The Dragon and the Djinn

"I am called 'the Nasraney,' " said the man in a rusty, worn-out voice.

  "Thou art a slave, then," said Murad. "So much the better. Look toward those who sit before me, so that they may see your face clearly," said Murad.

  Wearily, the man turned, but his eyes were still on the floor.

  "Lift up thy head!" said the bearded man sharply.

  The man lifted his head.

  Brian stared almost fiercely at him, although Jim, ibn-Tariq and Baiju were also looking.

  "I had never thought to see a man so changed," said Brian at last, in something very close to a deep growl, "but I think it is him, Sir Geoffrey?"

  The man lifted his head a little more, staring at Brian.

  "Answer him," commanded Murad.

  "I—" The man seemed to stumble in his speech. "I was once… Sir Geoffrey de Chaney."

  Brian leaped to his feet, took three steps forward and threw his arms around the man.

  "Sir Geoffrey!" he said, kissing him on both cheeks. "Do you not recognize me? Brian—Brian Neville-Smythe? Recall how I often used to be at Malvern, almost, in fact, growing up with your daughter Geronde?"

  "Geronde…"

  The man seemed stunned. He had not returned Brian's embrace. Jim was feeling a strange uneasiness. There was nothing wrong with what was happening—in fact, it was probably the most fortunate thing in the world; but it came very, very close to being a whopping coincidence—that they should meet ibn-Tariq, who knew Murad of the Heavy Purse, who just happened to have as one of his household slaves the one man they were seeking for in all of the Near East.

  "Sir Geoffrey, speak to me!" Brian was saying.

  "Perhaps," said Jim, "this is all a little too much for a man who has not seen one of his own kind for some years. Perhaps if Brian and I could have some time alone with him…"

  "Whatever wits he had are gone," said Baiju harshly.

  "More likely it is simply the suddenness of meeting someone he used to know from a long time back," said ibn-Tariq. He turned to Murad. "Perhaps this suggestion of Sir James is not unwise. O Murad, of thy mercifulness and great generosity, wouldst thou allow this slave to be alone with your two infidel guests, here?"

  "Let it be so," said Murad, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He looked at the man with the beard and the staff and made a motion with his finger. The man with the staff stepped forward to Brian.

  "Follow me," he said. The slave turned automatically, Brian went with him, and Jim jumped hastily to his own feet and joined them.

  They were led back to the entrance of the large room, and there a portion of the wall opened up again, and they were ushered through into a narrow corridor, but one still richly furnished, that led them a short distance to a small room furnished the same way. Here the bearded man stopped and took a step back from them.

  "You will stay here until Murad of the Heavy Purse summons you," he announced, turned on his heel and walked out.

  As the sound of his feet died away on the stone surface of the corridor they had just come along, the slave gradually raised his eyes to Brian.

  "Is it really you, little Brian?" he said, in a broken voice. "Brian, you are you, aren't you? You are real?"

  "Yes, Sir Geoffrey," said Brian. "Come—"

  He took the older man by the arm and led him to one of the walls of the room where some pillows were piled up.

  "Sit down, Sir Geoffrey," he said. He almost had to push the man into a seated position on a cushion, where the older man automatically crossed his legs in eastern fashion. Jim and Brian sat down with him.

  "Brian," said the man, in a wondering voice, "do you recall going looking for hobgoblins in one of our chimneys, and getting stuck? Geronde came screaming to me, sure that something terrible had happened to you. I had to climb into the chimney myself to get you out."

  "I remember it well," said Brian, chuckling. "And well I remember the beating you gave me for doing such a foolish thing."

  "It was but a child's adventure," said Sir Geoffrey. "I was too impatient in those days…"

  He put up his one hand and lightly stroked one side of Brian's face.

  "And now you are a man and a knight, with scars!"

  "And do you remember," said Brian eagerly, "the Christmas that no one was expecting you home and you came just the day before. It was when I was fourteen years old; and Geronde and I thought we would be alone all through the twelve days of Christmas—and then you showed up?"

  Sir Geoffrey nodded.

  "And then the Easter that…" Brian went off into a flood of reminiscences. Jim stood aside, forgotten, Sir Geoffrey was nodding to everything Brian suggested, but Jim could not be sure whether he really remembered all that Brian mentioned, or was just agreeing to keep the flow coming. His face looked happy.

  There was nothing for Jim to do while the two renewed their acquaintance. It was probably just as well, thought Jim. Finding Sir Geoffrey was not the end of all their problems. In a sense it was just the beginning of them.

  Murad had spoken of Geoffrey as a slave. That meant that he was property that Murad owned. Would Murad let him go? Probably. But, what kind of enormous price might he not ask, now that he must have gathered that getting Sir Geoffrey back and taking him home to England must mean a great deal to Sir Brian, and supposedly to Jim as well?

  Jim moved restlessly about the room, his mind searching for a point from which to attack the several problems that had presented themselves to him all at the same time. Brian still had most of the capful of gold coins he had received as the winner of the tournament. The coins were now sewn into the padded vest he wore underneath his chain mail shirt; and since, as commonly done, the vest had been sewn directly to the chain mail, the weight of the gold coins, hopefully, would be masked by the weight of the steel shirt.

  By English standards, it was a princely sum. But what would it look like to someone like Murad, who evidently was the equivalent of a billionaire—judging by this place, these servants and the submissive attitude ibn-Tariq had been showing to him? Even assuming the gold pieces, perhaps with Jim's money added, were enough to buy the freedom of Sir Geoffrey, the three of them would still be far from European friends, or any other help in this city.

  How, to begin with, would they pay the expenses of their trip home? How, indeed, would they even be able to get out of Palmyra and back to Tripoli, where Brian could possibly find some English or connections that would lend them enough to get home on? From what he had seen of this land, credit was not something that came easily to strangers—come to think it, credit never came easily to strangers anywhere, he reminded himself.

  Then there was the matter of ibn-Tariq and Baiju. The fact that they both had been on the caravan was now somewhat explained by the fact that there seemed to be some kind of political business between them with this matter of the Mongols of the Golden Horde coming down from the north into Lebanon and the attitude toward this of either the Mamelukes, or the Egyptian caliphate—or perhaps the last two were one, and ibn-Tariq represented them both.

  It could be that both ibn-Tariq and Baiju might have prices of their own to demand for the freedom of Sir Geoffrey. Baiju had not simply supplied them with camels and brought them from the Assassins' fortress to this city with such speed because he was a generous soul.

  Nor, in spite of his repetition of the word "friends," was ibn-Tariq simply a fountain of generosity. Moreover, ibn-Tariq was entirely too well connected, and in exactly the right place at the right time too often, for Jim's present peace of mind. Could it be possible that ibn-Tariq had somehow already known they were searching for Sir Geoffrey?

  But if so, how? And, if so, had he planned to lead them to Geronde's father, so that he could set some price on his assistance in getting Sir Geoffrey into their hands?

  It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that ibn-Tariq, who seemed the most polished of politicians and possibly one of the most clever individuals that Jim had met here in the fourteenth century, had gotten word from Cyprus of an
English knight searching for Geoffrey. But why should that interest the Egyptian?

  But if he had such an interest, having learned this much, ibn-Tariq could then have joined the caravan and tried to pump Jim for further information. Failing in this, he might then have somehow arranged with Hasan ad-Dimri to have Brian and Jim kidnapped and brought into the White Palace.

  But could he have foreseen their escape from there?

  Baiju, according to what the Mongol had said, had learned from Abu al-Qusayr where to wait for Jim and Brian and on what day and at what time. That suggested something very strongly. Which was that Abu al-Qusayr had known ahead of time they would be taken to the White Palace, but then escape by the tunnel. If he had somehow known this—he was a senior legal magician, after all—though he pointedly mentioned scrying would not show the future—he might have told Baiju to provide some help for Jim. That was the sort of thing Carolinus might do…

  Jim's head began to spin. I'll stop thinking about it, he told himself, and come back to it later.

  In his wanderings around the room, Jim had half-unconsciously drifted into examining the walls that surrounded them. With the exception of the entrance, the walls showed no openings. There were not even windows to be seen, and the only light came from several torches burning around the room, although these shed a remarkable amount of light for their size and the activity of their flames. Jim found himself running his hands along the walls as he passed, absently feeling for any difference.

  He had seen both the wall in the first room where he had met Baiju and ibn-Tariq in this house, and the wall behind Murad of the Heavy Purse, open and reveal a space through which a servant could enter the room. It was not beyond possibility that this room had something like that. And if it did…

  His mind was only absently considering this possibility when he felt under his fingers a slight vertical edge, the almost invisible upper side of a joint between two of the carefully fitted stones of the wall. He stopped and ran his fingers up and down it—finding it continuous, stone to stone, from floor level to just above his head.

  Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see that the joint also ran crosswise from its highest point, over to another line that descended again to the floor. The outline of a possible secret door was made less obvious by the fact that this wall, like all the others he had seen in the rooms where he and Brian had talked with ibn-Tariq and Murad, was faced with square slabs of polished marble; and the lines where they joined, both vertically and horizontally, helped hide the joint his fingers had discovered.

  But finding the doorway was one thing. To open it could be a more difficult matter. He tried pressing and pushing at the slab which faced the door, and running his hand up and down just inside the joint on either side.

  He was not sure exactly when he touched the place that opened it, but suddenly the stone facing before him moved back some six inches and then without a sound supped sideways. Unthinkingly he stepped into darkness, and then hastily on out to the daylight two steps farther on.

  He had expected to find only some sort of secret passage, hidden in the thickness of the wall between this room and whatever was next to it. Instead, he now came out into another room, this one with one side plainly open to fresh air, or whatever else was beyond being hidden by several layers of filmy curtain.

  Excited, he went across and tried to part the curtain just enough so he could see through it. By gathering almost a full armful of sheer cloth, he managed it finally; and what he saw beyond was a sort of interior courtyard with a fountain in the center, and trees growing around it.

  The trees were not very tall, but were heavily laden with what seemed to be oranges and lemons, some half-ripe, and some clearly ready for picking. Over-topping these trees and beyond them, Jim could see what apparently was an exterior wall, protecting this garden spot—and he thought as he peered through the tree trunks that he could see a green door at ground level in the wall that might lead to freedom.

  His happiness over this discovery suddenly tripped and dropped into a cold sensation more like despair.

  Even if they did escape, how could they take a valuable slave from Murad of the Heavy Purse and hope to hide with him? Particularly in this city where Murad evidently had so much power, and undoubtedly many people to search and locate them. In fact, they could almost surely not leave even this part of Palmyra without being seen; and once they were seen, Murad would hear of it.

  He was struggling to pull himself back up from this sudden fall of spirits, when suddenly two wafts of smoke came through the curtains between him and the garden as if the curtains were not there; and also coming through the cloth as if they were not there, riding on the smoke, were Hob and Angie on one, Geronde on the other, riding with another hobgoblin.

  The smoke deposited Angie and Geronde on their feet on the floor directly in front of Jim. The two hobgoblins stayed, perched where they were.

  "Jim!" cried Angie, wrapping her arms around him.

  He kissed her gratefully and heartily; then, remembering, came up for air long enough to say over her shoulder, "Geronde, we found your father. He's in the next room."

  "You found him?" Geronde stared, and Angie suddenly let go of Jim and stepped back.

  "You did, Jim?" said Angie. "That's marvelous. Let's go to him right now!"

  "There're some complications—" Jim was beginning, but even as he said this, he saw Brian and Sir Geoffrey enter the room through the still-open wall door, looking inquiringly in the direction of the voices. Brian raced to Geronde.

  "Look, Geronde!" Brian was saying, a moment later, as he came up for air. "We have Sir—"

  But Geronde had stiffened, and a cold look had come over her face as she stared at the elderly man. She broke in now, icily, before Brian could finish talking.

  "That's not my father!" she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "Geronde!" said Brian. "He is much changed and aged, I know, but he remembered the time I got stuck in the chimney looking for hobgoblins at Malvern Castle—he mentioned it first to me, before I ever mentioned anything about the castle yet he—"

  "What of it?" said Geronde fiercely, glaring at the man. "He may remember what he likes! But he is not my father—favor me with your understanding, Brian! I should know my own father, should I not? And this man is not Sir Geoffrey de Chaney!"

  Brian looked helplessly at Jim and Angie, who were standing, stunned, looking from Geronde to the man.

  "Sweeting—" the man said, advancing with his arms outstretched. Geronde recoiled.

  "My father never called me 'sweeting' in his life!" she snapped. "Stand back!" From somewhere about her clothing she had suddenly produced a small but undeniably useful dagger. The man halted as if he was on a tether suddenly jerked taut.

  "Brian, what made you pick up this impostor?" said Geronde, fiercely turning on Brian, the dagger still in her hand.

  "Geronde—" Brian ran out of words and looked helplessly at Jim, Angie and the man who had just been labeled an impostor.

  "If this man is an impostor, Geronde," said Jim, "the situation is more complex than you can imagine. We're all going to have to do some quick thinking. Put that knife away, will you please, Geronde? Whatever the situation is, I don't think much of the blame attaches to this man if he's not Sir Geoffrey."

  Geronde reluctantly slid the dagger back out of sight through a slit in the cloth behind the belt that gathered her full gown at the waist. Jim turned back to the man.

  "Well?" he asked. "Are you Sir Geoffrey, or aren't you?"

  "I am Sir Geoffrey!" said the man, and Geronde snorted. "This child of mine is merely…" His voice dropped off and failed. He looked at the floor at his feet. "What is the use?" he said in a dead voice. "I have been expecting death every day for the last twelve years. It will come now, one way or another. It makes no difference."

  "Who taught you things that only Sir Geoffrey could know?" demanded Jim.

  "It was Murad of the Heavy Pur
se, himself," the man said. He raised his head suddenly and his face had become stern. "I was a knight once, Sir Renel de Oust. I was a knight and a man once. But twelve years of being a slave have made me nothing, nothing at all."

  "For heaven's sake, Geronde!" said Angela to Geronde, who was still sneering at Sir Renel. "Have some pity for the man. This must have been his first and only chance to escape—"

  She turned to Jim.

  "How did this whatever-he-was-of-the-Purse know to tell this one about it?" she asked. "Perhaps he has the real Sir Geoffrey hidden somewhere around here."

  "That I can answer for you," said Sir Renel, still in the same dead voice. "I have been here the last three years as a slave. I can tell you, on the faith of the man I was once, he has no other here who, like me, was once a gentleman and a knight."

  Jim's mind, which had been poking halfheartedly—in fact, more or less hopelessly—at their problems since the moment of their arrest in the caravansary eating place, suddenly snapped into high gear and began to work with welcome clarity. It was something that had taken place in him during a number of crises, both large and small, in his life. The closest thing he could compare it to was the way a sudden awareness of oncoming danger brought mind and body together in an instant alert.

  He remembered it happening to him one time during a critical term-end physics exam as an undergraduate. He had sat through nearly half the time allotted for taking the exam, being defeated one at a time by each question in the test. He had felt exactly as if he was facing a solid barrier in which there never had been and never would be an opening. Then suddenly had come this moment of wakening; and the wall dissolved. Suddenly, all that he knew, all that he had absorbed over some months of the class, was back with him and, going back to the beginning he found the test questions to be child's play—obvious. The same thing happened now.

  "Hob," he said.

  "Yes, m'lord," answered Hob.

  Jim looked at him. The two hobgoblins on their miraculously hovering wafts of smoke hanging in place in midair in the room were almost identical. About the only difference was the fact that Hob had a cheerful look and sat proudly upright on his smoke, whereas the hobgoblin from Malvern was not only thinner, but sat hunched up in a small gray ball, as if hoping no one would notice him.