Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (32 page)

The mighty can be as foolish as anyone. The
sultan’s rejection inflamed Luna’s lust for him. She vowed she
would not rest until she had him groveling in her bed. She spent
her remaining time in his harem learning his weak spots. Now she
had nearly all the pieces to put her plan in motion.

“
She
will deliver him to me,” Luna
swore, “she” being his loathed
kadin
.

Luna had no doubt that fish was already on
her hook.

~

As the sorceress had anticipated, Najat
returned with the requisite articles the following afternoon. Luna
made a show of dropping the sultan’s golden hair and the strawberry
into a brass cauldron.

Alas for Najat’s hopes, this was a show only.
Every magician, however powerful, can perform sleight of hand. Luna
was no exception. As the smoke whirled up and she chanted magic
words, she replaced Iksander’s hair with that of another man. The
substitute belonged to Philip, the sultan’s second most trusted
friend. Philip was a celebrated artist and the son of the vizier.
His temperament was closer to the sultan’s than his commander,
being passionate and a bit romantic. Luna had bribed a servant to
get the strand during her residence in the harem. Now she prayed to
her god that it would serve her current plan.

She decanted the finished mixture into a
small cut glass bottle with a stopper. Najat took the vessel with
trembling hands.

“There is one more instruction I must give
you,” Luna said. “This is a royal-specific potion. Its powers will
not affect your husband’s taster or anyone who doesn’t have noble
blood. Simply slip a few drops into Iksander’s food or drink. He
will never notice it.”

Najat looked at the crystal clear liquid.
“How long will it take to work?”

“No time at all. You would be wise to remain
available and to prepare yourself to be well ravished. As soon as
he ingests the potency elixir, he will experience an uncontrollable
need for you. Should you not conceive right away, you may
re-administer the treatment.”

Najat shivered and then grew hot. Being well
ravished by her husband didn’t sound unpleasant.

“Thank you,” she said to the sorceress. “You
have saved my future happiness.”

The empress bowed and smiled pleasantly. She
knew the
kadin’s
future happiness was the last thing she was
saving.

~

Whatever her faults, Najat couldn’t give her
husband an unknown substance without some test of its safety. After
returning to the place, she slipped a single drop into her maid’s
mint tea. Nothing whatsoever happened, which was reassuring and
certainly fortunate for the maid. On the other hand, the sorceress
had said the potion was designed to affect royals. Having none
available except her mother-in-law and herself, she shook the
smallest possible droplet into her own wine cup.

When she sniffed it, she smelled nothing but
the age-mellowed grapes. When she wet her tongue and swallowed,
sensations such as she’d never known exploded through her body.

This was no accident. The potion Luna brewed
wasn’t intended for the sultan but for Najat. The sorceress had
counted on her tasting it. Her stratagem worked as well as she’d
hoped. The
kadin
was seized with longing for the man whose
hair the sorceress had substituted: Philip the vizier’s son, the
sultan’s trusted and very handsome friend.

The bottle fell from Najat’s fingers as the
powerful enchantment took hold of her. Her swiftly dampening pussy
ached with desire, her button of pleasure swelling to twice its
normal size. She knew she must have Philip or she would die.

Frightened by what she felt and desperate to
find the man, she ran from her apartment within the harem. She
ignored the startled questions of those she passed, her very reason
compromised by her lust. Each brush of her thighs against each
other maddened her more. She tried pleasuring herself in a small
alcove but could not achieve release, no matter how frantically she
tried.

Evidently, the attractive artist was the only
salve for her suffering.

After demanding his whereabouts from a number
of surprised servants, she found him in his studio.

It must be conceded that Philip had a little
yen for his friend’s
kadin
. The sultan’s wife was very
beautiful, very charming, and Philip was a healthy unmarried
djinni. Certainly, suggestive daydreams featuring Najat and himself
had slipped into his mind occasionally. Beyond the teeniest
flirtation—which might be accounted as politeness—he’d never acted
on these longings. He was a man of honor, and valued his neck
besides. Even sultans as principled as Iksander weren’t known for
tolerating adultery. Not with their wives. Not when they treasured
them.

Though no sorcerer, Philip had magical as
well as artistic talents. He could spell a chisel to cut through
marble as if it were butter. As luck would have it, he was working
on a sculpture of Najat that evening. She wasn’t bare in the piece
but wore flowing robes and a sheer head veil. Seated on a little
stool, she leaned forward across her lap to pull on one slipper.
Philip was proud of the way he’d captured her graceful figure
beneath the draping cloth. He thought his friend would enjoy
receiving the finished piece on his next birthday.

Given the subject of his work and his secret
affection for the
kadin
, he might be excused for momentarily
being too stunned to move when the real Najat rushed in and
embraced him.

“Help me,” she pleaded, immediately tearing
at his clothes. “Take me or I shall die.”

Before he could stop her, she ripped his
shirt fully off and writhed on his helpless thigh. Her free flowing
juices soaked not just her clothes but also his work trousers.

“My lady,” he exclaimed as she shoved her
hand down his garment’s front. “What are you doing?”

Her eager fingers wrapped his cock, which it
must be admitted was stiffening. Though the desire she labored
under was terrible, she stroked his hard length skillfully.

“You must fuck me,” she said, her thumb and
finger twisting excitingly beneath his now very swollen crown. “If
you do not, I will go mad.”

The poor beset artist tried to contain his
moans of delight. “I will . . . call your husband,” he choked out.
“He will assist you.”

“You,” she said, flinging off her jeweled
belt so that her robes fell open. “You are the lover I’m desperate
for.”

The sight of her naked breasts and belly
stunned him anew. Najat was beautiful, like a thunderbolt striking
him from above. Here was his forbidden daydream, begging him for
the very act he dared not perform. Further inflamed—and no doubt
frustrated—by his paralysis, Najat shoved him back onto a crimson
chaise he kept for his models and straddled him.

His rebellious cock had escaped his clothes
and pointed toward the ceiling. It certainly wished to satisfy his
mistress. When she angled the thudding rod toward her hot grotto,
the only thing he could think of to prevent her engulfing it was to
thrust two fingers deep into her pussy.

Such were the qualities of Najat’s
enchantment that Philip’s fingers were as good to her as his other
parts. She groaned with enjoyment, pumping her hips on the
penetration until—in almost no time at all—her body seized with
pleasure and she wailed out her completion.

Because Fate was not feeling kind that
evening, this was the moment her husband burst in on them.

The palace servants had alerted their liege
to the
kadin’s
strange behavior.

Seeing where that behavior led, white-hot
rage blazed through the sultan’s veins. His beloved had betrayed
him, and—so it seemed—his closest friend had as well. If his other
friend, the commander, hadn’t followed on his heels, Iksander most
assuredly would have slain both lovers.

“Wait!” the commander cried, grabbing his
friend’s raised sword arm. “This cannot be what we think it
is.”

“Your Highness!” Philip cried, throwing
himself face down on the floor. “Please listen to Arcadius.”

He’d had to squirm out from under Najat in
order to make this supplication. Coupled with a form of address
that said they were no longer friends, his action pulled a feral
growl up in Iksander’s throat. The sultan strove to attack again,
but the commander held fast to him.

Meanwhile, Najat had collapsed into a weeping
ball on the blood red chaise. She pulled her robes around her,
wrapping her head between her hands as she rocked back and forth in
distress. Now that she had climaxed, her madness seemed to have
passed.

“Forgive me,” she pleaded. “Beloved, I
couldn’t control my own actions.”

“You see,” Arcadius said as Iksander growled
again. “It must have been a spell.”

Iksander flung out his arm with the scimitar
trembling in his grip. He pointed the tip at his sobbing wife,
looking rather near tears himself. “No spell does
that
, no
matter how powerful its creator. It must have a seed of lust to
work on. She was attracted to Philip already!”

Arcadius had sometimes suspected this might
be so. Najat liked her little flirtations, and Philip was a
glamorous artist type. Because Arcadius knew her devotion to her
husband was deep, certainly deeper than any fancy she had for
Philip, he’d never thought it would cause trouble.

None of this seemed useful to mention
then.

He put his hands on Iksander’s shoulders and
forced the sultan to look at him. “You must call on your nobler
self, my friend, and spare the couple’s lives. Poor Najat was
charmed, and Philip was trying to, er, help her the best he could
without, um, sullying your trust.” Arcadius realized this might not
be the best way to put it.

“You cannot kill them,” he went on more
firmly. “You would become ifrit. You would be barred from djinn
heaven.”

“I don’t care!” the sultan cried. “I would
brave hell itself if it would burn away the image of her riding
him.”

In the doorway behind them, a familiar throat
was cleared.

“Joseph,” the commander said, sounding
relieved to see him. “Please establish whether the
kadin
has
been charmed.”

The eunuch crossed to her carefully,
crouching down to examine the merest tips of her right fingers. She
didn’t like him touching her, but under the circumstances she
allowed it. “I sense a foreign magical substance. I believe she
ingested it. Shall I check Philip as well?”

Seeing the sultan was a little calmer,
Arcadius nodded.

Philip rose from the floor. “Joseph,” he said
sadly, offering him his hand palm up.

The eunuch studied it. “He is himself,” he
said reluctantly.

“Himself!” the sultan burst out.

Perhaps Philip feared Iksander would rush
forward to attack. The artist stepped closer to the sultan’s
defenseless wife, his leg grazing her knee as a result. The moment
the contact occurred, Najat moaned throatily with desire.

Everyone stared at her in horror. Najat
looked horrified herself. She slapped her hand across her
mouth.

“My God,” said the sultan. “She still wants
him!”

He spun away, unable to look at her.
“Joseph,” he said in a hard tight voice. “I order you to use your
magic to banish her. You need not kill her. Simply send her
somewhere in the Qaf where I—and
he
—will never, ever see her
again.”

“Your Highness . . .” Joseph said
unsurely.

“Do it!” his superior spat out.

Joseph looked at the commander, who nodded.
If Iksander relented in the future, he knew Joseph would have sent
Najat somewhere safe. Though she wept and begged for mercy, Joseph
performed the spell. A whirlwind sprang to life within the studio,
dark gray and thunderous. The power of its raging currents blew
back their clothes and hair.

“In the name of God,” Joseph ordered the
swirling thing, “carry the
kadin
away from here.”

Najat wailed out one last plea as the ominous
funnel cloud swept her out the window and into the black of
night.

The sultan had turned to watch. As the
tossed-up items in the studio dropped, Iksander’s eyes fell on the
sculpture of Najat that Philip had been carving. Though the
sultan’s expression did not change, the artist tensed. Would the
sultan read more betrayal into the work? Iksander’s gaze shifted
slowly to the face of his former friend. The sultan appeared to
have aged a decade in a few minutes.

“Your sentence I shall decide later,” he
intoned.

* * *

Joseph stopped speaking and bowed his head.
For a couple seconds, no one in the crowd reacted. Like Elyse, they
expected him to go on.

“That isn’t a proper ending,” one ifrit
cried. “The sultan didn’t kill either of the adulterers. Are you
trying to raise our pulses with annoyance?”

Joseph’s eyes widened as if he were
surprised. “The sun is even now creeping over the mountains. I
thought it best to find a place to stop.”

“You stop at the
end
,” the same
tribesman protested. “On top of which, you called this story ‘The
Sultan and the Sorceress.’ You hardly put in any bits about her.
And she is the best character!”

“Forgive me,” Joseph apologized. He looked
helplessly at the sheikh. “What do you wish me to do? I can
continue another night, or we can measure the results now. I do not
wish to interfere with your men’s duties . . . or their perfectly
natural need for rest.”

Lounged comfortably in his throne, Zayd had
propped his chin on his hand. He regarded Joseph with raised
eyebrows. He seemed aware of the djinni’s disingenuousness.

“It is your choice,” Joseph insisted,
offering him a bow. “Whatever suits your convenience.”

Quite a number of Zayd’s men looked hopefully
at their leader.

“Very well,” Zayd relented sourly. “You may
continue tomorrow evening, but you had better finish then. I’ve no
intention of letting this contest drag on forever.”