Rhidan spun round to face the djinni. “Listen, I know our deal is that if you transport us to the Black Isle, we’ll wish you back to your husband. But right now, we’ve got to go back to the island.”
Khalila considered his words for a moment. “I’ve got another idea. One that doesn’t involve us going back to that place.”
“Go on,” Zardi said.
“You could wish Sinbad and his men home and I’d grant it, even if it means using my life essence.”
“We wouldn’t get to say good-bye.” Rhidan turned to Zardi.
“True.” Zardi smiled sadly. “But Sinbad’s journey was never supposed to be ours. I just want them to get home.”
Rhidan turned to the djinni. “Khalila, I wish you to send Sinbad and his men back to Arribitha.”
“And don’t forget the diamonds,” Zardi added swiftly.
“So be it.” Khalila clasped her hands and murmured an incantation, but unlike last time her hands did not glow with fire. “Something’s wrong.” She frowned. “I tried to send the crew of the Falcon back home but they’re still on the island.”
“Why wouldn’t your magic work?” Rhidan asked.
For the first time, Zardi saw something very much like fear pass across Khalila’s face.
“I’m not sure,” the djinni said hesitantly.
“Maybe you’re a bit rusty, my dear,” Oli offered. “And transporting a whole crew, while in a different dimension, isn’t an easy task even when you’re at the top of your game.”
Khalila looked glum, and Zardi felt a surprising pang of sympathy.
“I guess that must be it,” the djinni said.
“You need to start slow, baby steps and all that,” Oli went on. “I am more than happy to send you back to the island, so you can try there.”
Zardi’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the price? There is always a price to pay for magic, right?”
“You learn fast. I don’t have a price so much as a desire.” Oli looked almost embarrassed. “You see, I’m bound to remain in this place until my master, Eria, returns.”
“A guard dog with nothing to guard now the Windrose is gone,” Khalila commented snidely.
Oli ignored her. “And boredom is the worst torturer.”
“I don’t understand,” Zardi said. “What can I do?”
“Let me see your future.” Eagerness bloomed in Oli’s voice. “Once I’ve seen your future, I can record it in the Book of Wonders. I won’t have to wait so long to find out what happens next. Will you let me see?”
“I guess. If it means you’ll really send us all back to the island,” Zardi said.
“It’s a promise.” Oli clasped his hands together and murmured something under his breath. His hands glowed, and he touched Zardi’s forehead. Black exploded across the whites of his eyes.
Zardi shared a bemused glance with Rhidan as a smile split the djinni’s handsome face. Whatever Oli was watching in her future, he was enjoying it. At long last, the smile faded and the black seeped from his eyes.
Oli clapped in delight. “I’d better write this all down before I forget.” He hurried over and pulled the heavy leather book off the shelf.
“What did you see?” Khalila’s face was pinched.
“I’m sure you’d like to know.” Oli stared at the other djinni with a knowing look on his face, and Khalila lowered her gaze.
Zardi frowned. Something was going on between the djinnis that she didn’t understand, and she certainly didn’t like it. She folded her arms. “Actually, I’d like to know. It’s my future.”
Oli licked his fingers and flicked through the Book of Wonders, looking for a blank page. “Well, I don’t want to spoil all the fun, but know that the Black Isle will not give you the answers you seek. You won’t even reach there in time for it to make a difference. Zubeyda’s Hunt will go ahead and there is nothing you can do to stop that.”
“You’re wrong,” Zardi ground out.
“Of course he is. He’s just toying with you,” Rhidan said reassuringly. “We have the Windrose and once we find the Black Isle, I’ll convince my father to help us and—”
“Ah yes, your father, the mysterious Iridial.” Oli laughed. “Oh, Rhidan, I long to read your future, but I don’t want to ruin the ending for myself, and the end lies with you, I think.” He tucked the Book of Wonders under his arm. “Time for you to go—there’s much still to come!” Oli clasped his hands together. Words flowed under his breath.
“Wai—” Zardi began. But it was too late. She, Rhidan, and Khalila were ripped through space once again.
29
Spelltrap
“Ouch,’ Rhidan complained as Oli’s magic dropped them back on the beach. “Isn’t there a less painful way to travel?”
“Sure there is,” Khalila said. “But Oli clearly wasn’t feeling that generous.”
Zardi scanned the shore, searching for Sinbad and his crew, but all she could see was the carcass of the Falcon up ahead. She shivered as a cool breeze danced off the sea and rushed over her, making the hairs on her arms stand on end. The low sun in the sky told her that it was nearly dusk.
Fear gnawed at her. “This is wrong.” Zardi broke into a run, heading for the Falcon. Rhidan’s footsteps pounded behind her. Where was everyone? Where was the fire that should have been built by now, its smoky plume spiraling into the sky?
The herald’s warning about Okre sounded loudly in her head. He’ll come visiting soon. He always comes in the end.
“I hope you don’t expect me to run after you,” Khalila griped. “I’m not getting sand in my slippers.”
Only yesterday the Falcon’s hull had been riddled with gaping holes. Now they were filled up with some kind of sap that had grown hard and shiny. Zardi reached out and touched its smoothness.
“How’d they do this so quickly?” Rhidan asked, catching up with her.
“Get away from there!” A gaunt man with wild white hair ran toward them, shouting and brandishing a long stick with a sharp rock strapped to its end.
Zardi squinted in the failing light. The man looked incredibly familiar.
“Musty?” Rhidan asked uncertainly.
The white-haired man stopped short, recognition lighting up his face. “You’re alive!” he exclaimed. “How can this be? Where have you been for the last month?”
“What are you talking about?” Zardi asked. “We’ve only been gone a few hours.”
“What nonsense are you speaking?” Musty shook his head as if trying to dislodge their voices. “No time for games. There is work to be done. I must finish the ship.” He strode away, dragging his long stick behind him.
“But where is everyone else?” Zardi chased the frighteningly thin old man. How had Musty become so skinny, so quickly?
They caught up with Musty next to a pile of coconuts. He was busy splitting them in half with his makeshift axe.
“Musty, please, where’s Sinbad, the rest of the crew?” Zardi persisted.
“Gone, gone, gone,” Musty chanted. “A beast, some called him a Cyclops, came and kept on coming, night after night. Picking us off, gulping us down. Those of us that made it after the first night thought that the beast must have taken you and Rhidan.”
Zardi felt sick as she thought of Okre attacking her friends. She’d never see some of them again.
“But we haven’t even been gone a day.” Rhidan’s voice was thick with confusion and upset.
Angry color flooded Musty’s face and he stopped chopping. “Are you taking me for a fool, boy? I know how long it’s been. A moon has waxed and waned since I saw you last.”
“I think I’d better explain.” Khalila appeared by their side. “Time moves differently on different planes,” she said. “In Oli’s dimension four hours passed, here four weeks.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Zardi glared at Khalila and quickly calculated how long Zubeyda had been praisemaker. Fifty-six days, she realized. Only thirty-four days left until the Hunt.
The djinni tossed her braids over her shoulder. “I didn’t think it mattered. I wasn’t expecting to come back to this place.”
Musty stared at her with deep suspicion. “Who are you?”
“A djinni,” Rhidan said quickly. “And a friend.”
Zardi bit her tongue. Khalila was many things, but she wasn’t a friend. A friend would have told her earlier that time moved differently in Postremo. That Zubeyda only had little more than a month left to live.
The djinni held out her hand to Musty. “I’m Khalila. I’m sorry to hear about your shipmates.”
Musty shook her hand. “Did I hear right? You’re a djinni?”
“You don’t look surprised,” Khalila commented.
“I met a djinni once before, and he wasn’t half bad,” Musty said. “So, you’re hardly going to send me running into the trees screaming.” The shipmaster’s eyes took on a glazed look. “Besides, I’ve done all my screaming and all my running away.”
“You can’t blame yourself for running from the Cyclops,” Rhidan said, placing a hand on the shipmaster’s shoulder. “We’ve seen him. He’s a nightmare come to life.”
“Who said I was talking about the Cyclops?” Musty shook off Rhidan’s hand. “I’m talking about that thing. That she-devil, the Queen of the Serpents.”
Zardi’s eyes met Rhidan’s. Her horrified bafflement reflected in his violet eyes. She remembered Roco talking about the Queen of the Serpents.
“She made mincemeat of that Cyclops,” Musty whispered. “A more bloody, more grisly sight I’ve never seen.”
“I think you’d better start from the beginning,” Zardi said, finally finding her voice.
Musty began his story, leaning heavily on the handle of his axe as if each word left him weaker.
“We tried to fight him.” Musty’s voice cracked with grief. “But we were no match for his strength or greed. Our numbers dwindled, and wherever we hid the Cyclops always found us. Then Nadeem offered us a way out.”
“A way out?” Zardi repeated.
“He told us that we had an ally.” Musty snorted. “He had met someone called the Queen of the Serpents. The night after we lost Syed and the cook, the queen told Nadeem that she’d give us refuge. Sinbad made the only decision he could. He moved us into her kingdom, deep in the bowels of the earth.” Musty’s eyes clouded at the memory. “The queen and her army of snakes then hunted down the Cyclops, tearing him limb from limb.”
“The Cyclops is dead!” Rhidan exclaimed. “So everyone is safe now.”
Musty let out a chilling laugh. “Safe?” he sneered. “You mean safely locked up. After the battle, the queen took us all prisoner. Nadeem became her advisor, helped to keep us locked up like animals in cages so that we could work on her blasted flying contraption.”
“But you aren’t in prison,” Khalila murmured.
Musty cast his eyes downward. “She was going to feed me to her favorite snake, Satyan. She told me I was old and worn out. But Sinbad begged for my life and she set me free.”
“But why’d she listen to him?” Rhidan asked.
Musty was silent. His sunken, brown cheeks became ruddy.
He’s embarrassed, Zardi realized with some confusion. “What is it, Musty?”
“Well, you see, the queen is rather fond of the captain,” the shipmaster finally managed to say.
“You mean she fancies Sinbad,” Rhidan replied.
“It’s more than that. She’s in love with him,” Musty revealed. “To save me, he promised to be her consort and spend his days praising her beauty with poetry. She agreed, and I became an exile.” Musty lifted his axe and brought it down on a coconut. “Enough. I must finish the ship if I’m going to get my crew home.”
Zardi led Khalila and Rhidan to one side. “We need a plan.”
“Let me guess,” Khalila said drolly. “Please can you get my friends out of the Queen of the Serpents’ den and send them home?”
“That’s pretty much it,” Zardi replied. “We can’t leave this island until they’re safe. And don’t forget Musty.”
“Fine, but only because I want to get off this island once and for all.” The djinni frowned. “And I need the practice. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be told by another djinni that your skills are rusty?”
Oli’s words about the Black Isle and how its sorcerers were not the answer to saving Zubeyda catapulted into Zardi’s head. “Well, if you need the practice, save my sister and father as well.”
Khalila cracked her knuckles. “Sure, why not. That will show Oli.”
Zardi tried to keep her face composed. She couldn’t believe how easily the djinni had agreed. Could her family’s fate be so easily resolved? She imagined Zubeyda and Baba walking through the door of their home in Taraket. The look on Nonna’s face. Zardi quickly made the wish that would free her friends and family before Khalila could change her mind.
“Keep your eyes on Musty,” the djinni said. “He’ll be back in Arribitha in a moment as will the crew of the Falcon.” Khalila clasped her hands together, and Zardi looked over at the shipmaster, expecting him to disappear in a flash of light. But he didn’t. He just continued splitting coconuts.
“Khalila, I don’t think it’s—” She stopped as she turned to face the djinni. The color had drained from her face.
“I have no magic,” Khalila said hoarsely. “It’s not there.”
“Of course it isn’t,” a voice like dry leaves said.
Zardi spun round. A woman, part snake, part human, towered over them. Her golden, wide-set eyes were ignited with glee, and more than twenty snakes, all ivory except one, which was red and gold, waited at her back.
“No, no, no.” Musty’s howled protest was filled with dread and Zardi saw him drop to his knees as a ring of snakes surrounded him.
The Queen of the Serpents, Zardi thought, looking back at the woman-creature in horror. Time slowed as she took in her appearance. The queen’s head was wide and flat like a snake’s, and her jaw tapered to a sharp point. The skin of her face and arms was fish-belly white and covered with a whisper-thin membrane of iridescent scales that sparkled in the amber light of the setting sun. Her hair was a knotted mass of rattail silver strands that reached her powerful-looking violet-colored tail, and her upper torso was dressed in a silver breastplate. Around her waist she wore a belt of silver hoops, and hanging from it was a strange-looking glass orb filled with red light.
“I stole your magic, djinni,” the queen hissed. “Who knew that my creator’s spelltrap would work so well?”
“Spelltrap?” Khalila questioned. “What a ridiculous idea. I have been alive for over two thousand years. There’s no such thing.”
“Oh, really?” The queen took the orb full of red light from her belt and dangled it from her finger. “This tells me differently. This is your magic. Every drop of it.” She giggled, and the light twinkling sound was monstrous coming from her mouth. “I captured it when you tried to transport the crew from the island.”
Khalila whirled toward Zardi and Rhidan, her dark brown eyes now black with rage. “I don’t believe her. Wish something, anything.”
“Save us from her,” Rhidan said swiftly. “I wish it.”
Khalila closed her eyes and brought her hands together, but, again, no red glow illuminated her palms. She tried twice and then three times but still there was no light. The djinni’s breath rattled in her throat. “I don’t understand—how has this happened?”
“Vanity aside, I really have been frightfully clever,” the queen said. “I set up my creator’s spelltrap in the jail where I’m keeping Sinbad’s men. The first time you tried to take my prisoners, the spelltrap caught your magic and held it.” The queen grinned, showing white, even teeth. She looked round at them, her eyes resting on Zardi. “From what Nadeem told me of your character, I was sure you would come for your friends. So I let that worn-out shipmaster go free and sent one of my guards to watch him. As soon as you arrived I was informed.”
Khalila was a blur as she leaped from the ground and grasped at the spelltrap. The queen’s snakes were faster, though, and four of them surrounded their liege, protecting her. The red and gold snake shot out toward Khalila with its velvety pink mouth open, showing sharp fangs. Zardi grabbed Khalila and dragged her from the attacking snake before releasing her bow from her belt and nocking an arrow. She stood firm.
The queen let out a hiss that Zardi understood as a command: STOP.
Zardi thought about the fragment of blue stone embedded into her skin. My stone, it still works.
The red and gold snake halted in its tracks, frozen, and then with jerky movements came to rest beside the queen, its sides heaving heavily.
The queen glared at Khalila. “Try to touch me again and I will not stop him from ripping out your throat.” She stroked the red and gold snake’s head. “Satyan would be more than eager.”
Khalila did not reply. The fight had gone out of her. She watched with dull eyes as the queen reattached the spelltrap to her belt.
“Come, it’s time that we leave this place,” the queen commanded. “You’ve had me waiting long enough.”
“I don’t understand. What do you want with us?” Zardi asked, her bow still raised.
“My plan for you will be revealed in my own good time.” The queen pointed at the arrow. “I really wouldn’t bother with that. Before you even fire one, my snakes will be upon you and the results won’t be pretty.”
Zardi surveyed the serpents in front of her. There were so many.
The queen laughed. “Yes, I made sure that I brought my personal guards with me. Nadeem told me that you are a good shot, and many other things besides. He really has been incredibly helpful. For instance, I know all about your quest to find the Windrose and the Black Isle.”
Rhidan flinched, and Zardi recalled how they’d both stood on the beach pleading with Nadeem to give them the emerald eye, how they’d told him everything about their quest, the Windrose, even about wanting to free a djinni.
Zardi glared at their captor. The queen met her gaze. She doesn’t blink, Zardi realized. Just like a snake.
The Book of Wonders Page 18
