by J. R. Rain
“Same here. It’s a gut thing. But there’s one to go.”
But there wasn’t. The fourth rider, seeing the fate of the others, was racing away.
“Son of a leprous cur!” I swore. “He’ll carry the word back, and twice as many will be on our tail in hours.”
“So we had better get moving,” Jewel said. “Fortunately we now have three fine fresh horses, and the supplies they carry, like food and water.”
“Good point,” I agreed. “Let’s see to Jabeer.”
But Jabeer was now beyond hope of recovery. “You tried to warn me,” he gasped. “To save me. I want you to have my carpet.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t take your rug,” I protested.
“Take it! Use it! You must! It’s—” But he was unable to finish. He choked, shuddered, and died.
“We’ll have to bury him,” Jewel said sadly.
“Yes. What was he trying to say about his carpet? It looks nice enough, but surely he would prefer to have it with him in the afterlife. We should bury it with him.”
“I’m not sure of that,” she said. “There was something he said once. I thought he was joking, but maybe he wasn’t.”
“What did he say?”
“That it’s magic.”
“She’s right, Master,” Faddy murmured in my ear. “It is a flying carpet. I recognize the weave. This is a rare gift indeed.”
I stared at it. Could this be true?
Chapter Five
We buried Jabeer in a shallow grave, using the flat blades of the curved scimitars as shovels. Luckily, the sand was loose, which made burying easy. Unfortunately, it would also make excavating his body that much easier for the desert critters.
Hopefully, the three dead soldiers would keep such critters satiated, and leave Jabeer alone, although I did not hold out much hope for that.
Jewel wept for her old friend, but as soon as we were packed and mounted on the soldiers’ fine war horses, her cheeks were dry and her jaw was set determinedly.
The oasis wouldn’t be safe, not now. In fact, not much in this area would be safe. There were reports of fierce nomadic tribes that made sport of wayward travelers; that is, using their heads in wretched games. Or so people claimed. There were also reports that hidden within these foothills was a secret gateway to the land of djinn. A portal, as some called it, that led to a wondrous, fantastical, verdant land with all sorts of magical creatures. I had my doubts, although Faddy seemed to believe this account, too. As far as I knew, the ifrit had never seen such a land, having little memory of his existence prior to being bound to his ring since its creation eons ago. The very ring that now rested upon my right index finger. Nomadic warriors or not, magical lands or not, we needed to get away from the oasis and take our chances in the hills.
And so, with the sun setting beyond the western landscape, we followed a rocky path that sometimes appeared through the sandy dunes, a path that led toward the shimmering, distant foothills.
Once, in the far distance behind us, I saw a troop of soldiers appear. I immediately led the way around a rare rocky outcropping, but was pleased to see the soldiers take a different path, one that led back toward the outpost from which we had come.
I summoned Faddy immediately, suspecting the ifrit had had something to do with this. I expressed my suspicions, and the lesser djinn confirmed them, unable to lie to me.
“I erased your tracks, master, and, instead created a false trail, one that leads back to Al Bura.”
“I thought I told you to leave well enough alone,” I whispered to him.
“If you would like, I could remove the false trail and lead the soldiers back here.”
I sighed. I had made it a point long ago to use the djinn as little as possible. Often, not all went as planned, and sometimes the ifrit fouled up more than he helped. Besides, it was not good for a man to rely so heavily on such a creature. It made a man less sharp, less resourceful, and less a man.
“No, you did good, Faddy. Thank you.”
Faddy did not often physically appear, but when he did it was usually as a young man. He would not appear in this situation, as his existence would be difficult to explain to Jewel, and I rarely spoke of my djinn to anyone. After all, men would kill for such a helpful being. Or, as some would call him, a slave. I did not treat Faddy as a slave. All beings, magical or not, deserved fair treatment. I did not know what powerful magics kept him bound to the ring, but that did not mean I had to make his existence a miserable one. Faddy once confided to me that some of his masters had not been so considerate, and that he had done things he wished to forget.
“Since I have you here, Faddy,” I said, “could you confirm that we are on the right course to find the back road.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Oh, please.”
“I shall return shortly, master.”
I gritted my teeth at being called master, but let it slide. I was not a master. I was just a man with a magic ring.
A man, of course, who had once been king.
I shook my head and let the thought go. The thought was a painful one, and it brought up emotions in me that I wanted to forget.
Behind me trailed three of the horses. They would need water as well. It would be best to leave behind such horses, true, but even I could not treat a creature so cruelly. I would not let a living creature die of thirst in such a wasteland, and the oasis we had just left would not support such creatures for very long. For better or for worse, they would trek with us until we found a suitable place to leave them behind.
Remarkably, Jewel took the lead, looking back often and urging me on. If the woman lacked anything, it was patience. I complied, not wishing to face her fury, snapping the reins of my fine mount, and pulling along the trailing pack horses.
Faddy returned shortly, appearing invisibly by my side. “Stay upon this rocky trail, and you will soon come upon a wider road, one that will lead through the mountains.”
“And eventually to Samarkand?”
“Yes, master.”
Samarkand had a reputation, one that I had not heeded, and for that I have suffered ever since. For it was there that my wife and child were killed. It was there that my life came crumbling down around me. It was there that everything changed, and not for the better.
It was there, after all, that I abandoned my kingdom, and my people.
We continued on, and as the sun dipped below the approaching foothills, I convinced Jewel that we must make camp, or risk breaking a horse’s ankle. The horse’s ankle did not seem to concern her much, until I reminded her that if we traveled on foot we would, more than likely, never make it out of the desert alive.
She didn’t like it, but she acquiesced.
We made camp under a sheltering rock overhang, at the base of the first of a series of foothills that would lead higher and higher until at last we were traveling through mountainous crags. For now, we found some comfort and protection from the cold wind that whipped to life with the setting of the sun.
I provided the horses with some of our valuable water, knowing full well that our supply of it would not last for long. I resisted the urge to ask Faddy to scout ahead. I would soon find out for myself what lay beyond.
As a moderate wind, alternately hot and cold, wound its way over the empty hillside, I made a small fire beneath the overhang, certain it would be shielded from curious eyes, although it was hard to imagine anyone else out here. At least, anyone sane.
The woman was proving to be more trouble than she was worth. A single gold coin hardly seemed worth attacks from heavily armed soldiers and risking one’s life in these empty quarters.
As I added fuel to the fire—dry desert grass and the occasional twigs—she watched me from the far recess of the overhang. I felt her eyes one me as I rummaged through the soldiers’ bag and found dried meats and dates. I handed some to her and she simply glanced at them, unconcerned.
“You should eat,” I said.
“No, I
should be searching for my son.”
I thought about that, gnawing on what I assumed was dried beef. Then again, it could have been anything. My stomach didn’t seem to mind, either way.
“Your son is in Samarkand with his father, is he not?”
She nodded but did not look at me. Her fingers twitched and seemed about to reach for the food, but she seemed too troubled to eat. She would eat when she was hungry enough.
I said, “So he is safe then, no?”
Now she looked at me, turning her full gaze at me. Her flashing almond-shaped eyes caught the firelight and returned it to me a thousandfold. “He is most certainly not safe.” Her voice shook, and I saw her clawed hand scoop some loose desert sand.
“But he is with his fath—”
“His father has no concern for his safety. Trust me.”
The wind picked up. Sand sprinkled over me, and a low moan came from seemingly everywhere. The small hair on my neck stood on end. I knew the sound and I knew the feeling. There were old spirits here. Whether good or ill, remained to be seen.
I was now working on my first date. Still, she had not touched her food. The horses along the perimeter snorted. They would make for a good warning system. Faddy would, too, for that matter, if I commanded him to. For now, I would use the horses.
“Tell me about his father,” I said.
“I would rather not.”
I leaned back on an elbow near the fire. Jewel, I noticed, was about as far away from me as she could get. Did I smell that bad? I closed my eyes and listened to the fire crackle.
I know a thing or two about people. Ignore them long enough and it’s all you can do to shut them up later. I waited, exhausted, close to sleep, when she finally spoke.
“His father is the son of a sheik,” she said. “I was the daughter of an important amir, and our families agreed our union would be a good one.”
“So you did not marry for love?”
“Does anyone?”
I thought of my dead wife, a woman I had loved more than life itself, and said nothing on that score.
“Go on,” I said.
“We had a son and we had a good life. Money, servants, a beautiful home at the edge of a resplendent lake. We had the finest things but, apparently, it was not enough for my ex-husband.”
She explained further. Her husband, who had proven to be quite cruel, had always been inclined toward more and more power. Eventually his father was found dead, and her husband—Amir Ibrahim—had immediately assumed control of the vast tribe. But Jewel had always suspected her husband had murdered his own father to gain control. Now, of course, she was certain of it.
“But that does not explain why he would be a threat to his own son,” I said. I had sat up at this point. She was sitting forward, too, not quite as morose as before, but certainly not a woman with any joy in her heart.
She smiled bitterly. “My ex-husband, it seems, will stop at nothing to gain power.”
“What does that mean?”
“He has made a deal with the devil.”
“I don’t understand.”
“By this time tomorrow night, he will offer up his own son as a blood sacrifice.”
I sat straighter. I was not sure I had heard her correctly. “Did you say a sacrifice?”
But she was not looking at me. She had retreated deeper within herself and now I was beginning to sense the reason for her extreme haste.
She said, “I only found out about it days before, from one who had shown kindness to me during my imprisonment.”
“We are at least a three day’s ride to Samarkand,” I said, and then added, “My lady,” since I knew now she was of royalty.
“Don’t my lady me. Out here, I’m not a lady. I’m a mother, and one way or another we will reach my son in time.”
She sat back and closed her eyes, and as the desert wind whipped into something alive and angry, as our small fire danced in our protective shelter, I suddenly had no doubt that we would, indeed, reach Samarkand.
Except I didn’t have any clue how.
Chapter Six
Jewel stirred. “I’m turning in. You will get us there tomorrow.”
I nodded numbly. Unable to come up with a viable plan, I focused on a small thing: would she strip to wash herself with some of our limited water before she slept? Would she let me look?
No, she merely lay down on the sand and closed her eyes. I realized that her years in prison must have accustomed her to roughing it. She surely didn’t like sleeping dirty, but she could handle it.
Vaguely disappointed, I returned to thoughts of the mission. We had three days riding to accomplish in only one day. That was impossible without magic.
Magic. I didn’t like using it much more than Jewel liked roughing it, but I could afford such scruples no more than she could. I touched my ring.
“Master.”
“How can we travel three days in one?”
“Are you forgetting the flying carpet, master?”
The carpet! “That can do it?”
“No, master. The average carpet is little faster than a camel. You could travel continuously day and night, but it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Then what use is it?” I demanded petulantly.
“It will take you to the portal in the foothills.”
“Portal?”
“Master, are you teasing me by pretending to be stupid?”
“Who’s pretending?”
Faddy sighed. “The portal to Djinnland. Only there will you get the answers and power you need.”
“What answers and power?”
“The ones the Djinn of the Lamp will provide.”
“That djinn is nonfunctional. I haven’t been able to raise him in months.”
“Precisely, master. He must obey the call of the Lamp, just as I must obey the summons of the Ring. The fact that he no longer does indicates that he has been made captive in his own realm. You will have to go there and rescue him. Then he will be able to rescue you.”
“Me rescue the Djinn of the Lamp? He’s a hundred times as powerful as I ever dreamed of being.”
“More like a thousand times, master. He’s a king among ifrits, while I am but a peon. He must be in dire straits.”
“Even if such a feat were possible, we don’t have the time. We have only one day!”
“That’s why you need him, master. He can do heavy lifting I can’t even approach. He can get you to Samarkand almost instantly.”
This was ludicrous, but also intriguing. Faddy was not given to lying to me. He was right that the Djinn of the Lamp could solve my problems. But how could I ever hope to solve the Djinn’s problems? “I remain almost terminally ignorant. How can I take time off to try to rescue the djinn, when I don’t have time for my own mission?”
“That is no problem, master. Time is different in Djinnland. You could spend weeks there, and when you return here, no time will have passed here.”
“I’m having trouble believing this.”
“It gets worse, master. It’s the same way for the djinn. The time we spend in the mortal realm is as nothing in Djinnland. If I ever get to go home, after millennia here, I will arrive there the same time as I left.”
“Impossible!”
“No, merely relativistic, master.”
“I do not know this word.”
“Naturally not, master. It dates from a millennium in your future.”
“My future!”
“It would be complicated to explain, master.”
I cudgeled my balky brain to focus on immediacies. “So we go to this portal and into Djinnland and rescue Lamprey. Then he rescues us. Exactly how do we rescue him once we’re there?”
“That I can’t tell you, master. Only that there must be a way. There usually is.”
“Thanks a lot!”
He was immune to irony. “Welcome, master.”
“How is it you know so much about Djinnland, since you’ve never been there?”
> “I have been there, master. I once lived there. You merely assumed I had not, and I did not correct you, as you had no need to know.”
Now I sighed. First things first. “So in the morning we take the flying carpet to the portal.”
“Exactly, master.”
“Begone.”
But at least now I had an approach, crazy as it might be in several ways. I sank into sleep.
Jewel was up before me in the morning, fixing our breakfast. “You didn’t try to join me in the night.”
“Should I have?”
“No. But I thought you might. Men do get ideas.”
“I don’t want to get gutted before I complete our mission.”
“Is that the whole truth?”
“No. But it will do. Your body does appeal to me. If you ever actually want my attention, you may come to me without your knife and beg me for it.”
She smiled, accepting that. I doubted she had ever begged a man for it, or ever would. She thought I feared her retaliation. Just as well, because her antipathy to intimacy was convenient for me. It enabled me to hide the fact that I probably couldn’t do anything with her even if she were willing. Because I was impotent, and had been since the death of my wife. I had tried often enough with some quite lovely young women, and succeeded only in embarrassing myself. I had also tried potions and spells, but none were effective. Until I had the cure, whatever it might be, I could do it only verbally. Meanwhile it was not something I cared to discuss with her.
“So how do we get to Samarkand today?” she asked as we finished eating.
“We ride the flying carpet to the portal in the haunted foothills, then enter a portal to Djinnland, where we will rescue a spirit who will get us to Samarkand on time.”
She gazed at me. “You believe this?” She had the grace not to add the word “nonsense” but it was hovering there.
“Trust me.”
“Do you know how to operate that carpet?”
“No. But it can’t be complicated.”
She realized she had no choice. “Let’s get on with it.”
I unrolled the carpet and sat on it. “Go,” I said.
Nothing happened.