“Very true.” Matt looked down at the teenager. “Though to be honest, I don’t think he knows about you.”
Balkis stared at him in alarm. “Do not think that I can do more than I can!”
“We shall not,” Lakshmi promised her, “but I take his point: that sometimes even a small magic may win a battle, if it is sent at the right time and place, and the enemy knows nothing of it.”
But Balkis still looked scared. At least, being in human form, her fur wasn’t standing on end.
Back in the air, with the Hindu Kush unreeling below them again, Lakshmi confided, “I expected fretting and anxiety mixed in with the joys of parenthood, but never such as this!”
“I know what you mean,” Matt sighed. ” ‘He who hath a wife and babes, gives hostages to Fortune.‘ “
Balkis looked up sharply. “ Is that where the babies are? With Fortune?”
“Uh … well, not literally,” Matt tried to explain. “The first part is a metaphor, you see—ascribing the characteristics of one thing to another. The second part is a personification, pretending ‘Fortune’ is a person, not a thing, and—”
“Nonsense!” Lakshmi declared. “If you can ascribe it, then Fortune can indeed be a person, not a pretense! Does she not govern all our lives? Or at least weight them heavily. Nay, let us go and find her!” She raised her voice. “Marudin! A new trail! Follow!”
“Don’t be so literal!” Matt cried. “Fortune’s a concept; not a person!”
But Lakshmi said, “Not in this world. Let us go to find this Fortune.” Again she called out, “Husband, aid me!” Then she spun into a whirlwind, chanting a verse in Arabic, voice rising higher and higher. Nearby, Marudin’s voice underscored hers with the same words.
“No, wait!” Matt protested. “It was only a figure of speech, a—” Then he broke off, clamping his jaws shut against nausea.
Djinn and djinna chanted, and the world whirled about Matt and Balkis. They were lost inside a multicolored tornado. Balkis, becoming a cat again, yowled and sank in her claws. Matt was glad he’d thought to wrap his robe about his arm this time. Then all he could think of was trying to hold down his last meal as the tornado churned about him, rising, rising interminably …
… then suddenly fell. The whirling slowed and stopped, the scenery steadied around them, and Matt was glad somebody had taken the overdrive off the merry-go-round. Even more slowly, his stomach stopped churning and settled back into place.
Even through his queasiness, habit and caution made him survey his surroundings. They were mostly a blank, gray, curving wall, though as he turned farther, he saw stalactites and stalagmites, some joining to form pinch-wasted pillars. At least he knew he was in a cave.
Then he heard the singing.
“I think I’d better get down,” he whispered to Lakshmi.
“Can you stand?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
Lakshmi let him down by shrinking down to human size, spilling him out of her arms as she went. Balkis abandoned ship, took a few wobbling steps that grew steadier with every paw-padding, and prowled ahead toward the light that came through the assortment of stone icicles and columns ahead of them. Matt tried to follow, but stumbled. Lakshmi caught his elbow and held him up; someone else caught his other elbow. He looked up, surprised, to see Prince Marudin smiling down at him. Matt tried to grin back, took another step, and within ten paces was walking unaided.
As quietly as they could, they followed the sound of singing and the light.
The contralto was singing in several minor keys, which made things interesting if painful to hear. Matt reminded himself that scales and modes were cultural variables and tiptoed ahead, following a curve in the cave. As he came around it, he stopped, staring in astonishment.
The cave opened out into a large chamber, perhaps thirty feet by sixty. An older woman with a head of wild, light-colored curls stepped forward to a multitude of spinning disks fixed to the wall. She stopped half a dozen of them, drew out darts, then set them each spinning again. She backed away, surveying the collection. The whole wall was filled with such disks, all spinning, though Matt couldn’t make out the markings on them. With a nod of satisfaction, the woman raised a dart and sighted along it. She was perhaps in her fifties, and heavy enough to have a double chin and jowls. She wore a great deal too much makeup, cheeks very obviously rouged, eyelashes even more obviously false. Her frowzy hair was so bright a yellow that it seemed to owe more to chemistry than to Nature, and the way the curls were coming undone and straggling spoke of a similar debt to curling papers and irons. She wore cloth draped in a style that might have been Greek or Roman, but might also have been a hodgepodge of ancient fashions, and her singing was sometimes tuneless, sometimes wordless, sometimes bewitching in its loveliness, sometimes filled with poetry and wonder, sometimes completely empty.
The beldame hurled the dart. It struck one of the disks with so sharp a sound that it was clearly going to stay. She clapped her hands, exclaiming with delight, then picked up another dart and sighted for another throw.
“Can this be the dame herself?” Lakshmi hissed in disbelief.
“It can,” Matt said with resignation. “Fortune isn’t what it used to be, you know.”
When she had thrown all the darts, Fortune strode over to the disks to inspect her handiwork more closely. She nodded, chuckling, pleased with the results, then suddenly frowned and clucked her tongue, shaking her head. With a shrug and a sigh, she started choosing darts to pull out and darts to leave in—but as her hand touched one that had lodged in a rather small disk, she looked, then looked again and stared, mouth dropping open. She shut it with a snap and whirled, setting her hands on her hips and staring directly at Matt. “How dare you seek to spy out the workings of Fortune!”
“I have to,” Matt said. “I’m in politics.” He frowned and stepped out from the maze of stalactites. “How could you tell I was here just by looking at your targets?”
“You are one of the folk in this complex!” Fortune pointed to the little wheel. “I could see that a chance remark had made you come visit me!”
A chance remark? Well, yes, he supposed that line from Shakespeare fitted that description.
“How did you think to find me?” the dame demanded.
“We did not think,” Lakshmi said, “only acted.”
The beldame frowned in thought, then nodded. “That is a way to find me, yes—in fact, you’ll find little else by such deeds, save perhaps Doom and Disaster.”
Matt shuddered. “I’d rather not make their acquaintances, if you don’t mind.”
“Would you not?” Fortune asked in surprise. “But you have come close to them so often.”
Matt shuddered; she confirmed what he had suspected. “Uh, any ideas on how to avoid their company?”
“Do you truly wish to?” Fortune’s gaze strayed, becoming misty-eyed and nostalgic. “The dear lads! We were so close once—still are, really … Well!” She turned back to Matt, and to the moment. “Avoid them? Then avoid me! Or build a stout hedge between yourself and myself, if you can!”
“If,” Matt said with a shiver. “How do you recommend I do that?”
“Oh … become a boon companion of Prudence and Forethought.” Fortune made a face at the mere thought of the two. “A dull pair indeed! You know the ways—save money and goods; invest wisely in the present so that you may build a fortune in the future; make friends, doing favors for one another, so many friends that you become a community …”
“Find security,” Matt summarized, then bit his tongue. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to mention your enemy.”
“Oh, Security is no enemy of mine.” Fortune dismissed the remark with a wave. “Indeed, Security is not a person, but a sort of castle you mortal folk seek to build, and I have the most delightful time trying to knock it apart, which I sometimes can. Of course, those who become bosom friends with Prudence have her strength to buttress their walls, and though I can shake their castles, I can knock down very few of them …”