“We were both human. Shorter than our real selves, and with pale skin and yellow hair.” There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling, Tariq thought.
Travel Agency: Scouts
Part 1 of 6
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in the same setting as his story “The Travel Agency” and its three sequels. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
The original stories and this one need not be read in any particular order.
“Toys, charms, ornaments — rare woods and fine workmanship.” The voice was not the loudest or shrillest in the bazaar, but it carried well enough, and conveyed such an unostentatious confidence as to bring its possessor a steady stream of business throughout the day. The man who called out this announcement was gray of hair and beard, with a deeply lined face, and enormously strong arms ending in sturdy hands with surprisingly delicate fingers for one of his size. Observant customers noticed that no legs protruded from the hem of his not unusually long robe; but they politely made no comment, except on the quality of his workmanship and their great regret that their extreme poverty did not allow them to pay him the kingly price it deserved. The toy-carver, in turn, deprecated the work of his hands and urged it on them as a gift, poor, indeed, and not worthy of their estimable character, but the best he could offer. After five or six exchanges of this sort, a compromise would be reached, and money would change hands — five, six, ten, sometimes twenty or twenty-five dinar for an unusually large and fine piece.
As the sun lowered to the west, and shadows grew long, and some of the traders in the bazaar packed up their things to return home, a shadow fell across the toy-carver’s booth. He looked up from the long stick of mahogany which he was carving into the likeness of a dragon — a strange beast of the far north which few people in that city had ever seen, though the toy-carver himself was one.
“Ul-Kalsim!” he cried. “It has been long since I saw you. Come, embrace me. Return to my home and eat and drink with me!” He set aside the knife and the wood and held out his massive arms; the other man knelt and they hugged, then kissed one another’s cheeks.
Ul-Kalsim was a tall man, some ten years younger than the toy-carver, his hair still black with hardly a gray hair. He wore a white robe of fine silk, jeweled rings on three of his fingers, and a scimitar at his belt.
“Tariq,” he said, “accept my apologies for not coming to see you sooner or more frequently. The duties of my post keep me busy day and night, as you know better than anyone.”
“Yes, for I filled that post longer than you. Come, let us return to my home — business is slow for the last hour, I may as well close up.”
“I would, my friend, but I need you to meet someone. And is your home conveniently sized and situated to host a camel-centaur?”
“No,” Tariq replied, his eyebrows raising. “It is on the second story of a house not far from here. The stair is perhaps too narrow for a camel-centaur, and my room is certainly too small... Where to, then?”
“A house on the street of the glassblowers, perhaps half a mile to the west. How will you go?”
“Following you, of course, since you seem to know the way.” Tariq took up the four corners of the cloth on which his wares were spread out, tying it into a bundle. He opened a large box and set the bundle inside, then, closing it, lifted himself with his massive arms and sat astride the box. Only then did ul-Kalsim notice that the box had wheels on it.
“Lead the way,” said Tariq. Ul-Kalsim glanced uncertainly at him, then walked slowly to the west, followed by Tariq, pushing the upper rims of the front wheels. They kept to the walls, avoiding the donkey and camel traffic in the center of the streets, and proceeded south along the bazaar avenue a short way to a side-street, then west on the street of the silversmiths, which became the street of the glassblowers after a quarter-mile. At last they reached their destination, and entered a house with a high, wide door. Its large windows illuminated a high ceiling and several tables and cabinets, most of them too large for most humans to use conveniently, plus two low couches of human size and a lower table. On one of these couches reclined a human seemingly in early middle age, but with eyes that spoke of long experience and hard-won wisdom, wearing a green robe. Standing beside one of the higher tables was a camel-centaur, nude after the custom of his people, except for a small knapsack slung in front of his hump.
“Greetings, ul-Kalsim,” the camel-centaur said. “Is this the man you told us about?”
“Tvalenn, this is Tariq, my predecessor in office, disabled and retired six years ago. Tariq, this is Tvalenn, one of my best sources for events in the western desert. The Subtle One,” gesturing to the green-robed man who was now rising to greet them, “you know as well as I do.”
Tariq bowed to Tvalenn and the Subtle One as best as his handicap would allow. “I am honored to meet you,” he said to Tvalenn. “And you, Your Mystery, look no older than the day I retired.”
The Subtle One bowed in acknowledgment. Tvalenn bowed too, lower than one not familiar with camel-centaurs would have believed possible.
The camel-centaur, apparently their host, then called a servant and gave her orders; soon tea was served, and generous portions of sweetbread, roast lamb, and pickled olives.
“Well,” said Tariq to ul-Kalsim, “I know that this was not merely a social call. What do you need my advice about?”
“Not only your advice, my friend, but your help.”
“Help? What help can I give, in my condition, other than my advice? But say on.”
“You shall hear. Tvalenn, would you be so good as to explain to Tariq and the Subtle One what you told me this morning?”
Tvalenn nodded and began.
“About two months ago I first heard rumors of a mage from the far north who had appeared in the western desert, in the foothills of the mountains. He calls himself the Gray One, and he claims to be able, for a moderate fee, to send people to another world and bring them back some days later. I have not yet seen him myself, but a few days ago I finally managed to find and speak with someone who had supposedly traveled to this other world.”
“What is this other world like?” Tariq asked.
“I was not able to gain a clear account,” Tvalenn admitted. “My informant was a young camel-centaur, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, who was enthusiastic but not terribly coherent in describing his experiences. I am not entirely certain that the Gray One is not simply inducing hallucinations in his marks. One thing was clear, however; if this voyage to another world is real, it involves sending the soul and leaving the body behind. While in the other world — or while hallucinating about another world — he had, or seemed to have, the body of a human, eight or ten years older than his true age. He told me of a great city with buildings taller than mountains, of magical carts which roll far faster than a gazelle can run but are pulled by nothing visible, of small ovens which cook a meal in a few heartbeats... And these things are the possessions not only of the rich, but of nearly everyone. If the tale is true, it seems the other world is much richer in magic than our own.”
“Possibly,” said the Subtle One. “I will reserve judgment until I meet the Gray One and see how his spell works. If he can truly send a person’s soul into another world and bring it back, he is a greater mage than I; but if he is merely inducing hallucinations, then I am greater than he, and will be able to detect his deception, and protect the rest of you from it.”
“I see,” Tariq said. “If he is a charlatan, we cannot allow him to continue to prey on the sultan’s subjects unpunished. And if he is truly the great mage he claims to be, we need to know more about him, whether he is a threat to the security of the sultanate.”
“We also need to know more about this other world,” ul-Kalsim said. “If the Gray One can send people from our world there, quite possibly he can bring people from the other world hither, or there may be mages there who can send their own people here. Can they send them in large enough numbers for an invasion? What weapons do they have? What are their intentions, to make war on us or trade with us or simply ignore us?”
Tariq nodded. “Whom, then, do you plan to send? Tvalenn for a local guide, of course, and the Subtle One to investigate the Gray One’s spells or hoaxes. I suggest young Ghantim, if he is still in your service — he has traveled in the desert and foothills before, and knows the local languages.”
“I was thinking that we four would go,” ul-Kalsim said, “with perhaps one other, who will join us on the way.”
“We four? But I —” Tariq gestured toward the hem of his robe. “I would not be much help, beyond the streets of the city.”
“You forget,” said ul-Kalsim, “that if the Gray One’s magic is real, and we succeed in finding him, you and all of us will have other bodies in the other world. You will be able to walk; and there your experience and quick wits will count for more than Ghantim’s youth and strong legs.”
“Oh...” A light came into Tariq’s eyes and a broad smile slowly spread over his face.
They set out on the morning of the second day following. Tariq had returned to his rooms and paid his landlord in advance for two months, then entrusted his most valuable possessions to a friend who lived in the same quarter. He met ul-Kalsim and the others at Tvalenn’s lodgings that evening, and spent the night with them, going over their plans.
ul-Kalsim requisitioned three fine camels from the sultan’s stables, which the humans were to ride. He offered to help Tariq mount, but his old friend shrugged and said it wasn’t necessary; he barked a command at the well-trained beast, which knelt, then lifted himself onto its back with his thickly muscled arms and situated himself in the saddle before ordering the camel to rise.
They left by the western gate well before dawn, Tvalenn in the lead, and traveled until nearly noon before they stopped at the first caravanserai to rest from the heat of the day. A few hours later, after a meal and a nap, they moved on, and kept going until the moon set some hours after the sun.
That night, as they lay curled in their blankets looking up at the stars, ul-Kalsim asked Tariq, “Why did you leave?”
“For several reasons,” Tariq said, and was silent for some moments. Then: “I don’t want you, or the sultan, to think I wasn’t grateful. You saved my life, and the sultan rewarded me well for my years of service — as well as he knew how. But living in the palace, with so many servants... I was growing soft. Having servants to lift me out of bed, and put me in the bath, and set me up in a chair when I had visitors, and carry me to the council chamber when the sultan wanted my advice, I was growing weak and sickly. I resolved to do without them as much as I could; I pulled myself out of bed one morning, and dragged myself to the bath, ordering the servants to stand by and do nothing but bring the water. By the time I reached the tub, I was exhausted, and had finally to let the servants lift me into it; and I was good for nothing else that day. But day after day my arms grew stronger, and I grew bored with palace life. I could no longer travel as I used to, but I could at least go out into the city, and I did. And as I was going through the bazaar one day, I remembered how my father had taught me to carve wood, and thought that now would be a good time to take it up again.”
“You do it very well. But I think you serve your country better with your other skills.”
“Perhaps so.”
Early the next day they passed a caravan going east. Two camel-centaurs, man and wife, together with their three children, led and drove a train of twenty ordinary camels laden with bags and boxes. Tvalenn called out to them in Sikva, the language spoken by most of the camel-centaurs in the western desert, and they answered, telling him of conditions on the trail ahead. Tariq knew the language well, though he had not had occasion to speak it in recent years. An important oasis two days ahead had been partly buried by a recent sandstorm; a team had been dispatched to dig it out, but it was unlikely that they would be able to get water there when they arrived.
That night they reached what, because of the buried oasis ahead, would be the last place to get water for nearly five days. This was no hardship for Tvalenn, but the humans would get more than a little thirsty by the time they reached the next usable oasis.
They went on, stopping each day a little before noon and going on when the sun was well past its zenith. As their water ran low and their throats grew dry, they spoke less and less. They passed the buried oasis in the afternoon of the third day, and found four male camel-centaurs working with shovels to remove the sand from the pool and the bases of the date-palms. Tvalenn greeted them, but they did not stop for long.
Finally, when there seemed to be only a sip or two of water left in their last flasks, they reached the next oasis. Its date-palms were inhabited by a small family of pixies. Both Tvalenn and Tariq knew their language, though pixies were rare in the desert and unheard of near the cities. After greeting their hosts, they drank greedily and refilled their water-flasks, then began trade negotiations. Tvalenn had brought small flasks of the grape-wine and rice-wine brewed in countries to the east, and spools of fine thread, which after much banter, they traded to the pixies in exchange for some of their dates and a small flask of the finest date-wine to be found in the sultanate — only a few sips, but each one worth a whole bottle of the ordinary stuff made from the dates that grew near the city. They remained there the rest of the day and through the night, trading stories and songs with their tiny hosts. Tariq carved a likeness of the matriarch of the clan out of palm-wood, and gave it to her with his thanks.
The desert grew more and more beautiful as they continued westward. The deep drifts of sand receded and rock formations of eerie shapes and a thousand colors took their place. These gave better landmarks than the seemingly trackless sands, but to those unfamiliar with them it was as easy to get lost here as among the dunes. Tvalenn led them unhesitatingly and unerringly through both. They passed several more eastbound caravans, most of them consisting of camel-centaurs leading baggage-laden camels, but now and then one with human or dwarf passengers.
One morning, when they rose well before dawn to begin their day’s journey, the Subtle One led them on a detour into a box canyon. Tvalenn protested, but ul-Kalsim said it was necessary, and the camel-centaur fell silent. When they reached the end of the canyon, a sheer wall twenty or twenty-five feet high, the Subtle One spoke in a language Tariq didn’t recognize. There was a long silence, and then the rock... twisted, shifted. It wasn’t a rockslide, nor anything so simple as a door in the rock sliding open, but one moment the rock was solid and an eye-watering moment later, there was an oval hole in it. A creature stepped out of the hole, and the party stepped back to give it room. It stood higher than the walls of the canyon, and Tariq wondered how it could have fit through the hole. It was more like a man than a camel-centaur, but with iridescent bat-like wings whose upper tips caught the dawn light coming over the walls of the canyon.
The creature spoke in that unknown language, in a voice like crackling flames. The Subtle One said: “Greetings, ul-Balimmu. Please do us the favor of speaking in a language my companions can understand.”
“Greetings, Subtle One,” the creature said. “And you, Tariq, ul-Kalsim, Tvalenn. What brings you to my home?”
“We have a proposal,” said the Subtle One. “Have you heard of a mage called the Gray One?”
“No... it is many days since I came above ground. Perhaps many years; one loses track. Is he a child, younger than your august self?”
“He is no child; he may be older and more powerful than I — or he may not. But he is new to this land. And if he is a danger, I thought the ifrits would want to know as well as the sultan and his servants.”
“You thought correctly. Where is this Gray One, that I may see him and sift his heart?”
“I do not know, but the last we heard of him, he was somewhere to the west. In the foothills, probably, or in the mountains. We go to seek him and assess whether he is a threat. Will you come with us?”
“I will.”
“You might wish to take another form, which will not frighten those who mean us no harm.”
“Your idea has merit.” Then, with a twist and a shift which made Tariq’s eyes water again, the ifrit became — or took the appearance of — a camel-centaur, about Tvalenn’s age but with darker hair. The oval hole in the rock closed up at the same time.
They returned to the caravan-trail and Tvalenn led the way again. As they went, the others filled in the ifrit on the stories they had heard about the Gray One and his other world.
They were five more days passing through the canyons. Sometimes Tariq would wake during the night and see only one camel-centaur silhouetted against the stars; if he lay awake long enough, he might see a shape like a coyote or big cat slink into the camp, twist and shift and become a camel-centaur once more.
Finally they reached the foothills, where the soil was better though the rainfall was hardly more frequent than in the rocky or sandy desert. All the agriculture here depended on irrigation, water brought by tunnels and pumps from the river which collected itself from a dozen streams out of the mountains only to spend itself uselessly in a salt lake far out in the sands. These hills were inhabited by camel-centaurs and humans in nearly equal numbers, visited fairly often by dwarf traders from the mountains.
When they reached the large village at which the caravan-trail terminated, they made inquiries about the Gray One. Had anyone seen him? Had anyone taken his offer to travel to the other world? No, no one here had done either, though several said they had heard of him. Perhaps they might find him in one of the villages to the north, someone said. So the next morning they set out northward along the ridge. They stopped at three villages before nightfall, asking everyone they met about the Gray One. Still they met no one who had seen him, though as they continued they met more and more who had heard of him, and finally, in the village where they stopped for the night, they were referred to some adventurous youths who had gone out looking for him, and come back giving dark hints that they knew much more than they would say.
The next morning they found the boys, a camel-centaur and a human, who had supposedly met the Gray One and gone to the other world. They bribed them with date-wine (of good quality, but not the pixie-made brew) and coaxed them to talk.
“No, we didn’t see him,” said Baltvai, the camel-centaur. “But we found one of his servants, and he took our money and put the spell on us — his master had given it to him, already cast, ready to use on whoever could pay. He said it wouldn’t take effect right away, but within a day or two. And then, just a few hours later, we were in that other world...” He trailed off, looking past ul-Kalsim’s shoulder into the distance.
“There was a flash of blue light,” said Saluq, the human, “and I lost all my feeling for a moment, and then I was in another place, in another body.” He flushed and took a long swig of wine.
“What kind of body?” asked the Subtle One.
“Human,” Saluq said shortly. “We were both human. Shorter than our real selves, and with pale skin and yellow hair.” There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling, Tariq thought.
“Anyway, we were in a little room, lit by bright lamps set into the ceiling, and there were big metal cabinets all around. And there was a mage there, or anyway a man with a wooden staff like I hear tell mages use, and he introduced us to another man, who was supposed to be our guide to the other world. And then... he led us outside, and we looked up, and up, and up.”
“The buildings there were incredible,” Baltvai said. “As tall as ten houses. No, fifty, some even a hundred — I couldn’t be sure.”
“And the carts!” Saluq said. “They went so fast, with nothing pulling them. Someone would sit inside — they were nearly all of them covered with roofs, like a little house, but with glass-covered windows all around. And they’d turn a wheel and make the cart turn this way or that. Some of the carts we rode in were as big as houses, long and narrow ones with lots of benches for people to sit on.”
“Consistent with the other boy’s story,” Tvalenn murmured.
The Subtle One asked more questions about the room where they’d first found themselves, and the man they’d seen with the staff. (The Subtle One’s own school of magic didn’t go in for staves; he’d once, when he and Tariq got drunk after a mission, scoffed at mages who depended on them as lazy and unimaginative, and then, getting drunker still, confessed that there were some spells — ones far beyond his ken — for which even the most powerful mages needed a staff as focus.) But the boys hadn’t been very observant; all they could say was that he was middle-aged, bald, and pale of skin like their new bodies, and that his staff was of a dark wood they didn’t recognize.
“It wasn’t palm or lemon,” Saluq said.
“What about your own bodies?” Tariq asked. “Did you have someone watching over them while your souls were in the other world?”
“Didn’t we tell you?” Baltvai said. “The people whose bodies we used, their souls came and lived in our bodies for the two days we were in the other world. The Gray One’s servant who put the spell on us said he would guide them while they were in our world, keep them out of trouble and our bodies safe, and he kept his word — we were with him when we came back, and healthy and sated.”
Ul-Balimmu asked where it was that they had met the Gray One’s servant, and what he looked like. An hour later, after further questions which yielded nothing certain or useful, they set out in the direction the boys had indicated.
It was two more days before they found the Gray One’s servant, or rather, he found them. They met several more people who said they had been to the other world. Their stories were consistent on many points — all mentioned the tall buildings and the fast, donkeyless carts, and all of them, whether camel-centaur or dwarf or human, said they had been human while in the other world, and had seen no non-human people while there. One woman they met told them shyly that both she and her husband had been men while they were in the other world; hearing that, Tariq thought he knew what Saluq and Baltvai were keeping back.
They were sitting one evening in the common room of the inn in a small village near a dwarf warren. Dwarves sat drinking ale around the low tables at one end of the room, while camel-centaurs stood drinking date-wine around the high tables at the other, and humans in between; Tariq and the others sat and stood by one of the human-sized tables. A man in a gray tunic came in, looked around, spoke with one some of the camel-centaurs near the door, and then approached their table.
“I am Barsiq. I hear you have been asking questions about my master,” he said, sitting down in the empty chair next to Tariq.
“Do you serve the Gray One?” ul-Kalsim asked.
“I do. Are you interested in visiting the other world?”
“We are.”
“Hmm... there are five in your party, are there not?”
“Yes — myself, ul-Kalsim; Tvalenn; Tariq; ul-Balimmu; and Sumalm,” nodding toward each as he said their names. Sumalm was a name the Subtle One sometimes went by when he did not wish it to be known he was a mage.
Barsiq nodded thoughtfully. “A party of five may be difficult to match with a party of the same size from the other world,” he said. “But it can be done. It is a matter of time. Come with me, and I will prepare you.”
After they had paid for their meal and drinks, they followed him out of the village, past the irrigated terraces, and past the entrance of the dwarf-warrens, to a deserted place hidden from view by surrounding hills. The Subtle One and ul-Balimmu asked him questions about his master and the magic he would use to send them to the other world, and Tariq and ul-Kalsim asked him questions about the other world, but to the former he mostly answered, “I do not know,” and to the latter, “You will see.”
“All of you stand very still until I say you can move,” he warned them, once they had reached the spot. He walked widdershins around them, taking a bag of blue powder from his tunic pocket and sprinkling it on the ground in a circle around them. Then he watched the sky, licked his finger and held it up to judge the wind (which was not blowing strongly in that hollow), and finally said: “You may return to the inn. I will communicate with the Gray One, and tell him you are ready, and then return to wait with you. He will bring you to the other world as soon as he finds a group of five natives of that world who wish to visit ours.”
“How long might that be?”
Barsiq shrugged. “It may be hours — more likely days. Probably not more than a month. You should all stick close to one another, and to me, as much as possible while we are waiting.”
“Will that affect the spell?” the Subtle One asked.
“No, but it may cause trouble for the visitors from the other world, if one or two of them are separated from their friends and their guide when they arrive.”
So they returned to the inn, and were joined there by the Gray One’s servant a few hours later.
They passed two more days in that village, mostly in the common room of the inn. All of them heeded the man’s advice to stick close together, except for ul-Balimmu, who slipped out each night to wander none knew where, in none knew what shape. But even he stayed with them during the day, and mostly kept to the same camel-centaur form he had assumed when he joined their mission.
One afternoon, when the common room was nearly deserted and the scouts were growing bored beyond reason, Barsiq suddenly started up from his doze and said: “It is nearly time.”
“Have you heard from the Gray One?” ul-Kalsim asked.
“Yes — he has a group of five, and is preparing them now. You will have the best of the bargain, I think,” with a meaningful glance at Tariq’s missing legs, “— they are all young and healthy.” He smiled. “Perhaps when you return we can compare our experiences in the other world. I know you have been frustrated that I would not speak of it, but really, until you have exper-”
Tariq could guess that he was probably going to say something like “...experienced it, you would not believe what I say.” But just then he saw a blue flash of light, and felt momentarily dizzy. The bright blue light was replaced by a dimmer but still bright white light, and he was standing — Standing! On whole, sound legs! He didn’t see them at first, but he felt them!
He was standing in a room, smaller than the common room at the inn. It was less cluttered than the room Baltvai and Saluq had described, with only one cabinet and no other furniture. But the first thing he noticed was that he was surrounded by women — four young women, perhaps twenty years of age, and one woman about his own age or a little younger, with gray hair tied into a bun. None of them wore veils; the younger women wore tight tunics and trousers, and the older woman wore a looser gray blouse and a long black skirt.
Two of the young women were acting strangely, looking down at themselves and cupping hands to their breasts in a most immodest way. Another was looking around the room curiously, just as Tariq was. The fourth was staring at the older woman — who, Tariq now realized, was holding a wooden staff. The Gray One? The boys they had questioned had described the mage as a man, but Tariq had seen the Subtle One assume a variety of appearances for different missions; a mage could look like anything they chose.
He looked down to see his new whole, healthy legs, and got a shock. He was wearing a tight-fitting tunic not unlike those the young women were wearing. And it was tight enough to clearly outline the shapes of two breasts. They were not so large that he could not see past them to the feminine legs covered in tight trousers of a mottled blue fabric, or the flat crotch where those legs joined.
I'll probably post part two in about a week.
When Wasps Make Honey, the sequel to Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes, is now available from Amazon in Kindle format and from Smashwords in EPUB format. See here for more information.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. An earlier version of this story was serialized on the morpheuscabinet and tg_fiction mailing lists in January 2013.
Comments
Travel Agency stories
Nice start to a new series! The characters are interesting, I can't wait to see where you take this.
Cheers
Zapper