Prester John nodded.
“And that,” said Matt, “is why she kept having the feeling that she’d been here before.”
“Because she has,” John affirmed. “Let us bring her to my gardens.”
The moonlight made Prester John’s garden a place of magic, tranquil and mystical, the only sounds the susurrus of leaves and the tinkling of the brook that ran through it, turning model mill wheels and tugging at miniature boats moored for the night at fanciful tiny boathouses. The breeze that stirred the leaves wafted the perfume of exotic blossoms to the three wizards. Around them, flowering trees took fanciful shapes, the product of dozens of years of patience. Wind chimes filled the night with music. The turquoise lawn seemed deep green in the moonlight, bejeweled with dew. Topiary shrubs in sculpted forms framed an ivory gazebo of ornate screens.
“This … this all seems …” Balkis pressed a hand to her forehead. “Lord Wizard, is this another of those déjàs you mentioned?”
“I think it’s a bit more than that.” Matt watched her closely, concerned.
“There is a way to be sure,” Prester John said softly. “Call upon the spirits who surround you.”
Balkis began to tremble. “They will be angry if I trouble them to no purpose!”
Matt noticed that it never occurred to her that she couldn’t do it.
“It will be to a purpose, and a good one,” John assured her. “If they bear you goodwill, they will be pleased. Maiden, call.”
Balkis cast a look of desperation at him, then stepped out into the garden and called out, “O Spirits of Water and Tree! Phantoms of Earth and Wind! If any of you know me, come forth now, I beg of you, and tell me who I am!”
There was only silence, the wind whispering condolences.
Balkis bowed her head, her shoulders sagging. “There is nothing. It is to no purpose.”
“Give them time,” John said, reassuring her.
There was a splash in the river, too large for a trout or even a sturgeon. There was another splash.
Balkis looked up, hope lighting her eyes. Then she ran.
Matt and Prester John had trouble keeping up with her.
Balkis dropped to her knees on a little pier, looking down into the water. “Whoever you are who has come in answer to my call, show yourself, I beg you!”
Matt braced himself in case the answer was unpleasant.
But it was very pleasant indeed. Seaweed seemed to rise from the water, but it framed a greenish face, and Matt saw that it was hair. The spirit rose farther, and he saw a gentle roundness that he thought was a bust but saw an instant later was a cluster of lotus. Lily pads formed the flatness of a belly, and below it glistened the scales that might have covered a tail, but might just as easily have covered legs.
Another rose behind the first, and—gasped. “See, Sister Shannai! Her aura!”
“I see indeed, Arlassair!”
John and Matt both turned to Balkis, inspecting, seeing nothing. She herself turned, looking first over one shoulder than over the other. “Aura? What … what is that?”
“The color of light that glows about you, silly mortal!” Shannai laughed. “No two are the same! Each soul makes a different pattern! You cannot see it with your poor weak eyes, but we can! Can we not, Arlassair?”
“Of course we can—and we know it, too, do we not?”
“Certainly, sister! However could we forget the baby set adrift in the trunk?”
“Trunk?” Balkis stared. Then her words tumbled over one another. “A little chest crafted of ivory? Bound with straps of gold?”
“Like that? Do you think it was like that, sister?” Shannai asked.
Arlassair screwed up her face, considering—and dragging the moment out until Balkis looked as tense as a cat sensing a storm. At last the sprite relented. “Yes. The trunk was exactly like that. And there can be no doubt—you are the very babe who was in it.”
Balkis cried out and held out her arms. “Bless you, good spirits!”
Arlassair laughed. “We are not so good as all that, but we remember you, yes. Your poor mother! Those horrible horsemen who chased her down and carried her off to sacrifice! But she called on us to protect you, oh yes, and we did, didn’t we, Shannai?”
“We did indeed, sister.” Then to Balkis, “We nudged your trunk down the stream as far as we could, then called upon the dryads to care for you. Since you are alive and well, it would seem that they did.”
“Well, then! We have finished the task we never promised to complete!” Arlassair flirted her flukes above the water. “And since we have, there is an end to it! Feed the fish if you would show thanks, mortal, for they feed us!”
“Farewell, and be good to the river!” Shannai called. Then both nixies turned, splashed in dives, and were gone.
Balkis knelt on the pier, face in her hands, sobbing.
“Come, be comforted.” John came up and gently took her by the shoulders. “You have come home now, maiden, to the place where you were born, and where you belong.”
“But … but who am I?” Balkis raised tearful eyes to him.
“You are the daughter of the Princess Kanachai, my own niece,” John said. “We thought she had died in the invasion, and now we know it.”
“What … what was my name?”
“Balkis, even as the Franks call you,” John told her, “and her title now is yours: the Princess of the Dawn Gate.”
“So Balkis was indeed my name!” the girl cried. “I did not know why, only knew that it was!” She turned to Matt accusingly. “It was you who named me Balkis.”
“Then it’s no accident that she came home, is it?” Matt asked quietly. To Balkis, he said, “Remember why you came with me when I started east?”
“Yes—because something pushed me, something within me insisted I come.”
“Tearing yourself away from a really cushy place you had just made for yourself in a royal palace.” Matt turned to Prester John. “The flip side of the spells the nixies and dryads wove to protect her?”
“I would so conjecture,” John agreed. “Mind you, there is always a link between a mortal soul and its native soil, but when magic has been woven there, the link would be forged into a geas.”
“A magical compulsion.” Matt turned back to Balkis. “You may not have sent me east, but something within you knew you had to come.”
“I can only thank you so very, very deeply for bringing me home,” the princess whispered.
“And I can only thank you for getting me here alive,” Matt returned. He looked up at Prester John. “Just don’t let her claw the furniture, okay?”
Finally Matt and Alisande were able to close the door and be alone in the guest room John had assigned them. Matt took his wife in his arms. “It’s nice having the kids back, but it’s nicer having a babysitter for them.”
“It is good of Balkis to still serve them so.” Alisande sighed, resting her head on his chest.
“She’s just forging future diplomatic relations,” Matt said. “After all, she might need Kaprin’s help someday, when you’ve retired and he’s become king.”
“Retired … an interesting thought …” Alisande looked up at him as the other shoe dropped. “But why might Balkis need his help?”
“Well, the horde is still out there,” Matt said, “several of them, in fact—and now they know what they can do if they all band together.”
Alisande smiled and rested her head on his chest again. “We need not worry. They have been beaten; they will be too wise to attempt it again.”
But Matt wasn’t so sure. The khans knew now that they needed to attack the Western nations one at a time—and that they needed to find a source of magic that would be stronger than that of Islam and Christendom put together. Not very likely, of course, but they were no doubt burning for revenge. All they lacked was a leader.