The Forbidden Wish (26 page)

F
ORMLESS,
I
DRIFT.

Where do jinn go when they die? Humans are said to be destined for the godlands, where they will either dwell in ease or toil for the gods, depending on their deeds in life.

But jinn are cursed, and many believe they have no souls at all. When they die, they simply cease.

But I am still here—wherever
here
is.

Slowly I come to, my consciousness reluctant to wake. I am smoke, airy and thin, spread wide across a dark sky.

With much effort, I am able to assemble myself, finding that I am all in one piece. Instinctively I reach for my lamp, but I cannot sense it. Then I remember—it is gone. I saw it melt in the fires of Ambadya, felt the searing flames on my own skin.

My fate is tied to the lamp.

But I'm not dead.

The thought sends a jolt through me, and I take stock of my
surroundings. The sky above is dark, but there are no stars, no moon, and no clouds to obscure it. Below I see only sand, sweeping toward every black horizon.

I sink and take my human form, turning a full circle. And then I see it: the only thing to be seen for leagues about.

A door, half sunk in sand.

A door I know at once.

I open it, because I know that is what I'm meant to do. Certainty settles in that I am not in Ambadya, nor the godlands, nor the human world. Where I am, I cannot say, though my best guess is that I am still burning with my lamp, and this is some fevered hallucination. All I can do is follow the path before me.

The steps behind the door are not broken and covered in sand, as they were when Aladdin set foot here—or in the real version of
here
. Despite being sunken beneath the desert, the room looks the same it did the day I first created it, when you said you wished for a garden that would never fade, Habiba, more beautiful than any in the world.

The jeweled trees refract the light of the glowing diamonds above, scattering red, green, and blue flecks of light like dancing fireflies. Water babbles through the brook lined with rocks of silver and gold. A wind from nowhere softly shakes the emerald grass, filling the air with a musical tinkling.

I walk through the garden, feeling unattached to my own body. Ahead, I can see where I'm meant to go. The lamp sits on the throne, waiting for me. It's as if my mind is rewriting the day Aladdin and I met.

When I reach the throne, I stare at the lamp for a long moment, my eyes tracing the familiar contours with a blend of hatred and love. I've been bound to it for so long, despising it, cursing it, but it
has been the only constant in my long, lonely life. It is, in a twisted way, home.

I reach out and have the strange sensation of being inside the lamp at the same time, looking out at myself, feeling myself getting closer.

But before my hands can touch it, the bronze melts, bubbling and oozing, dripping onto the floor. I jump back, my stomach wrenching, as I imagine what it would be like to be inside it when that happened.
Did
happen. May still be happening.

“What is going on?” I murmur. “What is this place? And why am I not dead?”

“Of course, you already know.”

I spin and suck in a breath.

You stand before me, Habiba, dressed in the same armor and leather you wore the day you died. Your hair is long and loose, with little braids behind your ears. You shine like a goddess, but your flesh bears wounds and bruises from battle.

“A life as sacrifice,” you intone, “will set you free. And isn't that what the Shaitan fears most? A jinni with the power to grant her own wishes?”

“I can't grant my own wishes.”

“What do you do best but turn wishes into reality? You wished to die that the boy might live, and you made that wish come true. You opened a door to a magic long lost, far more powerful than any the Shaitan wields. A sacrifice for freedom—that is the Forbidden Wish. You made the sacrifice, now accept the consequence. Freedom bears great responsibility.”

I stare at you, my mind a flurry of questions, but I can articulate none of them. With a smile, you step closer and press your lips to my forehead.

“Live, my old friend,” you say. “And remember: Time is the strongest magic.”

You vanish as the room begins to shake, just as it did the day Aladdin stole me away. I break into a sprint, dodging chunks of stone that fall from the ceiling. Sand pours in waterfalls all around, burying the glinting jewels. I reach the stairs and bound up them, throwing open the door—to find not a desert but a void.

The universe spins around me, stars glaring bright, galaxies pulsing bursts of color. Looking back, I see the garden collapsing into itself, getting smaller and smaller. Flame rushes toward me, and without another thought, I jump.

I fall backward and upward, feel the wind rush around me, and I lose all sense of weight and direction.

The universe unfolds around me in a dazzling dance of light and color, opening circle by circle, each curling into elaborate patterns: sun and rose, starfish and pupil, tiger's mouth and elephant's ear. I fall through their center.

Stars are born, grow old, and burst apart into new stars. Galaxies blossom like flowers, shooting out tendrils of light, teeming with life. Spinning planets circle a million bright suns, and I see it all.

I have spun out of time. I stand on the edge of eternity, looking in at all the brilliant worlds. They are strung on invisible threads in a vast tapestry, each pulling the others, everything connected by the finest of lines. As I watch, the threads quiver and hum. The universe sings a deep, eternal song, sound in waves, in deep sighs, in whispers, in swirling chords and rising, falling tones. The music of the worlds, weaving in a pattern that is both chaos and order, both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end. Tears run down my face, and I dare not blink.

I lift my eyes, above it all, and see the one weaving the stars.
Imohel, the God of Gods. He smiles and pauses briefly to touch a finger to the center of my forehead, and at his touch, I fall.

Fall through the stars.

Through time.

Through light and wind and fire.

Through smoke and a sky gray like ashes.

•   •   •

Nardukha stands in the same spot, staring furiously at the fiery doorway. Less than a moment has passed since I threw myself into the fire, determined that I would not repeat the past, would not strike down Aladdin as I struck you down, Habiba. Determined that this, at the end, would be
my
choice. And somehow, it worked.

Somehow, I am still here.

It takes me a moment to find myself, to determine that I am standing in the doorway, in both worlds and neither. I turn around and see flames behind me. I myself am smokeless fire that burns red and blue, indistinguishable from the blaze that separates the mortal world from the immortal.

Turning back to the human world, I see Nardukha look down at Aladdin, who stares in disbelief at the doorway, unable to see me amid the flames, believing, no doubt, that I am dead. He doesn't even struggle when Nardukha wraps a hand about his throat and lifts him into the air. But his eyes begin to widen, and he gasps with pain.

At once I step through the doorway, a girl of fire and fury, taking human form in a gown of black smoke that curls and trails behind me. Never have I burned so hot. Never have I felt so powerful, not even when granting the most incredible wishes. A new power rages through me now, something completely wild and untrammeled,
and I realize what is missing: the invisible tether that bound me to my lamp. The bond has been broken.

Whether it was really you I saw, Habiba, or a ghost conjured by my mind, I know the words you spoke were true: In sacrificing my own life for Aladdin, I unwittingly triggered the Forbidden Wish. The bond between lamp and jinni is severed.

I am alive.

And I am
free
.

“
S
TOP
,”
I
SAY.

Nardukha drops Aladdin, who crumples to the ground. I run toward the thief, dropping to my knees at his side. He groans and blinks.

“Who are you?” he whispers.

“It's me,” I reply. “Lie still. You're hurt.”

“Zahra?” He seems bewildered, and suddenly I understand why. I put my hands to my face and suck in a breath, for it is not the face of Roshana I wear.

It is the face of a young Gheddan queen.
My
face. It is rounder and softer, my hair thick with brown curls and my skin a shade darker. How strange it is to wear it again, after so many years disguising myself in other forms.

“
You
,” Nardukha rumbles, and I whirl to face him. There is a wariness in him that I have never seen before.

I realize I have lost something else in my strange journey
through the Eye and back: my fear of him. For four thousand years even the thought of him made my soul tremble. Now I look at him, and it's as if I see him for the first time and find him . . . lacking. What did I fear in him before? By what power did he enthrall me? Whatever it was, it is gone now, and I will never cower before him again.

“All this time,” I say, rising to my feet to stand between him and Aladdin, “you've been so desperate to keep me—to keep any of your jinn—from loving a human. You knew what could happen if a jinni ever loved a human, loved one enough to
die
for them. That's why you went to war with Roshana—not because Roshana sought to make peace with the jinn, but because I loved her enough that I would have died for her. You couldn't let that happen because you knew what I would become. You knew the Forbidden Wish could work both ways.”

“What you
are
,” he breathes, “is an abomination. A jinni without a master, without ties to Ambadya or the gods. The order exists for a reason. I do not love chaos for chaos's sake. All things are held in balance, and you are a loose thread in the fabric of the universe. One wrong move and you could unravel everything.”

“I have seen the threads of the universe, and they are stronger than you know.”

Squaring his shoulders, his eyes flaring red, Nardukha exhales streams of black smoke. “It is called the Forbidden Wish for a reason, girl. I was not the one who named it so—creatures like you have been forbidden since the dawn of time.”

Wings flare from his shoulders, spreading the length of the alomb. Claws sprout from his fingers and fangs from his lips. His skin shifts to smoke, his clothes to flames. He is shadow wrapped in fire, and he leaps forward, set on destroying me.

I meet the Shaitan in midair, drawing conjured blades. I raise my swords, clashing with his claws in a shower of sparks.

“You can't defeat me,” he hisses, all trace of human form gone. He thrusts his head over my crossed blades, fangs snapping.

I roll aside, clear of his teeth. This fight is not going to be determined by swords and stances. Nardukha's attacks are primal and powerful, not to be overcome by human tactics.

I draw him away from Aladdin, who is struggling to his feet amid a crowd of creeping, hissing jinn. He draws a short knife from his boot and holds it up, a paltry defense against the claws of a ghul or the teeth of an ifreet.

“Leave him,” the Shaitan snarls, and the jinn back away.

Then he pauses a moment, his eyes intent on me. Once, I would have cowered to be the center of his terrible attention. Now, I want only to finish this. Live or die, this is a fight I cannot abandon.

I draw a deep breath and relax, my conjured blades evaporating.

I reach for my magic.

And for the first time in my long, strange life, it answers
my
call.

With a gasp, I sway and nearly topple, but gritting my teeth, I stand my ground and let it swell. Always the magic has come from a human, siphoned off them and into me.

This time, the power is born at
my
center. It is an entirely different feeling. It's dizzying and terrifying and wholly exhilarating. It spreads like white fire through my body, filling my limbs, my head, even my hair.

I can do anything.
The Shaitan formed me into the most powerful of his jinn, and now I truly know what that means.

Nardukha acts first. He sends a funnel of fire shooting toward me. The blast of heat hits me first, blowing my hair back. I react instinctively, throwing up a wall of smoke to break the flames.
By then he is already on me, striking me hard in my stomach and flinging me through the alomb. I let the momentum of his blow carry me out into the open, over the side of the mountain, where I shift to smoke from the waist down and hover in midair.

The Shaitan doesn't immediately follow. Instead, he stands at the edge of the alomb and waves a hand. The clouds around the summit part, affording a view of Parthenia below. He looks at me, then at the city, and the moment I catch on, I throw myself at him.

“No!”

But he sends me reeling with a shake of his arm. Before I can recover, he directs a finger toward the summit, and the ground splinters with a succession of deafening cracks, which begin to glow red with swelling lava. The shaking of the ground knocks Aladdin to his knees, and he retreats farther into the alomb as the mountain rumbles.

“Aladdin!” I shout. “Stay down!”

Horrified, I try to dive past Nardukha to help, but he grabs me and hurls me outward. Without pausing, he issues a command to the jinn, and they rise and begin winging toward Parthenia.

“This is the price of your treachery!” he spits out. “This is the cost of your pride!”

He will destroy Parthenia, just as he destroyed Neruby and Ghedda, all to punish me.

But this time, I can fight back.

I fly away from the mountain, which begins to spew black smoke from the cracks opening in its sides. Nardukha follows, his enormous wings of shadow fully unfurled. He rolls onto his back and brushes a hand through the air, causing the stones of the mountain to break apart and rise up, igniting one by one. These he sends arcing toward me like comets.

I dodge his flaming stones while flying farther out. The sky is filled with falling fire and trails of black smoke. I blaze through them, then turn and fling my hands wide, sending a powerful wind gusting toward him. At my thought, the wind hardens into icy fangs that whistle as they speed through the air.

Nardukha crosses his arms in front of himself, breaking the icicles. I am already moving, heady from the power that pours through me in boundless amounts. Usually there is a limit to my magic, proportionate to my master's wish, and I must wield it judiciously. Now with a mere thought I release floodgates inside, fueled by my desires, hampered only by the limits of my own imagination. And after four thousand years of granting wishes, my imagination is the most powerful muscle I possess.

I conjure at a rate that dazzles even me. Fire, wind, water, stone: All the elements bend themselves to my command. I send glittering eagles of flame screaming toward Nardukha. They claw at his eyes until he dashes them into a shower of sparks.

With a snap of my fingers, a pair of dragons appear in the sky above him, one of ice, one of fire. They roar and dive, spiraling around one another, their jaws gaping to swallow Nardukha. He turns and catches each by its muzzle, and with a growl, he reduces them to tiny harmless sparrows.

Enraged now, he goes on the offensive, slinging fire and rock in a crude but effective barrage. I dissolve into smoke and race through the air, flying over Parthenia, streaking toward the cliffs. Below me, the city is in chaos, as the people catch sight of the mountain erupting above them. The fighting around the palace begins to die down as they realize a greater threat is upon them. The earth beneath the city cracks and splinters, and when the walls begin to break apart, the wards protecting the people are broken. Jinn pour into the city.
My spirit aches, longing to fly down and defend them, but I can barely hold off Nardukha.

The Shaitan is close on my tail, his massive wings beating with a sound like enormous drums, whipping up powerful gales with each stroke.

I re-form into human shape on the spot where Caspida nearly dropped me from the cliff not long ago, my back to the sea. Nardukha lands in front of me and conjures a pack of shadow wolves. They snarl and snap and salivate, and I shudder. Of all animals on the earth, wolves I hate most, as all jinn do. Wolves thirst for our flesh and take particular savage joy in hunting us. How Nardukha can even conjure them I do not know.

Nardukha's wolves leap forward at an impossible speed, fangs bared and eyes glowing. Fear courses through me, immobilizing me. Nardukha's eyes flash with triumph. I can't look away. Can't think. Can't—

No. I am a slave to fear no more.

I spread my feet and hands and call to the one thing I fear more than wolves: the sea. For a moment, nothing happens.

The wolves are a breath away. They jump high, stretching their jaws wide, revealing far more teeth than any wolf should have. Their eyes burn red in their black shadow forms, and my body seizes as I turn my face away, eyes squeezing shut, knowing this is the end.

And then the sea answers.

It rises behind me in a mighty wave, deep gray coursed with rippling veins of blue, frothing and foaming, blocking out the sun. The wolves drop to the earth and cringe, tails between their legs. I stand, arms uplifted, holding up the sea. Then, thrusting my hands forward, I send the wall of water gushing over my head, dashing the wolves away. They dissolve into puffs of smoke as the wave washes
over the cliff top and pours back down, leaving several fish and one green turtle floundering on the grass. I lift them with a thought and gently drop them back into the water.

Breathing hard, Nardukha and I stare at each other for a moment. He is drenched with seawater, but it turns quickly to steam on his hot skin. His wings droop to the ground, leaving him standing tall as two humans, more coal than fire after the drenching I gave him.

“You are not the first jinni to break free of my rule. Do you wonder why you have never heard of the free jinn? Because none of them survived more than a few days. I will not allow it.”

I want to reply, but I can only pant, sore and exhausted.

His wings and hands begin to glow red. He pauses, just for a moment, to say, “You could have been a queen of Ambadya. Now look at you. I will finish you, jinni. I will crush you by crushing that damnable boy.”

With that, he rises and streams toward the mountain, and I race to catch up.

Sacrificing subterfuge for speed, I rise high into the sky before driving northward at a blinding pace. The sky is dark despite its being afternoon, and it is impossible to tell jinn from clouds. But they are there, flying to and fro, dropping into the city like hawks hunting mice. I dodge columns of black smoke rising from the city and race up the lava bubbling down the mountainside, its heat stifling. It has reached the city and begun to engulf the palace's north wall. As I fly, I conjure a rash of frost across the slope, and at its touch, the lava begins to cool and harden.

Nardukha has almost reached the alomb when I catch up to him. I spring on him from above, bringing us both crashing onto
the obsidian floor by the Eye and nearly on top of Aladdin, who scrambles out of the way.

At once I leap up, conjuring a torrent of sand, then spread my hands wide. My sand separates and hardens into a line of shining glass warriors who advance on the Shaitan, brandishing glittering spears. Light refracts through their crystalline forms, making them seem to glow. Caught off guard by their sudden appearance, Nardukha shifts to smoke to avoid being impaled.

While Nardukha is distracted, I shift to sand and stream across the floor, re-forming behind him, conjuring a trio of tigers, one of light, one of water, one of sand.

Nardukha, snarling, is driven back by my barrage of conjurations. He is stronger than me, and I know that if I give him one moment to think, he will destroy me—for good, this time. So I don't let up. I whirl and weave, teeth gritted, hair flying, crafting creatures of sand and fire, air and water, in a dizzyingly endless barrage. Scarlet and blue tigers, flaming eagles, a massive stone bear, warriors of water and smoke. They throw themselves at Nardukha, who furiously defends himself, shredding my weaves as quickly as I can conjure them.

He may be stronger, but I am more imaginative.

And after four thousand years of practice, I am
fast
.

I gather the elements and shape them in a blur, until the air in the alomb is thick with magic, flowing in ribbons of light and curls of smoke. I conjure as I have never conjured before, throwing everything I have at him. And he is losing ground. Framed by the fiery doorway, Nardukha is a dark shadow, wings spread, fangs bared.

Light flashes off the ring on my hand as I weave, and I glance at it.

My mind stumbles.

The symbols on the ring have been obliterated, probably by the fire blast that knocked me into the sea. I realize then that I've seen this scorched ring before, before even I forged it for Aladdin.

My eyes grow wide as the weight of this crashes over me like a tidal wave, but I hesitate too long.

The Shaitan tears through my last conjuration, a glittering dragon of glass and water. With a shriek it bursts into a thousand and one tiny flashing pieces, which fall like rain around the Shaitan.

And in that moment he attacks, throwing two powerful beams of blinding lightning—but I am not the target.

Aladdin is.

I move without thinking. I spin, a trick to gather as much magic as I can hold. The lightning is so close to Aladdin that his hair crackles with it, his eyes wide.

I reach deep, deep, deep, guided by instinct, guided by the memory of my strange journey back from death. I reach through the elements, through the unseen fabric that binds the world together. I reach farther and deeper than I have ever gone before, to those threads of the element I have only seen once, when I stood on the edge of the universe—the threads of time itself.