The Feline Wizard (13 page)

“We have begun indeed, son of men,” she agreed, “and begun well.”

The road stretched out before them, all the way home to Maracanda.

The road may have led toward the north, but it also led downward. Toward evening it rose again for a mile to a ridge that fell away to a valley floor. As they descended, the road slanting toward the stream below, Balkis noticed that the drifts by the roadside scarcely came to Anthony's knees, and saw dripping icicles on the bare branches whenever they passed a stand of birches.

As they strode lower, though, the sun hid behind the peak at the western end of the valley and the dripping lessened, then stopped as the air chilled, leaving the icicles frozen again. It was the mountains' height that had brought them snow, Balkis realized, and the lower they went, the warmer it would be, as she expected from a southern climate. “When we come out of the mountains to the plains,” she asked, “will there still be snow?”

“I doubt it,” Anthony said. “The flatlands are always oven-hot when we visit them in the summer, and they must be warm enough for crops to grow even now.” He made a face. “The air is thick with heat and moisture, though. It will be painful to breathe.”

Balkis hid a smile. She didn't doubt Anthony's words—for a man raised to breathing the thin, dry air of the mountains, the lowland air must indeed seem like soup.

The ground leveled about them, and they were so far below
the ridge that the land lay in twilight. Suddenly a partridge burst from cover almost beneath Anthony's nose.

“Good hunting!” Balkis cried, and leaped down off Anthony's shoulder.

“Good indeed,” he said, and she heard a hissing. She looked up to see a circular blur above his raised hand; then his arm whipped down and the partridge gave one raucous cry and fell out of the sky.

Shaken, Balkis stared up at her gentle Anthony as he wrapped the strings of the sling around its leather pouch and tucked it back in his belt. “I think we shall have fresh meat for dinner,” he said, “not merely boiled jerky.”

“It would seem so,” Balkis replied. “Do you always carry that with you?”

“Of course,” Anthony said. “You never know when dinner will spring up before your eyes. Do not people carry slings in your homeland?”

“Not in the cities,” Balkis said, “but we find our dinners in the marketplace there.”

“Ah.” Anthony nodded, understanding, and went to fetch the partridge.

Balkis decided that perhaps he didn't need quite so much help as she had thought.

They ate in companionable silence. Balkis changed back into a woman for the occasion, reasoning that her larger stomach could hold more food, which would sustain her longer. She told herself it had nothing to do with Anthony's admiring glances—but she did relish them. She was beginning to enjoy the strange, warm sensation those looks raised in her. Besides, the feeling was less intense in human form.

As she wiped her fingers on a tuft of dead grass, Anthony said, “Shall we play the old game, then?”

“What?” Balkis stared at him, trying to decide whether or not to feel insulted.

“The game,” Anthony explained. “You saw us at it last night, did you not? I have played at telling the old tales in verse as long as I can remember.”

“Oh! The old tales,” Balkis said, relieved. “It is not a game
with which I am familiar, Anthony. Besides, I may not know your tales.”

“How diverting!” Anthony exclaimed. “A new tale! Make up whatever comes to your mind, then.”

“I—I do not know if I can.” But Balkis realized what a rare treat this must be for him, to start not only the verse but also the whole saga, with no one to object. She couldn't disappoint him. “I shall try, though…”

“And you shall succeed!” Anthony assured her. “Here, I shall begin it.” He stared into the fire; his face became blank, then his eyes began to glow as he intoned, “Rustam woke and … No, he sprang from his bed … No, the meter is off with that… Rustam op'd his eyes and … Drat!” He broke off with an embarrassed laugh. “I have never begun the lay before! Once it is under way, I have no difficulty with the middle lines and certainly not with the last—now and again, even a first line will come to me—but the first line of a whole saga? Your pardon, for this will take some time.”

Balkis' heart ached for Anthony, frustrated when he finally had the chance to begin. If she could start him, though, he would be able to keep the tale going, at least. “Let me try, then.” Balkis was quite sure of herself with beginnings and middles. “What does Rustam do?”

“Why, he wakes, says his morning prayer to the sun, and equips himself for the hunt,” Anthony said, as though it should have been obvious. Then he reddened and gave an embarrassed laugh. “Your pardon; already I have forgotten that you said you do not know the tale.”

Balkis' resentment faded as quickly as it had come; she appreciated his understanding of his own gaffe. She did hope, though, that he wouldn't be asking her pardon every time she turned around. “It is enough to know how the lay begins. Let me see, now… Rustam woke and blessed the dawn…”

“See! You are quite able!” Anthony said, his enthusiasm restored. “Prayed to dawn and took his bow…”

Bow? What next? Then Balkis remembered what one did to prepare a bow. “Bent the stave with easy brawn…”

“Dawn and brawn! Good!” Anthony approved, then added, “Strung it and chose well his arrow… Finish the verse now.”

Balkis' heart sank at the prospect of finding the end-line. Arrow? What went with an arrow? And rhymed with “brawn”? Balkis stammered, “He shot at … I mean, he pulled the feathers … Confound it, Anthony, for confounded I am! I have never been able to end a verse!”

“I can, be sure,” Anthony said with a wry smile and chanted, “Slung his quiver and upon … There, now, begin a new verse.”

New verse? Knowing only that Rustam had “upon'ed something? Upon? Upon what? Was Anthony mad? But Balkis remembered that she did not have to make this line rhyme; she could end it with whatever word she chose, and the rhyming would be Anthony's problem. With a wicked grin, she said, “Out upon… the grass he… he stepped…”

“To seek the spoor and stalk a doe!” Anthony cried. “You see? It is easy!”

Easy for you
, Balkis thought, but she returned his smile, caught up in his enthusiasm. Then she remembered that she had to rhyme her own first line. Stepped? What rhymed with “stepped”?

Leapt! “A stream he found, and o'er it leapt…”

“Long he sought…” Anthony said, diving into the second verse.

Balkis kept up with him as well as she could, which was quite well on the first and middle lines—but the final rhyme always defeated her. After bailing her out three more times, Anthony said charitably, “Take the second line this time.”

“Oh, no!” Balkis protested. “You have had so little chance!”

“I've had small enough chance with the mid-lines, either,” Anthony pointed out, “and I will be quite happy with the third line and the last. After all, I am the clean-up boy, am I not?”

“You are far more than that!” Balkis cried in anger.

Anthony looked deeply into her eyes, his gaze almost seeming to devour hers. She felt a fluttering inside and an impulse to turn away, but stood her ground, gazing back at him. “Never try to outstare a cat,” she warned.

Anthony laughed with sheer delight, and the sound was balm to her heart. “I was staring, wasn't I?” he said. “Forgive,
beautiful lady! But it is very good of you to think of me so— and if you say I am, I shall be so!”

After all, Balkis decided, the first lines were the prize he had been so long denied—and once the poem had been started, what was the difference between the middle lines of a verse and the first, save that the first could establish a new rhyme, and was therefore even easier to craft?

“Well enough, then, lad. You take the first line, and send Rustam off on the hunt.”

“Then you take the second,” Anthony said with a grin, “and lead him where he has never gone before.”

Thus the evening passed, and when she lay down to sleep, warmed only by her cloak and the campfire, Balkis was surprised to realize that she was nonetheless quite content.

Stegoman thundered into the air and found a thermal to lift him higher. Matt scanned the sky but saw no sign of a slender red dragon. Then he looked ahead and saw beyond the mountains a vast expanse of beige.

“Southern desert ahead,” he pointed out to Stegoman.

“I shall gain altitude while I can,” the dragon said. “The air over that wasteland will not be rising until midday.”

Matt took the hint—no landing until noon, unless it was an emergency.

Stegoman flew high indeed, enough so that the desert looked like corrugated iron—until Matt remembered that those corrugations were rows of sand dunes. After an hour or so, they crossed a long, pale line that snaked its way from the southern horizon to the northern mountains. “Follow that strand!” he called to Stegoman. “It's a road!”

“Who would have need of a road on so flat a land?” Stegoman asked, but banked to follow the track anyway. Matt bit back comments about quicksands, jagged rocks, and slippery footing and contented himself with, “Thanks.”

As the sun rose higher and the land warmed, Stegoman settled lower, confident in the ability of the heated, rising air to take him aloft again. It was nearly noon when Matt spotted the cluster of dots on the roadway. “People!” he called to Stegoman.

“You wish to land and question them, I assume,” the dragon sighed.

“You don't mind, do you?”

“Not at all—if they have a spare goat nearby.” Stegoman wheeled back, then came in for a landing.

With his usual caution about public appearances, Stegoman slid to earth behind a sand dune a quarter mile from the road. It only took Matt ten minutes to hike in, but even so, the sun baked him so thoroughly that he arrived feeling dehydrated.

The travelers were riding camels and leading others laden with goods—all rather skittish, having seen a dragon overhead. The people stopped to stare at Matt. They wore loose coats and trousers of off-white, unbleached muslin, long enough to protect them from the sun, loose enough and light enough to be cool—or as cool as they could be in the desert.

“Hail!” Matt raised a hand and decided to start with the language of Maracanda.

“Hail,” a graybeard answered, raising his own hand in return.

“I'm looking for a young woman.”

“Most men your age are.” The graybeard's eye twinkled.

Matt grinned in answer. “Not that way—I'm her teacher, and she's disappeared.”

“She did not like your teaching?” a young man asked with a grin.

Just what Matt needed—a whole caravan full of comics. “Seems to have decided she knew enough to strike out on her own—and maybe she does, but I'm concerned anyway. You haven't seen a lone girl, have you?”

“We have not,” the young man said, and another assured him, “We would have noticed.”

“Noticed, but nothing more,” said the young woman beside him, with a dagger-glance, “at least, if you wished to sleep easily.”

“Let your heart be light.” The young man caught her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I would have noticed her and called you to talk with her, nothing more.”

The young woman's glance was somewhat mollified, but she was still suspicious.

So was Matt, suspicious enough to realize that Balkis would have been very foolish to try hiking in her human form. “She had a pet with her,” he said. “I don't suppose you've seen a cat?”

“A cat?” The young men stared.

“Yeah.” Matt was about to mention color, then realized he didn't know what robe Balkis had been wearing for her kidnapping. He hoped it wasn't blue or purple or green. “You know, small furry animal, long tail, whiskers, retractable claws?” Matt pantomimed as he talked.

The nomads stared at him as though he were mad.

“This is poor country for cats,” the young woman told him.

An older woman nodded. “There is little to hunt, and less to drink.”

Well, Matt wasn't entirely sure of that—he saw clumps of scrub brush here and there and knew it probably supported small colonies of mice who knew how to find the catch basins that watered it. Still, he wasn't about to contradict the locals. “If you do see one, could you take her in?”

“The cat, or the woman?” the second young man asked.

“Right,” Matt answered. “I'll try to check back with you later.”

“Be sure that I shall help her.” The young woman gave her young man another whetted glance.

“We shall, us women together,” the older woman confirmed.

“Thanks.” Matt smiled. “I'd appreciate it. Have a good trip.” He waved as he turned to start back to Stegoman.

“Beware, stranger,” the graybeard called after him. “There was a dragon flying overhead not long ago.”

“I'll keep an eye out for him,” Matt said with a backward glance. “Thanks.”

“It was not perchance your dragon, was it?”

“Mine? No, we're just friends. Take care, now.” And Matt plodded back to Stegoman, oblivious to the stares at his back.

Each day's travel took Balkis and Anthony lower and lower; each noon's sun was warmer and warmer, though the nights
stayed chill. By the end of the week they had come down into flat land, and Balkis found it was desert. The days were warmer than was comfortable, but not really hot; it was winter, after all. In her northern cloak, though, Balkis sweltered. She took it off, folded it flat, and slung it over her shoulder, retying her sash to hold it to her waist.

“Beware the sun's rays,” Anthony warned her. “They can burn.”

“I shall chance it,” Balkis told him. “The sun is my summer friend.” She doubted that the Central Asian winter could be that much worse than an Allustrian summer, which tanned her golden skin to bronze. She looked at Anthony with concern. “But your fair skin worries me.”

“I have a hood.” Anthony pulled it up to demonstrate. “Oh, my woolens are too warm for comfort, but I should be able to trade for a cotton robe as soon as we meet other travelers.” He took a shiny stone from his pocket. “We find these in the streams now and then. It should do for trade.”

Balkis glanced at the stone, then stared. It was gold. “Yes,” she said, “that might even buy robes for both of us—and a dozen more.”