The Librarians and the Lost Lamp (22 page)

“Well, there's always … or maybe…” Flynn faltered as nothing came readily to mind. “Look, magic
is
dangerous. Trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about.”

“But the Djinn
does
grant unlimited wishes to any who hold the Lamp, bringing them incalculable wealth and power?”

“Well, yes,” Flynn conceded, “according to the stories, but—”

“But nothing.” Khoja looked away from Flynn, turning his attention to whatever glorious future he envisioned. “Soon the Lamp will be mine, and with it the ability to turn my most impossible wishes into reality.”

“
Our
wishes,” Marjanah corrected him. “For generations, the Forty have sought the Lamp, ever since the
Alf Layla
eluded our grasp during the sack of Baghdad more than seven hundred and fifty years ago. But now our patience will finally be rewarded … and the Forty shall at last reign supreme.”

Flynn considered his adversaries. Khoja struck him as driven by personal ambition, but Marjanah seemed to be more about the “glorious” legacy of the Forty.

“Wow, you're a true believer, aren't you?”

“She should be,” Khoja said. “Marjanah's family claims direct descent from the original Forty Thieves. Her father, in fact, was the First before me—until she helped me overthrow him.”

“He was weak and stuck in the past,” she said unapologetically. “He lacked the strength and vision to guide the Forty into the twenty-first century … and claim the Lamp at long last.”

The carpet zoomed across Iran's airspace, flying low enough to allow them to breathe comfortably while hopefully evading radar detection. Shirin, who had been tossed toward Flynn during the carpet's headlong escape from the tomb, scooted close enough to grab hold of his hand as the rug carried them over the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles from the Zagros Mountains. Despite their perilous situation, Flynn found the magic carpet ride more than a little exhilarating. Glancing at Shirin, he saw a look of utter wonder on her face as well.

Might as well enjoy it,
he thought.
How often do you get to glide above the world on a flying carpet?

Too bad the company left something to be desired.

“So where the devil is this mythical island?” Marjanah said, squirming restlessly upon the carpet. Her dark hair blew in the wind.

“Patience,” Khoja chided her. “We seem to be making excellent time toward … wherever.”

In no time at all, the carpet began to descend from the sky into a thick patch of cloud and fog somewhere in the middle of the sea. A clammy mist briefly chilled Flynn before the mystery island came into view. A barren gray mountain, overlooking a small cove guarded by jagged rocks, rose from a fringe of woods and brush circling its base. At first glance, the vaguely
U
-shaped isle appeared to be uninhabited and untouched since the days of Sinbad. Flynn wondered if there actually was some enchantment shielding the isle from discovery, as with Brigadoon or Shangri-La.

I wouldn't be at all surprised.

The carpet slowed as it descended, much to Flynn's relief and concern. They were getting closer to the Lamp, which meant, unfortunately, that the Forty was getting closer to liberating the Djinn, possibly for good. He and Shirin needed to get away from their captors and find the Lamp before it was too late. What had Scheherazade written next about its location? Something about a hidden cave guarded by an enormous rock?

“Attention, all passengers,” he announced. “Prepare for landing.”

A loud cawing noise came from above. Peering upward, Flynn dimly glimpsed a large shape soaring through the dense clouds overhead. He suddenly remembered the immense piece of eggshell on display in the tomb.…

“Er, Shirin? Did the book say the cave was guarded by a huge rock—or a
roc
?”

Her face fell as she grasped what he was asking. “You mean—?”

The answer came in the feathered form of a colossal bird, which came swooping down from the clouds toward the carpet, its grasping talons extended, as though straight out of “The Second Voyage of Sinbad.” The roc was just as described in the classic tales: a monstrous bird of prey whose wingspan was at least fifty feet long, with ominous gray plumage that turned bloodred at the tips. Its pointed beak was that of a raptor, and large enough to swallow a grown man or woman in one gulp. Its prodigious shadow fell over the carpet and its stunned passengers.

“Sorry,” Shirin said. “I might have misread that line.”

“You think?” Flynn replied. “Granted, it
was
a rush job.…”

Gasps and shouts greeted the roc's attack. Dive-bombing the carpet, the monster grabbed a henchman with its talons and carried him, shrieking, back up into the clouds, while everyone else ducked low to avoid the speeding roc. The wind from its giant wings rippled the surface of the carpet.

Caught by surprise, Khoja took a moment to respond to the threat. “Open fire!” he shouted, lifting his head. “Bring that bird down!”

“But, First of Forty,” another gunman said, “what about Ahmed?”

“Never mind Ahmed! Open fire, I said!”

The thieves shot at the sky, the sharp report of the gunfire hurting Flynn's ears, but all they succeeded in accomplishing was making the roc drop its human cargo. Still screaming, Ahmed hurtled past the carpet, barely missing it, before plunging toward the rocky peaks below. The remaining thieves, including Marjanah, continued firing at the roc, which only seemed to make the monster angrier. Apparently, hitting a swiftly moving target from a wobbly flying carpet was even trickier than you might think.

Flynn took another tack.

“In the name of Solomon … evasive action!”

The carpet responded immediately, careening wildly through the sky in a desperate attempt to elude the roc, which flapped after them in pursuit, squawking furiously. The aerodynamic rug banked sharply to the right, then to the left, while zigzagging up and down and from side to side. Flynn held onto the raised edge of the rug for dear life, while regretting that flying carpets did not come with airsick bags. Khoja and his gang kept firing at the roc, but the carpet's barnstorming maneuvers tossed them all about, making it all but impossible for anyone to get a bead on the monster, which continued chasing after the carpet with surprising speed. Flynn recalled that Sinbad had once escaped a deserted island by strapping himself to a roc's leg and letting the gargantuan bird carry him away.

Talk about brave,
he thought,
or desperate.

The roc took another run at them, as though engaging in an old-fashioned aerial dogfight, and the carpet flipped over to shield its passengers from the winged monster's talons, which tore ragged gashes in the fabric, only inches from where Flynn and Shirin and the others had been crouching right before they were unceremoniously dumped into the empty air below the carpet. Gravity tore Shirin's hand from Flynn's as they found themselves in freefall, plummeting toward the rocky hills far below.

Seatbelts,
he thought.
I knew that rug
needed
seatbelts.

The wind howled in his ears, almost drowning out the screams of Shirin and the rest as they accelerated toward the ground at 9.8 meters-per-second-squared—which did not, he lamented, give him much time to formulate a clever strategy, no matter how many degrees he'd earned. His favorite books passed before his eyes, along with other indelible memories, some more recent than others.

I'm so sorry, Shirin. Your story deserved a happier ending.

Then, just when it seemed as though the Library were about to have an opening for a new Librarian, the carpet looped beneath the falling men and women to catch them before they hit terminal velocity. Flynn and the others smacked back onto the carpet, which absorbed the impact like a safety net. He found Shirin's hand and pulled her close. He could feel her trembling, almost as much as he was.

“Let's not do that again,” she suggested.

“Don't talk to me. Talk to the rug.”

Deep tears in the carpet, where the roc had slashed it, impaired the rug's lifting capacity, causing it to sink ever farther toward the island, fleeing the upper reaches of the mountain to glide over the scraggly woods below. For a moment, Flynn dared to hope that the roc would be content with chasing them away from the hills, but apparently the cave's guardian was as stubborn as, well, that other kind of rock.

“Here it comes again!” Marjanah shouted, having been caught by the carpet along with her cohorts. Typically, she looked more angry than scared. “Send it back to Hades!”

The wind from the roc's mighty wings buffeted the carpet and its besieged passengers, causing it to toss back and forth as though adrift atop choppy waters and tearing wider the gaping rents in the fabric. Marjanah and her fellow thieves fired ineffectively from the unstable carpet, which was dipping ever faster toward the earth. Tearing his gaze away from the hostile roc, Flynn looked ahead and saw that the carpet's headlong retreat was bringing them back toward the small cove cutting into the island. Pristine blue waters reflected the cloudy sky. He also noted that, preoccupied with the roc, none of the Forty were paying the least bit of attention to their captives at the moment.

“Can you swim?” he asked Shirin.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

There was no time explain. The cove was coming up quickly. It was now or never.

“Take a deep breath!”

He shoved her off the carpet without another word of warning, then dived after her. Gravity seized them again as they fell toward the cove dozens of feet below. Inhaling deeply, he hoped the carpet was too busy evading the roc to dive after them again, and that the Forty were also otherwise engaged,
and
that the inlet was deep enough that he and Shirin could survive this plunge.

On second thought, that's a heck of a lot of question marks.…

Gunfire blared overhead, competing with the raucous cawing of the roc, as the pair hit the water at high speed and sank beneath the surface. The cool water came as a shock, but at least they didn't encounter any hidden reefs or boulders. Holding his breath, Flynn kicked his way back to the surface and poked his head above the salty water. Sputtering, he searched frantically for Shirin.

“Shirin?” he called out. “Shirin!”

“Flynn! Over here!”

She was bobbing in the brine not far away. To his relief, she appeared soaked but unharmed. They kicked toward each other.

“Warn me next time!”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not planning a repeat performance anytime soon.”

Now that he knew they had both survived, he peered up at the sky, but he caught no sight of either the carpet or the roc. He wondered what had become of Khoja and his minions. Had they fallen victim to the roc or perhaps made a crash landing elsewhere on the island?

“You see what happened to the others?” he asked Shirin. “Or the roc?”

“Sorry, I was too busy falling from a flying carpet.” A distraught look came over her face. “The book! Scheherazade's book … we've lost it!”

He understood her distress. She was a scholar and historian, after all; losing the priceless tome had to be a huge blow to her, no matter what other challenges faced them.

“It couldn't be helped,” he offered by way of consolation. “But at least we're not bird food, and we still have a chance to find the Lamp before anyone else does.”

A faint smile lightened her expression. “Anyone ever tell you that you're an incorrigible optimist? Even for an American?”

“Comes with the job,” he replied. “You kind of need to think of the grail as always being half full.”

“Grail? As in the
Holy
Grail?”

“Remind me to tell you about how I broke it on my very first day on the job.” He winced at the memory before turning his attention to a sandy shore, studded with boulders, some fifty feet away. “Maybe after we're back on dry land again.”

A strenuous swim later, they dragged themselves up onto the beach and collapsed, soggy and exhausted. They were soaked to the skin and weighed down by their sodden garments. Flynn couldn't remember the last time they'd really been able to rest and recuperate—and, no, those hours they'd spent stowed in the back of the pickup truck didn't count. His stomach grumbled, and he wondered what kind of foodstuffs might be found on an enchanted isle in the Arabian Sea. Shellfish, maybe, or a stray seagull?

Roc eggs were probably off the menu.

Shirin slumped against him. “I've never felt so exhausted.”

“You and me both,” he said. “But we can't rest too long. For all we know, some of the Forty might have survived—”

A gun cocked behind them.

Flynn groaned. Turning his head, he saw Khoja, Marjanah, and two of their henchmen emerge from the woods and brush fringing the beach. They looked a bit beaten up and disheveled, but Khoja had managed to hang on to the turban hiding his face—and his pistol.

“Have a nice swim?” he asked.

 

17

2006

Flynn's spirits sank deeper than the bottom of the cove. Just when he'd thought they'd gotten away from the Forty, they were right back where they started, just a good deal wetter than before. He took off his boot and dumped out a canteen's worth of water. He was too exhausted and out of breath to even think about trying to flee from the armed criminals.

“If you don't mind my asking,” he said, “did you manage to bring down the roc?”

“I wish!” Marjanah snarled. “That filthy, feathered monstrosity nearly killed us all. I'd like to see it roasting on a spit!”

Flynn was starting to think the Second of the Forty had anger-management issues.