This last was more a guess than a deduction, but it worked. Sikander said angrily, “It was my idea as much as hers!”
Pride, or a last ditch attempt to shield a lady? Matt gave the man credit for a scrap of gallantry and said, “No point in trying to protect her now. We know the outline of what happened. You might help undo some of your damage, though, if you told us the details.”
Sikander deflated with a sigh and started singing like a star tenor. Matt encouraged him with understanding noises and monosyllables, keeping the information flowing. When Sikander ran out of words and sat slumped in dejection, Matt said, “Well, I can't deny that you made a pretty thorough mess of things, but there's a chance we might be able to straighten them out. Did the horseman say anything at all about where the shaman was sending Balkis?”
Sikander shook his head. “He said little but ‘thank you’ and ‘good-bye.’ I would guess he was openly a hireling.”
“Sure,” Matt said. “Why should the shaman risk getting caught with the princess in his own hands? A lot easier to pay somebody else to do the dangerous stuff.”
Sikander looked up, startled, wondering if he had been someone else's dupe. Perhaps the prince had wanted Balkis to disappear after all.
Matt rose to go. “Well, thanks for your cooperation. I'll tell the king that you've seen the error of your ways and are trying to help.”
Sikander gave him a sardonic smile. “What will that net for me? A quick death instead of a slow one?”
“Well, it should save you from the torture chamber, at least— unless there's something you haven't told me?”
“No!” Sikander declared, sitting bolt-upright.
Matt nodded. “Nothing more to learn, no reason for torture— except simple revenge, of course, and I don't think that's Prester John's style. I'll recommend he keep you alive until we know whether to charge you with murder, or just kidnapping. With any luck, you'll still be alive to face Princess Balkis someday.” He turned thoughtful then. “Not sure that I wouldn't prefer the quick death, though … Well!” He forced a bright smile. “Let's hope for the best, shall we?”
Then he was gone, and the cell door crashed behind him. Sikander doubled over, head in his hands, and spent half an hour wishing he had never been born.
Corundel was more defiant but had even less to tell; like Sikander, all she knew was that the horseman had taken Balkis away. When Matt pointed out that she was under sentence of death and that the only questions were when, how, and at the hands of the royal executioner or of Balkis, Corundel caved in and told him that she had opened doors to lead Sikander to the horseman, and that the two of them watched him ride away, then went back into the palace to celebrate. She didn't say that talking to the shaman had been her idea, but she didn't say that Sikander had forced her into being his pawn, either. Matt left the jail with a scrap of respect for each of them, though it was buried under a thick pile of contempt.
He briefly wondered why the guards hadn't noticed the horseman approach, then realized that a sorcerer who could provide the drug and the means of sending Balkis away could no doubt manage a spell of invisibility easily enough.
Matt reported back to Prester John. “The shaman's name is Torbat,” he told him, “and his shop is in the northeastern quarter where the Radial Avenue of the Second Hour meets the Twelfth Ring Road.”
Prester John, who sat at his desk, was impressed. “You are persuasive.”
“Oh, I just recited a little spell before I went into each cell,” Matt told him. “I also hinted that you might give them each a quick death instead of a slow and painful one.”
John frowned, affronted. “You made no promises in my name, I trust.”
“No, just hinted,” Matt said, “though I did come out and say my report might influence you into keeping them alive until we could bring Balkis home.”
“Why should I be so merciful?” John asked.
“So you would know whether to charge them as accessories to murder or only as kidnappers,” Matt said. “Besides, if we do bring Balkis home none the worse for wear, we can just sentence them each to spend half an hour alone with her and see what happens.”
Prester John looked surprised, then chuckled. “Yes, that would be appropriate.”
“But for now let's concentrate on getting her back.”
“Yes, quite so.” Prester John frowned. “How shall you search?”
“Well, we know the shaman's name now, not just his address,” Matt said. “Sure, it's only his public name, not his private one, so I can't make him break out in boils or drop dead from a heart attack—but it should be enough to bring me to him, wherever he is.”
Prester John gazed off into space, correlating the idea with what he knew of barbarian magic, which was substantial. Finally he nodded. “Yes, that should suffice. Let us repair to the workroom, Lord Wizard.”
As Balkis, in the form of a cat, slept, small figures stepped forth from burrows under the roots of the pines, stretching and yawning. They wore robes, turbans, and sandals, but their skin was nut-brown. In the Allustria where she had grown up, they would have been called “brownies.” They looked around them in surprise.
“What could have waked us at so unseemly an hour, Hurree?” one asked.
Hurree spread his arms, starting to answer, but a white-bearded sprite spoke first. “It was the spirit of the grove. What moves?”
“Nothing, now,” said an aged and creaky voice. The air seemed to thicken near one of the pines, then turned into a translucent figure that became more opaque with each step it took until it was solid, showing itself to be a stooped, wrinkled crone, leaning heavily on a knobbly stick. She gave of her life energy to her poor little trees, and though they gave back what little they could, it wasn't very much at all, so she was as stunted and twisted as they, her skin wrinkled and creased as bark. She was robed in garlands of brown needles that rustled as she hobbled forth. “That which moved now sleeps, by my blessing,” she told her brownies, “but she is wounded in head and side, and has need of your aid.” She pointed with her stick.
The brownies looked, and saw a miserable bundle of fur rippled by the breeze that sifted through the boughs of the pines.
Hurree caught his breath. “That cat is thick with magic!”
The dryad nodded. “Dryad-magic, nixie-magic, brownie-magic—it would seem that magic has rubbed off on her from half the sprites in the world.”
Hurree knelt beside the cat, small hand tracing the rent in her side. “How came she here?”
“By more magic, surely,” the dryad told him. “I felt the tingling of it, I looked out into the meadow—and lo! There she was, not a cat but a maiden fair, and sick to her stomach, poor thing!”
A brownie-woman parted the veil from her face to ask, “A maiden?”
The dryad nodded. “Even so, Lichi. The cows sensed that feeling of magic, too, and took fright. They moved toward the young woman, lowing to urge one another to defend—but the maiden, looking up, saw them, and lo! In an instant she had changed into a cat!”
Hurree's breath hissed in. “Surely you needed no further proof she was magical!”
“And surely that transformation must have disturbed the cows even more,” Lichi exclaimed.
“It did, but the cat was better able to dodge their hooves than the woman would have been,” the dryad said.
“Not able enough.” Hurree placed a hand lightly on the cat's head, feeling the swelling.
“Well,” said the dryad, “the cat is alive, where the woman might have been trampled to death.”