While the ironwood staff was the most obviously practical of the treasures I found on my first adventure, the lamp was by far the most alluring. Such lamps were famous, and assumed to be lost or spent centuries ago when the vultures picked the carcass of that once great empire clean. The lamps were among the greatest treasures of Old Qammuz, the marks of their mastery over the world.
On the tarnished surface of the lamp's brass skin was an inscription. I was pleased when I was able to determine that the language was in fact Old Qammuz, long dead like the empire where it had been spoken. Translation took more time, and would have been impossible if not for the expansive library at Thunderhead. For all his faults, Rhadoviel was ruthless when it came to the acquisition of books, and I reaped the benefits.
The inscription read, to the best of my knowledge:
Mighty King, this lamp is the prison of Zhahllaia the Enlightened. Call her forth and she must obey.
The lamp carried a thin aura of magic. A true lamp, one containing a djinn, should carry an aura like a great storm. An aura Lavinia would not have missed. Though I believed my first companions had treated me fairly, I bore no illusions. Had this been a lamp with a proper aura, I would not have been allowed to have it.
The question the aura, flickering like a guttering candle, demanded was simple. A truly inert lamp, one without its djinn, should have no magical aura at all. I was faced with a conundrum, and I was jealous enough that I wasn't going to share it with the old man. This was my treasure and thus my mystery. I would solve it, and whatever secrets the lamp held would be mine and mine alone.
Some of my obsession with the lamp was sentimental. It reminded me of Mira. I stayed with her in my mind often, ruminating over the delicious things she had done to me. Self-pleasure had never been a stranger, but after Mira, it became a close companion.
Most of the books on the Qammuzi were unsurprisingly in their language and my command was limited to painstaking translation. Luckily, there was one in Elven, and the wizard who couldn't read Elven was a piss poor excuse for a conjurer, according to Rhadoviel. I used this as my primary resource in my hunt for information on the lamp. Inside I found a single reference to a Zhahllaia, identifying her as some kind of councilor to the king, but I had no way of knowing it was the same Zhahllaia. For all I knew, that was a common Qammuzi name.
My mind came to the decision that my heart had come to the instant the lamp had been handed to me among my spoils. I would attempt to summon forth this Zhahllaia. I'd need to be careful, of course. The aura implied something was in the lamp, and it might no longer be the djinn. I might have a fight on my hands. Fortunately, I was blooded in a barrow, and so the lamp held no dread for me. I prepared a suite of combat spells and when the day came that I could delay no longer, I was ready to do battle with whatever emerged.
I was cautious enough that I wouldn't invoke whatever remained in the lamp inside Thunderhead itself. The danger would be too great and if I did somehow release a true danger, Rhadoviel would have my hide.
A steep pathway runs from the northern side of the tower down the western-facing cliff to the rocky shore below. A high tide will swallow the beach, but at low tide, the area is dotted with pools filled with all manner of creatures. Rhadoviel shunned this beach, despite his familiar taking the form of a cyclopus. It made this area perfect whenever I wanted privacy.
My familiar Oddrin knew something was the happening the second we left the tower. He spread his wings, catching the wind, floating gracefully on the chilly gusts that blew in from the ocean. I picked my way down the stone steps that were surely older than Rhadoviel himself to the shore. I was alone in both directions. If I followed the beach to the south, half a day of walking would get me to Burley Shoal. To the north, there was nothing save a dark forest that occasionally spit out ravening tribes of orcs and trolls.
I made my way to a flat rock where a fold in the cliff blocked even the top of Thunderhead. I was being overly cautious, even superstitious, but it paid to be overcautious when dealing with wizards. Frigid salt mist tickled my face. I set the lamp down in front of me and readied my staff. "Zhahllaia the Enlightened?" I ventured. Nothing happened. I tried again. The lamp was perversely still. Inspiration hit, and I tried the invocation in my terrible Old Qammuz.
The lamp shivered, threads of white smoke spilling from the spout. The smoke collected, growing and thickening in a cloud that was untouched by the breeze coming off the water. What had been threads turned into a stream, then a river of smoke. Soon, the cloud was larger than a human being, looming over me but resolutely keeping its distance. A shadow moved within, growing, as though approaching from a long hallway.
She
stepped from the smoke, and my voice fled.
Zhahllaia the Enlightened, for that was the only person who it could possibly be, appeared as a young woman, no older than me. Her hair, a deep brown that was nearly black, was straight and fell to the small of her back. She had fine, soft features, with wide, gold-flecked eyes, a modest nose, and an aristocratic mouth with full lips and even teeth. Her skin was olive, though she carried a bronzeish metallic tint. She was petite and slender, her figure softer than the reedy muscles of Black Mira. Her breasts were soft, bigger than Mira's, with dark, metallic-tinted nipples.
I knew this because she was nearly nude. She wore elaborately-engraved bronze bracers with turquoise adornments on her wrists and ankles. A golden ring sat over her flat belly, haloing her navel. Delicate golden chains radiated from this ring, wrapping about her hairless body in a fetching web. Her sex, modest and neat, sat at the apex of her lissome thighs. It was the first I had seen in the light of day and I tried not to stare, though it was the loveliest thing I had ever beheld.
She regarded me with a bored expression, speaking in a language I had never heard. Then it dawned on me. "Of course, you speak Old Qammuz. I should have prepared something." A conversation in Old Qammuz would be impossible, but I could at least write something out and read it all in one go, explaining who I was and that I was new to the language.
Then, in a lovely liquid accent, she said, "This is your language? Very well. I am Zhahllaia the Enlightened. Before you make your commands, know my last wish has been spent. You may return me to my prison."
"You speak my language?"
"I speak every language," she said mildly. "If I am not mistaken, yours is related to the barbarous tongue of the savage northern tribes. This fact does not fill me with confidence, nor does the fact that you summon me to this barren shore."
"You're in the northwesternmost part of Rhandonia," I informed her.
"I have never heard of such a place, but I have never journeyed into the land of the barbarian." Her eyes flicked to Oddrin, who landed on my shoulder. My familiar let out a confused trill. "A familiar. Then you are a sorcerer?"
"An apprentice."
"Unfortunate. Despite your savage origins, you should be able to understand this. My power is exhausted, my final wish granted. You may return me to my prison."
"Prison?"
"The lamp from which you summoned me," she said, like she was talking to the village idiot.
"Why do you want to return to a prison?"
"I am useless. As I said."
"Do you
want
to be in prison?"
"I have no choice. Absent of favors, your kind has no use for mine."
"Then I'm giving you a choice."
She cocked her head, for the first time really looking at me. "Do you have the power to break a curse?"
"I can try. You can help."
"I cannot. A condition of the curse."
"That's how they compel your people? The djinn?"
She held up her bracers and nodded to the ones on her ankles. "Enchanted, binding us even past the time we have power to remake the world. Our wishes are used up and then we are left to languish. Forever."
"That's awful."
"That is the way of things."
I only noticed then that the smoke was gone, having vanished at some point during our conversation. I had been too fascinated by her loveliness. I stuck a hand out. "I'm Belromanazar."
She looked at my hand, an amused smile quirking her lips. "You truly know nothing of djinn."
"Your people are more legend than reality these days."
She stuck a hand out to touch mine, and it passed through. It felt like a cool breeze brushing over my skin, the secret, subtle pleasure of the caress of breath over the nape of my neck. "Our kind cannot touch," she said.
I deflated, but mentally, I was already promising to figure out a way around that. I was besotted with her. "Would you teach me Old Qammuz?"
