Excerpt: The Third Wish

The city at the heart of the desert stood in flames. King Rafik watched his city burn from the balcony of his throne room, the smoke blocking out every star in the lapis sky. People scurried from building to building below him, pouring the river onto their homes bucket by bucket in a vain attempt to stop the flames.

The large emerald ring on his first finger burned, signaling an enemy nearby. He snorted softly at the irony: the ring hadn't reacted while an army broke through his gates and reached his very doorstep.

"How did it come this far?" he asked no one in particular, though the room was full of men.

"My lord?" his chief advisor asked from the cavernous room behind him.

A child screamed in the street below and, as Rafik watched, no one stopped to comfort him. Many children would be orphans in the morning.

"How did my enemies get so close to me, Aarif?" he shouted.

The advisers in the room all backed away as the king entered the room, keeping their distance. A servant appeared at his elbow with a bow, offering wine and food, and the king waved him away.

"They must have been cloaked by some powerful magic, my lord," Aarif said.

"Of course they were cloaked by magic. No army can breach the wall of this city or cross the great river without my permission. I would know who taught them of this magic. Someone must have helped them, perhaps even someone in this room," Rafik said.

"And what of the lamp, my lord?" Aarif asked.

"The lamp is gone. You know that as well as I do," King Rafik said.

Three wishes. The powers above had granted him three wishes when he found that lamp in the desert. Knowing that the king held such power had been the only thing protecting his head many times in the past, and now it was gone.

"Offer a purse of gold and gems to the man who returns the lamp to you, my lord," Rafik's treasury keeprer, Isam, suggested.

"And make it known that I have indeed lost it? No, I must recover the lamp from the far corners of the desert before anyone discovers that the last wish has been used. Tell no one of this, or I shall have the two of you executed alongside your families," King Rafik said. He turned on his soft-soled slippers and stalked out of the room.