They pa.s.sed through.

Within was a very large room indeed.

Its domed ceiling and much of its upper walls were painted a bright sunlit blue. Beneath this was what seemed to be a rather crude mock-up imitation of an oasis-the kind of imitation that inexperienced amateur theater stage carpenters might have produced. The trees that surrounded them were all fake palm trees, reaching up to an umbrella of false leaves at the top. From somewhere relatively cool air was blowing through the place, there was a pool of water in the center of the room, and in the middle of the pool a fountain spurted some three feet in the air and splashed back into the water.

Around the edges of this pool, sitting with their backs propped up against imitation palm tree trunks, were a number of young men, most of them seemingly lost in thought, or with their eyes shut-whether asleep or not he did not know. There were also a number of women around, most of them middle-aged and rather businesslike in expression, who seemed mostly concerned with gathering in groups, talking and eating. Nearly all the male figures lying around had trays of food near them, but very few were paying any attention to them. They looked dazed.

The women, however, were busy with their conversation and food. Occasionally one of them would break off to go over to one of the rec.u.mbent figures and stroke some fingers under his chin, possibly murmur to him or pay various sorts of little attentions, then carefully evade the slow grasp which might respond to these attentions-but by no means always did- and then return to the group; or go on to give the same sort of momentary touching and talking to another of the rec.u.mbent figures. The women were dressed in what seemed to be layers of filmy, semitransparent silk garments that covered them from neck to wrists and ankles, and were of various hues.

The clothes, in fact, were lovely. The women, Jim decided, on the whole were not; nor did they seem to be making any effort to be so.

What are those round things they are eating? Brian demanded, staring at the gathered group of women.

Sheep's eyes, answered Kelb.

Jim gagged, mentally, but nonetheless uncomfortably.

Say you so? said Brian, in an interested voice. I wonder what they taste like. What about those long rope like things that they chew on?

Sheep's entrails, said Kelb, stuffed of course with rice and sugar and cinnamon and other good things.

Hah! Like a Scot's haggis, eh? said Brian. There were certainly Scotsmen with the first crusade. They must have gotten in among these infidels-" He broke off.

They are not particularly dainty about how they reach into the communal pot of food, however, he went on. It is true they wipe their hands, but only so often; and I have seen more than one hand go in to the wrist. Also they feed each other, and those beneath the trees.

This last was true, Jim noticed. One of the things done by these women, who must be playing the part of the Houris, the women with which the Blessed were solaced in Paradise, would be to occasionally make a small ball of food from some of the foods on the tray beside a rec.u.mbent figure and put it into his mouth. But not always. Very often she just gave the dazed man a pat, or a stroke-and went on to the next one.

They skirted the pool and went on through the fake palm trees, with the figures against them becoming fewer and fewer until they saw a wall ahead of them. Low down, the wall was unpainted; and as far as Jim could see, there was no door in it. But Kelb carried them right to the wall, regardless.

Arriving at the point where the sand of the floor met the wall, he sniffed doglike along the line where wall met sand until he reached a spot where he began to dig industriously with his front paws. Sand spurted backward until he finally exposed what appeared to be part of a tiled floor, blue and white squares of glazed tiles alternating in a checkerboard pattern.

He pressed one of the blue tiles with a paw, and in front of him the apparently seamless wall slipped downward, revealing a rectangular opening.

"We now enter, my master," said Kelb, aloud.

He went in. In the dimness of the narrow, walled pa.s.sage, he hesitated.

"Are you still with me, master?" he asked.

Jim remembered the fact that the Djinni could probably no more feel them than see them.

"We're here, Kelb," he said, also allowing his words this time to come out as spoken sound.

"I am much relieved, my master," said Kelb. He went back to the opening in the wall, and using his paws pulled sand back over the tile that he had exposed earlier. Then he returned to approximately where he had stood before, and slowly but silently, the stone of the entrance slid up to fill the aperture through which they had entered.

As it did, an utter blackness descended on them. Kelb's voice came out of it.

"Master, there is no more need for you and those with you to ride as fleas upon me. If you will return to your ordinary bodies, you will find to your right, on the wall, a rack of torches, and at the end of the rack, a flint and steel wherewith to light them. There is a powder on the thick end of the torch that will make them light easily if you get a spark to them."

Jim made the necessary magic adjustment. Still in darkness, but now feeling the slight weight of Hob at the back of his neck, and also feeling rather than seeing Brian's presence beside him, he reached out. He rammed his fingers rather painfully against a hard wall surface. Then he ran his hand over it, up and down, moving along as if he was using a brush to paint it. Finally he touched what felt like a curved wooden stand.

In the stand, he felt a row of upright bundles of something that felt more like tightly rolled paper than anything else.

He lifted one from its hole, groped again, and found, dangling on a cord, the flint and steel that Kelb had mentioned. Holding the torch in his left armpit, he struck the flint and steel together with both hands until a spark jumped in the right direction to touch the upper, thicker end of the torch. A flame burst into view, spreading and brightening until it illuminated the end of a long tunnel in the rock.

It also revealed Brian, still looking somewhat battered, but cheerful, and Kelb in his dog form looking expectantly up at him.

"Hob, are you all right?" asked Jim.

"Yes, m'lord," came the small voice just above his left shoulder; and he remembered suddenly that, like Brian, he had been sleeping in his travel clothes for warmth, when the a.s.sa.s.sins had captured them. But he had not felt Hob climbing back into the knapsack.

"Should I come out?" Hob asked.

"There's not much to see," said Jim. "We're just in a dark tunnel. Perhaps you'd better just stay where you are."

"Yes, m'lord."

They went forward, Kelb trotting confidently a little ahead, but still within the circle of torch-light. The tunnel was longer than Jim had expected, considering that it clearly had been hewn out of solid rock. In the end, he judged they must have walked close to a quarter of a mile before Kelb stopped and waited for them to join him. They were facing a similar wall that seemed to bar off the tunnel at this point.

"I have pressed what needs to be pressed to cause this end of the tunnel to open," said Kelb in an apologetic voice, "but, my masters, it is evidently stuck. Would you mind very much jumping up and down on the floor? I think that will jar it loose and it will go up."

Not surprising, thought Jim. Mechanical contrivances here in the fourteenth century could hardly be expected to work better than those in the twentieth century.

"In that case," he said, "we'd better jump together, you and I, Brian. I'll say one, two, three and then we jump-that way we should come down together."

"Hah!" said Brian. "Infidel magic! Of course it doesn't work right!"

Jim was not exactly sure what he meant; but there was no point in going into the matter now. He counted off and they jumped. They came down hard on the stone floor; but evidently that was just what was needed, for slowly the stone slab before them began to move upward-but jerkily, as if it needed oiling.

"It is not used much, you see, my masters," said Kelb, "and anyone who is brought here, except the Grandmaster, must of course die after he has seen this tunnel. Therefore it is necessary that he be slain and his body be taken out to be left at some little distance on the mountainside, that he shall not be connected with the entrance, here, once it is closed again. But for us, we need but step outside now."

He had timed his words excellently. As he finished, the stone stopped jerking upward, and there was room to duck under it out into the star-lit night of the mountainside. There were a few bushes around them, and the rocks all but closed them in. Kelb did something behind them, and they heard the door sc.r.a.ping downward and finally ceasing to make any noise.

"It is closed now," Kelb said in a satisfied voice.

"That's good," said a voice out of the darkness. "And the place of its opening is now known. That will be useful. Abu al-Qusayr spoke truth to me, though I am not of his faith. So, now I find you all again, Franks."

It was the voice of Baiju, the Mongol from the caravan.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Jim looked in the direction of the voice, but he could still see nothing but what seemed like three or perhaps four patches of pale white, which might be or might not be there in actuality, but which seemed to waver and change outline slightly.

"Night-devils!" cried Kelb. "Master, protect me!"

"You?" said Jim. "A Djinni? And you're afraid of night-devils?"

Jim could feel the dog's body pressing against the back of his legs.

"Afraid?" said Kelb quaveringly. "Who, me? I am the most-the most powerful of Djinni. But some of these night-devils can be very cruel, master."

"Send the Djinni away," said the voice of Baiju. "I will talk to you alone."

"Go," said Jim to Kelb.

"But, master-"

"And don't just make yourself disappear," added Jim. "I'll know if you do; and then you'll wish it was night-devils got you instead of me!"

It was a completely empty threat, of course. Aside from the fact that Jim knew nothing of what night-devils were, or could do, he knew very well he could never bring himself to treat even a Djinni with deliberate cruelty. Nonetheless, the pressure of Kelb against the back of his legs suddenly ceased.

"I don't understand this," said Jim, speaking in the direction of Baiju's voice. "How do you happen to be here? And why?"

"Some time back, in Tripoli," said Baiju, "but after he had seen you and the Brian-Sir with you, I happened to visit abu al-Qusayr to find out when those of the Golden Horde that are coming this way would come; and how they might be stopped. He looked into water and told me only two things. One, stopping ibn-Tariq was the key to stopping them; and, two, you were the only one who could stop ibn-Tariq. I should try to find you at this time at this place in the night, and help you to get to Palmyra before the caravan."

"And so you came, and showed up here, just on the basis of that?" asked Jim. Baiju had not struck him as a particularly trusting or credulous individual.

"That was all he said he could tell me," said Baiju. "You are a magician yourself. I paid the price he asked for in gold-gold, not silver- and he gave me his answer. You would know better than I if a magician would cheat me after setting a price and getting it."

Baiju had a point, thought Jim. Magicdom's rules were very emphatic about that. Abu al-Qusayr could not play anything but fair with someone who had struck a bargain with him-once the bargain was accepted. If this was generally known, even among the Mongols, then it was just possible that Baiju would, indeed, have trusted the elderly magician. It also meant that even abu al-Qusayr had not known why stopping ibn-Tariq could stop the other Mongols.

"Let me see you," Jim said to Baiju.

"Yes," said Brian's voice at his shoulder, "and any who are with you, Mongol!"

Baiju gave a brief snort of laughter.

"Then make a light, magician," he said. "I will make none. You are not that far from Kasr al-Abiyadh that any light will not be seen by one of those on watch from its higher towers."

"If that is so," said Brian, "mayhap it is better to forgo the light. What think you, James?"

"I think you're right," said Jim, "and particularly if you think so, Brian."

"It is ordinary sense," said Baiju, with a contemptuous edge to his voice. "Come, then. I have white camels from Basra, for each of us. Not only are they faster, and do they go farther, than the heavy beasts of the caravan, but we will push harder. We will push very hard. In five days I will bring you into Palmyra."

Jim felt a return of the pressure at the back of his legs; and Kelb's voice spoke.

"O, mighty master, forgive your willful and unruly slave for coming back without permission. But what of me?"

"He is a Djinni," said Baiju. "Let him find his own way to Palmyra."

"Master-" began Kelb again.

"No," interrupted Jim decisively. "You are a Djinni, as Baiju says. We'll meet you there. Go then-however you can go. I will call for you again, possibly when I get into Palmyra."

"Master-"

"Go!"

The pressure against his legs ceased.

"He's gone," said Jim. "Now what?"

"Come toward my voice," said Baiju.

Jim felt Brian's hand on his shoulder and stepped cautiously forward, over what was obviously fairly rough terrain. He stumbled once on what was either a large pebble or a small boulder, and almost lost his balance but regained it again. A moment later he smelled Baiju's breath. It smelled of alcohol. The little Mongol had evidently been drinking. But he sounded sober enough.

At the same time Jim began to make out the white wavering shapes in the darkness, which turned out to be the camels Baiju had mentioned. Baiju helped both of them to mount; and a moment later, with the Mongol on his camel leading, they were making their way up the steep slope amid the rocks.

Jim could not remember how long a time the caravan had been supposed to take in making the journey to Palmyra; but it was now six or seven days since it had left Tripoli. Still, five days more from here to the city seemed like making very good speed indeed. He was encouraged.

Later, he wished he hadn't been.

It was true they were near the top of the mountains; and it was only a few hours from the time they had met Baiju before they rode through the dark pa.s.s at the peak, with the absolute blackness of rock walls on both sides and a narrow slit of night sky sprinkled with stars far above them. It was also true that the following day after a few hours sleep just before dawn they reached the bottom of the far side of the mountains looking toward the desert valley area, in the midst of which Palmyra was placed; and as they went in the days that followed, the air grew warmer, and somewhat less dry-although it was far from being what might be considered balmy.

All in all, Jim ended up with the conclusion that he would just as soon not make another forced march with Baiju. The little Mongol drove them from before daybreak until after dark; and if they had let him have his own way they would have had no more than three hours of off-camel sleep a night. The camels themselves stood up to it admirably. Brian said nothing; but his face began to look a little more gray with each day pa.s.sed, and he was definitely showing exhaustion by the time they got to Palmyra.

So it was not a pleasure trip. Their camels might indeed, as Baiju said, be jewels among their kind, and bred for racing; and it was undeniable that their gait, if anything, was smoother than that of the camels Jim and Brian had ridden in the caravan.

But Jim and Brian, both of them, were worn out by the time they all finally reached Palmyra.

At last, slumped in their saddles and swaying with fatigue, they entered the city in late afternoon. It was a good-sized place of tents and more or less lightly constructed wooden buildings, which had risen on the foundations laid out for an early Greek or Roman city.

At that time, clearly, the city had been constructed on a regular pattern; and the main street running east and west in the center of the city had ruins still standing of a double portico called the Great Colonnade.

It was close to this Great Colonnade that Baiju at last brought them to a caravansary where they could lodge.

Jim and Brian were shown to a room. It was not until then that Jim realized neither of them had their usual baggage. Their heavy armor and weapons, their extra clothing and-worst of all-his personal, deverminized mattress were missing.

To h.e.l.l with it, he thought exhaustedly, and chose a clean patch of floor. He visualized a magic line around it that would send all vermin and suchlike running from it in fear, and lay down, pulling his cloak over him. He had just enough consciousness left to magically make the splintered wooden floor underneath him as soft as a bed-and he fell ocean-deep in slumber.

They were wakened by Baiju. The Mongol showed no signs of weariness from the trip, just as he had shown no signs of weariness during it. They woke to find him standing over them.

"Will you sleep forever?" he demanded.

"Not any more, in any case, with your braying!" said Brian. "James, I must have breakfast-and a sword.

We must both get swords. But food now! Where do you get some food in this h.e.l.l-bound place?"

"Rise and come with me," said Baiju. Without waiting for them he turned and started out of the room.

"Wait a minute," said Jim. Unlike Brian, who woke up with a nasty temper until fed, but came fully awake at once, Jim needed a little time to reach full alertness. "If you walk out that door without us, you'd better count on not having anything to do with me from now on. I need a little time."