THE FLAME AND THE BOTTLE

The Flame and the Bottle, by Howard Andrew Jones, audio by Leeman Kessler

 

I

The woman was disconsolate with weeping. Surely the whole of the neighborhood heard her wailing from within the walls of her tiny house; the four of us grew conscious of it in the moments before we turned the corner onto her street. I dismounted in the afternoon chill that late autumn day and advanced toward her stout red cedar door. Dabir asked the general whether this sort of behavior was typical of her.

He gruffly replied that he was just as puzzled as we, and urged me to act with care.

I acted always with care, no matter that God, the all-knowing, the sustainer, saw fit constantly to place dangers in my path.  If the general had better known me, he would not have made the suggestion.

For my part, I knew the general vaguely from my time fighting in the army of the caliphate. In those days I had been but a junior officer, and so had interacted with him only by remove. Those above me had thought him stern but just, and that had been the consensus of us troopers. We respected that he wasn’t given to boasting, or over familiarity with those in his command. We might mock him for his formality, but we respected the old Persian for that, too. We had loved that the Greeks knew and feared him. He had won many a conflict against them, the most recent at the desperate battle of Hadath, where he had turned back an invading army.

The general’s adjutant, a young man, hurried to catch up with me. He was almost as tall as I, and his turban poked higher than mine, for it was wound about a helmet with a pointed tip. He wore one of those absurdly thick beards that were in fashion that year and carried himself as though he thought himself a vital participant in our enterprise. I stiff-armed him. Had the general not said there was sorcery involved? Had he not sought Dabir and myself for our expertise in such matters?

Dabir by that time had dismounted. He stepped around the indignant younger man and took up post to the left of the doorway.

Inside, the wailing had not abated. Truly, it seemed the woman had suffered some great calamity. I looked to Dabir, to see if he might offer some advice.

In those days he and I were in early middle-age, and there was gray in our beards. My friend still wore his own tightly trimmed to his chin, with thin lines of hair along either side of his lean face. Compassion shone in his bright blue eyes, but there was a set to his mouth, as I often saw when his patience thinned.

He did not normally wander the streets of Baghdad with a sword on his hip, but he had donned one over his brown jubbah today. Neither of us were ostentatious men. Unlike the general’s adjutant, whose robe was dark red with slashes of yellow, or the general’s deep blue, our robes were simple beige, though I do not mean to suggest they were not well-tailored.

To my look, Dabir gave a single nod, and with that, I rapped on the door, loudly.

There was the merest of pauses, and then the wailing resumed.

“Is all well within?” I felt stupid asking such, but it was the only thing that came to me.

The sobbing abated. A woman then spoke, her voice thick with grief. “Begone,” she cried, “My daughter is dead.”

The sobbing resumed.

“She has no daughter.” The general spoke with deep conviction, as though he had just caught the woman in a lie.

He was not yet an ancient, but he was past his prime years, even if he carried himself with straight shoulders. His beard was almost an inverse of my own, white with two thin streaks of black. His left cheek was puckered with an old scar and at some point his nose had been broken, but for all that, he was a handsome old man. Like his adjutant, his turban was wrapped about a spired helmet.

Dabir reached out for the door and knocked himself. Somehow he managed to sound mild even though he shouted to be heard above the uproar. “We’re here to help,” he said. “Perhaps we can help one another.”

“I should never have stayed with her,” the woman’s voice cried. “It was the worst mistake I ever made! I should just have walked away and become a soldier, like my brother!”

Dabir met my eyes. We had met women warriors by that point in our life. My own wife was a fair blade. But no woman of the caliphate could become a soldier, much less marry someone of the same gender.

“She sounds confused,” Dabir remarked, and his gaze swung back to the general.

“It is an act,” he said with an abrupt swing of his hand. “She’s stalling.”

I was not entirely convinced, nor, judging by his creased brow, was Dabir. Usually when we were confronting someone mad it was they who threatened us, which is why it troubled me that the general’s adjutant put his hand to his hilt.

“Do not be fooled,” the general told us, a martial snap in his voice. “She’s a powerful sorceress. I’ve told you.”

The woman within the building smashed something glass. And then another, even as the general expostulated.

“Stop her!” He shouted, and there was panic in his voice.  “She must be stopped!”

The adjutant rushed past me and took the door with his shoulder. He grunted as he hit. The wood shook in its frame, but did not budge. “Did you not hear the general?” He demanded of me, as though I were an oaf. “Help me get it open!”

He readied another charge, but I held a hand to him and tried the latch. The door proved to be unlocked, which likely illustrated some Indian proverb as to the fruitless energy of youth. I cast open the door and the adjutant hurtled past, drawing his sword a moment later, almost striking my hand in the process. I cursed him for a fool and moved quickly after.

The front room of that place was fragrant with incense, and lit by candles, of which there were many, burning in niches. Three windows there were, each shuttered and barred. Two dark carpets were arranged across the floorboards, and others of lighter make hung upon the walls. Also there was a small grouping of furniture, but my eyes were drawn to the right, where a veiled woman stood, dark of skin and hair. Her eyes were deeply recessed and very red, doubtless from her sobbing.  She wore a white dress belted at the waist, and red, curling-toed slippers. The light sparkled on a scattered spray of lovely litter near them that was likely glass but shone like a prince’s diamond hoard.

The young man advanced upon her with his sword. “Where’s the bottle!” he cried, which made as much sense to me as it probably does to you, although I knew some concern as his gaze tracked to shards of broken glass. The adjutant let out a cry of alarm. “Is that the general’s bottle?” he demanded.

I seized his shoulder lest he advance against the woman, swaying gently and sniffling.

His question she did not answer. “We had a deal,” she cried. “You can’t take it back!” This seemed directed to the adjutant, or perhaps the general, whom I knew by the scent of his perfumed beard had come in behind me.

She then addressed the middle air, sounding forlorn and lost. “Everything has been for naught. All that was ever important to me… I killed him!”

The adjutant struggled in my grip and shot me a dark look.

“I killed my own brother,” she cried, “You can’t know! You can’t tell anyone!”

From whence her knife came I did not see, but it was in her hand, and she suddenly rushed.

She surprised me, and my hold loosened upon the youth, who charged her with his long straight sword.

I was not the only one who cried out for him to stay his hand, for Dabir also shouted. The general’s voice rose most shrilly.

The woman did nothing to evade. She might have flung herself to one side, or raised an arm to ward him. Instead she came forward, knife raised inexpertly, and with little effort at all the young man struck.

The blade sliced a long gash through her clothing, across her sternum.

There was no blood. The blow drove her back and she cried out, more in outrage than pain. I heard an explosive gasp of air, as though a swim bladder had been opened. Shining red light streamed from the gap opened in her dress and then the body sank in upon itself, as though the clothes had been emptied.

This was a terrible sight, and I stepped further back, making the sign against the evil eye.

“Fool!” The general shouted at the adjutant, and cursed him even as the young soldier cried out to God for solace.

He backed past me, the hand that held his sword shaking. “A djinn!” He cried, his voice rising in fear. “I killed a djinn!”

I did not think he had killed anything, though he might have angered something very dangerous. I turned warily in place, studying the air, but that swirling light had vanished. As anyone knows, djinn can turn invisible on a whim, and it occurred to me that the creature might even now be stalking us. Somehow, though, I did not think it likely. Dabir must not have thought so either, for he maneuvered past me. While the general dressed down his subordinate, my friend knelt beside what was left of the woman. Now she seemed nothing but a pile of empty clothes, which would have looked utterly unremarkable save for the empty holes where eyes should have been staring sightlessly at me from above the veil, a grotesque and disquieting mask.

A single curtained doorway led from that room and I parted the way to investigate, then moved through. There was not much to be seen there. I spied an empty bed, and some shelves with books. Also there were more candles. It did not seem a sorcerer’s place. The general came in after me, took in the room, and rushed to the bed to peer beneath it. “Where are the bottles?” He demanded. He bodily lifted one end of the bed so that he might see the darker portions close to the wall, and cast up only dust. He cursed in dismay, climbed to his feet, and strode about, tapping the wall in search of hollow spaces.

I rejoined Dabir in the front room. The adjutant waited still beside the door, pale as a Frank, though his blade hand had steadied. He had not yet sheathed his sword, and his eyes remained unfocused even as they swept the room.

For his part Dabir appeared more disgusted than frightened. He was now freely rooting around in the remains.

“This is but tanned leather,” he said to me. “I fear it may have been human. Some thing was wearing it as though it were clothing.”

“A djinn?” I suggested. It was a dark jest. Our old friend Captain Fakhir was always ready to ascribe strange doings to the work of djinn, though in all the long years we had chanced upon disquieting things in his company he had never yet encountered one.

“Where has she hidden the bottles?” The general cried from the next room.

Dabir spoke quietly to me. “The general is an honorable man?”

“I had always heard it said.”

“He neglected key details when he asked for our aid.” Dabir wiped hands on the bottom of his robe and climbed to his feet. “It is time for truths, General.” His voice was level and uncompromising, and the oldster stepped into the main room, his eyes bleak, his mouth a thin line.

“You had said you knew of a dangerous sorceress who might be a spy,” Dabir said.

He returned only a one-word reply. “Yes.”

“She wasn’t human.”

The general’s gaze shifted to the terrible thing near Dabir’s feet. “I swear that I did not know that.”

“You seemed unmoved that she was inhuman. But then you were more worried about these bottles you speak of.”

The general said nothing.

“You know other things you haven’t told us,” Dabir continued. “You said we must hurry, and so we did. But if you truly thought this thing a danger to the caliphate, you would have come from the start with a troop of soldiers.”

The general’s hands fluttered, as if he were not sure where to place them. They rested finally on his belt. “The matter had to be handled with discretion. And I feared the sorceress might destroy the secrets. You and the captain are well known fighters of monsters and magicians.”

“It was a djinn,” the adjutant whispered breathlessly from the doorway.

“It may be,” Dabir said to him, then fastened his gaze once more upon the general. “Did she always sound so… troubled?”

“No,” the general answered decisively. “No, she had sounded eager. Happy. Greedy even.”

“Greedy for what?” Dabir asked

The general answered with a question of his own. “Is she dead? Did my idiot kill her?”

“You cannot slay a djinn with ordinary steel,” I said. “She has fled.”

“Asim is right,” Dabir said.

“We must find her.” The general straightened, and I think he meant to stride off that very moment.

Dabir did not move. “We go nowhere until you tell us what’s really happening.”

His thin lips downturned. Surely he was one unused to refusal of any kind.

But then neither Dabir nor myself served under him, and had both sat at the Caliph’s table. While we were no regular part of the caliph’s staff, in some ways our status was even greater than the general’s, which surely gave him pause. Also I think he knew he needed our aid.

And thus, after a brief hesitation, he responded to Dabir. “A few weeks ago word reached me of a woman who could soothe the pain of men. I do not mean a nurse, or a day wife. It was said she could pluck painful memories like you might pull burrs from cloth. Old friends of mine, and their wives, told me of burdens she had eased.”

“So you sought her out,” Dabir prompted, for the general had fallen silent.

“Yes. Yes, I did. Like a fool. All she asked in return was to take one pleasant memory as well. But I think she took more. I think she preyed upon important leaders and stole state secrets from all of us.”

“What do you think she stole from you?” I asked.

“I don’t know what she took,” the general snapped. “I cannot recall it! There is a great gap in my memory. I’ve no recollection of the Third Battle of Hadath.”

This was, of course, the great victory from the previous year for which he’d won so much acclaim.

“Given that it shattered the Greeks, my loss of strategic knowledge seems as though it might be vital, don’t you think? And I had Taweel follow this woman’s doings. He saw men that looked like Greeks[1] come to her house.”

It was no crime to be a Greek, much less to look like one, and there were numerous traders of that heritage who frequented the market stalls of Baghdad. But there also were spies.

“How did you know they were Greeks?” Dabir asked. From long experience he did not trust the perceptions of other men.

The general looked to Taweel, who answered. “Their carriage. Their furtive way. The styling of their beards. One was trying to fit in, but the other barely attempted it at all. He could scarce be bothered to be discrete, so haughty was his manner.”

Dabir’s left eyebrow quirked. “This one’s eyes. They were small?”

“No, they were prominent, like a fish’s eyes.”

I groaned, and then Dabir and I said a name at the same time. “Acteon.”

“You know this man?” The general demanded.

“To our sorrow,” I said.

“Is he dangerous?”

“He is more nuisance than actual danger,” Dabir replied. “His schemes are elaborate, and usually involve sorcery.”

“Then I was right.” the general showed his teeth. “She was stripping us of memories for the Greeks to carry away to Constantinople.”

“And putting them in bottles?” I suggested.

“Yes. Mine was a green bottle, I remember that.”

The broken glass at our feet was blue and brown.

“Why should a djinn work for Greeks?” I asked. “And this does not explain why she had gone mad.”

Dabir, though, had reasoned this out. “I cannot answer your first question. As for the second, I think she had imbibed some of her wares, perhaps out of curiosity. These were the memories of men, which is why they made no sense spoken from a woman’s body. So overpowering were these recollections they temporarily overwhelmed her natural instincts. Why else should she attack four men with a knife, one of whom wielded a sword, when she had sorcery?”

“By the nine-and ninety names,” I said. “You must be right.”

“Forget about your musings,” the general said. “She has fled, and so have the Greeks, with my memories! What are you going to do about it?”

“Who else knows her?” Dabir asked. “There must be some place where she keeps her bottles.”

“They were all here,” the general said. “Upon those shelves, and there were great chests of them along the wall. They are gone.”

“When did you last speak with her?” Dabir asked.

“Only yesterday. I did not realize my folly until the evening, but still hesitated to act. Perhaps too long.”

“Perhaps not. She could not have moved things very far. Did Taweel follow the Greeks?”

Of course he had not; the young man shook his head, no.

The general pulled at his beard. “How are we to find them in so large a city? Who is to say the djinn has not magicked everything away?”

“These creatures are bound by complex rules,” Dabir said. “The fact that she stored the memories in earthly vessels suggests that they would require physical transport, lest the Greeks also trade with her for some other service.”

The price for any dealing with a djinn was quite steep, as we had witnessed. A single favor might beggar a king.

The general did not look as though he believed Dabir, who spoke on. “There may yet be time. Asim and I will make inquiries, and seek you afterward.”

“Maybe this matter should be turned over to the army, anyway. We can set them to search the city.”

Dabir quickly shook his head. “No, then they will go to ground, and never be discovered. We must be subtle.”

“Very well, then. I will go with you.”

Again Dabir shook his head. “General, you are too distinctive.”

The old man grumbled deep in his throat, and before he objected I spoke:

“Trust us to this, as we trust you to the battlefield.”

Dabir nodded his agreement.

The general scowled then grimly gave assent. “Very well. But take Taweel with you, should you need an extra sword.”

We had as much need for Taweel and his sword as we had for extra nostrils, but Dabir agreed to shepherd him, sensing, as I did, the general would not be checked in his desire a third time. After the general’s departure I rounded on the youth. After a few brief words, he fully understood bodily harm would come to him if he were to draw a sword again in my presence without my given command.

Shortly thereafter we had left that place and its gruesome remnant, and recovered the horses from the urchin we had paid to hold them. From him I asked whether anyone had seen movers come to that house last night or today, but he knew nothing. Dabir made haste to wash his hands at a nearby bathhouse and we made inquiries.

One of the neighbors had noted the wide variety of well-dressed folk coming back and forth to the djinn’s home. We found other witnesses who had seen much the same, including an old matron, and a young pregnant woman across the street, who was the worst gossip of all. From the three of them we developed a fair description of the cart, its drivers, horses, and direction of departure. If the look of the drivers was a little vague, all three at least agreed the cart was headed west.

So it was that we turned our horses that direction. As we readied to mount, Taweel addressed us both. “But this might all be a feint,” he said. “Suppose that cart headed west to trick observers, but then was going to drive east?”

“Don’t overthink it,” I told him.

Dabir was more kind. “While that is certainly possible, we must think logically. The swiftest caravan route toward the Empire is northwest. It may be that the bottles are being shifted to some other location in the city, in which case we are unlikely to find them. But then, if they are not leaving the city, we have more time. Therefore the gravest threat to us is if they depart the city. Which is why we should seek the caravanserais to the west, which happens to be the direction the cart was travelling.”

“Captain Asim says that the djinn is not dead. If we face it again, won’t it be angry? How do we stop it?”

He worried the thing would take vengeance against him, which was reasonable enough. “There is no knowing the mind of such a creature,” I said.  “Who can say what it desires, or why it does what it does?”

“What if we speak the word of God?” Taweel asked. “Is it not said that the word of God, spoken by the righteous, will stay the hand of such a creature?”

I could see by Dabir’s manner that he had grown impatient, though he remained polite. “It may be so. And I think it likely she is a djinn. But you must remember that some djinn converted to the faith.”

Now that is a thing that had not occurred to me. Some djinn were said to be followers of the word of God, the creator, the most merciful. “How could she be?” I asked. “She is a worker of mischief. An evil-doer.”

“She may not see it that way,” Dabir remarked.

“What does that matter?” I asked.

He eyed me shrewdly. “You know as well as I that many proclaim to have faith, and even practice it, then make excuses for self-serving action.”

“They are not inhuman creatures,” I reminded him.

“The point is that if this djinn is one of the converted, ordinary measures won’t stop her. I have read of the exorcism of djinn, but challenging this one may not be an exorcism.”

I grunted. It might be that I would have to try my blade. At that time the sword I carried had been blessed – for reasons too detailed to relate here – and had served me well against one supernatural foe. Whether it might draw life from a spirit of smokeless fire was another matter entirely.  “Mount, Taweel,” I said, putting foot to stirrup. “Lest the Greeks reach Constantinople while we’re gossiping in the street.”

He closed his mouth, but it was clear he did not like riding off with so little idea about what lay before him. Neither did I, but it was a hazard with which I had grown overly familiar.

 

II

 

As you would expect, Baghdad teamed with even more caravanserais in that age than you see today. Merchants came from far and wide to unload their wares in the vast spaces, housing their carts and animals and sometimes even themselves and their staff on site until they had purchased other goods for return journeys.

The caravanserais could be found in sizes from large to small, the worst being little more than walled enclosures with gates, the best boasting staffs of hostlers, guards, teamsters, groomsmen, cooks and barbers.

You may wonder why we had settled surely upon a caravanserai being a point of departure. Well, any goods upon a cart would almost surely be transferred to camel back before they departed Baghdad for the north. Dabir assumed someone with a secret would wish to move discretely, which meant a smaller structure, and knowing Acteon’s preference for finer things narrowed our choices further.

After we finished our look at the fifth of these smaller caravanserais I wondered if perhaps the Greeks might be moving the bottles out some other way, or if Acteon might have finally grown more cautious and better hidden his steps by misdirection. I left it to Taweel to express these worries, whereupon Dabir cordially informed him he continued to overthink matters.

My own mood soured when we were forced by our mission to ignore the call to evening prayers. Finally, though, after sunset, we arrived at the eighth building. When we strode past the guards by their watch lanterns I immediately spotted a row of low carts with high sides that perfectly matched the description of that used to transport wooden chests from the djinn’s home. We soon saw a pair of horses being pulled off one of the carts that matched the brown with a blaze and the gray we’d had described to us.

From a hostler we learned that two caravans were scheduled to depart in the morning. A third smaller one had been intended to leave at the same time, but its owners had decided to move out tonight, instead. Its fragile contents had been carefully repacked and were even now being loaded onto a camel train under the supervision of two surly servants.

“It’s not as though we’ve never readied glass for transport,” the hostler confided to us. “But these folk are watching our every move.” He was a well-dressed man of middle-age, with a splendidly festive red turban and matching belt that served only as ornament, for he was so round he had no waist.

I looked over the courtyard where the camels in question were kneeling while lidded wicker baskets were being attached to harnesses strapped across their backs. The work proceeded under the light of nearby lanterns hung on convenient poles. I stared with particular interest at the men moving among the beasts, but the light was not excellent. Some of the dozen men were too old or fat or short to be Acteon, but I could not say as to the others.

“Are the owners there by the camels, or only their servants?” Dabir asked.

“Servants, though you wouldn’t know it by their ways.”

Dabir handed the man a parcel of coins. He overpaid for information, as always, for he had no head for money. “Tell me of them.”

The hostler looked confused, then showed stained teeth in a smile. “How kind you are, exalted one. Are you some rival merchant?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Nay.” He shook his head. “I think they are Greeks. There are two of them, a glib one with a gray beard, and a quiet one who always looks as though he has been sucking lemons.”

“Does he have eyes that protrude somewhat?” Dabir asked.

“Aye, that is him exactly.”

“Acteon,” I said.

“He did not give his name.”

From beneath his jubbah Dabir produced the amulet that few in the caliphate possess (I still have its twin in one of my chests). It was rectangular, and bronze, and stated in no uncertain terms that he who wore it was to be obeyed, by order of the caliph. The sturdy hostler craned forward to peer at it and then his eyebrows strained up his forehead.  He started to throw his bulk to his knees, probably thinking himself in the presence of nobility, but I quickly grabbed his arm. “Do not alert them,” I said quietly. I looked over to the men near the camels, concerned they might already have seen, but none looked our way.

“Get you swiftly to the nearest guardhouse,” Dabir said. “Tell them Dabir ibn Khalil and Asim el Abbas require assistance.”

At mention of our names the man’s eyebrows climbed again. “A thousand pardons! Why did you not tell me with whom I spoke from the first?” He made to bow once more before I again snagged his arm.

“Hurry,” I said, “but without drawing attention.”

He bobbed his head to me, then to Dabir, and hurried off. You would have thought that a hostler would run straight away for a horse, but he set out at a jog through the postern gate.

It was only then I noticed Taweel was no longer with us. “The boy is gone,” I said to Dabir.

“He wandered toward the stables.”

I frowned. “Flash your badge, grab yon gate guards, and go secure the missing bottles. I’m going to find the pup before he gets himself kicked or bites someone.”

“What a loving master of hounds you would be,” Dabir remarked.

There were actually stalls built about much of the perimeter of the caravanserai, beneath a balconied second floor with inn rooms. Taweel had apparently decided to look in at the stables where the workhorses were kept, a cavernous area filled with shoulder-high stalls, lit with only a handful of lanterns. Shadows were plentiful there, and it reeked of ammonia, for some idiot had left a cart full of wet manure in one of the aisle ways.

Taweel called to me the moment I stepped inside.

“Captain Asim!”

More than a decade had passed since I’d last held formal rank, but the title at which I had mustered out was still used with my name, as a courtesy.

“Come out from there,” I said.

He replied a moment later. “I found something.”

Likely he had found manure on his boot sole, but I advanced toward him. I felt a presentiment of danger and loosed my sword in its scabbard.

I found Taweel and his ridiculous bushy beard half inside an empty stall. He looked nervous, and his eyes were shifting.

Only then did I perceive two men in the stall’s recesses. One was crouched near the boy, a sword at Taweel’s middle. The other held a device I had encountered only a few times, a weapon known as a crossbow. I saw the point of its bolt gleam in the lantern light, and the sparkle of its wielder’s bulbous eyes.

Acteon chuckled. He had not changed much since I had last looked upon him along the border, some years prior, during that matter with the golem. I saw no gray yet in his hair, but then he was our younger by five years or more.

“Asim el Abbas,” he said. His Arabic was fluent enough, though accented. “I had it on good authority you and your preening master were in Mosul.”

Dabir might have been fastidious, but he never preened, and he was not my master, a matter Acteon never had gotten through his thick head. I might have reminded him that our last encounter had ended with him tumbling ignominiously down a muddy hillside, but I restrained myself. “You can see that we are here,” I said.

“You always bedevil me,” he asserted. “But you always underestimate me. I assume you advanced without waiting for reinforcements, as usual? Nay, do not lie. I observed your entrance. The boy confirms you came alone.”

This was true enough. Taweel, though, had not known soldiers were on their way. I just wished I had a better idea how long it would take them to join us.

Acteon nodded with smug satisfaction. “Now you will call for Dabir, and then I shall have a most pleasant bonus. What I can’t decide is if I wish to take you along with me, or merely the news of your deaths. Step closer, or Stamos will stab the youth.”

“I will draw no closer,” I said. “Nor will I call for Dabir.”

“You are a poor liar, Asim,” Acteon said. “You are attached to all your men, and I well know it.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Taweel said. “I thought I saw someone in here and –”

“Silence,” Acteon ordered. “Now I shall give you to a five count, Asim.”

I was more frustrated than worried. Assuredly I did not wish to be struck by a bolt, but I was fairly certain I could time my departure, for the trigger mechanism of a crossbow was not instantaneous. Taweel’s life was my true concern.

“Your plan was very clever, Acteon,” I said. “There are even a few things Dabir hasn’t figured out about it yet.”

“Oh?” Acteon was not altogether stupid and surely knew I stalled. But the thought he might shortly hear details about how he had outwitted Dabir was too great a lure.

“He cannot deduce how you found the means to work with a djinn,” I said. “They usually demand a steep price for their service.”

“That? It was as nothing. The trick was finding a mage capable of contacting one. But we—”

He stopped short at the sound of frightened screams from beyond the stalls. I threw myself to the right, landing mostly in hay. The twang of the crossbow sounded and I heard the crunch of the bolt into the stall door that had been behind me, also a curse in Greek and an exalted shout from Taweel.

“I am fine, Captain,” the boy called.

I had already leapt to my feet. Taweel had used the distraction to tear free from Stamos and now wrestled him for control of the blade, the sword forced over the older man’s head.

It was then arms enfolded me from behind. Meaty they were, and unwashed. Their owner cried in Greek to shoot, shoot, but Acteon was fumbling to re-load the cross bow. He had his foot through the far end and appeared to be pushing upon it with the full strength of his body. Were I not in danger it might have appeared comical.

I threw myself back and to the side, bashing the newcomer into the post at the front of a stall. He grunted in pain and released me; I drew my sword and slammed its pommel against his bearded chin. I heard the click of his teeth and he swayed to the ground, stunned.

I had no time for him, and no attention to give either to Taweel, still fighting for control of the blade, or to the shouts of alarm rending the night air outside.

Acteon had finally managed to pull back the string when I charged him. He shifted his boot free of the weapons and had begun to lift the weapon when I reached him. Probably I should have run him through, but I clouted him in the face with my fist as I pushed the crossbow up. This staggered him into the back wall of the empty stall. He triggered the bolt, by accident or design I could not tell, and it lodged in the stable ceiling. The kickback set the wavering Acteon further off balance. He slid on a clump of manure and struck his head against the back of the stall with a painful sounding thunk. He crumpled, groaning. The crossbow clattered on the floor beside him.

Taweel, meanwhile, was still struggling ineffectually with the man who’d held a knife to him, until I arrived and smacked his opponent on the head with my blade flat. This sent him to his knees.

Taweel then stared at me with wide eyes, panting heavily from his exertions. Truly, the youth possessed more energy than skill.

“Tie these up,” I shouted, then hurried from the stable, for I was worried about my friend.

In the courtyard, camels bawled their fear and ran hither and yon, some with cargo baskets already attached. Men were scrambling away from them; others had retreated to the edges and stared spellbound at a human-shaped thing built of flickering red lights that shimmered at the side of a broken wicker basket, digging through its contents. It would lift up a small colored bottle, peer closely at it, then drop it to the ground.

As everyone with any sense whatsoever watched from afar, I, naturally, was moving towards it. So too was Dabir, who waited for me as I jogged up.

“Where’s Taweel?” He asked.

“Herakles is tidying the stables.”

He eyed my stained, rumpled, straw-strewn jubbah. “It looks as though you cleaned them on your belly.”

The djinn discarded another bottle and reached deeper into the basket.

“I would have brought you Acteon to question,” I said, “but he managed to incapacitate himself.”

Dabir might have asked what I thought the Greeks were doing in the stables, but likely he suspected, as I had, they’d been readying their animals for departure when they’d caught sight of us. Dabir simply said: “He’s ever leaving us his messes.”

“What do you mean to do?” I asked.

“Diplomacy first.” Dabir resumed his walk. I went with him, though I cannot say it was an easy thing to approach so alarming a creature. We halted only a few paces from the djinn.

When she looked up I saw that she had a face, and two places where there were bright red eyes I had seen behind her mask. She wore a robe of sorts, also shifting, and nearly the same color as her form. She went without veil, and her hair, which seemed as flowing bits of fire, hung to her shoulders. The overall effect, at close range, was both comely and frightening.

Dabir bowed his head to her, and I quickly repeated the gesture. “Peace be upon you,” he said.

“You are the ones who came to me in my human dwelling,” she said. I recognized her voice, though not her tone, which was level and calm.

“We are,” Dabir said. “We offered to help before; we may be able to help you now.”

“I search for the joys. The certain joys. Of the first sight of snow. Of the time your sister shared her honey bread. Of the moment when your father swung you about, laughing, and said you were a bird. Do you know the ones I mean?”

“Those aren’t my memories,” Dabir said gently.

“No. No, you are singular,” the djinn said, as if she were reminding herself of a difficult concept. “There are so many bottles. I tasted those memories when I pulled them clear, now I want to drink them down and wash the bad memories away.”

“Why do you want any of these memories?” Dabir asked. “You have memories of your own, surely.”

He seemed to have gained her full attention now, and I hoped that was not a bad thing. “Oh, but you fascinate me. The way you run here and there and build big things, even knowing they will crumble. Each of you makes the same journey from birth to dust, yet you strive so hard, despite knowing the end! You puzzle me so.”

“And it was your idea to look closer at us?” Dabir suggested.

“It was the one known as Acteon who said I would better understand you if I could see your thoughts, and devise a way to store them, so I could revisit them.” She shivered, which I found a discordant sight for a being of fire. “How do you endure such pain? Surely you only bear it because of your joys.”

“What had happened to you when we found you?” I asked.

Her red eyes darkened so that they were clearly a different shade from her strange robe. “They deceived me. They took more than their share, and changed the labels. I thought I was imbibing joys, not sorrows. The memories had such hold of me I could not hold to myself! It took me some time to recover.”

She was like a drunkard, I suddenly understood, looking for solace in a bottle.

“The bitter tastes remain,” she said. “I want to wash them away with better memories. They must be in another basket.”

“I do not think you are meant for these kinds of sorrows, or joys,” Dabir said gently. “Do you not see that they have brought you close to ruin? The bottles of sorrow you drank drove you nearly mad. Don’t the joys do the same?”

Her lighter color had been restored. She fixed Dabir with her shining eyes while all the rest of her flickered.

“Is that why all humans are mad?” she asked. “Because they stumble from one condition to the other?”

“It may be so,” Dabir assented. “I find much of our lives fall somewhere in between, but it is those things that drive us. The only solace from sorrow is the wisdom it grants us.”

“What wisdom do you gain from such pain?” Even a dullard could not have failed to hear the raw anguish in her voice, as of someone who has suffered unspeakable torment. It had not been hers, in truth, but through her magics, she had experienced them just as their owners had.

“It depends upon the pain. Sometimes we see that we’ve misjudged. Sometimes we discover of our own ignorance, or prejudice.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “we learn to ask forgiveness.”

“Even of ourselves,” Dabir added. “But then sometimes we learn that life is brief, and we must better savor our family and friends and fortune, for all too quickly they may be gone.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, “yes, I see. You are right, oh man. I should learn from the pain of these memories, and my own mistake, and not make further ones. I better understand you humans, and that is all that I first wished.”

“That is all many of us wish,” Dabir said.

“How curious. I shall leave you now. It may be that I will seek you again before you are become clay, and speak to you on other matters.”

“I will look forward to it,” Dabir said.

She grew then to a searing flame so that the two of us had to look away even as we threw our arms before our eyes, so greatly did she flare. By the time we had blinked away the brightness, she had vanished utterly.

Acteon and his fellow plotter we turned over to the soldiers, who had arrived in time to see the djinn’s departure, thus further fuelling our legend, for within a few hours stories spread through the city that Dabir and I were tamers of djinn.

Acteon and his ally were locked away in the palace dungeons for a time, though it eventually came to pass they were traded for a hefty contribution to the treasury. Truly Acteon had powerful friends in the court of the empress of the Greeks.

As for the memories, we collected all the bottles. Almost every individual visited by the djinn had two, but we found only one for the general, and Dabir and I – after arranging for storage for the others – made our way across the city that very night. Taweel came with us, and he waited to one side in the general’s courtyard as we spoke with his superior.

Almost it had been time for sleep, for the stars were unveiled and shone down upon the city in cold splendor. A pair of lanterns hung on pillars supporting the second floor balcony and lit the spray of the fountain in the courtyard’s center.

The old man greeted us formally. He wore the same clothes from earlier, and I wondered if he had been pacing back and forth the entire time we had been separated, for he remained quite tense.

Once we had exchanged greetings, and Dabir explained we had stopped the Greeks, spoken with the djinn, and recovered the bottles, the general grunted in amazement.

“Your reputation as miracle workers is well earned,” the general said. “Do you have it?”

“We found only one bottle labeled with your name,” Dabir said, and I presented it, a small pretty thing of green glass as long as my forearm, with a black stopper.

As the general reached for it, Dabir said: “General, I urge caution. Your enemies no longer have access to this memory. If this is the bad one, it is one you chose yourself to excise. You said earlier you cannot remember the battle. Is there no one you can ask for details?”

The general shook his head. “I have thought to write my surviving staff officers, who are with other companies now, but the matter shames me. It was a hard fight — much of my staff died that day.”

“The general himself was gravely injured,” Taweel said.

“Taweel is new to my service,” the general added, although I had long since inferred that. The old man flexed his fingers at me, and so I handed off the bottle.

He unstopped it on the instant and pressed it to his lips. He drank it all in a single gulp, then lowered it.

Truly, he looked as my brother’s wife had when we brought her the news of his death, may peace be his. His jaw dropped slack and his eyes rounded, and the heartbreak was writ so deeply that his very soul was vulnerable and open to us.

“God, no,” he said softly. His eyes tracked to Dabir. “I should have better covered the left flank. My old friend Fahim, he warned me… But I did not heed.” Absently he shook his head, and he spoke on. “It was a near thing. He and his troopers closed the gap and held it, and died almost to a man. God forgive me. It was my fault. All those men, and my best friend, dead, and it is my fault.” He thrust forth the bottle, his eyes pleading. “Take it back. Please, by all that is righteous, take it from me and put it back in the bottle.”

But that was not a request we had the power to grant.

 

[1] The Byzantine Greeks and the people of the caliphate would likely have referred to themselves as Roman.

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Howard Andrew Jones lives in a lonely tower by the Sea of Monsters with a wicked and beautiful enchantress. His Ring-Sworn trilogy and his two historical Arabian fantasy novels from St. Martin’s were critically acclaimed by Publisher’s Weekly and other review outlets. He has also authored four Pathfinder novels and dozens of published short stories.

He was the driving force behind the rebirth of interest in Harold Lamb’s historical fiction, and assembled and edited 8 collections of Lamb’s work for the University of Nebraska Press. He is the editor for the sword-and-sorcery magazine Tales From the Magician’s Skull and served as Managing Editor of Black Gate magazine. When not helping run his small family farm or spending time with his wife and children, he can be found hunched over his laptop or notebook, mumbling about flashing swords and doom-haunted towers. He’s worked variously as a TV cameraman, a book editor, a recycling consultant, and as a writing instructor at a mid-western college. He can be found lurking at www.howardandrewjones.com, where he blogs about writing craft, gaming, fantasy and adventure fiction, and assorted nerdery. He holds a third degree black belt in Shatokan Karate and wrote this bio while eating stale popcorn.

Leeman Kessler is an actor, podcaster, and actual mayor. He is most known for portraying HP Lovecraft on the web-series Ask Lovecraft, providing the voice of Roger on Moonbase Theta Out, and curating Always Has Been, the compendium of weird Ohio lore on tiktok as MayorLovecraft. You can find out more at www.leemankessler.com

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