Loretta of the Lamp

The hermitage

Akil did not slow his pace as he began to talk, "I told you already of the Mountain of Smoke at Misbah and the sacrifices made there," he looked over his shoulder briefly at the tiny, distant point where the clouds hung, obstructing the pale gold hue of the sky as they began to spiral down toward the land. The inverted mountain.

"Well that creature is what those sacrifices will become, when the Mountain has finished with them,"

Loretta raised one eyebrow, "I don't follow you?" she said.

His look begged her not to probe, he knew she questioned because he was one of those sacrifices, but Bennou could not know, so he continued, "Those who are taken as sacrifices accepted into the Mountain of Smoke are kept there, sometimes for hundreds of years," he said, slowly and carefully, "but when the Lamp is done with them, when all their life has been sucked out and there is nothing left but the shell, they are expelled from the mountain. No longer Jinni, we call them the Jin, soulless and almost formless creatures that cannot die, and cannot live. They are the reason our cities are walled, why the gates are locked tight at night, and why we travel between them in caravans."

"The Jin," Loretta said.

Akil nodded, "Unable to live in the light, they take form only when the lamp has been extinguished for the night. They are filled by a lust for the living, a desperate need to consume all things that come in their path in an attempt to create a body and a form they can use once more."

"Zombies," Loretta muttered under her breath, clutching her arm tight.

"This is why our cities are guarded, and people do not feel safe any more," Bennou told her, "We flock to live in Misbah under the protection of the Djin King."

"The Djin King? He has power over them?"

Bennou nodded, "All the legends say the Jin will not go near a place where the Djin King is."

"Why?" Loretta asked, looking at Akil.

"We don't know." Akil shrugged, "He is powerful."

Loretta who looked back over her shoulder, "So where are going now then, if we cannot head straight for Misbah?"

"Doua."

The name sounded familiar to Loretta, "Will we there before it is dark again?" she couldn't see anything but the distant mountains ahead of them.

"Doua is right on the western edge of the lamp, so no, but we will be less exposed and closer to safety than the three days journey we would have to make from here to Misbah in the open."

"How will we be safe?"

"There is a hermitage I remember, on an outcrop at the foot of the mountains, we should be able to find refuge there for the night."

"Ahh!" Loretta snapped her fingers at Akil, "I remember, you said Doua is the name of your home town."

*

Upon a rocky outcrop the hermitage was balanced, a tumbling tower kept erect by its precarious position, wedged between two spires of natural stone. They climbed their way up the widest spire on a narrow path where a misplaced step would mean death on the rocks below. The light had faded completely by the time they reached the tower at the top. The tower had three floors, and on the highest floor there was a balcony from where they could see the view out over the land, from the mountains to the desert – all lands in the north.

"How can we know we will be safe up here?" Loretta asked Bennou as she watched him prepare a fire on the balcony, "Especially with you lighting up a fire that I'm sure will be seen for miles around."