by J. R. Rain
He was probably pulling my chain. But I couldn’t risk it. “We’re going to spare her that.”
“Oh, I doubt it, hero,” he said with heavy irony. I know I wouldn’t have liked him even on a good day.
Jewel had succeeded in prying one bar out, and was working on the second. She would be inside soon.
“You have another flying carpet,” I said.
“What makes you think—”
“Get over to the closet and fetch it out,” I ordered, marching him in that direction.
He obeyed, as he had to, one way or another. Soon we had a second large carpet laid out. I put him on it, and got on behind him. “Guide us there, fast,” I said. “And know that this pressure on your fat back is the point of my dagger. If you even think of any tricks, I’ll stab first and deal with the mess after. Now get us moving.”
The carpet lifted smoothly and ascended to the window and out. We flew rapidly toward the topmost turret. Jewel was no longer in sight; she had finally made it into the dread chamber. I repressed a shudder.
“There is one thing you did not think to ask,” Zeyn remarked. There was a satisfied smirk in his voice.
“What, lest I learn what pleases me not?”
“Exactly.”
“So what is it?”
“It is this, you utter naïve fool. Prince Zeyn has been the subject of many assassination attempts, so he takes precautions. I am not Zeyn; I am a simulacrum in his image, employed to preside at boring functions. You never came close to control of him, your lariat notwithstanding.” He chuckled. “Now do with me what you wish; it will not save your wench, who is surely getting royally plumbed about now.”
I knew with sick certainty that he was finally telling the relevant truth.
Chapter Thirteen
Up we raced, scattering the little fire-belching dragons, who were, in fact, the eyes of the wizard.
Wherever he may be, I thought ruefully, wondering just where this vile creature was waiting and watching. But I had little time to concern myself with such matters. I thought idly of shoving the impostor off the carpet, but even I couldn’t watch a man plummet to his death. If a man he be, that is. Perhaps his inherent magical talents would save him, or perhaps not. I didn’t know, but for now I held on to the lariat. Perhaps the ifrit imposter would prove valuable. Or perhaps not. We would see.
For now, I continued holding in the back of my mind thoughts of levity, anything that would keep me from densifying and plummeting to the floor below.
Up we raced, as I commanded the Zeyn simulacrum to direct the magic carpet. Wind whipped my hair. I held on to a frayed edge of the carpet with one hand, riding low. Often, as we turned hard right or left, I was nearly thrown from the damn rug. Each time the ifrit grinned, and I cursed.
We shot up a flight of stone steps, lit with torches, and as we reached the landing and barreled around a right turn, I heard a blood-curdling scream.
“Faster!” I commanded.
Amazingly, the rug, surely built for speed and maneuverability, accelerated faster still. Wind screamed over my ears. Recessed doorways passed in a blur. This time I saw the left turn coming, and sensed the ifrit bracing himself. I braced, too, and we hit the turn at nearly ninety degrees. It was all I could do to hold on to the rug and not be thrown off. Indeed, if not for my sure grip, I would have been slammed into the hallway wall.
“There,” said the simulacrum, pointing.
I saw it, too. An open door at the far end of the hallway. Torchlight flickered within. Shadows crawled over the walls.
“We’re going through,” I said grimly.
“We cannot fit!”
“Then I suggest you command the carpet to angle in.”
He did so, commanding the thing with barely audible words, and almost instantly one side of the rug dropped down. We both hung from the thing as if clinging to the top of a brick wall, and we swooped into the massive chamber.
The carpet and we circled above, and what I saw below was both a relief and a pleasant surprise. What I saw was hardly worthy of such a desperate flight: two women in bed, one of whom was completely without clothing. She had long, strawberry-colored hair, a narrow waist and a full backside. The scene might have been something out of any man’s fantasy if not for the ghastly stinger protruding from the full backside.
The creature had mounted Jewel, who was currently bleeding profusely from cuts to her eyes and lips. Obviously she had done her best to fight off the creature, only to have finally succumbed to its undoubtedly great strength.
“We are too late,” said the ifrit with satisfaction. “She’s about to be implanted. Nothing can pry her loose.”
Jewel looked up and saw me. She was about to scream but held her tongue. Wise girl. As of yet, the Queen was too focused on her prey to notice us in the chamber.
“Not good enough,” I said. “Surely there is some way to unmount this creature.”
The ifrit shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. I hated him even more. “Sorry, hero. But once she has a female mounted, it is all but done. Look, already her stinger is preparing for insertion.”
Indeed, the long, curved apparatus was veritably quivering in anticipation. The creature struggled only with parting Jewel’s legs. The emira fought valiantly; indeed, she lashed out and landed a wonderful hooking punch that rocked the Queen. Enraged, the creature bellowed and began transforming before our very eyes into something that resembled a great hornet.
Jewel screamed and I didn’t blame her.
But I also saw my opportunity.
As the creature metamorphosed, its body elongating and taking on a horrific shape, it sat back slightly, releasing some of its weight.
“Go to her now,” I commanded. “And when we reach her you are to take her place.”
“Please, no!” But even as he begged me, the carpet shot down from the high ceiling, racing toward the great bed.
I held on grimly, bracing myself, saying nothing. I had been a ruler once. I had been forced to hand down harsh sentences. This ifrit who relished Jewel’s misery was no friend of mine. He was an enemy of the highest order.
He continued to beg and plead but I ignored his cries for mercy. There was no mercy here, not in this vile place. And not by me.
The creature was nearly metamorphosed, its smooth, elongated head the last to transform. Most important, some of its weight was off Jewel.
She saw us coming, and just as the giant insect was about to position itself on her again, she held up her hand and I grabbed it. And just as I commanded, the ifrit, very much against his will, leaped from the carpet. What happened next couldn’t have been better rehearsed if we tried. I pulled Jewel up onto the carpet, even while the simulacrum took her place. And as I released the rope, thus releasing my connection to him, he tried desperately to crawl away. Too late. The stinger came down viciously...and deeply. He cried out, cursing my name, but already Jewel and I were gaining some altitude.
“Lamprey!” shouted Jewel in my ear. She pointed to an ornate bureau in the far corner. “He’s already inside. I freed him just prior to that....that thing appearing.”
That thing bellowed in rage, having just now noticed it had been duped. It spun around, drawing out its stinger from deep within the simulacrum, who had reverted back to his original form—that of a balding, middle-aged man. He was quite dead. Apparently the creature’s stinger, which also acted as an egg depositor, killed males, while undoubtedly keeping females alive. Magic at its most deadliest. I felt nothing for the ifrit who, likewise, had felt nothing for Jewel’s own dire predicament.
The queen, easily twice my own size, flapped her wings impossibly fast and rose from the bed. I was still high above it, circling around to the lamp. The creature rose straight up, watching me closely, turning with me. Its thorax flexed and it brought up its great stinger, presently covered in a dark liquid—the ifrit’s blood, I assumed. The beast, I saw, could fly forward and sting at the same time.
Now we were
over the lamp and I dove down, commanding the carpet with voice prompts and slight adjustments of the rug itself. Surely, there was a smoother way to fly these things, but I would have to make do.
The bureau approached rapidly. Too rapidly, I was going to crash. Jewel reached a calm hand, adjusted the carpet, stated her own command, and the magical contraption altered course. Unfortunately, so did the giant hornet above, which was now bearing down on us.
“Grab it!” she shouted.
And I did, swooping the polished lamp off the bureau, and ducking as the giant stinger swooshed over my head.
Merciful Allah, but that was close!
“Just hang on!” shouted Jewel. “I have a score to settle with this oversized dung beetle!”
And hang on I did. Jewel had proven herself to be much more adept at maneuvering the flying carpet, which was just as well. It was all I could to hang on to the lamp and the carpet at the same time.
We whipped out of the chamber and down the long hall. The demon hornet gave chase, proving to be just as mobile as the carpet, if not more so. And, apparently, faster.
It was gaining on us, buzzing down the hallway.
Jewel looked back once, and actually grinned. “Hold on tight, your highness,” she said, her words heavy with sarcasm, especially the last one.
Although we sat side by side, Jewel was positioned more in the middle, her arms spread wide, her hands gripping the carpet’s forward corners. Myself, I held only one lonely edge and sat low, cradling the lamp as best as I could, praying to Allah to spare me this one last time.
“You’re dragging us down, imbecile!” she shouted.
Indeed, my simple prayer had occupied that part of my mind previously reserved for thinking light thoughts. I quickly filled my thoughts with images of clouds and feathers and women’s undergarments, and soon we were picking up speed again. Jewel shook her head without comment.
“Get ready,” she said.
And now we plunged down the winding stairs, going round and round blindly, heedless of anyone or anything that might be in our way. I nearly closed my eyes. Nearly. Except heroes didn’t close their eyes. And a good thing, too.
“Look out!” I shouted.
She saw it, too, and not a moment too soon. An archway had appeared in our flightpath. I densified and she angled down and we just narrowly avoided disaster. We swept out the same upper story window and out into the throne room. I looked back. The demon hornet easily avoided the archway and burst out of the window like a cannon shot. It quickly gained on us.
The throne room, remarkably, was much different than when I had last seen it. The guards were nowhere to be found. Surely they would have returned by now after being dismissed earlier by the simulacrum, but no. The hallway so empty and quiet that I knew immediately something was wrong.
But there was no time to worry about that. The hornet was gaining. Jewel shouted a warning to me, and then turned hard, banking to port. We slewed through the air, briefly out of control, and then regained our magical traction again. The hornet made the turn easily and I was beginning to think it was only a matter of time—perhaps seconds—before the monster was upon us.
And I knew immediately what I had to do. It was me, of course, who was weighing us down. Me and my flighty thoughts of levity. I pointed to a far wall, where a great sword hung, crossed with another.
“Drop me off there!” I shouted, pointing to the floor beneath the swords.
Jewel looked at me slantwise, but did not question me. She knew I was the dead weight slowing us down. She leaned forward and we angled down. Behind us the flying beast angled with us. Its humming drone was louder as it got closer and closer. It didn’t sound happy.
The wall was upon us and if Jewel didn’t do something now, we were going to crash into it.
“Uh, Jewel.”
“Hang on!”
As the wall rose up before us, she threw her weight hard to the right, yanking her arms with her, and the carpet came to a nearly abrupt halt. I was dislodged immediately, tumbling head over tail, slamming hard into the wall.
She looked down at me, grinning. “I told you to hang on, your highness.”
The hornet was coming in fast and I urged her to go and she did so, snapping the carpet and giving a sharp order. She sped off as the flying creature banked hard, turning and following.
I next watched an aerial display the likes of which I had never seen before, nor would I expect to see again. With the extra weight off the carpet, woman and beast were nearly evenly matched. When Jewel looped, so did the creature. When she turned hard to starboard in ever tightening circles, the creature followed. And while they did this mid-air dance, I reached up and took hold of one of the curved scimitars, pulling it free from the wall. It was a good weapon, and felt natural in my hands
“Over here!” I shouted up to her. “Lure it over here!”
It was time to end this...and I would do this the only way I knew how, with the sword.
Jewel heard me and responded by heading directly at me. I watched her approach and fought the desire to duck, trusting her already. Indeed, at the last possible moment, she pulled up, and swung off the carpet and into my arms.
The hornet was directly behind, arching its thorax and lifting the stinger before it. It was going to impale one of us to the wall. My guess was me.
I wasn’t wrong. It was coming for me, and it was coming hard.
I raised the sword before me, visualizing the stinger as nothing more than a javelin held by a charging desert warrior. And as Jewel dove to one side, I swung the scimitar with all my strength, deflecting the stinger, and the hateful creature sailed to one side. Its stinger, surely as hard as any steel, drove deep into the fortress wall.
And what happened next surprised even me.
A great bellow erupted from seemingly everywhere at once. The walls of the fortress shook. The ornate throne toppled over and the crystal chandelier from above crashed to the floor. I lost my footing and fell into Jewel. She pointed to a far wall, where a massive face had appeared over the stones. I knew the ugly face immediately. It was Prince Zeyn.
The real Prince Zeyn.
Jewel pointed to the adjoining wall, and I saw it, too. His face was there as well. In fact, his face now covered every wall in the room, including the ceiling and floor, stretching from corner to corner.
As the demon hornet struggled to free itself from the wall, I saw that the face of Prince Zeyn, along the same wall as the beast, was in great pain.
He was in pain from the hornet sting.
“Get the carpet!” I yelled.
Jewel immediately complied, fetching the rug which lay in a heap at her feet. “What’s happening, my king?”
My king...those words sounded so nice coming from her, but I had little time to revel in them.
“The fortress is alive,” I said, as we sat together on the carpet. It lifted immediately. All around us more fixtures fell and crashed.
“I do not understand,” she cried out.
“Prince Zeyn is the fortress. He is everywhere at once.”
“But how?”
“It’s an illusion, of course. All of this. Now go, go!”
Chapter Fourteen
The carpet flew toward the main entry. But a portcullis appeared, looking an awful lot like huge teeth, and crunched down ahead of us. Had we been a trifle faster, it would have caught us and chewed us in half. As it was, we were merely trapped inside the main chamber.
“There’s got to be other exits,” I said.
The carpet spun about and zoomed across the room toward another entry. But this also sprouted teeth and snapped shut before we got there.
We swerved again, toward a third passage, but this too got bitten off.
“He’s playing with us,” Jewel said grimly.
“He wants to recapture us alive,” I agreed. “That’s probably bad news.”
“So he can flay you a sliver at a time,” she said. “And tie me down for the queen t
o screw.”
I looked across at the queen. She had almost succeeded in pulling her stinger loose. She would be very angry when she resumed the hunt. We had little remaining time to dither. “We’ve got to surprise him,” I said. “Do the unexpected.”
“He expects us to try to escape.”
“Ah, but the manner of it is what makes the difference.”
“Well, get your manner moving!”
“The turret,” I said. “Go back there.”
“Oho!” The carpet reoriented and shot across to the passage leading to the turret stairway. The change was so sudden that the teeth there did not have sufficient time to clamp. They formed as we squeezed through, and gnashed down just behind us, snagging the rear of the carpet. It abruptly halted, and we slid off the front.
I landed on my backside, and Jewel landed on me. At any other time I would really have noticed how her plush posterior mashed my groin, her slender torso fitted itself to mine, and her lustrous hair flung out to caress my face. But unfortunately I was too busy to appreciate any such things.
“We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she murmured, and pried herself free.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the carpet, and yanked. But it remained caught on the teeth. Short of cutting it free, we couldn’t free it, and I was not at all sure it would work correctly if maimed in that manner. “At least it prevents the queen from following us,” I said.
“Praise Allah for small favors,” she said.
“Very small favors. She will surely be let through the moment she seeks passage.”
We turned and ran up the winding stairway. We were soon winded. Again, at any other time I would have noticed how Jewel’s bare chest was heaving, and how her disheveled tresses gave her a certain appealing wild-woman look, and especially how her bottom flexed as she preceded me up the steps. But it seemed to be my fate to be too distracted by events to take note of passing points of interest.
“I have to rest!” she gasped.
I understood. “We can’t afford this extra weight,” I said, regretfully divesting myself of my scimitar.