The Dragon and the Djinn

  Well, there was one thing he could certainly do; and if there was ever a legitimate use of magic, this would be it. Magic could not cure disease, but it could heal wounds. The hit on the head he had taken was clearly a wound; his brain had been wounded. He had to fight the headache to do it, but with a little effort he managed to visualize his brain as red and swollen on the side that wasn't aching; and then visualize both the redness and the swelling as going away.

  It took a moment before he realized this had worked. The sudden stopping of his headache was the most noticeable thing of all. He realized that he had almost become used to that headache—now that it was gone.

  That didn't matter, though. The main thing was, whatever danger might have been there from concussion should be gone. Indeed, his head was very clear now; and unfortunately, one result of this was that he was much more conscious of the way the thongs, or whatever it was that was binding his wrists together, had been tied so tightly that his hands were aching from the interruption in normal blood flow.

  He was ready, unthinkingly, to simply visualize his bonds as being more loose, so the blood could get back into them. But a new thought occurred to him—one that he silently condemned himself for not having had sooner. This was a land of all sorts of magic and near-magic; much of it, in the case of the Naturals, unconscious and not deliberately controlled; but there could be some from other sources that was deliberate. It was just possible that if he used noticeable magic, he would draw to himself the attention of someone who wanted to catch him doing just that, demonstrating whatever powers he had.

  Perhaps it might be better to see if he could not get the bindings loosened some other way.

  While all this had been going through his mind, they had come out into an opening in the path, which had formerly been a ridge running along a mountain face. Now it was entering into another little stony valley, with another spring coming out of the mountains and a small pool underneath it, from which water over-spilled and trickled away down the mountainside.

  Those of his captors ahead of him were already gathered around the pool of the spring and drinking. Jim himself was suddenly conscious of a raging thirst at the sight of the water. He lengthened his strides toward it, but came to a halt behind the bodies of the captors ahead of him who were still waiting their turn to drink.

  "Stand back, nasraney!" snapped one of his escort who had come up from behind him. There was nothing compassionate about his voice, but Jim seized the opportunity to speak to him.

  "Look," he said. "I don't know where I am, and there's no way I could get away from you now. Can't you take these ropes, or whatever they are, off my wrists? Or at least loosen them? They're so tight my hands have gone numb; and I won't be able to drink unless I can scoop up the water."

  For answer, the man swung a backhanded blow at his face that was so completely unexpected Jim was nearly knocked off his feet.

  Instantly there was a hubbub around him, and another figure pushed itself through the crowd—or rather the crowd parted to let this other man through. He came up to Jim and the man who had hit him.

  "What happened?" he asked the man.

  "He tried to escape," said the man.

  "He lies!" croaked a voice.

  It was Brian's voice, and Brian shouldered his way through the crowd that had now closed tightly around them to confront this new authority. "He only asked that our bonds be loosened. They should be. Mine also. We are unarmed and have nowhere to run."

  "He did not try to escape?" asked the man he spoke to.

  "He did not, damn your black souls all to hell!" said Brian. "I am an English knight; and my word is good."

  Brian was a battered sight. Both eyes were black, his nose was a little crooked now and his face had been cut or tom open in a few places. Also, he had limped as he had appeared through the crowd.

  "It is he who lies—" The man who had hit Jim was beginning again, when the man who had just arrived struck him the same sort of backhanded blow the other had hit Jim with; and the man went down.

  "I shall judge who lies, here!" said the leader. "You lie. These infidels do not."

  Jim was not so sure of that. If he did not have his magic to fall back on, he told himself, he would have no more compunction about lying than the man now on the ground.

  "Take off the bindings on their wrists!" said the leader, turning away and heading back toward the spring. "And let them drink!" He added over his shoulder.

  Fingers fumbled with Jim's wrists. The bonds fell away; and a moment later Jim felt as if his hands were being put through the cleverest of torture machines that any medieval mind could imagine. It was simply the blood returning to his fingers, but for a moment he almost regretted that his wrists had been untied.

  However, Brian was giving no sign of how his hands must feel—and they could not feel much different from Jim's. Also, those captors standing close around them, it seemed to Jim, were plainly—almost eagerly—watching for any sign of weakness or admitted pain. Jim managed to keep his own face straight; and slowly, the pain began to ebb away. He passed through a stage where he could actually feel the blood pulsing in his hands. Then this, too, faded; and he was left with the soreness of his wrists as his main concern.

  He lifted his arms before him and looked at his wrists. They were an unlovely sight. The cords, thongs or whatever they were had cut through the skin and the flesh was furrowed and coated with blood. He made use of the pool to wash them off after drinking—he and Brian were the last to be allowed at the water. Clean, the wrists showed themselves to be more bruised than cut. Magic could have healed them, too; but there was the danger of any more use of magic being observed—by someone. The less everybody knew about his capabilities that way, the better.

  Brian also washed his battered face; and it looked better with the traces of blood removed. He and Jim were allowed to go on with their hands free. Jim's fingers had explored the bump on the right side of his head—or where the bump had been; for evidently upon taking care of the concussion he had also taken care of the damage from the blow that caused it.

  He and Brian were even allowed to walk side by side, where the route they followed was wide enough. Most of their escort was walking also. Only the man who had come back and ordered that their bonds be taken off was on horseback, and he rode at a walk at the head of the troop.

  Jim did not speak; and Brian did not speak. Their eyes had met in a glance that perfectly agreed on the situation. Their escort was close enough about them to hear anything they said; and undoubtedly this was not unintentional. For once, Jim found himself less than grateful for the fact that everybody on this world seemed, at least, to speak the same language.

  If there had been the same welter of different languages here that there had been in Jim's twentieth-century world, he and Brian could have talked English and possibly not been understood by those who were guarding them. For that matter, they could even have spoken in the broad Somersetshire dialect of the part of England where they lived, perfectly understandable to an English ear but possibly not so to an unaccustomed middle-eastern ear.

  In any case, there would certainly be sometime later on when they would have a chance to compare notes and discuss the situation.

  Two hours after that they came to their destination; a castle, or rather a stone fortification. It was considerably larger than Sir Mortimor's on Cyprus, but placed in almost as strong a natural defensive position on the steep side of a mountain, facing downslope.

  It had no moat, but a trench had been cut—very probably by human labor, since it was obviously not a natural part of the terrain—before the great door in the front of the structure. A wooden bridge led over it, a drawbridge with chains running back into the castle; and as they crossed the trench, Jim looked down.

  A second later he wished he had not. The trench was deeper than the height of a man; and its bottom had sharp spikes or spears set in it, pointing up, so anyone falling (or being thrown) into it would instantly be pierced
by half a dozen metal points. In fact, there were dead bodies there—ranging from near skeletons to some not more than a few days or perhaps some weeks dead; and the stench was choking.

  But they passed on and through the doors, which opened before them; and came into something that was a cross between a roofed-over, but very small, courtyard and an open-air stable. Here their leader dismounted and gave his horse to an attendant.

  He gave an order; and a couple of the escort prodded Jim and Brian forward at knife-point, so that all five went off in a small group by themselves.

  They passed through a farther entrance, along a passage and down a flight of steps into a shorter passage, lined with cells on either side of a narrow corridor. They had been created by iron bars sunk into the stone at top and bottom; and the cells were divided to make cubicles about ten feet square.

  The cells were almost twentieth-century modern in appearance; and by medieval standards they were remarkably clean. What this meant, Jim had no idea; but somehow the very cleanliness of it stirred an ominous feeling in him. He and Brian were herded into one of them and were locked in by a bar placed in sockets from the outside, with a chain hook below, so that the bar could not be lifted unless the end of the chain were detached; and the other end of the chain was fastened to the stone floor, out of reach of anyone behind the bars.

  All this time the leader of the expedition, as Jim judged him to be, had said nothing. But now he did.

  "You will wait here," he said. "In time our Holy Grandmaster will have you brought before him. Do not hope to escape. There is no way out."

  He and the two who had herded Jim before them down to the cells turned and left. Jim and Brian were at last alone, left in a silence so profound that it almost seemed to thunder in Jim's ears. They looked at each other in the yellowish, flickering light from a cresset at the far end of the cells, on the wall through which the stairs descended to enter this place.

  Brian still looked badly battered. But he was ignoring the fact, and his blue eyes were bright with interest. Already he was carefully examining the bars and as much as he could see of the room around them, including the ceiling and floor. After a moment he looked back to Jim and spoke to him in a low murmur, speaking almost into his ear.

  "I see no way by which they could overhear what we say to each other here," he said. "But I will wager such exists. Still, if we keep our voices down, and speak only when close to each other, perhaps we can keep any from understanding what we speak of, even if the sound itself can not be completely unheard."

  Jim nodded.

  "Do you have any understanding of why they have brought us here?" asked Brian. "Or, James, do you have any plans about what we might do about it?"

  Jim put his head close to Brian's and answered with equal softness in his friend's ear.

  "I don't know a thing about why they carried us away—just us—from that caravan," he said. "The crazy thing is, it looks almost as if the raid was put on only to get the two of us. Of course, there's no way of knowing what else they might have taken from the caravan while they were there."

  "I agree with you," answered Brian. "It is all passing strange. Where are we, do you suppose?"

  "From the mention of a Grandmaster," said Jim, "I'd guess we're in the headquarters of the Assassins. Why, I don't know. Can you think of any particular reason why anyone in this land wouldn't want us to find Geronde's father, or why the Assassins wouldn't, either?"

  Brian shook his head.

  "Well, I'll tell you one thing, Brian," Jim said. "If necessary, I can use magic and get us out of this—that is, unless there's something in this castle, or in this country, to stop it from working. But I don't think there is. So I can almost promise you I'll get us away safely, no matter what happens. The reason I haven't used it before this is because I'm beginning to think that for some reason someone might be wanting to know just how much I can do with magic; so besides using as little magic as possible—I told you why I was doing that—I'm trying to use the least amount when I have to use it, and in its simplest form. That's why I haven't healed our wrists where they had us tied up. They'd notice that right away."

  "Oh, those marks?" said Brian. "They are nothing, James. Nothing—that is, unless they interfere with you doing—whatever you wish."

  "They don't," said Jim. "Anyway, we're undoubtedly best acting like any two ordinary people who've been snatched up and brought here; and all we can do is wait for an explanation. Actually I think one will—"

  He was interrupted suddenly by an unexpected but welcome voice.

  "M'lord!" cried the familiar tones of Hob; and they both looked over to see the little hobgoblin slipping between two of the bars. Just outside the bars was a brown dog wagging its tail ingratiatingly. "Look who I brought, m'lord!"

  "I tried to warn everyone in the caravan by barking," said the Djinni-dog. "There're no dogs in the caravan. But either they did not rouse, or they were fearful of looking to see what made a barking where no barking should be. But I did rouse your hobgoblin, here. I did my best to save you, master!"

  "Did you?" said Jim, still suspicious, for Kelb was clearly trying to imitate the innocent, direct and almost childlike way of expressing himself that came naturally to Hob.

  "Oh, that was one of the things I was going to tell you, that night, m'lord," said Hob quickly. "At every cooking fire I visited all the men were telling each other that they were going to sleep specially heavily. Then, after one of them talked about it, the others would all look at each other strangely, without saying anything more for a moment. But when I got back, you and m'lord Brian were both asleep—"

  "What is this?" Brian was staring at Kelb. "A talking dog?"

  "It's a Djinni that wants my protection," said Jim. "I haven't made my mind up yet—" he added, enunciating clearly and looking directly and very hard at Kelb. "But there's one interesting thing. He's not trying to keep his voice down at all, so everything he's said is being heard someplace in this castle. Hob, you should remember that yourself. Everything you say that loudly is possibly going to be heard and understood someplace. We're sure they've got ways of listening to us."

  "But they aren't listening now, m'lord," said Hob. "They've all been having some kind of meeting."

  "Meeting?"

  "Yes, master," said Kelb swiftly. "They are being told of another raid such as the one on the caravan. Their Grandmaster is telling them."

  "Hmm," said Jim.

  He turned to Hob.

  "But how did you two get here from the caravan. Hob?"

  "Oh, I carried him here along with me on the smoke," said Hob anxiously. "Did I do wrong, too, m'lord? I didn't know what I could do to help; but I thought if I got here, maybe you'd have an idea you could tell me and then I could do it; and I would be helpful."

  "They will not need you," said Kelb to him. He turned back to Jim and Brian. "Oh, masters, fear not. If for some reason you cannot yourself free yourselves from this place, I will free you and set you once more on your path for Palmyra and the one you seek there."

  "What do you know about us seeking someone in Palmyra?" demanded Jim.

  But at that moment there were voices to be heard at the top of the stairs that led down to this cell block. Hob scrambled along the bars to a dark corner where his gray body was all but lost in shadow; and Kelb literally vanished.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The voices came closer. They descended the stairs and four of their captors came in, together with the one who had been in charge of those who had kidnapped Jim and Brian.

  Without a word, they unlocked the cell door, motioned Jim and Brian out and pushed them ahead up the stairs. They went through several long corridors into a large, square room with a domed roof in which windows with glass in them had been built, so that daylight filled the room with afternoon light. At the far end of the room a man sat upon cushions, and continued to sit motionless as Jim and Brian were brought before him. Then he lifted one hand; and the leader, as well as the four w
ith him, left.

  Brian and Jim were left standing before the seated man.

  He was a man of indeterminate age, but Jim guessed him in his late forties or even fifties. He was possibly slightly overweight, but that could be simply because of his position, seated cross-legged on the green cushions beneath him. He was wearing a dark green robe of almost the same shade as the cushion he sat on. He had a hat on his head that was rather like a beret that had been puffed out, and was white in color. His eyes were dark, his eyebrows graying and his face clean-shaven. It was a benign face, a calm face, an almost gentle, fatherly face, except for a rather round, aggressive chin and a firmly closed, straight mouth above it that lent a touch of sternness to his expression, at odds with the calm, unwrinkled appearance of the rest of his features.

  "So," he said, "you find yourself brought before me."

  "And who the hell are you?" snapped Brian.

  The man moved his eyes slowly to focus on Brian.

  When he spoke again the tone of his voice was exactly the same.

  "Know," he said, "I am Hasan ad-Dimri, who left my father's home early to travel from town to town, with others like myself. After some years, people would give me gifts, and bowed before me to hear words of wisdom from my lips. But in the night, one night, a blessed angel came and spoke in my ear, saying thus—'Oh, thou who are by rights ruler of all the world, the time of the return of Isma'il is at hand. But the way must be prepared for him. Therefore go thou and take control of the Hashasheen of the White Palace, in the mountains; revive their lost glory, and set them to the work of cleaning out the foul weeds from among the faithful and unfaithful alike; so that when lsma'il does come, he shall come to an earth cleansed and kept as is a well-kept garden.' "

  His gaze came back to Jim.

  "You are both nasranies," he said, "and claim to be in search of another nasraney. As such, you are a stench in the nostrils of true believers. But you, who call yourself James, are worse than the one with you or the one you seek, because you are also a nasraney magician. I am in the shadow and protection of Allah's hand, and your magics will not work against me. I fear you not. But there are, even among the faithful, those who may be weak or erring in their worship of Allah; and upon those, your foul spells may have some effect, turning them from the true faith and dooming them to everlasting death. Therefore, it is my duty to see that you do no such thing. My children, the Hashasheen that you call 'Assassins,' will guide and guard your friend on his way to his destination. But you, at least, must be put to death here, by men who are of true faith and will be untouched by any infidel magic you may bring against them—"