The Complete Parsina Saga

Volume I: SHRINE OF THE DESERT MAGE-15

“Now?” The soldier seemed stunned by his unexpected success.

“It is at your wish,” the thief said with a shrug.

After a moment’s thought the soldier stood up from the table. Hakem Rafi grabbed at his sleeve. “My mistress does request that you exercise discretion,” he whispered. “For you to go straight up those stairs would be a grievous offense against her modesty.”

“Then how…?”

“There is another set of stairs outside behind the tavern. There, under the darkness of night, you can go to her unobserved.” Hakem Rafi stood up and led the officer by the arm, keeping a firm grip so the man would not squirm away or change his mind. “Come, I will show you where it is.”

And Hakem Rafi led his victim out of the tavern once more and around the side of the building. There they were away from the main street and the prying eyes of evening travelers, covered by the darkness that was the gift of Rimahn to all evildoers.

“I don’t see any stairs,” the soldier said. Those were the last words of his life.

Hakem Rafi reached his left forearm around from behind the soldier, clasping it under the chin and lifting the poor man’s head backward. With his right hand, the thief whipped out his khanjar. He tried stabbing the soldier, but the armor breastplate repelled the dagger, so Hakem Rafi quickly changed his attack and slid his sharp blade in an arc across the man’s throat. Blood spurted forward and down. The soldier tried to scream, but Hakem Rafi’s stroke had broken his larynx and the air hissed and bubbled out of his throat as his mouth moved impotently. The victim struggled but Hakem Rafi, driven by desperation and the promise of mastery over Aeshma, was stronger than he.

In a few moments it was all over. The soldier’s body went limp in Hakem Rafi’s arms, and the thief let his victim slip to the ground amid a growing pool of blood. Looking around to make sure he was still unseen, Hakem Rafi dragged the body into the darkest corner of the alley and began stripping the armor and clothing from it. He wiped the worst of the blood off, though he could not get it all, and dressed himself in the dead man’s garments. As he’d guessed, the clothes were a trifle large for him, but fit adequately enough for his purposes. It was better, he reckoned, to have armor that was a little loose than a little tight.

He took the precious urn from the pocket of his kaftan and used his old robes to cover up the body. By the time the corpse was discovered, the caravan should be well beyond the city walls and Hakem Rafi would be beyond all mortal punishment.

Taking the urn wrapped in its plain rags, he went back to the commotion by the Palace Gate. Torches had been set up so the packers and the handlers could work through the night to make sure the prince left as scheduled in the morning. With so much bustle and disturbance, no one noticed Hakem Rafi dressed as one of the palace guards walking calmly through the chaos. He went up to one of the asses and tucked his treasure securely into a basket it was carrying. He hated to be parted from the urn for even a single minute, but he knew he could not be seen carrying it about with him. He took great care to memorize exactly where the urn had been stashed, then walked reluctantly away. Once the caravan was outside the city walls, he would find some excuse to approach this ass and remove his treasure again.

In the meantime, the purse he’d taken from his victim contained a few silver dirhams. That was more than enough to buy him a good meal and a decent bed for the night, and even a woman to share it with him. After today, the money would be meaningless—but one last time he would spend it and enjoy himself.

Chapter 9: The Jann

The Jann known only as Cari—for she was neither old enough nor experienced enough to have gained any other names—flew from her master’s tents to the walls of Ravan with great fear in her heart. Many were the stories and legends she’d heard about the power and the magic of the Holy City, and how magical beings were treated by the spells laid upon it centuries ago by the great wizard Ali Maimun. Even her people, the righteous Jann who worshiped Oromasd rather than Rimahn and tried to live their lives in good and ordered ways—even they avoided all contact with Ravan lest they be deemed too impure by the definitions of the spell and burned to ashes. Even though they did not age the way humans did and could live for many thousands of years, all djinni could die. The Jann, as the lowest order of the djinni, were the easiest to kill—and Cari, as one of the youngest in her line, would be easier yet.

Cari did not want to die. She’d lived a mere two hundred years and had barely begun to taste the richness of the world. She feared the spells of Ravan as she’d feared nothing else in her short existence, and she feared the vengeful flame she was certain would envelop and consume her the instant she passed beyond those forbidding walls.

And yet, as slave of the ring her master Akar wore on his finger, she had no choice. Akar had forged the ring under a powerful spell and engraved it with her name, thus slipping a noose tightly about her soul. She was his slave, his tool. Today he’d commanded her to enter Ravan and discover the source of the disturbance in the world’s magical network. She must do so, even though she was convinced she would die because of it.

Cari slowed as she neared the walls. She was constrained by her master’s orders to fulfill her task as quickly as possible, but that still left her some discretionary leeway. She took a little extra time now to recite a long, silent prayer to Oromasd and to ask the blessings of the Bounteous Immortals. She confessed all her sins—including a couple she’d never committed, just to be on the safe side—and begged forgiveness from the lord of creation and light. She prayed that if she died in Ravan, her soul would reach the Bridge of Shinvar and be worthy to enter the House of Song.

She had a particular stake in that matter. Humans would all be resurrected after the Final Battle; even those wicked people who’d been damned to the Pits of Torment would be rehabilitated and would share in the glorious Paradise of Oromasd. But the soul of a djinn was a fragile thing; if it was not sustained by being accepted into the House of Song, it would simply cease to exist. There would be no rehabilitation, no Paradise—nothing. That which the world had known for a brief time as Cari would never be again.

When her prayers were finished she had no more excuse to linger outside the city. Braced for certain death, Cari flew over the walls and into the streets of Ravan.

To her own astonishment and great relief, the threatened fires of vengeance did not consume her. She offered up another prayer to Oromasd, this one of gratitude for his mercy and compassion for a poor Jann, and she promised that, subject only to the whims of her master which she could not refuse, she would lead a good and blameless life.

With those obligations out of the way, she set about her assigned task. Akar had sent her into Ravan to discover what had disturbed the magical web that underlay the world. Had she been more experienced she might have deduced it immediately from the atmosphere. As it was, she had to resort to trial and error.

It was early in the evening when Cari began her search; the sun had just set and the dim dusk light cast odd shadows through the streets of Ravan. Cari did not worry about being seen as she swooped over the Holy City; it was a basic property of djinni that they could make themselves invisible and insubstantial at will. Cari could fly through the air like a hawk and float through walls as though they didn’t exist. No one in Ravan would know she was there if she wanted to remain unnoticed.

Even untrained as she was, she could sense the disturbance in the air. She’d flown over the walls near Merchant’s Gate, but this feeling of panic was not in the east quarter alone. The entire city was in an uproar. Floating closer to the ground, Cari could see some people running in fear, but she had no idea what they were running from. This would require more investigation.

She descended to ground level in a back alley where no one would notice and materialized into corporeal form. The shape she took was the one most natural for her, that of a young woman, slender, almost boyish of figure. She had an attractive, very oval face with wide brown eyes flecked with gold, and long black hair that fell down her back to her shoulderblades. She could have materialized in other guises, such as various animals, but she’d acquired that skill so recently that she still was not comfortable with it and was afraid she’d do it wrong. This was her natural form and she liked it best; besides, she could get more answers as a person than she could as a beast.

Stepping out of the alley, she grabbed the arm of one woman running past. “Your pardon, O my lady,” she said, “but why is everyone running? What’s happening?”

“It’s the police. They’re looking for something. You’d better run too, if you know what’s good for you.”

“But what are they looking for?”

The woman shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? They’re the police—that’s reason enough for them. If they’re looking for something, it’s best not to be around. They might find it, and then you’re in trouble.”

She looked sympathetically at Cari’s young, innocent, unveiled face. “You’d better run, little one. The police have no more respect for a maid’s virtue than for anything else. Come with me, I know places to hide until they’re gone and the furor dies down again.”

Cari shook her head. “I thank you for the offer, O gracious lady, but I have things I must do. I will be careful, and I guarantee the police won’t catch me.”

The woman shrugged again and hurried on her way.

Cari was thoughtful as she walked back into the alleyway and dematerialized once more. Could it be just a coincidence that the police were conducting a massive hunt for something at the same time the magical web was disturbed? Far more likely, she thought, that the two events were connected in some way. Quite possibly the police were looking for the source of the disturbance just as she was.

If such were the case, it would make her task much simpler. Flying off again, she headed straight for the palace; that was the place, she guessed, where the wali of police would have his headquarters. By hanging around there, she was sure to overhear some talk that would explain all this commotion.

The palace was huge, bigger than any human building she had ever seen—with the possible exception of Akar’s mountain castle, which sometimes seemed to extend forever into the bowels of the earth. Cari quickly realized she could roam these corridors for days without finding the place she wanted, so she materialized again near the front entrance and asked a servant where she might find the offices of the wali.

The servant was dumbfounded. “You want to go to the police?” he asked.

“Yes, I have important information about the object they seek, and I can only speak to the wali himself.”

The man raised an eyebrow but accepted her explanation. “The wali’s audience chamber is around on the west side of the palace,” he said, “next to the barracks and just above the dungeon. It’s said he likes to hear the screams of the prisoners as they’re interrogated.”

Cari ignored the chilling warning and thanked the servant for his helpfulness. She ran off until she was once again out of sight, then dematerialized and flew to the indicated portion of the palace.