“True enough.” Lichi joined Hurree, passing her hands over the stiffened fur on the cat's side. She called to another brownie-woman, “Aid me, Alii!”
Alii came to join her magic to Lichi's, mending the wound as two more brownie-men came to rest their hands on Hurree's shoulders, lending him their own magical energy as he healed the head-swelling, both inside and outside Balkis' skull.
The dryad nodded, satisfied. “Find her some of those mice who keep gnawing at the roots of my trees,” she said, “and show her where the rocks have caught rainwater. When she is recovered, find her better shelter than this.”
“We will, O Wise One,” Alii assured her.
“Thank you, little friends.” Nodding in satisfaction, the dryad stepped back into a twisted trunk and disappeared.
The brownies gathered around the sleeping cat, each giving a modicum of energy to mend bruised and torn tissue as Balkis' breathing deepened into a healthy and healing sleep.
Matt expected a gloomy, windowless dungeon filled with arcane equipment and bottles of noisome concoctions. Instead he found a wide and airy chamber with tall windows and a worktable against one wall. Fragrant bunches of dried herbs hung over the workbench, and shelves above it did indeed contain bottles, but they held very ordinary things such as pebbles, iron pellets, salt, charcoal, and sulfur. The most exotic item he saw was a silvery liquid that had to be mercury. Oh, the workbench held a rack of vials, different sizes of flasks, an alembic, a crucible, and a mortar and pestle, but Matt knew them all from freshman chemistry.
Of course, none of Prester John's subjects had taken that course. No doubt they found the workroom impressive enough.
The chamber was fragrant with the aroma of sandalwood. Matt looked around for its source and saw a brazier with a feather of smoke rising. He wondered if Prester John had a servant who refueled it periodically to keep the room filled with its scent. Somehow that reminded him of the perpetual fires of Zoroastrian temples, which struck him as a good sign.
In the center of the room was a rectangle of sand, neatly boxed and recessed so that it was level with the floor. Prester John gestured to it, saying, “Stand in the center, Lord Wizard.”
When Matt was in place on the sand, Prester John surrounded him with a dozen symbols, inscribed with a polished wooden stick three feet long. It reminded Matt of a magic wand, especially since it had symbols of its own inlaid with ivory and ebony, some of them identical with the ones on the floor.
Prester John went over to the brazier and fanned its smoke, blowing the smell of the incense across the sand-floor while he chanted a verse. Matt didn't recognize the language, but his translation spell gave him the meanings of the words anyway; the emperor was sending him to confront the sorcerer. Matt dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword for reassurance, then reached behind his shoulder to touch the butt of his own magic wand. He never went traveling without it anymore, though he rarely had occasion to use it—he usually went in for broadcast spells, not narrowly focused ones.
Mist rose up from the sand, surrounding him. It thickened, obscuring his view of the workroom, then hiding it completely. Suddenly there was nothing about him but fog. Dizziness struck Matt, then fled as quickly as it had come; he felt a moment's panic before recognizing the difference in the quality of the mist. Instead of the damp, clinging fog of the wetlands in the real world, this was dry, a mist of indeterminacy, the smeared electron shells of quantum physics, the blur of probabilities, of states of existence not yet determined, and Matt knew he was in the Void Between the Worlds.
His alarm abated; he had been here before. He turned about slowly, feeling for the Wind that Blows Between the Worlds to direct him toward Torbat. Prester John had included the sorcerer's name in the spell, and even if it were his public name, there ought to be some sort of direction-finding.
There! Matt felt the faintest of pushes. He took a step forward and felt the force strengthen, pushing him steadily ahead. He strode into the mist, with the Wind that Blows Between the Worlds at his back.
There he was, dimly visible through the mist—Torbat! Prester John's spell had been very accurate, placing Matt only a few dozen yards from the man. He stepped up until he was ten feet away, his steps soundless in the fog, then drew his sword, shouting, “Torbat!”
The shaman spun, eyes wide in shock—and Matt lunged at his right shoulder, trying to disable the man with pain. Torbat was fast, though; he slipped aside and raised a hand, fingers crooked in an odd sign, calling out a verse in his own language, and Mart's sword turned into a snake.” Here, take it!” he shouted, and threw the serpent at Torbat.
Torbat sidestepped again, chanting a different verse, and the snake stiffened, turning back into a sword. That gave Matt time to draw his wand and chant a verse of his own:
But he hadn't made it through a couplet when Torbat reached into his sleeve, produced a wand of his own, and swept it in a horizontal arc, shouting a staccato rhyme. Matt felt a blow strike his own wand aside, as though Torbat's stick had actually knocked against his instead of being five feet away. It was enough to ruin his aim; as he finished the final line, an expanding cone of frigid air shot out from the end of his wand, locking the mist of undetermined atoms into lattices of crystal—snowflakes that drifted off into the grayness.
Torbat shouted out another verse, stabbing his wand straight at Matt, who barely had time to riposte, crying,
Torbat's wand spat a line of fire. Matt's wand locked atoms into molecules of air, a stiff, narrow breeze that blew Torbat's fire aside. Matt riposted both physically, with the wand, and verbally:
Again Torbat flourished his wand and ruined Matt's aim. Matt hoped there hadn't been anything human and male lurking out in the mist, because if there had been, it would have become a silicate sentient. He made a quick frantic circle with his wand, hoping to bind Torbat's, but the sorcerer swung his stick high with a laugh.
He'd left himself wide open. Matt lunged, crying,
He hoped George Canning wouldn't mind his verse being mixed with one of Josh Billings' sayings.
A blow from an unseen hand sent the shaman sprawling on the invisible plane that served as a floor. Matt came after him, glowing with victory—but Torbat jabbed with his wand, calling out his own equivalent of Matt's freezing verse.
Matt slowed as the chill bit. He struggled to hurry, but could feel his feet turning into blocks of ice, his ankles stiffening, the chill rising up his calves as the spell drained the heat from his body…
Heat drain! Matt remembered an old friend—well, associate—who would be perfect for this environment. He called out, quickly, before his jaw froze solid,