“What did that jackal do?”
The vine witch rarely showed fear, but her eyes brimmed with concern. “He did something to Jean-Paul’s mind. Gave him a fever as if his brain was on fire. Jamra said he sent his mind to wander the desert. It was the only way he could compel me to find you.”
Sidra understood his treachery. She had used such spells on her enemies in the past too. Mortals were particularly vulnerable to magic that affected their soft-tissue brains.
“What kind of magic can send a man’s mind to swelter in a desert?” Elena asked. “Can he recover? Please, is there a spell to cure him? He seemed to improve the farther away Jamra and I flew.”
“You know this for sure?”
“Last night I was able to make Jamra pass out long enough for me to use my shadow vision.” She paused as Sidra’s brows raised at such a feat. “I used a wine spell that doubled the alcohol’s potency with a little sleep spell mixed in for good measure. In my vision Jean-Paul’s fever seemed to have lessened, even though he remained unconscious. I haven’t been able to check since.”
Sidra confirmed her speculation with a nod. “If Jamra has come south, the tether of magic may have weakened. The hold over your man could have lessened, but distance alone won’t be enough to help him recover.”
“What can I do? My healing charms had no effect on him.”
Predictably, there was little a witch could do for one whose mind had been sentenced to wander in the sand under an unrelenting sun. Most victims ended up in asylums, unable to care for themselves any longer. “No, in this case your herbs will not work.”
“There must be something you can do. Jinni magic against jinni magic. Can’t I make a wish? Let the magic find him in the desert and bring him back?”
“Yes, grant her a wish,” Yvette said. “Those things are powerful stuff.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Sidra reached in the fold of her caftan. “However . . .”
The witch’s cat eyes flared with hope. “Yes?”
Sidra fished out the three medallions. Without the fourth, they were useless for the purpose she’d had in mind. All had to be in her possession to ensure they were not used to entreat her help and reveal her location to Jamra. The instinct to be hidden was strong, but there was a force working against her. Perhaps not a true enemy, or they would have already informed Jamra of her whereabouts. As the fire revealed, some other plan had been set on its own trajectory and couldn’t be altered. One that determined she should not hide. The confrontation had to take place. Sidra exhaled, knowing the truth she’d seen in the fire.
“There is a way,” she said. “Both of you take a medallion. You must grip it in your hand and ask me for help. Invoke my name. Only then can I try to help him.”
“Wait,” Yvette said, accepting one of the charms. “Won’t that alert Jamra to where you are?”
Elena looked up from the bronze talisman in her hand. “Is that true?”
The elements of Elena’s shop illusion disintegrated as the spell ran its course. The letters on the glass scattered with the breeze, and the sign of the two moons above the door faded into shadow. Change was coming for them all.
“It is true.” Sidra gathered her silk around her. “But it’s what the fire has shown us. Events cannot be altered. They must proceed. This is the fate we’ve been shown.”
“But can you fight him by yourself?”
“I don’t think I’m meant to,” Sidra said, daring to meet each woman’s eye.
“Right. We’re in this together,” Yvette affirmed. “Always have been, it seems.”
“But I can’t. You have to understand. I must return home to tend to Jean-Paul.”
“And how will you get there?”
“The train . . .” Elena searched her satchel. “Though I may have to borrow the fare.”
“This is not the city. The train has already left. The next one won’t depart until tomorrow.”
The jinni had briefly wondered what her odds of defeating Jamra would be without the vine witch to complete the bond between the three of them. But again, the fire didn’t lie. The witch wouldn’t be going anywhere despite her proclamations. They were meant to stand as one. Though nothing was without cost.
“Give me a chance to free your man’s mind of Jamra’s influence. We’ll use your shadow vision. It is the only way. Afterward you’ll see if he is restored. Ease your mind of this worry.”
“But the talisman. You’ll draw Jamra here like a beacon. He and his followers will find you.”
“It’s as it should be.”
Someone jiggled the door handle. All three startled and backed away, but it was only a curious tourist thinking the store might be open. Sidra waved her hand to obscure them from view behind a veil of darkness.
“Jamra will find me. The fire has spoken. But my life is not what he’s truly coming for, though he’ll try to claim it all the same.” Sidra lowered her voice as she approached the cusp of telling the entire truth for the first time since Hariq had died. “No, what that blackhearted one is after is the dagger of Zimbarra and the powerful sigil embedded in its handle.”
Yvette stubbed out her cigarette in the ash left in the scales. “Jiminy, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Zimbarra? But . . . but that isn’t real,” Elena said.
“I believe you once said the same about my kind.” Sidra attempted a smile, despite her cursed nerves.
“What’s Zimbarra?” Yvette glowed eerily, as if sensing something supernatural in the wake of speaking the word out loud.
“Not what—where.” Elena opened her satchel and removed her spell book to show the girl. She laid it on the counter and thumbed through the pages until she hit on an old love spell she claimed her grandmother had passed on to her when she was a teen. “Zimbarra,” she said to Yvette, “is a mythical floating island.”
“Not mythical,” Sidra corrected.
Yvette eagerly leaned over Elena’s shoulder to get a better look at the page for herself. “Here,” Elena said, her finger trailing under the words as she read. “A spell for conjuring commitment from a boy who ignores you one day and can’t stop staring at you the next. The directions for the incantation say to work the word ‘Zimbarra’ into the spell because it refers to the dynamic nature of the mythical island, said to float from one location to another, the way a young man’s attentions may at times fluctuate.”
“This is what they teach you?” Sidra’s bracelets rattled as she turned the book around to see for herself. She read half a page, which proved more than enough. “Just because someone wrote something down in a book doesn’t make a lie a truth, though it may reveal the depth of the author’s ignorance.”
The book snapped itself shut and turned its spine on the jinni. Elena opened her mouth to argue, then admitted her mentor had been wrong about a few things in the past.
The book shuddered and locked itself.
“What makes you so certain this Zimbarra place is real?” Yvette asked.
“Because I’ve seen it,” the jinni said. She conjured a sitting area in the back of the shop for the women to be comfortable. She provided coffee, dates, and flatbread. A small oasis created in the midst of looming danger.
“Your book was not wrong about the nature of the island,” she said as she sank onto a pouf. “It is a fickle place, moving from one coordinate to the next. Many a pilot in their dhow has sailed to his death looking for its shores over the centuries. The silhouette of the island rises, barely visible on the sea’s horizon, and then disappears the nearer one gets. Nothing more than a mirage for most.”
“But not you?”
Sidra shook her head.
“How’d you find the place if it’s always moving around like that?” Yvette asked.
“The birds,” she said, her eyes glancing up to the sky where the creatures reigned. “Their vision is better than any human’s. They keep track of the island so they have a place to land when migrating. The terns revealed its beach
es to Hariq and me as a belated wedding present. A place where we could be alone and hide from our feuding families undisturbed, if only for a little while. Hariq was the one who discovered the dagger.”
“Where’d it come from?” Yvette asked.
“There were no other people on the island, but there were bones,” Sidra said. “We found a skeleton above the beach. Sun-bleached and scattered by scavengers.”
The girl gawked. “You found a body?”
“The bones of a magus. A priest. At least that’s what Hariq believed. There were rings and amulets among the skeleton as well as the dagger. Either he had been shipwrecked by chance or magicked there and never returned.”
“Or banished,” Elena added in a warning tone. The witch’s mind was clearly evaluating what she’d heard against what she’d been taught. At last she shook her head. “I can recall a few childhood stories about magical knives and swords, but I’m not familiar with one about a knife empowered by a sigil. What does it do?”
“Tell your grimoire to open again and I’ll try to explain.”
The vine witch looked doubtful. She stood and approached the book on the counter, speaking to it as if it were a stubborn child refusing to eat. Rebuffed, she carried it back to the soft pillows and poufs and set it on the ottoman in the center. At last she coaxed the spell book to open again by promising it could sleep with its pages spread out and free to flutter for the night under the draping silk ceiling. Sidra resisted the urge to roll her eyes to the heavens. Finally, the book cooperated.
“You will allow?” Sidra asked. After Elena gave a stern warning to the book, the jinni turned it toward her and thumbed through the pages until she came to the inevitable section on sigils. Some were familiar to her, others complete nonsense. She scanned her finger over the various symbols until she landed on a shape that looked similar to the one on the dagger Hariq had found, though the design in the book was not nearly as elaborate. “Sigils like these can be used to harness great power,” she explained. “Though often the power imbued in the symbol is incumbent on the skill of the sorcerer who created it. Or who controls it.”
“What kind of power?” Yvette asked softly.
“This one can control weather in the hands of a master sorcerer.” Sidra pointed to another. “This one, if only slightly altered with a line or two and paired with one’s malicious intent, can bring on famine and pestilence.”
“I’m guessing the dagger’s sigil aligns more with the destructive side of things,” Elena said.
“It’s a mark that carries a terrible curse.”
“What kind of curse?” Yvette asked. The girl glanced at Elena before popping a date in her mouth.
“Chaos,” Sidra said. “The kind that could set the world spinning into despair if the dagger were to fall into the wrong hands.”
“Jamra,” Elena whispered. “But what could he do with it?”
Sidra balled up her fist as if gripping the handle of the dagger. “The balance between order and chaos is held together by the tension between opposing forces. They serve as counterweights to each other, creating stability. But it’s a delicate line, as if always resting on a knife’s edge. This is why the sigil was embedded in the handle of a dagger. Whispered tradition says the one who wields the dagger, applying his will to tilting it just a little toward chaos, will gain dominion over an army of demons whose only mission is to create havoc and pain.”
Yvette stopped chewing and swallowed the date in one hard gulp. Her glow dwindled. “But don’t you have the dagger now? Doesn’t that make you the, you know, wielder of . . . demons? Merde, do you have it on you?”
The girl’s ignorance was at times astounding.
“Do you look in my eyes and see reckless stupidity?” Sidra showed her teeth and still the fairy didn’t balk. Good, she would need her nerve. “I have no ambition to bring humanity to heel. The world is a wild thing that doesn’t deserve to suffer more than it has already. But there are those like Jamra who would see the human race shackled and forced to do their bidding in return for past insults and degradations done against our kind. The dagger, in his hands, could do this. Intention, always, is the force behind any magic.”
“But where is it?” The vine witch set her grimoire aside, leaving the pages open as promised. “How does Jamra know you have the knife?”
Sidra explained how she and Hariq had brought the dagger back from the island, before they knew exactly what they’d found. The couple knew only that it was a powerful magical relic. They left the bones behind but collected the rings and amulets in the hope they might help identify the magus who’d died on the island.
“We asked at the markets if anyone recognized the jewelry so we might know who the priest was and what he carried. Many offered to buy the trinkets, but an old sorcerer in a village shop across the sea got a strange look on his face when we brought out the dagger to ask about the owner. The scent of char rose around him, the kind that hungers for destruction.”
“He knew what you’d found,” Elena said.
She nodded. “He was no market sorcerer. Behind his eyes he was jinn. But not of any clan. One of the dispossessed.”
“Dispossessed?”
“Outcasts. Unwanteds. The marauders who ride before the storm, their horses’ hooves kicking up the dust to create the great haboob. We fled to the ether as soon as we recognized him for what he was, but not before he’d seen the mark on the dagger. Afterward we took the sigil straight to the jinn leader we pay tribute to. He is a wise one with a great gift for envisioning the future.” Sidra recalled the look on Rajul Hakim’s face when they unveiled the dagger, full of astonishment, as if they’d found one of the lost treasures of the world. “When he told us of its power, we understood the mistake we’d made in returning it to the mainland.”
Sidra raised her palms to ask forgiveness from the All Seeing. “It was the dispossessed one who told Jamra about the dagger, I’m certain. It is they who he’s aligned with.”
“Where’s the dagger now?” Elena asked. “Somewhere safe? Shouldn’t it be in the hands of an official custodian or protector?”
“The dagger is safe for now. But anything can be thought safe until it’s found.”
The fairy and witch grew silent. Such beings of air and light, earth and herb. The thought of fire and death made their skin glow with the sheen of nervous perspiration. Their mood was as it should be. For it was their hands now, together with hers, that held the balance propped in place. One slip in the wrong direction and they might all be flung into chaos.
The balance between them must be held. Debt and indebtedness. One gesture in exchange for another. It, too, was as it should be. She would do this thing for the witch’s husband, and then Elena would stay until the other was done. Tawazun.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The anonymity of the abandoned shop proved the wisest place to hunker down for the remainder of the day, especially after learning that there was more at stake with Jamra’s impending arrival than mere murder. Elena held the talisman in her hand. Invoking Sidra’s name for help could draw attention to the jinni’s whereabouts, but without her help Jean-Paul might be lost forever. She felt the jinni’s glittering eyes on her as she wrestled with what to do.
“We cannot stop Jamra,” Sidra said. “The fire isn’t wrong. The confrontation has already been willed. But we can still try to help your man.”
“Go on,” Yvette said, turning her medallion over in her hand. “You have to try. I’ll say it too.”
The bronze felt warm in her palm, as if urging her to use the magic. Elena ran her finger over the symbols engraved on its surface. Small glyphs in the shape of an eye, a moon, a star, and a bird’s wing. Such different magic, yet similar too, the way it used symbols instead of words to connect with the source. Elena met Sidra’s eye one last time. She had no choice. If the jinni had already accepted her fate should the talisman’s energy reveal her location, then she must trust in the generosity of the offer. She closed her f
ingers over the metal and spoke Sidra’s name while envisioning the help she desired.
“It shall be done.” Sidra scooted closer on the sofa. “We’re lucky. You have the gift of second sight. Without it, he would be doomed. But we have a chance. First you must look into your world of shadows. Find your husband. I will follow you there. Now, for we must act quickly.”
So, she meant to heal him by piggybacking on her vision the same way Jamra had. The notion made her uneasy. They would both be vulnerable while in this state, with only Yvette to keep vigil in their absence. And yet the young woman had never failed her. With that in mind, Elena settled into the soft pillow and closed her eyes. A moment later her vision, only slightly slowed by the acknowledged presence of the jinni in the liminal space, followed the silver thread to Jean-Paul. He was still unconscious, though he’d been moved and was now in their bed. Stubble shadowed his jaw and his eyes darted beneath their closed lids, but otherwise he appeared as he had before. Brother Anselm wasn’t in the bedside chair. Turning her vision east, she sensed the monk moving in the kitchen below. The scent of sautéed chicken wafted up from the stove. She took it as a positive sign before feeling a psychic nudge to get out of the way.
An odd sensation filtered in behind Elena’s eyes. Warmth, as if she’d been staring into the fireplace, filled her vision. Her sight dimmed until she no longer sensed the light around her. Panic crept in at the edge of her thoughts until the calming scent of ripening grapes, just as the sugar rises before peak harvest, infiltrated her olfactory senses, soothing her while Sidra overtook her shadow vision. A good trick, that. And though she couldn’t see her, she sensed the jinni smile at her thought. Once Elena relaxed, the light seeped back in and her sight returned, though she no longer controlled where her line of vision was cast.
Sidra concentrated on Jean-Paul’s eye movement, the way it flitted rapidly under the lids. Frantic. Frenetic. Elena saw her hand reach out and presumed she no longer controlled her own limbs in the shadow world either. It was as if she and the jinni occupied the same space in her body yet remained side by side in her brain. She thought about Jamra nearly invading her this way and her body shivered, knowing he wouldn’t have preserved her mind.
The Conjurer (The Vine Witch) Page 11