And for the first time in my long, strange life, it answersmycall.
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 atmycenter. 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 washesover 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.
