“What solution is that?” Balkis demanded.
“Soap and water.” Matt turned to Lakshmi. “Maybe we should tell your husband about this?”
“Aye, at once!” Lakshmi said. “Then off we shall go, to Kharakhorum. Come!” She caught Matt with her right arm and Balkis with her left as she swelled, growing huge, tucking them both against her bosom and springing into the sky.
“Oh-h-h-h-h … here we go again!” Matt wailed.
Balkis simply curled up in the crook of Lakshmi’s arm and stared down, watching the landscape rush by, fascinated all over again.
Half an hour later the bosom against which Matt was cuddled was significantly harder, and it was Marudin’s bulging arm that held him. Balkis had elected to stay with Lakshmi, and Matt was rather grateful not to have to endure her claws.
“I shall be forever in your debt for discovering the whereabouts of my children, mortal man,” Marudin’s voice rumbled.
“My pleasure,” Matt called back. “Just remember, we haven’t found them yet. We’re only a little closer, that’s all.”
“I shall remember,” Prince Marudin promised.
A huge bellow sounded all about them. Marudin rocked, then spun; the world went whirling past them, and Matt found himself falling, the djinni’s arm gone. He looked up and saw the jagged peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains, thousands of feet below but racing up at him. He howled for help, but the wind tore his words away as he fell and kept falling.
CHAPTER 23
A huge hand slid into his field of view, horny palm up and wide enough to park a truck. Matt squirmed, trying to writhe away from it, but the huge palm followed him. He smacked into it and saw stars again. He just had time for the crazy thought that he should qualify as an astronomer when his body sent his brain the message that it was one big ache—but his brain forgot that message in panic as huge fingers closed over him and the whole world rang with a very nasty laugh.
His stomach could tell he was going up; then the fingers opened to show him the ugliest face he’d ever seen. Huge eyes bulged beneath a grimy turban with scarcely any forehead separating them. The nose would have looked nice making furrows in a field, and the grinning mouth was mostly notable because of the two huge tusks where lower eyeteeth should have been, tusks that stabbed upward and a jaw that sank downward, opening a maw like the back of a garbage truck, both in size and smell. The hand holding Matt swung him toward that mouth …
“Unhand him!” cried Lakshmi’s voice, and slender fingers slipped between mouth and man to catch Matt as he slid. The djinna’s fist closed about him, swinging him aside, but he could see between her knuckles as she backhanded the ugly djinn with her right. He flipped backward and kept flipping as Lakshmi tucked Matt against her bosom, as usual, and dove earthward with Balkis sinking her claws into Matt and yowling every inch of the way.
Lakshmi swung down for a landing somewhat rougher than customary, telling them, “It is a monster of an afrit, and an unbeliever, one who still worships only himself and has not come to believe in Allah. But he knows not what he has set upon. We shall put him to rights soon enough.” Then she shot back up into the sky.
Watching, Matt saw that Prince Marudin and the afrit had squared off against each other and were trading blows—boulders, fireballs, thunderbolts, all conjured from nowhere. But the afrit was clearly getting the worst of it—each of Marudin’s blows sent him reeling backward in the sky, sometimes flipping toes over turban, whereas Marudin advanced upright and steadily.
Then Lakshmi hit the afrit, and hit him hard.
He was just finishing a flip caused by a giant toadstool. Lakshmi caught him by the heels and began to swing him around. The creature bawled with terror as she swung him faster and faster, a virtual blur, and it must have been his own imagination, Matt thought, but he could have sworn the afrit was beginning to come apart in the middle.
Marudin floated nearby, watching judiciously. Just as it seemed the afrit was about to be subdivided, he pronounced, “Enough.”
Lakshmi let go, and the afrit went flying, to slam spread-eagled against a mountainside. Marudin and Lakshmi were instantly upon him, materializing bronze spikes and hurling them to strike deep into the rock at either side of wrist and ankle, pinning the afrit in place.
Prince Marudin wiped a hand across a bleeding mouth, and the wound healed. “How shall we punish this fool of an unbeliever, my love?”
“For the audacity of attacking two Marids?” Lakshmi answered. “Shred his essence and scatter it to the winds! Let him be a century putting himself back together, if he can.”
“A good thought.” Marudin drifted closer to the rock, hands out to shred.
“Punish me not at all!” the afrit bleated. “I had no choice in what I did! I am set here by a magic greater than my own, to stop all who may seek to pass the Hindu Kush! “
“No, wait.” Lakshmi reached out to stay her husband’s hand. “I have suffered such a fate myself. If ‘tis true, ‘tis not his fault.”
Marudin frowned, drifting in to inspect the afrit closely. His nose wrinkled. “It is true; I smell the stench of foul magicks even here!”
“Who stationed you so?” Lakshmi demanded.
“A mortal clad all in dark blue,” the afrit told them. “He bound me by the power of a ring!”
Lakshmi frowned. “Was he old or young?”
“Old, very old! White hair and beard!”
“Was he Hindu, Arab, Persian, or Afghan?”
“An Arab, most clearly!”
“I think he is dead,” Lakshmi informed the afrit. “At least, one such sorcerer is gone to his doom.” She turned to Marudin. “Let us leave him here; he will work his way loose soon enough. We shall bid the wizard free him from his binding to these mountains.”
“But what shall protect me from more of these mortals’ spells?” the afrit protested.
“Islam,” Lakshmi replied, “surrender to Allah. Become a believer, and the minions of the Prince of Lies shall lose all magical power over you.” She turned away and dove down toward the earth.
Marudin lingered long enough to say, “Never again be such a fool as to attack a Marid.” Then he followed his wife.
They shrank to human size as they landed, to find Matt bemused and awed.
Balkis, on the other hand, had found a pool of water in the rocks, fed by the last rain, and was washing her face—in human form.
“What make you of this, Lord Wizard?” Lakshmi demanded.
“A narrow escape,” Matt said fervently. “I’m just glad I was traveling with you two.”
“That, of course,” Lakshmi said impatiently, “though you should have known we would never let you come to harm.”
“Oh, I do! It’s just a little hard to remember when you’re in free fall.”
“Be mindful of my debt to you, when next you fear,” Marudin advised. “What say you of this afrit, though? Why was he set here to stop all who sought to cross these mountains?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Matt asked, surprised. “Arjasp is afraid of magic workers coming anywhere near his barbarians.”
“So I thought, too,” Lakshmi said with grim satisfaction. “We go not only toward our children, but also toward the center of these invaders—the throne, and the power behind it.”
“It also tells us that Arjasp isn’t all that sure he can win against us,” Matt said. “At the very least, this gives him warning we’re coming.”
“How can he know that it is we who come?”
Matt shrugged, and Balkis said, “He knows it is folk whose magic can match his own. Who else could it be?”