A/N-This little piece could fit before any of my stories.
Persia
2017, Riene
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He let the draperies fall back across the window, the heavy fabric sliding through his hands in a whisper of silk. Silk, imported from the Orient, only the most precious and expensive of materials for the palace of the Shah.
Never mind that the window had bars. "For your protection," the Vizier had smirked, but he had known better. The court magician already had the reputation of becoming invisible, of appearing and disappearing at will. The Shah was taking no chances, now that he had discovered the man's other talents.
Ignoring the coiled sheath of papers on the wide table which served as a desk, Erik paced the room, slippered feet soundless on the Persian rug. Though accorded the title of Honored Guest, he was as much a prisoner here as the wretches who cried unceasingly to Allah from the depths of the prison, their voices eerily similar to the thin cries of the djinns, the spirits who rode the summer winds, sweeping down from the mountains and across the sands.
Lights blazed from hanging oil lamps, their sweet aroma adding to the heavy atmosphere. Pillows in jeweled colors littered the carpeted floor. A carved wooden chair and chest lined one wall, the desk another, and against the far side a bed, scarcely used, awaited. The furnishings were opulent, costly.
He despised it all.
The man himself was an incongruous figure in the sumptuous room. His very bearing arrogant; tall, thin to the point of emaciation, he wore black robes embroidered with gold. Long silky dark hair hung down his back, tied back with a golden cord. But the most striking aspect of his being was the black silk mask that covered his face from hairline to cheeks, exposing only a pair of thin, unsmiling lips and blazing golden eyes like that of the silent predatory cats of the mountains.
Once more he raised the curtain, thin fingers clenched around the iron bars. Stars pressed down through velvet blackness made infinite by the distant horizon. Cold air wrapped itself around the opening and entered the room, swirling the plans for a palace from the table and on to the floor. With an oath he returned them, cursing the day he had come to this foreign land.
Kneeling, he raised the lid to the camphor-wood chest. Lying atop folded robes and notebooks was his only friend, his most prized possession, its wood grain smooth and almost golden in the oil lamps' light. Pale spidery hands lifted the violin reverently. Its voice could speak when his own throat closed, and he set it gently under his chin, tightening the pegs. The bow slid across the strings, a low moan of misery.
He stood before the window of night, swaying with weariness, playing for the djinni, perhaps in hopes they would spirit him away as they had so many others. The wail became a longing, a lament, and modified into song without volition, a folk song of the land of his birth, a country far from these cruelty-haunted lands.
There was no home to which to return.
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