Belike Arjasp will slay them anyway, when he has done with his conquering.”
“Even so,” the Caliph said, “it is nevertheless quite dangerous. Do you not wish them to have every minute of life they can?”
“I certainly do,” Matt said, “and the only way they’re going to live to grow up is if I go find them and bring them out by my magic.”
“It will take great wizardry indeed,” Alisande said with a catch in her voice, “if the magus succeeded in stealing them from your mother and father, and the Witch Doctor, too!”
“Mighty magic, or a traitor in their midst,” Matt said darkly. “Never underestimate the power of human greed, or good old-fashioned violence.”
“Simple solutions are often the best,” the Caliph agreed.
“Nonetheless, whatever watchers Arjasp has sent, they will have to see Her Majesty’s army ride away,” Matt said, “and me with them. Of course, they probably won’t mind if I go off on my own.”
A sudden weight struck his shoulder, and purring buzzed in his ear.
In spite of himself, Matt looked up at the white cat with a smile. “Well, not entirely alone. What’s the matter, Balkis? Don’t like people mistreating kittens, even if they are human?”
Balkis answered with a very emphatic yowl.
CHAPTER 16
Jimena and Ramon led Lakshmi back to the solar from which her attack had drawn them. The peace and harmony of the room seemed to calm the djinna instantly, the sun streaming in the tall windows onto the warm, polished woodwork and furniture and brightening the colors in the tapestries. Jimena showed her to a chair, told the guard to send for some of the coffee Tafas bin Daoud had been sending them, then summoned Lady Eldori.
“I do not understand,” Lakshmi protested. “What good can come of what this woman may not remember?”
“We deal with an enemy that is prince of negatives,” Jimena told her. She realized that, to Lakshmi, anything that didn’t relate directly to the finding of her own twins must seem a waste of time. She patted the younger woman’s hand. “Patience, my dear. Whoever kidnapped your children may have kidnapped Matthew’s, too. It is worth trying to pick up the trail here.”