Qar Iq-Qirishid

The Lampsellers—they call themselves Ra'ibid Ar-Ulkakhri, "children of the Great Fire", or else Uq-Qoliyyu, "the good people"—are not an imposing people. Fairly short and stocky, with burnt red skin and wavy, dark brown hair, only their amber eyes mark them as physically different from the dozens of peoples who have lived in and around the Senok Desert in the Southern Hemisphere. They are devout followers of Izfaism, commanding all to follow the decrees of the Sixty-Three-Named God in the long battle against the forces of the Night (male) and the Flood (female). They have this annoying tendency of burning down temples dedicated to other gods, but that's more part-and-parcel with living in the Senok Desert in any case. Their own architecture bears mention—the Palace of Irdush is one of the great marvels of the region—but their society is practically medieval. Women are sedentary, and run the markets and the oasis-towns (ammayad) with their mothers and sisters; men are nomadic, and marry as many times as they can wherever they wish, travelling with their brothers through the Long Roads (zuyaday). (The irmuz, leader of their main state Acarios—from Lampseller Ammay A-Qariyyu—is traditionally sent a wife from every major settlement.) An interesting people, but nothing to write home about.

And yet it is these people, first in the region, who learned to enslave djinn.

Qar Iq-Qirishid, the Rock of the Demon-Doors, is a large exposed granite structure in the eastern desert, quite near the Chom Mountains. Its sides are covered in strange pictograms, of zebras and alfils and long-necked rhinos, creatures that haven't been seen in these parts for millennia. Deep inside the rock are some of the oldest human skeletons in existence, as of yet undiscovered and thus still present. It's a beautiful, haunting place.

It's also one of the major spots where it becomes possible to catch djinn.

The origins of the djinn are uncertain. The Qoliyyu believe them to be lost names of God, who wandered away from God's purpose at the creation of the world. The Hercuans in the colder, wetter south think of them as false gods, worshipped by the Qoliyyu. The Kagamai, the wandering masked men, think of them as the spirits of the dead summoned by necromancy to do the bidding of tyrants.

The djinn themselves say little about their origin.

There was a tradition, long ago, of summoning the djinn not for service but for spirit-quests—for they are spirits of the air and fire, and see many things, and can carry the mind to many places. The ancient Kakamahi civilization (from whom the modern Kagamai are descended) spoke to them and merged minds with them, to be taken on journeys across the deserts and deep into the diverging planes of reality. But a djinni can be as easily bound to metal as to a mind, and when summoned they will do the bidding of the summoner—and if bound to a wayqa ir-rishaa, a Containment (usually in the form of a ring or a lamp), they can be summoned again and again with minimal effort. The Qar Iq-Qirishid is an excellent place to summon them, if you know the Word to call them with. And storing them in vessels (usually brass or copper, sometimes silver, and in one very strange case a Salvian prayer-wheel) allows the user to bypass the mental and physical effort needed to Call to them and get straight to the power. So they have been used for purpose after purpose—building cities, destroying cities, carrying people vast distances in the time it takes to snap one's fingers, fetching rare and expensive treasures from the far corners of the world…

It is never-ending.

The only consolation available to the poor djinn is that their users, too, become more and more djinni-like as they expend more power, and the misuse of their gifts will eventually burn a frequent wielder alive from the inside. After death…with luck they reach the afterlife of their choice before the cousins of the djinn they have tormented seize them.

Do not give credence to the old legends of caves beneath the rocks, filled with treasure. Heed not the stories of gateways to worlds beyond the world, to cities of amber and lapis lazuli, tended orchards of living metals. They are stories, nothing more. Know this and be comforted.

Take a step up here now, to this heart of the wilderness. Listen to the wind sighing through the rock, see the distant glitter of the snow-covered mountains reaching up to the heavens. Smell the rich must of cinnamon and desert peppers, burnt as offerings by the odd pilgrim. (There are those who remember who the djinni used to be.) The sun is high in the sky, but the air is cool up on the rock. And pay your respects, if you dare, to the djinn who remain, mourning their long-lost brothers and sisters.

They are angry now. They will not be taken again. Nor will they share their minds with humans, though they reach out to burn us only rarely.

But there is nothing to fear here. There is only the wind, sighing through the rock.

And the silence of the djinn.