Still they came. Hasan fell to the ground, weary and smarting from numerous injuries. Beautiful warriors trod over him, thinking his unseen body a corpse. The tents burst into flame, and he heard the screams of his children.
He scrambled up, finding new strength. Shawahi and Dahnash were still fighting a rearguard action, limned against the flames, but they were beset by crowding ama- zons. A second scream soared from the flame.
It was Hasan"s turn to go berserk. He was never able to remember what he did, nor did he care to try, but two amazons writhed on the ground in agony behind him while he charged through the sheets of flame.
The heat blinded him. "Sana! Nasir! Mansur!"
There was no answer. He stumbled over a body, dropped to the earth beside it, and found that there was still air to breathe next to the ground though the flames raged over his head. He touched the p.r.o.ne figure and felt blood and a female shape. "Sana!"
But it was an amazon, slashed and burned. His own head was burning, and he pawed at it until the blazing cloth fell away. Now he could see that this woman"s face was lovely even in the pyre. He recognized the royally born damsel Shawahi had offered him that day the army bathed in the ocean, so long ago. Never again would she charm men with her splendor or laugh amid friendly waves.
Perhaps he had been the one to kill her.
Hard hands grasped him from behind. An animal sound came from his throat as he struggled to free himself, but the grip was huge and tight. "I"m on your side, Hasan," a voice grunted in his ear. "Had you not lost your cap, I would not have found you in time."
It was the chief. They leapt into the air, leaving the flames and the horrors they enveloped below.
"My wife! My children!"
"I carried them to safety," the chief said. "They screamed when I picked them up, just as you did, but there was no time to reason with them."
Limp relief washed over him. His family was safe!
"Put me down and fetch Shawahi!" he said, surprising himself.
"I have already a.s.signed a minion," the chief rea.s.sured him.
They gathered in a dark gully near the conic mountain. "This is not safe," the chief said, "but there was very little time. The Queen has won the day."
Not even Dahnash cared to point out that it was night.
"But what of the seven kings?" Hasan said.
Four shapes appeared. "Our brothers are gone," the remaining kings said sadly. "Our troops are vanquished, our magic abolished."
"I have only what you see here," the chief added. No more than a dozen bedraggled ifrits remained.
Hasan made a formal head count. Beside the five mor- tals, there were the chief, the four kings, Dahnash and the chief"s remnant. Hardly more than a score of the thou- sands who had gone to battle so proudly two days before. But if the Queen"s forces had been similarly ravaged- Torches glimmered in the distance, and there came the sound of marching feet. Dahnash flew into the night.
He was back in a moment. "She"s got a full division left," he said. "I"m glad they don"t make female ifrits like that!"
"Take us away from here!" Hasan said to the chief.
The chief shook his head. "Hasan, my last flyer broke his wing transporting the old woman, and the kings are forbidden by covenant to carry the sons of Adam. I am the only one who can do it-and though I can take you anywhere, I can carry only one of you at a time, or the two children."
Hasan exchanged glances with the two women. "Take the children to my mother in Baghdad. The rest of us will stay and fight."
"But that will take me many hours, even days if I keep low enough to maintain their warmth. You cannot hope to withstand the force of Wak and the magic of the Queen without my help."
"Take them!" Sana cried, tears streaming down her face. She gave each boy a final hug and kiss. Hasan did the same, and so did Shawahi. The chief looked at them sadly, then took a boy under each arm. They screamed and cried, not wanting to go, but Hasan signaled the ifrit away and put his arms around each woman.
Sana sobbed openly as the chief disappeared into the sky and the cries of Nasir and Mansur dwindled in the dis- tance. Even Shawahi shed a tear. "Is your mother a gentle woman?" Shawahi inquired.
"She is very like yourself," Hasan said.
Chapter 15. Magma
The marching torches descended the hillside and spread out below. The gully was some distance around the cone, so that the amazons had to cross the plain to reach it. Their torches circled and formed once more into the terrible flower pattern, glowing and swaying in the night, a signal to the world that the Queen had won and would have her revenge. How could he ever have thought it beautiful!
"Why does she pursue us?" Hasan murmured, unable to take his gaze from the menace. "Doesn"t she know she would never see us again, if she let us go?"
"You are a handsome man," Shawahi said. "Did you not know?"
Hasan mulled that over in his mind, but could not make sense of it. "How long will it take them to reach us?" he asked Dahnash.
"An hour, mortal-no more."
"How long can we hold them off?"
"A minute," Shawahi said. "I trained those troops. Nor can we flee or hide from the Queen"s magic."
"It is in the hands of Allah, then." But somehow he felt that Allah"s will was far removed from Wak. It would take a miracle to vanquish the Queen, and Hasan"s life deserved no miracle.
If only Uncle Ab or the Black Shaykh were here to advise him! There must be some avenue of escape.
The Shaykh! Hasan still had a pouch of incense to summon him!
"You!" he called to one of the waiting ifrits. "Can you make a fire?"
"Yes, master," the creature said. He shuffled forward-a six-foot lizard with tusks.
"Good boy!" Hasan patted the scaly head. "I am going to sprinkle some powder and say a few words, and I want you to burn it up."
"Yes, master," the ifrit said. This one didn"t seem overly bright. Probably it was actually one of the lower orders, a jinn perhaps. But he needed fire, not brains.
He took the perfumed leather pouch and shook a little of the powder into his palm. He flung it away from him-not entirely trusting the firedrake"s aim-and sang out "Burn!"
A jet of fire shot from the lizard"s mouth, igniting the powder in midair. "Abu al-Ruwaysh!" Hasan shouted.
The Black Shaykh stood before him. "Wake Magma," he said, and vanished.
"But-" But Hasan protested to emptiness.
"Wak is out of his territory," Shawahi said. "I have heard of him. He can"t violate his covenant with the old King of the Isles."
Hasan was disappointed. He had hoped the Shaykh could help them. "All I wanted was advice how to save our lives. Just a few words." He paused, nursing his hurt. "Wake Magma?"
Shawahi looked at the smoldering cone, then down to the advancing flower of torches. "Even against her, I hesitate," she said. "But there is no other way. If the Black Shaykh advises it-"
This development did not dismay Hasan unduly. His curiosity about the marid might be satisfied after all. He hoped there would be a spectacular display. "How can we wake him, if all the sounds of battle couldn"t?"
"Magma isn"t very sound asleep now," Dahnash said. "That battle irritated him so much that any little thing might jog him alert."
"Like a rock down his chimney?" Hasan inquired softly.
"Ho mortal! You said it!"
There was a silence. Dahnash began to look nervous. " "Now just a moment-"
"Who else can do it? You"re the only flying ifrit left."
Dahnash paced about uncomfortably. "But Magma is a marid. If he caught me fooling around his-"
Sana and Shawahi added their stares.
Dahnash was distinctly unhappy. "I suppose I"m under orders."
Sana reached up and kissed him. The days of hope since their escape had done much to restore her beauty. "Too bad they don"t make female ifrits like that," Dahnash said, mollified.
Shawahi had already located a sizable stone. "I"ll put a noxious spell on this so that it will explode with the foulest of stinks," she said. "That should make him rumble."
"When Magma rumbles, that"s a rumble!" Dahnash said, recovering some slight enthusiasm. He hefted the stone. "In case I don"t. . . ."He shook his head. "Forget it. I don"t seem to have any cla.s.sic final utterance."
He leapt into the air, steadied his burden, and sailed heavily into the night.
Shawahi turned away. "When a mortal dies, his soul lives on unhampered, until he is reborn," she said. "An ifrit has no such escape."
"Is there really any danger?" Hasan asked her, sur- prised at her tone.
"Magma is a marid, just as Dahnash pointed out."
Hasan had no reply. He watched the great cone and wondered what would develop. They were all so serious about it! They seemed to be more concerned with Mag- ma"s sleep than their own impending murder at the hands of the Queen. Dahnash had told him about fire and redhot rock and quivering ground, and he had seen some of the smoke himself, but this didn"t seem sufficient to do more than annoy the amazon army. What was to prevent them from shielding their eyes from the fire and walking around the hot rock? Even if some of them were burned, more than enough would remain to wipe out the fugitives.
Of course, a large-scale distraction might enable his party to escape on foot. That must be it.
A tiny speck appeared in the light above the cone. A mote dropped down. Hasan almost thought he heard a faint "Ho ho!"
They waited. Nothing happened.
In a few minutes Dahnash reappeared. "I got away!" he exclaimed, jubilant. "Magma never saw me!"
"Maybe you didn"t wake him," Hasan said. Had all the buildup been for this? "We saw you drop the stone, but nothing happened."
"I woke him, mortal. His chimney"s clogged, so it"ll take him a little while to get going, but I felt him stir when the pebble hit! What a stench! Any moment now-"
The ground shuddered. "See what I mean? You can tell he"s alive now, if you just listen. When a marid gets mad, he broadcasts his mad all over the cosmos. Listen."
Hasan listened. He heard nothing. Even the single earth-shudder had subsided, and there seemed to be no wind or animal noise of any kind. "I mean with your mind," Dahnash said. "You can feel him in your head."
Another pause. "O Hasan!" Sana exclaimed. "I can hear it!"
Then Hasan began to pick it up. There was something- distant, marginal, almost beyond the range of whatever sense applied, but immensely powerful. It came clearer as he concentrated.
A surging liquid reservoir under enormous pressure . . . churning gases bubbling through liquid rock ... a long nasal tunnel reaching up ... a ma.s.sive stone plug holding back the building pressure.
Hasan shook his head. This was ridiculous! Rock was solid, not liquid, and gas was just another kind of air. It could not even move rock, let alone bubble through it.
"Magma doesn"t follow your feeble conceptions," Dahnash said. "If he chooses to bubble steam through stone, he bubbles it. If he wants to set brown earth on fire, he sets it. He"s got magic no one else can touch. Listen. ..."
Hasan listened.
Magma seethed and bubbled in molten fury. For centu- ries he had slept, puffing out his ashy breath during frag- mentary dreams, bracing against the warm sides of his liquid burrow as he flopped over for another nap. But recently there had been cacophony beside his mountain, and rivering blood smirched his sacred domicile. His dreams were disturbed, his temper strained. But for the fact that it was a lot of trouble to rouse himself, he would have blasted away the irritation.
Fortunately the disturbance stopped, and he drifted with lesser anger back to sleep. There was no need for- A deliberate pebble pinked his nostril. Well, it was a minor matter. Then an odor filtered in. ...
Essence of rafflesia. Magma hesitated sleepily, deciding how much rage he could spare. The mortals of Wak weren"t supposed to bother him. He sent up a current to investigate- and discovered that his nose was largely clogged.
If there was anything the marid of the mountain couldn"t abide, it was confinement. The pebble was forgotten as he generated pressure. One sneeze would- The obstruction held. Magma"s sneeze reverberated the length of the chimney and bubbled uncomfortably back through his main chamber. Now his stomach was upset- and he still couldn"t breathe.
He belched. The stupendous volume of gas shot up- ward, blasting against the confining plug . . . and turned aside to bathe him in its nausea again. He choked.
Magma was fully awake at last. His rage was towering. That a G.o.d should suffer such indignity! He prepared to tear loose on the orgy of the millennium.
The gases, under control now, surged and mounted the chimney, carrying volatile metals before them. They pressed against the unyielding plug. Magma gradually increased the force, ramming more and more substance into the chim- ney. There was nothing on the earth or in it that would resist the marid"s concentrated push for long.
Fingers of gas and liquid bored into the plug. Spirals of Magma"s deeper substances animated it, searching, prob- ing, drilling, twisting.
He had hold of it now. Magma threw all his t.i.tanic primeval energies, the power of which had fashioned the world itself in the old days when he ruled everything, behind the plug.
It blew.
"Cover your eyes!" Shawahi screamed. The ground bucked beneath them.
Hasan clapped his hands to his face, but the blast of light seemed to cut right through them and outline the top of the cone in fire, shooting brilliant fury high into the air.
From Magma"s throat came a thunderous roar of triumph. A thick column of incandescent debris shot up, spreading into boiling clouds which flashed now white, now black. The ma.s.s of smoke took the shape of the most monstrous ifrit Hasan had ever seen.
No ifrit, that. It was the marid.
Magma roared again, a deafening detonation. Hasan covered his ears, but the sound could no more be stopped than the light, and his ears continued to ring. How could there be more sound from the mountain when the marid had already escaped?
Another roar. They came every few minutes now, and Hasan realized that Magma had only begun to show his strength.