I stood up and listened next to her.
“Someone is out there,” I whispered. “What if it’s one of the guards injured and looking for help?”
“And what if it’s The Vizier waiting to pounce on us?” Jamal said, slipping between us.
I faced him. “We are the heads of this kingdom. What kind of royals are we that we are hiding away like frightened animals at the worst possible time?”
“The kind that want to stay alive,” Jamal retorted.
“We have a duty!” I said, knocking the wedged piece of wood, which turned out to be a doorstop, onto the floor. I tugged the handle, and as I did, a sharp shock ran up my arm.
“What is it?” Jamal asked his eyes wide as I pulled back my arm and gave it a rub.
“I couldn’t open the door. The Vizier has put a spell on it. All that time arguing about whether we should get out and we couldn’t even if we wanted to.” I would have laughed if I didn’t want to cry so much.
“What now?” Jamal asked, turning to the others. I looked at the expressions on their faces. My mother was lost again. Her eyes were blank. The change of scenery had made her lose her grip on reality, and I doubted it would come back anytime soon. I did notice my father holding her hand, which made me smile.
“Aladdin, what do you think?”
My father looked around him. “These shelving units are not bolted to the floor. We could use one to try and ram the door down.”
Jamal made to grab the shelves, but Genie stopped him. “A ram won’t get through magic. Only magic can do this.”
Jamal stepped back to let him through. Genie put his hand to the door handle and gripped it in his fingers. Blue sparks filled the air causing the rest of us to take a step back. He contorted his face into a look of either concentration or pain. I didn’t want to know which. The muscles of his arms bulged as he put his effort into opening the door. Color drained from his face as the blue sparks intensified. He let go and fell to the floor.
I ran to him, but he shrugged me off. “I’m fine.”
His words said one thing, but the look on his face told a different story. I sat next to him and snuggled against his chest. His heartbeat was erratic, and his arms around me trembled slightly, but it was less than ten minutes before he stood up to try again.
Again and again, the same thing happened. He tried four times, each time falling to the floor. His skin paled considerably as he fell to the floor again.
“No more!” I demanded. “Look at you. It’s going to kill you!”
“I’m stronger than that,” he said, managing a weak smile. I stood and looked at the others.
“Genie is done. He can’t open the door. We’ll have to try to ram it like Jamal suggested.” I made to pull the shelving unit away from the wall, but no one came to help.
“What?” I asked as five pairs of eyes stared at me.
“If Genie can’t open the door, how can these flimsy shelves help?” Jamal asked softly.
“So what? We just stay here until we die? Is that your plan?”
Jamal shifted his weight from one foot to another and looked to Aladdin for help.
Aladdin shrugged, offering no help at all.
“There is one other way,” Jamal offered. “You still have one wish left. Genie’s wishes are much more powerful than his normal magic. You could just wish us all out.”
“No! Not a chance.”
“Why not? You’ve just said that we’ll die if we stay in here.”
The truth was I wasn’t prepared to trade Genie’s freedom for ours. “There must be another way!”
Jamal shook his head. “There isn’t.”
Anger swelled in my gut. Genie wasn’t the only one who was magic. I had magic too. Yes, touching the door handle had hurt, but it had hurt Genie too, and he’d kept holding on until the pain got to be too much. I barrelled Jamal out of the way and grabbed the handle. Magic shot up my arm, but I held fast.
“Stand back!” I yelled as my body went up in flames. The magic running through me made my own magic uncontrollable. And yet, I held on as the others huddled in the far corner of the pantry for fear of getting burned. I pushed down on the handle, feeling a little give. It wasn’t much, but there was some movement.
A hand joined mine. Genie screamed as my own flames licked up his arm. That, combined with the magic now pulsing through both of us, was an agony I couldn’t bear. Not only was I in pain, I was hurting Genie. I tried to pull back, but Genie’s hand on mine made that impossible. I had two choices. Either argue with him as he burned to death or put my energy into what we were both doing.
I yelled out as I pushed down, helped by the force of Genie’s hand on mine.
Our screams mingled together as one as we pushed, and the handle finally went down, opening the door. Genie and I fell right through the door to the ground.
I closed my eyes as the sounds of chaos erupted around me. I heard the sound of water being splashed, but I was too exhausted to open my eyes. Something wet...a towel or something similar was thrown over my hand, which I realized was still holding onto Genie’s. Or Genie was holding onto mine; I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t much care. The force of all the magic running through me, being expended by me, had all but knocked me out.
I felt someone cradle my head and try and force a few drops of water into my mouth. I thought it was Genie until I realized he couldn’t possibly hold my hand and cradle me at the same time. I dragged my eyelids up and found Jamal looking down at me, a frown on his face.
“Thank all the gods. Here drink this.”
I tried to sit up, but as I moved, the whole room seemed to spin around me. I had to let him drip the water into my mouth.
“The Vizier?” I mumbled when my lips were suitably wet enough to speak.
“He’s not here. The corridor is a mess, and something smells of burning, but the palace is quiet.”
I used my free hand to grab hold of Jamal’s arm and pull myself up. The once white corridor was a mess of burn marks and rubble. I inhaled the sooty smell, which could have been left over from my fight with The Vizier.
Beside me, Genie groaned. I looked over to find my mother wiping his head with a cloth.
“Is he burned?” I asked, finally letting go of his hand. His skin wasn’t blemished at all despite me making his arm go up in flames only moments before.
“I don’t think so,” my mother said her voice panicked, “but he’s not waking up. I don’t know what to do.”
I’d never seen my mother panic. Not once in my entire life, but she wasn’t the person I used to know.
I half crawled away from Jamal and to Genie as the others ran around the corner.
Genie’s eyes flickered as I kissed his mouth lightly.
“Wake up, my love.”
The corners of his mouth curled slowly into a half-smile. I gripped his hand again as he opened his eyes.
“The guards are dead,” my father announced.
Behind him, Freya spoke. “Those that aren’t dead are gone. The palace is empty, but it’s a mess. The basement is full of bodies. Walls have been blasted through.”
“Any sign of The Vizier?” Jamal asked, tension etched into his features.
“No.”
“Let’s do a proper search. Gaia, are you ok? Can you look after Genie while we search the palace?”
I nodded, too scared to speak. The Vizier could be anywhere, biding his time.
I heard Jamal issuing instructions all the way down the corridor. I held my breath as his voice became quieter and quieter.
“We can’t let them go alone,” Genie said, trying to pull himself up. Like I had, just moments before, he faltered and fell back. I picked up the cloth my mother had just been using and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I nearly killed you back there,” I remarked, trying to hold the tears back.
“I used magic to shield my skin as well as the magic to open the door. I’m fine. Look...”
He held his arm
to show me. There was not a mark on it, but it was clear that he wasn’t fine. His face was sheet white, and his eyes sunken into his head. His skin felt like paper, and though it wasn’t burnt, I could see the blue veins beneath it.
“What is happening to you?”
He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. I heard a rattle in his throat as he did.
“I’m dying, Gaia. My body is flesh and blood, but each time I use magic, it becomes less so. I told you that I was becoming more like a genie every day. A genie isn’t human. I started off as human, and thanks to your father, I have had eighteen years of being a human again. But the transformation is almost complete. Once I become fully genie again, I’ll not need to eat, to sleep. I won’t be able to touch, to feel. The person you know will die. I’ll still be here, but I’ll be like a spirit. Everything I am will cease to exist.”
Tears fell down my face. “I wish...” my voice cracked as I spoke.
“Not yet, Gaia. Not yet. Help me up.”
“Why won’t you let me free you? I can stop all this.”
“You might be able to stop me from becoming a slave by making me human, but then what? The Vizier is still out there somewhere.”
“Wrong!” A menacing voice echoed down the corridor. “I’m in here, but good guess. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. I have the two of you right where I want you. The genie that has the power to grant me anything my heart desires and the girl who defeated me years ago. Where is it?”
He strode toward us and held out his hand. I looked up at him in confusion.
“Where is the lamp? I know you have control of the genie. I need the lamp.”
My mind flickered to the last place I’d seen the lamp. It had been locked in the pantry with us, the door to which was only a couple of feet behind us.
“I’m not telling you,” I said, standing up and staring The Vizier down. He looked so majestic from a distance, but up close, he had a sinister look in his eyes.
“Hmm,” he replied, obviously not bothered in the slightest that I was standing up to him. He towered over me, and the way his eyes bored into mine sent shivers down my spine. “Your friends didn’t have it on them, so one of you two has it.”
He dragged his eyes up and down my body before landing them right back on my face.
“I still don’t understand,” he hissed. “Even knowing what I know about you, it seems inconceivable that a little girl such as yourself could beat me. A baby as you were then.”
“What do you know about me?”
The Vizier laughed. “I know you are desperate to find out. I know everything. As soon as I saw you in Urbis, I guessed what you were up to. It was a coincidence, you know. Me being there at the same time as you. Connected, for certain, but imagine my surprise when I saw my little nemesis running around the streets looking for her history.”
“It doesn’t matter. If I defeated you before, it means I can do it again.”
The Vizier narrowed his eyes at me. “You couldn’t be more wrong. You have no idea who you are, and you have no idea why you defeated me the first time. I know how you did. I might not be able to really believe it, but I know how you were able to fell me all those years ago. I also know that you don’t have the ability to do it again.”
I wanted to slap the smug look off his face.
“Want to try me?” I said, pulling back my arm ready to shoot fire at him.
He had the audacity to laugh again.
“More fire? It’s getting rather boring, don’t you think? The others have much more interesting abilities.”
It annoyed me that he was getting to me. I hated that he knew more about me than I did, but I couldn’t let him know that. I needed to stop him from getting the lamp.
Pulling my energy in was so much harder than it had been before. I’d used so much just opening the door, but it was enough to send a small fireball his way. As I was so close, I was able to hit him right in the center of his face. He recoiled as his hair set on fire. He responded by sending jets of purple light toward me. I ducked as one narrowly missed me. A pair of strong arms wrapped around my waist and began pulling me back. Genie dragged me right past the pantry and into the huge kitchen.
“We need to go back!” I hissed as genie pulled me past the large ovens that cooked for the palace inhabitants and staff. “The lamp!”
“He won’t go for the lamp. If there is a choice between you and me, he’d rather lose me. He wants you. He’ll come after you, and when he gets you, he’ll go back for the lamp.”
Genie’s words made no sense to me, but he was right. The Vizier stepped through the kitchen doors we’d just run through. He raised his arm and sent a jet of magic to the doors at the opposite end of the kitchen, sealing them shut. We were trapped. The only way out was the doorway directly behind The Vizier.
He walked slowly, deliberately toward us, a chilling smile on his face. He knew that we were trapped, and he knew we were both low on magic. He also had a good idea that the lamp was in the pantry down the corridor.
I pulled a pan from one of the stoves and threw it at him. He lifted his arm and deflected it with magic before it even got close. It hit the wall and crashed to the ground with a metallic clang. I backed up, pushing Genie backward with me.
“Wish us out!” Genie whispered in my ear.
I shook my head almost surreptitiously. “No.”
“He’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“So let him!” I replied, this time out loud. I grabbed a knife from a knife block and threw it at The Vizier, following it up with the rest of the knives.
He blocked every single one, and just like the pan had, they clattered to the ground.
I sent another fireball, but this one did no damage at all. And all the while, he was getting closer and closer. He had a gleam in his eye and a smirk on his face. He wasn’t even attacking. Just deflecting my attacks. He didn’t need to. He was literally backing us into a corner. We had nowhere to go.
“Wish us out of here!” Genie whispered again, this time more urgently. “I can’t protect you unless you make a wish. I need you to wish it. I’m not strong enough without wishes.”
“I’m not sending you back into that lamp!” I hissed, stepping back, further still.
The Vizier lifted his arm, almost lazily, readying himself to strike. Genie and I were like a couple of baby mice in the eyes of a hawk.
I tried pulling my energy in, but I was spent. There was nothing left. I desperately needed to recharge, but there was no time.
A flash of light flew past my left ear and hit The Vizier in the chest. He stumbled backward, clutching his chest, before tripping and falling backward. Genie grabbed my hand, and we jumped over The Vizier and back out into the corridor. Almost immediately, I felt a drag on my arm. I looked back to see Genie bent double. His breaths were coming in great heaves.
“Come on!” I encouraged, trying to pull him, but it was no use. Every bolt of magic he used brought him closer to death, and he’d just used everything he had to help us escape.
“Gaia!” I looked up to see Jamal at the other end of the corridor.
“The Vizier!” I wheezed. “He’s in the kitchen. Help me move Genie. He’s too exhausted to walk.”
Jamal began to run toward us, but before he’d gotten anywhere close, a purple jet of light arced over Genie and me and hit Jamal, sending him flying backward down the corridor and into the wall at the end. After hitting the wall, he crumpled to the floor.
I looked behind me in a panic to see The Vizier. I threw everything I had at him as I dragged Genie down the corridor, but my fire was nothing more than tiny flames that he flicked away.
“Jamal!” wailed Freya as she rounded the corner.
“Go back!” I screamed at her as she fell to her knees beside Jamal’s body.
It was too late. The Vizier repeated his action. Freya didn’t have far to go, but she hit the wall and fell on Jamal. Neither of them moved.
“Stop it
!” I screamed over my shoulder to The Vizier, only to be met with a cackle.
Genie pulled himself up and turned to face The Vizier.
“Let her go, Akeem,” he said, pulling me behind him. “You can have me. The lamp is in there.” He nodded to the open doorway of the pantry. “Take me and let her go.”
“What are you doing?” I cried, trying to get past him. I wasn’t about to let him give himself up. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be, but he was quick enough to move to block me.
“You use my name, Genie,” The Vizier said, amusement in his voice. “It’s been a long time since I last heard it. Eighteen years or so. The last eighteen years have been particularly bad for me, thanks to your girlfriend. Hand her over, Genie.”
“No. You have me. You either get the lamp and enslave me or you fight me. There is no other option.”
“Fight you?” The Vizier laughed. “You can barely stand. I could knock you over with my little finger.”
As he spoke, we continued to back down the corridor toward Jamal and Freya. Each step we took backward, The Vizier took one forward. He paused outside the doorway to the pantry.
“Run!” Genie yelled, pushing me back. He dashed toward The Vizier and launched himself at him. The pair of them crashed to the floor. Genie laid his fists into The Vizier’s face. He had the element of surprise on his side, but it wasn’t just his magical strength that was waning. This was taking everything he had. I wavered for a second. Genie wanted me to run. He was literally laying his life down for me, but I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself just to save my life. I ran toward the brawling pair and aimed.
Neither noticed me as Genie pummelled The Vizier’s face, turning it more purple than his robes.
The Vizier tried to pull himself out from under Genie. It was clear he was used to fighting with magic and not fists. I only had seconds to react. The second he got his hands free from under Genie, he’d be able to use his magic again, and with Genie being so close, it wouldn’t take much to kill him.
I had the fire in my hand ready to throw, but in the chaos, I could just as easily hit Genie.
Gaia: Daughter of Aladdin Page 31