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 ontothe 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 amfast.
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.
Time is the strongest magic, your voice whispers in my thoughts.
Wrapping my fingers tight around the seconds and minutes, I twist the strands. The effort leaves me gasping, as if I’ve grabbed hold of a comet’s tail, but I do not let go. Unlike the four main elements with which I usually work my magic, these threads arealiveand moving. Manipulating them is like trying to change the direction of a river. And yet I stand firm, bracing myself against the flow of the hours. The tide pulls at me, coursesthroughme, beginning to separate my fibers. If I hold on much longer, I will dissolve onceand for all and be lost in that eternal current. Easier it would be to hold back the sea with one’s hand.
But I will not let him kill Aladdin.
He took you, Roshana. He took the Gheddans. He took me, for four thousand years.
No more.
With a deep cry that wells from the bottom of my lungs, I twist the threads of time. Around me, events pause and reverse, Aladdin falling to his feet, the fragments of my sand and water dragon re-forming into their original shape, the mountain sucking in bright streams of lava. Faster and faster the events unwind, flowing like a river running uphill. Deeper and deeper I dive, until the current begins pulling at me, and I must brace myself against it like an anchor dragging through the sand. When we stop, a thousand and one moments all happening and unhappening around us, only Nardukha and I stand outside it all, staring at each other as the time threads flow and pulse around us.
“How are you doing this?” breathes the Shaitan.
“I fell outside time,” I reply. “I saw the gods weaving the universe.”
Nardukha looks around, but I can tell by his gaze that he cannot see the threads I’ve twisted around him, trapping him in a single moment. He has never journeyed to death and back, as I have. He has not stood on the edge of the universe and seen the turn of the hours. And if he cannot see it, he cannot manipulate it. Finally his gaze returns to me, thoughtful, even a bit awed.
And then the fury flashes in his eyes. Nardukha opens his mouth in a wordless roar, his throat a cavern of flames, and he lunges—
I close my hands, and time collapses around him. His roar is cut off as he is washed away like a twig in a flood. The minutes swallow him up, pull him beneath the current, until he is simplygone.
