“So many will side with them who triumph, no matter who or what they are.” Prester John sighed. “I fear that Arjasp plans to conquer all the continent of Asia.”
“I don’t think he means to stop at the Caucasus or the Bosporus, either,” Matt said. “He means to go on and conquer all of Europe, too, clear to the Atlantic.”
“And when he has finished,” John said grimly, “he will come back to tear this city apart brick by brick and slay us all.”
“On top of which, since the demons have let in anyone who was seeking you out, Arjasp will have all his remaining enemies in one place.” Matt slapped his knees and stood up to pace. “Your pardon, Majesty, but I don’t think we should hang around—any of us.”
“Agreed,” John said with a smile of weary amusement. “What business brought you to me, after all?”
“Oh, just to ask a little favor,” Matt said. “Nothing much, just that you would take your invincible army and attack the barbarians from the rear.”
John nodded heavily. “I will gladly, Lord Wizard, but I must first defeat those who have conquered my own kingdom.”
“Deal!” Matt declared. “We help you win back your capital, and you attack the barbarians. Of course, I realize you’ll have to clear them out of the rest of your kingdom first.”
Prester John stared up at Matt as though he were insane, then asked the djinn, “Is he serious?”
“Most serious, I assure you,” Lakshmi said grimly. “I have come to realize he is at his most profound when he seems most foolish. But wizard, what of our true mission?”
John was instantly on the alert. “What mission is this?”
“A small matter,” Matt said. “Four small matters, actually, and everyone a child. Arjasp stole our offspring.”
“For hostages!”
“And distractions,” Matt said. “The hostage idea hasn’t worked too well—it just made me more sneaky than ever. But the distraction is working very well indeed—we’re off trying to find our kids instead of fighting barbarians.” He turned back to Lakshmi. “But you haven’t forgotten, Princess, that the kids are with Arjasp, and Arjasp is in Maracanda.”
“Of course!” Lakshmi cried, and Marudin grinned. “Win Maracanda, and we have nearly won the children back.”
“Only need to find them,” Matt agreed. “Of course, if Arjasp saw the three of us coming, he might kill them—but if he only saw John and his army?”
“Certainly there would be a hundred places for us to hide, if Arjasp were so distracted,” Lakshmi agreed.
Prester John frowned. “How, though, can you help me take back my capital if you have no army?”
“By being a wizard who has three companions,” Matt told him, “two djinn and one very talented apprentice.”
Balkis finally came out of her daze and stared up at him.
They came to the eastern gate accompanied by Prester John and a whole company of cavalry. “I do not see how poor three of you can banish a host of demons,” John said for the tenth time.
With weary patience Lakshmi assured him a new way. “It is an old tale I learned from a djinn who lived a thousand years before me, Majesty.”
Marudin reddened and looked straight ahead.
“I trust your knowledge, or I would beseech you not to go,” John said, but his voice reverberated down the corridors of dread. “Still, if you fail to banish them and are beset, my soldiers and I shall charge out to rescue.”
“You would all die in a trice.” Lakshmi was still trying to be gentle. “Be of good cheer—you shall not need to. But deeply do we cherish your courage and loyalty.”
“Only be sure all your people are ready to march when we win,” Marudin reminded him.
“They are summoned and set.” Prester John looked back down the long avenue to the fortress. Every inch was filled with soldiers and civilians, carts and packhorses, wagons and chariots. “They stand at your whim.”
“I must go out with you, too!” Balkis insisted, though she was trembling with fear.
“Other way around,” Matt told her. “We need to have you watching from the wall to bail us out, just in case we do get in over our heads.”
“Fear not, lass,” Marudin assured her. “We shall emerge unscathed.”
Balkis stopped trembling, but her face was pinched with worry.
“Sorry, Your Majesty, but you can’t talk us out of it.” Matt turned away from Prester John and called to the porters, “Open the right-hand gate!”
With obvious misgivings, ten soldiers put their shoulders under the huge bar and slid it clear. Two more stepped in and swung the right-hand portal open. Matt marched out with the djinn on either side of him and heard the great valve boom shut behind him.
“I just hope you’re right,” he told Marudin.
“I assure you, I have seen it,” the prince told him testily. “When you behold them, you shall understand.”
“Forward, then, to glory!” Lakshmi commanded.
Matt swallowed his heart down out of his throat and matched their pace, striding forward with the sound of his own pulse drowning out the awed and fearful murmur of the people thronging the wall behind him.
They hadn’t gone more than three paces before the sand before them began to stir and churn, as far as they could see from east to west and all the way to the desert horizon. Forms rose from the ground itself, and braced though he was, Matt nearly cried out in terror.
CHAPTER 28
They were horned, they were horrid, they were whelked, they were warty. They came in sickening combinations of human and animal parts—and features that came from neither. There were single glaring eyes, dozens of eyes, and any number in between—bulging, dished, compound stalked, large as platters, small as pebbles. There were pointed teeth, shark teeth, viper fangs, chisel teeth, dagger teeth, serrated teeth, and plain strips of whetted steel. There were trumpet snouts braying, wolf muzzles, octopus tentacles, beaks clacking, fur, goat legs, elephant legs, feathers, and fins. There was everything humans have ever seen and much more that they had imagined, all put together in mockeries of anthropoid and animal forms. There were giant insects with human heads, human bodies with scales and insect heads, claws and pincers and mantis-arms and spider legs.
They gibbered and hooted and droned and brayed and howled and shrieked. They marched toward the trio, looking neither to left nor right, grinning with menace—obviously meaning to chase them back inside if they could, though probably hoping the companions would stand their ground so that the demons would have an excuse to tear them apart. They were creatures of nightmare, some that Matt recognized from his own childhood night terrors, and the sight of them evoked that numbing, paralyzing fear all over again. His knees turned to jelly, but Lakshmi’s arm clamped about him to hold him up, and he understood in a flash that half the creatures’ power was the sheer terror they inspired in anything that saw them.
Anything except djinn, it seemed. “Recite, wizard!” Lakshmi snapped. “It shall take all our power merged to stop this horde!”
Matt felt Marudin’s hand tighten on his other arm and realized they were all three linked. The prince began the chant they had rehearsed, and he and Lakshmi joined in:
Then just for good measure, Matt threw in,