After a lonely spell in the dark, Q used deep sympathy to conjure a wyvern, uncoiling it from the sand and smiling into the pitch as the creature’s scaly spindles arced terribly against the ridged outline of dune peaks beyond. The boy patted himself on the chest in salutation, and the wyvern grudgingly huffed its disgusted acknowledgement.
As a rule of desert magicks, a conjurer holds his subject in servitude for one deed, after which the summoned may choose to return to the region from whence it arrived. Or it may stay and do as it pleases. Because of this second option, awakening a spirit so powerful as Al Taneen, the desert dragon, was an incredibly brazen maneuver, even in the middle regions between day and night.
“Marhaba,” said Q, staring up at the hulking shadow before him. “I need you for only a simple task.”
The wyvern growled and the earth trembled beneath it. It opened its jaws and spoke, and the words issuing forth were horrifying to the ear, the cacophonous vestiges of a language surely forgotten if, that is, it have ever been known to the realm of man in the first place. Q did not stutter or hesitate.
“You will give me your name,” he said to the wyvern.
Again the draconian beast upended the silent desert night with a bellowing grumble, heating the air to an acidic mist with its rancid breath. The words came as flaming arrows, fraying the link between earth and sky, sending sonic reverberations into untold leagues.
“I promise you, friend, this is all I ask.” Q’s voice was calm and defiant. “And then you may go, or stay and devour me, should you so desire.”
The wyvern lowered its serpentine head, allowing a sliver of starlight to illuminate its gruesome visage. Q noticed the eyes, blue and crystalline, leaking tears of blood onto the rocky underscales of the dragon’s snout. The monster’s fortress of teeth was the gate of a war-worn parapet, hiding the scent of rot behind its spires. It sniffed and grunted before retreating back into the darkness.
Two words were then whispered on the air: Wadi Malak. And then nothing. Silence enveloped the swirling mix of heated wind and dragon vapor, creating a dense and sickly vacuum. All movement, save Q’s steady breathing, ceased entirely. The demon apprentice met the stony gaze of Wadi Malak with even measures of pain and gratitude. Without flinching, both smiled. Two killers at a crossroads, admiring one another’s stubborn resolve.
“Shukran,” said Q.
“Salam,” answered Wadi Malak.
Then the beast pirouetted in the sand and bounded skyward, pounding its wings with an electric fury, graceful and disgusting as it whipped earthen debris into a maelstrom beneath its ghastly airborne corpus. Sandpaper scales along Wadi Malak’s back, invalid from the mighty creature’s long slumber, careened violently toward the ground and sent Q sprawling under a fusillade of petrified bone and sinew. Several pieces lanced his flesh, and Q, blinded with pain, tumbled into a grainy ditch and passed out.
When he awoke, he was naked, scab-covered and surrounded by skulls. Skulls of man and animal alike, foisted on a bed of bones. Q did not jump up in fright, but instead rose slowly and surveyed his surroundings. Despite the ceaseless darkness of the mystery land that had abducted him, Q’s senses had quickly adapted and become attuned to the unexpected. And the musty smell of subterranean confines was unmistakable.
Q crawled in the direction of the least foul smelling air, craning his head toward a vague sound of dripping water. Half-healed gashes reopened on his skin, and soon the scent of his blood rose thickly into the dank. He crawled for a solid hour like this, bleeding and thirsty, into further and further reaches of nothing. Then he halted. Q felt the presence of another, heard the dull rise and fall of breath. Someone, or something, was very close. Its low, gravelly voice echoed into the lightless din and sent ice across Q’s bare skin.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Quadamah Al-Ayman.”
