Chapter 3 #2
The peri’s expression didn’t inspire much hope.
“If I had to guess, she keeps them as playthings; bewitches and enjoys them as her personal entertainment. But we could not be certain because few have escaped her clutches—and even fewer have survived to tell their tale.” He paused.
“Until recently. A single man not only slipped Lab’s leash, he was fortunate to be rescued in the middle of the ocean. An astonishing streak of luck.”
I groaned. “He ran into Raksh.”
Khayzur grimaced, the shadows from the firelight flickering even more monstrously across his avian face. “I believe so. Especially if you abandoned Raksh at sea. He might have been desperate, his magic unpredictable and panicked enough to draw him and this escapee together.”
“It is a pity this Lab did not draw him back in,” I grumbled. Raksh being packed away as the plaything of a sorceress in a hidden fold of the Unseen Realm would solve a great many of my problems. “So what about this scenario has your people all riled up?”
“Because Raksh is telling every mortal he encounters about her! He has the humans all aflutter with dreams of vengeance and riches. They are apparently traipsing from port to port with tales of treasure rooms and beautiful enchantresses, all ripe for the plucking. He is luring even more mortals to Lab’s embrace, eager, hungry men with swords and delusions of grandeur. ”
I frowned. That both did and did not sound like Raksh. Oh, I bet he was savoring the ambitions he stoked, but he was a coward who thought little of the future save ensuring his survival. After his being trapped in Socotra, I could not imagine him willingly traveling to a possible magical prison.
It also did not sound like a scenario that would trouble the high-and-mighty peris.
“How do your people know all this? Do you spend half your days spying on humans?” When Khayzur said nothing, merely pressing his beak together like a man intentionally keeping a secret, I tried again.
“And why would the peri council care? Does this not fall within ‘the standard perimeters of human violence?” I asked scornfully, remembering what the peris had said when I begged their assistance in defeating Falco, warning how many people might die if the Frank gained control of the Moon of Saba.
“It would not concern them,” Khayzur admitted shamefully.
“Except that Lab is not the only danger on that island. Over the centuries she has been imprisoned, she has amassed a great number of treasures from her castaways, some magical. And there is one rumored to be in her grasp that has my people petrified.”
Apprehension flooded me. “What is it?”
“Humans would call it a spindle, at least I believe so. A strange device, it was described to me as a sort of stick whose purpose somehow is to . . . make fabric?” Khayzur sounded both unsure and awestruck, as though the concept of spinning was miraculous.
“Have you ever heard of such an instrument?”
“You might say that,” I replied, glancing at Marjana’s loom, where two of the “strange devices” lay nearby, in the process of turning fluffy wool into spun thread.
“Humans use them all the time. So I hope you’re not implying the very existence of a spindle is a Transgression, because let me tell you . . . that ship has long sailed.”
“No, no,” Khayzur assured. “The devices themselves are clearly of human make and ingenuity. It’s just this particular one that’s dangerous.”
“How?” I prodded.
He hesitated. “We are not entirely sure of the details. It is among the oldest Transgressions, the initial magic having been captured many eons before your Moon of Saba and having only grown more powerful since. For millennia it was isolated, but—”
“But what does it do?” I pressed. “Does it spin cloth of gold or barbed nooses? What’s the magic that’s so concerning?”
“It changes the threads of one’s life,” Khayzur answered somberly.
“Whether in your mind or in reality . . . its limits are unknown. The spindle seems confined by proximity for now, but were it here on the roof with us, it might temporarily rewrite your memories to make you entirely forget your family. To make you believe they were enemies who had destroyed your true family. And to act—accordingly. In pulling and unraveling the past threads of your life, it changes the future.”
I went cold. “God forbid such a fate.” Cloth of gold or barbed nooses suddenly sounded innocent; what Khayzur was saying was beyond terrifying.
No, it was blasphemous; the most vile and twisted defiance of what God had written for each of us.
To not be able to trust one’s own mind, one’s own memories . . .
Khayzur let out a low coo of distress. “It gets worse.”
I didn’t see how that was possible.
He continued. “The spindle seems to have a great affinity for vengeance, for falling into the possession of those most wretchedly wronged. At least it did before it was rumored to disappear into Lab’s possession. It apparently feeds on whatever violent revenge its host can enact.”
It feeds? Horror rushed through me and not just because what Khayzur was saying was ghastly—but because it was familiar.
The spindle thriving off revenge, off human emotions .
. . It all struck a bit too close to what Raksh told me of the spirits of discord, the “kin” he refused to discuss any further.
Did my husband—the creature who longed for the days when he had spun legends and drunk ambition, the demon who begged to stay at my side and spread tales of my glory with an expression of open lust—know such a device existed?
Did he wish to retrieve the spindle, to see if it was linked to his people?
Or was this just as it must seem to the peris: a chaos spirit cavorting in drunken taverns, goading humans into death at the hands of a sorceress so he could feed on their momentary dreams?
Either way, I resolved to keep such wonderings to myself.
The peri council had been ready to condemn me for being associated with Raksh, and I didn’t need to give them any new fears.
Especially when I remembered that Khayzur wasn’t just here to intervene.
He had been sent here to summon me. I took a deep breath. “This is the Third Transgression I am to retrieve, isn’t it?”
His voice was apologetic. “I am sorry.”
I closed my eyes, my heart breaking. One month.
One month I had savored with my daughter after the six it had taken to hunt down the Mortar of Mithridates.
My mother’s accusations of me cavorting about the Indian Ocean while they sat here shut away whirled through my mind, along with my fear over how easily Khayzur had tracked me down, his suspicions of magic in the house.
Not to mention the terrifying artifact I was being commanded to retrieve.
No, rather to steal—from an immortal sorceress who played with humans like toys and whose lair was notoriously difficult to escape.
God, save me. It was too much. But what could I do other than don the mask of an adventurer and take the job? I could not risk the peris peering too closely into my connection with Raksh or the magic that lingered around my family.
But I tried. “Can’t your people fly to this island and pluck away the spindle? You’re not supposed to interfere in mortal affairs, but this sorceress sounds far from human.”
He shook his head. “We cannot pass the boundaries of her island. Whether that is due to the marid’s intervention or her magic, I am not certain, but I was told it was impossible.
And for many centuries, while Lab’s possible possession of the spindle was far from ideal, it was at least trapped on the island with her. ”
“Until a chaos spirit starts sending hordes of human fortune hunters there,” I said bleakly. “Is there not a chance she might just gobble them all up upon their arrival?”
“We cannot take that risk,” Khayzur said. “Particularly if Raksh is among them, stoking their chances of survival. The spindle cannot be allowed to leave the island. We need your help, Amina. There is no one else.”
“You might have led with that,” I said acidly. “Not that I would believe the peri council, willing to toss me to my death, would admit to needing the assistance of a lowly mortal.”
He winced. “They would not humble themselves to confess such a limitation. But in this case, it is the truth, nakhudha.”
That did nothing to help my circumstances.
To the facts of the job, then. “So, all I have to do is locate some overly powerful sorceress hidden in the Unseen Realm who kidnaps humans for sport, steal a spindle that feeds off vengeance and murderous delusions, and then somehow escape her lair—a lair only one person has apparently successfully fled from in centuries? And do all this before another bunch of humans go after her. Correct?” When Khayzur winced again but did not disagree, I pressed on, despairing, “Any idea where this supposed prison might be?”
“Oh, yes. On that, I can help.” Khayzur raised his hands, a swirl of wind and dust rushing to meet them. “This is how the area looks to me when I am flying; it is a mountainous island located in the belly of the Sea of Pearls—”
“The Sea of Pearls?”
“That is our name. It is not very far from here.” Khayzur spread his arms, and the dust shifted into an undulating map.
The borders were rough and though it was strange for me to look upon the peri version of a map—as though soaring directly overhead instead of port and sea stretched before me—the dramatic swoop of coastline, like the crest of a wave, was instantly recognizable, Khayzur’s name only confirming it.
“This is the Persian Gulf,” I murmured, an ill feeling crawling in my belly like a worm. Lab’s island was close—a bit too close, considering how he described the Third Transgression. “You are telling me some immortal witch is holed up over there with a reality-unmaking spindle?”