The alchemist looked stunned. He gaped at him for several moments, and then closed his mouth. He stood and up and said to come with him. “My daughter will watch the boy, you need not fear.”

  The djinn left the two of them behind and went with the alchemist. They left the tent through the back and entered the house he had noticed earlier. The alchemist kept his work in a small back room.

  It was clean, with a large window to one side. Wooden benches held flasks and beakers of strange substances, and there were books everywhere in open piles, many with scribblings in the margins. A notebook lay forgotten on a bench beside a glass chamber, the pen dry and ink smudged. He took a quick peek, and saw it was written in code. There were words in different languages all mixed together and symbols he did not recognize. But he knew enough to see what the alchemist had been investigating. Quintessence, the entry read, remains beyond my grasp. I am convinced of its divine nature, my evidence is undeniable. Yet what baffles me the most is the simple paradox of its existence. How can something exist within a vacuum, yet be solely responsible for the vacuum as well?

  “That’s private. I’d rather you didn’t read it.”

  The djinn let it go. He opened up a thick book to a page. There was an illustration done in inks. A water bird wading in a river, wings spread before flight.

  “The bennu. That’s what you’re looking for? Well I can’t say I have any idea how to kill it, but if anything has power of life and death, it would be an immortal. How are you going to kill it, exactly?” The djinn handed over the lodestone. “Clever,” the alchemist said, “Very clever. But it won’t be enough.” Very intuitive.

  “Can you enhance it?”

  “I don’t know. This is not my area of expertise. But have a seat and I’ll see what I can do.”

  He did, and waited while the alchemist chipped a piece off the lodestone with a stone knife. He poured and distilled, mixed and dissolved and separated and heated various reagents over the fire so the room was filled with odd vapors and unusual flames. The sun dipped and golden light flooded the room while the hours ticked by. Eventually the alchemist said he could not do anything. When the djinn complained of the time he had lost, the alchemist snorted. “What did you think? I could clap my hands and turn lead into gold? Alchemy is a devilishly complex process. It requires time.

  “As far as I can tell, there is nothing extraordinary about this lodestone, except where it came from. I don’t know how to enhance it, I’m sorry. But here, take this, it may be of some use to you.” The object he was handed was a cuff of stone, meant to be worn on the wrist. It was made of three broken sections spanned by chains so the girth could be adjusted, and there was a large red bead set into it. “This little bracelet will absorb heat that would otherwise damage your body. But it has a limit, so use it wisely.” When he saw the questioning look the djinn was giving him, he chewed his lip and mumbled, “Maybe I know a little magic.”

  They laughed at that.

  “What was it like?” the alchemist asked. “Living in the capital?”

  “Enjoyable,” the djinn found himself answering.

  “The castle was a thing of beauty,” he went on, “all graceful spires and marbled floors. Silken tapestries on the ceilings, huge windows that fed the breezes that came from the lush gardens on the terraces; flowers of so many colours and fragrances. Carpets and silver engravings and geometric patterns of lapis lazuli, jade and blue amber on the ceilings of the domes. It was beautiful at night, with the hundreds of lanterns glowing all over the city, and the sounds of laughter coming from the plazas with their fountains and gardens fed by winding aqueducts. The king always kept the castle smelling nice, with perfumed satin and heady incenses. To cover up the stink of the city, he said. The fruits in the market were bursting with juice and grapes were so rich and so dark that if you got the stain on your clothes, you’d never get it out.

  “There were crystals the king had me design so that you could see other places in them. He’d keep them absolutely everywhere, so even the servants could see visions from steaming dense jungles and beautiful pristine islands, barely a scrap of sand in oceans that were the bluest things you’d ever seen. Storytellers used to come from all over, begging to tell the king their latest yarn for a few coppers. And traders, with all their goods, coffee and tea and furs and cotton, His Majesty wrung heavy taxes from all of them.

  “It was a place of knowledge, all the scholars came to the great library to study and learn. It was a place of discipline—you should have seen the soldiers, in their polished armor and shields like sunbursts … Do you remember the rains two years past?”

  “Yes, they were the heaviest in decades.”

  “That was His Majesty’s idea. I told him I could only gather the clouds, not make them, so he told me to start three years earlier. There was so much water, the streets were muddy and flooded and the people distraught. ‘Our wares are ruined!’ the merchants said, but when the sun came out, all the dust was gone, and the city was cleaner than it had ever been. There was still muck in the gutters, mind you, and it stank worse than ever wet. But, there were all these seeds he’d had planted, you see, and there were seeds already in the ground. And they were green! So much green! Crops springing from the soil faster than they could be harvested, and flowers everywhere! In the streets and walkways. Every man, young and old, was picking flowers, for their mothers and wives and sisters and for the girl with the pretty hair, because she looked so lovely with the white ones in her hair, they said.”

  “You miss it.”

  The djinn realized he did: “Yes, I do.” It was a queer thing.

  He let the alchemist walk him back to the tent, where the lad was asleep with his head in the alchemist’s daughter’s lap. The remnants of a meal for two were on the table.

  “Can I leave our things with you? I’ll collect them on the way back.”

  “Can I ride the carpet?”

  He chuckled. “Of course.”

  “What of the boy, will you take him with you?”

  “I …” It would be safer. But …

  “No. You should both go together. You’ll need the company.”

  He took the boy in his arms and asked the alchemist where he might buy a camel. The alchemist said they should take the flying carpet instead. “I thought you wanted to ride it?”

  “They’ll be time enough for that when you get back. You’ll need speed on your side; it’s a long journey. Don’t worry, I’ve got some spare rooms. Your things should fit.”

  They transferred all the items into the rooms and the djinn lay the boy down on the carpet with some blankets and pillows the alchemist provided. He also gave them food and water and a change of clothing. “How will you find the bird?” the alchemist asked.

  “By following the desert.”

  His daughter said, “Come back swiftly, Uncle. He’s such a sweet boy.” The djinn nodded, thinking sadly that she even sounded like his wife. He bid goodbye to their hosts and gave them his gratitude, and cast a spell of invisibility around both of them. The alchemist was still gaping when they left them.

  He waited till they were well beyond the town’s walls and dispelled the magic. He reclined on the pillows and looked up at the night sky streaking past. She might have been old enough to be our daughter. If we’d had a daughter. He looked sidelong at the young prince. If I hadn’t killed her in my folly.

  • • • •

  Those who came from afar, or spent their entire lives within the walls of the city, thought that the desert was mostly sand. This is false. The sandsea the djinn and the boy had crossed on their way to the oasis was only a minute portion of the desert that spanned the civilized world.

  Rocks. Rocks were what made up the desert. Big ones and small ones, everywhere you looked. Even the dunes were built on foundations of stone.

  Follow the desert. It was an old magic, but powerful. The phoenix was the bird of the sun, and who knew the sun better than the desert? Keep your mind blank, the ifreet had said, and look for the signs. He doesn’t want to be found, but he leaves a trail. Look for …

  It wasn’t easy, or one simple path. It wound its ways through different deserts, which were in different worlds. The gates to these realms were open, he realized, but only because they weren’t gates at all, but the connections between the two. Like the pages of a book, they were jumping from page to page along the bindings that held them together.

  There were deserts of black, lifeless sands under skies of green and blue clouds. There were plateaus that seemed to circle the globe, long bridges of crumbling sandstone that spanned two cliffs over an empty chasm, on and on and on. And there was sand.

  It might have been the next day, or the next year, or a single restful blink of blistering, sand-scarred eyelids, but then they were there.

  The djinn and the boy stood all alone in the sands. There was only sand, and wind, all around. And the spire.

  At first it was only a pillar of rock. But as they approached, they saw it was massive; several leagues in diameter and many, many more in length. It stretched upwards into the blue, so high the djinn was sure the tips must rake the sky and extend even to the black void beyond.

  It was not sandstone, or limestone or marble or any other rock or mineral either had ever seen. It was a uniform brown and red, sprouting irregular handholds that jutted out from it randomly. There were steps, too, smooth and carved right into the stones, spiraling all the way round.

  They made camp by the foot of the spire, and ate the food the alchemist had been kind enough to provide them with. The djinn kept looking up at the spire. He hadn’t even enhanced the lodestone yet. He hadn’t even made a weapon of it yet!

  He took it out and held it before the flames. If he shaped a blade, it would be very thin. It might even snap. But a spear would work. It would give him more reach, too.

  He shaped the metal with whispered words and a gentle touch, and it bowed to his magic and flowed like water. For the shaft of the spear, he used a branch he snapped out of the air. The finished product was seven feet in length, and the spearhead sharp enough to shave with. Yet it still needed enhancing. But how? How did you kill the sun? He had a twig with a rock at the end. It needed power, something mighty and invincible. How would he put out an everburning flame?

  And then it hit him. And he laughed.

  The answer was all around him.

  • • • •

  He didn’t sleep, but sat with an excitement he couldn’t contain. Finally he decided it was time and woke the boy. “I’ll be back soon,” he told him. It was still dark when he started to climb the steps of the spire, and it was still dark when he reached the top. Round and round, ever upwards. His hand clenched and unclenched around the shaft of his spear.

  The top of the spire was a plateau, much smaller than the base, but large enough to hold the entire oasis town. If there had been clouds, it would have towered over them, but even then there was sky above, a deeper, cleaner blue than he had ever seen. Even the air was thin, and he breathed deeply as if with exhaustion.

  A young man was sitting on the edge, dangling his bare feet in the air. He wore a pristine white robe that left his arms and one shoulder bare, and had copper hair that stood up from his skull in sharp peaks. He was handsome and had a gold jeweled collar around his neck, set with rubies that flashed like fire and amber stones. When he turned slowly to view his visitor, the djinn saw his eyes were pure gold, with splashes of red that moved and seethed like lava. Phoenix.

  “You have come a long way,” it said. Its voice was rich and beautiful.

  “I have come with a purpose,” the djinn replied. “I have come here for the secret you keep.”

  “I keep no secrets.”

  “I want the secret of life and death.”

  The phoenix’s eyes grew softer somewhat. It almost whispered, “I am sorry. But I cannot give you that. I don’t have it, it doesn’t exist. There is no Philosopher’s Stone, no Elixir of Life, no quintessence, no Master Work, no object of divinity. I can see it in your eyes, you want it for your wife. She is gone, djinn, and what is gone cannot be reclaimed.”

  The phoenix sighed deeply, and looked out over the horizon again. “How did you find me?” it asked.

  “I found an ifreet in a forgotten tomb who told me of you.”

  “Truly? An ifreet? That is a wonder; I had though them long dead. And now you say one lives? What has become of him?”

  “He is gone now, I freed him. The enchantment was the only thing keeping him alive.”

  “That is sad news. But I am glad he is at peace. What did he tell you of me?”

  “He told me you were one of us.”

  The phoenix nodded. “Aye. I was an ifreet once, long and long ago. I was young, and foolish. I wanted to see all there was to see. I … I made mistakes that I should not have. There was a contraption I designed, that would take me elsewhere. And it worked, oh, it worked.

  “I found myself floating in the void, with the forges of life and death all around me. I saw the stars as they were made, and planets larger than anything I had ever known spin around each other like dancers. I saw beautiful things and wonders and miracles, and in my haste and folly, I fell into the sun.

  “You cannot imagine what it was like. The fire, the heat was incredible. It—it changed me. When I awoke, I was back on land, somehow, and I was no longer an ifreet. I was this; some new being that carried the waters of the sun in his veins.

  “I learned quickly how to use my powers, and found that I was still mortal. Yet, when I died, I was reborn. I was a bird the first time, I think, with wings of fire. That was how man first came to know me. In the eons that followed, I have had many forms. I’ve died scores of times and been reborn in so many ways. Every time there was someone new, someone who sought to tell a story about me. That is why I am known my so many names and faces. The bennu, the phoenix, Zhu Que, I can’t even remember them all.”

  “I want the secret you keep. I want the secret of life and death.”

  “I do not have any such secret.”

  The djinn held out the spear. “You are the secret. You are an immortal. I will cut out your heart and use it.”

  There was no change in the phoenix’s posture, save a slight tightening around his eyes, and a dangerous tone to its voice when it said, “Take care, djinn,” smooth and soft as woven silk. “For I am still fire; I will tolerate no falsehoods here, not in my eyrie. Speak them, and I will burn your tongue to ash.”

  The djinn readied his arm. “This spear,” he said, “is made from a fallen star.”

  “You cannot kill me with simple steel, be it from this world or any other.”

  “And if this is not simple steel? If it this is from the massive star that fell so long ago and rose a cloud of ash to blanket the sun? When the land was cold, so cold and barren. This spear contains within it that selfsame power, from the endless nights when you were weak and dying. You almost did die, didn’t you? Without the sun, without its fire to sustain you, you are merely a bird.”

  The phoenix shrieked in anger, a thin birdlike keel that drove rocks to pebbles below far them. The djinn’s ears stung and he was momentarily deaf. The phoenix was standing now and facing him, its lips moving, but the djinn heard nothing.

  There was a flash of heat, and suddenly his hearing returned. Flames roared in his ears and he closed his eyes against the brightness. As he blinked black spots from his eyes he saw the phoenix transformed, now a tall waterbird with reed thin legs and dark feathers, every feather of its wings equal to the weight of a human soul. But its eyes did not change. With another wail, it launched itself at him.

  The djinn sidestepped, dodging its razor talons, and swung his spear. It should have cut, but the bennu had feathers like iron. He pulled back and jabbed at the bird’s soft underbelly, just as it rose into the air and grabbed his spear with its claws. Cursing, the djinn pulled it free and rolled out of the way.

  Time was lost to him, and seconds seemed to slow as the world faded to a single moment of flashing steel, sweat, and blood. He fought with all the skill he possessed, using magic and spearplay together, yet the fight dragged on. And as he fought, it slowly dawned on him that he could not feel the sun on his back. It should have risen, but it seemed as if the heat was coming from in front of him.

  It was, he realized with a start. The phoenix was giving off heat. His looked down to find his clothing scorched and burned away in places, but he himself was unharmed. It was the alchemist’s charm that was keeping him alive. The cuff was still tight on his wrist, but it was becoming looser. And the tip of his beard was beginning to singe …

  When he finally he manage to stab the bennu, it was just below the wing. The ifreet had told him what would happen when the bird was injured, and he pulled away in time. There was another roar and a heat and wind that drove him balking to his knees, and when the haze cleared, the phoenix had changed form.

  Every time you kill it, the ifreet had said, it will be forced to revert back to its previous form. You must keep fighting until you have driven it back to its original shape, then you can slay it permanently.

  He lost track of how many forms there were. There were a dozen tiny birds with sharp raking claws, and a creature with the head of a dog and wings of an eagle that hocked fire like phlegm. There was a man, he remembered, with the head of a green bird and armed with a broadsword taller than he was. Its strength was colossal, and when his own spear kissed the flaming blade of his foe, he felt as if his arm would break under the force. It was only through a spell that wound grass tangles through its feet that he was able to win at all. There was a bird that resembled a peacock, in shades of vermillion and orange, with long trailing feathers that stung like acid when they touched him. Firebird, red crow, Zhu Que, Suzaku, all these names, all these forms, and both of them were growing weary.

  He was bruised all over, and had broken at least two ribs. The battle was too intense for him to heal his wounds; he sealed a cut here and there when he found respite, but for the most part he was hard-pushed and weary. Once he received a cut above his eye and when the blood began to impede his vision, he grabbed a handful of grit and rubbed it into the wound. It hurt, but absorbed some blood and let him fight on.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30