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Gwandoya beckoned him closer. "Give it to me!"
He wasn't just eager, he seemed...rabid, Aladdin thought uneasily.
"Where is the payment you promised me?" Aladdin demanded.
Gwandoya wet his lips. "It is back in the city. I will pay you on our return."
Back went the lamp into the depths of his clothes. "Then I will keep it a while longer."
"I said give it to me!"
His instincts screamed at him to obey, but Aladdin ignored them. "And I said pay me."
The two men stared at one another, Gwandoya's chest heaving as though it cost him a great deal not to kill Aladdin on the spot.
All the more reason to hang onto the thing the madman wanted, Aladdin told himself.
Gwandoya forced out a smile that didn't touch his eyes. "As you wish, boy. But return my ring."
"Don't do it!" Kaveh's voice whispered.
The smile died. "What did you say?"
Aladdin swallowed. "Of...of course." With shaking hands, he pulled the ring from his finger. "Come and get it."
Gwandoya's eyes blazed. "I will not set foot in that cursed city! Anyone who steals from it is turned to – "
A great rush of wind came from behind Aladdin, so powerful that it pushed the boulder door shut, leaving Gwandoya outside. The man could be heard shouting and hammering outside, but the rock didn't move.
"What in heaven's name..." Aladdin began, risking a glance over his shoulder.
"I said not to give it to him," Kaveh said calmly, pressing his back to the boulder and folding his arms.
Realisation dawned. "You opened all the doors. Even that one. No man could move that stone. Not even Gwandoya, now you're in here with me. What are you?"
"I told you. I'm the servant of the ring," Kaveh said smugly. After a moment, he relented and added, "My previous owner charged me with protecting the city. Only one who wears my ring can open the door from the outside when it is closed, and no outsider may pass through the city gates with gold from the city that does not belong to him."
Dread curdled in Aladdin's belly. "What happened to the ones who tried?"
Kaveh waved his hand behind him. "They made a generous contribution to the city's wealth."
Aladdin approached what appeared to be a line of dusty statues. He lifted his torch and reached to brush the dust off the nearest one's face.
"By all that's holy!" Aladdin jumped back. Bugra's horrified face stared back at him, above a tunic that bulged with the treasures he'd tried to steal. Too heavy for him to carry, Aladdin realised, for they'd cursed him into a gold statue. He swallowed. "What have you done to him?"
Kaveh shrugged. "My master wanted me to just kill them, but who wanted decaying corpses stinking up the city gates? Especially if no one was home. So I thought gold statues might be better. When the prince returns, he can melt them down for the treasury."
"Will that hurt them?" Aladdin asked.
"Of course not. They're dead. Does a chicken feel when you roast its corpse?"
Unbidden, Aladdin's stomach growled even louder this time. "I would much prefer a chicken to a statue," he admitted.
Kaveh clapped his hands. "I can help you there. I know where the prince's store rooms are, where he keeps a lifetime supply of honeyed dates, among other delicacies."
Though he was now trapped in an underground city with a strange man who glowed blue, while another madman hammered on the gates, for the first time since he'd left home, Aladdin began to feel the tiniest bit better about his future. Any future that held honeyed dates had to be good, he was sure of it.
TEN
