by J. R. Rain
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.
“Forward,” I added.
The carpet took off so suddenly that it dumped me in the sand on my rear. Deprived of its rider, it looped in the air and dropped to the ground.
Jewel was plainly stifling her burgeoning mirth. “Perhaps I should try it.”
“Try it,” I agreed ungraciously. I did not add the appellation “she-dog,” but let it hover there beside her unvoiced word.
She fetched the carpet, spread it flat, sat on it, and spoke almost inaudibly. The carpet lifted, then moved slowly forward, carrying her. She glanced back at me. “Nothing to it.”
It turned out that there were a number of specific commands the carpet understood, but it tended to take them literally. When I had told it to go forward, I had not cautioned it to do so slowly. We practiced, and soon got the hang of it.
“What about the horses?” Jewel asked.
“There’s a bit of grazing here. We’ll try to send someone back for them.”
We sat together on the carpet, Jewel first, I with my spread thighs close behind her, clasping her hips. By Allah, her body was winsome! But the one part of my own body that might have taken advantage of that remained fallow. It was frustrating, even though I had no intention of trying anything anyway. I wanted her to think my abstinence was manly courtesy, rather than inability.
“You’re impotent,” she said.
She must have sat like this with a man before. What could I do but admit it? “Since I lost my wife.”
“You must have loved her deeply.”
“I did. And my son.”
“I know about losing a son. Save mine, and I will see what I can do for you.”
I couldn’t think of anything smart to say, so I remained silent. If she could actually cure my incapacity, our relationship would suffer a fundamental change. She was an imperious, violent, deadly woman, but I was coming to appreciate her qualities.
She murmured to the carpet, and it lifted and moved forward, slowly accelerating. Soon we were at treetop height and moving swiftly.
I touched my ring. “Guide us,” I murmured.
“What?” Jewel asked.
“You might as well know this too,” I said with resignation. “I have a minor ifrit named Faddy bound to my ring. He will guide us to the portal.”
“You continue to be a man of surprises.”
Flying was faster than riding the horses, partly because crags and ravines did not interfere. Before long we reached the site of the portal. There was a hut right where Faddy indicated the portal was. That was surely by no coincidence.
An old robed man stood before the hut as we glided in for a landing. “You are looking for the portal,” he said, seeming unsurprised by our appearance. “I am Abu Bakr. I am here to warn you away from it.”
We got off the carpet. “I am Niddala, and this is Jewel,” I said. “We have urgent need to pass through the portal.”
Bakr contemplated me with uncannily perceptive old eyes. I knew in that moment that he recognized me as the former king. Maybe he was a historian. “In that case, there are things you need to know, Niddala.”
Good, he was honoring my privacy. “We will appreciate learning them,” I said.
“Come in to my abode.”
We followed him in. It was much better kept inside than it looked from the outside. Bakr, also, was protecting his privacy.
“We are in a hurry,” Jewel said.
“Obviously,” Bakr agreed. “But you will get nowhere unless you are sufficiently prepared. Do you know anything about Djinnland?”
“No,” I said.
“It is in certain respects the reverse of the mortal realm. We are solid, while the jinn are gaseous. They can assume solidity when they concentrate, but it is not their natural state. In their realm they seem solid, but it is deceptive. Mortals who go there look the same, but are actually enormously denser. As a result, they tend to sink into the ground until they encounter bedrock, and they can not climb trees or ascend to second stories. They can however become diffuse if they focus on that, though they will revert to solidity when they stop focusing. They don’t change visibly, but dissipate most of their mass. The opposite of what the jinn do in the mortal realm to become solid. So this has disadvantages as well as advantages.”
“Advantages?” I asked.
“In that realm, you will be virtually invulnerable to any attack or weapons they mount against you. Their spears will bounce off you harmlessly. Only when you diffuse to their lesser density will you become vulnerable. They may be lurking to pounce at that moment.”
“So we’ll stay dense,” I said.
“Even then you are not completely safe. Just as King Solomon caught and bound many jinn, a good djinn sorcerer can catch and bind mortal souls in that realm.” He glanced at Jewel. “You would be subject to the whim of the possessor of the ring you got bound to, obliged to sate his lust perpetually, unable even to voice objection. You would have to seem to want it, lest you be cruelly punished.”
“But the jinni can assume any form they want to,” Jewel protested. “Their females are always ravishingly beautiful. Why would they care about my form?”
“Not so,” Bakr said. “Their forms are ordinary, and they change them only when they focus. They use illusion to enhance themselves. B
ut the males can see through that illusion. Illusion is like clothing; without it they are naked. But your form is natural, requiring no enhancement by illusion. You would be an invaluable possession, once bound.”
Jewel nodded, appreciating the problem. But her determination was unchanged. “We’re going in.”
“We’ll try to stay clear of their sorcerers,” I said, though I felt a chill. This would be no picnic.
Chapter Seven
Before we departed, Bakr fed us a simple stew in his simple abode. His was a solitary life, and one I would not want. True, living at the portal probably offered some adventure; after all, who knew what ilk poured in and out of this magical land? Perhaps pour is too strong of a word. I suspected that travelers were rare to the portal. Bakr had seemed truly surprised to see us, and after listening to his alarming warning, I could see why. Human mortals, it seemed, did not fare well in Djinnland.
As Jewel sopped up the rest of her meal hungrily, wiping her bowl clean with a stale piece of bread, I found myself wondering why I was risking life and limb to help a woman I barely knew? True, her gold would come in handy, but hers was certainly not the only paying job. Her beauty was undeniable, but little good that did me. Her beauty, if anything, amplified my shortcomings.
Her son was missing, and that hit home with me. Worse, someone the son had trusted—his very father—was the source of his threat. A father, it seemed, who was not against using the darkest magic to wrest the very kingdom I had once ruled.
Perhaps it was time for me to come out of my self exile? Perhaps it was time for me to move on?
Perhaps.
When we were finished, Bakr provided us with some provisions, reiterated some of his most dire warnings, and pointed us to the portal, which, as it turned out, was a rock bridge that spanned a wide chasm. The bridge disappeared into roiling mist, and what awaited us beyond, I could only guess.
I thought we needed to travel light, so I left my incidental belongings, including the little chest, with Bakr. That chest contained the Lamp, which I felt would be useless in Djinnland. I had to trust the sage not to molest my things. If by some mischance I did not return, then maybe he would be a deserving inheritor of the Lamp.