The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(10)
She passed over a crop of budding roses, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers as she flew. Her mood improved from the floral perfume until she was more resolute than desperate. Had this been her life before, she would have stayed among those heavenly scents as long as her heart desired, but today she must relent and fly. She turned to the west and headed for the hills.
The opening to the cave, once so perfectly hidden in the rocky ground, was now marked by an atrocity of a stone monument and a wooden gate. Mortals disturbed everything they came across. Tours, they called it. And yet the old one refused to leave the place. He merely burrowed in deeper beyond the reach of idle curiosity.
The gate had been secured for the day. Such locks were made for clay-footed mortals, but if the light could get through, so could she. Sidra drifted through the cracks at the entrance where the wooden gate and stone wall didn’t quite meet. Inside, the cavern yawned before her. The great room echoed with cool, expansive emptiness. She reanimated on a stone ledge on the lip of darkness. Removing an oil lamp from the wall, she lit the wick and blew her fire magic inside the glass so it shone with the light of ten lanterns. In the illuminated space at her feet, a row of stalagmites with a pinkish hue stood waist-high like teeth inside a mythical beast that had swallowed the world. A great tongue of solid ground, newly carved with steps for goggle-eyed tourists, descended deeper into the cavern. To find her answers, she would need to go very deep into the abyss to find the old one, beyond the reach of mortals and their rudimentary tools.
Sidra crossed her legs and sat on a cushion of air. Steadily, she floated through the dark with her lantern held out before her, winding her way down through openings in the rock, large and small, brushing against the limestone walls with their mud-slick slime and coiled fossils embedded in time. She didn’t care for the damp. And though the lure of hiding in dark places was fitting for her kind, she had never personally been drawn to them. Not until she’d felt the tugging loss of her husband’s death pull her down. “Live long enough,” she’d been told by those older than she, “and one day you, too, will seek out a hollow place at the bottom of the world to bury your sorrows in.”
She was getting closer. The spicy scents of turmeric and cumin began to overtake the wet beach smell of the limestone. She sank deeper, past the garbage left behind by the tourists, past the dripping water from the aquifer, until she came to a cave within the cave, a sideways tunnel gleaming with the reddish color of iron oxide, the color a talisman for luck and courage.
The air stirred. A noise like small stones tumbling over a ledge reached her ears from deeper inside. Ah, good. He is already awake. Touching her feet down again to walk, she dimmed her lantern to a tolerable level. Even jinn needed time to adjust their eyes after so much time in shadow. Especially one as old as Rajul Hakim.
Sidra approached the door, a curtain of darkness sewn from threads of cosmic magic. “As-salaam-alaykum,” she said and passed through the veil.
Inside, the air grew dry and comfortably warm. A small whirlwind of sediment and tiny pebbles kicked up from the stony ground. She could remember the first time she’d come to the cave and the fierce storm he’d produced in her presence. But time robbed even seasoned warriors of their hot breath eventually.
Rajul Hakim, called the wise one for his many centuries of gathering knowledge in the folds of his caftan, reanimated in front of her. He’d shrunk again. Though he once had been a giant among his kind, age had knocked a few more inches off his spine so that he stood not much taller than she. His golden-yellow robe puddled on the ground, and his graying hair needed trimming, particularly his brows, which had grown into splayed pigeon wings above his eyes. Despite his disheveled physical appearance, she knew his mental power had merely concentrated after being forced to live in a smaller body. He was still a formidable jinni to be cautious of.
“As-salaam-alaykum,” he said, though he had yet to open his eyes. Perhaps he needed more time than first thought to accept the light. She dimmed the lantern again.
The old man blinked and scratched his scraggly beard. “Ah, Sidra.” He seemed pleased to see her, but then his forehead wrinkled in confusion. He glanced at the wall of his cave where several spiral markings had been scratched into the limestone. A sort of cosmic calendar he conferred with to keep track of the outside world. “Your tribute is not due for another sixty years,” he said. “Where is Hariq? Did he not come with you?”
“No.”
Rajul Hakim seemed then to remember what happened to her husband. His face showed the proper remorse before checking his calendar again. After a quick calculation, he nodded to himself and gestured for her to sit with much more solemnity than normal. When she smiled weakly back at him, finding nowhere to sit, he mumbled an excuse about his aging mind before presenting an illusion of comfort by introducing two plush hassocks beneath a silken canopy. A brass dallah full of coffee appeared on a table beside a bowl of shriveled dates. Sidra sat and inhaled the scent of cardamom wafting from the cup, pleased to let the aroma filter through her lungs. She passed on the dates, believing them to be from an ancient and outdated spell.
The old jinni crossed his legs atop the hassock. “So, you do not bring tribute. Why then have you come?” He waved a finger, and a trio of hanging lamps came to life over their heads. In the brighter light his skin appeared ashen and sun deprived. Lizard-like.
“You should get out of this cave for a change,” she chided gently. “Go to a bazaar. Indulge in some sun and soft desert wind at a street-side café.”