The air in the diwan became tense.
His father had always had a penchant for violence. He had softened after marrying Mazen’s mother, but he was still the man who’d started the jinn hunts after her death and, before her arrival, killed a dozen of his wives without batting an eyelash. Before he’d handed the responsibility over to Omar, he’d been the first murderous King of the Forty Thieves, leading his own companions on jinn-hunting quests. Yes, his father was adept at the art of punishment.
Mazen could never—would never—deny that truth, even when he tried to forget it.
Being stripped of one’s titles and exiled to the desert would be the mildest sentence the sultan offered. At worst, he would seek vengeance, and no one could run from him then. He had men all over the desert; there was nowhere to hide.
The sultan spread his hands. “I am generous, however, and wish to pay you. Name a price. Any price. I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, al-Nazari.”
“Yuba…,” Mazen said softly. The sultan’s harsh grimace faded when he glanced at him. Mazen cleared his throat and said, “What if this relic is impossible to find?”
The sultan scoffed. “‘Impossible’ is an excuse offered by failures. No, the relic exists, and I will find it.” He looked at Loulie. “You will find it.”
“And?” She clenched her hands in her lap. “What is this impossible relic I am being forced to find?”
On the sultan’s command, Hakim took out a map—the same one he had shown Rasul—and handed it to the sultan. His father unrolled it, found the Western Sandsea, and tapped the sunken jinn city of Dhahab. The merchant inhaled sharply.
“Long ago, the first sultan buried an ancient relic in the Western Sandsea. It is the most powerful relic in the world, for it contains a living, breathing jinn bound to the service of the one who finds it. There is a story passed down in our family, a legend that describes how the relic was created and where it was buried. It is a secret of the royal family, but I will share it with you now in the hope that it will convince you of the truth.”
His father had told this story many times now, but never the way Mazen’s mother had. She had been a storyteller. Mazen was a storyteller, and it always made him anxious to hear his father tell his version with only the barest details.
“Yuba,” he said softly. “Please, let me tell the tale.”
His father paused. The Midnight Merchant raised her brows. Mazen cringed at the looks on their faces. “The story is in the details, and I know all of them.” An impromptu plan was forming in his mind. If he could not openly dissent, then maybe he could convince his father the same way his mother once had.
The sultan agreed, but only once Mazen refreshed himself with food and drink. After eating from a platter of nuts and drinking a glass of water, Mazen straightened, clasped his hands, and spoke in a voice that rose above the sound of the whistling leaves and the chattering birds.
“Father, brothers, Midnight Merchant, allow me to share with you an ancient tale.”
The Tale of Amir and the Lamp
Neither here nor there, but long ago…
There once lived a Bedouin sheikh named Amir, who was known for his golden heart and cunning mind. He had a younger brother, a valiant warrior named Ghazi, who was strong of heart and body. Many peaceful years passed under their leadership until one year, there came a Storm Season unlike any other. The winds were so fierce they tore down the tribe’s tents, the sun so hot it dried up water and blistered the people’s skin.
Journeying had never been so difficult, and the brothers were at a loss for how to provide for their people. Then one day, the tribe chanced upon an ocean of shifting sand and knew they could go no farther, for they had reached the dreaded Sandsea. It was then, staring at that endless expanse of sinking sand, that Amir had an idea.
At moonrise he called his brother to him and said, “Beneath this ever-shifting sand is the world of jinn. Tales have been told of jinn who claw their way out and come to this world for revenge.” He patted the small satchel he had brought with him. “It is here that I shall wait to meet with one of those fearsome jinn.”
Ghazi, who was perplexed by his brother’s plan, said, “What do you hope to gain from speaking with a jinn? It would sooner tear you apart than talk with you!”
Amir only smiled. “The jinn are powerful, but I have the mind to outsmart them. If we are to survive this season, we will have need of their magic.”
And so Amir described his plan. He showed Ghazi the items in the satchel—a pair of iron shackles and a simple oil lamp—and told Ghazi he would need three weeks. In the end, Ghazi agreed to lead the tribe through the desert to the Golden Dunes, where they would meet. So it was that the two brothers parted: Ghazi to the dunes and Amir to the edge of the Sandsea, where he waited for days with nothing but a cloak to keep him from burning in the sun.
By the time a jinn emerged, the sheikh was starved and thin. Still, he forced himself to bow as the creature approached. The jinn was seven feet tall with eyes of burning fire and skin like golden sand. Its face morphed with every step—a jackal’s one moment and an eagle’s the next. It was a thing of such terrible majesty it would have made the bravest of men run for the dunes.
The jinn stopped before Amir with a laugh. “Ho! What is this scrap of a human I see before me? It would be a simple thing to crush you beneath my boot.”
Amir responded in a voice made raspy by lack of water. “Oh mighty jinn, I have no reason to beg for my life. The sun has baked my body and weakened my eyes, and I am approaching death’s door. But alas, I mourn the life I lived as a hunter. I was well known in the desert. If you gave me a bow and arrow, no creature stood a chance against me.”
The jinn thought about this. It debated the merits of killing the man or of forcing him to be its servant. Ultimately, it decided a slave was more useful than a corpse, so it snapped its fingers and conjured a bow and a quiver of arrows for Amir.
“Prove your worth, then,” the jinn said. “Become my hunter and I will spare your life. Fail me and I will devour you.”
Amir consented, and he and the jinn ventured forth. Amir hunted for the jinn every day, and though he was not as strong as his brother, he had spectacular aim—he had not been lying when he said he could fell most creatures. This was how the jinn came to be reluctantly impressed by its human servant and how, over time, it came to trust him.
“Tell me, oh mighty jinn,” Amir said one day. “Why is it that you do not hunt? Surely your eyes are better and your aim truer than mine.”
The jinn responded, “We jinn are as mighty as gods! Hunting with tools is beneath us. Why complete tasks even a human can do?”
“And tell me, mighty jinn, what things can you do that a human cannot?”
The jinn laughed and said, “I can perform any feat, no matter how impossible, for I am one of the seven jinn kings, and the power of the world is at my fingertips.”
Amir was thoughtful. “Can you make the world move?”
The jinn clapped its hands, and the ground trembled and cracked beneath its feet.
“Can you make the sky scream?”
The jinn whistled, and the wind sliced through the sky and tore the clouds asunder.
“Can you make the clouds cry?”
The jinn sighed, and the clouds above them let loose a torrent of rain.