“Vacuum?”

  “Never mind, mortal. The point is, the rulers of Wak have powerful counteracting magic. For one thing, when one of their weapons strikes one of us, that ifrit is permanently put out of commission in his present form. Those amazon armies are the worst of all. They—”

  Now Hasan understood why Shawahi had not been concerned about their journey through the Land of the Jinn, when the amazons were marching. But now, of course, it was a different matter, since their party was on the side of the jinn and the amazons were the enemy.

  “Can you bring us the horses, or do I have to summon the kings again?”

  “I can handle it, mortal.” And Dahnash struck the ground with his foot and dropped into the gulf that opened under him. “Classy exit, no?” his voice said as the ground closed. In a little while he reappeared leading a fine black horse, saddled and bridled.

  Hasan checked the animal while the ifrit went for another. A pair of saddlebags hung from the bow, with a leathern bottle of water in one pocket and an ample supply of human food in the other. Good—it was tempting to order the ifrit to bring them a sumptuous repast complete with servants, right here in the canyon, but it was essential to get as far away from the Queen as possible. He realized that the rod was not an automatic solution to all his problems; it was merely a tool that gave him a fighting chance against the might of Wak.

  Dahnash returned with a second horse, similarly provisioned, and Hasan rounded up his party. Sana looked much better; the old woman had done a fine job of restoration and medication. He wondered whether the ifrits could recommend additional remedies, but decided to leave well enough alone.

  The third horse arrived. Hasan mounted the first, taking Nasir before him, while Sana took Mansur on the second. Shawahi brought up the rear.

  “Dahnash,” Hasan said, “you can go now—but come as soon as I call you, in case I need you again.”

  “I can hardly wait,” the ifrit replied sourly, and whirled into nothing.

  Hasan urged his steed, and it began to run with a strong, easy stride. The others followed, faster and faster, until the wind sang past their ears and tore at their clothing.

  They were on their way.

  All day they fared on the tireless horses, riding through the steep mountains and misty valleys, past leaning palms and giant flowers and jungle-thick vegetation. This was the richest country he had ever seen. The horses seemed to know the way, and their only delay was the need to give Sana periodic rests.

  Just before evening a black object appeared far ahead, like a tremendous column of smoke twisting-skyward. Hasan’s muscles tensed. He recited portions of the Koran and Holy Writ and prayed to Allah for safety from the malice of the Queen. But the thing was ahead of them, and he did not dare delay their escape by turning aside.

  It grew plainer as they approached. It was an ifrit of monstrous size, with a head like a huge dome and tusks like grapnels and jaws like a city street and nostrils like ewers and ears like leather bags and a mouth like a cave and teeth like pillars of stone and hands like giant forks and legs like masts. Its head was in the high cloud and its feet ploughed the bowels of the earth.

  Hasan held up the rod, ready to summon the seven kings, for he was certain this creature was not of their number. If the Queen had conjured it to head him off—

  But the giant bowed and kissed the ground before him. “O Hasan of Bassorah, have no fear of me. I am the chief of the dwellers in this land of the jinn. I am a Moslem, and not many here are of my faith. I have heard of you and of your coming; when I learned how disgracefully the Queen of the mortals of Wak had treated you, I became distressed at this place of magic and terror, and I decided to leave it forever and dwell in some other region, far from man and jinni and void of inhabitants, so that I might live there alone and worship Allah in peace until my fate ran out. Let me accompany you and be your guide until you depart from Wak. I will not appear except at night, and in this manner you can cover much greater distance and insure your safety.”

  When Hasan heard this he rejoiced. “Allah reward you well, O noble ifrit! Lead on.”

  And the towering spirit flew ahead and guided them, a glowing pillar of smoke in the night, so that they accomplished a full day’s journey when they would otherwise have had to stop for the night. They talked and laughed among themselves, no longer weary, pleased at their deliverance and sure of success.

  In the morning they stopped and took food and water from the saddlebags and refreshed themselves. The world looked very good, and Hasan was especially pleased to see how well Sana was doing.

  Ahead thrust the mighty conic mountain of the marid that had so alarmed Hasan during the approach to the Queen’s city. This time he saw it from the south side, and the landscape amazed him.

  They were on the slant of a verdant mountain pass. Close at hand the green jungle vegetation was solid and teeming with life—but it soon fell away to a wasteland of black ash and jagged rock. Ridges of dark material were formed into roughly circular patterns, concave within, as though the land were an ocean caught in the act of splashing. There was no life at all in this area, and somber wisps of smoke hung over the cauldrons and gulleys. Beyond, the land ascended into the slope of the major cone, a monstrous and sinister mass.

  To one side, miles away but made close by the scope of this calamitous landscape, stood the temple Shawahi had spoken of. It was a terraced mound of stone, built tier upon tier to form a wide low pyramid with elaborate arches and decorations lining every level. In the center rose a pointed dome not unlike that of the Caliph’s palace in Baghdad. But if the dome were of similar size—and while distance made certainty impossible, Hasan though it was—the temple itself was many times the size of any structure in Harun al-Rashid’s empire. It dwarfed the dome completely.

  How many centuries had it taken to fashion this temple? Or had the labor been done by the jinn? He started to ask Shawahi, but her attention was elsewhere.

  Behind them appeared an ugly dust cloud that walled the horizon along the ridge of the hill as far as the eye could see and darkened the day. When Hasan saw this he turned pale, not even having to conjecture what kind of host could raise a cloud of dust even in the moist jungle.

  A frightful crying and clamor struck their ears. “O my son,” Shawahi said, “this is the army of Wak, that has overtaken us in spite of our haste. The Queen will soon lay violent hands upon us.”

  “What can we do, O my mother?”

  “Summon the kings of the jinn. This time they will have to fight, and we must pray that their power can prevail against that of the Queen.”

  Hasan struck the earth with the rod. The ground broke open and the seven kings rose up to stand before him again.

  “Can you stop the army of Wak?” Hasan asked them.

  Giant heads turned to contemplate the pursuing cloud. “Master, we can try. But the forces of Wak are the most powerful array on earth, and our magic is as nothing against this. The Queen has potent counter-spells. We shall have to fight them hand-to-hand.”

  “Is there any way we can escape without doing battle?”

  “No, master.”

  Hasan sighed. “Meet them, then. Turn them back if you can, but kill them if you must. I commit the matter to your hands.”

  “Master, we shall have to summon our entire horde. You must go far up the mountain, so that the sight of our minions does not harm you and you are safe from the carnage of battle. We know you are right and the Queen is wrong, and this gives us strength—but the conflict will be cruel.”

  “I understand. We’ll go to the temple there.”

  “No!” cried Shawahi. “All the records of the empire are there, and the priests are loyal to the Queen. The moment we set foot in it, we’ll be in her power.”

  Hasan turned his eyes dubiously toward the cone. “There?”

  The giant ifrit who had guided them appeared. “O mortal, do not go near that mountain. I am the chief of all the jinn of this land, excepting only those of the seven kings,” he paused to nod at the standing royalty, who returned the gesture with aloof courtesy, “but I have no power there.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hasan said. He wished he didn’t have to repeat himself so frequently.

  “The kings govern forty-nine jinnish tribes of the world,” Shawahi explained, “while the chief has authority over the local spirits. But the mountain is the home of Magma the Marid.”

  “I think you told me that before.” Hasan didn’t see why that should be so significant.

  “A single marid has more power than all the creatures of the Land of the Jinn,” the chief said.

  “And all our kingdoms too,” the kings added.

  “And the forces of Wak,” Shawahi said.

  Hasan looked at the cone with dubious respect. “All that in one little mountain?”

  They nodded gravely.

  “Well then. Why don’t we ask Magma for help?”

  The kings stood around and shuffled their feet like small boys, and the chief averted his face. Even Shawahi seemed to be at a loss for words.

  Hasan had a suspicion he was being stupid again, and it made him angry. “All right! Kings, go set up for your battle. I’ll have Dahnash bring me progress reports.” They vanished. “Chief, if you want to help, you can set up a personal guard for the women and children so they don’t get hurt in case there’s a breakthrough.” The chief vanished. “Dahnash!” The ifrit appeared.

  “A regular little Caesar,” Dahnash remarked.

  Hasan drew him to one side. “What’s the situation with the marid of the mountain?”

  Dahnash looked at the cone and edged away. “Well—”

  “You were the one who told me all about marids. How they sink ships in the sea and blow away cities with a single breath. Now tell me one about this Magma.”

  “Mortal, maybe we’d better move away a space while I explain. No sense asking for trouble.”

  Hasan restrained his impatience and got his party moving toward a mountain overlooking both the temple and the cone, and commanding a good view of the black plain between them where the kings were already conjuring legions into existence. He was at a loss to comprehend this reluctance on the part of the ifrits, who should have little to fear from one of their own number.

  “I told you about the five orders of—” Dahnash began. “Yes, I’m sure I did. Well, the power of the groups varies exponentially, not arithmetically, and—”

  “I wish you’d speak intelligibly.”

  “Yes, mortal,” Dahnash said, frustrated. “Every group has its specialized members, and likewise the marids, but they’re not so limited. Most of them used to be gods, you know. In modem times they’ve been demoted—but they still pack plenty of power.

  “Now take Magma. He’s mostly a fire spirit, now—but he can tear up the air and shake the ground something awful, too. If he were closer to the ocean, he could make a wave that would swamp every city on the coast. I mean, he’s got power, straight, raw elemental force. He doesn’t have to pussyfoot with inertia and centrifugal dynamics the way ifrits do. He—”

  “Get to the point,” Hasan snapped, still unwilling to admit that he couldn’t follow many of the ifrit’s terms. “Why can’t we ask him to help us stop the Queen?”

  Dahnash stared. “Ask him to—mortal, are you out of your mind?”

  Hasan waited in stony silence.

  “Mortal, I’ve been trying to tell you. Magma is a marid. That’s no ordinary spook. He doesn’t help people.”

  “Well, what does he do?”

  “He sleeps.”

  Hasan took a deep breath. “I mean, when he isn’t sleeping?”

  “He destroys.”

  He was getting nowhere. “You’re telling me we’d better leave Magma strictly alone?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Then I’d better appoint someone to see that he remains undisturbed. The battle may get a little noisy, and it’s right on his flank.” He looked at Dahnash.

  The ifrit retreated. “Now hold on, mortal. I wouldn’t dare go near—why, he’d abolish me like so much imagination if—”

  The chief appeared. “I will watch him, Hasan. Magma knows me. I can probably look down his chimney every so often without bothering him.”

  “Good. You keep me informed on Magma, and Dahnash will keep track of the progress of the battle.” Hasan had discovered that he rather liked the feeling of generalship.

  Chapter Twelve

  By noon Queen Nur al-Huda’s troops were ranked upon the plain. They were, Hasan noted with surprise, largely male; only the Queen’s elite personal guard was amazon. Columns marched over the hill in seemingly endless array and spread like flowing water across the field, armor and weapons glittering. But once in place, the battle array opened in a monstrous flower, the bright shields countless petals, spears like—

  A flower! Hasan had marveled more than once at the circular rafflesias, like bowls three feet or more in diameter, containing a central cluster of stamens. The were beautiful, from a distance—but perfumed like offal.

  One of these was growing on the plain; Five circular phalanxes, each massed with hundreds of footmen, clustered around the outside: enormous leaves. A circular column represented the outer rim of the blossom, and a smaller circle way the inner disk. In the center stood clusters of men with spears held high, the stamens: twenty-five groups in the largest circle, fifteen more in the medium circle, five in the smallest.

  The amazons stood in the very center, protecting the Queen.

  The army of the seven kings, in contrast, was a motley horde. From this distance it was impossible to distinguish individual features, but Hasan could tell that the majority of the creatures was grotesquely unhuman. Some were small, lie warty toads and hairy spiders; others were enormous, like warty rhinoceroses and hairy ghouls; the remainder was similarly repulsive but less describable.

  The ifrit organization had no beauty. There seemed to be no discipline, no unifying pattern.

  It seemed so wrong to be on the ugly side. Hasan felt guilty, and he knew that Sana, standing beside him in silence, felt it too, for she turned away and entered the tent the ifrits had provided. Mansur, the younger boy, went with her, but Nasir stayed outside to gaze round-eyed at the preparations.

  “We’ll tear up that stinking flower soon enough,” Shawahi said with grim anticipation, and Nasir clapped his little hands and grinned.

  Dahnash appeared. “They are sounding the charge!” He vanished.

  There in the ravaged landscape the ravage of battle began. The clotted mobs of the ifrit army charged upon the living flower. Hasan saw the outer leaves sway as though ruffled by a cosmic breeze, then bend and dissolve into individual contests. He heard the clash of weapon upon claw and spear upon shell.

  Dahnash appeared. “Enemy units engaged,” he announced. “Agressor casulaties heavy; ours moderate.”

  “Wait!” Hasan yelled before the ifrit left again. “I can’t follow all that. Isn’t there some way I can see the battle for myself?”

  “Mortal, it isn’t safe. One of our own dogfaces might snap you up accidentally.”

  “Couldn’t I wear the cap and ride the back of one of the chiefs ifrits? No one would know I was near, and the covenant doesn’t apply to his subjects, does it?”

  Dahnash remained doubtful. “The flak is pretty heavy. . . .”

  “Let me do it!” Shawahi said. “I haven’t got so long to live anyway, and I’m an expert military observer. Give me the cap.”

  Hasan agreed reluctantly. He wanted to see the action himself, but Shawahi was right. She could learn a lot more in a short time than he could. He handed her the cap.

  She selected a flying ifrit and was off. Hasan noticed that all of the ifrit remained in sight, though the old woman was totally invisible. Apparently there were limits to what contact with the capwearer would do. A small object disappeared, but not a second individual.

  Another thought came. He had missed the obvious again! Why not—

  “It wouldn’t work,” Dahnash said. “The chiefs ifrits are bound to their homeland. They couldn’t carry you home.”

  The outer leaves of the flower pattern were now locked in turmoil. It was impossible to tell from here who was winning or even what was happening. Was war always as confused as this?

  The chief appeared. “Magma is sleeping restlessly,” he reported. “I’m afraid the noise of the battle is irritating.”

  “Can’t be helped. We can’t withdraw now.” Secretly, Hasan hoped the marid would wake. He wanted to see what would happen. But he also knew that this was a foolish desire. He was getting blase about magic, and that could be a fatal attitude.

  Shawahi’s ifrit came in for a landing. “What carnage!” the old woman exclaimed when she appeared, not at all put out. “Our champions are locked in deadly combat with theirs. Heads are flying from shoulders, trunks are falling, blood is flowing in rills, and arms and legs are floating about disconnected. Beautiful!”

  “I want to see!” Nasir cried.

  “But who is winning?”

  She thought for a moment. She evidently hadn’t considered the matter. “I think we have the advantage,” she said uncertainly. “It’s rather confused in the melee. . . .” Then her face lighted. “But you should see those jinn spout flame from their nostrils! That engagement is . . .”

  “A real scorcher,” Dahnash said as he appeared. He was gone again.

  Nasir jumped up and down. “I want to see! I want to see!” Hasan decided the boy would never have made a Buddhist.

  All afternoon the conflict raged. Gradually the lovely flower on the battlefield broke down, as first the leaves withered and then the outer circles of the blossom dissolved. But the ranks of the jinn were thinning also, and Hasan knew the issue wasn’t settled yet.

  At dusk the two hosts drew apart, and at either end of the field the flickering campfires blazed. It was beautiful—but the night breeze also brought the stench of gore. Dim light flickered as well from the smoke above the mountain. Magma was rolling about, perhaps annoyed by the odor.