Part 20 (1/2)

”Oh yes, master,” said Kelb.

”Good,” said Jim. ”Then, I've got a job for you. You'll carry Brian and me out that secret escape tunnel you talked about. Now, I'll tell you what to do, Kelb. Just turn sideways and lean against the bars at the front of this cage of ours, would you?”

”If I do this, master,” said Kelb, with a new, cunning note in his voice, ”you will then take me under your protection against Sakhr al-Jinni? If so, I will be your most loyal follower.”

”You can't be a loyaler follower than I am,” said Hob quickly. He jumped on to Jim's shoulder and clung to Jim's neck.

”Yes, I can,” said Kelb.

”No, you can't!” said Hob. ”You absolutely can not!”

”Never mind that now,” said Jim. ”We won't worry about it. Hob, you are my old and faithful Hob of Malencontri. As for you, Kelb, you'll have to show yourself faithful over the same number of years that Hob has been faithful to me-”

”-Since m'lord and m'lady first moved into Malencontri,” put in Hob hastily. ”I know I didn't talk to you a lot at first... and so forth, m'lord. But a hobgoblin is always faithful to those in whose house he lives.

And you and m'lady were people I loved from the first moment. I am the most loyal-the most loyal-”

”Yes, Hob,” said Jim. ”No need to get excited. Feel secure. And I'm glad you reminded me you were there. I was thinking only of Brian and myself for a moment. Lean up against the bars, Kelb; and, yes, I will take you on and promise you my protection-which I shall continue to do until you do something that causes me to cast you off. So you'd better be on your best behavior at all times.”

”None shall be on better behavior than me,” said Kelb.

”You can't possibly-” Hob began energetically; but Jim cut him off.

”Hob,” he said, ”never mind, now. I told you you were my old and trusted retainer, and as yet Kelb has got to win his place. Now, Kelb, we three are going to be small insects riding on your back; and you're to carry us to a secret pa.s.sage out of this palace. Do you, or do you not, know how to find it?”

”I do,” whined Kelb. ”It's just beyond Paradise-”

”Good enough,” said Jim. ”Lean against the bars.”

Kelb still hesitated.

”What does my master intend to do?” he asked, cautiously.

”Nothing important,” said Jim. ”I'll simply turn myself, Brian and Hob into fleas on you, hidden in your hair. You'll sneak through the corridors to the way out, and when you go invisible we'll be that way too.”

”I know not if you will indeed become unseen when I do, master,” said Kelb.

”If the dog can go invisible, why can't he make us invisible?” said Brian. ”That way we wouldn't have to be fleas.”

”I can't, master,” said Kelb.

”Why not?”

”He's a Natural, not a magician,” Jim reminded Brian. ”Let's not have any more talk, now. Kelb-against the bars!”

”Ought to be able to,” muttered Brian.

”Whatever,” said Jim impatiently. ”As fleas we'll be too small to be noticed anyway. Now, Kelb!”

Kelb turned sideways and pressed himself against the bars.

Jim had never turned himself into an insect before. He had heard Carolinus threaten to turn humans, animals or Naturals into insects; and he had actually seen Carolinus turn a thirty-foot sea devil into a very large beetle. But Jim had never done it, or even turned himself into an animal before. Still, visualization had lately been making everything seem possible, and he could think of no drawbacks to the idea. They would simply ride Kelb all the way out of this Kasr al-Abiyadh, or White Palace. He half closed his eyes and concentrated on visualizing Brian, himself and Hob as fleas on Kelb's hide, and locked the picture firmly in his mind and concentrated on it.

”Here we go,” he said.

And so they went.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

As it turned out, luck was with them. Kelb encountered no one on his way up the stairs from the cell block, or after that for some distance.

It was just as well that things had fallen out that way, Jim thought later. Because his first reaction after transforming himself into a flea was to discover at least one of the unfortunate side effects of the transformation. He had forgotten entirely what the viewpoint of a flea would be, out of sight in the hair on a dog's back.

Basically, the view was of hair. Hairs like tree trunks, all around them and leaning over them. There was, of course, the skin of Kelb underneath him. He felt a momentary instinctive urge to try to get at some of the blood beneath that skin, but overruled it. However, meanwhile, as in a dense growth of something like bamboo, he was still completely fenced in by hair-hair not only enclosing him but reaching up to shut out any sight of what might be above its tips.

This would not do. What he needed was a viewpoint outside his flea body. He visualized the prospect as seen through Kelb's eyes.

However, what he found himself seeing, though recognizable, was-as in the vision of all dogs-in black and white; and so different that it took a moment for him to make out even the stone walls and stone roof overhead. This would not do.

What he wanted was human vision; but human vision that would be completely disembodied.

Well, there was no reason why that should not be achievable by a very small amount of magic. What came immediately to mind was a pair of invisible human eyes floating in the air just above Kelb's head. A concept that fitted into words easily enough, but was a little hard to picture in the mind. To begin with, how did you picture eyes if they were invisible?

He had wrestled with that for a moment until the obvious answer came to him.

Of course, the invisible eyes didn't have to be like a pair of human eyeb.a.l.l.s, only invisible. It could be as if his flea-eyes were magic gla.s.ses connected to an invisible television camera hookup, which could be swiveled around, up or down, to let him hear and see things in perfectly normal human fas.h.i.+on, in any direction from Kelb's head.

He had visualized such a camera arrangement, then made it invisible, then turned it on; and suddenly he had achieved a good view of the corridor down which Kelb was trotting. It was a corridor perfectly bare of any kind of decoration, no carpet on the stone floor-that accounted for the sound he now heard of Kelb's claws clicking as he moved. The only thing that broke the corridor walls on either side were occasional entrances, either to rooms or other corridors; but Kelb was proceeding with apparent confidence, giving every indication of knowing where he was going.

”Where are we?” Jim started to ask the Djinni-dog. But even before the words were formed, he realized he had nothing to form them with. Not only was he so tiny that his voice would probably not be heard by Kelb; but he had no vocal apparatus as a flea.

It was true, he remembered, that the watch-beetle that Carolinus had summoned up on Jim's first acquaintance with the magician had spoken in a high tinny voice, but that might simply have been made possible by Carolinus's magic. Jim also remembered that Rrrnlf the giant sea devil, reduced to beetle size, had apparently had no voice at all. Though Carolinus had appeared to hear him saying things then, and talked with him in a conversation of which only Carolinus's side was audible.

What he wanted now, Jim decided, was to be able to speak inside Kelb's mind.

He tried to visualize what a Djinni's mind might look like. A sort of place of shadows? He had discovered sometime since that his visualizations did not have to be correct to work. It was the concept behind the visualization that made the structure on which his creative ability could act.

He concentrated on his place of shadows; and in his own mind he spoke to the dog.

Where are we?

Kelb came to an abrupt stop.

”Master?” he said, in a voice that quavered with what-if it was not fear-was a very good imitation of it.

That's all right. It's me, thought Jim. Where are we?