Chapter 10
"I really don't like the feel of this," the jinni muttered as she looked up at the open gates of the foreign city. The air was foul from the stench of criminal corpses left hanging on posts along the road. Seripensia was one of the few kingdoms that carried out public executions outside its walls as a warning to all would-be lawbreakers coming into the city. In a poof of magic, Eden's entire body and head were covered in a sterile white outfit complete with heavy boots and a face mask.
The night was stiflingly silent as Jasmine walked toward the gates, made invisible by the jinni's magic. She put a hand on Eden's arm after stopping in the middle of the path.
"Just wait here for me. I'll be out in a few hours at most."
"I'd be a lot more at ease if I knew what was going on," Eden said, the strange outfit and mask disappearing in another cloud of green dust. She folded her arms and gave Jasmine a reproachful look.
Jasmine shook her head. "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."
She left the jinni outside the walls as she navigated the dimly lit streets of the foreign city on her own. She kept moving briskly, driven as much by her urgent mission as by the need to escape the oppressive gloom of this place as soon as possible. It was easy to avoid the few guards patrolling the area, but several times she paused and had to force herself to move on from the sight of dead and dying homeless in the dark alleyways.
Forcing her thoughts away from the ills of the city, she focused on the directions Thanon had given her. She entered an area where there were hardly any lights at all, and the houses were little more than dilapidated shacks. She slipped past another guard and into a small side alley where Eberzin supposedly lived. She looked up at the worn carvings on the wood of a certain door and deciphered a number matching the one on the parchment.
Hesitantly she rapped her knuckles against the door, wondering if she could knock louder without being heard by the night patrol. She whispered the word Eden had said would make her visible once more, and drew her hood over her face.
There was the sound of shuffling inside the house, and a click as a wooden slot slid open at her eye level. She suppressed a gasp as a bloodshot eye appeared suddenly in the slot and a filmy gray iris focused on her.
"What does the girl want?" came a cracked whisper. She fought the urge to draw back at the madness in the man's voice.
"I come seeking the knowledge of Eberzin," she said softly, forcing herself to stare back at the grotesque eye.
The skin around the eye creased like worn leather, and a deep, throaty cackle sounded through the wood of the door.
"I am he. What might this young maiden have to offer in exchange for my knowledge?" the voice said slyly.
She almost stepped back again but caught herself. "I have the word of Thanon, son of Gavir, that you will give me what I ask if I show you this," she hissed.
She held the brass bracelet up to the slot in the door. It gleamed dully under the single lamp hanging overhead. The eye immediately widened, veins bulging, before the slot slammed shut. She tensed as the door creaked open a second later, and a wizened hand beckoned her in.
It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim candlelight in the musty room. The old man shut the door and motioned for her to sit in a dusty chair beside a cluttered desk. The room was just as dense with written material as Thanon's study, but full of cobwebs and an ashen smell.
Tremors ran through the old man's emaciated frame as he sat down slowly behind the desk. Bony elbows protruded from his frayed gray robe, the mottled skin of his bald head glinting in the candlelight. One eye was permanently closed, the skin around it sagging as if rotten. The other eye which she had seen at the door roved about uneasily, looking her up and down as if searching for a threat. It settled on the brass bracelet she held in her hand, and a crooked smile formed on his pallid lips.
"So the master decides to pull rank," he said, baring teeth that were clearly rotting away as he began to cackle. She hid her disgust at the foul breath that assaulted her nostrils.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
The gray eye blinked curiously as the man's fingers began to tremble. "He doesn't tell the girl. Of course he doesn't tell the girl, why would he? Talk about everyone else's past but not your own, of course, the rule all great historians follow, yes of course."
She steeled herself against the fear creeping up her spine. Thanon had said he was harmless. She could easily escape if the situation took a turn for the worse.
"I want to know about the sorcerer Destane," she said, changing the topic in an attempt to recapture the man's attention.
The eye gleamed again as he stopped speaking to himself and focused on her once more. "One of the many names of evil, this is what the girl wishes to know."
"Yes. I wish to know all that you know of Destane," she repeated slowly and clearly.
He cackled again, an unwholesome sound that awakened a bat nesting on one of the shelves. It fluttered about over their heads until it found another niche to settle in.
"This old man is mad, yes he knows, but he is not deaf yet," Eberzin wheezed. He tapped the side of his head with a yellowed fingernail. "I hear many things still."
"Then tell me what you know."
"As long as the girl has time and stomach to spare," he said, his obliging tone carrying a nasty edge. She kept her face expressionless.
"Once upon a time…" the man began, then paused with a toothy smile. "Once upon a time…there is a very disappointing beginning. There is no birth, no childhood, no coming of age in this story. There is just a man, and his origins are blank. Lost in the vast pit of quicksand called history, yes of course, there are many things that human hands cannot draw out to remember and record. The man begins with a name, Destane, and he will end with it as well, in the memory of the last person to remember him."
She avoided the errant gaze of the gray eye as it traveled around her face, focusing instead on the worn, cluttered surface of the desk before her.
"There is a cursed land, blacker than a moonless sky, tainted with many names of evil. It is home to no living being that still desires to live. The sand itself is alive, but no one wishes it to live. They are afraid; everyone is afraid. So the kings and caliphs and their magic-blooded servants seal it away like the ugly little secret no one wants to speak about. No one looks for many years, because they can't see it. No one crosses over the border because the law says they can't, though the black sand whispers to all the magic-blooded who draw near. Come, it says. Come because your heart of hearts desires to, because you desire power. There is just this flimsy barrier. Break it and come.
"The quicksand swallows the names of those who try and fail. Many who fail are executed by the law, but the black sand continues to beckon. Come, you who dare to try. Come to taste this power. Years pass as vast deserts through a sieve, but then one name defies the pull of the quicksand. History spits forth the name of Destane because it refuses to sink into the forgotten sands of time. Destane breaks the seal and does not lose his life to the law of kings because he has power enough. He meets the whisper of the dark land with a promise that he will rule it, and in the same breath he promises he will rule the Seven Deserts with a fist blackened by the forgotten Eighth.
"Many years he stays in the land and does not move, does not leave, does not kill or conquer. Kings hold their breath; perhaps Destane will not do anything. Perhaps Destane just wants to play in the sand as a child…but of course, of course everyone knows that this child is playing in the sand as with a box of knives, slowly sharpened to slaughter. Those who enter to seek him out are never heard from again, and the black sand cackles with his voice. He is studying it, shaping it, mastering it, until it bends to his will and whispers in submission.
"The silent years end. He leaves the black land, and kings let out their held breath in cries of war. But of course, no one steps forth first, only waiting for him to arrive at their gates, hoping he will not. He visits a city of magic, seeking its power. The first kingdom to fall beneath his sand."
The bizarre tale was hardly how Jasmine had expected to learn about the sorcerer. She tried to take in as much as she could without stopping him, but she had to interrupt now. "What was the name of this city?"
"Helinth. The magic of restoration lives within its temple. Holy, revered, worshipped by many," he crowed, unaffected by her interruption. "But desecrated, torn down, left in desolation by Destane! Destane, the name is feared greatly after that. He has the magic of Helinth—what can stop him now?"
"What kind of magic did the city have?" she pressed.
"True to its name, of course, the city's magic is divine healing," he answered. "In the core of its temple, kept aflame by priests and acolytes, there is a pure ancient light, guarded through the centuries and treasured by all who know of it. Those who are sick, who feel the hands of death creeping within their skin, crawl with haste toward the city to be healed, thousands flock every year with this desperate wish. But no more, for Destane puts an end to it. Destane steals it, and it is never seen again. The city is gone, destroyed, the thousands who would go to find life given over to the hands of death."
"Why would he want the power of healing?"
"The girl does not think," he said with a scornful smile. "Rob his enemies of such power, and no one can be healed. And then he has it for his own purposes. He studies it again, like he studies the sand before. And he finds another use for it, not so pure and divine. Not to heal the living…but to revive the dead."
She shuddered, feeling sick. His pasty eye gleamed in delight at her discomfort.
"Heal the dead! Such is the dark mind, breathing dark magic," he said gleefully. "Destane commands more than sand. He commands bodies beyond death; they cannot feel pain, they need no food or rest. They move under his will and destroy when he pleases. He raises many, many of his enemies' corpses this way. Many, many say that he must be stopped, but of course, no one steps forth to stop him first. He goes on to more cities, more deserts, takes more power and magic, takes more bodies to build his army. And then, he realizes."
She leaned forward to catch his next words as his voice suddenly drew down to a conspiratorial whisper.
"He realizes he can do more than command bodies. The souls he discards—they have power! More power than reanimated sacks of flesh and bones. He keeps the souls then. And he begins making his weapon."
He settled back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile, as if he had just handed her a priceless treasure she did not deserve.
"What weapon?" she asked, trying to hide her impatience.
"The girl does not know," he said spitefully, perhaps dismayed that she was not showing any gratitude for what he had just disclosed.
"No, I don't know. That's why I'm asking," she retorted.
"The girl has stomach to spare. The story will continue for her." He let out a cackle as his mood seemed to spin around mercurially. "The weapon of Destane will be the bane of the Seven Deserts, he imagines. He harvests the power of souls to pour into the weapon. He needs many, many souls, of course. He thinks he may never have enough. But he tries, still. He takes many lives to make his weapon."
"What was it, some type of sword?" she said.
His single eye looked at her with condescension and pity. She glared back, irked by the madman's arrogance.
"The girl knows little. Blades are ill-suited for channeling magic. Destane's weapon is not a sword," he asserted. "It is a glove."
She did not move for several seconds.
…you know nothing of this gauntlet, and you know nothing of power…
Mozenrath's source of power was the souls of the dead?
The thought sickened her more than the touch of his skeletal hand. But she forced her mind away from it for the moment so she could listen to the rest of Eberzin's narration.
"Destane enters more cities, takes more lives, often in secret, sometimes in daylight. Whatever way gives him more power, he chooses to take. He is feared, more and more feared every time he leaves his land. He kills any who defy him, he cares not who they are. Kings fear him because he cares not that they are kings or that their sons are princes. He kills holy men as well, for their souls are exquisitely fit for his weapon. And so the story winds on, if the girl wishes to hear," Eberzin said, his last statement seemingly a question.
"So he just kept conquering, building his army and adding power to the glove," she said, mulling over the thought of how vile a man Destane must have been. "What happened to him in the end?"
"Ah, the end of Destane. Happily ever after…?" he trailed off with a nasty laugh. "Disappointing, disappointing, just like the beginning. A great sorcerer, a force that would have subdued the Seven Deserts, an infamous name of evil, dead! He is dead, and turned into a soulless soldier, all by another sorcerer's hand. Another sorcerer who still lives today, and has taken the black sand as his own."
"How did this sorcerer kill Destane?"
"The girl asks about a mystery. This sorcerer's name…the girl knows? Eberzin sees in her eyes, she does know." His aimless eye was suddenly fixed on her.
She stared back. "Yes, I know his name. But that doesn't matter; I want to know how he killed Destane."
"The girl cannot know here because Eberzin does not know. The sorcerer she knows is said to be Destane's apprentice. The girl will not say his name?"
"His name is Mozenrath," she said in annoyance. "What do you know about him?"
The old man shrugged, a strange gesture for his aged body. "The apprentice is powerful, of course, now he commands the undead army of Destane, now he has the glove as well. He is ambitious, he is young. He has time yet to fulfill his promises to the Seven Deserts."
"Where did he come from?"
"Once upon a time, again there is nothing," Eberzin said with a smirk. "Another disappointment for the girl. Who is Mozenrath, the name she does not like to speak? Maybe a homeless child Destane finds in some conquered city. Or maybe Destane's own son. The quicksand knows; Mozenrath knows. If neither wants to tell the girl, what will she do?"
"I guess I can't know, then," she said with a touch of sarcasm.
"Your desire to know is great, I can tell. In fact, this is your reason for visiting," he said, suddenly lucid as he watched her with interest. "There is a way to know outside of the quicksand and the sorcerer. But it will not be easy."
"What is it?"
"An object of magic," he said, his eye glinting. "The Mirror of Fiereve."
"A magic mirror," she said slowly. "Where can I find it?"
"There is a cave. Enter by a tiger's mouth, and touch nothing but…" He stopped and grinned at her. "The girl already knows, I can see in her eyes."
"So I have to go into the Cave of Wonders to get the mirror," she stated. It sounded so simple when she said it out loud, but to actually do it…she turned her mind away from that thought for a moment. "What exactly does this mirror do?"
"The Mirror of Fiereve reflects the sands of time, both forgotten and remembered. Through it, human hands may reach into the quicksand of history. But…" he trailed off.
"But what?" she persisted.
"There is a cost. The girl will pay with memory."
"What do you mean, 'pay with memory?'"
"The mirror draws in something the girl remembers in exchange for what she draws out of the quicksand," he replied, as if that explained everything.
She digested that unpleasant bit of information slowly, weighing the options that lay before her. No matter, she had to figure out how to get into the Cave of Wonders first.
"Thank you for your help," she said with a stiff bow as she stood up. She paused, remembering the faded brass bracelet in her hand. "Is this yours?"
"The master gives the girl the shackle without telling her what it is," the old man mused to himself. "Not mine, it is my master's."
"Who's your master?" she asked, confused.
"Thanon, son of Gavir," he answered calmly. "I am his slave."
"What? There is no slavery in Agrabah!"
"In other lands there is," he said with a faint, cruel smile, retreating again into madness. "Master Gavir buys Eberzin in the market. He buys many slaves because he likes to set them free. Here is the disappointment for the girl. Eberzin runs away without being freed. Eberzin is captured and sold again in the market. Thanon buys him because it is written in his dead father's will. Eberzin is never freed because Thanon does not trust him."
"So you're still a slave…but Thanon doesn't control you," she said flatly. "He's a good man. He wouldn't do that."
"Of course, of course, Eberzin's master is good. So good that he keeps the shackle as the only token of power over his slave. Then he gives it to a girl to use Eberzin for his knowledge, and Eberzin obeys even though it is time to sleep."
"I'm sorry for disturbing you," she said shortly. "I'll leave now."
"Farewell, young maiden. Take care not to trip in the sand," he said, laughing softly as she opened the door and hurried outside.
She was glad to be out of that dark house and away from the insane old man. Thanon's warning had been justified; Eberzin was indeed unwell in mind and spirit. But the historian hadn't told her about the personal history between them. It unsettled her that Thanon technically owned Eberzin as a slave, though the former had all but let him wander free. Eberzin was fortunate to have such a kind master.
She slipped out of the city easily enough even without an invisibility spell. The jinni who was waiting for her breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Jasmine approach.
"A little bit longer, and I was going to come looking for you. Now can you tell me what you went in there for?"
"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, Eden. But no, I can't tell you," she said sadly. "Let's just go back to Agrabah."
"Hmph. Well, I guess I should feel honored that you trust me more than you trust my loud-mouthed lump of a boyfriend," she said before transporting them both back to Agrabah in a flash of green light. Jasmine gratefully breathed in the familiar air of her city. They were standing outside the jinni's colorful home. Eden had conjured a pocket mirror and was gazing at her own reflection with a worried frown. "Speaking of which, I'd better get some sleep so I can look decent for our date tomorrow."
"Thanks for all your help," Jasmine said, giving her a brief hug. "Hope you have fun with Genie wherever you guys decide to go."
"Hope you don't get into any trouble with the secrets you're keeping, missy," Eden replied in a motherly tone. She looked at Jasmine seriously. "If you ever need help, just call for me, okay? I'll be listening for you."
"Thanks, Eden. Have a good night," Jasmine said as the jinni turned into a fly and zipped inside the window of her and Dhandi's home.
***
12.
***
She passed off her tiredness in the morning as a result of not having fully recovered from her cold. That afternoon she spent some time away from Aladdin and her advisors, looking for the object—or pair of objects, rather—that she needed. She finally found them locked away in a drawer she had all but forgotten about.
It felt strange to be going off on a risky adventure on her own. She had always had Aladdin with her on such trips, and she had always felt safe with him.
Then again, she had already gone the last twelve days on her own, and she had another eighteen to go. Hopefully with the Mirror, she'd cut down the time it took for her to win the challenge.
But it wasn't merely about winning anymore. It was about knowing the man who had come close to killing her and Aladdin several times in the past yet had fought to save her life several days earlier. Why would it have mattered to him if Saleen had killed her? If Mozenrath truly had found a way to take over the Seven Deserts, he didn't have to bother with protecting one princess.
Jasmine was starting to believe that he required her for his plan somehow. There was no other logical reason he would have stepped in with haste to save her.
Illogical explanations were another matter. To her irritation, she could not brush off the memory of his face when he had realized she was unaware of the aphrodisiac in her system. She had never seen him wear such an expression before, though she had witnessed a wide range of his emotions—smug, malicious, indifferent, furious, bitter…but the best word she could use to describe the look on his face then was unnerved. Perhaps he hadn't expected that any other man could have control over her, or that she'd allow herself to get into such a situation.
Did he actually care for her? The question had quietly embedded itself in her mind, and she could not dislodge it despite its illogicality. She could not imagine him caring for any living being other than himself, but now she wondered if she was an exception.
Was it possible that he didn't fully understand his own emotions? That whatever feelings he had for her weren't actually part of his plan?
She didn't know and she was afraid to find out, but at the same time she felt an unnerving thrill at the thought. The Mirror of Fiereve might be able to affirm her suspicions. She'd be able to find out if he really was watching her every move—could he be that obsessed with her?—or if he was true to his word and left her alone until she called for him. Perhaps she'd even see him formulate the plan he claimed would give him power over everything. And in the process she'd find out his true reason for singling her out.
It wasn't too strange for her to ask Aladdin if she could borrow Carpet for a night. He knew she sometimes sought to relax by taking a ride into the desert by herself. So he still suspected nothing as she flew off into the night with a pouch containing two golden scarab halves tucked into her cloak.
She stared ahead over endless dunes of sand, and as the clouds obscured the moon she realized that at night, all sand appeared almost black. She wondered if the view from the Citadel was similar to what she was seeing now.
And she tried not to think about why she was going to such great lengths to know the man behind the villain, because she no longer had a simple and impersonal answer. The disquieting truth was that the fine line between tenacity and obsession had begun to fray.