“So what’s your answer?”
“I can think of two,” Arachne said. “It could be personal. As you’ve said, Richard is a persuasive and manipulative man. He’s used to people doing what he wants, and for the most part, they do. You, however, rejected and fled from him. It’s very possible that he resents that. With all of his power and charisma, Richard still failed to keep your loyalty. Perhaps he won’t be truly satisfied until you return to him of your own free will.”
I had to stop and think about that one. “I . . . guess?” I said slowly. I was so used to seeing Richard as my old master that it was difficult for me to think of him as a human being. “It seems kind of petty.”
“The powerful and the great can be as petty as anyone else,” Arachne said. “I only suggest it as something to keep in mind.”
“All right. What’s the second answer?”
“The second answer is simpler,” Arachne said. “Richard has made such an effort to recruit you because you have something he can’t easily obtain somewhere else.”
“That seems to fit better with what I know of him,” I said, “but I don’t get what that something is. Okay, Anne and I are good at what we do, but he could probably find a Dark diviner or life mage who could do the same thing. Actually, with Vihaela, he kind of already did.”
“A Dark mage, yes,” Arachne said. “But think of all the people you know who work for Richard and have worked for Richard over the years. Morden, Vihaela, Rachel, Tobruk, Onyx, and all those other Dark mages you’ve heard of or gathered information on. What do they have that you and Anne don’t?”
“Better salaries?”
“A lack of conscience,” Arachne said. “All of them chose to serve Richard willingly.”
“Okay, but I don’t exactly think that’s a selling point on our part.”
“Which brings us to this message,” Arachne said. “And to the jinn.”
I looked at Arachne curiously.
“Last Christmas, when Richard sent Morden and those other mages into that bubble realm in Syria, he did it to recover a storage box,” Arachne said. “Our best guess was that the box contained a bound jinn.”
I nodded. “You said you’d tell me that story another time.”
“That time is now,” Arachne said. “Listen, and attend. The jinn are magical creatures, but thousands of years ago, they were not so very different from humans. They had a physical form, and they ate, slept, lived, and died much as other creatures did. They were divided into orders—the weakest were the jann, followed by the jinn, then the shaitan, the ifrit, and finally the marid. All had abilities that you would consider magical, though their strength varied by their order—the jann would barely qualify as adepts by the standards of mages today. Rising through the ranks, though, their powers increased greatly. They could take the shape of animals, fly or levitate, or read thoughts, but what truly set them apart was something else. The greater jinn—the marid and ifrit, primarily—could grant wishes.”
“I remember now,” I said. “You said they were the only creatures in the world that could use true wish magic.”
Arachne nodded. “It was their greatest secret, and their greatest power. It was also their downfall. Other creatures coveted the power of the jinn. Humans more than anyone else, and mages most of all.”
“I thought mages didn’t trust wish magic.”
“With very good reason,” Arachne said dryly. “But in those times, things were different. Gaining the favour of the jinn was difficult—they were capricious—but for the lucky few who succeeded, the rewards were enormous. Power and glory and treasure beyond dreams. Men were raised up as lords or kings, and were thrown down as well. Wish magic has no inherent limitations. It has the potential for anything.”
I frowned. “What’s the catch?”
“The catch,” Arachne said, “was that the outcome of the wish would depend on the interaction between the human and jinn. The jinn could not use their wish magic for themselves—another creature had to shape it, give it will and desire. Humans, with their ambitious souls, seemed best, but even then, the results were unpredictable. Sometimes it would grant the wisher their dream, sometimes their nightmare, and for the most part, the jinn cared nothing either way. When humans raged against them, they would laugh.” Arachne was silent for a moment. “They should have been more cautious.”
“What happened?”
“Humans grew angry,” Arachne said. “They came to resent the jinn for their interference, and so the mages of the Council went to the leaders among the marid and ordered them to grant wishes only as the Council decreed. The jinn refused, and so it came to war. At first, the battles were even, but the tide of the war was turned by the master mage Suleiman. He invented a way of subjugating jinn, stripping them of their physical form and binding their spirits to items so that they were compelled to serve. They could still grant wishes, but now they could do so only at the command of their bearer.”
“That sounds kind of like slavery.”
“That’s because it is slavery,” Arachne said. “Oh, and additionally, the ritual that stripped away the jinn’s bodies also granted them immortality. So they could look forward to an eternity of servitude at the hands of their bearer.”
I sighed. “I’m guessing this is why I haven’t heard about any jinn wandering around.”
“To the best of my knowledge, the last embodied jinn was bound and sealed away more than a thousand years before you were born.”
Like I said, it’s depressing how often you hear some version of this story. I guess it’s not hard to understand why creatures like Karyos react to mages on their territory by trying to kill them on sight. “Okay, so what went wrong? Because I’m sure there’s a reason every master mage doesn’t carry around a jinn in a bottle, and I doubt it’s because of ethics.”
“It all comes back to the nature of the jinn,” Arachne said. “The Council hated how unpredictable wishes were. They wanted the process to be ordered, and they did everything in their power to make it that way. In the early days, they would investigate every case of a successful wish; later, once the war had begun, they tested hundreds of jinn to destruction in an attempt to take the ability for themselves. But the only answer they could ever find was one that they couldn’t accept.”
“What answer?”
“Empathy,” Arachne said. “The humans who had their wishes granted were the ones who were able to share the feelings of others. Those who made wishes for purely selfish ends tended to receive nothing, or a result that worked against them. Those who made wishes to help another, or wishes that helped the jinn as well, did not. It was to do with the bond between the wisher and the jinn. You can imagine how maddening that was for the Council. They were looking for something they could do, to make jinn operate like machines—commands go in; wishes come out. But if it was based on what they were . . .”
“Couldn’t they just be a bit more considerate with their wishes?”
“Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?” Arachne said. “It wasn’t enough to put on a show. They would have had to genuinely care for the jinn they were dealing with. Inner nature isn’t so malleable.” Arachne looked at me. “How many high-ranking mages do you know—Light or Dark—who deeply care for the magical creatures of this world?”