“A year!”
“Better to take that time, than walk into a trap.”
She nodded. “We do have time.”
“We can take the most devious unlikely route, where they won’t have spies out, then strike suddenly when we spy our objective.”
“Devious route to where?”
“We’ll just have to find Lamprey ourselves. We’ll look for the most impressive djinn estate and see if he’s there. Given sufficient time, we can do it.”
She eyed me slantwise. “Are you hoping to travel alone with me indefinitely?”
“That might be nice, but no. I want to rescue Lamprey, return to our own realm, rescue your son, then discover how well you like me when you’re grateful.”
She laughed. “You would like me very well. But first you have to accomplish those other things.”
“I will do my best.” Then I remembered something. “You made me bring the lamp with me. Why?”
“Lamprey must normally live inside the lamp, to be immediately at hand when you summon him.”
“True,” I agreed. I had not thought of that before. “He is bound magically to the lamp, unless I send him off.”
“And you sent him off?”
I thought of my dead wife and child. After their deaths years ago, I had abandoned everything. Yes, I had sent my genie off. I wanted solitude and peace, and I would have sent Faddy off, too, if I hadn’t forgotten about the ring. It had been months later into my self-exile that I had come upon the ring among my limited belongings. Turns out, Faddy makes for a halfway decent companion.
Jewel seemed about to ask why I had sent the genie off, but thought better of it. Perhaps she would ask at another time. Instead, she said, “So the lamp must be a safe place for him.”
“It must be,” I agreed. What was she getting at?
“He must be able to zero in on it at all times, so he doesn’t get lost when performing some foolish distant task you set him to.”
“Yes.” Again I had not thought of that.
“So maybe it also orients on him. Maybe you can use it to get a line on him.”
My stupid jaw dropped. “Maybe so,” I agreed.
I brought out the lamp. It was a dull brass, really rather ordinary. I touched its side.
The side was warm. Startled, I touched the other side. It was cool. “I’ll be an infidel’s grandson!” I swore. “It’s signaling his direction!”
“I thought it might. Now how are we going to get to him without being discovered? I don’t want to be caught and bound to a horny jinn stud forever.”
It was time for me to strategize. “First, concealment,” I said. “Are you claustrophobic?”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Trust me.”
“No, I’m not claustrophobic.”
“Good. Because it will be close and dark where we’re going.”
“Where is that?”
“Underground.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was pleased to be leading her mind, instead of having her lead mine. “First, we revert to full solidity. That means we can’t be harmed by their weapons, which is good. It also means we have to walk on bedrock, because nothing else will sustain us.”
“And your point is?”
“Bedrock generally runs some distance below ordinary ground. You can’t see through ground. It’s excellent concealment.”
“How will we breathe?”
Good question. Maybe too good. “I’m betting that in our solid state, ordinary ground will be almost as tenuous as air, and there is air between the clods. I’m betting we can breathe. If not, I’ll think of something else.”
“How will we find any castles when we’re below ground?”
“Castles generally sit on bedrock.”
“If we locate Lamprey, how will we get him out of there?”
“We’ll bash out a wall and break his manacles and turn him loose. We don’t need to take him anywhere, just free him; I can summon him later with the lamp.”
She gazed at me with something that on a better day might almost be mistaken for approval. “You have a mind like a fox.”
“Thank you.” I really did appreciate her respect.
“But wouldn’t it be easier and safer simply to put him in the lamp? It’s as solid as we are, so should be protection against their efforts to recover him, as long as we protect it.”
Now I stared at her. “And you have the mind of a vixen.”
“Thank you.” Then we both smiled. I liked that.
We solidified, which was our natural state here, and waded off the raised path and into the slop that was the ground. Jewel did not seem to feel the dark closure, but I discovered it did bother me. Then my eyes adjusted, and I found there was very dim light that enabled me to see a short distance around me. It was like peering through extremely heavy fog. Mainly I saw the roots of trees reaching down from above, and the rough contours of the bedrock below, with some suspended blobs that were dislodged chunks of bedrock.
And I felt the small warmth of the side of the lamp. I headed that way, stepping carefully because I did not know how treacherous this nether terrain could be. Suppose there were a hole in the bedrock? How deep would it go? How bad could a long fall hurt?
Then the bedrock angled up. That was a relief. When it was near the surface, I signaled caution to Jewel, who was following close behind, and then poked my head carefully up through the surface tension of the ground.
I was amazed. We appeared to be in a rise in a field near a farmstead. What looked like herbivorous dragons were grazing on bright blue grass. The fences were sparkling silver. The house was a lovely tower with multicolored minarets.
“What a beautiful picture,” Jewel murmured beside me. Only her head was visible, like mine, above the blue turf. “It must be mostly illusion.”
“Illusion?” I asked blankly.
“It’s probably an ordinary ratty farm, enhanced to make it look splendid. That’s what I would do if I had illusion to spare.”
“Every peon becomes a prince,” I agreed, seeing it in more than one sense.
“What’s that?” Her hand poked out of the ground and pointed to a marked stone.
I looked.
On the surface of the stone was drawn a crude circle containing a crude tower. A line slanted through it. “That’s a no-signal,” I said. “Meaning stay away from there.”
“Why?”
I suffered a flash of brilliance. “Because that’s not where we’re going. Lamprey is not there. We must look elsewhere.”
“How can you tell it means that?”
“Because it has Faddy’s signature.” I pointed to the crude little fat man drawn below the circle. “He is on duty, informing us without ever leading the enemy to us. He knew we’d pass this way, so he left a message. When we find a signal that tells us to go there, we’ll know we’ve found it.”
“I am getting to like Faddy,” she said, this time pronouncing it correctly.
Chapter Nine
We had been traveling along the bedrock for some time, slogging through ethereal dirt and tree roots and even glowing subterranean worms that shivered when we passed through them. I shivered, too, fighting my revulsion.
It was hard to believe that just yesterday I had been lounging lazily in my tent, idly wondering if I would ever find work again. Well, I surely found work. And what strange work it was.
We continued for some time. Since it was easy to get lost down here, I kept the lamp in hand, touching it often, adjusting our direction based on the heat signature. Once, we came upon what appeared to be a deep ravine where the bedrock dropped steeply away. Standing on the edge of the bedrock cliff, we debated what to do. We could parallel the edge of the cliff, and search for a section that would ford the bedrock ravine. Or, as Jewel suggested, we could lighten our bodies enough so as not to drop down into the ravine, but not so much as to float entirely up to the surface.
We tr
ied it. I seemed to have a better handle on easily lightening and weighing down my body—aw, men and their vivid imaginations. Jewel struggled a bit, sometimes sinking much deeper than me, or alternately rising much higher. Finally, I took her hand and together we crossed the open space in the bedrock. Shortly, we found ourselves on the dense rock, and we continued forward again, guided by the lamp.
“I’m hungry,” said Jewel, as we passed around a colony of long, furry creatures that lived in cozy burrows. I didn’t wish to disturb them, and so we skirted their labyrinthine tunnels as best we could.
I was hungry and thirsty, too. As her guide and escort, her hired hand, and as the male, I would be expected to find us food. But what would we eat in this world? We discussed this as we walked.
“Perhaps fruit,” said Jewel. I noticed that she often took my hand as we walked over the corrugated bedrock. She made it seem that she needed it to help keep her footing. I also noticed that she did not release it so readily. She held it tightly, and I found her touch reassuring as well. We were, after all, deep beneath a magical world so unlike our own.
“Would fruit nourish us?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be like trying to eat smoke?”
“I would like to see you try to eat smoke,” said Jewel, and she swung our interlaced hands. “I could use a good laugh. It has been a long, long time since I laughed deeply. I do not think I can laugh again until I find my boy.”
I knew the feeling. I had not laughed deeply since I lost my boy.
I said, “If we raise ourselves to the density of the food, I suspect we can eat it.”
“And what happens if we lower our density later? Would the food disappear from our bellies?”
“There is only one way to find out.”
We traveled for what I believed were many more hours, although judging time was difficult for obvious reasons. In this respect, our hunger was our time piece, and judging by the way my own hunger gnawed at me, I concluded that a full day had passed since we first left Bakr and entered Djinnland.
By the time the bedrock sloped gently up, our stomachs were growling in unison. It might have been funny if it weren’t so uncomfortable. The air around us brightened as we approached the surface. I could only imagine the start we would give a person who saw two heads emerge from the ground. No different than the start spirits and demons gave humans in our physical world, flitting through doorways and walls.
My head appeared above ground first, and I saw that we were in the middle of what must surely pass for night in this world. The golden sky was replaced with a darker, silvery glow. The rocky incline we had been following formed a small, bare mound in the middle of what appeared to be woods. We were surrounded by narrow, translucent trees that pulsed with an inner light. On the ground near my face, presently my eye level, was an array of flat, multi-colored mushrooms. If anything, Djinnland was not lacking for color.
Near a particularly wide mushroom with a glowing purple cap, was Jewel’s head poking up through the earth. Her scanning eyes met mine. We were alone, wherever we were. I nodded, and we ascended onto the rocky hillock. As we went, I raised my vibration and lightened myself enough to gather some of the colorful mushrooms.
As we sat together on the hilltop in this strange world, with the silvery sky above and the translucent trees swaying nearby and the distant blasts of fire from what I assumed were more dragons, I probably should have felt fear or, in the least, apprehension. But I didn’t. I felt excitement. More excitement than I had ever felt before. I was in a strange and distant land, with a beautiful woman who needed help. What more could an adventurer want?
The air was cool, with a hint of something savory on it. Then again, perhaps anything at this point would seem savory. We both looked down at the mushrooms piled between us.
“Do you think they’re safe to eat?” I asked.
“There’s no way to know—wait, what’s that?”
She pointed to a patch of rock behind me. I turned and looked. It was more writing, written directly onto the stone surface. I stood immediately and moved to it, aware once again of the crushing weight that I brought with me. Already, my ankles felt swollen and the muscles along my legs and back ached.
“It’s from Faddy,” I reported. Like the first sign, this was a child-like drawing of a rotund man pointing forward. I looked in the direction he was pointing, squinting through the silvery night, and there, in the far distance, was the silhouette of a hulking fortress.
“We go that way,” I said motioning toward the fortress. “Lamprey’s in there. I’m sure of it.”
Indeed, I felt my lamp and it was glowing warmer. We were very, very close.
Jewel, who was standing next to me, pointed at the drawing. “Hey, look what’s in his other hand.”
I looked and I saw it, too. Jewel picked up a bluish mushroom and took a big bite.
“I guess these are okay, after all. You know, I might just need to get an ifrit of my own. Well, maybe not.”
“Why not?” I asked around a mouthful of the mushroom. Unfortunately, the bite didn’t last long. After just a few chews, the stuff disappeared in my mouth. I thought lighter thoughts and felt myself grow less dense. I tried another bite and this time I was sable to chew it completely and swallow. I could even feel it sitting there in my appeased stomach. So far, so good.
I could see that Jewel had dissipated slightly, too. In fact, I could even see through her in parts. What a strange world this was.
Jewel continued after adjusting herself enough to accommodate the food. “Well, first of all, they are not easy to come by. And it seems that you not only have one, but two. You must surely be a remarkable man.”
I shrugged, grinning. Life has been both kind and painful for me.
“Don’t be too pleased, Niddala. Those people I have known who owned such ifrits or djinns, always were lazy and incapable of dealing with life on their own. They came to rely too much on their magical slaves.”
I nodded. I knew the temptation well. It was why I had sent Lamprey off, and why I did my best to use Faddy only when I needed him the most.
“Such men I find slothful and disgusting.”
“Do you find me slothful and disgusting?” I asked.
She finished off her latest fat mushroom. “So says the man with glowing mushroom remnants in his beard.” She grinned at me, letting me know that she was playing. She shrugged. “Slothful? Perhaps not. I have seen you in action, and you need little prodding. Now, how much you have used your ifrit on this journey, I do not know, but you seem like a man capable of making his own decisions and following his own heart. Disgusting? So far, no, but that remains to be seen.”
“You have been studying me.”
“I have had no choice.”
I enjoyed being ribbed by her. “Fair enough,” I said.
We gathered more of the mushroom, storing them, of all places, in Lamprey’s lamp. We stood together on the stony hillside and looked down on the distant fort. As we stood there, Jewel slipped her hand inside my arm and held on. She had needed no support this time. Indeed, she was holding me because she wanted to. I took in a little air. Her touch was heavenly.
“We can walk there above ground,” I said, “if we lighten up.”
“But then we risk exposing ourselves to potential threats in this world.”
“Unfortunately,” came a voice behind us. “You’ve already done that.”
Chapter Ten
Both of us whirled, startled. There before the trees stood a swarthy jinn man wearing a scimitar and what appeared to be a coil of rope. I knew he was a jinn, because of the typical arrogant curve of his upper lip and a certain nebulosity of his countenance. Anyway, what else could he be, here in Djinnland? He seemed to be alone, but he looked dismayingly confident. I didn’t trust that. I needed to know why he was sure of himself, before I waded into what could be a treacherous encounter. That meant stalling.
“Run, Jewel!” I called. “Don’t let him ravish you!”
&n
bsp; She caught on instantly. That was another thing I liked about her. “Spare him, honored sir!” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything you demand, only let him go unharmed.” She opened her shirt, revealing her marvelous frontal curvature.
The jinn paused, as any man of any type would, eying her phenomenal exposure. He recognized of course that her structure was real, not illusion.
“Don’t do it!” I cried. “Don’t trust him. He’ll ravish you then kill me anyway!”
“Forgive me, beloved; I’ve got to,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of you suffering.” She stepped toward the jinn, opening her shirt further.
“Forget it, wench,” the jinn said. “My master would make me a eunuch if I touched a piece like you. He’ll be using you himself, I’m sure, until you wear out.” Then he drew not the scimitar but the rope. Was he going to try to tie her up?
Jewel paused in place, bare bosom heaving provocatively, waiting for the man to come to his senses. That was bound to happen soon. Once he embraced her he would be a dead jinn, but he did not know that. How could any man know that, dazzled by her splendor?
The jinn lifted the rope and whirled a loop over his head. What mad game was he playing?
Then he flung the loop not at Jewel, but at me. Surprised, I was slow to react. All I did was step back a pace. But Jewel acted; she leaped to get before me, and the loop settled over her head and shoulders. It wasn’t a garrote; it hung on her body loosely. What was the point?
Her expression changed, becoming devoid of fake passion. She looked completely passive. “Do with me what you wish,” she told the jinn. “Your will is my will.” She did not seem to be pretending. This was extremely odd.
“I don’t want you, wench!” the jinn snapped. “I want him.” He hauled her to him and yanked the rope off her. He stepped back and raised it for another whirl of the loop.
That was when I grabbed him from behind, hugging him hard and lifting him off his feet. Distracted for key moments, he had taken his eyes off me, and I had gotten close enough.
“Grab the rope!” I told Jewel. “Put the loop on him!”