Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (35 page)

With that decision, she shoved Najat’s face
back into the bowl of seawater. This time, she held her under until
she died.

If the sorceress couldn’t have Iksander,
neither would her rival.

* * *

“Now
that’s
how you tell a story!”
Joseph’s former heckler shouted admiringly.

His words spurred the rest of the audience to
roar with approval. Seeming pleased with the response, Joseph bowed
modestly.

Good Lord
, Elyse thought. She’d
guessed Zayd’s men would prefer a miserable ending, but she hadn’t
known Najat’s suffering would inspire such delight. She’d cringed
at Joseph’s description of her death. She couldn’t imagine being
drowned in a bowl of water, held down while you strove to breathe
and your face was burned. She hoped Joseph had exaggerated for
effect. The idea was too gruesome otherwise.

Arcadius squeezed her shoulder, not in
comfort but warning. The sheikh’s gaze had slid to her. He was
watching her like a hungry cat outside a mouse’s hole. Was he
picturing her in Najat’s place? Wondering how she’d suffer so he
could drink it up?

Elyse fought not to shudder. She shouldn’t
have let herself become so engrossed in Joseph’s tale telling.

“We should check the results,” Arcadius said
in a deliberately calm tone. “See whether Joseph or you won the
bet.”

Zayd pulled his attention away from her, a
slight hesitation betraying his reluctance. He lifted his hand to
summon the ifrit who held the phone with the heart monitor data,
the one who’d been spelled to honesty.

The man trotted over, seeming relieved that
his duties were almost done. “One moment,” he said. “I must ‘poke
the app’ and the answers will come up.”

He jabbed the touch screen a few times and
scowled.

“Hm,” he said and scratched his head.

“Is the device functioning?” the sheikh
demanded.

“It is,” the ifrit said. “Forgive me. I . . .
it seems the eunuch has won the bet. The app tells me all five of
your champions went into the ‘red zone.’ More than once, according
to these squiggles.”

“You’re not mistaken?”

“No, sir. Your sorcerers spelled me to be
positive.”

This announcement wasn’t met with applause.
Instead the mood of the crowd around them quieted. Elyse had
worried Joseph might lose the wager. Now she saw winning might
present challenges.

Sheikh Zayd looked extremely irritated.
“Well,” he said. “Honor demands I pay up. The bet was for a flying
carpet to get you home, wasn’t it?”

“
Safely
home,” Arcadius emphasized
politely.

“All of you, return to your duties,” the
sheikh ordered his tribe members. “Guards, accompany us to the
secure cache.”

The sheikh stored his valuables exactly where
Joseph thought, beneath an outcrop of rocks not too far from camp.
Zayd had brought a torch to light their way. He planted it in the
sand, clambering up the tallest boulder to murmur a password that
sounded like
hyacinth
to Elyse. The rocks split up the
middle, making a grinding noise as they moved apart with Zayd
riding them. A cavelike mouth appeared between them.

“Bring out one of the larger carpets,” Zayd
instructed.

Two guards jogged down the sandy slope. They
returned carrying a rolled up ordinary-seeming Persian rug. They
laid it on the sand and stepped back from it.

“There,” Zayd said. “Never say I don’t pay my
debts.”

Arcadius and Joseph exchanged a glance. Like
Elyse, they thought this was too easy.

“Thank you,” Arcadius said. “We
appreciate—”

Without warning, Zayd blinked into his smoke
body. He zipped to Elyse before she could move, yanking her and her
leash away from Arcadius. She didn’t get a chance to struggle. He
pressed a long curved blade to her throat.

“Not another step,” he ordered.

Arcadius and Joseph froze. Arcadius addressed
the vaporous sheikh carefully.

“You gave you word,” he said.

“I promised you a carpet to get you home. The
Glorious City is no home to this human.”

“Splitting hairs does you no credit.”

Zayd’s laugh rasped like a match on cement.
“Her hairs aren’t what I intend to split, trust me.”

Elyse trembled. Zayd’s cloud form was damp
and icy where it held her. Was he drinking her fear already? Was
that why her knees felt weak enough to buckle?

More guards materialized from the shadows,
all with their scimitars drawn. Arcadius had promised to fight
every man Zayd had to protect her. Judging by the way he brought up
his fists and readied, he’d meant it. Joseph shifted around until
he and his master were back to back, two good djinn against dozens
of ifrits. Joseph had magic, but neither man was armed. They were
outnumbered more than ten to one.

Then the tribe’s sorcerers showed up.

Crap
, Elyse thought, her terror
spiking uncontrollably. Zayd had so planned this.

“Elyse,” said Joseph’s voice. He was facing
away from her, and no one else reacted. Perhaps he was projecting
his words to her magically. However he was communicating, he
continued. “I made the rope you wear around your waist. My magic is
in it. You can draw on its power to free yourself.”

That was fine, but she didn’t know how and
wasn’t sure what good it would do anyway. Even as she wondered,
Zayd’s smoke arm dragged her another body length away from
Arcadius.

“
Don’t
,” her protector growled. “I’ll
kill you if you harm her.”

“Why fight?” Zayd asked silkily. “I’m giving
you what you want the most. Go save your city. Leave this woman
with me. There are plenty more where she came from.”

Arcadius answered but Elyse didn’t hear.
Joseph was speaking to her again.

“You can do it,” he said. “Remember how you
worked the kettle? All you need is your faith and words of command.
You’re human, Elyse, the race most beloved by the Almighty. Your
words of magic overrule any of our kind’s.”

What words of magic? Did he expect her to
make them up?

Her attention split. Something had happened
that caused Arcadius to explode into his smoke form. Apparently,
his transformation was a signal for the dark djinn to change as
well. Chaotic wind and cloud filled the space around her. Dozens of
djinn tornadoes did battle. Strange glows flashed on and off within
whirling banks of gray. Zayd’s hold on her seemed to keep the
hurricane force gusts from tearing her apart, but some fighters
were getting hurt. Djinn screamed louder than the cacophony of the
wind, smoke forms shredding as lightning-like bolts tore them.
Djinn shot these bolts from their fingertips, forming disembodied
hands so they could do so. Hitting something that could be injured
seemed to be a challenge, but it was happening.

Elyse guessed the seriously wounded couldn’t
remain vaporous. Solid bodies fell bleeding from the sky. The
distinctive blue of Arcadius’s eyes told her he was alive.
Unfortunately, she kept losing track of him in the confusion.

Her attempts to find him kept her from
noticing Joseph was still solid. When she finally did, he was
looking straight at her through the tumult. His eyes glowed gold
with intensity.

“Grip the rope,” he said very firmly without
his lips moving. “Arcadius can’t hold them all off for long. Speak
your command in accordance with your belief.”

Speak her command . . . How did she speak in
accordance with her belief when she wasn’t sure what that was?

She’d have to try. They didn’t have time for
indecisiveness. She took the rope in both hands. The strands might
have been vibrating. It was hard to tell with all that was going
on. Zayd didn’t notice. The fighting had distracted him.

“In the name of Jehovah,” she whispered under
her breath, hoping desperately this would work. “God of Jews and
Gentiles, God of Djinn, God of all creatures great and small, I
command these djinn who want to harm us to lose their
strength.”

The rope flared within her hands like it had
gone nuclear, its matter turning to energy. Brightness flashed out
from her in a circle, magically clearing out the smoke.

The smoke hadn’t disappeared; it had changed
state like the rope. Every djinn except Arcadius and Joseph thudded
to the ground unconscious. A heartbeat later, the sheikh collapsed
behind her. Elyse staggered forward from gaining her freedom so
abruptly.

“Holy sh—” she said, cutting off the curse at
the last instant. Under the circumstances, more respect seemed
appropriate.

“Whoa,” Joseph said, sounding surprised
himself. Nice to know he hadn’t been convinced she could do it.

Arcadius returned to his solid form. “Hurry,”
he said. “Help me unroll this carpet. We don’t know how long
they’ll be out.”

They also didn’t know how far her impromptu
spell had reached. Elyse shot a nervous glance over her shoulder at
the camp and then ran to help the men. Whether by chance or on
purpose, Zayd’s guards had pulled out a big carpet. It was large
enough to have covered the floor in her living room. Once it was
unrolled, it still seemed ordinary. Something that looked like a
brass walking stick lay inside. Joseph picked it up as if it was
important.

“This rug is old,” Elyse said, noting the
faded patches.

“Old is good,” Joseph told her. “Newer flying
carpets aren’t as reliable.” He gestured her onto it. “We need to
get going.”

She stepped on suspiciously. Flying carpets
sounded romantic until she was about to ride one. Seriously, this
was just a rug. Even if it worked, there wasn’t anything to keep
them from falling off the edge.

Arcadius smiled at her look of doubt. “It’s
perfectly safe. Just sit down in the middle and—”

“Sirs, wait for me!” someone cried,
interrupting his instructions. They all looked up.

“Shit,” Joseph said. “It’s that two-faced
jackal, Samir.”

The little smoke demon flew up to them
through the litter of unconscious ifrit bodies.

“We’re not taking you with us,” Joseph said.
“You betrayed us to the sheikh.”

“Samir introduced you, just as you asked. Now
you have defeated Zayd and made me the bearer of bad guests. Zayd
will kill me as soon as he wakes up.”

“Then go hide somewhere. We’re not
responsible for you.”

“Be merciful,” Samir pleaded. “And smart. I
am an experienced pilot. I know the way you go. I can help you fly
home.”

“We can fly ourselves,” Joseph retorted.

Samir dropped to his knees and wrung his
smoky hands. “Please? None of the tribes will shelter me if they
find out what happened here.”

“Oh, let him come,” Arcadius said. “We
haven’t traveled this route before. Maybe he’ll be useful.”

“You try anything,” Joseph warned, “and we’ll
toss you into the Gulf.”

“You can trust me, sirs!” Samir scrambled
aboard the rug with them. “I know which side my toast is buttered
on.”

Elyse believed that. She watched with
interest as Joseph used the walking stick—if that’s what it was—to
draw a quick rectangle within the carpet’s edge. When he tapped one
corner, the border folded up like a box’s lid. The top reached
slightly higher than the men’s waists.

“Safety walls,” Samir explained to her with
almost convincing friendliness. “So we won’t tumble out.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She studied their new
companion cautiously. His smoke face was hard for her to read.

“Sorry you were almost raped and tortured,”
he offered.

“No you’re not,” Elyse said, which caused
Arcadius to snort out a laugh.

“I’m a
little
sorry,” Samir tried.
“Also, I will miss my rocking horse. I had to flee too quickly to
carry it.”

He shook his head dolefully. Elyse turned
away to hide her amusement.

“I’m ready,” Joseph said.

“Go ahead and lift off,” Arcadius
directed.

Elyse sat while she had the chance, doing her
best to clutch the carpet to either side of her. Samir sat too, but
Arcadius and Joseph remained standing, simply bracing their legs
like sailors. Joseph murmured one of his indecipherable
incantations.

They rose so smoothly they were five feet
above the sand before she realized they were moving. Fortunately
for her stomach, the motion was more like an elevator than a boat.
Up they went, until the fires of Zayd’s encampment dwindled to
candle flames. As they did, the men she’d knocked unconscious began
to stir. They heard distant shouts below and behind them.

“They’re lighting arrows,” Arcadius said. He
was near enough to the carpet’s edge to lean over. “I don’t think
they can see us, but they’ll probably try to shoot us down
anyway.”

Joseph nodded. Unalarmed, he planted the
walking stick on the carpet floor. He pushed the upper half toward
one end as if it were a rudder.

“Forward,” he commanded.

The flying carpet immediately—and
wonderfully—shot out of attack reach.

It soon became apparent, at least to Elyse,
that it was good they’d let Samir come. Arcadius and Joseph seemed
to have only a vague idea where their Glorious City was in relation
to the Great Desert. Samir rolled glowing eyes over their debate,
then drifted up to his cloudy feet to help.

“This star,” he said, pointing out one of the
brighter twinkles. “Steer toward it until you feel the Gulfstream
bump under us.”

The three djinn navigated together for a
while. Elyse guessed Arcadius was satisfied Samir knew his stuff,
because he left the others and joined her. To her relief, the men
moving about didn’t unbalance the carpet. Though it vibrated from
the air currents and their speed, it stayed level and steady.

Arcadius’s nearness steadied her in a
different way.

With a grace that said he was used to
traveling this way, he lowered himself beside her. Leaning back on
his arms, he stretched his long legs in front of him. The pointed
toes of his slippers reminded her how different from normal he and
this experience were.