by Lucy Tempest
“Had he known what?”
She let out a trembling breath. “Like Adelaide suspected the genie’s wish-granting tampered with my mind and will, made me do things I wouldn’t normally do, I think the same happened to Jumana. That is why everyone warns about the consequences of magic. It seems the magic that made her barren, then reversed it, was too much for her soul. There is a known malady that assails some women after they give birth, with them being inconsolably miserable to the point some entertain ending their lives. In Jumana’s case, the magic seemed to have multiplied this condition a hundred-fold. She once told me she couldn’t bear the weight of her skin, the air that fills her lungs. It was a tragic cost of so many good intentions, starting by her mother’s and ending by hers and Nariman’s.”
As with all the revelations I’d been hit with, this again rewrote so many things I’d made my own theories for, and made me question everything again.
We resumed walking in silence until we finally exited the realm of a thousand doors, or the Valley of Memories as per Cyrus. The light, as I’d suspected, had been changing places. It was now in front of another mountain we found looming over us. Not that it was really one. It was a mountainous pile of giant, cracked-open geodes.
We were a few hundred feet away from the gateway when the simurgh landed before it with the usual earthshaking thump, the ground beneath making that drum-like echo. It ruffled its feathers ominously as it stalked towards us, its eyes blood-red.
Then it noticed my mother behind me, and its voice hissed in my mind, surprised. “Where did you get this one?”
I tried to deflect its disturbing attention off her with my body. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t” Cyrus stepped in front of us, arms spread in protection. “We got to the gateway, so let’s get this over with.”
“You will not go through the gateway.”
Cyrus walked ahead, as if to meet it halfway in a duel. “Of course we will. We answered your riddles correctly and you must now give us the third one. Once we answer it, you’re bound to answer our wish. That’s when you’ll get your wish, too.”
“That I’d be free as you hypothesized?” said the simurgh, leisurely pacing towards him. “But I won’t be. I am the very same guardian that every traveler before you has encountered. Alabasta is my eternal post. I can’t leave unless something more powerful than myself wills it.”
“Then why did you agree to my explanation?” Cyrus demanded. “Why did you negotiate with us and loosen your rules to accommodate us?”
The bird cocked its head calmly. “Because you were the first one in my very long existence to not cower before me. You were also the first two to fight over the opportunity to answer my riddles and get eaten if you failed to answer them. You intrigued me.”
“You tricked us!” Cyrus shook off my persistent tug. His antagonism had worked before, but it didn’t seem it would again.
“It’s you who made a mockery of my generosity with your dishonesty.”
“What dishonesty?” Cyrus growled.
“You not only brought in a third I did not permit, you brought her from beyond the path I drew you. You will put her—” It pointed its beak at my mother. “—back where you found her.”
“We’re doing no such thing!” Cyrus shouted.
“There must be a new deal we can make,” I cried. “One that does have something you want!”
“There’s no deal I’d make with the likes of you. Not now.”
The way it said that, the way it looked at me, solidified the suspicion I’d had from the moment it landed. “This isn’t about my mother’s presence. You came here already intending to deny us passage. What made you change your mind?”
“Intentions!” It unfolded to its full, dwarfing height, its fierceness bringing my heart bombarding my throat. “I might not know those, but I witnessed the havoc yours caused. I became certain your new intentions would cause more when I found you wearing this and realized what it was.”
Before I could realize it meant my ring, it leaped at me, beak wide open. It clamped it shut with a jarring snap, missing my hand by an inch.
With a shriek, I burst into a run, dragging my mother behind me. Cyrus roared at our back, dragging its attention, giving us the opening to escape its second swoop. We zigzagged towards the base of the mountain and I hoped we’d distract it among us enough to reach the gateway. I had no idea if we could jump into it without the simurgh’s blessing, but that seemed to be the only thing left to do.
I looked over my shoulder to see where Cyrus was and I tripped over a rock. I fell in an uncoordinated mass, slamming my chin on the rough dirt and grazing my every joint. My mother landed on her knees, hands raised as she desperately muttered under her breath. Sparks fizzled between her fingers.
“This place is leaching off my magic,” she cried out.
I tried to get up, but my head was spinning and I could only wheeze, “Mama, run!”
“I will never leave you again!” she shouted back, brighter sparks creating short-lived webs between her fingers.
I, too, tried to use the unreliable magic on my own finger, making wishes that the simurgh calmed down, that it led us to the Cave of Wonders.
The simurgh only swooped above us, its voice thundering in my head. “Give me the ring or I’ll take it with your hand!”
The instant it was close enough to do that, the simurgh turned its head away and set its feet back on the ground, squawking in pain.
Cyrus stood behind it, teeth clenched, chest heaving, with one of its bronze feathers clutched in his hand. “Get away from her.”
It lunged at him and he jumped back, backhanding its head with all his might, angering it even more. It stalked after him, flapping its wings menacingly.
“If we give you the ring, will you honor our deal?” he shouted as he evaded it.
It squawked as it charged him again. “No. You must be punished for bringing it here.”
He bounded out of its reach, panted, “How is wearing a ring worth reneging on your deal? On your duty to all travelers who land on your doorstep?”
It swiped a wing at him, barely missing taking off his head as he ducked. “You really don’t know what lives in that ring, do you?”
Cyrus ran towards it, confusing it before he threw himself on the ground and slid between its feet. He slashed at its legs with his scimitar, but it didn’t leave a scratch.
He ended up behind it, yelling, “What does?”
“What you came all the way here for!” Its shriek blew across the arid plain and echoed within the giant geodes above us. “What you will never release.”
What did it even mean? We hadn’t come here by choice, didn’t know what we were looking for. And my ring had nothing in it to release!
Still holding the feather, his useless scimitar sheathed again, Cyrus now clung to its beak, forcing it shut. But his arms would soon slip and its jaws would snap over his head. I had to distract it, buy him a way out.
I crawled until I was under it, yanked at a golden feather, tearing it out. So we couldn’t injure it, but we could pluck it.
The simurgh reared back with a deafening screech, and I scrambled from beneath it before it squashed me, but remained within easy reach of a lethal peck.
Cyrus somersaulted over the simurgh’s back, hooking an arm around its neck, steering it away from me.
This couldn’t go on forever. We’d run out of ways to distract it from one another. Also, that didn’t give us a way to escape. Surrendering the ring wouldn’t do a thing either.
It threw Cyrus off its back, tossing him over my head. He slammed against the open-mouthed rocks with a sickening crack and landed feet away from me. He rose to his knees at once, but he met my eyes as the simurgh closed in on us. We exchanged the knowledge.
There was nothing more we could do.
I shuffled towards him on all fours. I had to be beside him when the end came.
My mother suddenly hurtled in front of us, blocking its path, a blinding blue-white light exploding from her palms.
It flapped away shrieking and Cyrus whispered, “If it wants the ring that badly, it must consider it dangerous. See if it’s working again!”
It hadn’t been just now. But all I could do was make one last desperate wish.
Crying out for my mother had her hurling herself beside me. I linked arms with her and Cyrus, raised the ring to my quivering lips and breathed out against its stone.
“Whatever you are in there, I wish the three of us get safely to the Cave of Wonders!”
The simurgh shot towards us, its beak yawning straight for my face. It was no longer settling for a hand, going for the head that was giving it so much trouble.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the dark depths of the end between its jaws.
A crack reverberated through me. But it wasn’t my neck snapping. It was the ground beneath us. My eyes tore open to see a rift opening a second before it swallowed us.
Chapter Twenty-Six
We plummeted in silence.
I was screaming, but no sound escaped my throat.
We fell for what felt like forever, with nothing to see except the unending darkness of the bowels of the earth.
Suddenly, our fall came to a thudding end.
It was nothing like the splattering force I’d expected. We only bounced off a semi-hard surface two feet in the air, before dropping back on it, softly.
Cyrus still had my entire body almost covered in his. If we’d landed how I’d thought we would, his protection wouldn’t have mattered, and we would have both shattered to pieces. But it was the thought that counted, that he’d offered his own body and life to protect mine.
I held onto on him tighter—then shrieked. He’d been holding me, and I’d been holding my mother. Where was she?
“Mama?”
My scream echoed a dozen times before I heard her voice beside me. “I’m here.”
I blinked in the dimness and saw her rising to her knees a few feet away.
I slumped against Cyrus as I asked, “Was that your magic coming back or…?”
“The rift, and the landing?” She shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. I couldn’t do more than blast a bit of light at that creature.”
“That bit of light stopped it from chomping us to pieces.” I shimmied to a sitting position. “But even if your magic isn’t working as it should, we escaped the simurgh and we’re all fine.”
I didn’t add, for now.
“Is it me or did a carpet just break our fall?” Cyrus’s incredulity echoed around us.
I followed his gaze below us. In the dim, sourceless light I did see a carpet.
I couldn’t see its pattern clearly, but it was antique, with tasseled edges and a busy surface. And it had broken a mile long plummet in the softest way imaginable. I’d had a much harder landing when I’d fallen from the second-floor window of Ella’s mansion into the shrubs.
I blinked. It remained there. “It’s a carpet alright.”
I stretched to check beyond its edge. It was hovering high in the air, all by itself. Judging by the illuminated circle at the bottom, above a hundred-foot drop.
“Err…neither of you are afraid of heights, are you?” I asked them.
She moved to look where I had. “Not particularly, why…” Her jaw dropped. “Oh!”
“The carpet is flying,” he stated matter-of-factly. “This is a flying carpet.”
My mother looked around. “You think it meant to catch us?”
“We should ask it,” he said.
“In case it answers only three questions too or something, I have a better one for it.” I cleared my throat. “Carpet? If you can understand us, do you mind putting us down?”
And just like that, it began a slow and steady descent that still scared me into clinging onto them both for dear life.
The carpet stopped a foot above the floor, in the center of what turned out of to be a massive octagonal space at the bottom of the endless shaft. The golden illumination came from eight, large, ancient lanterns fastened to the walls, their glass fogged with impurities, their light pulsating as if it were hundreds of encased fireflies. But the walls were solid, no openings, no cracks even.
We’d fallen into an inescapable prison cell.
The first thing I did was wish for the ring to show us a way out as it had with Cyrus.
Nothing happened. Seemed it felt it had done us a great favor and was resting now.
Cyrus swung his legs off the carpet and stood up looking around, before going to feel around the walls. “There must be a disguised opening like back in the palace.”
“I doubt you’ll find the same mechanism here.”
He stopped tapping the wall, looked over his shoulder. “Tell me—as a thief, was giving up an option when something you wanted appeared hard to get?”
At the word “thief” my mother eyebrows shot up.
I stalled the thousand questions leaping into her eyes with a whispered, “Later”.
To him, I said, “I only gave up when all my plans, and their failsafes failed.”
“Then why are you giving up before even trying now?”
“Maybe because we keep jumping from one fire into the next?”
“Ada—Adelaide…” he started carefully, as if testing how my name felt on his tongue.
To me, it was sheer pleasure, hearing him say it. It felt like he was accepting the part of me he’d recently discovered.
I still started saying, “Call me Ada” when he repeated my name firmly. “Adelaide—I know you’re beyond stressed and tired, and this is a scary situation, but I need to you try something for me.”
I would have blurted out, “Anything.” But with my mother beside me, I amended it to, “What’s that?”
“Forget everything that happened in the last few days. Focus on where we are, the same way you always did on a heist.”
Confused, I quirked an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
He walked back, helped me off the carpet before moving behind me and cupping my elbows. I dropped my heavy, aching head on his shoulder. “What would you have done if you were caught and put in the dungeons? Somewhere sealed off like this?”
His steadiness and support relaxed me, had me push aside pessimism and dread to make room for analysis.
Focusing on the walls I thought out loud, “I would first think that no place people built is totally sealed. This place and the shaft we fell through are too geometric, so can’t be natural caverns. They were built, so must serve some purpose, and with that, a way in and out.”
“Keep going,” he encouraged.
“I wouldn’t consider the mile-long drop an out for this place, so there must be something else. Also, usually bare spaces with high ceilings or vents are used for storage. But since this place is totally empty, it’s probably an antechamber to where things are stored.”
He nodded. “This is the equivalent of the empty chamber leading to the vault.”
“You have it all figured out.” I teased as I moved away to check the walls myself. “Then what do you need my help for?”
His fond gaze grew warmer. “I need it because your successful history as a thief means you have an eye for details most miss.” Who would have thought that Prince Cyaxares would be so enamored with the thief side of me! “And as you’ve remained uncaught, it proves you can think on your feet, and come up with alternatives on the fly. While I’m used to taking my time in analytical and problem-solving endeavors, and we can’t waste any now.”
Wishing I could for once validate his trust in me, I nodded, spread my arms and started measuring the walls.
I finally spun around, heart pattering. “This side and the one across from it are the same size…and smaller than the other six.”
“Any idea why?”
“It should indicate either one or both have some different characteristic, probably a door. But since there are
no levers in the lanterns or loose bricks in this solid rock and it doesn’t respond to pressure, maybe…” A thought hit me. “…maybe if we push simultaneously?”
Our eyes locked across the space, in eagerness and trepidation. Then we both pushed.
The wall beneath my hands snapped up so fast I fell through the opening it left behind.
Blinding light washed over me, burning my dark-adjusted eyes.
I raised my hand protectively as my mother kneeled beside me, shawl covering her eyes. “Are you alright, dear?”
Cyrus helped me up, shielding us both with his body. “Ada, you did it!”
“You would have figured it out…” I stopped, what I’d stumbled into coming into focus.
My jaw dropped and wouldn’t come back up.
“You found it, Ada! You found the Cave of Wonders!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When I heard the word ‘cave’ I thought of a dark hole in the side of a mountain—craggy and crawling with bugs, with stalactites dangling dangerously and matted with giant spiderwebs. Basically, what I experienced in Mount Alborz. To my mind, Cave of Wonders only exchanged ghouls with ifrits.
But to call the place that spread into infinity below us a cave was an insult.
This dwarfed the palace vault, what I’d thought an unending chamber of wonders. It was easily a thousand times its size. And while the vault had its treasure haphazardly strewn, this was perfectly organized, lit by a trail of magnificent chandeliers that seemed to go on as far as my bleary eyes could see, every section divided into squares as large as the palace ballrooms, each a different color scheme and architecture, with its treasure separated into smaller squares, with passages in between.
As we descended into the boundless space, I saw a square that had mosaic floors and murals that held marble sculptures. Another had golden fences that protected jewel-encrusted weapons and suits of armor, and giant statues holding masses of gold coins and jewels in their hands and laps. A dormant fountain sat in one square, its centerpiece a merman on a giant clam holding the reins of dolphins. Another held a set of claw-footed furniture, a mahogany bookshelf stacked with leather-bound volumes that sat next to a giant alabaster statue of a cat with a gold earring, and a ten-foot-tall grandfather clock with a diamond pendulum.