Izzi sat on the hard bed in her new tiny bare room and cried. All she had in the world now was one rack of clothes, one sack of meagre belongings, and an old picture book. 

Blinking through the tears, she fished through the sack and placed a few things she would need, like combs and cosmetics, out onto the one small uncarved bench near the one small plain lamp, and dumped the sack into the simple chest at the bottom of the bed. 

The room was not wholly without cheer, she supposed. A couple of small windows high on the walls faced not to the courtyard like her old room, but east above the Zakra walls, out over the desert.

Izzi was not really sure where she stood now in the household—she was used to just asking for what she needed and having it provided. She had never seen the actual sea, other than in the realm of the wiles, but imagined Haroun in his tiny boat at the mercy of the waves, riding up and down. She decided she would assume she still had some privilege as a daughter of the son of Enzel until the waves calmed, but would keep a low profile and not push things until her feet found the sand.

So that night she meekly fetched herself a bowl for washing, keeping her traitorous eyes averted from the other women in case they might burst into tears again. She was stronger than that! And she began to prepare herself for bed.

She unwound her hair and unfolded the scarf, a duty Yasmin would usually perform. She searched for the folded scrap of paper with the charm, expecting that using the spell would have burned it to ash, as normally it would. But instead of ash Izzi found a tiny piece of coal, about the size of a fingernail. It was probably just the spent charm, and worthless, but to be on the safe side she found a circular silver locket among her few pieces of jewellery and put it inside, closing it with a sure click. She left it on the nightstand. 

At some time during the night she was woken from a fitful sleep by muted croaking from her old friends the nightjars in the courtyard on the other side of the khan. Alerted, she slipped out of bed and dragged the single stool under a window so she could reach up and see out. Far out over the desert a storm rose up behind the mountains, with lightning flashes that lit the clouds orange and created a rumbling, muffled by distance.

Just a storm, she thought, closing her eyes but holding her mind open, questing for any taint of ghuls.

Izzi did not feel any questing ghul spirits in the air, and the lightning flashes had revealed none. But she could feel something—the khan’s wards shivered. It did not feel like something outside, it was more like the presence was within, and close.

She recited a calling her mother had taught, a little song to unhide the hidden. 

By the power of my will and voice,

I summon forth the unseen light.

By the will of my own choice,

To blind me with the desert sands.

By the magic of my heart and soul,

To show me what I dare not see.

By the price of my own toll,

To unseal what lies beneath to me.

What Izzi did not expect was a silent reply in her mind, extra new verses that were not her own.

By the waking of my ancient voice,

I reflect back your hidden light.

By wisdom of unchosen choice,

To bind you with the desert sands.

By the power of my secret urn,

To grant you what you cannot see.

By the boon of my own toll,

To be what lies beneath for thee.

Izzi opened her eyes immediately and placed her palms on the window ledge to draw on the magesty of the old building and the entwined apricot trees. She recited another charm to ward away whatever it was that had latched onto her.

Mind my will, my shining light,

Unwelcome spirit, stay away.

Soul and heart, art and part,

Leave me be, do not stay.

But the disembodied voice had different ideas, and spoke again as she jumped off the stool.

Make no haste, child of light,

Welcome me, and what I say.

With your art, and wishes three,

What you desire, comes your way.

Izzi knew now what the voice was. Mogh Kalu’s attempt to cancel the summoning spell had failed, and now somehow the Ifrit spoke in her head. She knew such beings to be bound on the mortal plane by the rule of threes, and summoned the courage to confront it. She sat on her bed and placed her hand on the locket with the tiny coal inside. 

“Once already I have commanded you to leave,” she told it. “Again I say begone back to the chaos whence you came. You have already cost me so much, and what I desire is you out of my life, so it can go back to normal!”

The locket became so hot she snatched her hand away. She feared the silver would melt.

“Normal is lost to you now, little one,” the djinni said, his voice so loud in her head that Izzi clamped her hands onto her ears, which of course did not help. “But do not hasten to make a third demand to banish me, or normal will never return. Hear first what I have to say.”

“Okay, just please stop shouting!” 

Izzi took her hands from her ears and reached again toward the locket. Somehow the djinni must be bound to it, and it might be her only hope to sever the link.

The locket shone brightly in warning and she flinched away.

“I will be honest with you,” said the djinni, “When your magian teacher attempted to cancel the summoning spell, it only partly worked. I am partly through to your realm, but partly still in mine. This is a disaster for me, because I now have full power in neither. On top of that, it is quite painful and embarrassing.”

“So you have no power to help me,” Izzi interrupted.

“Ah, but I am an Ifrit djinn, and a prince among them. Even a mere fraction of my power would be a boon to you, if you were to not reject it. So I will make a pact with you—if you were to help me reach full form by taking on a simple task, once I reach that form I will fully grant three wishes to you, since it will be in my power then to do so, and I will be free to return whole to my realm. Until then, I will aid you with such magesty I do retain to help you reach your goals, so long as they align with the task I set.”