The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(41)
Jamra didn’t lash out as expected, but his temper clearly simmered beneath his skin. “Give me the dagger and I promise you will feel only minimum anguish when I kill you and avenge my brother’s death. Deny me, and the morning will bring nothing but destruction for you and the people of this village.”
Sidra glanced quickly at the rooftops for signs of ifrit hovering about, but the sightline was clear. Had he really come alone?
“You never spared any love for your brother,” she said, lowering her eyes to meet his. “You would have eagerly taken his life if his death would have delivered you what you seek.”
“Now I have the pleasure of demanding that same condition from you.”
Sidra grew bolder. “The dagger was not made to fit the hand of the defiled.”
The jinni’s eyes flashed with hatred. The insult had found its sticking place. Let the wrath of her fire do the same. Sidra conjured a wave of grease-fire and hurled the blaze at Jamra. The same spell she’d used to sear his skin the first time she’d faced him one-on-one. Only this time the fire missed. Went right through him. The flame hit the wall, licking the stone with scorching heat and black smoke.
Jamra hadn’t even made a move to defend himself. Instead he grinned as a choking column of smoke billowed upward. And then he faded from view. A mirage. A trick. He’d never been there at all. He’d manipulated her mind. Her vision. Provoked her from afar until she reacted. She looked up again. The smoke climbed above the rooftops to fill the sky.
A signal. A beacon to mark her spot.
At the end of the lane the dog lowered his head after watching the trail of smoke rise higher. Even he seemed to understand that, somewhere, a pair of plotting eyes scanned the horizon.
CHAPTER TWENTY
He’d had to slink behind a mother and child while they admired the stalactites, the rows of teeth-like formations growing in the stomach of the cave. Their tour guide had been so preoccupied with assigning lanterns and pointing out the guide ropes that he hadn’t noticed a dog slipping inside the gate behind the group. Not that it would have mattered. He could have easily moved through the ether, though the damp in the cave wasn’t to his liking in his spirit form. Better to trod on four paws than endure the unnatural merging of moisture with his essence.
The old one slept. To mortal ears his snores were likely nothing more than echoes inside a cave. The sounds of wind and dripping water. But to the dog they were the forewarning of an ancient one’s days winding down. He stared into the abyss where he knew Rajul Hakim was tucked away.
As-salaam-alaykum, Rajul Hakim. The dog sent the greeting into the old one’s mind, yet the jinni didn’t stir. He sighed, not wishing to do the thing he must. He waited through another chorus of snores, then reluctantly trotted inside the darkness, letting his wet nose nudge up against the coil of energy there. At last the old one grumbled awake.
“Who is there?” he asked, reanimating so that his hand reached out to touch the dog’s head. “Ah, it is you. I’ve been expecting your arrival.”
“The time is upon us,” he said and transformed into the form of a man.
“Yes, so the great unwinding has begun.” The jinni gathered up the front of his too-long caftan and walked the few steps to the wall where the spirals had been scratched into the limestone. He traced a finger over each one, as if sensing the churning energy—wish energy—still swirling in the cosmos. “The confrontation is imminent,” he said and tapped his finger on the final spiral.
“She has already been found.”
The old one studied the coiled etchings. Each like a spring releasing its kinetic energy into the world, creating ripples of outcomes that might never have been otherwise. At least that was how the energy of wishes had been explained to the young man from his earliest education in the designs of magic. But the way the elements of the wish all interacted was a thing to behold. He bowed to the old one’s ingenuity and wisdom.
“It was not all my doing,” Rajul Hakim said, as if reading his mind. “She had a hand in things too.” He tapped his finger on the big spiral enveloping the smaller ones.
The man recalled the creature who’d sat on his shoulder to whisper in his ear and shivered. “She makes gooseflesh of my skin.”
“Then you have good instincts.” Rajul Hakim laughed, but it soon turned into a cough. In the outer cave a child cried out for his mother. “She is not one to trifle with. Especially if met in one’s dreams.”
The jinni nodded before lowering his head in thought. There was more he wished to say. Uncertainties he wanted made certain. Guarantees written in the language of the ancients. The old one’s blood oath that everything would work out the way it was meant to, but he was no fool. Events would go forward as planned, with the consequences spilling out when the thing was done.
“And you still do not know where she has hidden the dagger?” the young man asked, although his instinct knew the answer even before it was confirmed with a shake of the head. The old one seemed to realize then he had not extended his hospitality to his guest by offering coffee or a pipe, but the jinni waved him off. “I must return and find my place. May the All Seeing allow us to meet again on the other side.”
Aching to stretch his back, the jinni said a final farewell, then walked out of the cave on four feet. Soon, the All Seeing willing, he would live in the world as a man once again.