“You truly are a god, mighty jinn!” Amir exclaimed, and he bowed before it. As the weeks passed, Amir challenged the jinn to other tasks. One day, he said, “I have heard tales that your kind is crippled by iron. Is this true? Can you withstand its burn?” The jinn hesitated, but its pride outweighed its fear, so it told Amir that it could indeed endure the burn of iron. Amir took the shackles from his satchel and dared the jinn to travel with them on its wrists.
The smug jinn allowed this. Immediately after the iron was set on its arms, its legs became heavy as lead and its senses clouded. Yet because it was a proud creature, it only gritted its teeth and said, “You see? I am a king and cannot be defeated by iron.”
So the two continued on their travels, and now it was Amir who led the way, for the jinn could barely stand. “Mighty jinn,” Amir said one day. “I am useless without your magic. Will you not take off the shackles so you can create fires for us and halt the desert winds?” But the jinn refused to doff the cuffs, thinking that to do so would be a weakness. Instead, it asked Amir if he had any other items in his satchel, and when Amir gave it the oil lamp, the jinn drew runes upon it with its blood, enchanting it. It blew fire into the lamp and told Amir he could capture anything within it—be it fire or wind or water—and command it to obey him with these words: You are bound to me and you will serve me.
Over the next few days, Amir tested the limitations of the lamp—he trapped wind and sand and even stars in it. The bottomless lamp fit all manner of things. By the time Amir and the jinn arrived at the Golden Dunes, Amir knew it would work for his plan.
That night, he approached the jinn with the lamp in his hands. The jinn, thinking he meant to release their captive fire, sighed with relief. Instead, Amir held the lamp out and said, “Hear me, mighty jinn. With this lamp I bind you by your own magic. From this day forth you will be my servant as I have been yours, and you will do everything I ask of you.” The jinn lurched to its feet and rushed at Amir with fire in its eyes, but Amir was unafraid. “You are bound to me and you will serve me,” he said, and the jinn was forced to kneel before him.
The jinn cursed and hissed, but it could not resist when Amir commanded it to follow. Together, they made for the sheikh’s camp. Amir’s return was celebrated by his tribe, who had feared him dead. He commanded the jinn to procure a grand feast, and the starving tribe ate and drank enough food for three men each. Afterward, when their appetites were sated and everyone was sleeping, Ghazi approached Amir and pointed to the lamp, where the jinn now slumbered.
“Amir, your wit and cunning have indeed brought us great prosperity, but what do you plan to do with the jinn? To abuse its power would be unwise.”
Amir shook his head. “Nonsense. I served the jinn for many weeks; now I am forcing it to do the same. Come tomorrow, you will know my plans.”
The next day, Amir had the jinn king construct walls to protect the tribe from the fierce winds. Then he ordered it to create a town, one that grew as more and more Bedouin came seeking shelter. The jinn did the work of a hundred men in mere weeks—never before had such a prosperous city been created in so short a time. When the creature was done, Amir commanded it to build a palace so he could watch over his tribe from on high.
The jinn reluctantly constructed a palace from the purest white marble and built minarets so the sheikh could see everything in the desert. When it was done, the palace was the most remarkable building in the land, too grand for even a sheikh, so the people named Amir sultan and begged him to be their ruler. They dubbed the desert metropolis Madinne, and it became a place for trade to flourish. Amir went on to take a wife and have many children, and it was in this way that Madinne’s royal bloodline was established.
While Amir ruled from Madinne’s golden throne, the jinn plotted behind his back. Ghazi’s fears had been correct: a man with too much power was blinded by it. One day, Amir gave the lamp to his wife and told her she could command the jinn while he was away.
Amir did not realize his mistake until he returned from his hunt and found his wife dead. He had forgotten to tell her to be clear in her instructions, and so when she had ordered the jinn to procure a feast, it had poisoned the food. Amir was racked with grief. He locked the jinn in the lamp and gave it to his brother, whom he had made qaid of his military.
“You were right, Ghazi,” Amir said with tears in his eyes. “I relied on power, and it destroyed me. We must bury the lamp to keep this tragedy from happening again.”
And so saying, he bade his brother to bury the lamp so that none could ever find it. Ghazi rode hard and fast, and when he came to the Sandsea, he threw the lamp into the sinking sand and stayed long enough to watch it vanish.
After mourning his wife, Amir resolved never again to rely on magic, for it had made him greedy. He ruled Madinne until his son took over and then his grandson and so on and so forth. Hundreds of years have passed since Ghazi threw the lamp into the Sandsea. But while humans eventually succumb to death, the jinn are near immortal, and legends say that the mighty jinn king still lies buried in the Sandsea. They say that any who possess the lamp will find the world at their fingertips. But beware, gentle friends, for they also say that death will ghost the footsteps of any who lust after its forbidden power…
13
LOULIE
Mazen bin Malik was a good storyteller. His face was like quicksand, his expression alternating between exuberance and solemnity with envious fluidity. If she’d had any doubts that this was Yousef, they were gone now. The prince was just as starry-eyed when he told stories as when he listened to them.
Loulie did not realize how invested in the tale she was until it ended. For a time, she had felt like a child listening to tales around a campfire. But this was no hearth, and the fantastical legend was not a harmless story. Possibly, it would send her to her death.
She glared at the sultan. “You would have me believe this legendary lamp exists?”
The sultan looked at Hakim, who began unrolling a series of dusty, ancient-looking scrolls. The papyrus was stained, the words scrawled on the scrolls faded with age. Loulie saw slanted letters and dates, and a signature: an alif, followed by a meem, a ya, and a ra. Amir.
The sultan gestured toward the documents. “These are the papers that founded our kingdom. In them, Amir writes of the jinn he enslaved. He writes of the items the jinn enchanted for him, and the lamp’s burial. And he writes, most importantly, of ways to enter the Sandsea. There are paths, al-Nazari: caves that lead beneath the sand and roads hidden between the waves.”
“If others have failed to locate your lamp, what makes you think I can find it?” The longer Loulie stared at the scrolls, the tighter her lungs became. She had stood in front of the Sandsea before but never ventured into it. It was a land of no return. Even Qadir, who had traveled up through it once, would not approach it again.
“They were not collectors of ancient relics,” the sultan said. “But you are.”
“Why me?” Loulie insisted. “Why not your son, Prince Omar?” She glanced at the eldest prince and frowned. She had not forgotten their last encounter—the way anger had clouded his eyes when the sultan leaned over Mazen. It had occurred to her that the sultan never asked Omar if he was unharmed.
“My son is a hunter, not a tracker.” He paused, and the silence had an ominous weight, a foreboding that surrounded them like smoke. Loulie wanted to wave it away, to wave all this away like she would a bad dream.
“Omar.” The sultan turned to his son, and Omar dipped his head in acknowledgment. “You will accompany the merchant to make sure she does not run from her responsibility.”
“What?” She and the prince spoke at the same time.
“I hear you employ a bodyguard, al-Nazari. Think of my son as additional security.”
Omar shifted, frowned. “But, yuba, my thieves—”