NINE
For the first time, Aladdin found Gwandoya had not lied. Inside the door sat a stack of torches. He seized one and carried it back to what remained of Gwandoya's fire. It was enough to light the torch, which was all Aladdin needed. He stepped back inside the cave and set off down the tunnel into the depths.
After several turns, Aladdin found himself at a crossroads of sorts, with two paths to choose from. Gwandoya and the doorway were out of sight, so there was no one he could ask for directions. Swearing, Aladdin peered down both tunnels, but neither dusty stone passage seemed more inviting than the other.
This cave ran deeper than he'd thought. Deep enough for a man to get lost in, maybe. Was that how Bugra had died? Aladdin moistened his suddenly dry mouth. Other men might have died here, but he would not. He backtracked to where he found another unlit torch in a bracket on the wall, and lit that, too, before he headed down the right hand passage. Any torch he saw, he lit, so he'd know he'd passed this way before.
Pretty soon, the warm light of all the torches behind him made Aladdin comfortable enough to start looking around him, at what wasn't a cave at all. The tunnels had been carved by tools, not nature, and he could see the marks of axes where they'd been opened out. Some tunnels came to dead ends that looked more like rooms where people had lived and worked. But where were the people?
They'd left tools and clothing behind, even bedding, but everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. As though the people who lived here had left in a hurry, intending to return, but they had not. What had driven them out, and what had prevented them from returning? Aladdin wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to either question.
Especially not if the answer was somewhere in the city with him. Someone or something had killed Bugra, and Aladdin had no desire to be next.
He entered, then backed out of a prayer room. Perhaps he should take a moment and pray, he thought, then decided not to bother. Who knew which direction to face, anyway, so deep underground? No one would hear his prayer from here.
The next corridor ended in a dead end, blocked off by a boulder that looked like a smaller version of the one at the entrance. A door, Aladdin guessed, eyeing it. "Please open?" he suggested.
The round stone rolled smoothly aside, revealing a new passage. Aladdin breathed a sigh of relief, and stepped through.
More passages, more rooms, more torches, and more doors that opened at his request. Aladdin knew he descended deeper into the earth at each step, but he'd seen no sign of treasure, lamps or otherwise.
If he wanted to hide a pile of untouchable gold in this maze of a city, where would he put it? Aladdin considered this for a moment, before he had his answer. He'd put it either in the very centre of the city, or in the furthest depths from the entrance. Whichever was easier to defend if the city were attacked.
Aladdin laughed, the sound echoing through the empty tunnels. What would he know about defending or attacking a city? He should be safely home in his. All he had to do was find the benighted lamp, hand it to the madman outside, and he could go home.
Deeper he went, taking the tunnels that led down until he could go no further, for his way was barred by a bigger door than any he'd seen yet. This was the one, he was certain of it.
"Open, please," he breathed.
The door rolled open. Aladdin took a deep breath and thrust his torch inside.
At first, it didn't look too different from the store rooms he'd passed, with dusty casks, boxes and sacks piled up on either side of a narrow aisle. But something glowed at the end, as though he'd arrived at the surface and not the depths of the city.
Aladdin crept forward, suddenly glad he was so thin, for a bigger man wouldn't have fitted so easily between the chests piled up to the ceiling. The hem of his tunic dragged along the top of a chest, revealing costly polished wood under the dust. This was the treasury, all right. What had Gwandoya told him to watch out for? Not to touch the gold, or let his clothing touch it. Pulling his tunic tight around him, Aladdin proceeded forward into...the light.
The second chamber didn't look any different from the first, at first, for whoever owned the contents of this place preferred to keep it safely locked in chests, instead of piled up all over the floor, as Aladdin might have expected. Someone with countless wealth would surely be careless with their coins. But the first glimpse he got of gold was in a chest that someone had pried open so roughly it no longer closed. Bugra would not have had the strength to do this – and nor did Aladdin. How many men had Gwandoya brought here? And why had they all failed?
Aladdin rounded the corner and found his answer. A lit lamp sat in an alcove on the wall, so blackened from use it was hard to tell it was brass. But the flame was as bright as ever, illuminating a chest full of riches that surely belonged to a king or a sultan. Gold jewellery snaked around a collection of gold lamps, so shiny they hurt his eyes. Aladdin squinted, and looked again. The chest was not full – it was barely half full, and some rings and a necklace lay on the ground in front of it, as if dropped by someone in a hurry to cram as much treasure as they could into a sack to take with them.
Automatically, Aladdin stooped to return the treasures to their chest.
"I thought you were brighter than the others," a strange voice said.
Aladdin jerked upright. "Who said that?"
A blue glow appeared on Aladdin's right, atop a barrel. The light grew until it took the shape of a man. A man who was as lanky as Aladdin himself, though his clothes were far finer than anything Aladdin owned. "That would be me," the bluish man drawled, snapping his fingers. The blue light vanished, leaving the magic man looking as normal as Aladdin, or as normal as any man who hadn't appeared from a ball of light.
"Who are you?"
The man bent double without rising from the barrel. "Kaveh, servant of the ring you wear on your finger." He nodded at Aladdin's hand. "And you?
"Aladdin." He didn't know what else to say. Unemployed street rat? Minion to the madman outside? Son of a spinner? His heart lurched at the thought of what would happen to his mother if he died here. It would break her heart. "I need to grab that lamp and get it out of here." He reached for the alcove.
Kaveh whistled. "So you are brighter than the others. You're the first one who went for the right lamp."
Aladdin's hand closed around it, a moment before he realised that a lit lamp would be hot to the touch. To his surprise, the metal was as cold as the stone underfoot. "Must be magic," he muttered.
"Sure is. Why do you think that madman wants it so much?"
Aladdin hefted the lamp in his hand. It was such a small thing – his mother had two such at home, both in much better state than this. "What does it do?"
Kaveh grinned. "Give it a rub and find out."
Aladdin almost obeyed, then stopped himself. Something had killed the other men Gwandoya had sent here. He'd survived this long, but who knew what Kaveh's motives were? Perhaps he'd killed them, or tricked them into doing something that had.
"No," Aladdin said. "I have a job to do. I must fetch this lamp from the city and bring it back to Gwandoya. Then I get paid." Not enough to let him see Maram again, though, Aladdin realised with a sinking heart. A man who ate bugs wouldn't have a princess's bride price to spare. Why hadn't Aladdin thought of that before?
"The only repayment he'll give you is a slit throat. He can't risk you telling anyone what you found in here," Kaveh said, as though reading Aladdin's thoughts.
Aladdin sank onto a chest, his head in his hands. "What will I do? I have to get home. I need that money." Funny, Gwandoya had never mentioned just how much Aladdin's payment would be. Now he knew why.
"In debt, are you?"
Aladdin shook his head. "Who would lend money to someone like me? Even I know I'll never be able to repay them. No, it's...there's this girl..."
Kaveh's eyes lit up with an unearthly glow. "A girl? Is she as glorious as the moon?"
Aladdin's mind cast up a vision of Maram bathing naked in the bathhouse. The image from his dreams. "The moon herself would weep to see her, she is so beautiful."
"So you want a gift to win her affections?"
Aladdin laughed. "I would need a whole kingdom before I had a chance of that. She's the Sultan's daughter, you see, and I am no prince."
Kaveh nodded thoughtfully. "So you need a gift fit for a princess. You know, I think I can help you."
Help never came for free. "What will you want in return?" Aladdin asked.
"Don't give the madman back his ring, and I'll show you the perfect thing to win your princess's heart, and her father's, too."
Aladdin stared at Kaveh for a moment. "What do you want me to do with the ring?"
Kaveh shrugged. "Keep it. I'd like to meet this princess of yours."
"She's not mine, and she never will be," Aladdin said steadily.
Kaveh grinned. "Never say never. Women fall in love with their heart's desire, not with whoever their father wants them to marry."
Aladdin didn't bother arguing this time. Judging by his clothes, Kaveh was highborn, maybe even as highborn as Maram herself. He had no idea what it was not to be able to remember when he'd last eaten – or wonder when he might eat again.
"We'd better get this lamp up to the surface. I said I would, and my word is all I have left." Aladdin rose.
"You're a fool," Kaveh said.
Aladdin knew he was right. "Perhaps, but an honest fool."
Kaveh shook his head. "I don't have to watch this." He dissolved into sparkling blue light, which streamed into the ring before the light winked out.
Aladdin peered at his hand. It looked like an ordinary silver ring, but he knew he hadn't imagined Kaveh.
Aladdin tucked the lamp inside his tunic, before tightening his sash to make sure it didn't fall out. He'd come too far to lose it now.
The hike back through the tunnels seemed a lot shorter now. Maybe it was because he was headed for the surface, or he knew where he was going, Aladdin wasn't sure, but there was a spring in his step as he glimpsed the yawning entrance to the cavern he'd dreaded when he first saw it. How wrong he was.
"Do you have it?" Gwandoya asked eagerly, his shadow blocking the light coming from the entrance.
Aladdin dug into his tunic and produced the sorry-looking lamp. "Yes."
Gwandoya beckoned him closer. "Give it to me!"
He wasn't just eager, he seemed...rabid, Aladdin thought uneasily.
"Where is the payment you promised me?" Aladdin demanded.
Gwandoya wet his lips. "It is back in the city. I will pay you on our return."
Back went the lamp into the depths of his clothes. "Then I will keep it a while longer."
"I said give it to me!"
His instincts screamed at him to obey, but Aladdin ignored them. "And I said pay me."
The two men stared at one another, Gwandoya's chest heaving as though it cost him a great deal not to kill Aladdin on the spot.
All the more reason to hang onto the thing the madman wanted, Aladdin told himself.
Gwandoya forced out a smile that didn't touch his eyes. "As you wish, boy. But return my ring."
"Don't do it!" Kaveh's voice whispered.
The smile died. "What did you say?"
Aladdin swallowed. "Of...of course." With shaking hands, he pulled the ring from his finger. "Come and get it."
Gwandoya's eyes blazed. "I will not set foot in that cursed city! Anyone who steals from it is turned to – "
A great rush of wind came from behind Aladdin, so powerful that it pushed the boulder door shut, leaving Gwandoya outside. The man could be heard shouting and hammering outside, but the rock didn't move.
"What in heaven's name..." Aladdin began, risking a glance over his shoulder.
"I said not to give it to him," Kaveh said calmly, pressing his back to the boulder and folding his arms.
Realisation dawned. "You opened all the doors. Even that one. No man could move that stone. Not even Gwandoya, now you're in here with me. What are you?"
"I told you. I'm the servant of the ring," Kaveh said smugly. After a moment, he relented and added, "My previous owner charged me with protecting the city. Only one who wears my ring can open the door from the outside when it is closed, and no outsider may pass through the city gates with gold from the city that does not belong to him."
Dread curdled in Aladdin's belly. "What happened to the ones who tried?"
Kaveh waved his hand behind him. "They made a generous contribution to the city's wealth."
Aladdin approached what appeared to be a line of dusty statues. He lifted his torch and reached to brush the dust off the nearest one's face.
"By all that's holy!" Aladdin jumped back. Bugra's horrified face stared back at him, above a tunic that bulged with the treasures he'd tried to steal. Too heavy for him to carry, Aladdin realised, for they'd cursed him into a gold statue. He swallowed. "What have you done to him?"
Kaveh shrugged. "My master wanted me to just kill them, but who wanted decaying corpses stinking up the city gates? Especially if no one was home. So I thought gold statues might be better. When the prince returns, he can melt them down for the treasury."
"Will that hurt them?" Aladdin asked.
"Of course not. They're dead. Does a chicken feel when you roast its corpse?"
Unbidden, Aladdin's stomach growled even louder this time. "I would much prefer a chicken to a statue," he admitted.
Kaveh clapped his hands. "I can help you there. I know where the prince's store rooms are, where he keeps a lifetime supply of honeyed dates, among other delicacies."
Though he was now trapped in an underground city with a strange man who glowed blue, while another madman hammered on the gates, for the first time since he'd left home, Aladdin began to feel the tiniest bit better about his future. Any future that held honeyed dates had to be good, he was sure of it.