The Curse of Zohreh Read online

  ‘We must use the carpet,’ said Husam. ‘Gur, Kareen, come with me. We will fight the Wolves and rescue Khaled.’

  ‘My days as a fighter are over, and I would only be in the way,’ said Abdullah, his colour high, ‘as much as I would like to strangle those wretches with my bare hands. I will inform the Prince of what has happened, and pray for your safe return.’

  Soheila blurted out, ‘Please, let me come with you to find Khaled. Please.’

  ‘You, come with us?’ snapped Kareen.

  ‘This will be too dangerous –’ began Husam, but Gur stopped him.

  ‘She must come,’ he said quietly. ‘It is only right.’

  Kareen shot Soheila a suspicious glance, but said nothing, merely shrugged. ‘We must be back by midnight,’ she said. Quickly, she told Soheila about the advice Ebon Zarah had given her.

  Soheila whispered, ‘If we are back by midnight Khaled and I will call up my ancestor, together, and beg her to end the curse.’

  They all looked at her. Abdullah said, ‘Go with my blessing then, my child; help to bring my son back safely.’ He paused. ‘I think you will need the treasure of your house, to tackle such a task. You need to take the Talisman with you. Farasha, please take Kareen and tell Bikaj I ask he give the Talisman to her.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Farasha, excitedly, and flapped swiftly off, followed by Kareen. Soheila gulped and looked at Abdullah. ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘there is something I must tell you –’

  ‘Tell me when you bring my son back, child,’ said Abdullah, a tired smile lightening his face. ‘Tell me then. I do not need to know, now.’ He paused and turned to Husam and Gur. ‘Bring him back safely, my friends; he is the light of my heart.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Husam, clasping Abdullah’s hands. ‘He will be back here, safe, before you know it.’

  ‘I hope so. I pray to God it may be so,’ said Abdullah, and just then, Farasha and Kareen came back. Kareen had the Talisman in her hands. Without speaking, she handed it to Soheila.

  As Soheila took the box in trembling hands and gently opened it, an extraordinary radiance seemed to emerge from the box, lighting up Soheila’s face, smoothing out its harsh lines, its unchildlike gauntness. In that radiance, it seemed to them they could see the face of a man, a man in a great white turban, with startlingly blue eyes under waves of iron-grey hair.

  Soheila said, ‘Oh Melkior – Melkior of the Stars –’ and tears rolled down her cheeks. A voice said, ‘It is well, daughter, it is well. I will guide you.’ As the echoes of the voice died away, the radiance began to fade. But Soheila stood there with the box in her hand, the tears still rolling down her cheeks.

  At last, she turned to Abdullah and said, ‘One hundred years ago, on this very day, Zohreh was slain in this house. Tonight, Khaled and I will stand together, our hands on the treasure of my house, and we will lay my ancestor’s spirit to rest. She is a vengeful spirit, still, but I will lay her to rest, that I promise you, and bring this curse to an end, forever.’

  ‘I hope to God you will not be too late,’ said Abdullah, much moved. ‘Please bring me back my dear one.’ And with that, he turned away, so that none of them should see the tears in his eyes.

  ‘I will come with you, my lord,’ said Farasha, flapping up onto the old man’s shoulder. ‘I will help to protect this house, and keep you company, till they all return.’

  ‘I am grateful, Farasha,’ said Abdullah very gently. ‘You are a true-hearted Jinn, the best of this house.’

  Then he turned on his heel and walked away, his back straight, his head high, Farasha riding proudly on his shoulder. There was a short silence.

  ‘As to me, I’d better try and rescue my Jinns before the night’s out, or I won’t be able to call myself a Jinn master any longer,’ said Sharib, who had groggily come to his senses. He watched as Gur, Husam, Kareen and Soheila, clutching the Talisman, climbed onto the carpet. At a whispered word from the werewolf lord, it rose up into the air and straight over the garden wall, into the night. Sharib watched till they were out of sight, then, sighing, bent down to gather up the scattered pieces of his Jinn housing. It would be a long night.

  Twenty-four

  Khaled had been walking for about an hour in the desert when he began to hear a peculiar sound. He stopped and listened. It was not, as he had at first feared, the engine of a pursuing car. It was something else – a dull roar. What could it be?

  He looked up at the sky. The bright star he thought of as Melkior’s still shone brightly in the north, guiding him. The desert was silent around him. So far, he had met none of its feared denizens – not desert lions, not hyenas, not, most feared of all, afreets, evil Jinn who were said to roam this place.

  It’s not easy walking in sand dunes, even when, like Khaled, you are not a stranger to the desert. There were moments when he stumbled and almost fell. Sheer walls of glittering sand rose up in front of him like unstable, endless mountains, and he had to scramble up them, his calf muscles aching with the strain. He took a sip of water from time to time, trying to conserve as much as he could for the daytime. He had no idea how long it would take to walk out of here. He presumed they wouldn’t have taken him too deep into the desert – they hadn’t had time – but it is always slower walking in sand. And even if he managed to elude pursuit tonight, would he have managed to get somewhere more hospitable by daybreak, when the sun would rise and gradually fill the desert with its pitiless light?

  He slogged up another dune. It seemed to him the sound was getting louder. He frowned. The roar was changing tone. There was a kind of wild shriek to it, a sort of –

  He froze. Just below him, in the starlight, he could see something moving. A long, fluid silver form, full of feline grace. ‘Desert lion!’ thought Khaled. It was pointless trying to think of defending himself against it. He had no weapon. His only chance was to stay very quiet and still. If he made a move, the creature would see him and attack.

  The lion seemed nervous. Its tail switched. Its broad face was turned up to the sky, as if examining it. Its soft, heavy big-cat paws scratched at the sand. Then Khaled heard it growl, deep in its throat. In the next instant, it was bounding up the slope, towards Khaled. The boy’s heart nearly threw itself out of his chest, but he forced himself to stay still. The desert lion reached him. Its narrow, green eyes looked straight into his: for an instant, both boy and animal seemed suspended in time. Then the creature gave a deep, throaty roar, leapt past Khaled in a single bound, and disappeared up the crest of the dune and down the other side.

  Khaled had no time to wonder what had happened to spook the lion. In the next instant, a howling and a shrieking and a roar were upon him, as of twenty thousand demons all speaking at once, and he found himself picked up as if by an invisible hand, into the whirling, hot heart of a terrible wind.

  It was Kareen who first spotted the tent – and the headlights of the car, racing along the desert track towards it. ‘It’s them!’ she shouted, over the gathering noise of the wind. She peered down. ‘I can see the tent, and people by a fire. Follow me.’ Rapidly transforming into a great red bird, she swooped down from the carpet into the black night. Gur Thalab, who was steering the carpet, yelled, ‘Hold on tightly, I’m going straight down!’ In the next instant, the carpet plunged sickeningly, flying fast as lightning after Kareen.

  The two men by the fire only had time to glance up and let out a startled exclamation when the Jinn was on them, bird claws pointed straight at their eyes. Then the carpet flopped down on the sand, disgorging its passengers rather abruptly. Things happened very quickly then. Gur Thalab was up at once, and in his hand there was a dagger, shining bright and wicked in the moonlight. With a yell that was half a howl, he flung himself at Mahmoud, screaming curses in his own language. But the man was quick; in an instant, he had ducked and feinted, and pulled a small gun from his pocket. He fired, once, and Gur Thalab fell, red blossoming in his side. Husam scrambled up, the old executioner whirling his sword ab
ove his head. Shrieking, ‘Stay on the carpet, don’t put the Talisman at risk!’ at Soheila, he sliced at Mahmoud before the man could fire again. His weapon tore at the thug’s shoulder, making his gun fly out of his hand. The other thug, Tarik, forehead streaming with blood from the Jinn’s attack, staggered around blindly.

  The car stopped and two men jumped out – a very large man dressed in white robes, his headcloth pulled up around his face, and a fat, dapper man in a dark suit and dark glasses. Each of them had a gun and they began firing as soon as they got out of the car. Kareen yelled, ‘Everyone, get back on the carpet, push the protective shield up, it will stop the bullets. I’ll deal with them.’ Husam took no notice, and Kareen, seeing this, stood in front of him, spreading her flaming wings so wide that the light from them dazzled the gunmen, who fell back. Then she swooped on the white-robed man, flying straight at his face. Instinctively, he threw his hands up, and dropped his gun. Kareen touched it with the tip of her wing and instantly it burst into flames and exploded, setting the man’s robes on fire. Shrieking, he ran away and rolled in the sand, but was engulfed in an instant. Seeing this, the dapper man ran round the back of the car, Husam hot on his heels, his sword held high. Meanwhile, Soheila, disregarding Husam’s advice not to move, dragged Gur Thalab’s unconscious body to the safety of the carpet. After a struggle, she finally got him on, and laid the Talisman by his side, near the bloody wound.

  The dapper man fired. But his shot went wide and Husam knocked him down with the flat of his sword. He sprang at the man, whose gun went flying. But just as Husam grabbed him, the man jerked up, a wicked little dagger in his hand. Husam parried just in time, and now the man gave a great gulping sigh, and fell from a sword-thrust to the heart.

  Soheila gave a warning cry: Tarik was sneaking up on Husam, dagger in hand. With a roar of flame, Kareen tackled him, and he fell, screaming, then lay still. Mahmoud, who had groggily recovered, flung his arms up. ‘I surrender! I surrender!’ he yelled. His yellow eyes were frightened now.

  ‘Just as well for you,’ said Husam grimly. He trussed the man up thoroughly with rope he took from the thugs’ car. Meanwhile, Soheila had run to the tent. She hadn’t really expected to find Khaled there – surely he would have called out to them. But until she looked in and saw nobody was there, she hadn’t realised how afraid she’d been of getting there and finding it was no live boy but a dead body that lay there in the tent.

  ‘No-one’s here,’ she told Kareen, who, having returned to her normal shape, stood behind her, looking in. Kareen nodded. ‘That thing will have to tell us,’ she said, gesturing towards Mahmoud.

  ‘He got away,’ said the cowering prisoner. ‘I don’t know how. I didn’t see him go. It’s only desert around here. And he’s on foot.’

  Soheila had been examing the back of the tent. ‘A hole’s been dug here,’ she said. ‘He must have burrowed out.’ She looked at the dune behind the tent. ‘He must have climbed that.’

  Husam bit at his lip. ‘Yes. But what direction could he have gone in after that?’

  ‘Let’s get on the carpet,’ said Kareen. ‘We can fly over the whole area, see if we can see him. We can cover a lot of ground quickly in it, much quicker than one boy can walk. I think he would have gone south, towards Jumana.’

  ‘Makes sense. Let’s go. But first let’s secure that one.’ Husam pointed to Mahmoud. He trussed the man up even more securely and locked him in one of the cars. ‘He’ll keep till we return,’ said Husam.

  They took off rather jerkily into the gathering wind-storm, until Kareen caught a slipstream of air and settled into a steady cruise, so steady that Gur Thalab remained unconscious. The trouble was that though the carpet flew straight and true, and they were protected from the worst effects of the wind by the bubble of protection, the dizzying whirl of sand thrown up by the wind made it very hard to see down below, even though Kareen had turned on all the lights.

  Husam was grim-faced. ‘If Khaled is caught in this storm we might never find him – alive or dead.’

  ‘I think we’re going the wrong way,’ said Soheila. ‘I think Khaled would have more likely gone north. You see, the Mesomians were based in Jumana, and that car came from the south. He wouldn’t be wanting to walk straight into their path.’

  ‘But north is towards Mesomia –’ said Husam.

  ‘Yes, and so they wouldn’t think of him going that way.’

  Kareen nodded. ‘The girl is right,’ she said, and turned the carpet around so fast that they were all tumbled into the middle.

  For a while, Khaled had existed only in a whirl of noise, a roll of hot dust. He had been tumbled over and over in the grip of the wind, shaken in its howling waves like a bit of driftwood tossed in the ocean. He’d managed at one point to pull down his head-cloth so that it covered his nose and mouth, but though he’d tried to press his feet into the sand to gain a foothold, he’d been whipped off his feet more than once. Khaled knew these winds didn’t last more than half an hour or so, but that they could do immense damage. They had been known to swallow up entire encampments of nomads, to sweep great camel caravans off their feet, and to change the whole shape of the desert.

  He needed shelter – protection from the pull and snatch of the wind. The dunes were no use. There were no trees anywhere. Only his headcloth and his robe stood between him and the demonic power of the hot wind. And they wouldn’t last long. Worst of all, his water bottle was filling up with sand. In just a few hours it would be day and the sun would take possession of the desert again. If the wind hadn’t crushed him, the sun would, for sure. Its fiery passage through the sky would mark his end, he thought. Tomorrow was his fifteenth birthday. Zohreh’s curse would be accomplished. As she had foretold, he would die by fire – under the burning endless fire of the desert sun, maddened by thirst and weariness.

  The sky was completely obscured by the whirling sand. He could no longer see the star or its guiding light. He was completely disoriented, and no longer knew where north was. Even when the fury of the wind abated a little and he could walk, he had no idea if he was walking in the right direction, or if he was going around in circles. Real terror began to fill him, terror of the knowledge of what awaited him. What a fool he’d been to think he could work against fate. What a fool he’d been to think one could make bargains with vengeful spirits. It was obvious Zohreh’s spirit was not going to let him go, that he was destined to die and could not escape.

  In his present peril, he had almost forgotten about the kidnappers. Then, as the howling of the wind started to die down, it seemed to him that he could hear another sound: a humming, coming closer and closer. Panic filled him. Was it the kidnappers’ car? Or did they have some other thing – a helicopter perhaps – out looking for him?

  The wind was still blowing but nowhere near as hard as before. He had thought he’d feel relief when at last it stopped, but now he was willing it to go on. At least they wouldn’t be able to see him. Where could he hide? He looked up into the sky – and saw a set of powerful lights rushing down at him. They were almost on him. With an anguished yelp, he flung himself flat on the ground and, covering his face with his head cloth, began frantically to dig himself a hiding place in a windswept drift of dune.

  Soheila held the Talisman in the palm of her open hand. A soft glow radiated from it into the night. Her eyes wide open, she murmured soft prayers to Akamenia, and asked for the intercession of Melkior and the protection of the Talisman, not just for herself, but for the others on the flying carpet, and Khaled, lost in the howling wastes of wind and sand. She spoke Khaled’s name again and again, knowing as she did that something now spoke in her heart for him, that somehow he had changed her life forever.

  All at once, she gave a cry. ‘Husam! Kareen! I can see something white. Down there, look. It’s Khaled. He’s fighting the wind, but he’s getting tired. Hurry, hurry!’

  The hum grew louder and louder, closer and closer, the lights more blinding. Khaled waited, throat dry, heart thum
ping, in the suffocating silence of his sandy hidey-hole. He waited for the helicopter to set down and for armed thugs to get out and search for him. Instead, he heard the hum stop, and then a voice he hadn’t expected at all.

  ‘Are you sure it’s him? Hard to see in this place …’

  ‘Husam!’ Khaled yelled, jumping out of the hole like a jack-in-the-box, scattering sand in every direction, and making both Husam and Soheila shout in sudden fright, though Kareen merely frowned. ‘It’s me! It’s me!’ he shouted. ‘Oh, you’ve got the carpet. It works now.’ He stared at Soheila, then at Gur Thalab, still lying senseless on the carpet.

  Husam said, ‘He is our friend, who lies wounded for having helped us.’

  Khaled nodded rather absently, his eyes returning to Soheila. ‘Payem?’ he said, questioningly, his bewildered eyes taking in Soheila’s strangely altered appearance, and the box in her hand.

  ‘Not Payem. Meet Soheila,’ said Husam, as Soheila, staring at Khaled, went first red, then very white.

  ‘Soheila?’

  ‘I am Soheila of the Melkior clan, Zohreh’s great-great-great-grand-daughter, as you are Kassim’s great-great-great-grandson,’ said Soheila in a very small voice.

  ‘Oh.’ It was Khaled’s turn to flush, then grow pale. He could not tear his eyes away from her startling blue gaze. His heart gave a little leap, and he didn’t know why.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Soheila, ‘for not telling you the truth from the start. But I couldn’t. You see –’

  ‘She wanted to avenge her ancestor,’ said Husam. ‘Didn’t know about the curse.’