by Amber Lough
Firuz gripped my forearm. That man is not from Mongolia. He is a jinni. I nearly gasped from the pressure of his words in my mind. How was I so blind? We need to return. Now.
A jinni was in the room. Another jinni. He had to be a descendant of the Forgotten.
A shiver spread down my arms, and I backed into the garden, suddenly nauseated and dizzy. It didn’t matter that I still had more to listen to. There was another jinni in the room, talking to Ibrahim and his men. Clearly, no one there knew what he truly was.
Did the Forgotten support Ibrahim, or were they planning something more sinister?
IT WAS THE middle of the night, and there was a hand pressing against my mouth. I struggled against it, pulling away.
“Shh,” came the voice, “I’ve come to get you, but you have to be quiet.”
I blinked away the darkness and saw Taja. She was kneeling over me, holding a small wishlight orb that glowed faintly. She looked more excited than murderous, so I nodded and she took away her hand.
“Where are you taking me?” I whispered.
She pulled me off the bed. “Come. You can wear that,” she whispered, pointing at my gown. It was the same dress I’d worn during the day. I had been too tired to change it before falling asleep.
“Where are we going?” I repeated.
Her eyes sparkled. “It’s a secret. Keep quiet till we get out of the house.”
“Is this part of my training?” It had to be. The only times I’d ever seen her were when there was something to learn or be tested on. Now that I thought of it, I’d never seen her walking around the Cavern without Melchior.
She shrugged, and gestured for me to follow, so I did.
Outside the house, the Cavern was dusky. It wasn’t as dark as real night, but the wishlights lining the streets and lake wall had been dimmed. The only bright lights came from the orb Taja carried and the flickering surface of the lake, where the flames danced all day and night. Shadows stretched between buildings, flowing over the ground like a black fog. The ceiling was lost in blackness, and I could almost pretend it was the sky, the real sky, but one without any stars or moon.
Taja would not slow down, so I hurried to keep up with her. “Now can you tell me where we’re going?”
“To the Lake of Fire.” The mystery of her words seeped into me like a warm cinnamon bath. “The rest you’ll see for yourself.”
Together, we trotted over the cobblestones, climbed the stairs to the lake wall, and stopped at the boatkeeper’s hut. Gal, a stout woman with a voice that carried, waved us over to the dock. She held a long pole with a lantern attached to the other end, and used it to point us to a boat.
“That one down there!” she called out while we passed her by. “Get the one on the end.” Then she handed Taja the pole with the lantern. Gal stayed at her hut while Taja and I climbed down to the dock and made our way to the boat. After we climbed in, Taja set the pole into a hole at the front and picked up the oars.
The Lake of Fire was a different monster at night. The flames darted across the surface in a flickering, glaring dance. It was pretty, but it left spots in my eyes when I blinked. I was glad Taja was in charge of getting us to our destination, although she still didn’t tell me where we were headed.
Taja rowed in silence, with her back to the lake. At first, I thought she was taking me out to Devil’s Island, where Atish and Shirin had taken me when I’d first come to the Cavern. But that was toward Iblis’s Palace, and she headed in the other direction, to the far side of the lake.
There were no other islands. There weren’t any platforms. There weren’t any other docks. But there were, I remembered, dark arches cut into the wall of the Cavern itself, just above the waterline. I cleared my throat, because it had suddenly turned sticky.
Taja was taking me to a tunnel. At night.
“This isn’t another test, is it? I don’t have to run in a tunnel again, do I?”
Taja looked over her shoulder. I followed her gaze and saw that not too far ahead, another lantern bobbed on the lake. I hadn’t noticed it before, because the flames sprouting from the lake had hidden it, but this light was constant, and was attached to a boat like ours. In fact, there wasn’t just one boat. There was a line of boats, almost reaching to the opposite wall.
She rowed and rowed, and I sat on the edge of the bench and gripped the sides until my knuckles ached. Finally, we reached the far side. The other boats were tied to a series of rings screwed into long spears of gypsum, their lanterns swinging while the boats rocked at the waves of our approach. Beside the crystals was the entrance to a tunnel. A portion of the Cavern had been wiped free of crystals, and in its place was an arch, a scar of blackest black, and whoever had been in the other boats had already gone through.
Taja found another ring on the other side of the entrance and tied up the boat. Then she climbed into the hole, careful not to fall into the lake, and reached out her hand to me. From where I sat in the boat, her arm looked disconnected, her body lost in the rim. But I took her hand and let her pull me in.
I landed on a smooth, clean floor. Instinctively, I reached out around me, feeling for the walls, but I could not find them.
“Come with me,” Taja said. Her voice echoed.
We walked slowly until we saw a faint reddish glow. Then Taja grabbed my wrist and pulled me along at a quicker pace. We emerged in another geode, much like the Cavern but far, far smaller. Its crystals had been filed down until only smooth, reflective disks remained. The spaces between the disks were filled in with silver, and I had the impression I had shrunk in size and had crawled into the setting of a giant ring.
The jinn filled every standing space in the room, dozens of them. They circled a pedestal with a large stone bowl filled with water, but none of them were looking at the bowl. They all turned to face us, and one by one, I recognized a few. Atish, Samir, Arzada, Rashid, and Saam stood together on one side, and on the other were Melchior and Aga. The rest I didn’t recognize, but they smiled at me as though they’d known me my whole life. Maybe they had.
This was not going to be a test of endurance. Judging by the way Atish was fidgeting, this was when they’d choose between the final three.
“Welcome, Zayele,” Melchior said. Taja entered the circle and then beckoned for me to join them.
My throat had tightened and gone dry. I stepped up and joined the circle. And then I felt it. A soft vibration coursed around us, in a ring.
Melchior raised his brows. “This is the Bonding, as I’m sure you’ve surmised. What you’re feeling is the power of the Dyad, which courses through us all when we’re together.” He looked at Aga, who pressed her lips together and nodded back at him. “As a magus, you can do anything any other jinni can do. You can fight like the Shaitan. You can slip into places unseen, like your sister. You can heal, like the physicians. But you cannot do any of these as strongly, or in your case as clearly, as they can. The one thing you can do, however, is protect those around you. Each magus has a special talent, and yours, it appears, is your strength of will. This is why you were able to make the Fire Wish without knowing how to make a wish in the first place. This is why you were able to change your cousin’s sight. A long time ago, the magi were set above all other jinn for their special qualities. Unfortunately, a few magi went too far, so a decision was made to bind a magus with someone in the Shaitan. The magi needed jinn who were both physically and mentally strong, to keep them from going too far once again.” Melchior paused, just long enough to look each jinni in the eye. Then he stopped at me again. “But first, we must mark you, so that everyone will know you are one of us.”
Suddenly, half of them slipped off their shawls and revealed a red flame marked into the divot of their collarbones. That was where the magi were marked.
My heart thumped against my chest like it wanted to get out. I pressed a hand against it, but it did nothing to calm it down.
Melchior broke away from the ring of Dyads and stepped up to the bowl o
f water, reached in, and pulled out a ruby spear. It was narrow, long, and sharp as a knife at one end. Then he walked around the bowl and came to me. He stopped an arm’s length from me and held up the ruby.
“This will mark you into the magi,” he said.
Without giving me a chance to hesitate, he pointed the ruby at the hollow of my throat and pressed it into the skin. It stung, but I did not move. I did not even swallow. I inhaled through my nose, deeply and slowly, and blinked away the bright red light emanating from the ruby.
The chamber filled with the reddish light, and Melchior’s cheeks turned sharper, the shadows beneath his eyes a dark, bloody red.
Then the pain released, and he pulled back the ruby.
I brushed my fingers over my throat, but felt nothing. The skin was intact, and only faintly warmer than usual.
“Did it work?” I spoke too soon. A second later, a rush of fire overtook my body and spread through my arms, over and down my scalp, and down to my toes. It burned, hotter than anything I’d ever felt before, and I could not hold back an earsplitting scream.
My scream echoed, ricocheting off the flattened crystals on the ceiling. I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around myself. I was burning. I was aflame. I breathed, and fire erupted from my nostrils. My hair fell down, freed now from its veil. And my dress fell to the ground in a dusting of ash.
The fire burned the bones in my body. I screamed once more, and the fire flew out from my mouth and finally, finally, left me cold.
I fell to my side, naked and singed, and felt hands upon me, lifting me up to my feet. But surely I could not stand? Surely I wasn’t alive?
A cloth was wrapped around me, and two jinn held me on my feet. Taja, and someone else on the other side. They were whispering, Taja saying “What happened?” and the other one, “Was that because she’s half-human?”
“Open your eyes,” Melchior instructed.
I blinked, and saw that the room was less red. Melchior had returned the ruby to the water, and the light now came from a ring of wishlight orbs set into the wall above our heads. Blue—soft, cool, blue light. Not the light of fire.
Atish was on the other side, held back by Rashid and Saam. His eyes were dark pools, and I shook my head at him. I was not dead.
“What happened to me?” I croaked. My throat felt like I was rubbing two sunburned parts together.
“That is what it’s like to get the mark of the magi,” Taja said. “It’s not the most comfortable, and it looked worse for you than it was for us.”
“I almost died,” I whispered.
“On the contrary. You have just been born,” Melchior said. His voice was too loud, and I winced. “The mark of the magi cannot shine on human flesh. Now you are truly jinni.”
The mark of the magi cannot shine on human flesh.
Melchior had burned away all that had been human.
“No,” I cried, pulling away from the older woman on my right. “You can’t do that. It isn’t possible. It isn’t right.”
“Shh,” Taja whispered in my ear. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“No! We talk about it now. Melchior, you never said anything about this.” I didn’t care if my throat was falling to pieces, like burned sheets of paper. “What have you done to me?”
“I have brought you into the magi.”
I was one of them now. I had burned away all the human blood in my body. I could not see it now, but I had a mark on my collarbone that flickered, garnet red and pulsating, in the shape of a flame. Was it worth losing my humanity to protect my Dyad?
My grandfather, ever hateful of the human blood his daughter had married, had found a way to cleanse me of it. Would my sister be next?
One glance in his eyes showed me he had won. But only in this. He had burned away all traces of a father I had never known. I did not have time to cry, so I pulled myself out of Taja’s arms and stood tall.
“And now we choose which Shaitan I’m partnered with?” I asked.
Atish’s eyebrows were bent in concern. “Are you sure you want this now?”
“It does not matter what she wants,” Aga said. “She is a magus, and a magus cannot be without the Shaitan. The three of you, go stand before her.”
When Atish reached me, he grasped my hand and squeezed it softly. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.
Aga gently pushed him away from me and held up a spool of thread. When she began to unwind it, I recognized it. It was the pale and luminescent silk of the glowworms. She wound it around my wrists, and then covered my hands with hers.
“Close your eyes,” she instructed. When my eyes were shut, she said, “We will place the Shaitan around you. When your mind is calm, you will find your dyad.”
The sounds of footsteps encircled me and then stopped. The room was quiet except for everyone’s quickened breathing. I needed to find my dyad blindly. As frightening as it was to choose in the dark, it was a relief to make the final choice.
Taking in a deep, slow breath, I tried to focus my mind. I imagined a flame flickering outward from my chest like a beacon. It twisted left, then right, and then around me, searching for the man I should choose. Finally, it stopped swirling and shone straight and true, then brighter. I turned to my left and opened my eyes.
He and I both laughed in relief. Atish’s face was as bright at the flame had been.
“Thank Iblis,” he sighed, and he pulled me close.
Aga cleared her throat behind us. “Now that you’ve made your choice, we must finish the Bonding.” She took his wrists and wrapped the end of the thread around them. Then she gestured for everyone to back away.
“Dyathi.” All the Dyads said this wish together.
The silk tightened, and then sank into our skin painlessly and disappeared. When it was gone, Atish and I both studied our wrists.
“That didn’t feel like I’d expected,” I said. I rubbed at the soft skin. There were no marks. “How do people know if you’re in a Dyad if the mark is invisible?”
Taja shrugged. “You’re a magus. You can’t be a marked magus if you aren’t in a Dyad.”
“I don’t feel any different,” Atish said. “I thought I’d feel…stronger.” Suddenly, the tension eased, and a few jinn laughed.
“You are stronger,” Rashid said, smiling. “You have a magus as your companion.” Then he glanced down at the empty spot beside him, where his dyad would have been if she were still alive, and dropped the smile.
Atish took my hand again, and I found his arm was shaking.
FIRUZ AND I ran into the room with the Eye of Iblis and found Delia staring openmouthed at the image of the jinni, spread out, larger than life, across all the tiles. His cheekbones were sharp enough to cut through the crystal.
“He’s a jinni!” I shouted.
She did not turn her head, and instead she held on to the table beside her. “Did he see you?”
“Not unless he has the ability to see through my shahtabi.”
“Then we have a chance,” she said with a sigh. “He must be one of the Forgotten. He should not have been there. When Iblis died, he left behind a mess. There wasn’t a system of law, there weren’t any traditions, and there wasn’t anyone prepared to take his place. There was a grab for his seat, which left many, many dead. The Diwan was eventually created, and they decided that each magus should be paired with someone in the Shaitan.”
“But some didn’t want that, did they?” I asked.
She turned away from the wall, from the giant image of the Forgotten jinni, and looked down at the sheets and charts scattered across the table. “Rather than be in a Dyad, they fled. Twenty-two magi left, along with their sympathizers.”
Why is he working for Ibrahim? And what is Ibrahim planning? I wondered.
“Delia, there’s more information than just that image.” I looked at Firuz.
He nodded. “Ibrahim is planning an attack on us for tomorrow.”
She blinked rapidly and stood up, straightening her b
ody. It was like watching a wilted plant take on water. “Where?”
We told her everything, and she called for the rest of the Corps to join us. I waited in the corner while a ball of iron formed in my stomach, heavy and unmoving. The Corps filed in, and I watched while Delia relayed our information, gesturing at the jinni on the wall. There were several gasps and many frowns, and the mood of the room darkened until the shadow I stood in was empty of light and air.
—
An hour later, Delia found me leaning against the wall for support. Her hair had slipped out of the sapphire clip, but she did not care. She brushed it out of her face and looked me straight in the eye.
“You have to find him.”
“The other jinni?”
“You need to find out where he has gone and what he is up to. Word has been sent to the Shaitan, and everyone will soon be heading toward Samarra.”
“What about the reeds? Firuz said they’re using them as a bridge.” Whatever it actually was, Kamal had designed it, and they were going to use it against us. Reeds didn’t sound threatening, but neither had a simple ball of selenite until Kamal and Hashim turned it into a weapon.
Delia shook her head. “I’m sending Parviz ahead to see if he can find out anything. In the meantime, you will be tracking down Toqto’a. But be careful. He and his friends, if he is not alone, will not be pleased if they find out they’ve been discovered.”
“Delia,” I asked, pausing by the door, “can they do what the Shaitan can do?”
“I do not know, but please, do not try to find out.”
“How do I find him?”
Delia called over a member of the Corps, a woman ten or fifteen years older than me. She was the smallest jinni in the Corps, and rumored to be more observant than most. She smiled weakly and handed me a thin bangle. I took it and laid it on my palm, a circle of pure, soft gold.
