by Sara King
To take her back with him… Now that was an interesting prospect. To have that luscious body for his own, as long as he wanted, a slave to his demands…
He was being uncharitable, he knew, but the woman had long since earned it. Her stubbornness, her hatred, her own lack of charity. He was sure he could show her a thing or two about servitude, once he was free.
But how? In order for a djinni to unleash the fire within, he had to make her surrender to him. And not in despair. In total, complete trust. She had to spread her legs to him, willingly, and allow him to plant his seed.
‘Aqrab’s groin was afire, now, his manhood a throbbing ache against his abdomen. Yes, he decided, as her tiny, slender body tentatively moved deeper into the forest, he could find great enjoyment introducing her to three thousand years of her own medicine. Magus of the First Lands she may be, but her powers would have less sway in the Fourth Realm. If he managed to kindle her fire and spirit her off, she would be as utterly helpless to him as he was to her now.
And the thought of that was, for a hundred different reasons, utterly delicious.
Yet it would be a dangerous game he played, for in a djinni’s seed was his own path to surrender. And then, bound to this world a lifetime, three thousand years would suddenly look to be merely a mortal’s toss of the dice, as he gambled his night away in one of the dens.
You play a dangerous game, Yad al-‘Aqrab, a part of him warned. The same part, he noted, that had warned him against picking up an unattended bauble in the middle of the lonely desert, or dueling a pretty girl wearing a tiny steel sword.
A sword that, once he had laughed and accepted her challenge, burst into a thousand rays of light, and a pretty girl who, as his eyes widened in horror, grew wings of eye-searing radiance and gained a foot in height…
It had been one of the many moments, looking back, that he wished he’d given that rational part of him a second thought. But yet, what game was really worth playing, unless the stakes were high? A djinni thrived on that kind of risk. His very soul sang at the thought of getting his ice-queen to accept his touch, to moan beneath his fingers, to spread her virgin body beneath him. To tame a Sword Maiden… Few men could boast of such a feat, and fewer still had survived the final act, for a Maiden’s first time was…interesting.
You play a dangerous game, his rational side warned him again.
As he watched her willowy form work its way through the woods, her feminine curves exposed for him to see, ‘Aqrab knew that it was a game long, long in the making.
Kaashifah found the Sleeping Lady Lodge deserted, the lights still on, the generator still running. With every shield she could muster solidly in place around her body, Kaashifah went into the shop and, with a gloved hand so as not to disrupt her magics, put the iron beast back to sleep with the press of a button. Immediately, the battery system picked up where the generator had left off, a brief flicker in the overhead lights. Kaashifah went to the shop doorway and looked up at the Sleeping Lady, which loomed dark and dormant over the lawn. She bit her lip, wondering what kind of tricks her enemies had waiting for her inside.
Still standing in the entry of the shop, Kaashifah concentrated her magic and sent it outward in an inquisitory blast, like a bat bouncing its shriek against its environment. What came back worried her. The Inquisitors had left no spies behind, not a single soul to break the wave of her magic.
Everything within range was either dead or taken. Silence reigned absolute.
Kaashifah glanced down at the concrete floor. Various bits and pieces of the wereverine’s iron monsters lay strewn around, their incomprehensible components bared for all to see. While Kaashifah owed the wereverine no protection by oath, she had come to respect the ill-tempered Northlander for never pushing her boundaries, once she had made them known. Unlike the djinni, who touched her at every opportunity, the wereverine had only done so once. Somewhere in the hours of tears and ritual ablutions that had followed, he had gruffly apologized. Kaashifah suspected that Blaze had had something to do with that.
Yet the phoenix, the first person that had even come close to being a friend on this wretched continent, was probably even then being drained of her magics by Inquisitors’ apparatuses.
I gave her my word, Kaashifah thought, fighting another wave of anguish. She stepped from the shop and looked up at the phoenix’s dream. The Sleeping Lady Lodge sat in the center of a lush wash of crops, surrounded by greenhouses filled to the brim with every fruit tree imaginable, ringed with verdant pastures filled with flourishing animals of all forms. All of which would, within weeks, begin to wilt and starve as the last of the phoenix’s magics slipped from the land, and the realities of the harsh Alaskan fall returned to steal the life from the grounds.
All of it was dying before her eyes, an abundance of plant and animal wealth, abandoned by those who would take the phoenix’s magic for themselves.
Kaashifah had to help. Not only had she given her word, but she owed the phoenix. For no gain of her own, the phoenix had not only tolerated her, but given her a home. Being a Maiden of the Sword, Kaashifah was cold and aloof by nature. She had to be. She and her sisters were the Justices of the battlefields. She was a mediator of the Realms. She was one of Ares’ hounds. It was her job to kill oathbreakers—those fools who did not obey the Pact of the Realms. Her very existence depended on her lack of passion, her purity of mind and body.
Yet, even with all of that, the phoenix had treated her as an equal, and, while Kaashifah had never quite allowed the woman to grow close enough to call a friend, Blaze had easily been the closest thing to a friend that Kaashifah had ever had. The phoenix had been kind to her, where all others had either cast her out or simply tried to kill her, once they’d realized Kaashifah could no longer feel her wings.
And Kaashifah had given her oath to protect the woman. The oath of a Fury had no equal.
…except, twice cursed as she was, she wasn’t a Fury. She had lost her sword. She had no wings with which to fly. Even the mere thought of permanently harming someone left her nauseous. Hells, she couldn’t even behead the criminal that had been taunting her for three thousand years.
Still, she had to find a way to help. She had given her word. Closing her eyes, Kaashifah stretched her mind, reaching outward to feel the winds in a desperate attempt to determine which direction the Inquisitors had taken her friends.
You can’t take her as you are, something whispered, like a breath against her mind. Find the dragons.
Frowning, Kaashifah wondered where the words had come from. It had almost sounded like…wind. Glancing at the iron monsters scattered around the shop, she considered that. The dragons owed her an ancient blood-debt, but the dragon republic held council in the Brooks Range. That was over four hundred miles out of her way, over mountains, through heavy forest, across rivers and swampland. She didn’t have time to trounce through the woods looking for serpents. She needed to find the Inquisition. Desperate now, she pushed her mind out further. She couldn’t kill, but if she could figure out where the Inquisition had taken the phoenix, then perhaps she could concoct a spell to walk the Void and free Blaze, who could then take matters into her own hands.
But where had they taken her? Kaashifah prodded outward with her awareness, seeking, stretching. She found the blissfully human neighbors of Ebony Creek Lodge still safe within their home. When she moved further, however, she found more homes empty, more people missing. All the moon-kissed. Gone.
Kaashifah frowned. Gone? The further she looked, the more missing souls she found. Third Landers, fey, naga, elementals…
Where? Kaashifah pressed, pushing further, straining to feel the Inquisitors’ trail.
Go to the dragons, the whisper came again, insistent. The War has started. The dragons are key to the—
Always loping at the edges of Kaashifah’s mind, the Third Lander wolf that infected her blood suddenly found her outstretched mental tendrils and viciously ripped them to pieces. Slammed back into her body
, Kaashifah reeled into the shelves of tools and fell to her knees on the grease-stained concrete, momentarily disoriented as her awareness tried to regain its bearings. For two thousand years, it had been thus. The Third Lander, bitter that his attempted possession from the frostrealm had failed, now took every opportunity to thwart her out of spite.
Much like a certain djinni.
Well, their best efforts be damned. She may be cursed, but she was not helpless. She would fulfill this oath. Pushing herself back to her feet, she strode from the shop and into the small cabin that the wereverine had built for her. The inside had been ransacked, with her meager belongings tossed around and shredded like confetti. Doubtless to implicate the famed ‘mutant’ wolves of the area. Kaashifah found a clean set of clothes amidst the rubble and tugged it over her body.
Then, without another second’s delay, she tugged on the djinni’s cord and snapped, “Yad al-‘Aqrab, Djinni of Ji’fah, I summon you.”
The mountain of ebony flesh appeared against the curtained wall a few feet away, giving her a wary look. “Then you will make your final wish, mon Dhi’b?”
“I offer no wish,” Kaashifah growled. “I offer a bargain. Free me of my curses and we renew our duel. If I win, I will kill you quickly, and without pain, and upon killing you, I will immediately release your soul back to the weave, for the gods to do with as they choose.”
The djinni stared at her so long that she wondered if he had not heard her. Finally, his violet eyes quizzical, ‘Aqrab said, “I am a poet, mon Dhi’b. I tell stories.”
Kaashifah felt herself frown. “So?”
He blinked at her. “So you offer me…death…little wolf? That is your bargain?”
“A painless death,” Kaashifah snapped. “Our time of games has ended. There are other lives at stake, now. I would have my true nature back, and I would wreak vengeance upon those who have broken the Pact of the Realms, as is my duty as my Lord’s Justicar.”
“So you offer me…death.” He was still staring at her as if she had grown a scarab’s mandibles.
“An honorable death,” Kaashifah reasoned.
The djinni glanced at the cabin around him, then crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned back against the wall, looking amused. “So let me see if I heard this correctly. As my incentive to free you and give you your powers back, you offer me death.”
“I gave my Lord my oath to kill you,” Kaashifah growled. “I have no choice. We’ve discussed this.”
The djinni rumbled his amusement, though his eyes were sharp with calculation. “You want my help, little wolf, you will have to do better than that.” And there it was. The djinni wanted a bargain.
“My friends are in danger,” Kaashifah snapped. “I don’t have time to twist words with a djinni.”
‘Aqrab snorted. “Don’t delude yourself, mon Dhi’b. The only friend you’ve ever had was your sword, and you left that in an oasis back in the homeland, three thousand years ago.”
The djinni’s words hit her like a blow. As painful as it was, it hurt most because it was true. Kaashifah had to look away to keep him from seeing her shame. Her voice cracking, she managed, “I have oaths to keep, djinni.”
The beast scoffed. “As if I give a damn about your oaths, little wolf. They happen to involve my head rolling by my feet.”
Kaashifah narrowed her eyes. “You will help me, now, or I will get someone else to undo your magics and I will fulfill my master’s command slowly. You understand me, ‘Aqrab?”
The djinni snorted. “There is no Fourth Lander stupid enough to unravel a djinni’s weave.”
Kaashifah allowed a vicious smile to play upon her lips. “I didn’t specify which Realm I would seek help from, djinni.”
He laughed. “There are no First-Landers capable of unraveling—” Then he caught himself and frowned, his eyes settling on her uneasily. In the silence that followed, he fiddled with a curtain-chain hanging from the wall by his elbow as if he found it suddenly fascinating. He did not, however, finish his sentence.
So he wasn’t a complete fool. He knew that she could use her last wish to exchange his servitude to her for that of a dragon, and a djinni had as much of a chance of twisting a dragon’s wish back on it as he did twisting off his own head. The serpents, unlike most First-Landers, were very adept at the weaving of words.
“So you see,” Kaashifah said, “you will cooperate, and earn yourself an honorable death by my blade, or you will force me to seek aid from the dragons, at which point, you will spend the rest of your miserable life passed around as chattel.”
The djinni dropped the chain back to the wall and glared at her. “I have committed no crime, mon Dhi’b.”
“That is not what my Lord told me,” Kaashifah snapped.
The djinni narrowed his eyes at her. “Then your Lord lied to you. I never broke the Pact.”
The mere suggestion that her Lord could be lying left Kaashifah clenching her fists in rage. “Unlike a djinni, my Lord does not lie.”
“A djinni does not lie,” the djinni growled, uncoiling his massive arms. And, for the first time, there was anger in his words. “We can’t, you fool. We’re bound by the Fourthlander Law.”
“Yet you tell me you never broke the Pact,” Kaashifah growled. “My Lord only sends me after those who break the Pact. He does not waste his time with anything less.”
The djinni’s eyes were like fiery amethyst when he leaned down toward her, until their faces were inches apart, and bit out, “Then you misunderstood his command.”
Once again, the magus was trying to assert that she had some divine right to kill him. Except this time, she seemed desperate enough to seek out the serpents in her quest to fulfill that ridiculous claim. That, ‘Aqrab knew, would not end well for him. The serpents owed his mistress a blood-debt, for saving several clutches of eggs from being ravaged by the same wolf that ultimately bit her. And, while the serpents had already stated they would not interfere in the dealings between a djinni and his mistress until their bargain had completed—likely because the cowards did not want to become the brunt of a Fourth-Lander wish—they also had no qualms with acquiring his servitude for themselves in exchange for doing her the favor of returning her wings.
And, if he was reading her face right, that was exactly what the little magus had in mind.
“Then you misunderstood his command,” he bit out, irritated to the point of anger. “I am Yad al-‘Aqrab. Sand-singer of the Scorpion clan, firstborn son of a djinni sheik, rightful heir of a miles-wide gannah of dates, figs, and pomegranates around my clan’s oasis. I am no more a criminal than you are a whore.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then. “My Lord told me to kill you, specifically. He only gives specific orders like that on very important occasions. Most of the time, my sisters and I were left to our own discretion.” She cocked her delicate head. “So tell me, Yad al-‘Aqrab. Why would the Lord of War tell me to kill you, if it were not for your crimes at Ji’fah?”
‘Aqrab felt a miserable sound roll from his chest. “Little wolf,” he said, “as I’ve told you repeatedly over these last three millennia, I have no idea.” She was going to give him to the dragons. He could see it in her eyes.
“He told me to kill you,” she said stubbornly, as if that ended the conversation. …Just as it had ended the conversation so many times before.
Yet this time, ‘Aqrab found himself on different ground. Fighting a building sensation of despair—because he was looking at a lifetime of servitude to creatures as adept at word-weave as himself, and because not even a djinni wanted to be hunted by the Lord of War—‘Aqrab said, “Is there any way you could have misunderstood his command?”
She snorted, as if his words were completely beyond consideration. “His orders were for me to kill you,” his magus insisted. “You. Yad al-‘Aqrab. The Hand of the Scorpion. The djinni of Ji’fah. And not any of my sisters, but for me. I was considered one of the greatest of us, back before your curse. Perhaps he k
new it was going to be a difficult kill.”
“A difficult kill?” ‘Aqrab cried. “I am a bard. I’ve never killed a sentient being in my life.”
“And yet you’re not dead,” she said flatly. “Are you, djinni?”
‘Aqrab looked away, frustrated. It just didn’t make sense. He’d never broken the Pact. Only a fool did that, and djinni were not fools. They were bound by Law and had the winds of the half-realm to guide them. They did not make foolish mistakes of that magnitude.
Hell, one of the only times the winds had ever spoken to him, ‘Aqrab had been on his knees, a winged angel of death raising her sword beside him. Touch her, they had whispered. Claim your wish.
And, with those words, they had saved his life. He had taken ‘wish,’ in that instance, to mean a deadman’s curse, the final wish of a dying man, and had uttered the four words that had saved his life. May you never kill. He still marveled at that, so stunned had he been when her sword had slipped from her fingers to bury itself in the sands, instead of his neck. The winds had saved him. After many years of silence, after centuries of allowing him to be passed between masters like a favored stallion, the winds had deigned to save his life. They had told him to claim his wish.
…Only to begin a worse torment. Three thousand years tied to a perfect pillar of ice. It stank of the gods, and indeed, he suspected he had somehow invoked divine wrath sometime in his past. Yet how? He’d always obeyed the Law. He’d never twisted a reasonable wish. He’d never grasped for power. He’d never broken his pact to his masters, even when their devious use of their last wishes kept him perpetually bound to the First Lands. As much as he’d been tempted to simply kill his tormentors and be done with it, he had always completed his favors owed. He’d never stepped on any divine toes, and if Ji’fah was the best reason the magus could come up with for her master wanting him dead, then it had to be something else. Every djinni that had ever had the misfortune to be trapped in the First Land had been forced to twist a wish for the good of all.
