Now Duban spoke; I had not noticed when he reappeared. “It is not safe out there. Zeyn lurks. We must wait until he tires of watching.”
“He wants you, not me,” Sinbad said. “I mean to find a portal and return to the ship. The treasure may be gone, but I have all the treasure I need.” He put his arm around Nydea, who of course did not argue. She had become Sinbad’s wife, to the extent feasible, and supported him in all things.
I exchanged a frustrated glance with Nylon. What could we do in the face of this delusion?
“Maybe if we show ourselves at one portal, distracting Zeyn, they can escape by another,” Duban said uncertainly.
“That would be risky for both parties,” Nylon said. “Zeyn may have traps by the portals.”
“And maybe he doesn’t,” Sinbad said. “We’re going.” He set off along the path that had brought us here, and Nydea went with him.
“This is catastrophe,” I muttered.
“I had no idea he was so headstrong,” Duban said.
“He is in love,” Duban’s companion said. In my distraction I had not noticed her either.
“It’s an adult folly, Myrrh,” Duban said.
She merely squeezed his arm agreeably. I wondered what the real Myrrh would think of this. Did the Nymph intend to remain with him until the two of them met?
She remains with him until the issue of his relationship with the real one is settled, Sylvie thought. The real one could die, and then the Nymph could painlessly take her place. In the interim she has the pleasure of his company.
So it seemed. Meanwhile Sinbad was marching resolutely toward likely disaster.
We had to do something to stop this idiocy. But what? As usual, my mind was freezing up.
Chapter Twenty-two
They moved quickly together through the living forests, whose branches and vines parted obligingly. Still, a livid Sinbad brushed them away angrily when one or two curious vines reached out to him.
Soon he was at the stone path, having ignored me the entire way. The man was headstrong and foolish, and I was beginning to see why he often came back empty-handed, having lost ship, treasures and his men. He was truly lucky to be alive.
At the portal he turned to me, holding out his sword. “Do not follow me, King Aladdin. I thank you for your companionship and courage. The goal was always to save my wife, and I have done so. I only want to be far away from these enchanted vixens.”
“And where will you go, friend?” I said calmly.
He gripped his Nydea’s hand possessively. Nydea, of course, looked exactly like my departed wife. My head hurt. Sinbad said, “Another land. Another ship. Just far, far away.”
“So this is it, then?” I said. “This is where our adventure ends?”
“It was never an adventure for me, King Aladdin. It was a rescue.”
Nydea held Sinbad’s hand tightly. That she would play the role of his wife admirably, I had no doubt, but something felt off here. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Sinbad was being deceived.
Do not be too hard on yourself, my lord, came Sylvie’s faint voice in my thoughts. On some level, Sinbad is aware of the deception and chooses to permit it. As admirable as her imitation is, Nydea has not yet mastered his wife’s nuances. Sinbad’s confusion over this is also driving his hostility and recklessness.
So what do you suggest I do? I thought. And how do you know this about Sinbad? You only have access to my thoughts.
I have not lived this long for nothing, my lord. I know the ways of man, especially men in love. For we of the Sirens prey on such vulnerabilities, whereas the Nymphs exploit them.
I must admit, their way of exploitation is preferable to yours.
Oh? Do you not remember your sailor friend? He did not appear to be complaining.
Despite myself, I nearly laughed.
And to answer your question, my lord. Leave him be. He is his own man, free to love whom he chooses.
I nodded, seeing the wisdom of her words. I reached out a hand and Sinbad clasped it.
“I wish you calm seas and safe passage, my friend,” I said.
He smiled and nodded. “As well you, my king. My advice is to return to your kingdom with your boy. Leave this madness behind.”
“I will keep that in mind, Sailor,” I said. First, of course, I would seek Jewel and Lamprey.
Recalling our own harrowing escape from Djinnland, I asked Sinbad how he and Nydea planned to return to the mortal realm. I was, of course, careful to use his wife’s name, Vania, lest I wanted another quarrel with the sailor.
Instead, Nydea answered, sounding exactly as my deceased wife would have sounded. “There is a nearby enchanted cave, known only to us Nymphs. From there, we Nymphs can pass into the mortal realm with ease, although, once there, we generally appear as invisible. It is only when we have found true love—or through dark sorcery, as you have seen—that we become truly physical beings...and ultimately mortal, our fondest wish.”
“And you can return my good friend with you?” I asked.
She nodded and looked up at Sinbad. “If we have found love,” she said, and he squeezed her hand with obvious adoration.
I saw the Nymph’s dilemma. They appeared as invisible in the mortal realm, and it seemed highly unlikely that a mortal would find their hidden realm. Indeed, it appeared Sinbad’s and Nydea’s union was a match ordained by Allah himself.
“I bid thee well, my friend. Godspeed.” I clapped Sinbad on the shoulder and he gave me a final, bittersweet smile, and told me to look out for my boy, that he was a good lad and would make a fine musician. I noted that he didn’t say ruler or magician.
Holding hands, they stepped together through the shimmering portal and into the broad passage that appeared dug from the earth itself. They were still far underground, too far for even Prince Zeyn to reach.
As they moved further down the tunnel, I was about to turn back to Nylon, who was waiting behind me, when I felt a great rumbling.
An earthquake?
Rock and other debris shook free from the slope, rattling past me. Through the shimmering portal, I saw Sinbad and Nydea pause as well, clearly confused.
I was just about to wave them back through the portal, when a great beast burst through the tunnel wall.
By Allah, it was a massive earthworm, bigger than even the lion-serpent we had encountered some time ago. The great worm opened its black maw, swallowed Sinbad and Nydea whole, and continued through the opposite wall, the great expanse of its body following, as the ground shook harder than ever, and it was all I could do to keep my footing on the rocky slope.
The rumbling faded, and I stood there in stunned silence, when Nylon ran forward, screaming. She was about to dash through the shimmering portal but stopped herself. A good idea; she was safe on this side.
Furious, she turned to me and said, “That was no worm!”
I nodded, my stunned brain finally kicking into gear. I had seen the dark prince’s handiwork when he had morphed into a giant castle and a dragon. I wondered how Sinbad and Nydea were faring in the bowels of the great worm.
“Prince Zeyn,” I said.
I noticed Duban and his Nymph were at the foot of the rocky path. He was out of breath. Evidently the boy had felt the rumbling and had come running.
“It could be none other.” She clenched her fists, still, looking and now acting, like Jewel. “I swear this, he will never again harm another of my daughters.”
“Where would he take them?” I asked.
“His castle,” said Nylon.
“A real castle or an illusion?” I asked, recalling the magical illusion that had been Zeyn’s castle last year.
“As real as they get. And as horrific.”
I looked at her sharply. “What does that mean?”
“His castle is not only lined with the corpses of those who have opposed him, but embedded within the very walls themselves is an army of demons.”
“I do not under—”
??
?Demons and other foul creatures lie dormant within his walls, appearing only as stone statues until called upon by Prince Zeyn.” She looked at me and took my hand. “They also act as his eyes and ears, so no one can get close to Prince Zeyn without their knowledge. No one.”
I set my jaw and looked back through the shimmering portal. “And this is where he took my friend?”
“And my daughter,” she said. “He must be destroyed.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
Chapter Twenty-three
My mind was blank again, so I turned to Duban. “We have here a man-sized challenge,” I told him. “To rescue our foolish companion. Do you have any feasible ideas?”
“Yes.”
“Because this is the occasion to really wrack our brains in the faint hope of just barely possibly coming up with something that might diminish our hopelessness in the face of—” I paused. “What did you say?”
“He said yes, Aladdin,” the Nymph with Duban answered. “He’s very smart. I mean to marry him some day.”
Of course she wasn’t fooling Duban, any more than Nylon was fooling me. But their semblances were a pleasant interim fiction, and they did mean well, so I played along. “And what do you believe his idea is, Myrrh? Maybe you can read his mind.” I hoped I wasn’t being unkind; the real Myrrh could have done that, but not this one.
“I have asked Myrrh to stay out of my mind for the duration,” Duban said. “I prefer to maintain my privacy, and she honors that.”
The Nymph squeezed his arm affectionately, appreciating the way he covered for her. It occurred to me that at such time as Duban achieved his majority, he might elect to have a concubine, and the Nymph would be ideal. She would emulate his love without the awkwardness of reading his mind.
But at the moment we had a formidable task to accomplish. “And that idea is?”
“To give ourselves up to Prince Zeyn.”
“Duban, have you lost your mind?” the emulation of Jewel, his mother, demanded, sounding just like her.
Duban looked startled, and I knew Nylon was showing him Jewel, enabled by my gaze on her. “I hope not,” he said. “I am thinking that we should offer to exchange ourselves for Sinbad and Nydea/Vania. Only when Zeyn releases them do we enter his castle.”
“Oh, he would certainly make that exchange,” Nylon agreed. “He wants Aladdin for vengeance, and you for the security of his kingdom. He hardly cares about Sinbad, who is a mere pawn in this game of power.” She frowned. “He wants you both dead.”
“Yes, of course,” Duban agreed. “And we would prefer to have Zeyn dead, or as close to it as an immortal could come. So we understand each other.”
“Better than you and I understand each other,” I said. “How can you even consider walking into that dragon trap?”
Duban almost smiled. “It’s worse. We need Jewel Nymph there too.”
“Me!” Nylon squealed, so much like Jewel that I almost laughed. “If Zeyn ever got me into his castle he would bind me naked on a table with my legs wide apart and my mouth blocked open and put his minions into continuous rape duty before he plucked out my eyeballs and cut out my heart with a trowel. Then he would ponder ways to torture me.”
Duban was perplexed. “Why would he prop your mouth open? So you could better scream?”
“So I couldn’t bite.”
“But if you were tied down, you couldn’t get at anyone to bite.”
“Oh, I could, and would. The moment one of them—”
“Never mind,” I said, not wanting to expose my son to the detail of the adult activity to which she referred. Then I had my own question: “You have a heart?”
“Only an emulation of one, while I remain immortal. But he would dig into my flesh for the sake of the mutilation. To make me ugly, and thus humiliate me. He could not hurt me physically, of course, as my gouged organs would quickly regenerate, but the indignity would be appalling. It would become burdensome in the course of centuries.”
Centuries of torture. Just so. “So why do you want her there too?” I asked Duban.
“So she could emulate me while standing athwart the portal to Hades.”
“How do you know of that?” Nylon demanded.
Now Duban squeezed Myrrh’s arm. “My girlfriend would do anything to please me. She pleases me by providing information. Even some she shouldn’t. She can’t help herself, when I really want it.” He looked at me, as Myrrh looked suitably guilty. “The portal is just within the castle, unknown to Prince Zeyn. We need to get safely into the castle to gain access to it.”
So he was using the Myrrh Nymph for his own purposes. He did have a cunning mind. He had picked up on my idea to have a Nubile Nymph emulate him by such a portal. I realized that the ploy just might work. If Zeyn thought we were escaping, and he caught us, he would pounce on Duban without much caution. But this was fraught with dangerous complications. “Exactly where inside the castle?” I asked. “How could it be there, and Zeyn not find it?”
“Where Zeyn never thought to look,” Nylon replied. “In the servant’s privy. It is ill-kept and it smells, but they have no choice but to use it. They have no idea of its significance, as the portal is invisible and inoperative until invoked. Only we know of it, and that information has been useless to us. Even if we were captive in that ill castle and wanted to escape, we would not indulge in a one-way trip to Hades. No one would.”
“But if Zeyn were to pounce into it, unknowing...” I said, considering the ramifications with growing interest.
“He would be gone, and we would be safe,” Duban concluded. “His minions might be annoyed, but I could handle them, in the absence of Zeyn. That evens up the odds.”
“It does indeed,” I agreed. “But you know, there’s many a slip twist the chalice and the lip. This is so chancy that only a fool would even consider it.”
“Or someone desperate to save a friend, however unworthy that friend might be.”
“What do you think?” I asked Nylon. “Would you care to risk such an insane venture?”
“Well, it would not be boring,” she said. That was her way of saying yes. She had explained to us how boring immortality was. But was that her only motive?
That made me think: suppose Jewel and Myrrh, trying to recover the Lamp, fell into evil clutches and died? What would there be for Duban and me? Myrrh Nymph and Jewel Nymph. We might find it necessary to go the way Sinbad had, into denial leading to a new reality. The Nymphs would see to it that we never regretted that choice.
And, of course, Nylon did want to save her daughter. So it did all add up. I was sure we could trust her, regardless; I just liked to be certain things made sense.
The Nymphs’ motive was not hostile, and we did need their help. So it was best not to look this gift camel too closely in the mouth.
“Then it seems we are decided,” I said more briskly than I felt. “We will proffer a trade of hostages. But how can we be sure Zeyn will honor his side of the deal?”
“That is the beauty of integrity,” Nylon said. “He must release them first. Then we will go to his castle. He is dishonest as the day is long, and days can be extremely long in Djinnland, but he knows you will honor your part of the deal. So we don’t need to trust him; he will trust you.”
“But I’ve often lied,” I protested. “Sometimes it’s good business practice.”
“But have you ever reneged on a formal commitment?”
“No, of course not.”
“And only the broad agreement will be formal,” she continued. “Let Sinbad go; you and Duban will report to his front gate. All else is vague. He will be so eager he won’t even consider that it might be a counter-trap.”
“But I thought you were coming too.”
“I am. My daughter is, too.”
I shook my head, confused.
“As rings,” she explained gently. “No need to inform Zeyn of that minor detail. Not that he would object; he would welcome the chance to capture two more Nubile Nym
phs for his entertainment.”
Entertainment: centuries of rape and torture of beautiful women. I shuddered.
Duban was nodding as she spoke. He had known it all along. Once again I was the dull one out.
Still, I had more objections. “Suppose he beheads us right there? Or chains us, or locks us in a steel chest?”
“He may,” Duban said. “My magical powers do not match his, here in Djinnland, but they are not inconsequential. I will conjure us elsewhere in the castle. So we will have honored our commitment, but will still be free to act. He will have to run us down, which he should enjoy, cat and mouse.”
“And we will head for the privy,” Nylon said. “Where you will remove your rings and we’ll assume the likenesses of what Zeyn most desires to see: you and Duban, ripe for capture and execution.”
“Hiding in the servant’s stinking privy,” Duban continued. “Where he will wrinkle his nose and pounce without thinking.”
“And go to Hades,” Myrrh Nymph concluded.
Thus catching Zeyn in the same kind of trap that he had caught us in, portaling us to Djinnland. It seemed almost too pat. Things were bound to go wrong. They always did. But what else was there?
“We’ll do it,” I said more gamely than I felt.
Chapter Twenty-four
We waited only a short while before a messenger appeared at the portal.
Prior to that, I had been nervously lounging with Nymph Jewel in her spacious lodge, while Duban practiced his magic with one of the elder Nymphs. Through a window, I watched him quickly master what I could only imagine were very intricate spells. Glowing dragons appeared and disappeared. The elder Nymph herself grew suddenly to a great height, and then shrank so small that Duban held her upon the flat of his hand. They both laughed.
“Your son is powerful,” said Nymph Jewel, looking out the window. “I can see why Prince Zeyn fears him.”
I nodded absently, too nervous to think of anything other than my friend. I paced before the great hearth, as the hellbeast snapped playfully at my heels.