The Forbidden Wish(4)

This the Jinni pondered, before replying, “The poet also says, woe to the man who befriends the jinn, for he shakes hands with death.”

—From the Song of the Fall of Roshana,

Last Queen of Neruby

by Parys zai Moura,

Watchmaiden and Scribe to Queen Roshana





Chapter Two


WE ARE ADRIFT ON A SEA of moonlit sand, the silence as infinite as the space between the stars. The night is calm and deceptively peaceful, the city that stood here just moments ago nothing more than a memory.

Inside, I am roiling with apprehension and dread. Will the jinn know I have escaped? How long until they come running? Their fiery hands could close on me at any moment, their eyes red with fury. I wait for them to drag me down and chain me in the darkness once more, but they do not come.

I lift my head and let out a slow breath.

No jinn are racing through the sky. No alarm bells clang across the desert. And at that moment, it strikes me fully: I have escaped. I have well and truly escaped.

We are surrounded by the sand of the great Mahali Desert, endless sand, sand in hills and heaps and valleys, stained pale blue by the moon. The sheer immensity of empty space staggers me after my long confinement. As the boy catches his breath, I turn a full circle and breathe in the desert night. I had long ago given up hoping that I would ever see the sky again. And such a sky! Stars like dust, stars of every color—blue, white, red—the jewels of the gods displayed across black silk.

I long to stretch myself out, to crawl smokily across that glorious moon-blue sand, spread myself like water, a hand on each horizon. And then up, up, up to the stars, to press my face against the sky and feel the cool kiss of the moon.

I feel the boy’s gaze on me, and I turn to him. He is still lying on the sand, propped on one arm, staring at me like a fisherman who has unexpectedly caught a shark in his nets.

I return his gaze with equal candor, adding him up. His stubbled jaw is strong and just slightly crooked, his copper eyes large and expressive, his lips full. A small, cheap earring hangs from his left earlobe. A handsome boy growing into a man’s body, already powerfully built. Were he a prince or a renowned warrior, he would have entire harems vying for his attention. As it is, his rough beauty is hidden in his poorly cut clothing. I pick out the scars on his hands and his legs. The gods have been negligent with this one.

With a sigh, I say, “You look like you’ve been kicked by a horse. Here, get up.”

I offer my hand, but he scrambles away, his eyes wild and wary.

For a moment, he and I regard one another silently beneath the pulsing stars. His ragged breathing is laced with fatigue, but he is as tense as a cornered cat, ready to flee, waiting to see what I will do. My head is still spinning from the suddenness of what’s happened: the first human I’ve seen in five hundred years, the mad race to escape the collapsing ruins, the vastness of the desert after so many centuries confined to my lamp. I sway a little, taking a moment to sort out earth from sky.

“I cannot hurt you,” I say. My hands clench at my sides, and I force my fingers to open disarmingly. “The same magic that binds us together prevents me from harming you. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Have you never seen a jinni before?”

The boy clears his throat, his eyes fixed on mine. “No, but I’ve heard stories of them.”

Turning my back to him, I look up at the stars. “Of course you have. Tales of ghuls, I’m sure, who devour souls and wear the skins of their prey. Of ifreet, all fire and flame and no brains at all. Or perhaps you mean the maarids, small and sweet, until they drown you in their pools.”

He nods slowly and climbs to his feet, brushing sand from his palms. “And the Shaitan, most powerful of all.”

A chill runs down my spine. “Ah, of course.”

“So are they true? All these stories?”

Turning to face him, I pause before replying. “As the poets say, stories are truth told through lies.”

“So are you going to devour my soul?” he asks, as if it is a challenge. “Or drown me? What sort of jinni are you?”

With a curl of smoke, I shift into a white tiger and crouch before him, my tail flicking back and forth. He watches in amazement, recoiling a bit at the sight of my golden eyes and extended claws.

“What are you?” he whispers.

Should I tell him what—who—I really am? That even now, legions of angry jinn—ghuls, maarids, a dozen other horrors—could be racing toward us? If he has any wits about him, he’ll abandon my lamp and put as many leagues between us as he can . . . which would leave me completely helpless. At least while he holds the lamp, I have a fighting chance.

“How did you find me?” I ask. So many centuries, and this hapless young man is the only one to have found my prison. After that final battle, after you fell, Habiba, my kin threw me into the garden I had created for you. Sit in the dark and rot, traitor, they said. And for so many years, I was certain that would be my fate. But then, surpassing all hope, the boy appeared.

“I’m from Parthenia.” At my blank expression, he adds, “Two weeks by horseback, to the west. On the coast. As for how I found you . . . I was led here. By this.”

He pulls from his finger the ring he’d been twisting earlier. He holds it out on his palm, and after a slight hesitation, I pick it up. A tingle in my fingers tells me the ring was forged in magic. There is something familiar about it, but I am certain I have never seen it before. The band is plain gold but for the symbols carved into the inside, symbols that have been blurred by time and fire.