“Don’t pay any attention to her.” Saul jerked his head toward the djinna. “She’s a sexist, too, a product of a patriarchal culture.”
“Sexist! Fool, do you dare bait a djinna?” Lakshmi shot up to twelve feet, glaring down at Saul.
Saul raised both hands. “All right, all right! After all, you’re arguing my side of the point. Idle down, lady!”
“I am not a lady—I am a princess!”
Saul sighed. “Y’know, for traveling companions, we’re not exactly getting off to a good start.”
“We are not getting off to any start! Will we argue all year about the manner of our going?”
Ramon spoke up before Saul could. “I think you are right, Saul—it had better be Jimena who accompanies you.”
Jimena took Ramon’s pack from his hand and stretched up for a lingering kiss, then clasped his hand between both of her own and gave him a smile full of promise. “Endure in patience till I come home, my husband.”
“Don’t be too long about it,” Ramon said gruffly, but his eyes filled with anxiety and, already, with longing.
A few minutes later he watched the diminishing figure in the sky that was Lakshmi carrying her traveling companions through the air. Beside him Sir Gilbert said, “Do not be offended, my lord. Seeing how attractive the princess is, I think our Saul may have wanted a chaperone.”
“Or a witness his wife would trust, to assure her he has been faithful during his travels.” Ramon nodded. “Yes. That would also explain why he is not terribly cordial to Princess Lakshmi.”
Lakshmi set the two of them down, and Saul staggered, the landscape tilting around him. “That’s … much more comfortable than tourist class,” he said, “but I think I still prefer jets.” Then the landscape stabilized and he caught his breath. “Wow! Is that the Mediterranean?”
Below them, a mountainside covered with evergreens fell away to a strip of tan and green. Beyond it, a sheet of blue rose to the sky. “How far away is that horizon—a hundred miles?” Saul asked.
“What lies to the west matters not,” Lakshmi said impatiently. “Tum toward the east, and your enemies.”
Turning, Saul looked out over the world, or so it seemed. The land stretched away to a horizon just as distant as the ocean’s rim. “Where are we? The hills of Lebanon?”
“We are, and those evergreens are its fabled cedars,” Lakshmi told him. “Here the East begins, as far as you benighted Franks are concerned. If our kidnappers’ master is in Central Asia, this should be a good vantage point to begin our search.”
“What do you mean, ‘benighted’?” Saul returned. “Matt may be a knight, but I’m quite content to be a wizard only, thank you.”
“Cease playing with words and seek out the children!”
“Oh, all right,” Saul huffed, “but playing with words is what wizards do. You’re right, though—if there’s anything to see, we should be able to see it from here—if we have one whale of a telescope.”
Lakshmi scowled down at him. “What manner of spell is that?”
Saul opened his mouth to tell her a telescope was an object, not a spell, then remembered duplicating the effect magically. “One that lets you see something clearly from a great distance.”
“How great?”
Saul thought of the huge instrument at Mount Palomar and pictures of the planets. “Very great.”
“Then conjure it up! But how will you know where to point it?”
“Ah.” Saul nodded ruefully. “That’s the hitch.”
“It is indeed,” said Jimena. “How are we to discover traces of these kidnappers?”
Lakshmi asked, “You did not bring a scrap of their clothing or anything they had touched, did you?”
“No.” Saul flushed. “I should have thought of that.”
“You were thinking of protecting yourself, and tricking them into telling more than they knew they were saying,” Jimena told him.
“I don’t suppose you can find a sight of Arjasp across a couple of thousand miles of steppe, without something to remember him by?” Saul asked.
Lakshmi stared, astounded. “What sort of spell could work thus?”
“None I know,” Saul sighed.
“Perhaps if we had a hair of his beard …”
“Remind me to talk to his barber,” Saul said sourly. “Since I can’t, what else can we use for a starting point?”
All three were quiet, thinking.
“Highness,” said Jimena, “may I see your child’s slipper?”
Both of them stared at her blankly. Then Saul grinned. “Of course!”
“I see!” Lakshmi cried. “Since whoever kidnapped my babes, stole yours also, the slipper may lead us to the thief’s master!”
“It does seem likely,” Jimena said. “May I have the slipper, Highness?”
“Of course.” Lakshmi shrank down to human size and handed over the pointed bootie.
Jimena frowned, passing her hand over it and chanting a verse in Spanish. A blue glow began on the sole and spread upward around the slipper. It lightened; forms seemed to dance within it, fuzzy at first, then beginning to clear …
Abruptly, the image died. Lakshmi cried out in grief and anger.
“A block?” Saul asked.
Jimena nodded. “Someone or something has detected my spell and cancelled it with a counterspell. I shall have to neutralize it.” She began to chant again.
“How can she forestall such a spell?” Lakshmi asked.
“She can make it turn back on itself, tie it in a sort of knot of energy,” Saul explained. “That’s her special talent—binding other people’s spells so they can’t work.”
“So that is why folk call her the Spellbinder!”
“So does Ramon,” Saul said, “but I think he has a different reason.”
Jimena held the slipper in both hands, staring at it as she chanted. Strain began to show in arms and shoulders, as though the weight of the tiny shoe were becoming greater and greater, the effort raising the dew of perspiration upon her brow.
With a sudden notion of what would happen, Saul stepped toward her—but all he saw was her body freezing, her gaze turning vacant.
Lakshmi saw, too, and cried, “What has happened?”
“Her spirit has gone adventuring,” Saul said, his voice flat and crisp. “Touch her with a fingertip and pour your own power into her, if you can!”
“We must follow!”
“How?” Saul asked.
Lakshmi gave no answer, so he touched Jimena’s hand with his forefinger and concentrated on lending her his strength.
Jimena found herself once again in the realm of mist. Cold gray fog surrounded her, above, below, before, behind. She felt its tendrils chilling her face, saw nothing but grayness. The cold seeped in beneath her robe, beneath her skin, reaching inward, iciness reaching for her heart.
But warmth spread from her hands, up her arms and into her chest. She looked down and saw that the glow around the slipper had become rosy. She frowned at it a moment, wondering how so small an object could generate so much heat—and why it would.
A heavy sound came to her, muffled by the fog, but coming again and again, regular, doubled, grace notes—footsteps. But they were footsteps of something huge and very heavy, growing louder, coming closer, and she looked up in alarm as the fog began to move, to billow, to open into a tunnel before her.
It came into sight dimly, dark against the gray of the mist, growing clearer as it came closer, an obscene pallid shape with tentacles writhing from its scalp, a leering grin splitting its face with shark’s teeth, huge goggling eyes glowing in the gloom. Spindly legs carried it forward on huge flat feet, foot-wide hands reaching out from the ends of sticklike arms as long as the creature was tall. “Come,” it crooned, “you who seek to merge your magic with me! Come within, join with me, become a part of me, be absorbed in me!”