A Life Less Ordinary (19 page)

“A bunch of infidels put up the money for the mosque,” Dervish said, bitterly. I blinked in surprise. I knew very little about Islam, but I couldn’t understand why one Muslim would consider other Muslims infidels. I thought that that was reserved for Christians and Jews. “This place wasn’t built out of the sincere love of Allah, or even out of a sincere desire to create a place to serve as both community centre and prayer hall, but out of the need to show off their money and bolster their Islamic credentials. If we were allowed to interfere in the mundane world...”

We stepped into a surprisingly large room. There were no tables or chairs, merely a set of cushions on the floor surrounding a sheet of plastic. It looked like a picnic ground and I realised, suddenly, that that was exactly what it was. Dervish waved us both to sit on the cushions and headed off through another door. Silence fell, broken only by the eerie sound of a preacher calling the faithful to prayer.

“Like most religions, Islam takes a very dim view of magic,” Master Revels explained. He seemed perfectly at ease on the cushions. I was merely grateful that they weren’t hard wooden chairs, ones that would have hurt my rear end. “The mystics who founded the Unseen Words of Allah were often persecuted by their fellow Muslims before they went underground and became part of the Magical World. They maintained their links to secret societies and groups within the Islamic World, but mostly they do nothing more than try to defend it against mystical threats. It’s not an easy task. The deserts used to be home to a great many mystical creatures and they’re waking up.”

I nodded, looking around the room. There was a painting on one wall that caught my eye, so I stood up and looked at it. It showed a man wearing Muslim clothes – with a very long beard and holding a bottle in his hand – confronting a blue-brown creature with flaming eyes. I had seen something like it before, but not in the magical world. It was very like the Genie from
Aladdin
, yet it looked far darker and unpleasant, with long claws and very nasty eyes. The caption at the bottom was in Arabic. I couldn’t read it at all.

“That’s one of the most famous paintings in the magical world,” a voice said, behind me. I turned to see a young girl, standing just behind me. I couldn’t understand how she had crept up on me until I realised that she was barefoot. Her feet had made no sound at all on the carpet. “The painting is called
The Confrontation of King Solomon, Beloved of Allah, with the Lord of the Jinn
. According to legend, King Solomon was charged by Allah to capture the powerful Jinn – what you would call Genies – and imprison them in various magical containers. Once they were bound, the spells holding them prisoner charged them to perform three wishes for whoever released them before they could go free – and, as long as the third wish was always for the Jinn to return to the lamp, it worked perfectly.”

She smiled. It was a pleasant open smile. “And sometimes the person who released the prisoner was not smart enough to order the genie to return to its prison,” she added. “The genie broke free and wreaked havoc over the world. They have no sense of human morality to curb their antics. Or so legend has it.”

“It’s not legend, but simple fact” Dervish said, as he re-entered the room. A tray was floating in front of him, hovering over to the plastic sheet. I felt my mouth start to water as I smelled the curry and rice. “This is my daughter, Jewel of My Heart.”

I blinked at the name, and then understood. They wouldn’t want to share her real name with anyone, not even his friends. “I am pleased to meet you,” I said, formally. “You may call me Dizzy.”

“If you want to see something really special,” Jewel of My Heart said, “look over there.”

I followed her pointing finger. There was something there, yet it was cloaked behind an unusually powerful glamour-spell. I felt myself walking towards it, staring into the haze...and suddenly it snapped in front of me. There was a sword, its blade plunged within a cube of black rock, just waiting for someone to reach out and draw it from the stone. My hand crept forward before I realised that I was not worthy. I couldn’t even touch the hilt.

“That sword belongs to all of us,” Dervish said, quietly. “According to legend, Allah gave it to humanity, promising us that whenever it was truly needed, it could be drawn from the stone. It is powerful enough to destroy one of the Great Powers, if used in Allah’s service. The last time it was used, many years ago, it destroyed a devil some fool had unleashed upon the world. And then, once it was returned to the stone, it was brought to Edinburgh. The last person to use the sword was granted a vision, warning him that the sword would be needed here.”

“The legend states that the last task of whoever holds the sword is to put it in place for his or her successor,” Master Revels said, as he beckoned me back to the cushions. “Whatever the sword is needed for, it will be needed in Edinburgh, something that has caused a great many sleepless nights among people here. The person who carried the sword hasn’t always succeeded in saving the world or even saving themselves.”

I blinked. “But the world is still here,” I pointed out. “Why...?”

“You can look up the legends later,” Dervish promised me. He waved a hand towards the bowls of curry. “Please, eat; it is given freely and without obligation.”

The curry tasted great, I decided, after two bites. The chicken was nicely spiced, with the rice cooling it down just enough to make it palatable. Dervish took several bites of his own curry and then leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. I realised that he really didn’t want to talk about whatever had happened in Mecca, even though it was important. Master Revels didn’t press him. He just ate his curry and waited, so I did the same. I couldn’t help glancing back towards the painting though. Was it my imagination, or was the Jinn changing position every time I looked?

“A decade ago, a number of girls died in Mecca,” Dervish said, finally. I realised, finally, what he was battling with. He was
ashamed
. “Because of the circumstances of their death, they renounced Islam and cursed Allah in their last moments. They earned themselves a sentence to Hell, but Allah, the Most Merciful, allowed them to remain on Earth as ghosts. They haunted the city for years before He finally relented and allowed them to reincarnate in new bodies. He punished their tormentors most thoroughly.”

I sensed, more than heard, part of his underlying emotions as he spoke on. He was ashamed of what had happened, ashamed...just as I had been ashamed when I’d seen the slaves. It might even have been worse for him because he hadn’t done anything to try to save the girls while they were still alive. Even if he hadn’t been there at the time, he still felt guilty and shamed of his failure. It wasn’t his failure, yet...I knew exactly how he felt.

“The same could have happened to the ghosts at the Kirk,” he added. “They could have been taken from their resting place and reincarnated.”

“Perhaps,” Master Revels said. “If so...”

“This isn’t the place to seek answers for them, I suspect,” Dervish admitted. He winked at Master Revels. “I just wanted to invite you for lunch.”

“For which we are grateful,” Master Revels assured him. I finished my curry and put the bowl aside. “If we need further assistance...”

“You are welcome to call on me,” Dervish said, seriously. He stood up and I realised that the meal was over. “If someone is actually kidnapping ghosts...well, there’s no reason why they couldn’t use something like a Jinn bottle, is there?”

He waved a hand towards the painting. “And if they are,” he added, “you know where you have to go look.”

“Holy Corner,” Master Revels agreed. He held out a hand and Dervish shook it firmly, before bowing to me. “If you will open the door for us...”

“Of course,” Dervish said. “May Allah go with you.”

Chapter Seventeen

“That was a waste of time,” I said, once we had started to walk back towards the Meadows. I felt warm because of the curry, but otherwise I felt as if we had wasted an hour. “Why didn’t he tell us that he knew nothing right from the start?”

Master Revels smiled, humourlessly, and smacked my bottom. It wasn’t a particularly hard smack, but it hurt my bruised behind and I yelped. “A word of advice,” he said. “No one in the magical world ever tells everything they know about anything. Finding our friend there was a lucky break, the more so because he was willing to help us eliminate possibilities and steer us towards a possible suspect.”

I rubbed my behind angrily. “What kind of suspect is Holy Corner?” I demanded. “Come to think of it, why did your masters want you to investigate in the first place? Why are we even bothering to stick our noses into this business if we’re not going to do anything about it?”

Master Revels sighed. “My superiors –
our
superiors – are always interested in new and unusual forms of magic,” he said. “They maintain their supremacy by always being in control of new magic, or at least understanding it completely. It wouldn’t do to have some young whippersnapper develop a whole new form of magic and use it to replace one or all of them, would it?”

He tapped me firmly on the shoulder. “They exist to maintain the status quo, Dizzy,” he reminded me. “Anything that threatens the stability of the magical world, regardless of if it seems good or bad is a possible threat. It has to be investigated by us. Does that make sense?”

I nodded, reluctantly. “And besides, you did have lunch and got to see a different aspect of the magical world,” he added, dryly. “Did you like studying the painting?”

It was, I realised, a more pointed question. “The genie was moving in the picture,” I said. I was sure of it now. Master Revels wouldn’t have brought it up unless the painting was important, somehow. “That painting is one of the genie traps, isn’t it?”

“So we have been told,” Master Revels said. “The Unseen Words of Allah are the heirs to King Solomon and his magic, Dizzy. They know things that we have forgotten, if we ever knew them in the first place. Displaying the painting like that is a way of reminding the rest of the world that they have secrets and a rather less than subtle threat. A genie is a very dangerous enemy.”

I smiled. “Are they worse than the Elves?”

“They grant wishes,” Master Revels said. “They grant
any
wishes, any at all, which is why they are so dangerous. If I had one, I could wish for vast magical power, or to become one of the Great Powers, or to destroy the magical world...oh yes, the genies are feared and hated because of their power. And when one manages to break free...they have no sense of anything, but hatred for the human race that dared to imprison them. A very long time ago, back when Atlantis was a thriving city, one broke loose and destroyed the city in a single night.”

“Oh,” I said. I remembered watching all three of the
Aladdin
movies. The friendly blue genie had made the street rat a prince, before his lamp had fallen into the hands of the evil villain. The genie had turned him into the most powerful sorcerer in the world and then transported the palace to the top of a mountain. “How many genies are left in the world?”

“Very few, for which we are all delighted,” Master Revels said. “There are occasionally legends of genie lamps or bottles being discovered and causing havoc before vanishing again, but no one has seen a genie for a long time. The one in the painting may be the only one left in the human world.”

He sighed. “Dervish, for all of his faith and devotion to Allah, is cut off from the mainstream of Islam,” he added. “The Unseen Words must serve and never be appreciated. The price he paid for his power is far greater than anything
we
ever paid. You should pity him.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, allowing me a chance to concentrate on the healing disciplines. The pain in my rear end was fading away, although I still felt bruised and I was certain that it would be a very poor idea to sit down on anything hard. Master Revels said nothing as we left the Meadows and walked back onto the main road, heading down towards Holy Corner. Like so many other places in Edinburgh, it glowed so brightly with magic that I couldn’t understand how the mundane world couldn’t see it. It was far brighter than many other buildings.

Holy Corner had picked up the nickname because it was a crossroads with a church at each corner. One of them I knew from a famous book sale that took place every year, but the others were new to me. It wasn’t the visible churches that held my attention, though; it was the glowing ghostly church in the centre of the crossroads. It seemed to shimmer, right on the edge of visibility, seemingly unconcerned about the cars passing
through
it as their drivers drove up to Church Hill. Master Revels took my hand as the cars slowed to a halt, muttered a charm into the air and led me forward. The church suddenly became clear – the cars took on ghostly forms – and we stepped into the doorway. Inside, the noise of the cars suddenly vanished. It was the most spiritual place I had ever entered.

“This place is supposed to have been built by Deacon Brodie, one of Edinburgh’s more colourful characters, although others say that it is actually far older and dates all the way back to the early Christians,” Master Revels said, as the doors closed behind us. “It is maintained here by the faith of the monks who run it, creating a place for true faith to flourish in the magical world.”

I looked up as an elderly man appeared in front of us. He wore a simple brown monk’s dress and a heavy cross, which seemed to pull him into a permanent stoop. His eyes were dark and very knowing, as if he’d seen all the sins of the world and forgiven them.

“I bid you welcome in the name of Christ our Lord,” he said. His voice was accented, an accent that would have been seductive in other places. Here, it just seemed to fade away in the silence. “We welcome you to the Silent Cathedral of Holy Corner. How may we be of service to you?”

“There were ghosts in the Tron Kirk that have vanished,” Master Revels said. His voice seemed pale and weak compared to the silence. It seemed to smother all sound within the building. My ears felt weird, as if the silence was pressing down on us all. “I am charged with investigating them for...”