Excerpt
The first djinn emerged in the night sky:
a whirlwind topped with a simulacrum of Khalid himself. Knife-sharp grains of
sand spun upward, pulled by the centrifugal force of the air that formed the
construct’s lower half. Khalid swallowed down bile as he looked at his
creation. The djinn’s outstretched arms were frozen in a gesture of welcome,
but its unblinking eyes were indifferent to the suffering it was about to
cause.
If only he could create a living
construct, he wouldn’t be forced to watch oversized statues of himself wreaking
destruction. Before Sabha, he used to revel in the fact that his enemy would
know he had been the mage who had killed them. Now, the sight of his giant face
in the sky made him sick.
Two more djinni coalesced, dragging
roiling storms of colored lightning behind them like fringed capes. Malik shut
the spellbook, words of congratulations on his lips. But his face fell, his
compliments silenced before they could be uttered. Khalid’s heart rate sped up
as he followed his vizier’s gaze.
The three djinni should have been flying
north over the dunes to the enemy encampment, spinning tornados of wind and
lightning beneath them. Instead, the constructs hung suspended in midair, their
lower whirlwinds frozen into a stillness as eerie as their unmoving humanoid
tops.
A rush of air rippled Khalid’s headscarf
and robe, but the desert was suddenly silent. He could no longer hear the rasp
of wind over sand.
Eurus, Khalid realized, his grim fear
sinking into actual dread.
The glimmering white-gold outline of a
woman’s face emerged in front of the djinni.
Khalid swallowed as she pressed her lips
against one statue-like face before dissipating back into air.
Khalid waved Malik back to the assembled
guard. “Go,” he said. “Back to camp.”
But Malik pressed shoulder-to-shoulder
with him. “No one can contend against the air itself, Amir. It won’t matter if
we stay or go.”
That’s an unfortunate truth, Khalid
thought. For all they knew, Eurus existed within the very air they drew into
their lungs. She was everywhere but only rarely took physical form.
Humans, even other faeries, were typically
beneath her notice.
“Your djinni still don’t live.”
The East Wind’s soft voice was impossible
to locate, though they all spun around to look for her. Eurus was air, an
elemental faerie born billions of years ago when the Earth’s atmosphere formed.
“Why are you here?” Khalid called, his
voice overly loud in the stillness.
Eurus, as the East Wind liked to be called, manifested into a shadowed figure
floating cross-legged as if atop a flying carpet. But of course, Eurus didn’t
need any support to defeat gravity.
Khalid’s face covering blew off, and he
caught the red headcloth before responding.
“You told me war didn’t interest you
anymore.”
“Your djinni interest me.” The elemental
faerie’s voice hovered in the air around him, pressing against him like the
atmospheric warning of an approaching sandstorm.
“I’m no via-enchanter to cast spells on
living things, Lady Eurus,” Khalid reminded her.
The fae demanded honesty, and he’d told
her this many times already. “I don’t know how to make a djinn draw breath.”
“You were working hard to modify your
spells,” Eurus said. “At least until your sisters convinced you to claim the
Sahara for your al-Saaqib tribe.”
“I have a duty to protect the desert’s
people. I can’t play with spell designs while we remain under threat,” Khalid
said — then cursed himself when he realized he’d given her an opening.
She pounced. “I am more dangerous than
five thousand battlemages. Bargain with me. I can steal your enemies’ breath.
Blow their ships back from your shores. I can keep your lands safe from the
predators while you perfect your djinn spells.”
“I’m no via-enchanter, Lady Eurus,” Khalid
repeated. “I spent decades and only managed to integrate biomarkers into the
design.”
His gaze flickered up. Six vacant eyes
that matched his own stared down at him in impotent stillness. Eurus’s magick
held his unreleased djinni captive. He needed her to let them fly. Let Khalid
kill his enemy.
“You see how well I can keep you safe,”
Eurus said, glancing upward as well. “Even from your own spells.”
Khalid hated how tempting her offer was
now. Everyone else had perished at Sabha. It had been a Pyrrhic victory, but a
victory nonetheless. If she didn’t release his djinni, this battle would end in
an actual defeat.
There was nothing worse than defeat.
“Do not surrender, Al-Amir,” Malik
whispered. “With or without the djinni, we will prevail!”
“Surrender? Who said anything about
surrender? I’ll be your hired hand, Amir Khalid ibn Hawwa al-Saaqib!” Eurus’s
voice hung slyly in the air as she fluttered down into a full bow, her thin
frame splayed across the sand before him.
Khalid
stared down at the elemental faerie. No sane person made a bargain with a
faerie, but then, no sane faerie stalked a human.
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