Djinnx'd (The Tamar Black Saga #1)

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘That you were glad my shirt isn’t embroidered?’

  ‘No, before that, about being trapped in a room with no doors.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, we’re not, are we?’

  ‘Yes we are.’

  ‘So, what are we leaning against?’

  They turned round. ‘But that’s the door we came in by.’

  ‘So? It’s the only door in here; it has to be the way out. I mean you can’t say that you’re trapped in a room, when there’s a flaming door right there.’

  Tamar actually smacked her head. ‘Of course! Oh, I am so stupid, it’s so obvious; it’s a trick.’

  She wrenched open the door. It now led, not into the courtyard, but into a large ballroom.

  Denny was triumphant. ‘You see, I bet the corridor spins round to this room, once you’re inside. Lateral thinking you see.’

  He took in his surroundings. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. The ballroom was furnished in the most surreal manner. Like a turn of the century funfair, bathed in the sepia tones of a hundred flickering candles.

  The centrepiece was a carousel, the candy coloured horses staring eerily in the gloom. The other “amusements” included a puppet show, dodgem cars, some small rowing boats standing in dry dock in a corner and here and there, waxworks in period clothes. All were standing about in various attitudes among the rides like patrons, silent and still, like a scene, frozen in time.

  ‘What the hell is all this?’ said Denny. ‘I think we’re dealing with a sick mind here. Do you think this guy moonlights as a pop star?’

  The only other door was beside the rifle range at the back of the room. The sign above it, framed in lights, bore the legend ‘HALL OF MIRRORS’.

  ‘I’m not going in there,’ announced Tamar decisively. ‘God knows what’ll happen.’ And she swung round and opened the door again. The chequered corridor was still there.

  ‘You didn’t think it would work twice, did you?’ said Denny. ‘Right, hall of mirrors it is then.

  ‘How bad could it be?’ he added with ghastly cheerfulness. ‘Mirrors. Right up your street I would have thought.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ he grinned. Then his face fell and he turned the colour of putty and his stomach lurched as they both heard – ‘ha ha ha ha - ha ha ha ha – ha ha ha ha.’ It was sickening, unnatural laughter, repetitive and sinister.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tamar, picking up an oar. She stalked over to the glass case, smashed it and beat the laughing policeman therein, until the sound wound down like a broken tape recorder. ‘I’m not putting up with that!’ she announced. ‘I hate those things. Some people,’ she said to the air, ‘have no imagination.’

  She looked defiantly at Denny. ‘All right, hall of mirrors then – got any cigarettes?’

  * * *

  They picked their way, gingerly through the dusty amusements. ‘Watch out for these waxworks,’ said Tamar.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m really worried about Shirley Temple here,’ said Denny, indicating a wax figure of a small child with golden curls, carrying a large lollipop. It could have been either a girl or a boy.

  ‘Clown.’

  ‘No need to be insulting.’

  ‘No. CLOWN! On your right.’

  Advancing on them was the largest clown Denny had ever seen. He may well have been crying on the inside, as the saying goes, but he was just damn scary on the outside.

  Denny had never had a scary clown experience at a birthday party, and of course, the last time Tamar had had a birthday party, clowns, as we know them, had not yet been invented. But they had both seen Steven King’s “It” (Tamar, while it was in pre-production, but that is another story) and the symbolism was not lost on them. Besides, the thing was immense and brandishing a large dagger.

  Denny sensibly backed away, but Tamar was frozen to the spot. She had lost her powers the moment Denny had hit “Enter”, as she had feared she would, and now had no idea what to do without them.

  “Pennyfarthing” or whatever its name was, raised the dagger with the mechanical slowness of the terminally brainwashed. Denny darted forward and bore her to the ground, and they both went careering into the rifle range.

  It was raining rifles; Denny grabbed one, cocked it expertly, and started firing with surprising accuracy. The clown staggered; a dark red stain appeared on its colourful tunic. Real bullets? Well why not? He fired again. The clown went down like a punctured balloon and lay still. Denny dropped the gun as if it was red hot.

  ‘Nice shootin’ Tex,’ said Tamar, with studied casualness, she had been taken aback by this impressive display of heroism; taken aback and seriously impressed. In fact, her heart was threatening to start fluttering again, but she was determined not to show it.

  ‘Well, I was always pretty decent at ‘Space Invaders’,’ said Denny, modestly. ‘After you,’ he added, indicating the door. ‘Or – no, I don’t suppose that’s very chivalrous under the circumstances. Second thoughts, stay behind me.’

  * * *

  The hall of mirrors was not quite what they were expecting. For one thing, it was not so much a hall as a gallery, really. And the mirrors were not of the full-length distorting funfair variety but hung on the walls in ornate frames like a row of blank portraits. Their reflections in them looked perfectly ordinary. No two mirrors were facing each other.

  ‘Well, I don’t get it,’ said Denny.

  ‘Whoever designed this, missed the point I think,’ she replied. ‘I guess they never saw a hall of mirrors, which suggests that they’ve been in this file for a long time.’

  ‘How does that help us?’

  ‘It doesn’t; I was just sneering.’

  ‘Oh.’

  At the end of the room was a heavy red velvet curtain hanging from a gilt pole, with a tasselled pull cord of the type you usually find a plaque behind. The obvious thing to do was to pull the cord, so they did.

  Behind the curtain were two more mirrors. Plain, unframed and apparently also perfectly ordinary.

  Tamar stared at her reflection. There was something ... It looked almost too real, as if it were not so much a reflection, as an exact duplicate of herself on the other side of an empty frame, mimicking her every move. She felt like a cartoon character; as she twisted and turned and pulled faces, trying to catch it out.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Denny clearly wondering if she had lost her mind.

  ‘I’m trying to – aha. There. I knew it.’ She faced her reflection. ‘Okay, the game’s up, who are you? What’s going on?’ Her reflection shrugged, although she had not moved. Denny gaped. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ the reflection said. ‘I just work here.’

  Denny turned to his reflection. ‘What about you?’ he asked, feeling slightly foolish, as if he had been caught talking to himself.

  His reflection smiled at him; it was profoundly unnerving. ‘We are the guardians of the portals,’ it said. ‘You have to decide which one to go through – we’re here to help you.’

  Tamar’s reflection cut in. ‘It’s very simple; one portal leads to your desire and the other leads to certain death. As for which one is which, well ...’

  Denny’s reflection took up the thread. ‘You can only ask one question, and you should know that one of us always lies and the other always tells the truth, and I’m not telling you which is which. You couldn’t be sure that I’d tell you the truth anyway, so ...’

  ‘That old saw,’ snorted Tamar, a world of contempt in her voice. She turned to Denny. ‘Didn’t I say? No imagination.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Denny, ‘I know this one.’ He turned to his reflection ‘If I were to ask the other one which portal leads to certain death, which one would she say?’

  His reflection grinned. ‘Oh, she’d tell you that it was this one. She’s a terrible liar.’

  ‘Or you are,’ Denny po
inted out. ‘Either way it doesn’t matter, because if it’s you who’s lying, then she wouldn’t say that, because she tells the truth. On the other hand, if you tell the truth, then she would say that, because she’s a liar. Either way, it’s not the truth, so,’ he paused for breath. ‘This portal isn’t the one that leads to certain death – we go this way.’ He grinned at Tamar, who was looking at him in exasperated pity.

  ‘All this time,’ she said. ‘And you haven’t learned a damn thing, have you?’

  Denny was hurt. ‘What do you mean?’ he said indignantly. ‘I got it right, I know I did.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘But I do know that these people don’t play by the rules. You should know that by now. What’s to prevent both these jokers from being liars?’

  ‘Oh,’ Denny was crestfallen. ‘I see what you mean.’ There was no arguing with this logic. He tried anyway. ‘But it’s a riddle, if you’re right, then what do we do?’ He was almost wailing.

  ‘I think a mallet would be handy right now,’ she said.’ But failing that ...’ She pulled down the curtain pole. ‘Okay, tell us the right portal, or I smash you to smithereens.

  The reflections tried to look at each other, but naturally they could not. They both shrugged, and Tamar’s reflection said, ‘They both lead to the same place, so it doesn’t really matter.’

  Tamar lowered the pole. ‘And where is that?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Denny’s likeness. ‘Honestly.’ It added, as Tamar lifted the pole threateningly. She lowered it again.

  ‘How did you know?’ Denny asked.

  ‘Simple – look at them. They’re us – sort of. That’s the point! You have to face up to who you really are and admit the truth about yourself to get past them. I figured they were lying because that’s what I would do. And you, well you’re not as bad as I am, but can you honestly say that you’ve never told a lie in your whole life? Of course not. They know us; they knew exactly how to play us. That puzzle stuff, you live for that stuff. But I knew that neither of us would rather die than give up the truth.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  Tamar bowed.

  ‘So,’ said Denny. ‘Let’s see what’s behind door number one.’

  The mirrors slid up to reveal open doorways, which led apparently nowhere.

  ‘One each?’ suggested Denny.

  Tamar shrugged. ‘Okay.’

  ~ Chapter Twenty Three ~

  It was funny, Denny thought, how from one side of the doorway it looked completely dark and yet once he had walked though he found himself squinting in the bright sunshine.

  He was not altogether surprised to realise that Tamar was not with him. He had half expected it. She undoubtedly had too. The portal guardians had lied about everything else, so it had been only sensible to assume that they had lied about that too, and only prudent, therefore, to take a passage each. That way, at least one of them might reach their goal. It was the “might” that was bothering him. He was wondering where Tamar had ended up. Since he did not appear to be facing certain death, he could only hope that she was not either. On the other hand, there seemed to be a shortage of reticent sorceresses in the vicinity too. A shortage of everything, in fact, except for sand, sea and palm trees. Actually, certain death seemed a distinct possibility, now that he thought about it. He had evidently been cast away on a desert island.

  The doorway through which he had come had naturally vanished the moment he had stepped through.

  It was obviously an illusion. For one thing, he was in a castle wasn’t he? And, for another, it was too perfect, the sky was too blue, the sand too soft – not a pebble or shell anywhere – and the palm trees too symmetrical. But for all that, it was enticingly convincing. He wondered how it was done.

  Denny was annoyed. He yelled to no one in particular, but he was sure someone could hear him. ‘I didn’t come all this way to play “Robinson Crusoe” you know.’

  His voice echoed slightly, which in the absence of cliffs, gave him the eerie feeling of being in a bubble. ‘So, this is what it feels like to be on reality TV,’ he thought.

  The beach seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, and it was desolately empty except for one thing, far ahead of him, stood a large cheval mirror. Well, why not?

  Denny, by now, would not have been all that surprised to have seen a nuclear reactor away in the distance. On the other hand, it did seem a singularly useless thing to leave there. It stirred his curiosity. Feeling like a laboratory rat, Denny was now certain he was being watched, he approached it cautiously. When he got close enough to see his reflection he found, to his intense relief, that it did not reflect himself at all. He had had enough of himself today. The thought of any more conversations with his reflected image was more than he thought he could put up with.

  Instead of a reflection, the surface of the mirror, if indeed it was a mirror, showed a spinning logo. Round and round and up and down it spun, sometimes backwards, sometimes forwards, sometimes it turned round on itself so that the lettering was in reverse. It did this very fast, and it was a few minutes before Denny was able to read it. When he did, he realized two things. One, that it was indeed a mirror. And two, he had heard about this before, although he could not remember where. The spinning logo read “THE MIRROR OF FUTURES”.

  His spine prickled. He reached out to touch it, but then drew his hand away. ‘I’m not playing,’ he said evenly, ‘do you hear me?’ he turned to walk away, then hesitated, turned back, turned away again, took a few steps, then finally gave in. He touched the mirror. The screen changed.

  He saw himself; at first it seemed a normal reflection. He was just looking at himself, looking in the mirror. Then he saw himself walking away from the mirror. ‘Pretty obvious,’ he thought, ‘even I could have predicted that!’

  Then the images started to change rapidly in a montage of views that went by too quickly to follow. ‘Slow down,’ he begged. The images slowed down, and he saw…

  The future. His future, many futures it seemed, conflicting futures. All possibilities – as yet unfulfilled. He remembered Tamar’s warning about knowing the future. “Knowing the future will make you afraid”. He understood now. How do you make a decision, knowing that it could end up like that? Or how do you know how to make the right decision to avoid it? How do you know that you will not cause the very thing you want to avoid, by trying to avoid it?

  He saw himself in a strange room bending over Tamar; she appeared to be dead.

  He saw the world darken and the faces of people he had not yet met. All were grim and tired and hopeless. He saw himself fighting dark shadows in dark places. The future seemed full of faceless monsters.

  He saw a grim old house that he did not recognise. It was shrouded in darkness.

  And the face of a man he had never seen before, grinning at him in a knowing fashion and wielding a knife.

  He saw himself… but no, he would never do that.

  Finally, he saw his own death. It was gruesome. He still looked very young.

  He turned away, shuddering. The whole thing was obviously a cheat. What he had seen before his own death was clearly impossible. Clearly – impossible!

  ‘So, you didn’t like my mirror then?’ said a voice behind him. ‘Well, it takes some people like that; everybody actually.’

  ‘Kelon?’

  ‘No.’ The voice lilted with laughter.

  Denny looked round about in vain; there was no one to be seen.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  But Denny had not spent so much time in Tamar’s company for nothing. He snorted derisively. ‘Cut the bull,’ he snapped in Tamar’s best scathing manner. ‘Show yourself or bugger off.’

  ‘Well!’ said the girl appearing from out of nowhere. ‘There’s no need for that I’m sure.’ She smoothed down her short pinstriped skirt and fluffed her hair. ‘You
only had to ask,’ she added.

  Denny took in her appearance without much surprise. Blonde, smartly dressed, glasses and a briefcase.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘Girl Friday?’

  ‘Quaite,’ she agreed. In a voice that Denny would have described as “hoity toity”

  ‘And that’s your mirror is it?’

  ‘Well, I’m in charge of it, you might say.’

  ‘Really?’ said Denny without much enthusiasm.

  ‘You didn’t like what it showed you, did you?’

  Denny didn’t answer. The girl did not seem to mind. She carried on. ‘Of course you didn’t, who would? But of course, it doesn’t have to be that way.’ She waited for a moment to let him speak, before carrying on. ‘You see, those futures are predicted on where you are now, do you see?’

  Denny shrugged. He had an idea where this was going, and he did not like it.

  ‘If you carry on down this path, one of those futures is inevitable and they were all pretty nasty weren’t they?’

  ‘If they were even true,’ Denny said, ‘which I don’t believe they were. I bet that’s not the whole story.’

  ‘Oh, they’re true all right,’ the girl giggled. ‘And the thing is, I don’t think it can be avoided now, whatever you do. You’re not the sort of person to just give up on a thing like this, are you?’

  ‘NO,’ said Denny vehemently. ‘So, why are we even talking about this?’

  ‘She’s in a lot of trouble right now,’ said the girl, apparently changing tack. ‘You saw what could happen to her?’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ said the girl softly. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better if none of this had ever happened? If you’d never opened the bottle at all? The future would be very different then, you know, and you’d never know the difference, none of this would ever have happened. You’d be safe; she’d be safe.’

  ‘Well, I did open it,’ Denny said. ‘It’s too late to change that now.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  For a moment, Denny was tempted; then he remembered where he was. These people, whoever they were, could not possibly have the power to do what the girl was suggesting. If even the Djinn did not have the power to turn back time, (and he had it on the very best authority that they did not) then he was sure that a mere sorceress did not. Besides, he could not betray Tamar like that. And, even if he could, he would not want to go back to his old life, not really. If those horrible futures were real, so what? If he was destined to die young, so what? And even if they were real, that did not mean that it would all be bad, did it? Or even that it would be the way it looked; it might not be the way it seemed. It was a trick probably. Like a photo album, you see the pictures, but that’s not the whole story. Grandma’s birthday party might look like a nice family occasion, but what the photos do not show is Uncle Bert getting drunk and insulting everyone or Auntie Ruth coming out of the closet and causing a furore and cousin Luke being sick on mum’s best rug. He felt he was getting into a complicated metaphysical area here. Anyway, he decided that he would rather take his chances on the future as it was. Come to think of it, he did not have a choice did he? There was no going back. The only question now was why was this person trying to convince him that there was? Answer – to get him out of the way. Or was it some kind of test?