The Golem and the Jinni Read Online Free PDF

types of jinn—they are a highly diverse race, with many different forms and abilities—he was one of the most powerful and intelligent. His true form was insubstantial as a wisp of air, and invisible to the human eye. When in this form, he could summon winds, and ride them across the desert. But he could also take on the shape of any animal, and become as solid as if he were made of muscle and bone. He would see with that animal’s eyes, feel with that animal’s skin—but his true nature was always that of the jinn, who were creatures of fire, in the same manner that humans are said to be creatures of earth. And like all his brethren jinn, from the loathsome, flesh-eating ghuls to the tricksterish ifrits , he never stayed in any one shape for very long.
    The jinn tend to be solitary creatures, and this one was more so than most. In his younger years, he’d participated in the haphazard rituals and airborne skirmishes of what could loosely be called jinn society. Some minor slight or squabble would be seized upon, and hundreds of jinn would summon the winds and ride them into battle, clan against clan. The gigantic whirlwinds they caused would fill the air with sand, and the other denizens of the desert would take shelter in caves and the shadows of boulders, waiting for the storm to pass.
    But as he matured, the Jinni grew dissatisfied with these diversions, and took to wandering the desert alone. He was inquisitive by nature—though no one thing could hold his attention for long—and rode the winds as far west as the Libyan Desert, and east to the plains of Isfahan. In doing so, he took more of a risk than was sensible. Even in the driest desert a rainstorm could strike with little warning, and a jinni caught in the rain was in mortal danger. For no matter what shape a jinni might assume, be it human or animal or its own true shape of no shape at all, it was still a living spark of fire, and could easily be extinguished.
    But whether luck or skill guided his path, the Jinni was never caught out and roamed wherever he would. He used these trips as opportunities to search for veins of silver and gold, for the jinn are natural metalsmiths, and this one was unusually adept. He could work the metals into strands no thicker than a hair, or into sheets, or twisted ropes. The only metal he could not touch was iron: for like all his kind, he held a powerful dread of iron, and shied away from rocks veined with ore in the way a man might recoil from a poisonous snake.
    One can wander far and wide in the desert without spying another creature of intelligence. But the jinn were far from alone, for they had dwelt as neighbors with humans for many thousands of years. There were the Bedouin, the roving tribes of herdsmen who scratched out their perilous existence on what the desert had to offer. And there were also the human cities far to the east and west, which grew larger every year, and sent their caravans through the desert between them. But neighbors though they were, both humans and jinn harbored a deep distrust of each other. Humankind’s fear was perhaps more acute, for the jinn had the advantage of invisibility or disguise. Certain wells and caves and rock-strewn passes were considered habitations of the jinn, and to trespass was to invite calamity. Bedouin women pinned amulets of iron beads to their babies’ clothing, to repel any jinn that might try to possess them, or carry them away and turn them to changelings. It was said among the human storytellers that there had once been wizards, men of great and dangerous knowledge, who’d learned to command and control the jinn, and trap them in lamps or flasks. These wizards, the storytellers said, had long since passed from existence, and only the faintest shadows of their powers remained.
    But the lives of the jinn were very long—a jinni’s lifespan might last eight or nine times the length of a human’s—and their memories of the wizards had not yet faded to legend.