“Why are you out here?” Snorri asks him, kneeling to be on a level, though keeping his distance. “The dead need to cross the river.”
The hound circles around to stand beside the milestone, and the boy reaches up to pat his back. “I left myself here. Once you cross the river you need to be strong. I only took what I needed.” He smiles at us. He’s a nice-looking kid . . . apart from all the blood.
“Look,” I say. I step toward him, past Snorri. “You shouldn’t be out here by y—”
Suddenly the hound is bigger than any Fenris wolf ever was, and on fire. Flames clothe the beast, head to claw, kindling in its eyes. Its maw is a foot from my face, and when it opens its mouth to howl, an inferno erupts past its teeth.
“No!” I screamed and found myself face to face with the djinn, at the heart of the sandstorm. Somehow I’d resisted its attempts to drive me out of my body again. Perhaps that child’s hell-hound had scared it out. It certainly scared a whole other mess right out of me, double quick!
I saw the djinn only because each wind-borne grain of sand passing through its invisible body became heated to the point of incandescence, revealing the spirit shaped by the glow, trailing burning sand on the lee side where the wind tore through it. Here before me was a demon as I had always imagined them, stolen from the lurid imaginations of churchmen, horns and fangs and white-hot eyes.
“Fuck.” My next discovery was that being chest-deep in sand made running away difficult. And the discovery after that was worse. Through the storm I could make out a body, lying sprawled on the dune behind the djinn. A momentary lull allowed a better view . . . and somehow it was me lying there, slack-jawed and sightless. Which made me the one doing the watching . . . an ejected soul being sucked down into Hell!
The djinn held position, just before me, illustrated by the glowing sand tearing through its form. It just stood there, between me and my body, close enough to touch. It didn’t even have to push me, the dune seemed eager to suck me down. Scared witless, I dug my arms down and tried to draw my sword but the sand defeated me and my questing hand came up empty. I grabbed the key off my chest, unsure of how it was going to help . . . or if it even was the key, since there had appeared to be an identical one hanging about my body’s neck when I glimpsed myself during the lull. I clenched the key hard as I could. “Come on! Give me something I can work with here!”
In the instant of my complaint the sand about me fell away revealing a trapdoor incongruously set into the dune, with me two-thirds of the way through. And as the sand fell through it, I fell too. I managed to get both arms out and hold myself there, dangling over a familiar barren plain lit by that same deadlight. “Oh, come on!”
Finding little purchase on the dune, and still slipping into the hole by inches, I grabbed the only other thing there. Part of me expected my hands to burn, but despite its effect on the sand I’d felt no heat from the djinn, only the blast of its wordless rage and hatred.
Beneath my soul’s fingers the djinn felt blisteringly hot, but not so hot that I was ready to let go and fall into Hell, leaving my body as its plaything. “Bastard!” I hauled myself up the djinn, grabbing horns, spurs, rolls of fat, whatever came to hand. With a strength born of fear I was two-thirds out of the trapdoor before the djinn even seemed to realize what had happened. Surprise had unbalanced the thing and though my soul might not weigh as much in the scales as some, it proved enough to drag the djinn forward and down whilst I climbed up.
Within moments the two of us were locked together, each trying to wrestle the other down through the trapdoor, both of us part in, part out. My main problems were that the djinn was stronger than me, heavier than me—which seemed deeply unfair given how the wind blew through him— and blessed with the aforementioned horns and barbs, together with a set of triangular teeth that looked capable of shearing through bones.
It turns out that when it’s your soul doing the wrestling the sharp spikes and keen edges are less important than how much you want to win—or in my case, win clear. Panic may not be much help in most situations, but well-focused terror can be a godsend. I jammed Loki’s key into the djinn’s eye, grabbed both his dangling earlobes, and pulled myself over him, setting a booted foot to the back of his neck and pitching him further into the trapdoor . . . where his bulk wedged him fast. It took me jumping up and down on him several times, both heels mashing into his shoulders before, like a cork escaping an amphora, he shot through. I very nearly followed him down, but by means of a lunge, a scramble, and a good measure of panic, I found myself lying on the dune, the winds dying and the sand settling all about me.
Quickly I pulled the trapdoor closed and locked it with Loki’s key, finding in that instant that it vanished leaving me poking the key into the sand. I shrugged and went over cautiously to inspect my body. Re-inhabiting your own flesh turns out to be remarkably easy, which is good because I had visions of the sheik and his men turning up and finding me lying there and soul-me having to trek along behind while they slung me over a camel and subjected me to heathen indignities. Or worse still, they might have passed me by unseen beneath my sandy shroud and left me to watch my body parch, the dry flesh flaking in the wind until I sat alone and watched the desert drown my bones . . . So it was fortunate that as soon as I laid a soul-finger on myself I was sucked back in and woke up coughing.
I sat up and immediately reached for the key around my neck. How much of what I’d seen had been real and how much just my mind’s way of interpreting my struggle with the djinn’s evil I had no idea. I even harboured a suspicion that the key itself had drawn those scenes for me, calling on Loki’s own twisted sense of humour.
The caravan outriders found me about half an hour later, crouched on the blazing dune, head covered with the ill-smelling blanket I snatched from my camel. The Ha’tari escorted me back to Sheik Malik, prodding me along before them like an escaped prisoner.
The sheik urged his camel out toward us as we approached, two of his own guards moving to flank him as he came. Behind him at the front of the caravan I could see Jahmeen, slumped across his saddle, kept in place by his two younger brothers riding to either side. I guessed the sheik would not be in the best of moods.
“My friend!” I raised a hand and offered a broad smile. “It’s good to see there were no more djinn. I was worried the one I drew off might not be the only attacker!”
“Drew off?” Confusion broke the hardness around the sheik’s eyes. “I saw the beast had taken hold of Jahmeen so I pushed it out of the boy and then set off at once, knowing it would chase me for revenge. If I’d stayed it would have sought an easier target to inhabit and use against me.” I nodded sagely. It’s always good to have someone agreeing with you in such a discussion, even if it’s only yourself.
“You pushed the djinn out—”
“How is Jahmeen?” I think I managed to make the concern sound genuine. “I hope he recovers soon—it must have been a terrible ordeal.”
“Well.” The sheik glanced back at his son, motionless on the halted camel. “Let us pray it will be soon.”
I very much doubted it. From what I’d seen and felt I guessed Jahmeen had been burned hollow, his flesh warm but as good as dead, his soul in the deadlands enjoying whatever his faith had told him was in store for a man of his quality. Or perhaps suffering it.
“Within a few days, I hope!” I kept smiling. Within half a day we would be in Hamada and I would be rid of the sheik and his camels and his sons forever. Sadly I would be rid of his daughters too, but that was a price I was willing to pay.
FOUR