The Will of the Wanderer by Margaret Weis

Author:Margaret Weis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0553276387
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Published: 1989-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The ‘efreet

Kaug did not dwell in a sumptuous palace on the plane

of the djinn. For reasons best unknown to anyone, he lived in a cave far beneath the Kurdin Sea. Rumor had

it that he had, centuries before, been

banished to this cave by the God Zhakrin

during one of the cycles of faith when that dark God reigned supreme and Kaug’s God, Quar, was but a humble

licker of boots.

Swimming

through the murky salt water of the inland sea, Pukah

pondered this story. He wondered if it was true, and if so, what dread deed Kaug had committed to merit this

punishment. He also wondered, if Kaug was

now so powerful, why he didn’t move to a

better neighborhood.

Despite

the fact that he could breathe water as easily as he breathed air, Pukah felt smothered. He missed the blazing

sun, the freedom of the vast, open land.

Cutting through the sea with slashing

strokes of his arms, the djinn deeply resented having to endure the cold and the wet and what was worse, the

stares of goggle-eyed fish. Nasty creatures,

fish. All slimy and scaly. No desert nomad

ate them, considering them food fit only for city people who could get nothing better. Pukah’s skin crawled

in disgust as one of the stupid things bumbled into him. Pushing the fish aside, taking care to wipe the slime from his hand

on a nearby sponge, Pukah peered through the

water, searching for the cave entrance.

There it

was, light streaming from within. Good, Kaug was at home.

Kaug’s

cave stood at the very bottom of the sea, hollowed out of a cliff of black rock. The light from inside

illuminated long, greenish-brown moss that

hung from the cliff, drifting about in the

water like the hair of a drowned woman. Coral rose in grotesque shapes from the

seafloor, writhing and twisting in the constantly shifting shadows. Gigantic

fish with small, deadly eyes and sleek

bodies and rows of razor teeth flashed past, eyeing Pukah hungrily at first, then cursing the djinn for his

ethereal flesh.

Pukah

cursed them back just as heartily—for being ugly, if nothing else. The young djinn was not in the least

overawed by his surroundings, beyond a

certain repugnance and a desire to gulp a

draft of fresh air. Confident in himself and his own intelligence and what he

assumed was the correlating stupidity of his opponent,

Pukah was actually looking forward to tossing a verbal sack over the head of his enemy.

If Pukah

had talked to Sond or Fedj, he would have been on his guard. He would, in fact, have been quaking in his

silken slippers, for it was far more likely that—in an encounter with the evil ‘efreet—it would be Pukah who would end up in

the bag and not a verbal one. But Pukah had not discussed his plan with

either Sond or Fedj. Still determined to outdo both the other djinn and win Akhran’s admiration for himself, Pukah had

devised a second scheme to salvage his

first. Like many others, djinn and human

alike, Pukah mistook a hulking body as an indication of a hulking mind, visualizing himself as being capable of

flitting about the older ‘efreet’s dull

intelligence like a teasing bird fluttering about the head of the bear.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.