by Jade
Aladdin would have no trouble when he tried to obey Gwandoya's order not to touch the gold, because who would leave anything of value in such a desolate place? There wasn't even any water here to justify stopping.
Gwandoya grinned, his teeth surprisingly white in the afternoon light. "We are here, yes?"
Aladdin wasn't sure how to answer, so he didn't bother.
Gwandoya led Aladdin to a rock that didn't appear any different to the others, then knelt beside an old fire pit. He took a leather flask from his belt and poured the contents over the half-charred timbers. Then Gwandoya pulled out a tinderbox and set about rekindling the fire.
Aladdin considered telling the man it was pointless to attempt such a thing with damp wood, but nothing this man did would surprise him any more, so Aladdin sat down on a nearby stone instead.
The fire flared to life faster than any Aladdin had seen before. The liquid must have been lamp oil, Aladdin realised. Gwandoya spread his arms wide and began to chant in a language Aladdin didn't recognise as he danced about the fire.
For a moment, Aladdin thought he saw wisps of smoke rising from the man's hands, but he shook his head. He must be imagining it. Except the smoke was thickening until he couldn't deny it was real. Sparks jumped between the smoke clouds, like nothing he'd ever seen before. And still Gwandoya chanted.
The man was a magician, Aladdin realised, dread clenching at his stomach. Aladdin had heard stories about dark magicians who used blood to cast spells. Was that why he needed Aladdin – to provide the blood in this unholy ritual? Is this how the other men had died?
The smoke cloud surrounding Gwandoya streamed toward the stone, taking the vague shape of a man, though a giant man. The smoky figure grabbed the stone and pushed it to the side, revealing the dark entrance to...what? The underworld?
Gwandoya didn't look surprised. He had done this many times, Aladdin guessed. But not enough to succeed in his dark purpose, which was why he needed Aladdin.
"We're going in there?" Aladdin asked.
"No, we are not."
Aladdin breathed a sigh of relief.
Gwandoya continued, "You are entering alone. You will journey through the underground city to the treasury. Touch nothing on the way. Once you reach the treasury, and this is very important, tuck your robes up around you so that not even the hem touches the gold in there, for if you touch it, you will surely die."
Like Bugra.
"You are looking for a lamp. An old, brass lamp that will appear out of place amid such treasure."
"So why is it there, then?" Aladdin asked before he could stop himself.
Gwandoya glared at him. "It has great personal value to me."
Aladdin didn't believe a word. He might be a street rat, but he'd been raised to be a merchant, who had to know the difference between truth and lies as much as he needed to be able to sort brass from gold. "So I find this old lamp of yours, and then what? Where's the wealth you said I'd find?" Aladdin asked.
Gwandoya lifted his chin proudly. "Bring the lamp to me, and I shall richly reward you."
Another lie. But Aladdin merely lowered his eyes and nodded.
Gwandoya pulled a ring from his finger and held it out. "You will need this. This magic ring will allow you to open doors in the city."
Aladdin took the ring gingerly. It seemed real enough, the blackened silver speaking of its great age. "Do I have to do the dancing and chanting thing like you did?"
"The inner doors are not as stubborn as the city gates. You will only need to command them to open, and they will."
No chanting, then.
"Do I get a torch?" Aladdin asked hopefully. The city gates really did look like the gates to the underworld.
"There are torches inside. They will allow you to reach the treasury," Gwandoya said. "Find the lamp, and it will light your way back to me."
The lamp that wasn't his, but Gwandoya wanted so badly he was willing to kill as many men as it took to bring the thing to him. But not enough to venture into the city himself.
"Right. Here I go, then," Aladdin said with forced cheer.
Wishing he'd stayed in his own city, where he belonged, Aladdin stepped into the dark.
EIGHT
"Isn't she beautiful?" Anahita marvelled as her eyes followed the falcon's flight.
"I've never seen a bird fly so fast," Maram admitted. She didn't want to watch the bird make a kill – she didn't share her half-sister's thirst for blood – but she couldn't deny she envied the bird her freedom of flight. Maram might travel the world with her father's ambassadors, but right now, she would give anything to fly, to be able to see everything in the city. Every man, too, with the sharp eyes to recognise the one she wanted. So she might ask Aladdin why he avoided her.
Maram sighed deeply. The one man she wanted, who apparently had no desire for her. Fate was laughing at her, she was certain of it.
Anahita bumped her hip against Maram's as she took a seat on Maram's stone perch. "Where does he live, your bathhouse lover?" Anahita asked, peering out over the city. "Only Merlin has a better view of the city than we do from this ridge. Why, I can see the bathhouse. Is he waiting there for you now?"
Maram shook her head. "There is no one waiting for me. Not there, not anywhere."
"Men the world over pine for you, just as you are doing now. Perhaps this lover of yours is simply fate turning the tables on you," Anahita said. She let out a piercing whistle, summoning her falcon back.
The bird circled, swooped, then circled again, not seeming to want to land yet.
Maram didn't blame her. Why would she give up the freedom of flight when she hadn't found what she sought?
But she wasn't a bird. She was a princess, a daughter of the Sultan, who did not search the alleyways of the city for a man who appeared to be a street rat, yet had higher morals than any royal prince she'd ever known. She would send a servant in search of him, Maram decided. Aladdin wasn't that common a name – she'd never known another man called that – and he lived alone with his mother, she thought he'd said. If Aladdin avoided her, his mother could not. She would send the servant with an invitation for Aladdin's mother to present herself at the palace. Maram would share a meal with the woman and ask her why Aladdin had not returned. His mother would know – mothers always did. Her own mother...Maram shut that thought down before it could fully flower in her mind. Her own mother knew nothing of her life now – such was the fate of a treasonous former Sultana.
"Oh, you stupid bird! Not another frog!" Anahita cried in dismay as the bird dived into a well.
Maram couldn't suppress a smile. Evidently she wasn't the only one who loved what she shouldn't.
NINE
For the first time, Aladdin found Gwandoya had not lied. Inside the door sat a stack of torches. He seized one and carried it back to what remained of Gwandoya's fire. It was enough to light the torch, which was all Aladdin needed. He stepped back inside the cave and set off down the tunnel into the depths.
After several turns, Aladdin found himself at a crossroads of sorts, with two paths to choose from. Gwandoya and the doorway were out of sight, so there was no one he could ask for directions. Swearing, Aladdin peered down both tunnels, but neither dusty stone passage seemed more inviting than the other.
This cave ran deeper than he'd thought. Deep enough for a man to get lost in, maybe. Was that how Bugra had died? Aladdin moistened his suddenly dry mouth. Other men might have died here, but he would not. He backtracked to where he found another unlit torch in a bracket on the wall, and lit that, too, before he headed down the right hand passage. Any torch he saw, he lit, so he'd know he'd passed this way before.
Pretty soon, the warm light of all the torches behind him made Aladdin comfortable enough to start looking around him, at what wasn't a cave at all. The tunnels had been carved by tools, not nature, and he could see the marks of axes where they'd been opened out. Some tunnels came to dead ends that looked more like rooms where people had lived and worked
. But where were the people?
They'd left tools and clothing behind, even bedding, but everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. As though the people who lived here had left in a hurry, intending to return, but they had not. What had driven them out, and what had prevented them from returning? Aladdin wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to either question.
Especially not if the answer was somewhere in the city with him. Someone or something had killed Bugra, and Aladdin had no desire to be next.
He entered, then backed out of a prayer room. Perhaps he should take a moment and pray, he thought, then decided not to bother. Who knew which direction to face, anyway, so deep underground? No one would hear his prayer from here.
The next corridor ended in a dead end, blocked off by a boulder that looked like a smaller version of the one at the entrance. A door, Aladdin guessed, eyeing it. "Please open?" he suggested.
The round stone rolled smoothly aside, revealing a new passage. Aladdin breathed a sigh of relief, and stepped through.
More passages, more rooms, more torches, and more doors that opened at his request. Aladdin knew he descended deeper into the earth at each step, but he'd seen no sign of treasure, lamps or otherwise.
If he wanted to hide a pile of untouchable gold in this maze of a city, where would he put it? Aladdin considered this for a moment, before he had his answer. He'd put it either in the very centre of the city, or in the furthest depths from the entrance. Whichever was easier to defend if the city were attacked.
Aladdin laughed, the sound echoing through the empty tunnels. What would he know about defending or attacking a city? He should be safely home in his. All he had to do was find the benighted lamp, hand it to the madman outside, and he could go home.
Deeper he went, taking the tunnels that led down until he could go no further, for his way was barred by a bigger door than any he'd seen yet. This was the one, he was certain of it.
"Open, please," he breathed.
The door rolled open. Aladdin took a deep breath and thrust his torch inside.
At first, it didn't look too different from the store rooms he'd passed, with dusty casks, boxes and sacks piled up on either side of a narrow aisle. But something glowed at the end, as though he'd arrived at the surface and not the depths of the city.
Aladdin crept forward, suddenly glad he was so thin, for a bigger man wouldn't have fitted so easily between the chests piled up to the ceiling. The hem of his tunic dragged along the top of a chest, revealing costly polished wood under the dust. This was the treasury, all right. What had Gwandoya told him to watch out for? Not to touch the gold, or let his clothing touch it. Pulling his tunic tight around him, Aladdin proceeded forward into...the light.
The second chamber didn't look any different from the first, at first, for whoever owned the contents of this place preferred to keep it safely locked in chests, instead of piled up all over the floor, as Aladdin might have expected. Someone with countless wealth would surely be careless with their coins. But the first glimpse he got of gold was in a chest that someone had pried open so roughly it no longer closed. Bugra would not have had the strength to do this – and nor did Aladdin. How many men had Gwandoya brought here? And why had they all failed?
Aladdin rounded the corner and found his answer. A lit lamp sat in an alcove on the wall, so blackened from use it was hard to tell it was brass. But the flame was as bright as ever, illuminating a chest full of riches that surely belonged to a king or a sultan. Gold jewellery snaked around a collection of gold lamps, so shiny they hurt his eyes. Aladdin squinted, and looked again. The chest was not full – it was barely half full, and some rings and a necklace lay on the ground in front of it, as if dropped by someone in a hurry to cram as much treasure as they could into a sack to take with them.
Automatically, Aladdin stooped to return the treasures to their chest.
"I thought you were brighter than the others," a strange voice said.
Aladdin jerked upright. "Who said that?"
A blue glow appeared on Aladdin's right, atop a barrel. The light grew until it took the shape of a man. A man who was as lanky as Aladdin himself, though his clothes were far finer than anything Aladdin owned. "That would be me," the bluish man drawled, snapping his fingers. The blue light vanished, leaving the magic man looking as normal as Aladdin, or as normal as any man who hadn't appeared from a ball of light.
"Who are you?"
The man bent double without rising from the barrel. "Kaveh, servant of the ring you wear on your finger." He nodded at Aladdin's hand. "And you?
"Aladdin." He didn't know what else to say. Unemployed street rat? Minion to the madman outside? Son of a spinner? His heart lurched at the thought of what would happen to his mother if he died here. It would break her heart. "I need to grab that lamp and get it out of here." He reached for the alcove.
Kaveh whistled. "So you are brighter than the others. You're the first one who went for the right lamp."
Aladdin's hand closed around it, a moment before he realised that a lit lamp would be hot to the touch. To his surprise, the metal was as cold as the stone underfoot. "Must be magic," he muttered.
"Sure is. Why do you think that madman wants it so much?"
Aladdin hefted the lamp in his hand. It was such a small thing – his mother had two such at home, both in much better state than this. "What does it do?"
Kaveh grinned. "Give it a rub and find out."
Aladdin almost obeyed, then stopped himself. Something had killed the other men Gwandoya had sent here. He'd survived this long, but who knew what Kaveh's motives were? Perhaps he'd killed them, or tricked them into doing something that had.
"No," Aladdin said. "I have a job to do. I must fetch this lamp from the city and bring it back to Gwandoya. Then I get paid." Not enough to let him see Maram again, though, Aladdin realised with a sinking heart. A man who ate bugs wouldn't have a princess's bride price to spare. Why hadn't Aladdin thought of that before?
"The only repayment he'll give you is a slit throat. He can't risk you telling anyone what you found in here," Kaveh said, as though reading Aladdin's thoughts.
Aladdin sank onto a chest, his head in his hands. "What will I do? I have to get home. I need that money." Funny, Gwandoya had never mentioned just how much Aladdin's payment would be. Now he knew why.
"In debt, are you?"
Aladdin shook his head. "Who would lend money to someone like me? Even I know I'll never be able to repay them. No, it's...there's this girl..."
Kaveh's eyes lit up with an unearthly glow. "A girl? Is she as glorious as the moon?"
Aladdin's mind cast up a vision of Maram bathing naked in the bathhouse. The image from his dreams. "The moon herself would weep to see her, she is so beautiful."
"So you want a gift to win her affections?"
Aladdin laughed. "I would need a whole kingdom before I had a chance of that. She's the Sultan's daughter, you see, and I am no prince."
Kaveh nodded thoughtfully. "So you need a gift fit for a princess. You know, I think I can help you."
Help never came for free. "What will you want in return?" Aladdin asked.
"Don't give the madman back his ring, and I'll show you the perfect thing to win your princess's heart, and her father's, too."
Aladdin stared at Kaveh for a moment. "What do you want me to do with the ring?"
Kaveh shrugged. "Keep it. I'd like to meet this princess of yours."
"She's not mine, and she never will be," Aladdin said steadily.
Kaveh grinned. "Never say never. Women fall in love with their heart's desire, not with whoever their father wants them to marry."
Aladdin didn't bother arguing this time. Judging by his clothes, Kaveh was highborn, maybe even as highborn as Maram herself. He had no idea what it was not to be able to remember when he'd last eaten – or wonder when he might eat again.
"We'd better get this lamp up to the surface. I said I would, and my word is all I have left." Alad
din rose.
"You're a fool," Kaveh said.
Aladdin knew he was right. "Perhaps, but an honest fool."
Kaveh shook his head. "I don't have to watch this." He dissolved into sparkling blue light, which streamed into the ring before the light winked out.
Aladdin peered at his hand. It looked like an ordinary silver ring, but he knew he hadn't imagined Kaveh.
Aladdin tucked the lamp inside his tunic, before tightening his sash to make sure it didn't fall out. He'd come too far to lose it now.
The hike back through the tunnels seemed a lot shorter now. Maybe it was because he was headed for the surface, or he knew where he was going, Aladdin wasn't sure, but there was a spring in his step as he glimpsed the yawning entrance to the cavern he'd dreaded when he first saw it. How wrong he was.
"Do you have it?" Gwandoya asked eagerly, his shadow blocking the light coming from the entrance.
Aladdin dug into his tunic and produced the sorry-looking lamp. "Yes."
Gwandoya beckoned him closer. "Give it to me!"
He wasn't just eager, he seemed...rabid, Aladdin thought uneasily.
"Where is the payment you promised me?" Aladdin demanded.
Gwandoya wet his lips. "It is back in the city. I will pay you on our return."
Back went the lamp into the depths of his clothes. "Then I will keep it a while longer."
"I said give it to me!"
His instincts screamed at him to obey, but Aladdin ignored them. "And I said pay me."
The two men stared at one another, Gwandoya's chest heaving as though it cost him a great deal not to kill Aladdin on the spot.
All the more reason to hang onto the thing the madman wanted, Aladdin told himself.
Gwandoya forced out a smile that didn't touch his eyes. "As you wish, boy. But return my ring."
"Don't do it!" Kaveh's voice whispered.