Magic Banquet (26 page)

Aja’s heart raced fast while she crept
slowly past the ovens. She could see a glimmer in the next chamber.
Her bracelets clinked against each other, and she stopped dead. Her
gaze whirled back to the golems. Had they heard? Zinging barbs of
tension coiled and thrashed inside her.

The golems continued their labors.

Aja wouldn’t depend on any more divine
favors. She slipped off her bracelets one by one, placing them onto
stalagmites. Yesterday, Aja could never have abandoned such
treasures. Now she breathed easier without their weight. The bands
of gold circled the stakes of rock. The cave formations cast toothy
shadows, and strips of red light sawed back and forth across
Aja.

A rolled-up rug leaned against the wall. Its
tassels were familiar. Aja hugged the magic carpet. She tried to
push it, spread it open. Maybe it could carry them all to safety,
if only it weren’t too heavy to move. No, she had no idea how to
control it. The djinn had always done that. Aja would have to leave
the rug for now. She snuck past and ascended a stair to the next
room.

The walls glittered. She guessed she had
entered a crystal cavern. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw that
shelves surrounded her, towering into the chamber’s unseen heights.
Bottles and jars crowded every space. Spices filled some with
yellows and reds. A green slime glowed in one. Another held what
looked like long hairs, and its bottle was etched with a stylized
sphinx.

Aja peered at the glassware. She needed to
find more essence of the nine-tailed fox for the guests. Only that
would cure them of the bloating. The jars were labeled with
carvings, designs that the Chef would know. Even if Aja could
recognize the mark, she feared she would spend days searching for
it among the thousands. On one shelf, a globe of light crackled
within glass. Another bottle held lumps that looked too much like
warts. Aja clutched her quaking stomach. The next jar shimmered
with mist.

Water flowed somewhere nearby with a sound
of slithering. A louder noise startled Aja, a shriek.
The
empress’s voice.
The girl’s cry broke like shattering crystal
chimes.

Aja’s hands clawed her ears. She backed into
something hard and cold. It was a table. Or an altar. At its center
rose a pillar that bristled with knife handles. Hooks held
implements that could be used for cooking or torture. Metal grater,
two-pronged poker, clawed spoon, tongs, and spiked mallet.

Aja clambered onto the countertop to reach
the tools. She wanted something that would hurt. The empress’s cry
still ricocheted within Aja. The Chef deserved a pummeling for
that. She ran a finger over the mallet’s head, feeling the rows of
pyramid spikes.

A gleam of glass caught her eye as she
scooted off the countertop. Someone had left out a bottle. The
etching on it looked like a sharp-eared dog with nine tails.
The
fox essence!
Aja clutched the jar against her chest. The djinn
must have left it here to be found.

Crouching, Aja moved into the next room
toward the source of the empress’s cry. The cavernous hall was a
maze of cages. A chimera behind one set of bars growled at Aja, but
without much spirit. Its asp tail hung limp from lion shanks. A
phoenix huddled within a prison of dripping stalagmites. Over them
all stretched a giant’s shadow. Aja crept around a pond-sized vat
and stole a glimpse toward a flickering light.

The Chef sharpened a knife near the empress.
A golem held her pinned with one arm, and its other lump-of-clay
hand gripped pliers. The metal pinchers were clamped on the
empress’s tongue.

Aja could guess all too well what the Chef
planned to cut with that knife. A whetstone scraped down the
curving razor. He rotated the blade in the lamplight, eyeing the
edge.

Gripping her mallet, Aja shuffled forward.
Then she retreated. She inched forward again.
Smash his knees
out from under him.
His back was to her. She could hit him and
perhaps run away from his long arm. The blade in his hand looked
sharper than the ones he had used to carve the terror bird in a
flurry. He could mince Aja. She leaned against the stone of the
vat, hand clamped to her mouth, her chest heaving.

The whetstone stopped its keening. The Chef
lifted his nose and snuffled. He turned toward Aja.

What? No! She ducked behind the vat. Her
heart thumped against her ribs. She couldn’t attack the Chef, not
alone. She scanned the cages, spotted only a multi-headed scaled
beast. The guests—her friends—were nowhere.

Lamplight wavering over the floor revealed
streaks of blood. The stains had not had time to dry, and the
dribbles ran to a metal door. Cringing, Aja padded toward it.

She reached the door, looked through its
window. Inside, a candle shed a ribbon of smoke that hung
motionless in the air. She had to think some sort of magic had
frozen the flame in place. Nothing moved. The stillness inside was
like a grim painting. Carcasses of meat hung from the ceiling.
Below and between the butchered animals sprawled Old Janny, Solin,
and the swordsman.

Just bloated, she hoped. Not all dead. She
only had cheese enough for one.

Brightness flared behind her, and she heard
the djinn’s voice crackling with resentment. “Yes, Master?”

The Chef asked, “You sent the girl back to
her city? Aja.”

“I did as you asked.”

“Then why do I smell her?”

Aja choked down a groan. She gripped the
door latch, but before opening it she eyed the hinges. They could
squeal. She kicked a loose rock into the chimera’s cage. It lifted
its lion head, and the roar covered the noise of the opening
door.

The candle brightened, and its smoke wavered
back into motion. Everything had been locked in stillness, and
opening the door had freed them. Aja knew she couldn’t let it close
behind her. Leaving the door ajar, she hurried to the
swordsman.

His mismatched eyes flickered up to her. She
dribbled fox essence into his mouth, and he was aware enough to
swallow. His abdomen shrank back to normal size. He no longer had
his sword, and that worried her. She carried the bottle next to
Solin. He clung to his crutches with a death grip. She tipped the
fox potion into his mouth.

A whimper led Aja to a darker corner, where
she found Old Janny. The nine-tailed bottle helped her too, and
then Aja searched for the lord.

The swordsman shambled to his feet. He
swayed forward and grabbed a cleaver imbedded in one of the
carcasses. “He took the empress as a second course.”

“And the lord was the first?” Aja asked. She
wavered over a pool of blood. The lord lay crumpled at its center.
She didn’t look too closely, but the emptiness of his sleeves might
mean his hands had been cut off. He seemed dead. Nothing about him
moved except a blackness swirling in his eyes.

“Don’t help him.” Solin hauled himself
upright on a crutch. “He’s the same as the Chef.”

“Not in every way.” Aja remembered how the
lord had stopped her bleeding nose, had talked to her when all else
wanted to eat her foot. She pressed the Cheese of Life between the
lord’s painted lips. “He’ll know how to stop the….”

The Chef’s face loomed on the other side of
the door. His breath blasted steam against the window.

Aja flung her arm toward the door. “He’ll
close us in!”

The swordsman hurled himself against the
door. He strained against the Chef, but the swordsman’s sandals
slipped back on the blood. He was losing ground. Solin came up
behind him.

“Mind for a mind,” the hexer said. He
collapsed onto his crutches as a snake of magic tore from his
throat. The red viper snapped around the door at the Chef.

The Chef vanished before the hex could reach
him. With nothing blocking the door, the swordsman forced it wide.
He charged with his cleaver held high. Aja peeked out after him,
gripping the mallet. She was pressed against the doorway when Old
Janny squeezed by. She moved fast for someone her size, bounding
away between the cages.

“Ryn!” The swordsman ran toward the golem
that held down the empress.

The voice of the Chef boomed. “Return them
to the time vault.”

“Yes, Master.” The djinn swept up Old Janny,
carrying her like a leaf in a gust.

Old Janny’s legs pumped in the air. “Put me
down you windy wench.”

The swordsman had almost reached the empress
when the Chef reappeared. His hulk lunged from the shadows with a
sweep of knife. The swordsman parried the first cut with a clang,
but the Chef’s razor was everywhere. It whistled in a shredding
fury.

The swordsman fell back and into the arms of
the djinn. She carried two people as easily as one.

Aja had taken three steps forward to help
fight the Chef. She stopped. If the Chef could beat back a trained
fighter, she dared not go within slicing distance. She needed a
better way.

She slammed her mallet against the lock on
the chimera’s cage. Once free, the monsters might eat the Chef.
Metal pinged against metal. Nothing broke. The cage stayed shut,
and the chimera reached a lion’s paw between the bars to swipe at
her. She had to scramble away.

Bronze-reinforced crutches rang on the
floor, and Solin loped past her. She saw he had recovered from his
last hex. He spat another.

The Chef dodged it by hurling himself behind
the vat, and the djinn scooped up Solin. He swiped at her with a
crutch. It passed through her as if through a flame. The crutch
burned. The djinn seemed not bothered at all.

The djinn, she’s the key.
Aja
remembered the djinn had said how to release her from being a
slave.
Destroy the lamp.

Aja sprinted toward the flickering light
beside the golem and the empress. A yellow flame danced from the
lamp’s brass nozzle.

“Grab her,” the Chef shouted.

Aja felt heat rushing in from behind. She
knew she was too late.

The djinn passed Aja and swept away the
empress instead.

“No!” The Chef’s knife sliced the air. “The
other one. Aja!”

Aja swung her hammer above the lamp. This
close, she could admire the flame patterns etched into its brass.
For a heartbeat, she hesitated. The lord had warned her not to free
the djinn.

Her hammer crashed down anyway. They had
little to lose, and Aja believed the djinn had kindness in her. She
was a mother, after all.

The spiked head of the mallet crumpled the
lamp. Oil spouted in a gout of fire. It landed burning on Aja’s
arms and face. She squinted and kept beating the lamp to a lump of
brass.

“Golem,” the Chef said, “crush the
girl.”

The man of clay dropped the pliers and made
a clapping motion with its arms. Aja knew she couldn’t step away in
time. The golem moved too fast.

The djinn came faster, whooshing into Aja
and carrying her to safety. Aja floated shoulder to shoulder with
the swordsman and Old Janny. A warm breeze carried them not to the
vault as the Chef had commanded but to the flat top of a crate. The
djinn set them down. The swordsman laid out the empress, and Aja
made her drink the last of the fox essence.

“Free at last,” the djinn said.

The djinn sifted out of sight, her gown and
body blowing away like so much sand. Aja gulped, frightened that
the djinn was dying somehow. Then Aja saw the shimmering heat
mirage that remained and understood. The djinn had shed her human
skin.

“We’re all free,” Aja said.

“Thanks to you, Aja.” The rippling air that
was the djinn flowed around the guests smelling of desert flowers
and morning sunlight. In a hissing blast, she left them and curdled
her way toward the Chef. “Now I have a decade of servitude to
repay.”

The Chef’s brows scaled up his bald pate in
alarm. He gestured toward a dark corner, and shadows engulfed the
room. The only light that remained was a ring around the vaporous
djinn. Squalls of fire whirled outward from her. The darkness
lapped them up and shriveled their light.

“No!” The djinn’s wind-song voice shrieked.
“You must roast over a thousand burning coals.”

Blackness covered everything, constricting
even her light. Aja didn’t want to believe the Chef’s magic could
overpower the djinn’s fire. This was dreadful. Aja huddled in the
soupy shadows. Soon there would be nothing left alight in the room,
except a doorway where a candle floated. The one small flame was
held by an embroidered glove.

“Trying to hide, my succulent suckling?” The
lord lifted the candle, and the shadows sundered. Red light scathed
across the room.

The guests could all see the Chef trundling
away on his thick legs. Exposed, he bent forward to flee faster
toward the spice room.

“You should know you can’t outrun your
fears.” The lord reached with his free hand. His fingers stretched
into black spears, into impossibly long fangs. His glove changed,
became something living and huge.

His sleeve exploded in a dark river of
scales. The serpentine colossus smashed through the room. At its
end, a dragon’s head reared over the Chef. Its eyes fluoresced with
a light that seared Aja’s vision with afterimages of green. The
spikes of the dragon’s teeth curved outward and spurted with
venom.

The Chef dove away into the shadows. Or he
tried to. He was pushed back into view as if the darkness were a
curtain or a wall he could no longer pass through.

The dragon snaked its way around the Chef,
blocking his way out. He backed up, spit on his hands, regripped
his knife, charged at the scaled flank, and roared.

“This is my kitchen.”

The knife shattered on the scales and broke
into shards of light. They flashed green from the dragon’s eyes.
The Chef crouched to pick up a few splinters. Aja didn’t know why
he bothered. He should see it was hopeless. No metal splinters
could stop djinn and dragon, and, yes, he let the bits of knife
fall between his hands.