The Secret of Ka

by Christopher Pike

  "The djinn does what I say. You'll see when you meet it."

  Spielo did not look anxious to meet it. "You said the djinn was torturing them. How?"

  Amesh giggled. "Each hole is deep but narrow. All they can do is stand. They can't sit down and rest. They've been in the holes since nightfall and already they've given up their bosses' names."

  "Why would they crack from just standing a long time?"

  "It's an American invention. It's called passive torture. It works better than pulling out a person's nails or even burning them with fire. Stand long enough in one place and your whole body cramps!"

  I had never heard of passive torture before, but it sounded awful. It was no wonder Bora and his partners had talked. But now Darbar would be able to gather all those who had hurt Amesh.

  Amesh's third wish would be fulfilled!

  He would become Darbar's thrall!

  But wait ... not so fast.

  Amesh was no fool, and he knew the rules of the djinn. And he was desperate.

  Was Amesh going to try to have Spielo take his place?

  The idea was not as far-fetched as it sounded. It would be easy to get Spielo, who knew nothing about the Laws of the Djinn, to make wishes, maybe even three. If so, Darbar would still end up with a thrall, and he might let Amesh off the hook.

  But I did not believe Amesh could escape so easily. Already, he was almost Darbar's thrall. He had made three wishes. According to the rules, as soon as Darbar fulfilled the last wish, it would be all over for Amesh. The carpet had never said another person could become a thrall in your place. Still, I feared Spielo might end up a thrall as well, that Darbar would harvest two tonight.

  I felt sick to my stomach thinking about it.

  Amesh patted Spielo on the back. "Don't worry, my friend. When we reach the Shar Temple, you'll be happy. All those who hurt us will be there. And my djinn will be waiting to punish them."

  "How are we going to get through the gate?" Spielo asked.

  Amesh brought out a wad of lira. "The men who work security are as poor as the rest of us. They'll be happy to take our money and let us through. Just as long as we're not carrying a bomb. I have a limousine outside. It's beautiful! It has food and drink in it. We'll travel in style!"

  "Why not fly there on the magic carpet?" Spielo asked.

  Amesh got angry. "Why do you keep bringing up the carpet?"

  "You're the one who told me about it. Why won't you show it to me?"

  Amesh went to snap at him again but paused. A weird look came over him, a look I had seen before on the island when Darbar had spoken in his head. He closed his eyes; he could have been falling into a trance. Spielo reached out and shook him.

  "Amesh?" he said.

  Amesh opened his eyes. "You'll see the carpet tonight."

  Spielo was excited. "Can you take me for a ride?" he asked.

  Amesh glanced in our direction. He could not see me, I knew, but maybe he sensed me.

  "Is Darbar looking through Amesh's eyes right now?" I hissed at Lova.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Does Darbar sense you here?" I asked.

  "Yes," Lova said.

  When Amesh spoke next, even though Darbar was talking to Spielo, I felt as if what he said was for my benefit.

  "I'll take you places you never dreamed of," he said.

  They left the room. Lova and I hopped back on the carpet and flew above the parking lot. I had to stay low to hear them. But I felt safe in the black sky, with black clothes and the black bottom on the carpet. I was also pretty sure I was below any citywide radar.

  A long white limousine waited for the boys. Amesh had not been exaggerating when he said he had hired guards. Two armed men jumped out to welcome them.

  Then Amesh bent over in pain and started yelling at the men. Lova translated. She said that Amesh wanted them to break into the hospital pharmacy. But they shook their heads and said that would alert the police. Amesh pulled a wad of lira out of his pocket. He gave it to the bigger guard.

  "Bribe whoever you have to. But get me medicine that stops pain."

  Spielo was no dummy. "Your hand's hurting you. There's something wrong with it."

  "My hand's fine! I just need the medicine!" Amesh yelled.

  Spielo spoke to the guards in whispers we could not hear. One of them went inside. The spasm in Amesh's hand kept up. He was in terrible pain. But oddly enough he kept looking up at the sky. I knew Darbar was telling him I was near.

  Spielo watched him. "What are you looking at?" he asked.

  "She's up there," Amesh said.

  "Who?"

  "Sara. She's spying on us."

  Spielo looked around. "I don't see her. Where is she?"

  Amesh pointed to the sky, but in the wrong direction. "Up there!"

  Spielo sucked in a breath. "Does she have the carpet?"

  Amesh got annoyed. "She stole it from me. I'm going to get it back."

  The big guard returned in a few minutes with a bag full of medicines. Amesh studied them while Spielo tried to talk him into letting a doctor look at his hand. Amesh refused.

  "Doctors can't help me," he said.

  "Can your djinn?" Spielo asked quietly, so the guards could not hear.

  Amesh paused before answering. "Sara promised me she would. But she lied. American girls are like that—you can't trust them."

  "Yesterday you told me that she was the greatest girl in the world."

  I had no idea when he had told Spielo this, but it warmed my heart to hear it. Maybe I was grasping at straws, but I knew deep inside this was not the real Amesh I was seeing. The pain in his body and the agony of the djinn in his mind had turned him into someone he would ordinarily have hated.

  His last words, before they left, confirmed my belief.

  "Yesterday was a long time ago," Amesh said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THEIR LONG WHITE LIMOUSINE rode through the dark streets of Istanbul—and out into the desert, where it was even darker—toward the hydroelectric plant. I commanded the carpet to follow the limo no matter where it went. It occasionally skipped its position above the road, probably to stay on a ley line, but it remained near the vehicle. Still, I kept my altitude low, barely above the building tops. There was no way I wanted to face another jet.

  To make myself more comfortable, I told Lova to shrink in size so I had room to stretch out on the carpet and stare up at the stars. A half moon rose in the east, but its soft white light worried me. I was pretty hard to see, up here in the night sky, but I was not invisible.

  With the moon up, I instructed the carpet to let the limo have a half-mile lead. I was no longer eager to hear what Amesh had to say, and I had another reason for backing off.

  Spielo was obviously fascinated with all the limo's gadgets, including the skylight. He had opened the roof, and I worried that he might spot us. It was cute, his fascination with magic carpets, but his curiosity could cause problems.

  After listening to Amesh and Spielo talk in the hospital room, I realized that Amesh had lied to his grandfather when it came to the Shar Temple. Amesh had told his Papi he had seen it once, when it was clear he was obsessed with the place. But why obsess over it unless it had something he wanted?

  Then it struck me.

  Was the Shar Temple a djinn temple?

  Boy, it was obvious! I should have realized it earlier! It explained so much. For one thing, it explained the mystery of why Amesh had changed into a wild man on the island when he heard we were surrounded by djinn temples. He already had an obsession with them long before we met.

  He was not alone. Whatever Amesh knew about the Shar Temple—Mr. Toval, Mrs. Steward, and my father knew ten times more. They were the bosses in charge of the job site. They could go into the temple whenever they wanted. I was confident that I had not been allowed in to see it because they didn't want it seen. The whole idea of asking the archaeologist's permission had been a charade.

  Had they found the cave by c
hance? Or had they chosen this location for the hydroelectric plant because it gave them an excuse to dig up the area with modern equipment?

  It was doubtful Mr. Toval and Mrs. Steward had ordered the four boys to attack Amesh. The act was brutal. By its very nature it would call attention to the temple. But the two bosses had probably arranged for the four young men to guard the cave. And the security measure had gotten out of hand.

  Way out of hand. No pun intended.

  Mr. Demir had talked about how the four guys had shown up in court with lawyers they should not have been able to afford. That meant there was money behind them, which was another way of saying that Mr. Toval and Mrs. Steward were protecting the guys—and the temple. It was a fact that the bosses had lied.

  It was also a fact that my father knew they were lying.

  It made my heart ache to admit my father was involved, but it was the only explanation that made sense. My father was honorable. Yet when push came to shove, he'd kept his mouth shut to protect his superiors. The guilt ... it must have torn him apart.

  Mr. Demir had praised my father for his selfless acts. How he had visited Amesh every day at the hospital. How he had arranged for the best doctors for Amesh. But all the while my father had been acting out of guilt.

  That was why my dad was worried I was seeing Amesh. He feared I was going to learn the truth. It probably terrified him that I would see him as a criminal.

  Yet there were bigger issues when it came to the Shar Temple. Once again, it dealt with the possibility that Mr. Toval, Mrs. Steward, and my father were deliberately searching for such sites. Since I was a kid, my dad had read books on archaeology. He had a whole library of them at his house.

  Was his interest in the djinn in his blood?

  It was possible. We shared the same blood.

  But who had hired the guys who had almost killed me that afternoon? My dad would never have done anything to harm me, which meant he couldn't know about the carpet.

  Looking back, it might have been a mistake not to tell him about it. With all his research in this part of the world, he might even know of its existence. I couldn't wait to see his face when I showed it to him.

  The pictures on the carpet caught my eye. Now that I had been to the island, discovered my destiny as a Kala, and fought with the djinn, I felt as if I saw the images anew. I certainly saw things I had not noticed before.

  Once more, I assumed the carpet's story began in the upper right-hand corner. There was the equivalent of the Garden of Eden scene, filled with two types of beings—humans and angels, which I now suspected were djinn.

  I had only seen two djinn with my eyes and one had been a monster. Yet I think the carpet portrayed them the way they saw themselves.

  As the story flowed around the star field, there was the fuzzy red image of the dragon. It could have been any kind of monster, actually. Its red light poured down on the soft green of the garden and stripped it bare, transforming the garden into desert.

  The dragon reminded me of the red star I had seen above the island. Indeed, the star had been fuzzy because of the gaseous nebula that surrounded it.

  A third type of creature entered the picture, one that interested me more than before. They were taller than humans and djinn, and darker than both, with brownish gray skin, and strangely shaped faces. The bottom half of the carpet showed these creatures fighting the djinn and the humans.

  I assumed that this was the third race Lova had mentioned at the hotel.

  As the story swept up the other side of the carpet, the dragon reappeared, but the djinn and the third race disappeared. And as the dragon receded, all that was left were humans. Only now they wore robes instead of skins, and they were not as tall or as beautiful as their ancestors.

  I ordered Lova to resume her normal size. I had questions.

  "Tell me more about the beings the djinn warred with long ago."

  Lova's red eyes glowed. "Why do they matter to you?"

  "Because I don't believe I was attacked by a djinn today. Nor do I think that woman who wanted the carpet was possessed by a djinn. You're clever, Lova—you would have known if she was. It surprised you that the woman had a pashupa. That means it can't be a djinn weapon. It must be part of the arsenal of weapons of the race that defeated you before."

  "You're guessing."

  "You were scared when you returned with the carpet. I saw it in your face. What scared you, Lova?"

  Lova slapped the carpet with her palm. "You could not have been struck with a pashupa! It would have killed you!"

  I had never seen her show such emotion.

  "But I was hit with one and I'm still here. Does that scare you?"

  Lova looked away, at the desert. "No human scares me."

  "What was the name of the creatures that defeated the djinn?"

  Lova hesitated. "The Anulakai. But we do not speak of them."

  I pointed to the angels on the carpet. "Are these djinn?"

  "Yes."

  I pointed to the third race. "I assume these are Anulakai?"

  "Yes"

  "You act like the djinn were the only ones who fought the Anulakai," I said. "It's clear from the carpet that humans fought them as well."

  "Humans were created by the Anulakai. They were their slaves. They only rose up to fight them when..." Lova stopped.

  "When they got tired of being slaves?" I asked.

  Lova shrugged. "By then it was too late. The war was lost."

  "Do the djinn resent humans because they didn't help earlier?"

  "What is there to resent? Humans are inferior. We did not expect their help and we were not disappointed when we did not get it."

  Lova was an elitist. One minute she was complaining humans had not risen up in time to help her race. The next minute she was saying it wouldn't have mattered.

  "Where did the Anulakai come from?" I asked.

  "Out of the darkness."

  Swell, I thought. That could mean just about anything.

  "Did they come from Mars?" I asked.

  "No"

  "Another solar system?"

  "No. They came out of the darkness."

  "Are they here now on Earth?" I demanded, frustrated.

  Lova hesitated. "The djinn do not believe they totally left."

  "Are they going to return here? In force?"

  "Who can say? They might be already on their way."

  "Why do you say they made us?" I asked.

  "They genetically enhanced your race. Not to help you, but to make you better slaves. You mean nothing to them."

  That threw Darwin and creationism out the window at the same time—not an easy thing to do. I sensed Lova was giving me only part of the story.

  "At most, there are only a few Anulakai here now," I said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Well, I've never run into one. That means we must have beat them the last time."

  Lova was annoyed. "You did not defeat them. They withdrew."

  "But not before they punished the djinn by enslaving them. That's true, right? You lost the war and they hid you away in another dimension."

  Lova glared at me. But I could tell my words had hurt her as well. I assumed that meant my insight was correct.

  "This is no time to gloat, Sara," she said.

  I disliked her using my name.

  "How come the Anulakai didn't punish humanity?" I asked.

  Lova lowered her head. "They come in cycles. Perhaps this time we'll defeat them. Perhaps this time you'll fight alongside them and we'll destroy you both."

  "Do you want humanity destroyed?" I asked. When she didn't answer, I said, "Why don't we fight together like last time and defeat the Anulakai?"

  Lova stared me in the eye. "We don't trust humans. We never will. They were bred to be slaves. Anulakai slaves or djinn slaves—it makes no difference. Humans were not meant to roam free."

  I held my anger in check. "What does the word Shar mean in djinn?"

  "It is an Anulak
ai word."

  "What does it mean?"

  "Center."

  "Center of what?" I asked.

  "I don't know."

  I let the interrogation end. Lova was giving me a headache.

  The limousine continued to roll through the desert and into the night. The moon rose farther in the sky.

  As we neared the job site, the carpet began to make a ringing noise. It reminded me of when the jet had locked on its radar. It made sense—the six-billion-dollar hydroelectric plant would have a radar system that would notify its security people if a low-flying object was approaching.

  What to do? I could go up or I could go down.

  Whatever I did, I had to do it fast.

  I could not repeat the game I had played with the jet. But I spotted a large truck following the limo, not far behind us. Since there was nothing else out here, I assumed it was headed for the job site. I flew over it to take a closer look.

  It was a garbage truck. Empty, but nevertheless smelly. The ringing noise grew. I immediately ordered the carpet to land inside the truck and was relieved when the ringing stopped. Lova complained about the odor, but I told her to hush.

  "We won't be here long," I said.

  We stayed inside the truck only as long as it took to pass security. I doubted the job site swept itself with radar. Its antennas must all be pointed outward, away from the plant. Once we were away from the gate, I flew out of the truck.

  Unfortunately, now I had lost track of Amesh and his limo. I assumed that he was heading for the cave and Shar Temple, on the far side of the pit, but I had to raise the carpet pretty high to get my bearings. The place looked different at night. I reached for my binoculars, searching.

  Eventually I saw the limo and Amesh. He was holding my father captive, and he had a sword in his hand. He was shouting for me to come down from the sky.

  "Last warning, Sara!" he yelled. "Surrender or he dies!"

  My father tried to tell Amesh something but Amesh struck him on the side of the head with the blunt side of the sword. My dad was bleeding from his nose and ears. I sat back and stared at Lova, my heart pounding.

  "If I order you to destroy Darbar, will you do it?" I asked.

  "If you will agree to be my thrall."