“Oh?” Matt asked, giving her a leery eye. “How’s my score?”
“Like those of most.” Fortune shrugged. “You have won some and lost some, and won one great score, though it took a great deal of hard work to consolidate what I had sent you—but overall, you are winning.”
“Well, I can’t complain,” Matt said slowly. “I married a queen, and I have two children whom I love. Seems they’re always in peril, though, and that my winnings are very temporary.”
“Everyone’s are, everyone’s are!” Fortune nodded vigorously. “There are one or two who have built enough Security to be safe from my worst darts, but they are rare, rare.”
“And I’m not one of them,” Matt said with a sinking heart.
“You have insisted on true, passionate love, or nothing,” Fortune reminded him. “If you had found nothing, Security would be quite easy to build—but you found true love, and thus set yourself high, where you are exposed to more darts than most. But you have built a different kind of Security, too, not only wealth of belongings, but friends. Indeed, you have helped some people so much that you have become necessary to them—and if they have need of you, they will help you when you have need, and fight to defend you when you are attacked.”
“I haven’t—” But Matt broke off, thinking of Sir Guy, King Rinaldo, Frisson, Sir Gilbert … Could all those people he bad helped have come to depend on him?
Yes. They could.
“You see, your true security is other people.” Fortune smiled upon him. “The more of them who need you, the more who will aid you in your hour of need, even as you have helped this djinna, and she has helped you—so that now you aid one another again.”
Matt and Lakshmi looked at one another as though seeing each other for the first time.
“You, however, have not challenged me,” Fortune said to Balkis. “Come, assume your true form! I know you for what you are; there are no secrets from Fortune.”
Matt looked away, not wanting a queasy stomach after all those Middle Eastern sweets. When he turned back, Balkis stood in human form, glaring out from under her veil at Fortune. “How do all others challenge you at birth, but I did not?”
“Because your mother took your challenge upon her.” A tear formed at the comer of Fortune’s eye. “Poor woman, she died for it.” Balkis looked stricken, and Fortune stared. “You did not know? Poor child, I did not mean to speak so brusquely then! But yes, she died, but before she did, she set you adrift in a basket, begging the water-spirits to care for you—and so they did, and entrusted you to the dryads, who laid a geas upon you that would compel all magical creatures to treat you kindly.”
Lakshmi gave Balkis a sidelong look, reevaluating their relationship.
“So you are one of the few of whom it can be said that you bear a charmed life.” Fortune stepped forward, holding out a dart. “Come, take it! You shall see that you cannot throw it amiss.”
Warily and with every doubt showing, Balkis took the dart.
“Step up to the line, now.” Fortune took her by the elbows and led her into position. “There, now! Throw!”
Still hesitant, Balkis drew her arm back, then hurled the dart. It bit deep into wood, and Fortune bustled over to inspect the wheel in which it had landed. She nodded briskly. “Even as I foretold! You have determined where the three of you will go next.” She turned, smiling broadly as though at some inner joke. “Go, then! Off to find your children, parents—and child, off to discover your destiny!”
Balkis still looked wary, but Matt was glad of a way out. He caught her hand and started to turn away—but a pang of sympathy kept him from turning his back on Fortune. “You could, you know … if you wanted … come with us …”
Lakshmi looked alarmed, and Balkis shrank down into a ball, but Fortune backed away in sheer terror. “Go … out? Out of this cavern, you mean? Oh, no, I could not! I dare not, all manner of things might come at me out there, Heaven alone knows what monsters await! Go out? No, never, nay!”
Her voice ended in a scream; she backed up against a wall of rough stone, arms spread wide, fingers clutching at its niches and crevices.
“Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion! An invitation, I mean!” Matt knew a case of agoraphobia when he saw one, even if he’d never seen one before. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to make you come with us. You’re safe, you can stay here.”
“Can I?” Fortune thawed a bit, at least enough to bring her arms down. “I can remain in my cavern, then? But, oh, I miss the outdoors, the wide sky and the rolling plains!” Tears gathered in her eyes. “I so long to see them again—but I dare not.”
“You used to live out in the open?” Matt asked, surprised.
“Oh, aye! The herding folk, they thought me a goddess, and every tribe had a hearth for me in their camps. But they ceased, yes, gobbled up by those same barbarians who even now threaten the Caliph, or settled down by a river-fork and built themselves cities, then forgot me. There was no more hearth for Fortune, no more meal-cakes or puddings assured, so I hid myself away here, yes, and made myself wheels to spin, through which I could watch the endless pageant of humankind.” She stepped away from the wall, eyes damp with reminiscence. “You are a wonderful species, you know, combining wisdom and folly, courage and cowardice, nobility and vulgarity, and all steps in between.” She took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh as she shook herself—spilling her coiffure into frowzy curls and gaining a dozen pounds again—and said regretfully, “No thank you, my friends. I shall stay here.”
“As you wish,” Lakshmi said, with a smile of sympathy. “We shall try our best to visit again, when we return.”
“Yes, do!” Fortune nodded vigorously. “I shall look forward to it. But now, good-bye!” She stepped over to the wall of wheels, stopped one particular disk from its spinning, and stabbed a dart into it without even letting go. A huge blast of wind caught the companions, and Lakshmi barely had time to catch Matt and Balkis to her breast before she was whirling about and about in the wind, and the world turned into a kaleidoscope of churning colors again.
When the Technicolor tornado stopped spinning, Matt looked up and saw down. He was rushing head first toward the sharpened peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains again.
“Yikes!” Matt shouted. “This is no improvement! At least when we left, we were flying level!”
“Oh, be not such a babe!” Lakshmi snapped, disregarding how she was holding him. Her flight path began to curve and she called out to her husband, “Marudin! Fly due north!”
The djinni only nodded, lifting his head and, thereby, his torso, then the rest of his body, swooping in a great curve and steadying on his new heading.
The mountainside swung from in front of Matt’s forehead down to under his chest, and “before” suddenly became “below” again. His stomach tried to stick by its preconceptions and stay where it had been, but he choked down the nausea, accepting it gladly as the lesser of two evils.
He gave the new heading ten minutes or so while he developed the shakes and let them run down, leaving his body limp as spaghetti. Then he called up to Lakshmi, “Any idea where we’re going?”
“To find this Arjasp’s capital,” she told him, “or should I call it a mere headquarters?”
Matt thought it over. “Considering most of his warriors are nomads, we’re probably looking for a collection of tents large enough to be a small city. The direct route seems a little hazardous to me, though.”
“Filled with hazards? What do you mean?” Lakshmi demanded.
“He knows we’re going to be looking for him,” Matt explained, “or at the very least, ought to be suspecting it and be on the watch for it. He’ll have spies on the lookout, maybe even wizards scrying.”