The Tale of the Jinniyah and the King

an El-Hazard fanfiction by Vince Seifert (seifertv@csus.edu)

El-Hazard characters and situations are copyright 1995, 2001 by 
AIC / Pioneer LDC, Inc.  This work is not intended to infringe 
those rights.

     ~~~~~

     "It is told (but only the Eye of God is All-seeing!) that 
long ago and far away there was once a young king.  Now this king 
was a bad king, for he coveted the lands of neighboring kingdoms 
and wasted his soldiers in foolish invasions; he was greedy for 
money, and so he taxed his people until they groaned for mercy, 
and then he taxed them yet more; and he lusted for the pleasures 
of the flesh... but I will not describe his cruel ways with 
women, for there are children present.

     "It came to this king's ears that there slept, on the 
Forbidden Island where no one goes (because it is forbidden, 
among other reasons), a jinni of great power who would grant 
three wishes to whosoever awoke it from its sleep.  The king 
immediately bethought himself of the power and riches and harem 
he might gain by mastering this jinni, and his avaricious dreams 
overcame his feeble wisdom.  So the king commanded that a ship be 
prepared, provisioned with the finest viands and crewed by the 
most skilled sailors and navigators of his kingdom, and he set 
sail on that ship for the Forbidden Island.

     "The adventures that he encountered before he found what he 
sought are tales for another time.  Let it suffice to say that 
his ship reached the Forbidden Island, and he landed on the 
Strand of Woe; he searched out the ancient fortress amid the 
wasteland, and wandered a maze of twisty passages, some alike, 
until at length he discovered the ruined chamber where the jinni 
slept in a crypt of sorcerous light.

     "As the king approached, he saw that the jinni was in fact a 
jinniyah.  Her face was as fair as a pearl without flaw, her hair 
was the color of the great ice cliffs at the top of the world, 
and her body was a vision out of the lustful dreams of men, 
richly clad in clothing of a bygone age.  Floating above her was 
a great staff in the shape of a key.

     "Now, despite the jinniyah's lack of fashion sense, the king 
was smitten with her beauty, and in his befuddled state he 
remembered another tale he'd heard of how to awaken a sleeping 
princess with a kiss.  He seized the key staff, for it obstructed 
the pathway of his desire, moved it aside, and bent to kiss those 
lips like rubies.  Alas, he did not see that the jinniyah was 
rising from her bed even as he bent, and so it came about that 
her forehead smote his nose sorely.

     "And when the king had recovered, dashing the tears of pain 
from his eyes, lo! he saw that the jinniyah now stood upright 
upon the air at the foot of her bed, and yet it seemed that she 
still slept.  At this, the king remembered the proper legend, and 
recalled that the jinniyah must be awakened by the winding of a 
key, and realized that he held the key in his hand.  He sought 
eagerly beneath her clothing, and there at the small of her back 
he found a socket, and thrust the tip of the staff in.

     "Ten times he turned the key, as magical lightnings flashed 
and crackled about them, and then he could turn it no more... and 
the jinniyah's eyes opened.  She took a step away, disengaging 
herself from the key in the king's hands, then turned to face 
him, held out her hand, and spoke, saying: 'Give me that.'

     "'No way,' quoth the king, clutching the key staff to him.

     "At this, the jinniyah stepped forward and wrested the staff 
from the king as easily as though she were wresting a lollipop 
from a baby, muttering unto herself, 'Another idiot, after all 
these years.'  She examined the king with her cerulean eyes, 
nodded to herself, and addressed him thusly: 'Hast thou sold thy 
soul to Shaitan, lord of all evil beings?'

     "'Not bloody likely,' the king replied.  'Now, about my 
wishes--'

     "'Canst thou abjure me by the Names of the Marids of the 
four quarters?' interrupted the jinniyah.

     "'Never heard of them,' said the king.  'Can we get on--'

     "'Hast thou about thy person, mayhap, the Seal of Suleyman, 
may he be forever blessed?' inquired the jinniyah patiently.

     "'I must have left it in my other pants,' was the king's 
response.  'Look, I want--'

     "'Then hear me, O Son of Adam!' the jinniyah thundered in a 
voice which shook the room, while lights danced within and around 
her staff.  'When I went to sleep I vowed that for the first 
thousand years I slept, whomsoever would awaken me, to him I  
would grant three wishes.'

     "'That's the story I heard, all right,' said the king, 'and 
for my first wish--'

     "The jinniyah spoke again, her voice easily overcoming his.  
'I vowed that for the second thousand years I slept, whosomever 
would awaken me, him I would serve for all of his days!'

     "The king's eyes widened at this, and he said, 'That's even 
better than three wishes, isn't it?  But shouldn't it be 
"whomsoever"?'

     "The jinniyah took no notice of him, continuing in a voice 
replete with doom: 'But I also vowed that if the third thousand 
years began and I still slept, it would be a sign that all men 
had become cowards (not at all like the daring adventurers we had 
in the old days), and I vowed that whomsoever would awaken me, 
him I would slay with great care and attention to detail.'

     "At this, the king's knees turned to jelly and his water 
turned to ice, and he quavered, 'And how long have you slept, 
exactly?'

     "The jinniyah grinned, a grin as beautiful and terrible as 
the unsheathing of a brightly-polished scimitar, and said, in a 
voice like the clicking of abacus beads: 'Three thousand, one 
hundred and seventeen years, forty-two days, three hours, eleven 
minutes, and sixteen seconds.'

     "At this, the king uttered the ancient formula 'Oh, shit!  
Feet, don't fail me now!' and fled with the laughter of the 
jinniyah ringing in his ears.

     "Now, what the king did not know, for the tale had not come 
to his attention (which shows the wisdom of listening to humble 
tale-tellers such as myself), was that this jinniyah was an 
ifritah.  She was, in fact, the most powerful of the evil ifrits 
who had consumed the many-towered cities of the world in the 
Great War of legend which ended when the Eye of God blinked for 
the first time.  In a time long before the king awakened her, but 
long after that war, the jinniyah was a slave of whoever wound 
her key, and would go to and fro at her master's command and kill 
any and all whom he willed.  But it came to pass that she fell in 
love with her master's arch-enemy, a young sage of great wisdom 
and kindness, and refused to kill him despite her master's 
orders.  For his part, the sage was filled with pity and love for 
her, and set her free from her slavery, for he saw that she 
repented the evil deeds she had done.  Together they vanquished 
those who assailed them, and saved this magnificent world 
thereby.  That was only the first of their adventures together, 
and they had many more... but those are tales for another time.

     "After many years the sage grew old, and there came to them 
at last the Destroyer of all delights.  But!  The jinniyah (who 
had, of course, the eternal life and youth of her kind) had 
toiled for many years to prepare a great sorcery, the likes of 
which the world had never seen... and, as her beloved's soul 
slipped from his body with his last breath, she caught it 
tenderly in magical nets of fancy and wonder.  She drew it into 
her own heart, and there it took up residence, so that she and 
her lover truly became one.  Only the Almighty knows why He 
allowed this -- perhaps because it was done for love -- but so it 
was.

     "After the death of the sage, the people of the kingdom 
feared the jinniyah, for they remembered her power, and now she 
had no master but her own will.  Now, no part of her will (which 
also now encompassed the will of the sage, you will remember) 
desired any harm to come to the kingdom or its people, and indeed 
she had done much for their benefit.  But their fear did not 
abate, and the sight of this saddened her, so that she resolved 
to return to her ancient refuge, there to sleep away the years 
dreaming dreams of Paradise shared with her beloved.

     "As a consequence of the presence of the sage's soul within 
her, she gained many of the virtues of the Sons of Adam to add to 
her own.  She possessed all of the wisdom and kindness of the 
sage, and all of the power and cleverness of the ifritah... and, 
because of their long association filled with bliss and laughter, 
she was mischievous.  Now, her mischief was not of the cruel 
kind, but when the young king awakened her and treated her with 
callous contempt, she could not resist the temptation to make 
sport of him.

     "And so it was that the king found himself pursued among the 
wastelands of the Forbidden Island by the jinniyah, who flew 
above and behind him, laughing and flinging bolts of ravening 
destruction that fell all around him, but never close enough to 
harm him.  And it happened that the king espied a huge rock 
falling from a cliff to crush him where he ran, and he cowered to 
the ground waiting for death, but lo! the rock fell in fragments 
all around and over him, for the jinniyah had blasted it to dust 
as it fell.

     "'Why did you spare me?' the king asked, with the politeness 
of utter terror.

     "The jinniyah, hovering overhead, replied 'None but I shall 
do thee die!' and as she leveled her dreadful staff at him, again 
the king fled in fear for his life.  She harried him down to the 
Strand of Woe, where his ship lay offshore awaiting his return, 
but when the crew of that ship saw the jinniyah swooping to and 
fro amid the fires, explosions, and smoke-clouds of her wrath, 
their courage failed them.  As the king plunged into the water 
and swam for the ship, they swiftly weighed anchor and made off 
at the ship's best speed, piling on sail until the yardarm-
projectors grew hot as coals.  The king swam after them in vain, 
for the jinniyah continued to pursue him, and so the sailors 
dared not turn back.

     "At last the king grew weary and paused in his swimming, and 
only then noticed that the shore of the Forbidden Island was very 
far away, farther than he could still swim, and that his 
faithless ship had disappeared among the trackless waves.  He 
submerged involuntarily, and came up gasping.  'Help!' he croaked 
without hope, then went under again.  But just as he was about to 
go under for the third time (from which, as you know, there is no 
returning), the jinniyah swooped low and seized his hair, holding 
his head up thereby and allowing him to breathe the sweet air of 
life.

     "'As I said to thee before, none but I shall do thee die,' 
she reminded the king.  While the king was pondering this, she 
seized him by his sash, hoisted him bodily from the sea, and flew 
back towards the Forbidden Island, arriving there sooner than 
even a swift seabird might.

     "Now, the terror he had suffered, the seawater he had 
swallowed, and especially the stress of flying over the waves 
hanging by his belly, caused the king to lose his breakfast upon 
the blasted sands of the Forbidden Island.  When he had quite 
finished, having lost the will to live along with the contents of 
his stomach, he spoke to the jinniyah standing nearby: 'So slay 
me, already.'

     "The jinniyah shook her head and replied, saying, 'Nay, thou 
understandest my intent not.  I vowed to slay thee, and I shall, 
but I spoke no word of when I would slay thee, and that time has 
not yet come.'

     "At this, the king's hope returned to him in a flash, but in 
the next instant, he realized that he was marooned on a desert 
island, and he fell to cursing and heaping insults on the men who 
sailed for him and the ship they rode in on, with a few words to 
spare for a certain jinniyah.

     "The jinniyah stood by and listened to his torrents of 
abuse, and as she did, a frown gathered upon her brow like unto 
the storm clouds which gather above that same Forbidden Island to 
this day.  'So,' she said when the king had at last run out of 
invective, 'thou art a king, then?  Where lies thy kingdom?'

     "The king gestured sulkily in the general direction from 
which the ship had come, having in truth no knowledge of 
navigation.

     "'Rather than see thee die here of hunger and thirst, 
depriving me of the pleasure of slaying thee in my own sweet 
time,' the jinniyah told the king, 'I shall return thee to thy 
kingdom.  But beware!  Thy speech makes it quite clear that thou 
art a bad king, with no care for the welfare of thy people, who 
are the strength of thy kingdom.  Thou shouldst put more thought 
to husbanding them, and less to screwing them... and we will 
speak more on THAT later.  I shall accompany thee from this 
moment on, and should I see thee acting as a bad king, the next 
instant shall be the instant of thy death.  Art thou hearing and 
understanding?'

     "The king nodded quickly, not trusting himself to speak, 
seeing what straits his hasty speech had brought him to (and 
verily, that was the beginning of his redemption).  So the 
jinniyah took the king up in her arms with her staff slung over 
her shoulder and flew away from the Forbidden Island at 
marvellous speed, so that a thin streak of cloud formed behind 
them as they went.  In the twinkling of an eye they passed over 
the ocean to the land beyond, and the jinniyah alighted atop a 
green, grassy hill and set the king on his feet there.

     "Now, the king had recovered some of his arrogance during 
the flight, so he complained to the jinniyah, 'Why didn't we go 
straight to my kingdom?'

     "The jinniyah looked about her and up at the sky.  'It's 
such a nice day, why don't we walk?' she suggested to the king, 
smiling.  There was not much the king could do about this, so 
they walked.  

     "They walked all the way back to his kingdom, and the 
adventures they had on the way (though those are-- yes, yes, you 
know, they are stories for another time) began to teach the young 
king the value of courtesy, of honesty, and of keeping one's 
pantaloons buttoned.

     "With the threat of the jinniyah's sentence ever present, 
the king dared not fall back into his old ways, and over time he 
became a good king.  He gave orders that his soldiers should be 
trained and deployed for the guarding of the land's borders; he 
reduced taxes to a point that would support the needs of the 
kingdom rather than the demands of his own luxury; and in due 
time he won the love of a princess from another kingdom, and he 
married her properly, and their offspring grew up bright, strong, 
and good, and they played with the jinniyah in the gardens, for 
she loved children.

     "From time to time it happened that the jinniyah saved the 
king's life, from treacherous blade, or wild beast, or simple 
accident, and on each occasion she reminded the king, 'None but I 
shall do thee die.'  But in spite of this -- or perhaps because 
of it -- the king came to regard her more as a bodyguard than a 
judge.  And every few years the king wound up the jinniyah again 
with her key.

     "At last, after a long, productive, and surprisingly (to a 
man who had given up all his former pleasures) happy life, the 
king fell ill unto death.  And he spoke to the jinniyah, saying, 
'You swore that none but you would slay me, and now see what has 
happened!'

     "The jinniyah examined the king with the senses of her kind, 
which surpass your own senses as yours surpass those of the 
creeping snail, and saw that his fate was near and certain.  But 
she smiled at him, a smile that lightened the hearts of all the 
grievers there, and said softly, 'Fear not, O King!  For you have 
lived a good life and a righteous, and I am certain that you 
shall ascend into Heaven because of it; and so I am become your 
bright angel of death, and if you wish it, I shall slay you with 
great care and attention to detail.  You shall not suffer the 
least pain, but be released from your suffering and set free to 
go to your reward.'

     "Then the king perceived the mercy and justice that was in 
the jinniyah -- yea, and the mischief as well -- and he laughed 
despite his pain, and agreed gladly.  And when he had bidden 
farewell to his family and his people, the jinniyah touched him 
gently upon his forehead, and he died in that instant with a look 
of peace and contentment upon his aged face.

     "As for the jinniyah, she left that kingdom soon after... 
and it may be that she wanders this world even yet, for she is 
never alone."

     The audience gathered in the village marketplace was silent 
for a while, hoping that that was not the end of the tale, but it 
was.  And then a brave child asked, "Did all that really happen?"

     The tale-teller laughed, not loud or long, but with such joy 
and love of life that the hearts of all who heard were lightened 
by it.  "Oh, yes, it all really happened," she said.

     ~~~~~ end The Tale of the Jinniyah and the King ~~~~~

Thanks to Dave Roeder and Darniil Entroth for prereading.

Thanks to Sir Richard Burton for translating the "Alif Laylah wa
Laylah", whence I filched certain plot and style elements.