Worldsoul

many names of God as they wove and coiled around the bars, and resisted the urge to bow her head. She did not want to take her eyes off the ifrit for too long, wary of what it might do.

She had already tried speaking to it, in the old language of Persia, a tongue now lost or kept secret by the Fire Worshippers, the Zoroastrians. But the ifrit had remained within a vast and distant silence, like the quiet of the desert itself, at the breaking of the day. Shadow had not really expected anything else and repressed a sigh. They were not like angels, who might deign to talk to you, or demons, who were eager to do so in exchange for something else. They had an agenda which Shadow did not understand, and even the great mystics had failed to delineate their thoughts.

“If you will not talk to me,” Shadow said aloud, “Then I cannot give you what you want.” Yet she knew this was meretricious. She thought she did know, indeed, what the ifrit wanted: it wanted to be free, to roam the high places of the air beneath the stars, to step lightly with feet of flame upon the sands of the desert, to burn to a blaze that lights the night. She could not give it that, because the Shah had imprisoned it. So that meant forcing it into action.

Shadow swallowed, and went over to the latticed window. Below, the fountain played its music in the centre of the courtyard and a flock of golden doves wheeled above the Has, before settling onto the opposing roof where they cooed and quarrelled. That gave Shadow an idea. She walked back to the captive roil of the ifrit.

“You want to go back to your kind, don’t you?” she said. She pitched her voice low, almost seductive. “Back to your flock? I can help you.”

She lied, but she did not think the ifrit would know that. At least, not yet. The mass of energy slowed a little, she thought, although it could have been her own imagination. Wishful thinking… well, that was what magic was all about, after all.

“If you give me what I want,” Shadow said, “I will make the Shah help you. And then I will help you get your revenge.”

If the room were bugged, if she were challenged, she would say only that it had been a ploy to force the ifrit’s cooperation. Perhaps this was even true, in part.

The ifrit said, in a voice that was not a voice, within her mind, “What do you want?”

“The Shah wants knowledge,” Shadow said. “Not to live forever-he is too wise for that. But when he does die, he wants to know how he can force the hand of paradise. He wants the name of a particular spirit, and you can get that for me.” She lied, of course, and did not like the lie. Once the ifrit had agreed to do her bidding, then she could act: transform the ifrit into other parameters. That it should be changed into human form, the Shah had commanded, and Shadow would have to do her best to comply.

“It is a long time,” the ifrit said, “since I set foot at the gates of heaven.”

“Your kind are not allowed into paradise, are they?” Shadow said, hesitant.

Soft, vast laughter. “We do not wish to go. The sunset airs are enough for us.”

“But can you get me the name?”

“Which is the spirit?”

“He is a prince of the air,” Shadow said. The Shah had coached her carefully in what she had to say. “His number is nine and his stone is the moss agate. His hour of the day is six o’clock in the morning. That’s the only information the Shah has, and do not ask me where he got it from.”

“I shall look within memory,” the ifrit said. “In return, when will I be free? And what assurance do I have that this will be so?”

“I will go away while you are looking,” Shadow answered. “When I come back, I will bring the Shah’s own Court with me, as a guarantee. Its use in my magic will set you free.”

“Then I agree,” the ifrit said, surprising her. (It was only much later, Shadow realised, that she had omitted a crucial factor from her considerations. Set on the notion that the ifrit would want its freedom above all else, it had not occurred to her that the ifrit might have other ideas.)

She left the room, seeking the Shah. She found him in the long room that adjoined the courtyard verandah.

“How are you getting on?” She might have been a new secretary, typing a report.

“I’m not sure.” Shadow was determined to treat the Shah with as much neutrality as she could muster. She told him what the ifrit had said.

“Interesting. You may borrow the ring.”

Shadow had been expecting more protest, which either meant that the Shah wanted this very badly, or that he was playing a different game altogether. She was inclined to suspect the latter.

“The ifrit will know… ” she began. The Shah blinked at her mildly.

“If it is a fake? Yes, I am aware of that. I shall just have to trust you with the genuine article, then.”

“All right,” Shadow said, warily. “I’d best get back.”

The Shah removed the heavy signet from his finger and put it into her hand, curling cool fingers around her own for a disconcerting second. “Do try to look after it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

On the way up the stairs, she looked down at the ring. It was a heavy thing of pale gold, with a carved obsidian stone. The letters were in Arabic and glided across the surface of the ring. Shadow blinked, as the Shah had done, and the letters changed. All at once, she was conscious of being watched. It was as though she held an eye in the palm of her hand. No wonder the Shah had not suggested accompanying her back to the room in which the ifrit was held; he had not needed to. He could watch, and perhaps listen, through the very mechanism that she had requested of him.

Holding the ring tightly in her fist, Shadow stepped back into the room to meet the ifrit.

Twenty-One

Mercy and Benjaya sat on one side of the table in a downstairs office, the ka on the other. Perra sat with its paws on the ebony wood, a small severe judge.

“You have a choice, as I see it,” the ka said. “Stay on this side of the world and try to close the gap, or pass through and find out why.”

“I told the Elders that I would do my best to sort this out,” Mercy said. She felt the obligation like an uncomfortable lump in her throat. The ka looked at her. “And how do you intend to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Mercy admitted. The journey to the Eastern Quarter had clarified the danger, but had accomplished little in terms of resolution. The idea of going through the gap held a dark appeal: Mercy had to ask herself whether this was simply escapism, staving off the problem in the guise of taking action. She looked at Benjaya’s hopeful face and thought: Oh dear. Librarians. We don’t get out much.

When she turned to the ka, she saw to her irritation that Perra had already divined what she was thinking. The ka was not, so Mercy believed, reliably psychic-although it might just have been that Perra kept its own counsel.

“Should you go,” the ka said, “I shall accompany you.”

“Thank you,” Mercy said.

They set out that evening, when twilight was already falling in a soft veil across the city. Mercy once more carried the Irish sword; Benjaya bore his rapier. They had brought suitable clothes. Mercy was wearing one of the thick woollen sweaters that Greya had brought from the north and rarely wore in the temperate climes of the West, and toting a padded coat with a fur hood. The sweater-cream wool, with a design of small black snowflakes-made her conscious of a link with her mother, now who knows where on the Barquess… Even in the temperate climes of the Library, she was already feeling far too hot. The thought of that Arctic air was almost welcome.

Benjaya wore a leather coat, as dark as his skin, and sensible stout boots.

Perra padded alongside on small lion’s feet, saying little.

As they approached the stacks of Section C, Mercy thought she felt a cold wind already blowing through, but