Part 22 (1/2)

Morning came. Hours had pa.s.sed, seeming like minutes while they cowered in the gully listening to Magma's wrath. There was no sign of the Queen's army.

Even as the day brightened, the air filled with choking sulphurous fumes. A dense cloud of smoke rolled over, turning the day to night again. The blasts came louder, and the ground shook steadily.

Then there was a stillness.

”Is it over?” Hasan inquired hopefully.

Shawahi and Dahnash stared at him. ”Over? Magma is a marid.”

As though that explained everything. ”Well maybe we'd better move on before the Queen finds us.”

”Don't worry about the Queen. She'll be busy enough with Magma,” Shawahi said, smiling to herself.

They began their trek, however, away from the moun- tain. The rumbles began again as they did so. ”He's spotted them,” Dahnash said.

”But why should he go after them, when we did it?”

”I framed them,” Shawahi said.

An impenetrable swirl of smoke obscured the cone, and lightning flashed from that cloud into the surrounding air. Hot ash rained down upon them, making immediate cover necessary. Hasan was surprised to discover that the parti- cles, though white with heat, could be brushed off quickly from the skin without extreme effect. The party was able to proceed through the strange storm by holding bundles of large leaves overhead.

A wind came up, gentle at first, but rapidly increasing to violence. Dust blew into the eyes, nose and mouth. The world tasted of whirling ashes.

They were in the jungle now, blindly charging through trees and trailing vines. Wild beasts swarmed about them, but paid no attention to the human party. Even tigers and pythons were intent only upon escape. Hasan would have marveled at this unusual camaraderie of living things if he hadn't had other problems to take his attention.

The explosions resumed, louder than ever. Larger frag- ments fell from the sky, some the size of human heads.

They traveled desperate miles, but neither noise nor smoke seemed to diminish. The sound of Magma became a sustained roar, deafening the world with its power. Light ash covered every leaf of the jungle trees and carpeted the ground.

At last they could travel no more. Sana was sobbing and gasping for breath, her face grimed with dust, and Shawahi wasn't much better off. Even the ifrits seemed morose and tired.

Magma's cloud had formed into a pine tree many miles high, the last time Hasan had glimpsed it. He hoped the tree would not come cras.h.i.+ng in their direction. All they could do was wait, tired and hungry and afraid.

”I think we're far enough away,” Shawahi said.

All night Magma vented his fury into the sky. The trees of the forest shriveled and burned, and when the morning came the sun appeared only as a distant b.l.o.o.d.y ball behind a curtain of sickly yellow.

They ate what they could stomach, drank from the water bags the ifrits were still able to provide, and slept. There was nothing else to do, though the roiling dreams of the marid clothed their slumber in nightmare. Would they ever see a normal world again?

On the third day the earth jumped again with a cataclys- mic blast. Hasan was thrown to the ground, head spinning again with the violence of both external and internal rage. He tried to cover Sana, waiting for the hot fragments to smash into the ground, killing whom they would. Magma had multiplied his power manyfold . . .

Nothing happened.

A stiff wind lifted the smoke and haze to reveal the devastated jungle. Ash was inches deep over everything, and not a creature moved.

But Hasan's mind was empty. Magma was gone.

By mutual consent they traveled back to the mountain. The distance which had seemed interminable through the raining stone now became short. In hours they were back.

Hasan looked upon the scene, hardly crediting it. The cone was gone; the neighboring temple was gone; even the plain upon which the ifrits had battled the Queen's army was gone, and the protective gully. All that remained was a giant circular valley, a cauldron more than two thousand paces across, wisps of fog hovering above it. Waves of heat still emanated. ”Magma did-this?”

Shawahi nodded. ”He sleeps again-but he isn't gone. A marid is never gone.” She stared wistfully at the place the temple had occupied. ”All the records and artifacts of the Wak empire were there,” she murmured. ”Magma destroyed everything. I wonder if it was not too great a price to pay for the safety of three fugitives.”

Hasan didn't know what to say. He felt painfully guilty about his overeager, ignorant desire to see the marid wake. True, the Queen had been a terror-but she was undoubtedly a capable ruler. How could he equate the success of his quest with the destruction of an empire?

They turned away and began to organize for the journey to Arabia. The four kings provided food and horses and a magnificent tent for the party to relax in before undertak- ing the hards.h.i.+ps of travel.

But others had survived the holocaust. The scouting ifrits brought in no less a person than Queen Nur al-Huda and several of her chief officers. They were dizzy and bemused, but her magic had saved them from death. They were all that was left of the magnificent amazon army.

The kings brought Hasan a throne of alabaster inlaid with jewels and pearls so that he could sit in judgment. They brought another of ivory plaited with glittering gold threads for the princess Manar al-Sana, and a third for Shawahi Zat al-Dawahi. There, near the brink of the disas- ter wrought by the marid of the mountain, the three awaited the prisoners.

The Queen was pinioned at the elbows and fettered at the feet, but her imperious beauty had not deserted her. She wore a flexible jacket of python skin, and did not look at all ashamed for the damage resulting from her intractable att.i.tude.

Shawahi was overcome by rage. Hasan had thought she was mellowing toward the Queen, now that the battle was over, but he had underestimated the wrath of a woman who had been betrayed.

”O harlot, O tyrant,” Shawahi screeched from her throne. ”Your recompense for your despicable deeds which have demolished the accomplishment of an empire shall be to be bound to the tails of two mares who have been denied water until their thirst is burning and who are released in sight of water; and two b.i.t.c.hes starved for a week shall be released to follow you and rend your skin. After that your flesh shall be cut off and fed to them piece by piece. How could you treat your own sister with such infamy, O strumpet, knowing that she was lawfully married in the sight of Allah, which these two wors.h.i.+p? Women were not created except for men and to give them pleasure!”

Hasan looked at Sana, but her eyes were tightly closed. ”Put these captives to the sword,” he said.

Shawahi agreed vehemently. ”Slay them all! Do not spare a single one!” She seemed to have forgotten her earlier laments about the demise of an empire. Slaying the Queen would hardly bring it back.

Sana opened her eyes and spoke to the Queen. ”O my sister, what has come upon us? How can you be conquered and captive in your own country?”

”This is a mighty matter, sister,” Nur al-Huda replied, while Hasan listened in wonder. ”But it is true: this merchantman has gotten the mastery of us and all our realm. His army defeated ours.” The Queen was making no apologies for her defeat.

”But he did it only by means of his cap and rod,” Sana protested.

”True-but it was a fair encounter. I am in his power now and will accept his decision. My only regret is that there was ever misunderstanding between princesses of Wak.”

Sana turned on Hasan. ”What are you doing to my sister? What has she done to you to deserve punishment at your hands?”

”She tortured you. For that a thousand deaths are too little.”