At moonrise he called his brother to him and said, “Beneath this ever-shifting sand is the world of jinn. Tales have been told of jinn who claw their way out and come to this world for revenge.” He patted the small satchel he had brought with him. “It is here that I shall wait to meet with one of those fearsome jinn.”
Ghazi, who was perplexed by his brother’s plan, said, “What do you hope to gain from speaking with a jinn? It would sooner tear you apart than talk with you!”
Amir only smiled. “The jinn are powerful, but I have the mind to outsmart them. If we are to survive this season, we will have need of their magic.”
And so Amir described his plan. He showed Ghazi the items in the satchel—a pair of iron shackles and a simple oil lamp—and told Ghazi he would need three weeks. In the end, Ghazi agreed to lead the tribe through the desert to the Golden Dunes, where they would meet. So it was that the two brothers parted: Ghazi to the dunes and Amir to the edge of the Sandsea, where he waited for days with nothing but a cloak to keep him from burning in the sun.
By the time a jinn emerged, the sheikh was starved and thin. Still, he forced himself to bow as the creature approached. The jinn was seven feet tall with eyes of burning fire and skin like golden sand. Its face morphed with every step—a jackal’s one moment and an eagle’s the next. It was a thing of such terrible majesty it would have made the bravest of men run for the dunes.
The jinn stopped before Amir with a laugh. “Ho! What is this scrap of a human I see before me? It would be a simple thing to crush you beneath my boot.”
Amir responded in a voice made raspy by lack of water. “Oh mighty jinn, I have no reason to beg for my life. The sun has baked my body and weakened my eyes, and I am approaching death’s door. But alas, I mourn the life I lived as a hunter. I was well known in the desert. If you gave me a bow and arrow, no creature stood a chance against me.”
The jinn thought about this. It debated the merits of killing the man or of forcing him to be its servant. Ultimately, it decided a slave was more useful than a corpse, so it snapped its fingers and conjured a bow and a quiver of arrows for Amir.
“Prove your worth, then,” the jinn said. “Become my hunter and I will spare your life. Fail me and I will devour you.”
Amir consented, and he and the jinn ventured forth. Amir hunted for the jinn every day, and though he was not as strong as his brother, he had spectacular aim—he had not been lying when he said he could fell most creatures. This was how the jinn came to be reluctantly impressed by its human servant and how, over time, it came to trust him.
“Tell me, oh mighty jinn,” Amir said one day. “Why is it that you do not hunt? Surely your eyes are better and your aim truer than mine.”
The jinn responded, “We jinn are as mighty as gods! Hunting with tools is beneath us. Why complete tasks even a human can do?”
“And tell me, mighty jinn, what things can you do that a human cannot?”
The jinn laughed and said, “I can perform any feat, no matter how impossible, for I am one of the seven jinn kings, and the power of the world is at my fingertips.”
Amir was thoughtful. “Can you make the world move?”
The jinn clapped its hands, and the ground trembled and cracked beneath its feet.
“Can you make the sky scream?”
The jinn whistled, and the wind sliced through the sky and tore the clouds asunder.
“Can you make the clouds cry?”
The jinn sighed, and the clouds above them let loose a torrent of rain.
“You truly are a god, mighty jinn!” Amir exclaimed, and he bowed before it. As the weeks passed, Amir challenged the jinn to other tasks. One day, he said, “I have heard tales that your kind is crippled by iron. Is this true? Can you withstand its burn?” The jinn hesitated, but its pride outweighed its fear, so it told Amir that it could indeed endure the burn of iron. Amir took the shackles from his satchel and dared the jinn to travel with them on its wrists.
The smug jinn allowed this. Immediately after the iron was set on its arms, its legs became heavy as lead and its senses clouded. Yet because it was a proud creature, it only gritted its teeth and said, “You see? I am a king and cannot be defeated by iron.”
So the two continued on their travels, and now it was Amir who led the way, for the jinn could barely stand. “Mighty jinn,” Amir said one day. “I am useless without your magic. Will you not take off the shackles so you can create fires for us and halt the desert winds?” But the jinn refused to doff the cuffs, thinking that to do so would be a weakness. Instead, it asked Amir if he had any other items in his satchel, and when Amir gave it the oil lamp, the jinn drew runes upon it with its blood, enchanting it. It blew fire into the lamp and told Amir he could capture anything within it—be it fire or wind or water—and command it to obey him with these words: You are bound to me and you will serve me.