If Wishes... Ch. 03-05

I glared, and the guards grew more alert, aware at least that this was the moment of truth. As had been true for Bekhat, what could I do but obey? It was clear that this was a trick of some kind, but its nature and kind I could not fathom. And so I nodded suspiciously to the sorcerer, I turned, I stepped... I flinched back from the web of crackling purple lightning that described exactly the contours of that circle in the dust.

The gasps of the guards, the rumpled little sorcerer's cry of triumph, the shouts of wonder and terror from passersby drawn to our little drama, none of them could break me away from the sight of my beloved Bekhat, and the sight of her face falling as hope was crushed. Then the wall of scorpion-stamped shields and breastplates crowded in and she was lost to me.

Chapter Five

Confined as I was, as tightly as if I were trapped in the same bottle I had found but a few hours earlier, I knew little of what transpired next. Clearly recognizing that the wall of brutes surrounding me a temporary solution, the little sorcerer quickly arranged for a tent to be brought and set up around me and draped in thick fabrics, cutting me off from the outside world.

I raged against my imprisonment for a time, hammering uselessly on walls of lightning, but I was never a man given to fits of rage, and these periods did not last long. Some shouts suggested that my bed had been found, and wondering just what they would make of it occupied a few candles' time. From the sounds I heard shortly thereafter, it was possible that my house had been demolished to make more room for the tent and its wardens.

For the most part, I brooded, gnawing on my own worry over Bekhat. I believe, based on the light that leaked into my little prison, that it was several hours I waited there, until I received a visitor, and when I did, it was not one I had expected. Who did I expect? Most likely for Eagle to return, perhaps with more sorcerers, possibly as much as a visit from the Pharoah himself. What I got was a young man I didn't recognize in a not-particularly-clean kefti.

We each took a moment to look the other over; he was clearly fit and well-fed, with a mop of black hair and a rather pronounced nose. His look of uncertainty broke into a grin which I immediately gathered was both his default expression and something that had gotten him both into and out of a great deal of trouble. He finished his inspection at roughly the same time I did, tilted his head to the side, and said "This is a Djinn?"

"You get what you get," I said testily. Though I felt neither tiredness nor hunger despite having stood in the same spot for hours, I was in no mood for such idiocy. The grin did not waver, and I noticed that he kept his teeth well hidden behind it.

"And a Djinn is what I get," he said softly.

"You do not look particularly much like a Pharoah or prince. What, my boy, makes you think I'm yours?" Given the whole 'constrained within a magical circle' business I had decided that any pretense to mundanity would be suspect to say the least.

I got an insouciant wink in reply as he knelt down and began rooting through a small bag that had been slung over his shoulder. "Respectfully, great demon, this does," he said, unfolding a length of verdigrised chain from within. "The sorcerer says that I just make a circle with it around you, draw it tight, and then flip it over and it'll put you into some tiny magic pouch." A shrug. "He seems to know of what he speaks."

A single glance at the chain, roiling with magic, confirmed that the sorcerer (presumably still Eagle from earlier), had told this young man the absolute truth. A bare few hours as a Djinn and I was about to be bottled and stolen!

"These, I think, sound like the words of a man who has been hired, and is here for payment. I dare say that whatever you are being paid, I can outbid it impressively." That finally seemed to register. The young man stopped fitting the chain around my circle of dust and looked up at me.

"What can you offer?"

"What can you imagine?" He sighed.

"Well, I'd like to not get my limbs ripped off by enraged stallions and the remaining parts dipped in oil and burned."

I did not need to do any acting in order to look perplexed. "Is this a likely possibility for you now?"

"Pretty well guaranteed."

"Because...?" I prompted.

"Know who Gawam is?" I nodded. In my previous life (earlier that day) I, like every other merchant and scribe in the Muizz Street area had paid protection to his thugs. He did not seem to have a surname, he was just Gawam, and he was feared above any of the city's authorities.

"I work for him." I made a rolled my hand outward in the universal gesture of Come On, Out With It."And I'm bedding his wife," the young man said. The issue with the stallions became clear.

"And have you considered stopping that, and perhaps fleeing the city as though your backside were on fire?" The sigh this time was yet heavier. I supposed that a young thief didn't get many such chances to unburden himself.

"Because I love her." Well, that was a horse of a different color, as I have since heard an American say; the boy was going to need some significant help. How could I resist aiding someone in whom I saw so much of my own lusty youthful recklessness, and who could aid me in return?

"Well then, we had best get started on making her yours, hadn't we?" I said with enthusiasm, grinning widely. "What do you have to work with?"

"Once I give you to the sorcerer... Three hundred silver shekels and this magic ring that hides me from sight." My face fell theatrically.

"It is a tragedy that I must tell you: I do not think it will be enough to change your fate." He nodded. "However, were you to have, for example, a Djinn in your debt? That would be something very different indeed. Even Gawam could not match such a resource." Any shopkeeper would recognize the look I saw before me: it was the look of a customer who has seen that which they need above all else and dreaded hearing the price they already knew they would pay willingly, regardless of what it was. I thought of it as a sort of despairing determination.

"What need I do?"

"Simply drag your foot through the dust and break this line. Free me!" That last came out more forceful than intended, echoing with the strength of a Djinn's determination. The power I held clearly had no more fondness for imprisonment than I did.

"And then?" He had made his way to the arm-crossed pose of deep negotiation.

"I will free my wife from whosoever holds her." At that his eyes widened.

"Another Djinn?!" he choked. The sigh was mine this time.

"No, my boy, she is mortal as you are and I once was. Her escape will be from bars and stone. After this, we will make your lover yours truly, and Gawam an unpleasant memory."

He stepped closer. I tried not to let my gaze dart to his sandal as he drew close to the circle, but kept my eyes locked on his. For a subjective eternity he stood, assessing me. At last, he nodded, and broke the line. Nothing felt different in any way, but the thief was illuminated as light poured onto him from what seemed like my eye level.

"My side of our bargain is complete, spirit, and in doing this I have betrayed a man of power." I refrained from commenting on how it appeared to be a running theme with him, even in the short time I had known him. He appeared sufficiently worried already. "I will sneak out of the city, and will wait at the Wadi south of Marjun for you to come and fulfill your own part." Without waiting for a reply, he took hold of a ring on his left hand fashioned to resemble entwined snakes and twisted it. At once he faded to nothing in my mortal view even as the bound magic radiated like a sun to my spirit sight. Thus hidden (and having answered just how he had gotten in initially) he slipped out the front of the tent and past the guards waiting there, out into the night.

I was free, and on my soul, soon too would be Bekhat. First, of course, was the most pressing question: where even to seek her? Assuming that she even yet lived.

Even as that despairing thought did its best to ruin my resolve, I became aware of a distant pull, drawing me in a direction I knew not. Somehow, I knew that this was Bekhat; that we were indeed linked inextricably, melded at the heart and soul. Focusing my otherworldly sight (an effort I can compare to attempting to cross one's eyes and then read upside down), I could just barely make out a string of gold, leading from myself out beyond the tent, and knew that at its end I would find my love. The trail was set, as was my resolve.

Those guards left behind to guard my prison were the first obstacle, and they were swift to discover together what it means to seek to bar a Djinn from his chosen task, wish or no wish. So focused was I on trying to keep that drifting string of gold in sight that the first was scarce more than a shadow in my eyes when he moved to intercept me. I later gathered that I sent him hurtling into his compatriot with a peevish flick of one finger before blurring out of visibility myself.

From my perspective, it was the world that blurred away. The golden thread grew to fill my sight, more solid and real than the walls around me, until I was not walking but moving through something like water, pulling myself forward with handfulls of glowing gold. Like a swimmer surfacing, I reached its end and burst back into the world, only then realizing that sight and sound had drained away until that moment.

I looked around in bewilderment, certain I had travelled quite some distance, but equally sure that I was where I needed to be. And where I needed to be was... Dark. And filled with soft, rustling things. And quite small. My impossible powers, travel through the very ether itself, and I was in a closet. I felt slightly betrayed by the anticlimax of it all.

I opened the door gradually, peeking out to see a bedroom fit for a prince or a very fine brothel, draped in eastern silks and smelling of crocus fruit and fresh bread. Seeing no one, I could not resist and hurriedly availed myself of slices of the rich, sweet bread that, along with the fish of the Nile, was at the core of my people's diet. A few slices of fruit, a cup of wine and I was refreshed, yet also as though the refreshment I felt was illusory.

I might have thought more upon that if not for a sound carrying from another chamber. I have never been able to resist the sound of a woman in ecstacy, it is true, but among the moans was Bekhat's distinctive voice. I hurried out of the bedroom and through richly appointed corridors, turning two corners before reaching an ornate doorway standing ajar. The air was sweetened with the sounds of pleasure, and having by now realized that I was in a hareem, I slowed to first appreciate the sight.

My first coherent thought was that whosoever had designed the building in which I stood was a genius. The sun was setting, but through some trick of design its light was yet reflected downward from the great dome above, gleaming from the entangled limbs of what I was able to gradually determine were my wife and two young women.

A pale, perfectly proportioned backside in a transparent slip of gauze first greeted my sight, its owner's auburn-haired head buried between my Bekhat's thighs. Judging by the grip Bekhat had on the young woman's hair, she was quite skilled, and my beloved was, I believed, moaning in enjoyment. It was difficult to be sure with a slim, dark-skinned woman kneeling above her and smothering Bekhat's cries with her own lower lips. The woman's eyes were screwed tightly shut and her fingers pinched one hard nipple rhythmically as she tossed her head wordlessly from side to side, glossy black hair sliding back and forth along her like a silken curtain. Her hips rocked back and forth along Bekhat's mouth, and in the gleaming light, there was a hint of the iridescence I had seen in my own saliva earlier. My lust boiled as I watched the concubine shudder under my wife's attention, her mouth falling open to release moans broken jagged by the fluttering of her stomach muscles.

The shared moans peaked, subsided, peaked once more and grew still. Bekhat slid out from under the barely-conscious concubine, licking her lips lasciviously, and pulled the other up. Her influence was clear on the paler young woman as well in her swollen pupils and distant look. I strongly suspected that it was only my darling's continued grip on that lovely mane of auburn hair that kept her companion from collapsing entirely.

Bekhat gave a soft kiss to the young woman, cupping one pale, full breast, and with no sign of surprise, turned her gaze to me.

"Is it not rude to linger in doorways, my love, and to stare?" She asked, stroking a fingernail along the curve of the concubine's hip and drawing a soft moan. "Will you not join us?"

Perhaps I should have paused to consider the circumstances, and whether it was wise to indulge in a hareem owned by I knew not whom. I did not. I scarcely noticed that my clothing dissolved itself into wisps of vapor as I strode to join my beloved.

Our kiss was hungry, our tongues eager, and my love guided her pale companion to her knees and her mouth onto my hardness as we kissed. Our fingers met tangled in the concubine's hair.

The warmth and wetness was delightful, the young woman's tongue skillful and throat welcoming, but it was Bekhat for whom I burned. Withdrawing myself and forgetting at once about all else, I lifted Bekhat and carried her to a pile of pillows, reclining her and raising her legs up to taste her myself.

She was well aroused already, and I noticed that the saliva that was present already coated not only her lovely pink lips but also the winking button of her anus. Inspired, I focused my own efforts there, gently teasing, probing, easing a finger within her to the music of her surprised, yet appreciative groan.

Rising, I placed my rod at her hindmost entrance and looked at her in askance; her eyes and smile told me to proceed but her cry of "Yes, my love!" settled any doubt.

Such tightness greeted me that I could scarcely believe it, and Bekhat's hands gripped my head fiercely, staring me in the eye. "More, my sweet," she urged. I obliged, pushing in to the hilt. " I feel so full!" She grinned fiercely. "Indulge yourself, love, keep nothing back, I need all!"

Each pull out from her drew shivers up my entire body, and each thrust back within was a discovery of what pleasure could be. I rode her mercilessly, pounding her and delighting in her nails clenching on my neck in time with her entrance clenching around my manhood. It was not long until I reached my own peak. When I burst deep within her, my own vision went to white, as though another vista of sight beyond the physical and magical had opened.

Bekhat and I returned to focus at the time time, eyes meeting in shared joy. It was with some regret that I withdrew from her fully. "I suppose now would be a good time to ask just where we are?" I inquired. Absentmindedly I reached out in a direction that no mortal could see and drew forth my clothes, barely noticing that they were of finer quality than they had been when they vanished. Bekhat stood and stretched, arching her back in a most fascinating way. Seemingly absentmindedly, she took a fist full of the glossy black hair I had admired earlier on the slender concubine. Pulling the young woman to her knees, Bekhat pulled the concubine's mouth to her own backside. "Clean me well, girl," she said cheerfully, lightly slapping the girl as encouragement in her efforts. She turned to me.

"The Prince's hareem, of course, my love," she said, pausing for a moan of enjoyment. "I am delighted that he took this idea from the northern Sheiks. He put me here as a safeguard against your good behavior, for which I am most grateful." With a look of deepest satisfaction, she released her grip on the concubine's hair and allowed her to fall to the floor, gasping for breath and frantically toying with herself.

"Could we not linger here a while longer, dear husband? There are many other tastes to sample," she finished with a knowing smile. I will admit that I considered it, but for once in my life, lust was overcome by good sense.

"Delightful as that sounds, my moon and stars, I fear that we have an appointment elsewhere, and I have little desire to see how quickly Eagle learns of my escape," I said, fastening my once-more existent belt with a regretful glance at the dark-skinned concubine, still lost to the world from my wife's attentions.

Bekhat paused for a last, deep kiss with each of the two young women, drew a silken robe about herself, and hand in hand we strode out. That it was directly through the walls felt nothing less than natural.

We were as a passing breeze, perfumed and sweet, to those we passed as we proceeded in short order to the Wadi where Ali awaited us, and new adventure with him, with the vengeance of both a betrayed sorcerer and his in-turn betrayed master at our heels.

-SLH