by Prue Batten
‘But Lalita, you need not cope alone.’ The djinn, a pleasant man with a smile of light and eyes as dark as shadow, touched her arm. ‘Rajeeb,’ he bowed, ‘will help where he can. As will the afrit. Take a breath. Slowly. There. And another. You see? When you feel your breath, you are neither in your dreadful past or your unknown future. Be heartened, Flower, it is not your time. Fate has decreed otherwise. Keep breathing, that’s it.’
The confidence in the djinn’s tone anchored Lalita and for a second she grasped at his words, ‘Fate has decreed otherwise’ but then she let them slide away.
Rajeeb placed an arm along her shoulders. She sat straighter with the sensation of comfort and listened more carefully. ‘Others know these things better than mortals,’ he said. ‘I can tell you, your destiny is not to be smashed like a paperweight on rocks.’
‘Then what is my destiny? For if I am found outside the seraglio, I will be tossed off one of the towers again and this time you’ll not be able to save me.’
‘He could if he wanted.’ The little afrit sat on a boulder in front of her, hands balled on his knees, lifting his lips to an innocuous sneer. ‘It appears he can do anything he likes, controlling even the wind. Or afrits.’
‘It won’t be necessary,’ Rajeeb shifted his arm. ‘The seraglio will think you are dead, fallen to your death as you planned. And you will be free to begin a new life. There is a new life waiting, Lalita, despite what you might believe.’
‘A new life?’ A life of revenge. I will kill Kurdeesh if I happen on him, have no doubt. ‘How? I have but one skill and am known for it. I should soon be hunted down. The Raj is not so big.’ Lalita stood, sadness and grief at the periphery of her soul and waiting to swoop on her like the vultures that soared overhead. She opened her palm and looked at the tiny yellow glass stud.
Something had poked an end out of the hollow.
She picked away at it as she thought of the strangeness of standing here, pulled from the brink of death by Others. Her fingers began to form the Horn but she stopped their curl and continued to poke and prod at the miniature shard with a fingernail, her mind trying to sift through chances and choices. The roll pulled free and almost blew away in the puff of air blowing over the riverbank.
‘What’s that, Flower? What is it?’ The afrit, ever curious and more pleasant in an instant, jumped from rock to rock until he stood behind her and looked over her shoulder. She carefully pressed the delicate paper out flat where it lay like a tiny skeleton leaf imprinted with a spider scrawl of writing.
‘It’s Færan. Look, Rajeeb, what does it say?’ The afrit hopped from foot to foot. ‘It’s an important message, why else would it be hidden? By Diff Erebi, do you… could it?’
‘Quiet afrit, let me see?’ Rajeeb didn’t attempt to take the scroll from Lalita’s palm but his eyes widened and something cold passed down Lalita’s spine.
‘Ah, Lalita, Fate is a funny thing. There you were attempting to put an end to your existence and here you stand on the precipice of a life that you could never imagine. In your fingers is one of the most sought after things in Eirie. And suddenly you have become as valuable, by virtue of its possession. A tiny secret shattered like glass by a simple accident.’
‘It is,’ the afrit whooped.
‘What?’ Lalita let the scroll roll upon itself and closed her palm. ‘What does it say? It looks like two words.’
‘Indeed. And if spoken, could spell calamity or even worse.’
‘And calamity is valuable? Then I am valuable. The afrit has been telling me for weeks now that calamity and myself belong together. What are the words?’ Lalita opened her palm again, her thumb pressing the scroll. ‘Can you say?’
Rajeeb shifted on the rocks. ‘What you hold is a cantrip, one of four. The charm that bestowed immortality was destroyed not long since but there are three others, three that can take life,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘just like that. The one in your hand reveals two words. I cannot speak them but if I were unprincipled and uttered the charm, then I could effectively kill any who live within a hundred leagues. A foul charm, a devastating charm. Lalita, I cannot underestimate the value of this for it speaks of our earth, our land,’ he spoke with emphasis, ‘and worse still, the dust we could become, a speck in the air we breathe.’
Rajeeb told Lalita a brief history of the enchantments, of their longlasting shadow in the Vale of Kush and she sat with her grief on hold. ‘The power of these charms is monstrous,’ he said. ‘It is rumoured that the malign of the Other world seek them to empower themselves. If the Immortality Charm had not been invoked, it is doubtful anyone should have known the Cantrips had been found. As it is…’ he grimaced. ‘But Lalita, there is even more to tell you, so much more but not here, as the town awakes. Hold my hand and we shall move. Not far but far enough.’
The dark mists ceased swirling, Lalita dizzy with vertigo as she took her hands away from Rajeeb’s grasp. The afrit pushed at her shoulders. ‘Sit Desert Flower, sit before you fall.’ He waved an admonishing finger and grinned as she turned to brush him away. ‘Now now, remember if you are rude to an Other that calamity will occur. Oh but then this we know, don’t we?’ He chucked her under the chin and she fluttered her hand as if to chase away a mosquito but he laughed and added, ‘Disaster Damsel!’
‘He is frustrating.’ Rajeeb passed Lalita a cup of aromatic tea. ‘But he has watched over you and we must be grateful.’
Lalita blew on the liquid before sipping. ‘I know. He watched from the beginning. I remember walking with Salah from the Door of a Thousand Promises along a colonnade and the afrit touched me like a soft breeze. I was beleaguered beyond belief and he calmed me.’
‘Calmed you?’ Rajeeb snorted. ‘Then it was definitely not the afrit. He didn’t learn to calm you until later and that was because…’
‘Because you ordered me too.’ The afrit frowned.
‘I asked the afrit often if it was he and he would say, Maybe, maybe not. I never really knew the truth of it.’
Rajeeb shook his head as he studied the afrit. ‘I’m an odd djinn, Lalita, not given to tease and turmoil like most spirits of the Raj. In another life my father imprisoned me in a lamp for my… Shall we say my perverse lack of diligence? I was a sore disappointment but that is another story. When I first glimpsed you in the colonnade, walking with such pride against such unbearable odds, I knew you were hurt. I recognized the signs; a palpable hurt that I wanted to cut away. And when I heard your name, I realized Fate had sent you my way. You see, I knew of your brother and thus it suited me to help you.’
Lalita’s heart jumped. ‘My brother? How? Tell me.’
‘It is a long tale and I think we must eat before I talk. We are safe here for now and can rest uninterrupted.’ He pulled jars of spicy pastes and flat breads out of a bag, along with fruit and nuts and the afrit piled sweet nougats and stinging sherbets on top.
Despite impatience pulling at her like the Symmer wind, Lalita was hungry and welcomed food, glancing around at the building in which they sat as she ate. Louvred timber slats were shut against the glare of the day and shafts of light pierced the cracks, small motes of dust swirling in some dervish dance. Long racks lined the walls and in the humid gloom she could see greenery lying in piles on the shelves.
‘Silkworms.’ The afrit picked up a leaf, showing her the ivory caterpillar cutting away with scalloped bites. In his other hand he held a silky chrysalis.
‘But there is only one silk house in Ahmadabad and that is behind the palace walls,’ she dropped the flatbread, smearing paste over the thin silk kaftan. ‘Rajeeb, you have magicked me back into my prison.’ She stood, heading toward the door.
‘Not at all.’ He clasped her hand and pulled her back with infinite care. ‘This is as good as any place for the moment. The silkworms were fed earlier, we are safe from prying eyes and I shall only have to move you this evening when the fresh leaves are delivered. When the time comes I shall move you somewhere equally secure, have n
o fear.’
Despite the easy confidence of the djinn, Lalita’s nerves jangled, tiny wires stretching tight and then loose, tight and loose. ‘Then tell me of Kholi, please.’ She rolled a velvet-soft peach in her hand and her eyes glistened. Tell me of my brother, of my family, because now I have none.
‘Ah Lalita, this is a ballad you could have written in the Sultan’s book – a grand tale of love and loss. I could take the rest of the day to tell it.’
Lalita grabbed his hand. ‘Tell and I promise I shall listen and say nothing.’
‘She’s good at that,’ chuntered the afrit. ‘There were whole days gone by in the seraglio and she might as well have been a mute like the rest of them.’
Chapter Ten
Finnian
The mystique that surrounded the four Gates of Færan was the stuff of myth, the locations never divulged outside of Færan and puzzled over for aeons by both mortal and Other. But Isolde’s library had been thick with it and Finnian had read it all. That the Ca’ Specchio, Palace of Mirrors, housed the Venichese Gate, he knew. Once through, he could find his way with speed to the Raji Gate which opened close by Fahsi.
As he stepped past the gilded glamour of the Ca’ Specchio, his fingers moved to the parchment fragment in his pocket, his lucky charm. He rendered himself invisible and passed between a bevy of cleaners set on polishing the terrazzo floor of the ballroom. Another regiment swirled large dusters over the mirrored panels of the walls and more still draped large sheets of calico over lowered crystal chandeliers, swathing fragile gilt chairs in similar coverings. He wound his way between the shrouded furniture to walk through a mirrored panel in front of him as if it had never been there. He glimpsed the cleaners as he passed but they were blindly oblivious to his very existence, unaware of his exit.
On the other side he pulled to a halt, turning back to glance at the mirror that had stretched, thinned and then dissolved to allow him entry. It had been like passing through a soft veil, one that blurred his vision momentarily so that when his sight sharpened he sucked in a breath.
A glistening, pristine scene reflected back from the looking glass panels. Inculcated with the dour and severe within Castello, he could hardly believe what stretched beyond his boots. The ballroom was indubitably a mirror image of its mortal counterpart but here the mirrors gleamed like the ice sheets from Oighear Dubh in the far southern seas. Between the panels, the walls had been papered with fine silk in soft buttery stripes, as if a beam of spring sunshine had been cut and laid down the wall. The furniture glimmered with celadon silk and the candelabra sparkled, three lines of them swirling away down the frescoed ceiling. Light danced off the lustres and illuminated the room with diamond fire, prisms shifting and changing as if they were a troupe of tiny dancing wights. He stepped forward, tapping staccato across the marble and as an echo reverberated, he stopped.
Footsteps behind…
He turned toward the mirrored wall to his right. Nothing, not in any of the reflections.
But listen, what’s that?
He turned to the left and walked a couple more paces, straining for sounds of a follower.
Tap, tap went his feet. Tap, tap went their echo and he stopped again and swung quickly back to the left.
There, in that mirror, a reflection…
He spun to the opposite mirror as his heart began to gallop.
No, you are not there…
But she was. In the mirror Isolde lay on a bed propped up on pillows, her face as white as the linen, her flesh pulled hard against the skull, her white hair lying crazed around her. He shivered in the knife-sharp glare of her eyes, her expression acute and pointed. He waited like a whipped cur for her to speak, to scour his spine with her cruel temper, but she remained silent and he hated her all the more. She had never been silent, ever, and this new Isolde, a quiet, piercing figure, was terrifying even to the grown man. He turned quickly and threw open the double doors at the far end of the room, slamming them shut behind, leaving the image buried amongst the reflections.
I imagined her. She cannot know where I am.
He clipped down the marble stair that curved to the ground floor. Through the main doors he passed, never sighting an Other, leaving the nightmare vision behind until he reached the wide landing and the duplicate waters of the Venichese laguna.
Escape!
Black gondolas drifted back and forth, no gondolier at the oar, some eldritch force propelling them. Inside were Færan of the most gracious and beautiful kind, young and old, waving to each other, whispering behind hands and splayed fans.
Only ever used to the machinations of Castello and the rhythms, energies and circumstances of that grubby quasi-mortal life, he moved cautiously toward the eldritch boats, unable to help casting an eye behind. Safe? He climbed into a moored gondola, sitting awkwardly on the seats amongst pillows made for lounging, under a canopy that shielded him from weather, to watch as the ropes untied themselves, right over left over right and under and then coiled out of the way. The gondola’s prow headed between the mooring poles, to turn again midstream. He floated down the Grand Canal, the beautiful city drifting past. She can’t have found me. It’s impossible. He wiped a hand over his mouth. This world of Færan overlays the mortal world, gulling me into believing she sees me, that’s all. Surely she doesn’t see me. She can’t. He pulled the curtains aside. Dammit, which is the way to Fahsi?
Gio’s glib line of fortunes and Fahsi had set Finnian’s course. Where else would a thief take his goods to sell for a fortune? Somewhere in the souks, at some stall or other, he would find what he sought. His gondola rocked as the water tumbled against the sides and Finnian was drawn from his self-indulgence to glance upward.
The canal city’s brilliance had faded. A cracking, dry breeze scraped past his face as he watched the stuccoed buildings with their quatrefoils, studded doors and regiments of mooring poles dissolving like wet paint sliding off a canvas. Cliffs the colour of watermelon manifested and sharp-beaked kites and black vultures wheeled, shrieking like banshees in the moaning Symmer wind. He had passed from one place to another as easily as walking through the Venichese mirrors and the discovery thrilled him and he heaved a long sigh. Far from Isolde.
His gondola had metamorphosed into a scrappy blue craft with an upturned bow and painted eyes that glared to ward off evil. The opaque ochre river along which he floated rose and fell over rocky outcrops. Swollen with Symmer rains, it slid over boulders lining a precipitous gorge until Finnian was swirled into a bend where his boat scraped and thudded onto a long wall of ghats that edged the current. In the blink of an eye, in the passing of a boat over water, he had left Veniche and entered the Raj at Fahsi.
Mothers and grandmothers lifted great slabs of wet clothes and slapped them against the wide steps that made up the ghats; grandfathers bent their stiff backs to wash their faces and necks. Children laughed and splashed in air that held the promise of heat and thirst despite the shadow cast by the pink, monolithic walls of a citadel.
Finnian slipped behind a skein of folk winding their way up steps to a gate in the city walls. He glanced at the people around him, a mixture of fine faces and ugly, plainly woven clothes, women’s heads draped in cotton saris, men crowned by fold upon fold of turbans. Mortals. I’m back from Færan and once again with mortals and so quickly as not to notice. He hated his surprise, hated that he was so ingenuous but cared more that he had left Isolde far behind and that the paperweights might be within his grasp.
An anguished cry echoed from below and he turned to see an old woman dragging at the body of an elderly man floating in the water. The mortals around him invoked Aine the Mother but it seemed something they expected… that an old man should die in the arms of his wife as they washed themselves in their sacred river.
No one gave him a second glance, such was the nature of this melting pot of Eirie. He was just another infidel from south of the Goti Range, pallid and ordinary like a thousand in the town. He kept to the shade, not for
fear of discovery but because in the white brightness through the gate in the wall, the city heat smothered him like a scorching blanket.
A sea of humanity – where had he read that? One of Isolde’s books to be sure. People ebbed and flowed and the multi-lingual ambience drifted on the scarifying desert air. He climbed a shadow-swathed stair by the side of a house and stared down at the crowd, at their swirling madness and it seemed to him they had no purpose other than to mingle in a tight mass. But as he scrutinised the faces of the hundreds in the crowd, he realised that they did in fact walk decisively, their destination in their minds, their business half done. He remembered being told that mortal minds went at a frenetic pace, thinking of dozens of things at once – especially the women as they moved – a shoal of brightly coloured fish dipping this way and that.
The crowded bazaar in front of him stretched into a dusty distance where the entrance to the covered souks gaped cavern-like in its darkness, enticing, for it promised cool as well as curiosity, but he could go no further dressed as he was. The weight of the oilskin smothered him and as he hoisted it off and held it over one shoulder with a finger, he heard a voice from below.
‘Effendi looks very warm. Would he like some new clothing, cool as the Symmer breeze at night, light as the fingers of a hourie?’ The face gazing up leered with half the teeth missing in gums almost concealed by an ill-trimmed moustache, the remaining teeth stained with betel juice. Hair hung in oiled, inky ringlets from the side of a turban that sat rakishly on the head. He held up a fold of pristine clothes and Finnian bent to touch the light fabric. He studied the fellow but the trader merely winked, a knowing flick of a heavy eyelid.
