Chapter 12

“Who are you?” asked Pukah in astonishment.

The woman who had been hovering over the young man whirled in fear. At the sight of Pukah, she instantly disappeared.

“Wait! Don’t go!” Pukah cried. “Beautiful creature! I didn’t mean to frighten you! Don’t leave! I—She’s gone.” The djinn gazed around disconsolately. “What was she? An immortal, of course, but like none I’ve seen in all my centuries!”

Coming nearer the unconscious youth, Pukah felt about in the air with his hands. “Are you here, lovely being? Show yourself. You needn’t be afraid of Pukah. Gentle Pukah, I am called. Harmless as a human babe. Come back, dazzling enchanter! I want only to be your adoring slave, to worship at your feet. Such small, white feet, peeping beneath your white gown, hair the silver of starlight, wings like a dove. . . Wings! Imagine that! And eyes that melt my heart!

“Nothing. She’s gone.” Pukah heaved a sigh, his shoulders slumped. “And I am desolated! I know what you are going to say.” He raised his hand to forestall any argument that might be forthcoming from his other half. “You, Pukah, are in too much trouble already. The last thing you need is a female—even if she did have wings. Because of you, Sheykh Zeid and twenty or so thousand mad meharistes—give or take several thousand—are going to sweep up out of the south and murder us all. Thinking to right this by trying to bring about peace between Quar and Akhran so that the tribes can separate and no longer prove a threat to Zeid so that Zeid would go back to his camels and leave us in peace, I went to Kaug—may sting rays swim into his pantalons—and told him that all three tribes were gathering together to strike out at the city of Kich.”

Shaking his head sadly, Pukah lifted the unconscious youth. “And it should have worked! Kaug was terrified, I swear it! Well, you know! You saw him!” This to Pukah’s alter ego, not the young man. “It was Quar, that archfiend of a God, who stirred up trouble. How was I to know the Amir was such a powerful general? How was I to know he had magical horses? How was I to know he would try to arrest my poor master and nearly get us all killed? I—”

“So it was you!” came a ferocious voice from out of the darkness.

Pukah nearly dropped the young man he was carrying over his shoulder. “Pukah,” he muttered to himself, glancing around swiftly, “will you never learn to keep your mouth shut? Who . . . who is there?” he called.

“Sond!” came the terrible voice.

The large, muscular djinn took shape and form, standing before Pukah, his strong arms folded before his broad chest, and a dark expression on his face.

“Sond! Honored friend! I would bow, but as you see, I am rather discommoded at the present time—”

“ ‘Discommoded!’ “ said Sond, his voice swelling with his rising passion. “When I am through with you, swine, you will not only be discommoded, you will be disembodied, disemboweled, disexcruciated, disenchanted, and dis-anything else I can think of!”

The young man, hanging upside down, his head and arms dangling across Pukah’s shoulders, groaned and began to stir. Wondering why Sond was in such a towering rage, and also wondering, uneasily, how much the elder djinn had overheard, and further wondering how he could escape with his skin and his ambition both intact, Pukah gave Sond a meek smile.

“I am honored that you take such an interest in me and my unworthy doings, Sond, and it would please me no end to be able to discuss them with you, but—as you see—my master has ordered me to tend to this poor madman, and of course, I must obey, being the dutiful servant that I am. If you will wait for me here, I will deposit the madman in his bed, then return. I swear, I will be back in two barks of a dog—”

“Two barks of a dead dog,” Sond interrupted grimly. “Don’t think you can escape me so easily, worm.”

The djinn clapped his hands together with a sound like thunder. The young man hanging over Pukah’s shoulders disappeared.

Pukah nervously began to back up.

“My poor madman!” he cried. “What have you done with him?”

“Sent him to his bed. Weren’t those your orders?” Sond said through clenched teeth, advancing one step forward for each step Pukah retreated. “I have done your work for you. Are you not grateful?”

“I—I am!” Pukah gasped, inadvertently putting his foot into a brass pot and nearly falling into a tent. “Dee-deeply grateful, friend S-s-sond.” .

Catching his balance, Pukah hopped along, trying desperately to extricate his foot from the pot. Sond, shoulder muscles bulging, veins popping, eyes flaming, continued to stalk the unfortunate young djinn.

“Therefore, since you are so grateful to me, ‘friend’ Pukah, do continue your most interesting conversation. You went to Kaug, you say, and told him—told him what?”

“That. . . uh . . . that the two tribes of Sheykhs Majiid al Fakhar and Jaafar al Widjar were united at last and that . . . uh . . . we were now rejoicing that a third tribe—that of the powerful Sheykh Zeid al Saban—would soon be united with us as well and . . . and”—Pukah thought swiftly—”I told Kaug that this was all your doing, O Great Sond, and that truly this is proof of your high intelligence—”

Thinking to flatter the elder djinn (also thinking that if Zeid did attack them it would be best to start laying the groundwork for casting the blame onto someone else’s shoulders), Pukah was astounded beyond measure to see Sond—upon hearing these words—go livid.

“You. . . what?” The djinn choked, near strangling.

“I gave you all the credit, friend Sond,” Pukah said humbly. Finally kicking the pot off his foot, he straightened and held up his hands deprecatingly. “Do not thank me. It was nothing but your due. . .”

Pukah’s voice died. Sond, bellowing terrifyingly, had soared to nearly twenty feet in height. His great arms lifted above his head as though he meant to tear the stars, one by one, from the sky. Pukah saw instantly, however, that the stars were not the target of Sond’s wrath. Plunging down like a meteor, the djinn descended upon Pukah.

Panic-stricken, the young djinn had time only to hide his head in his arms and regret his young life, tragically ended, visualizing himself stuffed in an iron money box, locked and sealed and buried one thousand feet below the surface of the world. A gigantic wind hit him, blew all around him, completely uprooting two palm trees. . . .

Then the gale stopped.

This is it, the end, thought Pukah grimly.

But there was nothing.

Fearfully he waited.

Still nothing.

Keeping his arms covering his head, his eyes squinched tightly shut, Pukah listened. All he heard was a pitiful moaning as of a man having his guts wrenched out. Cautiously Pukah opened half an eye and peered out over his elbow.

Bent double, his arms clasped around his stomach as though he were holding himself together, was Sond—sobbing bitterly.

“Ah, my dear friend,” said Pukah, truly touched and feeling more than a little guilty that he hadn’t spoken the truth. “I know that you are grateful to me, but I assure you that this display of emotion is completely—”

“ ‘Grateful’ !”

Sond lifted his face. Tears streaked the djinn’s cheeks, foam frothed on his lips, blood dripped from his mouth. Teeth gnashing, hands outstretched, Sond leaped for Pukah’s throat.

“Grateful!” Sond screamed. Knocking Pukah to the ground, he grabbed the young djinn around the neck and began bashing his head into the desert floor, driving it deeper with each word he spoke. “She is lost! Lost to me! Forever! Forever!”

Bash, bash, bash. . .

Pukah would have screamed for help, but his tongue was so tangled up with everything else rattling around in his head that all he could do was gasp “Uh! Uh! Uh!” at each blow.

Eventually Sond’s strength gave out, or he might have bashed Pukah clear through the world, where the djinn would have come out on the other side and discovered that Mathew wasn’t mad after all. Exhausted by his grief and his rage, Sond merely gave Pukah a final shove that sent the young djinn down through six feet of solid granite. Then Sond fell over backward, moaning for breath.

Dizzy, disoriented, and thoroughly shaken, Pukah at first considered staying in his hole and—not content with that hiding him from Sond—pulling the desert in on top of him. But as his head cleared, he began to consider the elder djinn’s words: She is lost. . . Lost to me forever. . .

She who? Lost how? And why was it apparently all his—Pukah’s—fault?

Knowing he would never rest content—not even locked in an iron money box—without the answer to these questions, Pukah peered up out of his hole.

“Sond?” he said timidly, preparing to dive back down if the elder djinn showed signs of renewed hostility. “I don’t understand. Tell me what’s wrong. Something is wrong, I take it.”

Sond groaned in answer, flinging his head about from side to side, his face contorted in a grief most awful to witness.

“Sond,” said Pukah, beginning to have the feeling now that something was really, really wrong and wondering if it was going to further compound his own troubles, “if you’d. . . uh . . . tell me, perhaps I could help—”

“ ‘Help’!” Sond propped himself up on his elbows, gazing at Pukah with bloodshot eyes. “What more can you do than you’ve done already except to take my sword and slice me in two!”

“I would be honored to do that, of course, if it is what you truly desire, O Sond,” began Pukah humbly.

“Oh, shut up!” Sond snarled. “There is nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do, not even Akhran.”

Upon hearing the name of the awful God, Pukah glanced nervously up into the heavens and scrunched back down into the hole.

“You. . . spoke to Holy Akhran?”

“Yes. What else could I do?”

“And. . . what did you tell him?”

“I confessed my guilt to him.”

Pukah heaved a sigh of relief. “For which guilt I am certain the merciful God has forgiven you,” he said soothingly.

“That was, of course, before I knew anything about the hand you had in this!” Sond growled, glaring at Pukah. He sighed bleakly. “Not that it matters anyway, I suppose.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t!” Pukah said, but Sond wasn’t listening.

“I lost Nedjma the night Kaug stole her from the garden. Akhran made me see this. I was a fool to believe that anything I did would induce Kaug to give her back. He was using me. But I was desperate. What else could I do?”

In a few bitter words Sond related the story of Nedjma’s capture by the ‘efreet and Kaug’s demands that Sond separate the tribes or lose Nedjma forever.

“I tried to split them apart. It didn’t work. You saw that,” Sond continued miserably. “Everything was against me! Zeid coming out of nowhere like that”—Pukah squirmed uncomfortably—”and forcing the Akar to make friends with the Hrana. I went to Kaug to try to explain and beg him to give me another chance, but he only laughed cruelly. He asked if I truly thought myself clever enough to thwart him. Nedjma was gone, he said, and I would never see her again—until the day I myself was sent to join her.”

Pukah’s brow wrinkled in thought. “That’s an odd statement. What did he mean by it?”

Sond shrugged wearily, letting his head lapse into his hands. “How should I know?” he mumbled.

“And what did Hazrat Akhran say?”

“After I finally found him,” Sond said, looking up, his face drawn, “a search that took four days and four nights, he told me that he understood why I had done what I had done. He said that next time I was to come to him directly, then he gave me a stern lecture on attempting to subvert the ways of the Gods and reminded me that he himself had ordered us to find out what was happening to the vanishing immortals—”

“Why, that’s it!” Pukah cried.

“That’s what?”

“That’s what happened to Nedjma! Kaug’s sent her to wherever the lost djinn are. From what he said about your going to join her, we’re next, seemingly,” Pukah added after some reflection.

“Do you truly think so?” Sond looked up, hope illuminating his face so that it glowed in the dark with a pale, white radiance.

Pukah looked at him in amazement.

“Honored Sond, I am pleased beyond measure that you have recovered your spirits and that any poor words of mine have performed this transformation, but I can’t help wondering why this dread news of Nedjma’s being banished to the Gods know where—no, on second thought, to someplace of which they don’t even know—fills you with such joy?”

“I . . . I feared. . . she was. . . that Kaug had. . .” Sond’s voice trailed off huskily, his face growing dark and brooding once more.

“Ah!” said Pukah in sudden understanding. “Kaug?” He scoffed. “You say Nedjma is delicate and beautiful? Then she will not arouse Kaug’s interest. He ruts with sea cows. I’m serious! I have it on very good authority. . . Now, come, my friend.”

Pukah felt confident enough to climb out of his hole. Going over to Sond, he respectfully assisted the djinn to his feet. “I am always thinking, you know. It is my curse to have a fertile brain. And I have the beginnings of a plan. No, I can’t say anything yet. I must do some research, some investigating,” the djinn continued importantly, brushing the sand off Sond’s shoulders and putting the djinn’s rumpled clothing to rights. “Don’t say a word to anyone yet about. . . well, what you overheard me discussing with myself tonight, particularly to the master. All this is part of the plan. You might spoil it.

“And now,” continued Pukah, as Sond stood gazing at him in bewilderment, “I must go and tend to the madman as my master ordered. As if I didn’t have enough to do!” He sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Be of good hope, O Sond!” Pukah clapped the djinn on the shoulder. “And put your faith in Pukah!”

With that, he vanished.