It sounded like a lifeboat smacking the surface of the sea, Josie thought. She picked herself painfully out of the thornbush where she had been none-too-gently knocked by the ifrits.
‘I’m alright,’ she told Tash, who was anxiously forging into the bush to help her. ‘Just a little scratched. That was well done. Very well done.’ She reached up to Tash, and he pulled her out of the bush and took her into his arms.
‘Thank you,’ said Josie, starting to tremble. It had been so close, but Tash had taken her hint, and she had managed to distract the magician and his minions long enough for him to get the magician’s rings. She was not exactly sure what had happened, but could guess well enough from Yustus’ screams and curses.
‘Are you sure you are alright?’ asked Tash uncertainly.
‘Yes,’ she said, clinging to him. ‘How about you? You are bleeding.’
‘I think it is the magician’s blood,’ said Tash. ‘Excuse me, I need to drink.’ Tash carried Josie to the edge of the stream, set her carefully down, had rather a long drink and washed his face, and picked her up again. She did not say anything during this time. She was scratched and bruised – she seemed to have stabbed one foot particularly badly on a broken bit of branch – but she was happier than she had ever been. There was a long way to go to get to anything that she would have called a safe, normal life before, but she was free of the magician, and her soul danced and sang. In the distance, a wild dog howled a signal to its fellows.
‘I don’t think the ifrits will stay in the castle long,’ said Josie, once Tash had picked her up again. ‘They’ll want to go back to wherever it is they came from. We should go there.’
‘The castle?’ said Tash.
‘Yes,’ said Josie again. ‘Thank you.’ She tightened her arms around Tash.
‘You said that already,’ said Tash.
‘I suppose I did,’ said Josie. She laughed. ‘If this were a fairy tale, I would kiss you now, and you would turn into a handsome prince.’
‘What is kiss?’ asked Tash.
Josie laughed again, and planted her lips on the side of Tash’s broad beak. ‘This.’ It should have been as unsatisfactory as kissing the keys of a piano, but in some curious way it was not. Tash’s beak was like ivory, yes, but warm ivory, and smelt of jasmine, and a trace of magician’s blood.
‘I do not seem to be turning into anything,’ said Tash.
‘I expect you have transformed enough already to last you a good long time,’ said Josie. ‘Besides, this is some kind of real life, and not a fairy story.’
They gave the corpse of the magician, already surrounded by snarling wild dogs, a wide berth. The sounds of the dogs feeding carried a long way.
Josie clung to her strange protector as he loped through trees and clambered over rocks. She was still happy, deliriously happy, but underneath she also felt sick. Yustus had been an evil man, but she had killed him, as surely as if she had dropped him a hundred feet herself. He would be alive if it were not for her. But he would also be alive, she told herself sternly, if Tash had not played his part, and if the ifrits had not exacted their revenge, and if Yustus had not behaved so abominably himself and planned such horrible things for her, and if the Lion had not drawn her into this strange world. They were all links in a chain. Still she felt sick: she could not get rid of the feeling that the magician’s blood was on her head.
‘The castle is up there,’ said Tash. ‘But we have come back to the bottom of the steep cliff. I will go around the bottom of it and see if there is a way up.’
‘I was thinking about that,’ said Josie. ‘Of course there has to be a better way in, since he would have left himself some way to get in and out without the ifrits. But it occurred to me that there might be all kinds of nasty traps that way. So maybe we would be better off climbing up the wall where we climbed down it, since we know that is safe.’
‘Um,’ said Tash. But he was willing enough to follow Josie’s advice.
It was a hard climb, and there were a couple of times when Josie’s heart went into her mouth, but at length they found themselves back in the garden. The wound in Josie’s foot was bad enough that she could only limp painfully about, but it was very nice to lie back on the soft grass in the sunshine. Tash prowled about the garden, exploring.
‘What does the statue in the middle of the fountain look like?’ asked Josie. ‘I could only reach the feet.’
‘It looks a bit like you,’ said Tash. He sounded very weary to Josie, and she was tempted to tell him to sit down and have a rest instead of prowling about. ‘But too tall, as tall as me. And carved as if she was all over jewels. She is holding the head of some animal.’
‘Oh,’ said Josie, rolling onto her front. ‘What sort of animal?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tash, but he described it to her as looking rather like one of the statues in the garden, the one without the antlers, but with more shagginess to it.
‘It sounds like a lion,’ she said.
‘So that is what a lion looks like,’ said Tash.
‘There hasn’t been any sound of the ifrits at all,’ said Josie. ‘I suppose they must be gone.’
‘I hope so,’ said Tash.
A moment later, in that curious way people have of appearing when you mention them, Josie heard the first faint sounds of distant flapping.
‘Uh-oh, they are coming,’ she said, and then corrected herself, as the sounds resolved into those made by a single pair of wings. ‘One of them, anyway.’
‘Shall we hide?’ Tash asked.
‘Let us find out what it wants, if it is only one,’ said Josie. ‘I am sure you can fight it, and I am sure it cannot carry me away alone.’ It seemed to Josie that they were Zardeenah’s wings, and not those of any of her brothers, as the sound drew closer. She could not have described what the difference was, but she knew it was there. She stood up, and a moment later Tash was standing protectively at her side.
‘Miss Furness,’ called a voice from the sky.
‘Yes, Zardeenah?’ Josie called in return. Zardeenah was not landing, but was circling in the air above them, near enough that Josie could smell the burnt cinnamon fragrance of her hair.
‘We are in your debt, my brothers and I,’ called the ifrit.
‘Yes?’ said Josie, thinking wildly for a moment of three wishes and magic carpets.
‘My brothers think it will amply settle our debt if we leave you as Mistress of Telmar,’ said Zardeenah.
‘But,’ began Josie. She was going to say, ‘But I don’t want to be Mistress of Telmar, I want to go to- to-‘ but she did not really want to go to the place where the gazelles were sending her, to the strange foreign men with their lion god and their prophecies. And the ifrits could carry her, but what about Tash? There was no way they could take him.
‘Indeed, I told my brothers, she cannot rightly be called Mistress of Telmar if she does not have possession of its secrets.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Josie.
‘She would not find it herself in a hundred years of searching, I told my brothers, despite her magic; but I know the place where it is kept.’
‘But-‘ Josie began again.
‘So this is yours, Mistress of Telmar, she who turns-stone-to-flesh,’ said Zardeenah, and let something drop. Tash almost, but not quite, caught it, and bent over to pick it up from the grass.
‘Thank you,’ said Josie. ‘But I don’t want to be-‘
‘Our debt is finished,’ called Zardeenah from a height as she flew rapidly away.
‘-Mistress of Telmar,’ Josie replied, to empty air.
‘It is a very grand place,’ said Tash. ‘Nearly as grand as the Procurator’s Tower. Here.’ He handed Josie the thing Zardeenah had dropped – a key as long as a fountain pen, carved out of some very hard glassy stone, which was tied to a silken ribbon.
‘The key to the secret treasure chamber, I expect,’ she said, and slipped the ribbon around her neck. She gave a rueful smile.
‘I am sure of it,’ said Tash.
***
Tash liked the look of the red key around Josie’s neck. It made her look more queenly, more like the statue. Surely there would more jewels in this place, and then Josie could be bedecked properly as Mistress of Telmar.
The highest ambition anyone could imagine in the village Tash had come from was to rise high in the service of the Overlord – this had been the way of things for countless generations – so it is not surprising that the dream of not being useless that had come into his head was of rising high in the service of Josie, Mistress of Telmar. He rather liked the statue in the middle of the fountain: the expression on the woman’s face put him in mind of the exultant way Josie had looked, when he had pulled her out of the thorny bush. The severed lion’s head, on the other hand, bore an expression of idiot malice. He supposed whoever carved the head had put it there on purpose, but it certainly did not look like the expression of any kind of god. The woman looked much more like a god.
‘Now, I can go through over there,’ said Josie, pointing almost at the base of the tower. ‘There’s a door. But I think it is too small for you.’
‘Maybe over here,’ said Tash. He had seen already the barred gate that Josie had found impenetrable, and a flagged courtyard beyond it, and thought that he would try his new strength out on it.
It was not easy, but the bars did bend a little when he tugged hard on them, and when he figured out the right way to twist the gate came off its hinges. ‘It worked!’ he said triumphantly.
‘I heard,’ said Josie, smiling at him. She started walking toward the gate in a slow and painful way.
‘Do you want me to carry you?’ he asked.
‘You have carried me enough for now,’ she said. But she did not make any protest when he gathered her up. Beyond the flagged courtyard there were other courtyards, and then a broad flight of steps leading up to heavy double doors. Tash tried these, and they opened with a loud crack, and beyond them was a high-ceilinged stone hall, and after a few more doors and halls and turning they found themselves in the rooms that had belonged to Yustus.
You or I would be pleased enough to find ourselves in possession of the palace of a magician, filled with all the good things that can be provided by magic; but we know of such things through stories, and have some idea of the kind of things we might find. Tash had no idea. He had never imagined such comfortable rooms, or so many good things to eat. There were cushions to sit on that were softer than anything he had thought of, and mirrors where he could see himself outlined as sharply as if here were some other thalarka- very drab he looked in such richly furnished rooms, he thought – and pools of warm water set in smooth white stone where he could soothe his itchy skin, but most of all there was the food. There was every kind of food that the ifrits had fetched for the magician – fresh fruits, and cold roast meats, and honeyed pastries, and other things that Tash had never seen or thought of. Every one of them tasted nicer than pickled grith, and he gorged himself in a haze of joy.
Josie meanwhile had bandaged her foot, eaten more sparingly, and gone to search the rooms for a change of clothes. ‘I know there are clothes for me in the tower by the garden, but it is a long walk back there,’ she told Tash.
When Tash was full enough he looked around for jewels and ornaments, of which there were plenty. There were also plenty of things that were of no immediate use to Tash – probably of no use to him, ever – but which still grabbed his attention, for magicians’ rooms tend to be full of such things. There were vials of evil-smelling oils and spices, leather-bound books of strange ideographs and peculiar pictures, strange implements of glass and nasty-looking metal instruments; curiously shaped knives in polished boxes; other things that looked like they could be used for carving words into wood, or flesh; a fragment of something that reminded Tash uncomfortably of part of the device the old thalarka had used to command the Gnawers.
Josie reappeared in clean garments of a shimmery soft material. Instead of a single long black garment, she had a much shorter green one on top, and billowy yellow things that that clung to her legs underneath. The ruby key looked very splendid indeed, Tash thought, on top of the green cloth.
‘I found these jewels for you,’ said Tash. ‘You will look very splendid.’
Josie took the things he offered, and smiled, but did not put them on. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you really use your magic to change me back from stone?’ Tash asked cautiously.
Josie grimaced. ‘I don’t think so. Not unless it is like you being stronger, and it is something that happened when I came here. I don’t feel magical at all.’
‘You could try with the other statues in the garden and find out,’ suggested Tash.
‘Hmm,’ said Josie. ‘Not right now, I think. Just in case it does work. If it works, and either of those beasts aren’t talking beasts, or talking beasts that don’t like us, it will be very complicated and unpleasant. And I was just enjoying it being not complicated or unpleasant.’
‘You are right,’ said Tash.
Josie sat down on one of the big cushions with a sigh of relief, and Tash realised that he was also very tired. In the excitement of exploring all the marvels of the palace he had quite forgotten how exhausted he was. He dragged the largest one he could find next to her and plopped himself down as well. It was curious how pleasant she was beginning to smell. He had found the strange animal smell of humans strong and unpleasant when he had fallen into Telmar – that was blood, he remembered with a shock, Nera’s blood – but the more he had carried Josie, or curled up around her, the nicer she had smelled to him.
‘We should find out what that key opens,’ said Tash.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Josie. ‘I don’t want to do anything that might cause more problems.’
‘What do you think it will open?’
‘Well, a door, or a chest, or something. We haven’t found the wand they used to turn you to stone, or the apples of immortality that the magician talked about, so I expect they will be behind whatever it opens.’
‘It would be useful to turn our enemies into stone. Also to be immortal,’ said Tash enthusiastically.
‘Silly, we can’t do those things,’ said Josie.
‘Why not?’ said Tash.
‘It wouldn’t be right,’ said Josie, in an explanation that wasn’t an explanation. ‘It wouldn’t be right for us to turn people to stone, and it wouldn’t be right for us to live forever.’
‘It wouldn’t be right for anything bad to happen to you,’ said Tash resolutely. ‘Ever again.’
Josie made one of those exasperated noises. ‘You’re very sweet, Tash. But like I said, I don’t want to do anything that might cause problems for the rest of the day. Or anything at all, really. Except maybe have some of those sweetmeats. Is there any of the Turkish delight left?’
‘Turkish delight?’
‘Little cubes of soft stuff, covered with powder.’
‘Yes, rather a lot.’ Tash got up helpfully and returned rather too hastily, giving Josie’s new clothes a solid dusting of white powder when the tray tipped sideways. ‘I am sorry,’ he said.
‘Oh, there is no need to be sorry,’ said Josie, laughing. ‘You saved my life. That gives you every right to cover me with powdered sugar if you want.’
‘Does it?’ Tash asked her. This seemed like a curious custom.
‘Well, no, not really,’ said Josie. ‘I just mean it would be ridiculous of me to complain about a little thing like that, after all the big things you have helped me with.’
Tash sat down next to Josie and together they ate rather a lot of Turkish delight. There were five or six different kinds, of different colours and flavours, some with different chewy lumps in them – ‘nuts’ Josie explained – and they were all ever so much nicer than pickled grith.
‘You saved my life too,’ he pointed out, between mouthfuls of rosewater-flavoured Turkish delight.
‘We don’t know for sure,’ said Josie. ‘It might just have been a coincidence. I certainly didn’t set out to turn you back from stone.’
‘You would have, if you had known,’ said Tash confidently.
‘Very well then,’ said Josie, and flicked powdered sugar at him with her fingers.
Tash and Josie let the fire die, and spread the floor with silken blankets to sleep on, since Josie did not want to go back to the tower where she had slept before, and neither of them wanted to sleep in the bedchamber of Yustus the magician, whose bones were at that moment being fought over by wild dogs. Without either of them saying anything they ended up sleeping much as they had the night before, with Tash curled up around an uncomplaining Josie.
‘Good night, Tash,’ she said.
‘Good night, Josie Miss Furness, Mistress of Telmar,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, but he could tell she was pleased. He thought, for the hundredth time, that her hair was exactly the colour of fresh grith stalks before they started to turn grey.