Excerpt
The first djinn emerged in the night sky: a whirlwind topped with a simulacrum of Khalid himself. Knife-sharp grains of sand spun upward, pulled by the centrifugal force of the air that formed the construct’s lower half. Khalid swallowed down bile as he looked at his creation. The djinn’s outstretched arms were frozen in a gesture of welcome, but its unblinking eyes were indifferent to the suffering it was about to cause.
If only he could create a living construct, he wouldn’t be forced to watch oversized statues of himself wreaking destruction. Before Sabha, he used to revel in the fact that his enemy would know he had been the mage who had killed them. Now, the sight of his giant face in the sky made him sick.
Two more djinni coalesced, dragging roiling storms of colored lightning behind them like fringed capes. Malik shut the spellbook, words of congratulations on his lips. But his face fell, his compliments silenced before they could be uttered. Khalid’s heart rate sped up as he followed his vizier’s gaze.
The three djinni should have been flying north over the dunes to the enemy encampment, spinning tornados of wind and lightning beneath them. Instead, the constructs hung suspended in midair, their lower whirlwinds frozen into a stillness as eerie as their unmoving humanoid tops.
A rush of air rippled Khalid’s headscarf and robe, but the desert was suddenly silent. He could no longer hear the rasp of wind over sand.
Eurus, Khalid realized, his grim fear sinking into actual dread.
The glimmering white-gold outline of a woman’s face emerged in front of the djinni.
Khalid swallowed as she pressed her lips against one statue-like face before dissipating back into air.
Khalid waved Malik back to the assembled guard. “Go,” he said. “Back to camp.”
But Malik pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “No one can contend against the air itself, Amir. It won’t matter if we stay or go.”
That’s an unfortunate truth, Khalid thought. For all they knew, Eurus existed within the very air they drew into their lungs. She was everywhere but only rarely took physical form.
Humans, even other faeries, were typically beneath her notice.
“Your djinni still don’t live.”
The East Wind’s soft voice was impossible to locate, though they all spun around to look for her. Eurus was air, an elemental faerie born billions of years ago when the Earth’s atmosphere formed.
“Why are you here?” Khalid called, his voice overly loud in the stillness.
Eurus, as the East Wind liked to be called, manifested into a shadowed figure floating cross-legged as if atop a flying carpet. But of course, Eurus didn’t need any support to defeat gravity.
Khalid’s face covering blew off, and he caught the red headcloth before responding.
“You told me war didn’t interest you anymore.”
“Your djinni interest me.” The elemental faerie’s voice hovered in the air around him, pressing against him like the atmospheric warning of an approaching sandstorm.
“I’m no via-enchanter to cast spells on living things, Lady Eurus,” Khalid reminded her.
The fae demanded honesty, and he’d told her this many times already. “I don’t know how to make a djinn draw breath.”
“You were working hard to modify your spells,” Eurus said. “At least until your sisters convinced you to claim the Sahara for your al-Saaqib tribe.”
“I have a duty to protect the desert’s people. I can’t play with spell designs while we remain under threat,” Khalid said — then cursed himself when he realized he’d given her an opening.
She pounced. “I am more dangerous than five thousand battlemages. Bargain with me. I can steal your enemies’ breath. Blow their ships back from your shores. I can keep your lands safe from the predators while you perfect your djinn spells.”
“I’m no via-enchanter, Lady Eurus,” Khalid repeated. “I spent decades and only managed to integrate biomarkers into the design.”
His gaze flickered up. Six vacant eyes that matched his own stared down at him in impotent stillness. Eurus’s magick held his unreleased djinni captive. He needed her to let them fly. Let Khalid kill his enemy.
“You see how well I can keep you safe,” Eurus said, glancing upward as well. “Even from your own spells.”
Khalid hated how tempting her offer was now. Everyone else had perished at Sabha. It had been a Pyrrhic victory, but a victory nonetheless. If she didn’t release his djinni, this battle would end in an actual defeat.
There was nothing worse than defeat.
“Do not surrender, Al-Amir,” Malik whispered. “With or without the djinni, we will prevail!”
“Surrender? Who said anything about surrender? I’ll be your hired hand, Amir Khalid ibn Hawwa al-Saaqib!” Eurus’s voice hung slyly in the air as she fluttered down into a full bow, her thin frame splayed across the sand before him.
Khalid stared down at the elemental faerie. No sane person made a bargain with a faerie, but then, no sane faerie stalked a human.
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The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with . . . Laura Engelhardt . . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
I write a mashup of genre fantasy and literary fiction. Some publishers would call this “upmarket fiction” because it’s not quite top-drawer Haruki Murakami-esque literature, but it’s also not pure genre fiction ala J.K. Rowling. “Upmarket fiction” straddles the two extremes.
I’ve also crossed lines within fantasy subgenres: in my world, technology and magick co-exist. So in some ways, I have more in common with science fiction authors, where the type of science that exists in their worlds is more like magick than pure physics! But I love what’s known as “soft sci-fi,” where there are different types of sentient species, and cultural difference is a key factor in the plot lines. My world is populated with faeries, sirens, were-jaguars and werewolves. The physical ability to perceive magick is more of a divider between humans than gender or racial differences, and there are a lot of different cultures! From the forests of the Taiga, where faeries rule, to the Southwestern mage enclaves and the mundane democracies of the Americas. There are sirens in Atlantis, an island off the coast of northern Africa, and Australia is a mage superpower that rules their continent under mage apartheid.
In my books, the plot exists to showcase my characters and their relationships, not vice versa. This is a departure from most urban fantasy or paranormal books. I love epic sagas in both fantasy and historical fiction — from Katherine Kerr to James Clavell to Kate Elliott. Readers have pointed out similarities in my work with traditionally published writers such as Tamsyn Muir and L.E. Modesitt Jr., as well as indie/trad writers like Sharon Lee and Steven Miller.
Have you found yourself bonding with any particular character(s)? If so, which one(s)?
As a writer, I discovered that the distance I had between me and my characters dissolved when I started writing in close third-person narration. It’s like I’m walking in their shoes. I truly enjoyed writing this particular story duo, because in the rest of my series most of my narrative characters are women. I come from a feminist angle, and I think I avoided writing from male perspectives for too long. I adore Khalid. He’s my modern-day male hero. He has the strength of will and character to sacrifice the only thing he things matters (victory), and the only thing that matters to him (his magick) for the greater good. In the second story in this duology, he discovers that even when he has fallen under the influence of an emotion too strong to evade, he can still be the person he wants to be. He might have fallen prey to a one-sided love, but he can nevertheless remain true to himself … and her.
Do you have a character that you have been working on that you can't wait to put to paper?
I have a yearning to write a standalone novel about Gerel, the Mongolian enchanter who was a part of the Asian mage clan invasion force when they attempted to conquer the American deserts in the 1400s. She was captured by the American mage, Chía. In her effort to stay alive (and preserve her magick) winds up helping him develop the were-spell to construct werewolves and were-jaguars. In my current series, Gerel is a Brazilian vampire: the cruel master of my anti-hero, Kyoko. She’s an obvious villain who appears fleetingly in one short story. I long to write a novel about her as a young mage, desperate to stay alive and find her way out of an impossible situation. My whole series is about people forced to make difficult choices, and I would love to tell her story.
What are some of your writing/publishing goals for this year?
Stay tuned in 2024 for the audiobook release of Mages Unbound, the second book in the Fifth Mage War Origin Duology! I have been working on my Arabian Spells trilogy for the past year and a half, but I need another year to finish it. It’s got great bones, but there is a lot to refine and perfect before it’s really ready for readers. So that won’t be out until (hopefully) Q1 2025 when I will do what’s known as a “serial release:” staggering publication of all three books by a month. This way, readers will be able to get the complete saga relatively quickly — even though it means I had to make them wait longer for the first book.
Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere, money is not a concern? What would you do with this time?
I’d also have to wish-away my family responsibilities to imagine this fantasy (I have four children to manage!). So here is my one-year itinerary. My plan would be to continue my writing during my travels, unimpeded by anyone else’s needs or wants:
January: Snowshoeing in the Canadian mountains. Northern Lights, Hot Springs, glorious mountain views. That will get me in shape for the rest of the year!
February: Enough of the cold. I’m off to Bora Bora in French Polynesia. Getting from my idyllic island room to the main dining room at the resort by boat, waking up to the sound of the sea … I will be inspired to write more siren adventures. Maybe I can finally develop the woeful tale of Kōkai-Heika, the Pacific siren king, while I’m there.
March: Time to rejoin society. I’m going on a musical tour of all the opera houses. From the Sydney Opera House in Australia to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, to the Teatro ala Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Bayreuth in Germany, finishing up with the Teatro Cólon in Buenos Aires! Maybe my musical adventure will inspire more stories about Mary, the singing faerie, who I featured in Mississippi Missing.
April-September: My Spanish is not up-to snuff quite yet. I’m going to dig deep and focus on being able to speak fluently with my in-laws. According to the U.S. State Department, an English speaker in full-time learning needs 24-30 weeks to achieve “General Professional Proficiency.” (“Which languages take the longest to learn.” Johnson. The Economist, Sep. 18, 2023). I have a little bit of a start. If I spend five months traveling across South America focusing on language acquisition, I hope I’ll reach that level! Plus, I could visit the Atacama Desert and watch sandboarding competitions like the one I feature in my Arabian Spells trilogy.
October: Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. I’ll kick off the season with a foliage tour south down the Appalachian trail. I’m no athlete, so any hiking would be day hiking. But who knows, maybe I’ll beat the middle-age slump, and return to the muscular glory of my mid-20’s. That’s a rejuvenation treatment even Ozempic can’t beat.
November: Well, I’m a big fan of our election process, so I’ll be back in New Jersey to man the polls on Election Day, then will cross the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2! I’d love to get a peek at Gilded Age splendor, without suffering through the technological foibles of the era. Plus, I’ve never slept on a boat and woken up to the sea.
December: This is the last month of my tour. Time to check out Switzerland and see if my German is still up to par. I’d love to rent a chalet in one of those cute resort towns like Zermatt (hey, you said money was no object!), and invite all my friends and family to join me so I can ease back in after a solitary year of exploration.
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