Chapter 8: A Mystery
"Danger?" Mark asked before Nimrod could continue. "What's all this about danger?"
"Oh, I'm sure we'll all come out of it quite intact, and perhaps even wiser for it. In any case, it is evident that the two of you, Castiel and Holly, are both djinn, but the clincher is that we don't have any idea what tribe you're from. You see, there are good djinn, and there are bad djinn. John, Philippa, and I belong to the Marid, the most powerful and the smallest tribe of good djinn. If you recall from your reading, the Ifrit are a tribe of very evil djinn. They are our mortal enemies, are the Ifrit. If I'm not very much mistaken, some tried to follow us from the airport this morning." Nimrod began.
"Were they the people in the black Ferrari?" Holly asked. Nimrod nodded, his next smoke ring shaped like the sinister car.
"How do you do that trick with the smoke? It's really cool!" Cas asked, before Nimrod could elaborate. Nimrod frowned.
"It's merely a parlour trick, Castiel. And now that you know of your true identity as a djinn, a being made of fire, I simply must implore you not to refer to things you find admirable or interesting as 'cool.' It's something I've told my nephew countless times, but he still chooses to ignore me, don't you John?"
John grinned. "You need to stop doing such cool stuff with your smoke rings, Uncle Nimrod." he said cheekily.
"Hm." Nimrod hummed disapprovingly. "Anyway, what was I just saying? Ah, yes. Yes, Holly, they were, but I distracted them with a sort of, well, hologram. I had hoped to keep your existence a secret from them, but it seems that they have already discovered you. And if the Ifrit are interested enough to follow us, that can't be good. We must leave for Cairo as soon as we possibly can. If everyone would be so kind as to gather up their things, we can leave in... oh, say, about an hour?"
Mark choked on the air and quickly went into a coughing fit, partially helped along by all the smoke in the air, which was making it quite hard for Mark to breathe.
Finally, he cleared his throat enough to rasp "An hour?! But don't we need like, tickets and everything?" incredulously at the same moment that Cas spoke up.
"Cairo? Why?"
"Because, Castiel, we have to begin your training at once, and to do that, we must go to the desert. And yes, Mark, I did say an hour. Time is of the essence, as I'll explain later." Nimrod nodded sagely.
Already, John and Philippa were rising obediently to follow their uncle's instructions. John paused to grin at Cas and Holly. "You guys are going to love Cairo!"
If Holly, Mark, and Cas had any remaining doubts about Nimrod's identity as a djinn, they were all quashed once and for all when Nimrod made a carpet fly.
"I know, I know." Nimrod said, somewhat melodramatically as he, Mr. Groanin, and the twins carried a large rolled up blue carpet out of the house and into the backyard. "It's cliché. Overdone. An absolute affront to djinnkind and my djinneration. However, there's nothing to be done about it. What with all the ecological problems circulating through the atmosphere these days, it's unfortunately no longer safe to fly a whirlwind."
Holly exchanged a glance with Cas, and then Mark. Whirlwinds? They wondered collectively. And just what was Nimrod doing with the huge carpet? Surely that belonged in his study, spread across the floor, not in the backyard. Also, Holly wondered, did Nimrod just tack the word 'djinn' to the beginning of the word 'generation?'
"John, Phil, help me unroll this loathsome thing, will you? Ah, thank you both."
Once the carpet was spread out on the grass of Nimrod's backyard, Nimrod waved his arms, shepherding everyone towards the carpet, which glittered mysteriously in the dying summer sunlight.
"Everyone on, and do keep away from the edges, particularly you three." He turned to address Holly, Cas and Mark specifically. "Since you've never flown like this before, it simply won't do to have you novices falling off the edge accidentally. Incidentally, that's another reason djinn prefer whirlwinds: they're quite a lot safer."
"Safer than what?" Holly finally asked, frustrated at how evasive Nimrod seemed when it came to admitting their mode of travel. "A magic carpet?"
Nimrod flinched visibly. "Flying carpet, if you please, Holly. It's bad enough without calling it magic. Magic is something reserved for children's parties and stages in Las Vegas. It has nothing to do with us djinn. Light my lamp, no."
Holly scowled. "Okay, okay, I get it. Flying carpet, fine." She rolled her eyes. "Jeez, anyone would think that I'd insulted your mother or something, the way you told me off."
Nimrod cleared his throat awkwardly. "Perhaps I did overreact a bit, at that." He allowed.
Mark, meanwhile, had crouched down at the edge of the carpet and was examining it with great interest.
"It doesn't look particularly special. It is a nice carpet, though. I do like blue." He shifted, preparing to stand up, but paused. abruptly. "Hang on, is that gold thread?"
"Ah, yes, you have keen eyes Mark. Yes, it is gold thread. Part of a single thread as long as eternity, which was used to weave the original flying carpet that belonged to King Solomon himself."
"I hate travelling by blinkin' flying carpet." Groanin said to no one in particular, holding his suitcase in one hand and keeping his bowler hat securely on his bald head with the other. "And to think that I used to complain about whirlwinds."
Philippa and John smiled at the butler's complaining, ( a trait which Holly was beginning to suspect was something of a trademark of Mr. Groanin's,) and Philippa turned to her uncle with a look of some concern, as though she had just remembered something troubling.
"But Uncle Nimrod, will you be all right? I mean..." she glanced over at Holly, Mark and Cas before whispering the next few words. Nimrod looked even more offended than when Holly had referred than when Holly had referred to the carpet as 'magic.'
"Light my lamp, Philippa, I may not be as powerful as I once was, but I'll be bottled if I can't fly this carpet from here to Cairo. If you think about our jaunt across central Asia and then to Italy, a flight of this distance is like a walk in the park!"
"If you say so, uncle." Philippa said indulgently, dragging her luggage onto the carpet, followed by John and Mr. Groanin.
After a moment's hesitation, Holly, Cas, and Mark followed suit as well.
Nimrod smiled, strode onto the carpet himself, raised his arms, and muttered something. A second later, the carpet and everyone on it rose up into the air, hovering several feet above the grass, filling Holly, Mark, and Cas with a feeling of wonder.
"Wow," Mark whistled in awe. Nimrod smirked with self-satisfaction.
"Yes, well, it's nothing compared to a whirlwind. And I'd really rather conserve my power altogether and take a jet plane, but we're in rather a hurry, so flying carpet shall have to do."
"Still though, this is really just... astounding!" Cas told Nimrod enthusiastically.
Nimrod smiled. "Well I'm glad you think so, Castiel. Groanin certainly doesn't." Nimrod glanced back at his butler, who was scowling largely at the prospect of going to Cairo on a flying carpet.
"That's the understatement of the century." Groanin grumbled. "I say, that's the understatement of the bloomin' century!" Then, as an irritated afterthought, he added "Sir."
"Well, never mind. It ought to take us to Cairo faster than an airplane, at least, and there's less chance of the Ifrit interfering with the journey if we go this way."
"Oh, I get it." Holly nodded, although she still didn't quite understand. She was a little too focused on trying to remain standing on the undulating carpet to really absorb any new information now.
Philippa laughed slightly, already sitting cross-legged on the blue carpet. "Sit down, you three," she urged Holly, as well as Cas and Mark, who were similarly wobbling, "before you fall over!"
Holly and Cas sat down immediately, seeing the sense of Philippa's advice, but Mark wobbled about a bit more before he, too, complied.
"Are we all settled?" Nimrod checked his passengers to see if everyone was ready, "Excellent. Here we go!" With another murmured word, the flying carpet rose into the dark English sky at such a rate that it soon made Holly dizzy to look down. Holly was not immediately comfortable with being so high up in the sky, with nothing but a thin blue carpet to support her. True, she didn't feel claustrophobic at all, and it was liberating for her to bypass the usual fear of airplanes, but still, they were so very high up! Holly breathed in deeply and clung to her brother's arm, willing the acrophobia to go away, but it stayed, the idea that she might fall from such a height continuing to prey on her mind. She pushed it away and ignored it, trying to give her undivided attention to Nimrod, who by now, was talking again.
Cas noticed that Holly was busily chewing her fingernails, a sure sign that she was very nervous. He patted her on the back, and smiled at her as Nimrod continued to speak.
"We're above Spain right now. We're heading South and then East. Look at Madrid! Now that's a very old city. If I recall correctly, there's a lovely old antique glassware shop that sells the most beautiful bottles. Perhaps we can visit after we're done in Cairo."
"Uncle Nimrod, do you know which of the Ifrit was following us? Was it any of Iblis' sons?" Philippa asked. Holly and Mark frowned in unison. Iblis was the name of the Devil in the Muslim faith, believed by many to be a djinn, just like Nimrod.
"No, I don't believe so. Nor was it the new leader of the Ifrit, Jirjis Ibn Rajmus. It was Iblis' sister and her son, Dimme and Azazel Teer."
"Who is Iblis?" Cas asked.
"He was the head of the Ifrit, like Uncle Nimrod is the head of our tribe, the Marid." John explained. "Iblis got sealed in a jade coffin a year or two ago, thanks to Kublai Khan."
"Wait, the Kublai Khan? As in the Kublai Khan that Marco Polo went and visited way back in the thirteenth century?" The mention of such an ancient monarch in such a modern setting was enough to make Holly momentarily forget that they were hundreds of miles above land.
"Yes," Philippa said. "It seems weird, but I've noticed that a lot of times, history plays an important role in many of today's mysteries." Cas nodded. Between Nimrod mentioning meeting angels offhand, John talking about Kublai Khan, and the fact that Nimrod, John, and Philippa claimed that Holly and Cas were both djinn, nothing seemed quite so impossible anymore.
"That's another reason we're heading for Cairo," Nimrod said. "You see, Azazel was, until very recently, trapped in a bottle. I believe that Jonathan Teer, Iblis' son, tricked him into it and left him somewhere on one of the Balearic Islands, I think. Azazel was rather a nuisance to Iblis, and nearly had Iblis' throat torn out before we got to him, and also killed more than a few innocent mundanes, not that that mattered much to Jonathan."
"Mundanes?" Holly asked curiously, before Nimrod could continue.
"It's what we djinn tend to use instead of the term 'human beings.' From the Latin mundus, meaning world. Er... no offense, Mark." Nimrod obviously felt obliged to apologize, as though he had said something that might be considered rude or out of line by some.
"None taken." Mark replied coolly, and Nimrod nodded politely.
"Thank you, Mark. In any case, it's not so much the fact that Azazel escaped from his imprisonment as the fact that he hasn't yet done anything. Normally when an Ifrit is freed from an extended period of incarceration, the first thing they do is cause mass hysteria. Azazel, however, hasn't caused so much as a single parking ticket, as far as I am aware. This leads me to believe that he is up to something utterly horrible. The only reason I do know that he escaped, besides the somewhat unreliable testimony of my wife, Alexandra, was because of the sudden jolt in the homeostasis."
"What homeostasis?" Cas asked
"The homeostasis is the delicate balance between good and bad luck in the world, measured by Berlin Meridian Luck, or BML. You'll learn a great many more things when we arrive in Cairo. Not much longer now, I should think, at the rate we're going. In any case, you ought to have a look at the tuchemeter yourselves."
"And a tuchemeter is?" Mark asked.
"An instrument that measures all the luck in the world," Philippa said, before Nimrod could answer.
"Well remembered, Philippa." Nimrod commended his niece, and Philippa smiled.
"Where are we now, Uncle Nimrod?" John asked impatiently. Nimrod frowned slightly, and squinted over the edge of the carpet, towards the lights below.
"I believe we're just coming to Morocco now, John. Be patient. In any case, back to the matter at hand. Azazel Teer. The mystery I mentioned after dinner was not where he is now but what he is planning. I have no doubt that he is up to no good."
As they rode the flying carpet across the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara desert, Nimrod continued to tell of some of the dreadful deeds that Azazel Teer had done in the past four years he had possessed his djinn power.
Cas listened intently to Nimrod's recitation. It struck Cas that this Azazel person seemed to have absolutely no conscience whatsoever. But it also seemed to Cas that he had met someone before who sounded eerily like Azazel. Whoever it was, the vague memory sent a shiver up Cas's spine.