Expedition journal of Nathaniel Faust, Curse-breaker and Master of Mystic Science 17 Jan. 20–
It’s always sort of odd to get a call from an old friend. Especially when it’s been years since you last spoke, yelling at one another as you walk in separate directions at the airport. Regardless, even if you parted on bad terms, it’s common decency to at least answer them. They did decide to call, after all. There might be a good reason.
I woke up to a warm breeze tickling my face. Odd, I thought, for January. I was sure I hadn’t left the big window open, otherwise I’d have fallen out and splatted in the middle of B— Street. And the attic didn’t have heating of any kind (to be fair, neither did the house, technically) which the frozen drool on my cheek could attest to. I mumbled the usual “I’m just resting a bit, I’ll get to it eventually” in case either Benton or Rel was up here to tell me about a client.
“I had hoped that I would get more of an arousal from you,” the voice sounded both close and far away, but I couldn’t ignore the distinct accent. I cracked my eyes, and, sure enough, her visionary form floated not two feet away, “and after I waited for you to stop snoring too.”
“I do not snore,” I rubbed my eyes, pushing my neck against the frosted over window, “did you find the thing? That…” what had she been looking for? “echo stone?”
“About five years ago,” she was not giving me any grace this time, “you said you would ‘keep in touch.’”
“Well, we’re talking now, right? Did ya hear I died?”
“I sent flowers to the funeral,” her tone was as flat as the tablet she swears is ancient u’dgr’al art, “now, are you at least going to pretend to care why I have called, or shall I ask Alastair if he could use a new Egyptian artifact for his museum?”
“If you even try to do that, so help me I’ll—
“So, now you are interested,” her smug grin was almost annoying enough to dispel the illusion right then, but she was right. I was interested, and not only to keep Alastair from being able to shove his asinine face in something that apparently mattered.
“What’s the haul?”
“Come to Istanbul and find out, I dare not say it over the ‘waves,”’ she reached forward and ripples dissolved the image. Whatever it was, it was obviously something good. Been a while since I’d last gone relic hunting. Last time I’d found a talking noh mask that nearly killed me.1I couldn’t wait.
I made sure to lock all 11 dream butterflies in their cage (one had died in the night, I blame myself) and dashed downstairs. Benton was sitting in the second floor library, like usual when he had nothing better to do, flipping through a copy of Earl Prestonbury’s Notable Dragonfolk of 13th Century Wales. When he saw me awake before the butterfly alarm was meant to go off, he apparently thought I was sleepwalking.
“Oh-! Master!” he started scrambling around the room, accidentally knocking over a stack of old cursed Viennese sheet music, “Uhh… just maybe… um… lie down, and we’ll—” “Benton, go grab whatever you need for a two day trip,” I picked up the Testament of the Eternal Wanderer from its place on the side table next to my favorite reading sofa, “we’re going to Istanbul’s sphere, so make sure to pack for somewhat warmer weather.”
1 See entry for 4 February, 20–
“Are—wha- oh,” my number two finally realized I was fully awake (to be fair to him, I have often sleepwalked/sleepread whenever I’ve been overindulging in spirit spirit. And I tend to also go on sleep excursions, as well). He gave a quick bow and ran off to his room. I used my master’s key to summon the door to my study. As per usual, Rel had sent up a bottle of soul draught using the ancient dumbwaiter. She still hasn’t said a word to me since last August…
After downing the foul contents of the bottle (she still added a hint of cinnamon to make it palatable), I dashed off a note to tell her that Benton and I would be going for a few days, so I would be using soulfire whiskey to sustain me instead. I sent it down with the empty bottle, much like I had every day for the past five months. That done, I grabbed a couple useful spell packs from my collection, as well as retrieving my trench coat, the silver rapier from the Locksholm museum, 2my blade, and the Wand of the Wyrdwitch from the Talisman safe under the desk, just in case I had to bribe her.
I was studying my collection of shabti figurines, wondering if it might be useful to bring a bit of Egyptian magic for the inevitable realm journey that comes with any trip to the still undisturbed ancient places, when Benton knocked on the door to signal he was ready. I decided to grab a lump of clay just in case I needed a shabti, and went out to the hall where my friend was waiting dutifully.
“Been a while since we went somewhere without a client, huh?” he stood to the side so I could lead the way to the east stairwell.
“Yeah,” I said, remembering something he might find interesting, “oh, by the way, Ale is gonna be meeting us when we get there.”
“She wha—” Benton nearly tripped on his own feet at the news. So, he must still have the hots for her, I was right.
2 See entry for 19 March, 20–
“She sent for you specifically,” I reached the globe-painted window and began the spell to make it open. Fortunately, it was only a matter of incantation, the actual magic had been cast long before I came into ownership.
“She didn’t,” whatever anyone might say about Benton, he wasn’t by any means dumb, “I mean, she wouldn’t even know I’m here again.”
“Yeah, well, won’t she be surprised then,” at this, my friend’s usually pale complexion turned a charming tone of rose red. I jumped into the window, feeling the pull as it connected me to the Istanbul temple.
A moment later, Benton and I were in the middle of a bustling city around midafternoon. The smell of strong coffee and spices wafted from the door of a cafe on the corner, and, though it was a touch rainy, it was still warm compared to New York winter. We had a few hours until the Linkage Sect opened its local entrance, so we decided to kill some time with touristy things: we had a cup of Turkish coffee at the cafe (tasty for coffee, I guess, but I still prefer energy drinks), visited the Blue Mosque (the Hagia Sophia was still closed for renovations to reopen prayer services), and watched the boats pass through the straits for a bit. At dusk the rain started up again, and some of the foot traffic died down. We wound through the alleyways of the older neighborhoods, listening for the Bell of Shades.
“Is that it?” Benton pointed at a shabby-looking doorway with a faded nazar symbol painted on it where a peephole would be on an apartment door. We stood under the eaves, straining our ears for the sound.
Bltingleting!
We were in the right place. I knocked.
We waited.
I knocked again.
More waiting.
Benton tried it.
Nothing.
I tried to look through the nazar in case it was a peephole.
Nope.
We were stuck.
“Usually it just… opens,” I pulled my trenchcoat over my head like a hood to stave off the cold rain. I offered the other end to Benton, who accepted the cover.
“Maybe it’s still not open?”
“The bell is ringing,” I countered, “maybe one more ti—”
“Did you ever think to try simply pushing?” the doors creaked behind us.
“Valeria!” I smiled, “you should have come out to see us! We could’ve gone for doner together.”
“You did not even think to bring food? Americans,” Ale muttered like it’s an American thing to not bring food whenever one goes anywhere. She stepped back, motioning for us to enter the temple.
The entire time, Benton was watching her like a kitten would watch someone working: silently, while trying to keep his distance and seem cool, failing at it spectacularly. When she retreated into the shadows, I actually had to nudge him to get him moving.
“I assume we won’t be eaten by snakes made of poisonous fog when we cross the threshold?” I held my companion back while I assured our safety.
“Come freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring,” she quoted, striding off down the immense hall without even bothering to turn her head while answering.
“Guess we can enter…” I tentatively stepped forward, and, satisfied that I was not being eaten by snakes made of poisonous fog, kept going, pulling Benton in by his arm. Our footsteps echoed throughout the ornate temple interior, reverberating off ancient Byzantine, tiled mosaic, and even older artworks. Dimly glowing oil lamps sat on the floor at seemingly random intervals, lending an air of emptiness and abandonment to the whole space. I kept my hold on Benton, just in case the spirits of the house were as mischievous as those in mine; we couldn’t afford to be separated, especially not in this place.
“So,” I called out at our ostensible host, still quite far ahead of us, “how long have you been keeping an eye on the Shadow of Constantinople?”
“About three months,” her voice sounded much closer due to the echo, “it is actually a lot more comfortable than it looks.”
“Yeah, right. You definitely didn’t just get drafted to be the temple-sitter after staying the night, right?” I had spent a few weeks in Istanbul before, working on a favor for its former master, Sanie al’Zili. There were usually not enough mystics in range of the temple to play a good game of türk pokeri. At least, not enough who were awake.
“Absolutely not,” her voice was more bitter than the coffee we’d had earlier, “I am absolutely… delighted to be in this temple for weeks on end,” our hostess turned into one of the branch corridors, and Benton and I had to run to make sure we got to the right one before the doors fully closed behind her. This new section was cramped and musty, the light coming from weak mercury bulbs strung along the wall. I had never been in this part of the temple before (not surprising, since the Istanbul temple exists in a realm underlaid on the entire city) but it was similar to the pathway that had led to my dormitory last time I was in town.
Eventually, we arrived at a curtained doorway. Benton pushed the elaborately patterned cloth aside and walked in before I could remember to stick with him. A stupid mistake; when I tried to follow I found myself looking at more of the smooth stone wall
Ale poked her head around a corner that definitely hadn’t been there two seconds earlier, “oh? Did you perhaps fall behind and get lost?” her sweetheart routine didn’t quite make it much further than her mouth.
“Alright, Witch, no more games! Do you have a serious venture, or do I have to show you what happens when people waste my time for a laugh?” I pulled out my blade as a reminder of both how dangerous I am, and how serious she knows I get when it comes to expeditions.
The wall behind the curtain dissolved to reveal a slightly larger and more opulent version of the basic room that could be found all over the temple. Ale reclined on a red divan, while Benton, sitting on a floor cushion, ate a small meal of pita, hummus, and olives off a short table.
“You always get sooo dramatic when it comes to your little adventures, Mr Big Shot Devil’s Dealer,” the witch sighed dramatically, “and yet you cannot even tell when something is a simple false illusion,” she giggled, “did dying make you lose your touch?”
I wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer. I sat across from Benton and nibbled on a fig, making sure to keep my arms covered by my sleeves. I couldn’t let it get out that my bond-marks were gone.
“I thought it was pretty funny,” Benton chimed in, trying to break the silence I’d left hanging in the air, “did you forget that I spent half a year studying demons here, Nathaniel? I know my way around.”
“You couldn’t get in the front door,” I muttered, looking around at the shadowy corners of the room. The other shoe hadn’t dropped yet, so it must’ve been somewhere.
“Yeah—but, that was because you usually take the lead,” he sputtered in response, apparently forgetting how he’d just dashed through the curtain ahead of me. He’d probably helped with the illusion, too. Ale could make him commit a murder in broad daylight while stark naked just by fluttering those eyelashes in his general vicinity.
I swallowed the fig, finishing my obligation to sit around trading pleasantries, “alright, what’ve you got?”
“Not yet,” the witch held a finger to her lips, “we are not yet all assembled.” “Who else could possibly—?
“Dayiman ghayr sabur, talibi,” the shadows on Benton’s left chastised me, in familiar, beginner-level Arabic (“the better for me to understand”:(.
I jumped to my feet, “nope! Not happening. If he’s involved, I will have to decline,” I practically ran to the curtain, hardly pausing to let out a “come along, Benton.” Sanie al’Zili let out the knowing, fake laughter that gave all of his students the impression that he was a friendly, grandfatherly teacher, and not, in fact, a pure-evil megalomaniac bent on mystical genocide on a dimensional scale. “You will stay, my boy. I can promise the reward will be sufficient to compensate you for your time.”
“Nuh-uh, nope. I don’t need anything badly enough to—
The curtain pulled aside to reveal nothing but shadows. The dark, solidified void whose invention gave my former sword master his title. I was being surrounded by them, too. Black, amorphous masses with no weaknesses. Benton was clearly under one of Ale’s trances, his eyes were just lazily pointed in her general direction. There was only one way out of this.
“Fine,” I directed all of my attention towards my traitorous friend, “what did you think you needed me to find, unless this was just a trap to kill me,” I let the last statement hang in the air, silently wishing the venom in my tone would magically manage to kill my old teacher.
“The Eye of Horus,” the old assassin’s voice constantly pulled at my attention, trying to get me to focus on him. I kept my eyes fixed on Ale, as she anxiously picked the skin off a grape. She isn’t with him, I realized.
“What of it? I thought you stole the thing from his tomb back in ‘74.”3
“Ifoundtherealoneinalowerleveloftheduatthanwherehumansusuallygoto,” Ale blurted, seemingly to relieve herself of the tension in the room. Her fingers crushed the grape into greenish goo as the rest of us stared at her (of course, Benton had been staring at her the whole time, and
was now starting to drool a bit). It took a couple seconds to process the outburst. “The ‘real one?’ Like, the—
“One that was ripped from his head?” The black-shrouded conjurer finally stood and moved out of his dark corner of the room, “we believe so.”
“If you two are in on this together, how can you not have—” I let the thought trail out, realizing what it could mean that two of the most powerful mystics with experience in relic acquisition were unable to get something on their own.
“We ran into a…” the witch considered her next word very carefully, “particularly stubborn obstacle. We decided it might be best to ask the aid of a more stubborn man.” “What she means, my boy, is that we need—”
“You need me to break a seal, right?” I interrupted. There was nothing else they could possibly need me for, unless it was a trap.
“We figured it would be… up your alley,” he made eye contact, forcing me to look into those black pools of infinite cunning and malice. They needed my blade.
“You need my blade,” I accused, “Ifrit and Taniyn are really only useful for killing.”
3 See “record of grave expedition beneath the Nile delta,” 3 September, 1974. The House of Life records
“Ha! You were always a clever student, just like me,” my former master’s face betrayed his false enthusiasm for a second, showing his envy for my blade. He glanced ruefully at his twin scimitars for a nearly imperceptible instant. I nearly tried to leave again, hearing him say how similar we were.
Fortunately, right then Benton cut the tension in the room by face planting in the bowl of hummus and stopping breathing. I leapt to his side, dodging my old master’s robes, to break the trance, which was obviously overheating his brain. His pupils dilated unevenly, and his ears were so brightly red his hair seemed flushed pink. I yelled at Ale to break the spell, and she responded by telling me that it was a minor lovelorn potion. Completely harmless, really, she said. Of course it had to be a potion. Everything always has to be complicated.
I pulled out my mortar bowl and plopped some of the contaminated hummus in it, along with some spirit spirit and a few drops of water from the sea of dreams. No reaction, which was a good sign that it would work (a more violent reaction to anti-lovelorn potion would probably kill whoever you tried to save). I finished the salve by cutting a tiny part of my friend’s arm with my blade, collecting the last ingredient of his infected blood and creating an easy place for the cure to enter his body. He immediately started breathing normally and fluttering his eyelids as soon as I dabbed the mixture on the cut.
“He will be fine to leave here,” the one whose fault it was that my friend nearly melted coaxed me to get up and leave him alone in a strange room, “he just needs rest now.” “I know that,” I resisted, “but I ought to stay and watch over him. If he relapses—” “I can personally guarantee that he will be fine,” Sanie Al’Zili held his hand up, and he muttered something which made the room feel… off, “I have frozen the room in time until we might return. Now, we must hurry: the shifting sands of the Duat will cover our quarry if we delay too long.”
I planted my feet firmly, stopping Ale from being able to drag me down the hallway, “look, I’m not interested in doing this if you’re just going to take it. Expeditions aren’t free, like cases are.”
“Of course! What if I offer you the false Eye of Horus?” The old man pulled a small velvet pouch with an almost entirely fadedTaff and Co. Jewelers label. The pale burgundy of the pouch shone with a silvery light, in case one had any doubts that it held a solidified moonbeam. “That’s… tempting. But why would you give up—?”
“A silver trinket for the flesh of a god? I thought you, of all people, would understand what is truly… valuable.”
I turned to Ale, who still looked anxiously at the conjurer, “so then, why are you doing this? If he’s only offering the—”
“He has the missing pages.”
“The missing—oh,” it dawned on me. Of course that bastard would have them. Now it made sense why she would be working with anyone, much less the Shadow Caster himself. I pulled my arm away from my friend’s grip, and motioned for her to lead on. If she was so dead set on this, I figured I might as well get something out of it. She led us down several passages, finally arriving at the gateway that connects the dimension of Shadow Constantinople with the Duat mirror realm of Memphis. But instead of going to the Egyptian temple annex, Ale muttered a rearranging of the portal’s spell, shifting the image from a similarly lit passageway to the one we were in to a much darker chamber.
Ale shivered, motioning for me to lead us through the portal. I would’ve preferred to send our other party member through first, sealing the way behind him forever, but I instead nodded and passed through the portal, my skin prickling with the familiar sensation of the Duat. Like being buried in cold sand just as the dawn is breaking, so everything is both blindingly visible and
eerily dark. I made sure to turn around quickly, just in case they decided to pull the trap I’d hoped to use on my old teacher, but I found that they had followed almost uncomfortably closely. “The door is at the far side, by the offerings,” Ale’s voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of a deep pit, much like it had on our last expedition together, when she’d gotten stuck at the bottom of a deep pit, and I’d had to pull her out.
I made my way over to the wall while she drew her wand and began casting a starbright charm. The wall was largely unadorned, with an incredibly smooth, seamless stone surface. The “offerings” were a few leather sacks of extremely dried meat and rotten fruit. Including bananas. They weren’t offerings at all, they were the remnants of someone else’s expedition supplies, or maybe
just a snack for a grave robber. I placed a hand on the wall, feeling it for any indication of magic. A light, nearly imperceptible sigh seemed to come off the cool limestone. I followed the direction it came from, tracing my fingers along the wall until I came to a pair of skeletons. They were dressed in khaki uniforms, and each had a bullet hole in the skull. A revolver lay between them. The wall thrummed here with magic.
“I thought you said it was by the ‘offerings,’” I pointed at the leather sacks several yards away.
“I did. They offered their souls to try to break out of this chamber,” the witch condescended, “too bad they were at the wrong side to get back into their natural world.” I sighed at her response. Neither body bore the signs of any kind of spiritual experience, nor of soul bargaining (something I am an expert on). I couldn’t tell if she thought as much, or if she was just being dramatic.
“Have you seen the sigil at all? I need to know what I’m dealing with here before I break it,” I turned to see Sanie Al’Zili standing directly behind me.
“It showed itself when I asked my friends to break through it. They could not, it is old, powerful, beyond even them,” the former head of the Linkage Sect put his hands in that evil summoning gesture, calling shadowy figures from other dimensions within himself. The shadows billowed towards the wall, touching it with their shapeless hands. A pale glow appeared in the corner of my eye: a spell in something that predated any hieroglyphs I’d seen before. These were more ancient and powerful than even the hidden spells beneath the Grand Rift at the site where Babylon was eventually founded. I knelt, and started pulling out my supplies.
“You can break it, right?” there was almost desperation in my companion of many expeditions’ voice. It would’ve been surprising, had the old man not offered the missing pages of her temple’s sacred manuscript.
“I should think so… lemme just—” I poured a vial of stardust into my palm and blew it over the wall. Instead of revealing the spell clearly in its entirety, the precious substance just stuck, twinkling, to the wall.
“Are you… sure you can break it?”
“Yeah yeah, if it were that easy, anyone could do it,” I muttered, “just hold tight, it’ll be a good minute.” I assembled a couple choice reagents in my mortar bowl, using the pestle to chip off a bit of the wall to use alongside them. While I mixed, the old conjurer started humming a familiar tune, which I’m pretty sure was just Arabian Nights from Aladdin in reverse. Ale paced the chamber, occasionally asking, again, if I was up to the task. After a couple failed mixtures, three further starbright charms, and the entire Aladdin soundtrack in reverse (both the original and live action versions), I hit upon a good-based mirror realm compound that burst into silvery flames. The smoke rose in a thin, vine-like manner, twisting around organically as it crept up the wall, eventually pooling to show the exact glyphs, that were previously just barely visible, clear as day.
“Is that it?” Ale’s voice reflected an eagerness that would put an otter who’s been let loose in a salmon buffet to shame.
“Nah, that’s just the first step. I’ll tell you when it’s done,” I brushed her away to continue working. She knows how I work, I thought, as I measured four ounces of bone from our dead friends, she’s just anxious to get the pages. We should be anxious about that eye…
I set to work, meticulously studying the glyphs against those recorded in the Testament of the Eternal Wanderer and, hopefully, disassembling the spell piece by piece. Sanie Al’Zili launched into the soundtracks for the direct to dvd sequels, while Ale eventually stopped pacing, and decided to try reading over my shoulder in case she could figure something out that I’d missed. As though she knew how to decipher ancient lesser-ghmnry’ed.
“Can you just use the blade? Please?” she asked at one point, rocking on her heels. “I could, sure, but it’s usually better to pick apart the outer sections of the spell first. We don’t want to accidentally rush into anything and reawaken an evil cosmic horror (not that I have any experience doing that).”
By the time the old man was halfway through the Lion King 2 soundtrack, having switched to the franchise after running through all of Aladdin twice, Ale was basically catatonic. Even though I figured I’d only managed to pick apart about an eighth of the overall seal (having had to figure out what it said, figure out what order to disassemble it, go about doing that, AND recording each section of the seal for posterity’s sake) I decided to relent and just get it over with. Benton would be recovering soon, and he needed to get out of the Linkage Temple before someone discovered him and put him to work.
I stood up, knocking my companion to the floor, wiped the drool off my shoulder, and drew my blade. I pointed it at the center of the wall, and cut downwards, scratching the limestone slightly. The smoke dissipated first, and a golden flash erupted from where the glyphs had been.
“Ow! So now you decide to just break it? What about ‘not wanting to rush?’” You could hear her eyes rolling as she picked herself off the ground.
“I figured it out, would’ve just been repetitive from that point onward,” I stepped away from the wall and waved my hand at it, “well? Don’t you like to be the first one in a new tomb?” Ale stuck her tongue out at me and pressed her hands against the wall. She pushed. Nothing happened. Seconds trickled by like the sand falling from the ceiling. Eventually, she threw her shoulder into it, which accomplished nothing except making her arm crack. She drew her wand and tried to command it to open. Nada.
“If I may, child,” Sanie Al’Zili pulled her away from the door, holding his hand up in a prayer-like gesture. He began invoking the powers of some forty-seven of the spirits within his thrall, the very aether began to cloud over with every word, darkening until he became truly enshrouded in shadow. The wall trembled slightly, imperceptibly. Then it started to shake, stronger and more violently as the dark powers of demons and otherbeings was directed against it. A seam began to show. Another. Several; the wall was not a single cut stone, it was a mosaic-like camouflaged door. The parts began to slide, some backwards, others towards us until the door sung out on some secret hinge. The other half swung back to reveal another, nearly identical room. The only difference was a large stone slab in the middle of the floor.
We approached it cautiously. It didn’t appear to have any magic at all, beyond perhaps some natural characteristic of the rock itself. There was no decoration, not even a name or a depiction of the buried. It was just a somewhat smooth piece of grey granite. Wordlessly, we positioned ourselves along the nearer side and pushed. It slid back like it was an air hockey puck; there wasn’t even so much as a grinding noise.
There it was.
A small body, almost like that of a child, lay in a small depression. It was so thoroughly mummified that the skin had the texture and appearance of cured leather, which was tightly wrapped around sticklike bones. It wore the remnants of what looked like something that might have once been a tunic. A faintly sweet smell, almost like teriyaki flavored jerky emanated from it.
“Is that the eye?” I pointed at the most glaring feature of the corpse: a singular golden eye that was much too large for the skull it was half embedded in. The other eye socket contained an incredibly rotten onion.
“Yes,” the old man reached for it, but drew back at the last second, “you. Retrieve it,” he pointed ifrit at me, too experienced in ancient curses to reach for such a powerful artifact in such a place.
“No,” I drew my rapier, using its longer reach to keep him at a distance, though I knew that he could still easily slit my throat faster than I could think to stab him. “That is a nice sword, talib. But it is still just a sword; you never learned how to infuse life into your weapons properly.”
“Perhaps, though I do have the advantage in these close quarters,” I transferred the rapier to my left hand and drew my blade.
“Fine, I will get it,” Ale reached down, muttering something about “hombres y sus espadas,” and touched the eye before either of us could react. I’m not sure why she did it; maybe she had a death wish I didn’t know about, or was so eager to get the pages that she didn’t care anymore. Whatever the case, as soon as her fingers closed around the glowing relic, the mummy jerked its head and bit into her arm.
A scream rang out, but I’m unsure as to whether it was her, it, or I who was doing it. Maybe all three of us, or it was just in my head. My friend’s arm began to turn black, withering before our eyes. Nearly on instinct, I started to cast the Light of Horus, figuring the protective
spell might work extra well with a part of him sitting right in front of us. Unfortunately, I had used too much energy earlier when I dismantled the door’s defenses, and nearly blacked out trying to free cast without Benton to help bear the burden. What was meant to be blinding rays of light came out as a puff of greyish-brown smoke. I dropped to my knees, wishing I’d been more careful about conserving energy, and that a miracle would save one of my earliest friends.
A slicing sound splurched through the space. As my vision started to clear, I saw that Sanie Al’Zili, the man said to have personally killed every child or married woman he’d come across, was kneeling over Ale’s body, wrapping a bandage around her hand. Or arm stump, rather.
Though I was able to see again, I still couldn’t move, and Ale was unconscious from the shock. We sat there for a while, during which time the old man murmured in a low voice something that sounded a lot like the story of The Ebony Horse, except that, at the end, instead of the prince and princess living happily every after, she falls off the horse while they make their daring escape. Though, of course, my Arabic is a lot less strong than my Latin or German, so it may have been me mishearing. I also must’ve imagined the tear in the corner of his eye as he finished.
I tried to move, and, finding that my body and soul had recovered enough to sit up, I pushed myself over to the others.
“Will she be ok?” Ale’s arm had been severed halfway between the elbow and wrist, and the bandage, though expertly wrapped, was already black with cursed blood.
“Perhaps… I am not an expert in life,” he considered carefully, “not anymore.” “Maybe I have someth—” I reached into my coat and my fingers brushed against the handle of a wand. I pulled it out, and saw that it was the Wand of the Wyrdwitch. I’d forgotten I’d packed it.
“Could this help?” I held it out.
“I do not know, wands are distracting tools. They weaken the spirit.”
“If I tell you how to use it, can you try a spell?”
“If you get the eye, I will help,” the slight hint of a genuine smile peeked through his stone-hard face.
I puzzled over the dilemma, ruffling through my supplies to see if there was anything that might help. I found a couple vials of various crystals, emergency dried fish for rations, some charcoal, and… a lump of clay! It had been some time since I tried making an animated figurine, but kindergartners can make little dolls out of clay, so it isn’t that hard. I wouldn’t need to give it any spells or the capacity for thought, just a simple command-following instinct. While I molded my tiny golem, I could swear I heard the old man telling another modified story, this time of Abu al-Husn and His Slave Tawaddud, this time having Tawaddud lose her examination, leaving her master destitute and forced to sell her for barely enough to last him a year.
This time, as I was able to prepare, I mixed a healthy portion of soulfire whiskey into the clay, downing the rest of it to give myself at least something to cast the magic. Once the tiny figure was dry enough to not collapse his little malformed body when set on the ground, I told it in Gaelic to go get the eye, and eat it as soon as Ale made a sound. As though that would be anything more than a tiny bargaining chip to use against my former master.
The plan went off without a hitch: the mummy’s mouth was still full of my friend’s now-completely-decayed wrist, and was unable to react in time to even knock the tiny golem over as it effortlessly pulled out the glowing orb. Sanie Al’Zili proved to be incredibly adept with the Wand, casting the absolyte revyrsyl spyll successfully on the second try. Ale woke up gasping, and golem ate the eye. Sanie Al’Zili then grabbed the figurine, dropping the Wand and letting go of Ale, both of which I scooped over to my side of the room.
“You can’t take him apart without damaging it,” I warned.
He looked at me, eyes filled with pure annoyance, “I hate when people make things more complicated for no reason, now end ‘his’ little time in this world.”
“Not until we’re all on the other side of the portal,” I insisted, standing and putting the unconscious witch over my shoulder, throwing in an “and we get what you promised us.” “Pah! You were always greedy. Fine! I agree to your terms,” the old conjurer moved towards the door, but I managed to narrowly beat him through it so as not to let him seal us inside. We then stepped side by side back through the portal to the Shadow of Constantinople. After returning the portal to connect to the Egyptian annex at Memphis, we made it back to the room where Benton lay, still asleep, of the divan. Ale woke up, we made the exchanges (the password to liquify the figurine was “golem1234”), and said our goodbyes. Benton and I returned back home by way of the Dawn Gate, which, unfortunately, only works one way. As we passed through its rosy doors, I could swear to have heard the voice of my former sword teacher whispering, “next time, you should be ready to lose our little game, Tajir AlShaytan.”
Expedition Successful.
About the Author
John (Jack) Turcotte is a sophomore from Minnesota majoring in history. He spent most of elementary through high school daydreaming about superheroes, and uses what he remembers for creative writing. The cat’s name is Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Read more on the Honors Blog.
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