This serial is a sequel to North of Midnight. Carnival of Deepest Desire can be read as a standalone, but if you’d like to read North of Midnight first, click the button below.
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Khalid’s impulsiveness had gotten us into this mess—but I couldn’t fault him when he sprang into action to do what he could to protect the hapless carnival dwellers.
My first impulse had been to yell, “Fire!” at the top of my lungs. But if the carnival goers continued to be unable to see the flames, they would think I was crazy. And if my shout caused them to see the flames, they might panic. The crowd was big enough that someone could easily get trampled in a mass race for the exit. Khalid had a better idea—pull them away from the fire.
Being fireproof, he had no trouble grabbing bits of flaming canvas in his hands. Then he jumped into the air and soared up a little above the crowd—an easy trick for him, backed by the power of his dragon armor, which he had allowed to become visible. In the darkness, it looked like a leather outfit. Spectators couldn’t see the moving image so carefully crafted across the chest—Khalid flying over what looked like medieval Baghdad. But if any of them were even remotely psychic, they might have sensed the magic involved.
“Come watch the greatest acrobatic act of all time!” he yelled, creating flaming circles by moving his hands more rapidly than a human eye could easily follow.
The crowd couldn’t see the dangerously close blaze—but people noticed Khalid immediately and watched, eyes wide, as he did somersaults in midair, leaving trails of fire as he moved. Since he’d mentioned acrobatics, some of them must have assumed that wires and other equipment were hidden by the darkness. Still, his dexterity was impressive. Even professional acrobats seldom achieved such prowess as fourteen-year-olds.
“Here! Over here!’ yelled Khalid, moving toward the entrance, clearly visible because of the sign hanging over it. People followed as if hypnotized.
I didn’t know what the Dulluhan had expected us to do, but Khalid’s clever plan caught him completely by surprise. Properly lit and looking outwardly like a carnival, his trap was enticing. But the effectiveness of its attempt to give people what they expected to see would now be its undoing. In such a mundane form, it couldn’t compete with Khalid’s eye-grabbing performance.
The Dulluhan had only other option I could think of—trying to use magic or physical violence to bring Khalid down. But that risked revealing too much about the true nature of the carnival. At best, he would cause carnival attendees to flee. At worst, it might make the various faerie rulers aware of his activities in the mortal realm. They would not be amused, to say the least.
Despite the risks, I saw him take out his bone whip. It didn’t seem long enough to reach Khalid, but who knew what magic it might have? Still carrying my hearth fire torches, I charged at him. Presumably, he’d back away enough to keep him out of the way until Khalid led everyone off carnival grounds and back into the real world.
Unfortunately, I guessed wrong. Instead of backing away, he turned on me, lashing his bone whip across my hand, tearing skin, drawing blood, and inflicting enough pain to make me drop the torch.
The blow also caused enough noise to cause the people nearest me to turn in my direction. I didn’t want that. I wanted them to keep following Khalid, but the grass at my feet had caught fire. I had to stomp out the flames, which drew more attention.
“What’s this?” yelled Khalid. “A fair maiden in peril? Fear not, for I will rescue her.”
He shot down in my direction like a teenage comet and tried to pick me up in his arms. I was relatively slender, and Khalid had some muscle—but not quite enough to pull that move off smoothly. He nearly dropped me, and I could practically hear the muscle pulls in his arms. If he intended to fly off with me, even the combination of his innate ability and the dragon armor was probably not enough to get the job done. From what he’d told me, the best he could do on his own was jump really high, and the dragon armor was only designed to levitate him, not another person he was carrying.
“What is this trickery?” he yelled, trying to keep up the act. “A spell holds her here.” That line got some laughs from crowd members close enough to see what was really happening, but at least, their focus was back to him and away from the Dulluhan—or it was, until Khalid pointed him out.
“Ah, I see the evil wizard there! I must defeat him.” To the audience, it would have looked as if Khalid drew a bow out of nowhere, which caused a satisfying number of surprised exclamations.
I glanced over at the conflagration we’d stared. It was in the process of consuming the nearby carnival booths and hadn’t yet moved in our direction. But the wind was blowing toward us, so it could spread this way at any moment.
Khalid started firing as rapidly as he could. That got the Dulluhan’s attention, and he disappeared, garnering a number of “ahs” from the crowd in the process. His rapid vanishing act suggested that he had only been a projection, but the burning in my bloody hand told me otherwise. How had he gotten away so fast?
“I have vanquished him!’ proclaimed Khalid. “But he may be back! Follow me to safety.”
This time, he ran, holding me by by my injured hand because my other hand was still gripping the remaining torch. Most of the crowd, thinking they were still watching part of a show, followed, waiting to see what would happen next.
Would we just be allowed to lead them all to safety? I looked around and saw no indication that the Dulluhan or anyone else was trying to stop us. But that seemed far too easy.
I also worried about Carlos and Shar, but once we got the other people out, we could slip back in and find them.
Yeah, that sounded like a good plan—until we ran right into an invisible barrier. It didn’t just block us because a couple of fast-moving audience members stumbled into it as well and recoiled in shock.
Not far behind us, the flames were burning ever higher, and I could have sworn that I heard the Dulluhan laughing at us.
“The Carnival of Deepest Desire” is related to the Spell Weaver series. (The action takes place between the sixth and seventh books, just after the end of “North of Midnight.”)
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