The Feline Wizard Read Online Free Page A

it all happened. Right from the top.”
    Prester John frowned. “The ‘top’?”
    “The beginning,” Matt explained. “How long did it take Balkis to get used to Maracanda?”
    “At once, and not at all,” Prester John sighed. He gazed off into space, seeing the events as he spoke of them. “My niece loved the palace and the people instantly, and they rejoiced in her presence. Still, there were moments of melancholy…”
    Prester John's voice trailed off. Matt tried to be reassuring. “That's normal enough in a teenager far from her own land, Your Majesty. There's bound to be the occasional bout of homesickness.”
    Prester John's smile was tight with irony. “But this is her own land, though she never knew it till you brought her here. Still, I cannot be surprised that she thinks of your Frankish land of Allustria as her home, since she grew up there.”
    Matt didn't think the Germanic people of Allustria would have appreciated being called “Frankish,” but they'd had to suffer it during the Crusades of his own universe, too. “She would kind of miss the dense forest and the hundred-year-old oaks—and the mountains.”
    “She did indeed, and she yearned for—” Prester John broke off abruptly with a guilty glance at Matt, who smiled covertly.
    Matt had been aware of Balkis' crush on him. He found himself hoping that wherever she'd been taken, she would find a gentle, handsome young man. “I hope you made sure she wasn't lonely.”
    “I did indeed,” the king averred. “I surrounded her with young men and women of noble birth and set my own son Tashih to entertaining her when I could not. But if I could be with her, I was.”
    His eyes shone with the memory, with besotted fondness, and Matt, watching closely, saw that Balkis hadn't just been the great-niece returned to him by Fortune—she'd been the daughter he had never had, too. “Did the other young folk like her, or belittle her as subtly as they could?”
    “Ah, they adored her. You would expect as much of the young men, for she is very beautiful. However, the women made her one of them instantly.” He shrugged. “Who would not? She is not only beautiful, but also witty, spirited, andgentle. The older people were as entranced as the young, and she soon became the darling of all my courtiers.”
    Matt frowned. “That kind of instant popularity is bound to make someone jealous.”
    Prester John looked up, startled, then turned away, abashed.
    “Someone did get jealous?” Matt asked, his voice low.
    “My son Tashih,” the king admitted, “he who is to become Prester John after me. Oh, he never spoke of it, but I could see it in his eyes when he watched her in the center of a knot of young men and women, chatting and laughing.”
    Matt dreaded the next question, but it had to be asked. “Just how jealous do you think he is?”
    Prester John leaned back and closed his eyes with a weary sigh. “He might perhaps have worried that Balkis could gather a strong enough following to displace him when I die, Lord Wizard. I do not believe that is true, but it is possible.”
    He said it as though Matt had pulled it out of him with pincers, and the wizard felt himself tense at the thought. He knew enough of palace intrigues to believe that the crown prince might very well have wished to rid himself of a potential competitor. It wouldn't have been the first such abduction.
    He couldn't say that to Prester John, of course. “But there was no real sign that he might take action?”
    “Not truly, no.” Prester John looked down at his knees, frowning. “Matters came to a head at dinner one evening a few days ago. It was no state banquet, but our daily informal affair—only my three thousand regular courtiers, and a few casual guests—say a thousand…”
    Matt's head reeled with the numbers. He wondered if Prester John used his dining room as a parade ground when he wanted to drill his troops in bad weather. “I seem to remember such an affair.