“Angra Mainyu, yes.” Lakshmi nodded. “The older djinn have told us tales of this demon, and the fools who did his work whether they knew it or not. Ahriman, they call him now.”
“It is surely a coincidence,” Jimena said as they started riding back up to the castle, “but I have a very bad feeling about it.”
Saul saw them coming and met them at the portcullis. “Did you find her?” Then he saw Lady Violette surrounded by guards, and relaxed a little. “At least she’s still alive.”
“Yes, through Lady Mantrell‘s foolish mercy,” Lakshmi snapped.
“See her to her dungeon,” Jimena called to the sergeant, then held out a hand to the Witch Doctor. “Come, Saul! We must hurry to the postern.”
“Why?” Saul asked, but he was already in midair, leaping up behind her onto the horse’s back.
“Because the man to whom Lady Violette gave the children was waiting for her there! We may still find his trail!”
But at the postern, Lakshmi could only shake her head in frustration. “I have nothing that belonged to the man, nothing he had touched. I cannot cast a spell to make his trail appear.”
“And his footprints only go to the water.” Saul frowned, following the indentations in the perpetually damp ground.
“Why bother?” Lakshmi demanded. “If we cannot follow—”
“Perhaps we can.” Jimena laid a hand on her arm. “Saul never does things without reason. Watch him.”
The Witch Doctor stopped at the bank and pointed to a gouge in the earth. “A boat’s bow did that. He had a dinghy waiting with an oarsman in it.”
Lakshmi stepped up beside him, frowning. “How can you tell there was an accomplice? Have you the Second Sight?”
“No, just logic.” Saul gestured at the gouge. “It’s too small for him to have pulled the boat up high enough to keep it from drifting away, and there’s nothing near to tie it to.”
“There is also no mark of an anchor,” Jimena said, studying the ground.
Saul nodded. “The castle has a couple of boats it uses for fishing, doesn’t it?”
“You mean he fled in the castle’s own skiff?” Lakshmi was beginning to look outraged again.
“He could have,” Saul agreed. “After all, if you’re going to bribe one person on the inside, why not two?”
“Because that yields twice the likelihood that one will talk before the deed is done,” Ramon answered.
Saul nodded. “Much easier to bring your own boat and carry it away with you.”
“Or sink it,” Ramon said, “when you’re done.”
“That’s it!” Saul turned away from the water. “Race you to the drawbridge.”
“Why bother?” Lakshmi spread her arms to gather them all in as she swelled to forty feet high. Saul shouted a protest, kicking, but Jimena and Ramon hung on, stifling protests, as the djinna calmly stepped across the moat and set them down as she shrank to human size.
“Well, I have to admit that saved time.” Saul wiped his brow with a shaky hand, then looked down at the bank. At once, he saw the tracks. “There! Two horses—one for the kidnapper and one for an accomplice!”
“Then the boat should be—” Ramon leaned, gazing down into the water, then pointed. “—there!”
Saul waded in before Lakshmi could pull another one of her growing pangs, reached down under the surface and heaved. One side of a small skiff came up, then rolled over so the whole boat floated upside down. Saul fished, found the painter—the rope tied to its bow—and waded ashore, pulling the rowboat with him. As it came up onto the bank, Ramon flipped it over, then leaned his weight against the painter. Jimena joined in, and the whole craft slid up onto the grass.
“Now I have something they have touched!” Lakshmi purred, and stepped forward.
“Will not the water have washed all trace of them from it?” Jimena asked.
“Their actual touch perhaps—the oils from their skin and any fibers their clothing may have left—but not the fact that they have touched its wood.” Lakshmi passed her hands over the boat in an intricate pattern, chanting a verse in Arabic.
Footprints glowed into sight on the boat’s bottom, semicircles on its seats; the ends of the oars glowed from the touch of the rower’s hands. Still chanting, Lakshmi continued her gestures over the horses’ hoofprints. They too began to glow.
“Couldn’t she have just recited her spell over the horses’ traces in the first place?” Saul asked.
Jimena shook her head. “The principle of contagion, Saul. The horses are living beings themselves, and she had no trace of them to use as a magical lever. True, the kidnappers had touched the horses, but Lakshmi had nothing the horses themselves had touched.”
“Except the earth.” Saul nodded. “And that’s a thirdhand touch, once too far removed.”
“Follow!” Lakshmi commanded, and set off, following the prints of the horses. Saul and the Mantrells followed, (marveling at the durability of the djinna’s delicate-looking slippers).
The tracks sprang to life in front of Lakshmi and faded behind her, leading them down the talus slope and across a field to the rough, unplowable land around a watercourse lined with trees and thick with undergrowth. The djinna pressed canes and shrubs aside—and saw the tracks end. “It cannot be!”
Saul shouldered up beside her, frowning, and agreed. “The ground’s damp enough that the horses would have left ordinary prints. How’d the sorcerer pull this disappearing act?”
“He did not,” Lakshmi said, thin-lipped. “He left this plane.”
CHAPTER 17
Ramon stared. “You mean he went to another world?”
“Not a world,” Lakshmi said. “I doubt an underling could have that much power. He has gone between worlds, the quicker to transport himself to his master.”
Saul turned away, cursing.
Jimena stared after him. “It is not like him to give up so easily.”
Ramon touched her arm, frowning. “He has not. He searches for something.”
“There!” Saul pointed.
Spreading between two trees, a huge spiderweb reflected sunlight.
Lakshmi paled. “You do not mean to call upon the Spider King!”
Saul nodded. “This is just the kind of stunt that would appeal to his mordant sense of humor. Keep dinner warm for me.” He stepped forward, directly into the spiderweb. For a moment his outline wavered, then it disappeared.
“Let us follow!” Jimena stepped forward.
“I dare not!” Lakshmi paled. “The Spider King is a spirit who could confound even a Marid!”
“He transported you before,” Ramon pointed out, “to our world.”
“He did not! I did that myself, following Matthew!”
“Who was taken there by the Spider King,” Ramon said, with appreciation of the irony, “who would therefore resent your intrusion on his domain. Well, I shall follow Saul, if I may.”
Jimena called out in alarm, but Ramon was already stepping toward the spiderweb.
He bounced off.
He bounced hard enough to knock him down. He sat on the ground, staring up in disbelief. “I knew spider silk was strong, but not so strong as that!”
“I think you are being denied passage,” Jimena said with relief. She stepped forward, groping toward the web—and saw it begin to glitter with sunlight, a glitter that seemed to fill her eyes, wrapping about her. Dazzled and confused, she blundered forward—and disappeared.
Ramon cried out, leaping to his feet and charging after her, but again he bounced off the web and stood, fists clenched, raging and cursing in American English.
Lakshmi frowned, wondering about the meanings of the foreign words, though she thought she could tell the essence of them. She stepped forward, touching his arm. Ramon whirled to her, face contorted with anger, then saw her and forced himself to calm. “Your pardon, Princess.”