Eternal Sky 01(76)

Al-Sepehr smiled back and bowed low. “What could I offer one so great as yourself, O djinn? For surely, your mastery of fire and air, your powers of transformation and your cunning are so immense that I—a small one, a mere mortal, all of whose ability has amounted only to the leadership of one small, all-but-forgotten sect—have nothing you could want. Moreover, there is nothing I could obtain that you would want, O great power of the desert wind and sun. For is not the very desert itself in essence that wind and sun? You are eternal, O djinn. Whereas I am only a man, a brief thing that will flicker out before you even notice my existence.”

The djinn looked at him, one eyebrow rising, head cocked to the side. It had folded its arms in irritation when al-Sepehr began speaking, but now they swung relaxed.

“It is true,” the djinn said. “That I am powerful.”

“You are powerful!” al-Sepehr said. “Truly I believe there is almost no task you could not complete, you are so great.”

The djinn scowled, and sparks flew from the corners of its eyes. “Almost none?”

“I should not ask you to wrestle gods,” al-Sepehr said. “For that would be blasphemy. But short of that—”

“Gods?” the djinn said. Now it smiled, seeming to believe he had misstepped, and pressed its advantage. “I believed your religion admitted of but one, and that one omnipotent.”

“It is so,” al-Sepehr said. “But I believe you could do almost anything else.”

“Almost,” the djinn said, mocking. It moved in a slow circle around him, considering. He turned to follow it. “Almost. You and that almost! Set me a task then, mortal man, and I will show you your almost.”

Al-Sepehr clapped his hands together, unable to restrain himself, and saw the expression of chagrin cross the djinn’s face a moment too late.

“Damn,” it said. “You’re good at this. All right then, mortal, let’s hear your task.”

“Bring me the Green Ring of Erem, once borne by Danupati of the Dragon Banner—the ring that can command scorpions and storms and lets a man speak in the language of Ghuls. And bring me the skull of that same Danupati.”

The djinn stopped its circling. It folded its arms again across its narrow, muscled chest. Al-Sepehr saw the fingers of its right hand tapping gently against the bulge of its left bicep. He thought it might be sucking its teeth.

It smiled a gloating smile, and he saw fangs.

“As you wish,” it said, and vanished in a curl of smoke and a wind so hot he felt his face redden as if from the sun.

He did not fear the source of the djinn’s cold smirk. He knew what he had asked for. And he knew the price with which those things came.

He was counting on it.





12



Edene prayed as befitted a Qersnyk woman: standing straight, her arms at her sides, her eyes open and raised to the sky above. But it was not the Eternal Sky; it was the featureless sky of the Scholar-God, all textureless shallows and pale, flat sun.

She did not know if the Eternal Sky heard her.

Al-Sepehr—the man who came, the only person she spoke to or saw—had brought her clothes in the Ctesifonin style, and she wore those now because they were clean and soft. And enveloping, protective—wool the buff color of the desert sheep, as light as a veil, woven so fine the breeze passed through it but not the sun. She missed the freedom of her coat and trousers and did not like the way these clothes left her breasts and slowly mounding belly free to sway.

She was standing at her window praying to the alien sky on the day that everything changed.

First, her meal was not brought to her by al-Sepehr, but by a woman veiled in the buff and cream veils that Edene let fall about her neck like scarves when she bothered to wear them at all. Only the veiled woman’s startling hazel eyes set in nut-brown skin showed to show her attention or emotions. There was a dot as black as a spot of ink in the left iris, so dark Edene wanted to touch it and see if it was really a hole.

Fortunately, captivity had not yet driven her so mad that she jabbed the other woman in the eye. Instead, she stepped forward as the new visitor set the tray down, and said—in Qersnyk, it being the only tongue in which she was fluent—“Hello. I am Edene.”

She pointed to her chest as she said her name, in case the other woman did not speak her language. And that might have been the case, because the woman simply stared at her, furrows forming in the slip of forehead Edene could see.

“Edene,” Edene said again, tapping her breastbone again.

“Ah,” the woman said. She touched herself. “Saadet.” She pointed to the food then and said a word that must mean “eat.”