I said I would update soon, didn't I?
Anyways, this is the real Chapter numero uno. Enjoy!
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The city of Dewar, year 2006, Hassan Province
There is a point in every teenager's life that he (or, in this case, she) stupidly decides to summon a kawi without adult supervision. Call it youthful arrogance, a chemical balance in a not-yet-fully-developed brain, or maybe just sheer stupidity. After all, out of the five percent that actually manage to summon the kawi and not just singe the carpet, only twenty percent survive the encounter with an intact brain and/or body.
The kawi of the world of Bashir is a force to be reckoned with, a few ranks below the djinn on the immortal food chain but more dangerous due to the fact that it is not bound by the mortal constraints of something like the djinn's material residence. And the most dangerous part is the voice; until it is properly held under an oath of obedience to the summoner, the kawi can persuade you to break the iron ring that surrounds it and enable it to wreak havoc on the mortal world; to sign a contract with it that will put your very soul at stake; or even to slit your own throat, if it's in a particularly nasty or impatient mood.
But the profound danger that this ritual poses to amateurs hasn't stopped millions of apprentice mages from trying their hand at calling upon the creatures of the deep, nor the how-to section of every literary stall in the bazaars from including numerous books that have at the very least a chapter on this particular category.
Alarda Khartani had been preparing for this particular summoning for weeks, ever since she'd inherited the necklace from her mother for her eighteenth birthday, along with the story that had been handed down all the way from her great-grandmother Shari. The tale had been garbled by generations of oral recitation, each woman putting it into her own words as she recited it to her daughter, sort of like a stretched-out game of Telephone. However, the gist of it was this:
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Your great-great-grandfather, Khajal Darmani, bought the necklace for his wife in a Bagrahn bazaar. But the night that he was to return home, terrorists from some desert cult broke into the hotel and massacred and looted most of the guests on the first two floors, including Khajal. Nobody had ever found the murderers, despite numerous scrying attempts by some of the province's best mages. However, as we now know due to modern spells and machines, there was something about this necklace that made Khajal determined that the terrorists would not have it. What was it? Sadly, there's only so much that both magic and machinery can do. We've never been able to figure it out, in the one hundred and six years that it's been in the family, because Khajal put a seal on it.
Anyways, he sent it via the Gatami, or the Channels, as it was called in the old days of occupation, back to Aleesha, with a note that had obviously been hastily dashed out: "It will bring you fortune, if you summon it. I love you both."
Aleesha never wore the necklace, but she gave it to Shari on her eighteenth birthday, as well as the story of its origin. And it has been in the family ever since.
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Alarda knew that no one in the family had ever figured out the nature of the magic in the necklace because none of the recipients had the heart, brains, or guts to find out. There were only three reasons why there would be a seal on the necklace: a curse, a kawi, or a tracking spell. Alarda had ruled out the tracking spell because, first of all, a tracking spell was something that rich people put on their jewelry in case of burglary, and she refused to believe that her great-great-grandfather was a jewel thief; and that, if he had been, that he would have been stupid enough to leave the spell on the necklace at all. If it had been a curse, why would Khajal have sent it to his wife? That only left the kawi. Her assumption was further supported by the fact that he had written in the note, "It will bring you fortune, if you summon it."
Well, that was exactly what Alarda was about to do.
She felt a tiny bit guilty about risking such a valuable possession; it was not only an antique, it was part of the family tradition, along with the feasts that were held at the main family's compound every full moon, the passing-down of the family stories such as Khajal's, and the expectation of every child of the Khartani family to know his or her forebears. But where else would she find such a golden opportunity to summon a kawi?
Tossing her thick black braid over her shoulder, she turned back to the old, cracked volume resting on her desk. The illustration provided wouldn't be very helpful, because kawi, like any other being of the Immortal Realms, are formless until they enter the mortal realms; ergo, it could choose any shape it desired. But she had done everything else described in the book to the letter; she had prepared the circle of iron (she had had to take her time with this part, slipping into her older brother's room whenever he was out and taking just a few pinches of iron dust from his mage kit at a time; he hadn't noticed that it had been disappearing faster than usual and so she had gotten away with it), scattered the pieces of the sacrificial animal (a goat from the butcher's, although she was supposed to kill it herself. But what would the demon care? A goat was a goat.), the eight candles placed in the eight directions of the compass, and finally, the pendant in the center of the circle.
The final part was the most difficult, and one that she still hadn't quite figured out: the kawi's name. For the solution, she had turned once again to Khajal's letter; the name would have something to do with fortune, she was quite sure. Why else would he write such a weird and pointless sentence?
Everything was now in place, and Alarda began the chant. "Oh, immortal creature of the deeps (it wasn't wise to call a kawi a kawi, as the name had a negative connotation), I conjure you from your mortal prison to appear before me. I call upon thee..." she hesitated. "Farhaad."
Nothing. She blew out a breath of frustration. So it wasn't the magical term for "fortune". Maybe "wealth". "Mahdi." No response. She could have screamed. "Haal (money)! Gamen (cash)!"
But wait. She was thinking too narrowly. "Fortune" didn't necessarily just mean money, did it? It could also mean... "Sadi!"
Luck.
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It had been almost as unbearable for Sadi trapped inside the ring as it would have been had he been forced to return to the immortal planes. At least, as an immortal, he would have soon lost all concept of time and so would have passed the time with relative eases. He had long ago given up keeping track of the date or even the year, unable to see outside the pendant into the world beyond. Here, stuck on Bashir, he was forced to wait, wearing holes in his elaborate rugs with pacing, with nothing more entertaining to do than decorate and re-decorate his home, fling darts in patterns that left increasingly elaborate rows of holes in the wall, and practice what he would say to his new master or mistress when he was released.
Of course, he could always just wait for the spell to lose its potency. It had, over the period of time that he had remained in the pendant, grown decidedly less resilient to his probing, especially after some sort of beam that was decidedly not magical had passed through not just the pendant itself, but Sadi's home and Sadi himself, and had left him feeling weak and shivery for a couple of hours. Yes, he supposed that he could break the seal if he truly wanted to. "But what is the point, if my home has fallen into strange hands?" he had asked himself many a time. And so he continued to wait.
Until he heard, along with a garble of other foreign words, his name. He was summoned.
Yes, I'm stopping now. I know, I'm mean, but hey, this was already more than I was intending to write anyways. And I'm typing up the next chapter already because with school starting in less than a week, I dunno how much I'll be able to do.
So long for now. And have a nice day.