In a rush of understanding, Jimena knew the creature for what it was—a parody of love, an embodiment of the destructive aspects of desire. The love with which Lakshmi had fashioned this tiny shoe drew the monster as a shivering beggar would come to even the smallest of fires.
A beggar who sought to eat that fire, to have its warmth within him.
She understood, too, that her own anxiety for her grandchildren was another such magnet—but she also understood the power that love could give anyone who sought to harm them.
“Avaunt, thing of emptiness!” she cried, to give it fair warning, but the monster only came closer, slobbering and crooning in a mockery of lovers’ kisses and murmurs, cold flabby hands reaching for Jimena’s warmth, and she chanted, with grim conviction,
The broad hands and long, boneless fingers reached closer and closer, touching her cheek and drawing all the warmth out, chilling her to the bone, touching also the little slipper …
And snatching away, crooning turning to screaming, the huge weal of a bum on the skin of its palm, the other hand corning quickly to cradle the first as the monster hooted and howled. But the bum spread, turning the whole hand bright red, the whole arm bright red, the whole monster swelling and reddening and whirling in a widening helix until it burst with an explosion that hurled Jimena back into the cold clinging fog, back into a dizzying, churning kaleidoscope of black and white that gained color and fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. Raucous calling filled her ears, and against it a man’s voice rose in angry song:
Somehow, she was looking upward, seeing Saul towering over her, and some strange leather-winged creature with four legs and long sharp claws, with a face half reptilian, half human, trying to reach past him toward herself. Saul batted each grasping talon aside, though his hands dripped blood from half a dozen wounds.
But Lakshmi towered above them all, swelling huger and huger, shouting orders in Arabic which the creature ignored. At last a huge feminine hand reached down, wrapped about the hovering monster, wrapped and enveloped as the djinna’s voice thundered its commands. Something popped, and a wisp of smoke drifted up from her fist. Then it opened, showing only a darkening where something had turned to powder, darkened dust that drifted away on the wind as the djinna shrank to human size, her voice rising in pitch as she seized Saul’s hand in both of hers, commanding, “Hold still!”
“It’s all right!” Saul protested. “Just a few scratches, I’ll be—”
“Dead!” Lakshmi snapped. “I know not that monster, but I know its kind! There was poison in those talons, and I must draw it out or you will die!” So saying, she pressed her lips against the first of the scratches on Saul’s hand.
His face went blank with surprise, then lit with delight that intensified to ecstasy. Lakshmi turned her head to spit out the contaminated blood, and Saul came out of his trance long enough to look down and say, “Don’t tell on me, Lady Mantrell.” Then Lakshmi’s lips pressed to the next wound, and the idiotic smile of rapture lit Saul’s face again.
“I will preserve your confidence.” Jimena smiled, amused. Then she realized that if Saul was looking down at her, she must be below him. She pushed herself up on one elbow, felt around, and realized she was lying on the rock of the mountaintop. How had she fallen, she wondered, and why?
Well, Saul would tell her as soon as he was able—and as soon as Princess Lakshmi was done with her healing. Jimena didn‘t even wonder how the djinna could suck out poison that had already begun to percolate through Saul’s veins, or why it would not harm her—she knew that magical creatures, such as the djinn, had inborn powers mortals could only hope to achieve through long study and practice.
While she waited, though, she picked herself up off the ground—and stumbled. She found a boulder and sat, amazed at her own weakness. She realized she must have spent a great deal of energy fighting the monster of mockery in her trance.
She looked down and was surprised to see the little slipper still in her hand.
“All right, all right, I’m cured!” Saul protested, but not very strongly.
Lakshmi eyed him narrowly, then nodded. “You are. For once, you are right.”
Saul bridled. “Whaddaya mean, ‘for once’? Why, I’ll have you know that—” He broke off, eyes widening.
Lakshmi watched him, amused.
“You’re right,” Saul admitted. “You not only cured the poison, you cured the cure.”
“Not difficult, with a man of such vanity,” Lakshmi assured him.
“Vanity? Who, me? The original blue-jean-and-chambray kid? Well, maybe not original,” Saul qualified, “but—”
“But that is not the quality of which you are vain,” Lakshmi finished for him.
Saul gave her a glare, but the habit of introspection was too strong in him. “Well, maybe,” he grumbled. Then he turned to Jimena, the quarrel instantly forgotten. “Are you all right, Lady Mantrell?”
“Perfectly, I assure you, Saul.” Jimena summoned the energy for a smile. “Only very tired.”
“No wonder, the kind of effort that spell-breaking must have taken!”
“You have spent some, too, it would seem,” Jimena said. “What happened? Here, I mean.”
“Here?” Saul shrugged. “You chanted a verse, and a blue glow sprang up around the little slipper. Then your eyes went vacant, and I knew your spirit had gone off to untie the blocking spell. But that winged monstrosity came diving out of the sky, and I had to fight it off.”
“It was surely a tool of the sorcerer who set the spell-block,” Lakshmi said, “come to weaken you by attacking your body. If it could have slain you, your spirit would have wandered wherever it had gone forever.”
Jimena shuddered. “I thank you most surely for protecting me!”
“It was my honor to do so,” Lakshmi said.
“Mine, too,” Saul agreed. “I thought the fight would end when the little slipper’s blue aura blew up. That was when you fell, and I was too busy fighting the bat-wing to catch you. Lakshmi had started growing, but she shrank down fast enough to keep you from hitting the ground hard. Then she cried out and reached for the smoking slipper, but she yanked her hands away and blew on her fingers.”
Lakshmi nodded. “It was so hot! How can it still be whole?”
“The heat was of magic resolved,” Jimena said. “Two spells strained against each other until both broke.”