"You can open it, of course?" he said to Geoffrey.

Geoffrey nodded, pressed at various points on the wall, and it slid downward out of sight. Ahead of them was complete darkness.

"Follow me," said Geoffrey, plunging into it and disappearing almost immediately. Jim and Brian did so, followed by the rest of their group.

It was a little like stepping into a pool of ink-even to the point where the air that touched them in this darkness felt almost liquid, heavy and clammy against them.

"Don't worry," came Sir Geoffrey's voice, "just walk forward."

They did so, blindly; and suddenly they were in a room that was less than half the size of Murad's bedroom, but completely unfurnished-bare stone floor, ceiling and walls, with the only illumination being die late afternoon light coming from a single arrow slit in one of the walls.

Jim turned to see if everybody else had got through all right. They were there. Angie, Geronde and the two hobs on their smoke. Brian was with him and just behind them were Sir Renel and up in front was Sir Geoffrey.

The place had no door. No place of entrance or exit. It was solid wall all the way around except for the arrow slit.

"How do we get out of here?" asked Brian.

Jim had been turning to Sir Geoffrey to ask him the same question; but now he saw the knight beckoning him from one of the walls. He walked over and saw that there was a c.h.i.n.k between two of the squared rocks that made the wall, hidden from casual view by the fact that one rock protruded enough to hide the slit except from a certain angle.

"Look through that," said Sir Geoffrey.

Jim looked.

He saw, from what seemed to be about fifteen feet above its floor, the large square room with a domed roof he remembered from his visit to Hasan in the White Palace-a domed roof with windows now filled with the fading pink sky of new twilight. Inside the room torches had been lit; and these burned most brightly at the far end to Jim's right, where Hasan ad-Dimri was in conversation with ibn-Tariq. Baiju, with both wrists and both ankles bound together, sat on the floor almost at Hasan's feet; and, sitting just beyond him, looking like a third partner in the conversation with Hasan and ibn-Tariq, was a small brown dog.

When abu al-Qusayr, the Tripoli magician, had come to speak with Hasan on behalf of Jim and Brian, he had told Jim after failing to help that there was someone or something aiding Hasan-that a power was at work here; though Jim, as a low-ranking magician, possibly could not sense it. Jim had not been sure about such a power then; but he could feel it now, in the room below.

It was like a cold pressure, emanating outward from a point in the room that was like the depression in the center of a whirlpool of water. He could feel it pushing like a large, open hand against him; but also, oddly, it seemed to him, he could almost smell it-a strange, bitter smell. Also, as these things impressed themselves on him, he became aware that the ordinarily fully lighted room below now seemed to have acquired, to his sight at least, all sorts of strange, hard-to-see shadows; lurking not only in corners but in mid-air, moving to and fro, some darker than others- but all becoming invisible when he tried to look directly at any one of them.

Whatever all this meant, there was certainly no question about where the center of the whirlpool of the power he felt was. It was centered not upon Hasan, but upon ibn-Tariq.

Down below, the brown dog turned its head to look up in the direction from which Jim was looking down on him. Jim felt a distinct shock, as if he and the canine were face to face.

"We are observed." The dog's voice floated upward clearly to Jim's ear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

"Welcome, O visitors," said ibn-Tariq softly.

Abruptly they were, all of them, down in the room Jim had been looking into, standing before the four who were there, but at a little distance from them.

Jim was acutely, immediately conscious of matters of measure-shape and shadow. Without any need to calculate, he knew that he, standing in front of the rest, was exactly three lengths of his own body from ibn-Tariq, who was the closest of the three. He was aware that ibn-Tariq, the dog and Hasan ad-Dimri marked the points of a triangle, enclosing Baiju at its center, that had exactly three equal sides; and that a globe enclosing all four of them would have a diameter that was exactly twice Jim's own height It was as if the nonexistent globe could be the heavy, if invisible, head of some ma.s.sive hammer, the handle of which reached half the length of the distance from them to him. He found himself imagining, as he might have imagined a sudden strike out of darkness, the hammer rising on the base of the handle, pivoting up to fall down again upon him and those with him, crushing them all. A hammer controlled by any one, or possibly all three, of those who sat at the points of the triangle.

This was power of a magnitude he had not encountered before. Power only to be found otherwise in a senior magician-perhaps not as great as that he had faced in his original battle at the Loathly Tower to free Angie-but then Carolinus had been there to deal with it. Here, he was the only one who used magic.

The vortex of this power was still with ibn-Tariq; but it could be that the other two, Hasan and the dog Kelb, had not yet shown their hand. He had an uneasy feeling that there might be more here than had yet appeared.

But, he realized, it could not be Hasan. Hasan could not be a magician if he was heading up a group like the a.s.sa.s.sins. The activities of the a.s.sa.s.sins were flatly against the rules of Magicdom. Also, if Hasan had been anyone else with magical powers, abu al-Qusayr would not merely have reasoned with him, then backed off. That left only the two who could be direct opponents of his in this moment. Ibn-Tariq alone was at the vortex. But he also could not be a magician and act as he was acting now-aggressively.

That left only one thing he could be.

"You're a sorcerer," Jim said to ibn-Tariq.

Ibn-Tariq smiled.

"And stronger than any you ever expected to encounter," he said. "Is that not so? You thought Julio Eccoti, the counselor to King Jean of France who made the alliance with the sea serpents you defeated-you thought he must have the utmost strength of we who study and use the Whole Book of Spells. But the truth is Julio learned only a little; and then ran out into the world to become rich with it. I stayed, and never ceased to study with the masters of my art. Already, my strength overcomes yours."

Jim abruptly became aware of something he should have noticed earlier. In the dome above them, the windows showed a sky in which late afternoon was moving toward twilight. It was not natural that evening could have come so soon-but then time was now an area beyond the actual. The dimming sky now made almost visible the shadows he had first felt, rather than seen from the room above, and which now had gathered and thickened in the hall. Also, they were moving in on him and his small group.

They, too, he realized now, were creatures of angles and distances. Each had its own particular size and pattern; and the total of those patterns was closing in on Jim and those with him, slowly, but always more and more tightly.

There was no time left to waste. Now a full understanding came to him of why Carolinus had warned him to h.o.a.rd his magical energy against some great possible need.

Theoretically, his drawing power there was "unlimited." In practice, there had to be a limitation.

Otherwise, he could break the bank-call for all the free magical energy there was, and leave no reserve supply for any other of the world's magicians. But now he needed everything he could get, for he could feel that what he faced was stronger than he was. Gratefulness washed through him that he had not wasted any more of what had been available to him.

He reached for that available amount, now-and found himself climbing a steep, stony mountainside, toward a peak, gray against a b.l.o.o.d.y-colored sunset. Far and high the top of the mountain stood dark against the light; and he knew without needing to be told that the staff he had come to get was only to be found at that top.

His will almost failed him. It was too far to go in the small period he dared be absent from the domed room in the White Palace. But suddenly, there was Carolinus, standing on a great boulder above him along the path upward he must go, and looking down at him.

"There will be time," said Carolinus, "but save your strength to reach the very top; or you may fail with what you face."

He stood for a moment more, looking at him.

Then Carolinus was gone. A little wind whispered and whistled among the boulders and smaller rocks to either side of the narrow path on the rocky mountainside Jim saw before him. There was nothing growing anywhere. All was rock.

The small wind whistled and sighed among the stones. It stroked his face and chilled his body inside his clothes as he drew the air deep into his lungs. Deep, for the air was thin as well as cold. Leaning forward to balance himself against the steep slope, he started up the path that wound between the bigger rocks.

Now there was sound in addition to the talking of the wind. He had not realized how complete otherwise the silence had been. But now he heard the grating of pebbles and the rasp of immovable stone below his boot soles; and he felt a moment of grat.i.tude for that night back in the caravan encampment when the a.s.sa.s.sins had kidnaped him, when he had left his boots on as he went to sleep, to keep his feet warm in the air that grew mountain-cold at night there, too. The foot-sound, and the sound of his breathing, seemed loud in the otherwise perfect soundlessness around him. No far-off rocks fell, no solitary hawk called, high overhead.

He climbed. If it was not a path he followed, he told himself, it was another old, dry streambed that had once snaked down this mountainside; and it was well it was there, because as he looked to right and left he saw nothing but a wilderness of stones, large and small, through which he would otherwise have had to climb and squeeze his way. But the path was becoming even steeper now, and the going was not easy.

The cold began to reach deeper into him. He pushed it back with the inner heat of his determination to get to the top.

He walked so for some time, leaning farther forward as the way grew steeper. The muscles of his thighs began to ache lightly as he went on upward, and the path or watercourse narrowed, winding up and up until he could have reached out and touched the taller stones on either side at once, as he went.

The wilderness of boulder-tumbled mountainside came to an end, abruptly, as a forest stops almost neatly at the edge of a meadow.

The pathway narrowed and ended. He turned sideways to pa.s.s through the last large rocks, and came out in an open s.p.a.ce, at the edge of a sheet of ice-gray, smooth ice with no sign of snow on it, stretching like a river itself up the mountainside.

There was a darkness at the far end of it. More rocks, he a.s.sumed; but he was breathing so hard now and his eyes were misting, perhaps because of the dryness of the air, so that he could not make out exactly what the dark shape was. In any case he would have to climb the ice, and it was as smooth and clean as a fresh-shaved skating rink. It was like the out-reaching limb of a glacier, except for its gla.s.slike clarity; like a river of ice; and, thinking of it as a river, for the first time, he looked over at the far side of it.

The brief stop while he looked had allowed him to catch his breath, and his vision had cleared and sharpened On the other side, he saw what looked like s.p.a.ces between the rocks there that went up also toward his goal and might give him an ice-free place to climb. But he would have to cross the river to get to it.

His hand had reached for the hold-out knife that Brian had taught him to carry, and which he had produced when they had all begun to follow Sir Renel between the walls of Murad's palace. Leaning out over the edge of the ice, he began to chip hand- and footholds in it Slowly, building his way as he went, he crossed the ice-and he had been correct. On the far side it had not flowed completely in among the rocks and there were s.p.a.ces of flat, dry stone that required only an intermediate hand- or foothold chipped in the ice to get him from one to the next stony s.p.a.ce. With the help of his knife, he worked his way up the far side of the ice river until the line of rocks began to run out and the river itself narrowed.

He had forgotten to look ahead in his absorption with making his way. Instead, the knife in his hand had reminded him of Brian, of Geronde and most of all of Angie-and then even of the hobgoblins, Sir Geoffrey and Sir Renel. There was a living warmth in thinking of them that counteracted the cold that seemed to be stiffening all his movements now; and with this in mind he had been feeling as if he was almost to the staff. So it was a shock when he came to the end of the ice floe, and the end of the rocks alongside it where he had been moving, almost running into it before he stopped and saw what was there.

It was a long slope of scree-pebbles and broken stones-that must have come down as a landslide over the ice river. It offered a dry route toward the top; and for the first time he could see how close the top was. It loomed only a hundred feet above him.

He went faster now, seeing himself so close. It was moments, only, before he got to the scree and started up. He took his first two steps with confidence, but his feet supped and he fell, for the surface under his feet might as well have been made by an avalanche of gla.s.s marbles. It rolled and slid, one pebble and fragment over another, as his weight came upon it. He could go upward only by climbing with both hands and feet.

But the scree did not stretch far. He struggled up it, not looking ahead, until he was stopped by a wall of rock.

He lay, the loose stones hard against him, his lungs pumping, pumping the thin air in and out to get enough oxygen to slow his racing heart. This was the darkness he had not been able to make out from farther down. It was a cuff, like a wall built to keep him back at the last.

Gradually the pounding of his heart slowed, breath and calmness came back together upon him. He looked up at the cliff. The red of the sunset was gone from the sky overhead now. The twilight was moving in, and darkening. But still, sharply outlined against what was left of the illuminated western sky, was the top of the mountain not far away. The cliff did not rise straight upward. It leaned back, but at a near-vertical angle. There were handholds and bosses of rock sticking out. It could be climbed.

He breathed for a moment more, and then began to try to make his way up it.

He had believed he could do it when he started; but by the time he was halfway up, that confidence was dying in him. The muscles of his arms were trembling and weak; and his body seemed to weigh many times what it should.

He hung where he was, doubting that he could go on, sure that he would fall if he tried to go back.

Then a hatred of his body took him. His body was only an animal, after all, he told himself. It had to do what his mind told it. Slowly he began to climb again, not thinking any more about a time when he would stop climbing but ready to climb forever. And, after some time beyond measure, his right hand, reaching up, went over the top edge. He had reached the end of the climb.

With what seemed the last of his strength he pulled himself out on to a little s.p.a.ce of flat rock, tilted upward, but by comparison with the cliff almost level. He lay there, once more working to get oxygen back into his body. It was a strange thing-that the stopping should seem to be so much harder than the going on; and for the first time he began to notice the cost of his struggles.

His feet hurt and his hands hurt. His knees hurt. He looked at his knees and they were naked, the clothing over them worn away. His boots were hardly more than collars around his ankles and the top of his feet Like his hands, his feet were icy from their contact with cold ice and the cold rock; but now he felt pain in them as well, and looking more closely at his hands, he saw the cuts and tears in them. He did not try to see the soles of his feet.

But he was very close to the top now. He looked to see above him the spire of rock that it was; and for the first time his courage died within him. Between him and it was a last, short stretch that was a jungle of large and small boulders. There was no path. There were only the tops of rocks, some rounded, some jagged, but all with s.p.a.ces between them, into which he could slip as into the jaws of a trap. Now, so close, but barred like this, tears came to his eyes.

He made himself think again of Angie and the others; but now it was as if they were at a distance, and he did not rouse at the thought of them. Something inside him was sure that if he tried to cross those rocks he would fall between two of them and be caught forever-or slip and fall on some sharp spine or spire of frost-broken boulder, and spear himself on it.

He was aware of Carolinus once more beside him. He rolled a little on to his left side to look up at the red robe, the white beard, the old face and the faded blue eyes, looking down at him.

"Why?" he asked.

What he had meant to say was Why does it have to be so hard?

"Because," Carolinus answered, as if Jim had spoken the words aloud, "the staff is made by your effort in reaching it. If you give up right now, you will still reach out and gain a staff. But it might not hold the strength you need. You could have stopped anywhere before now and gained whatever that much had earned you. But the stoutness of the staff is measured against your will, the strength of your spirit, which will be tested against the strength of what you'll need to use it against"

It seemed to Jim suddenly that he had known this from the beginning, only he had never put the knowledge into words. Known it, not merely from the beginning of his climb, but from the beginning of the moment that he and Angie had found themselves back here in this fourteenth-century world where they did not belong-where they were foreign matter introduced into something that had no room for them, like grit into the crankcase of a running engine.

From the beginning he and Angie had known they had to make a place for themselves in this different world; and it had been their choice to stay-they could have left. It was too late to change that choice now. Even without thinking, he found his body move, beginning to climb the first of the rocks in the jungle between him and the top of the mountain.

That last cold and impossible distance he did not really see or feel as he made it, nor after was he able to remember. But after a time he could not measure-going beyond all things in him, beyond his strength, beyond his courage, beyond his desire, beyond his love for those still back in the reception room of Hasan now with the shadows moving in on them-he came to the end of the rocks; and half fell into an open s.p.a.ce; and the staff was there, standing straight and upright against the last of the red glow in the western sky, which disappeared even as he looked.

He reached out and took hold of it-and he was back in the domed room with the others.

He had returned almost to the moment he had left; people were still all in their same positions. "-my strength overcomes yours." Ibn-Tariq's words still echoed in his ears.

But during the small moment between, the shadows had moved closer. He lifted the staff and they drew back... not far, but they drew back. He glanced for a moment down at himself. His clothes were untorn, his shoes complete again, his hands unlacerated. Angie was looking at him penetratingly, but outside of that, none of the others showed any sign of being conscious he had been away.

"Your rod is no threat," said ibn-Tariq.

Jim risked a glance at his staff. It was neither as tall as nor as thick as Carolinus's had been in those first days when they had come and with Carolinus's help they had made the a.s.sault on the Loathly Tower to rescue Angie. Then Carolinus's rod had held back the Dark Powers while he, Brian and Dafydd ap Hywel fought its creatures and won.

This that he grasped would not hold as much power as Carolinus's had; but it was straight and weathered. It fitted like a talisman in his right hand. Its lower end now rested on the floor of the room; and the floor, through various underpinnings, reached down finally to touch the earth itself, drawing strength upward from the planet into the staff and him.

"I say," came the voice of ibn-Tariq again, "the staff is no threat. We are Muslim. Your Christian magic cannot attack us, as you yourself know. Lay it down. You will suffer less from us."

"Not all of you are Muslim," said Jim. For the first time he noticed that Baiju, seated with knees drawn up to his chest, had his wrists bound tight to his ankles.

"Baiju," he said, "if it is what you wish-come stand with us."

As he spoke, he visualized it. A small lightning flickered from the top of his staff, burning through the cords that bound Baiju-and the little Mongol appeared behind Jim, standing on his feet. Baiju gave a grunt, but that was all.

"So much for magic," said Jim. "I went a long way and a hard way for what I hold; and you're right-I'm not allowed to attack with it. But I'm not here to attack, but to defend those who need defense. Even you- I will defend you, too, if you'll come to me. But you'll have to leave your own unlicensed sorcery behind."

Ibn-Tariq's gaze sharpened like that of a cornered hawk.

"Am I only an apprentice in my art," he said, "to think I might need the aid of one like you?"

Jim did not answer.

His mind was fully open and understanding, sharp and clear now that he had the staff in his hand.

"To begin with," he said, "you could have wanted only to stop Brian and me from finding Sir Geoffrey and taking him back to England. Then you found out about us by chance, probably from abu al-Qusayr-carefully hiding the sorcerous element in you when you dealt with him-that our success would mean the end of all you planned-"

Ibn-Tariq's eyes glittered.

"I hide from no magician!" he said.

"If that was true, you'd be a fool," said Jim, "and you're not that. So, you found out about me, and that I was one of the junior grades of magician, who ought to be easy to handle. But when you couldn't get me to talk about magic, so you could get some idea of my powers, as we traveled in the caravan, you arranged to have Brian and me captured by the a.s.sa.s.sins; and tried to trick me into showing what magic I had by forcing me to escape with it, didn't you?"

Ibn-Tariq only smiled.

"But then when we escaped, using no important magic, but learning of the secret way in and out-knowing which could allow the Golden Horde Mongols to get in and conquer the White Palace easily-we became a real danger. But why should we, or even Baiju, who met us as we left the secret way, tell those of the Golden Horde about this?"

"He is of the Horde," said Hasan, behind ibn-Tariq.

"Ya barid!" snapped ibn-Tariq, turning on him. "Fool!"

Both Hasan and the dog cowered away from him. Ibn-Tariq turned back to face Jim; but Jim had already looked back to meet the eyes of Baiju.

"Is that true?" Jim asked. Baiju met his gaze unyieldingly.

"No," he said. "I am of the Il'Khanate, those of the first horde who hold Persia, as I told you in the caravan. I thought you, with your magic, would understand."

"I didn't then," said Jim, "but I do now. By letting them think you were of the Horde, you hoped to learn what the Mamelukes of Egypt planned for the Horde."