“Wow! Great to meet you.” Layla smiled genuinely at Yousry, fascinated and wanting to hear the story now of how he and Adrian had become aligned.
“The pleasure is all mine.” He smiled brightly, effortlessly winning. “But come! This week we shall tend no business! This week is about taking care of family. And as we are all family here, let us allow uncle Yousry to take us around his beloved Luxor, eh? Into the car, lovelies, and let’s away!”
They needed no second urging. The day promised to be hot as a zephyr flowed up from the tarmac beneath the morning desert sun. Settling their luggage in the trunk, they were soon piled in, Adrian up front in the passenger seat beside Yousry as he drove, Layla and Dusk in back. As they pulled out of the airport, heading west towards the city and the Nile, Layla admired the modern buildings interspersed with greenbelts, ancient ruins, and far more modern hovels crowding all around. The city sprouting up along the twisting Nile River reminded her of Nice on the French Riviera, a combination of dirty and chic – a place of history and modernity all at once. As they drove into the chaos of the city proper, sprouting up against the vivid desert sky, Yousry struck up a blithe conversation.
“So! Adrian. All is prepared for our journey to the Crystal Plateau. I have a Jeep outfitted for the desert, and I have cleared my schedule for the week to be your guide. We have a residence in the city tonight, and tomorrow morning we drive across the river, heading west towards the Valley of Kings and the Crystal Highway. The Crystal Highway into the Plateau is heavily warded, but I am supposing our young Egyptian drake can get us through.” He glanced in the rear-view mirror at Dusk.
“I’m fairly certain I can,” Dusk spoke up, though he frowned a little. “But I can’t be one hundred percent sure. I’ve heard even King Markus Ambrose hasn’t been able to penetrate my homeland since the war.”
“Indeed.” Yousry spoke soberly now, glancing at Dusk again in the rearview as they arrived in the heart of town and traffic began to slow around the Bentley. Though there were no skyscrapers, palm trees lined touristy avenues chock-full of six-story apartment buildings, hotels, and shopping, thick with the press of humanity all around. Turning right on an avenue that followed the sweep of the river, they headed through the hotel area, out towards where the hotels gave way to the Luxor Temple on the river’s banks.
“King Markus has been through Luxor many times in the past century.” Yousry continued as he drove. “He has been turned away from your land again and again, and became so furiously angry that he declared the Crystal Plateau cursed by your clan’s dead, Dusk. I do not hear of curses from the wind, but I hear of angry spirits. We shall see when we arrive, but I believe your dead are restless, and it has caused a barrier, almost a rift in that area of the Twilight Realm. The earth roars and shudders in your homeland, and Djinn cannot pass. It is why I am so eager for this adventure – I will be the first man of the winds to see it in recent history! Such a tale I will tell, after we are through.”
But as Yousry spoke, Layla saw Dusk darken. Despite the excitement of the adventure before him, the mention of his clan’s restless dead troubled Dusk deeply. Reaching out, Layla slid a hand over his thigh, and he glanced at her with a brief smile. But she felt how much weight lay upon him now, deepened by Yousry’s eagerness to get a good story out of the whole thing.
To Dusk, his clan’s extinction wasn’t a good story. As he glanced out the tinted windows, watching the river pass by as they headed towards the Luxor Temple, he clammed up. Yousry prattled on about winds and history, but as Layla caught Adrian’s gaze in the rearview mirror, she saw his concern for Dusk also, and even Yousry’s eyes flicked to Dusk as he talked. As much as this journey seemed like a holiday, it wasn’t. It was a homecoming to a dead land with a dead people, and on some level, they all knew it. As Layla mulled that over, feeling Dusk’s mood darken away from his excitement earlier on the jet, she realized his past was something he almost didn’t want to face.
But he had to, if he wanted to start his clan again.
And his rising Dragon wasn’t giving him any choice in the matter.
CHAPTER 11 – TOUR
Layla had thought Yousry was driving them to a hotel in the human world, when he pulled up to a fairly barren greensward right beside the Luxor Temple ruins and rolled down the window of the car. As he waved his hand in an elegant gesture beside a ruined stone heap, producing a curl of wind and flashing a gold and ruby ring on his index finger, Layla suddenly experienced the white vision and disorienting whine that meant they were headed into the Twilight Realm. As he pulled the car forward, the sprawling park with its handful of tourists resting under the tall palms was transformed.
Into a six-story hotel surrounded by lush greenery.
Layla’s mouth fell open as birds of thirty different varieties took wing at their arrival, flashing up from a massive fountain as they drove in to the hotel’s semi-circular drive. Inlaid with cobalt glass and gold tiles, the hotel shone in the morning sun. Surrounded by high palm trees, the hotel was like a dream oasis, filled with enormous urns of bird-of-paradise, jasmine, and numerous other varieties of vines and flowers. Blue lotus blossomed in a riot in the fountain’s stunning white basin, the hotel’s façade between the tiles carved from the same blinding white stone in ornate, mosque-like arabesque and geometric patterns.
As Yousry parked the car and everyone got out, bellhops in crisp white caftans and loose white pants whisked quickly out from the colonnaded arches, fetching their luggage. The bellhops didn’t carry the luggage, but swirled their hands in a manner similar to Yousry, and the bags were fetched up into tightly-controlled funnels of wind that the men whisked quickly inside. One of the younger men, a sexy dark-haired fellow with blue eyes so vivid they were almost electric, winked dashingly at Layla as he swirled her bag up from the trunk. Layla was left standing by the car staring as Yousry laughed. As the bellhops departed, an older gentleman flowed out of the building towards them, embracing Yousry, then Adrian.
Their host was elderly but upright, tall and slender but not infirm. His fantastic mane of white hair moved in its own wind, his silk-slippered feet not so much walking on the earth but flowing over it in a way Layla’s eyes could barely track. He was there but also not, as his body swirled out to nothing and then reappeared, his white and red-striped caftan now just edges, now full fabric, now so sheer he was damn near invisible. But his eyes remained a ferociously electric turquoise in his tanned, high-cheeked face as he turned and gripped Dusk with easy familiarity. As their host turned those too-bright eyes upon Layla, she suddenly felt like when she’d initially met Queen Justine Toulet of the Storm Dragons of Europe – like their elderly host had swept a deep wind though her, reading her life, her magic, her dreams.
Everything.
“Layla Price, Royal Dragon Bind,” their host spoke in a flowing tenor voice, his electric eyes smiling down upon her from his tall frame, “be welcome in the House of Everwinds. I am Tarik Malhoum, First of the Rogue Djinn and proprietor of this wayfarer’s hotel. This is a place of peace, where all are permitted to rest upon their journeys. Please, be welcome in my home.”
“Thank you.” Layla spoke, too stunned to say much. She was still trying to see the man as he became a silhouette, then bright-edged like a ghost, then fully present again. Watching her, he laughed as he gestured a hand absolutely covered in gold jewelry for them to follow him inside.
As Layla followed Tarik and Yousry beneath the vaulted arches and into a fantastic courtyard open to the sky and devoured by greenery, with a matching fountain like the one in front, Layla watched how Yousry was influenced by his Rogue Djinn First. Yousry hadn’t shown any Djinnic power other than passing them through into the Twilight Realm, but now he began to shimmer and become bright edges and moving etheric winds similar to Tarik. It was a haunting effect, and Layla found herself mesmerized by the two of them talking in Egyptian Arabic now rather than English and waving their hands – their wrists and fingers flashing gold as much as the elegant courtyard and hotel around them.
The ornate Djinnic hotel was just as stunning as their hosts, fabulously appointed in an old-world Egyptian way. Teak screens carved with flowers and detailed arabesque patterns made secluded niches in the courtyard, complete with scroll-back chaises in bright silks for lounging. Walls of white stone were carved through, permitting glimpses of fabulous sitting-rooms beyond in bright teals and sapphires, warm desert reds, golds, and plum. Crystal chandeliers cascaded from the vaulted ceilings, along with silver chandeliers of brightly colored glass votives that matched each room’s decor. Gold glinted everywhere, from the gilded edges of cobalt ceramic pots full of flowers, to gilded screens, to bright gold tassels of silk throw-pillows on the chaises. It was opulent and sensual, yet so gorgeously whimsical that it felt like a playful wind teased through the entire place.
And a wind did. Lifting up through the vaults and flowing around the courtyard, Layla watched the winds of the Djinnic hotel swirl and dance as they picked up fresh flower petals clearly scattered throughout the garden to create just such an effect. Whirling high up to the topmost story of the hotel, the winds carried petals of chrysanthemum and rose, jasmine and iris up to the furthest balconies, then dove down in intricate patterns. Swirling through the waters of the fountain, they twisted the water and sculpted it, braiding layers of dancing petals through every tier of cascading water in a spectacular dance. The sight of it filled Layla with joy, the warm winds sweetly teasing her hair and outfit until her curls were full of flowers.
Watching her with a smile, Dusk stepped over, picking rose petals out of her hair as he chuckled. His dark mood from the car had been eased by the whimsical space and their warm welcome, and Dusk beamed at Layla and Adrian as he gazed around the courtyard also. Taking a deep breath of the playful winds, he sighed, and Layla did the same as she wound her fingers through his, holding his hand as they watched the winds dance. The air was scented with the flowers of the sprawling courtyard, and as Layla breathed, she caught rose and honeysuckle, jasmine and cinnamon, like a tapestry of scents woven by the winds’ dance. Stepping to them, Adrian laced his fingers through Layla’s other hand, and they stood together a long moment, breathing together.
“The Dragons are enchanted by our Courtyard of Dancing Winds, yes?” Tarik spoke as he stepped up beside them with Yousry, both of the Djinn watching the winds with them. “This courtyard was a holy place, long ago. The winds would dance around this spring from which the fountain still flows, playing with the oasis and flowing out to the waters of the Nile. We have guided them into patterns, but still, they dance of their own doing. Come. There will be plenty of time for you to enjoy such holy delights later. Let me show you to your rooms.”
Beckoning them away from the central courtyard toward a set of grand red and gold-painted stairs that wound up to the second level, Tarik showed them to their rooms. A little ways down the corridor, three opulent suites next to each other waited with their doors open. Each suite overlooked the broad fountain courtyard, and had a fountain basin of tiny gold tiles adjacent, as if for washing off the sand of the desert when one entered one’s room. Moving inside her suite, Layla admired it as the bellhops finished leaving their luggage on ornately-carved teak luggage stands. The sexy young Djinn with electric eyes winked at her again as he departed, though he didn’t say anything. All of them bowed to Tarik as they left, who nodded to each with a pleasant smile like a benevolent king.
Turning a full three-sixty in her suite, Layla admired its opulence. Beneath a vaulted dome of white stone, a four-post teak canopy bed carved with arabesque flowed with bright turquoise silk jacquard drapes edged in gold tassels. Tiles of turquoise and gold, cobalt and a bright sea-green decorated the walls of her suite with ornate patterns, the bed set on a platform of white stone as decadently carved as the bed, the floor as gleamingly bright though smooth like white glass. Ornate silk rugs lay everywhere, and her own private fountain burbled in the sitting-area with its plush silk chaises and chairs. The suite even had its own aviary, birds of bright colors with long tails flying in through carved screens over the doors and roosting in a living tangle of vines and flowers that devoured one wall.
But the view was the real kicker. As Layla moved to the vaulted windows with their recessed niches and sitting-alcoves for reading, throwing open one carved teak screen, her breath was stolen. Staring out over the lush greenery surrounding the hotel, she saw the Luxor Temple with the broad banks of the blue Nile shimmering beyond. But though her mind knew the temple had been ruined for ages in the human world and half-repurposed into a mosque, here it stood strong and proud, hale and bright in its original splendor. Painted in colors as vivid as Layla’s room, fresh turquoises, emeralds, bold reds, and saffrons, this temple had never been ruined by time. Every statue, every tall column was pristine, not even sand-pocked – all of it shining in the bright midday with broad greenswards and beautiful gardens, irrigated by clever sluice-ways engineered off the river.
Turning, Layla gaped as Dusk, Adrian, Tarik, and Yousry shared beaming looks as they watched her. Stepping forward, Tarik spoke as his electric blue eyes smiled. “The Temple is lovely, is it not? For thousands of years my people have kept it, though sadly we could not do so for its counterpart in the human world. Many of us Djinn cannot control our powers, and our figures blow as our winds take us. Yousry is one of few that can; and one of few that crosses through the Realms to keep safe what is left of our temples upon the other side.”
“But I thought Yousry worked for Adrian?” Layla blinked, cocking her head.
