Queen of Cahraman: A Retelling of Aladdin (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 3) Read online

  Queen of Cahraman

  Fairytales of Folkshore: Book Three

  Lucy Tempest

  QUEEN OF CAHRAMAN – A RETELLING OF ALADDIN

  Copyright © 2019 by Lucy Tempest

  Cover Art Copyright © 2019 Lucy Tempest

  Editors: Mary Novak, Jennifer Jansen

  First edition published in 2019 by Folkshore Press

  ISBN: Paperback: 978-1-949554-05-2

  ISBN: Ebook: 978-1-949554-04-5

  All rights reserved.

  Sign up to my VIP mailing list at www.lucytempest.com

  [email protected]

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored in, or introduced into a database or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Disclaimer

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who

  Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,

  Not one returns to tell us of the Road,

  Which to discover we must travel too.

  The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam

  Contents

  Introduction

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Family Tree

  Pronunciation Guide

  Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Also by Lucy Tempest

  Introduction

  Welcome to the magical world of Folkshore!

  Fairytales of Folkshore is a series of interconnected fairytale retellings with unique twists on much-loved, enduring themes. It starts with the Cahraman Trilogy, a gender-swapped reimagining of Aladdin.

  Join each heroine on emotional, thrilling adventures full of magic, mystery, friendship and romance where true love is found in the most unexpected places and the fates of kingdoms hang in the balance.

  Among the retellings will be:

  Beauty & the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hades & Persephone, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and more!

  Map

  Prologue

  As a fraud, I should have known I was being played.

  But I’d thought I’d figured out Nariman’s plan, and that I could foil it.

  I hadn’t only failed, but I’d ensured her plan’s success.

  Now I remained where the witch had flung me, watching the world around me darken and distort in the scorching horror of a genie’s power.

  Before my eyes, Nariman’s wish to become Sunstone’s queen turned the once-magnificent capital of Cahraman into a nightmare. Its warded walls were crumbling to the sand, leaving the city within vulnerable to the genie’s dark magic. Its gleaming buildings turned the russet tone of dried blood, their streamlined architecture sprouting sharp edges like broken claws, and their spired domes distorting like melting wax. Then the defiling smear blazed up towards the seat of its crown.

  High on the mountain, sprawling on its summit, the palace with its spectacular blue-glass domes and silver spires pocked with sinister thorns and its luminescent hues shriveled into the dullness of extinguished coal. Soon the timeless monument to beauty and magic became a revolting monstrosity looming over the desecrated land, no longer a palace, but a prison.

  A prison where everyone I’d left behind was trapped.

  And it was all my fault.

  I was the one who’d brought the lamp within Nariman’s reach, thinking I could trick and overpower her. I was the one who’d failed to beat her, who’d failed everyone.

  And now the devolution of Nariman’s vengeful wish reached new heights. Black, gnarled gates ripped from the ground, rattling my ribs with literally earth-shattering force. They spread like the tentacles of a nightmare, forming towering, barbed fences that cast an ominous enclosure around the city where the gleaming walls had stood minutes ago. They slithered far into the horizon, no doubt choking all of Cahraman, a cage cutting it off from the rest of the Folkshore.

  Before, there had only been intangible barriers keeping Cyrus and I apart. Those of my lies and his duty. Now there was this materialized curse between us.

  I wanted to scream and weep, but I was too frozen by the horror unfolding before me.

  Above me, the genie, a gigantic creature of roaring flames turned its attention from the hell-scape it had created to Nariman. Blue fire spun from its palm and wrapped around her like a blinding tornado, reshaping her clothes, turning her robe into a black, crimson-lined cape and flaring her dress into a coppery gown encrusted with hundreds of diamonds that reflected its fiery light in a dazzling kaleidoscope of beams and dots.

  The funnel of fire twisted up until it reach her head, thickening and coiling her hair into intricate braids, turning its color a deepest, mercurial red like the inside of her cape. The final flash of magic solidified into a golden diadem with a single, massive ruby at the center, a jewel that glowed an ominous crimson and matched the eyes of her snake staff.

  Queen. The genie had made Nariman queen. Just like she’d primed me to look like a noblewoman. Except her transformation was an inversion of mine.

  Unlike the pretty, polished facade she’d given me so I could infiltrate the Bride Search and steal the golden lamp, the genie seemed to have manifested her dark lust for power, what had warped Cahraman into a ghastly distortion of its former self. Her transformation felt real. And it felt—terrible.

  Now she looked every bit the terrifying sorcerer queen of every fable I’d heard about.

  “Is there anything else you wish, my queen?” the genie asked, its voice encompassing us in its heartrending reverb, shaking every bone and drop of blood within me.

  Nariman admired her attire, caressing a jewel-encrusted armband as the reflections of the genie’s fire set her every inch blazing like the now-hidden sun, the glint in her eyes chilling me to the marrow, enough to negate the smothering heat around us. “Not for now. Now, I’ll see to my queendom.”

  She aimed her staff at the gates and its eyes shot a blast that burst them open, before scorching a path through Sunstone all the way up the mountain, like a gigantic snake of lava.

  Rising shakily to my knees, my throat full of ashes
—Cahraman’s ashes—my voice cracked in anguish and dread as I asked, “W-what will you do?”

  She swirled her cape as she turned, sparks crackling off the dark material. I watched her mutely as she siphoned the genie she’d unleashed back inside the lamp with a soft murmur and tap before she gritted, “What I should have done years ago. Take what I’m owed. You can only wait so long for the gods to bring you justice. That is something you have to do yourself.” She frowned down at me. “This is the part where I ask where you stand. Either you’re with me, and after a few services you get to go home, or you’re against me, and you remain stranded here forever.”

  A sudden movement to my left had me whipping around. It was Ayman. I’d forgotten all about him after Nariman had swatted him and Cora away before she’d unleashed the genie.

  He was charging Nariman, leaping at her, scimitar poised to cleave down her back.

  Nariman turned in utter tranquility and flashed the staff’s eyes at him. “Suit yourself.”

  Red light enveloped Ayman, freezing him mid-air, poised to stab. Through the shroud of crimson, a dull tint crept over him from toes to head. Everything about him—white skin and hair, dark clothes and vicious weapon—was coated in a thick layer of grey.

  Nariman flicked her fingers and he crashed down to the ground, rocked on the burning sand as if about to keel over before coming to a standstill.

  What rose up a roaring, flesh and blood man had come down as silent, frozen stone.

  She’d turned Ayman into a statue!

  A throat-tearing scream escaped me. “No!”

  “After all I did for him, that’s how he repays me.” Nariman frowned her displeasure at Ayman’s petrified form, at my frenzied reaction. “I assume you won’t do any different.” She aimed her staff at me and I began to hyperventilate. The red light intensified for a second, before it dulled again into the snake’s regular ruby eyes as Nariman sighed. “Or not. You did do me a great favor.” She threw her arm out to present the land still being swept in the blight of her curse. “None of this would have been possible without you, Adelaide. I hope you know that.”

  The shame and the horror of my role in this disaster turned my bones to lead and rusted my joints, keeping them pinned to the burning-hot sand. Cahraman was gone, replaced by this dark manifestation of Nariman’s wrath.

  “And you—who are you again?” she asked impatiently, turning her staff to Cora who’d so far been frozen stiff, gaping at Nariman’s contortion of reality. “With or against me?”

  Cora’s answer was to bravely, if stupidly, spit at Nariman’s feet.

  “I see,” Nariman said distastefully, yet making no move to turn her to stone, too. “Now you’ve made your positions clear, I’ll leave you to the fate you’ve chosen. If you’ll excuse me, I have some unfinished business to settle.”

  Before I could draw another labored breath into my burning lungs, Nariman lifted her arms and flew up high, sumptuous clothes flapping like the wings of a mythical bird in the scalding wind, following the fiery path she’d gashed across Sunstone. Her destination was clear. The palace.

  Cora rubbed the hip she’d landed on as she trudged over to help me up. My legs felt like rubber and my joints scraped together like sandstone.

  “Any ideas what to do now your plan has flopped?” Cora asked, her eyes fixed on the distorting city.

  A bitter laugh gurgled out of my churning gut, came out an agonized groan.

  Flopped? My plan had destroyed everything.

  “Ada? Did you hear me?” she repeated. “What now?”

  Swallowing, I looked up at the now dark and sinister palace. Cyrus was still up there, so was Cherine, Fairuza and Ariane. While Cora and I were out here, and Ayman was—was...

  A sob slashed through me as my eyes dragged to his stony form. Was he—dead?

  Even if he wasn’t, he was as good as. It might even be a fate worse than death.

  And that was on me, too. He was here because he considered me a friend and I’d asked him to help us escape. Because I hadn’t told him what I was really going to do, or who I’d be going up against.

  Now Nariman had entombed him in stone, and Cyrus and all the others might be stuck in that manifestation of her vengeance. I doubted she’d let any of them go, especially him. We were all trapped in that inverted world of festering hatred she’d created.

  “I don’t know, Cora,” I finally croaked, throat convulsing, eyes pricking with a thousand needles of pain and desperation. “I don’t know what to do—how to fix this.”

  Ayman’s stone form stood by us, his now permanent expression one of anguished fury and his body frozen in an attack that would never come to pass. He was stuck in this state just like Cahraman was. And there was nothing I could do to help either of them, or Bonnie thousands of miles away.

  The gates began to close. I looked behind me at the desert—where certain death awaited us in its endless barrenness—then at Cora. She looked back at me with the same realization widening her meadow-green eyes before she pounced on me.

  I struggled as she started dragging me towards the gates, cried out, “We can’t leave Ayman here. We must get him inside with us.”

  She yanked harder at my arm making me stumble. “Even if he was his regular weight, we won’t be able to carry him and run back before the gates close. Then we’d both die out here and be no good to him—if he isn’t dead already.”

  Heart convulsing, I brought the magic ring Cyrus had given me as an engagement ring placeholder to my lips, a whisper of heart-bursting urgency spilling from me. “I wish for the gates to stop closing.” Nothing. “I wish Ayman was flesh and blood again.” Again nothing. “I wish we could carry him easily.”

  We tried, and we could barely budge him.

  And Cora yelled at me. “Now, run!”

  Begging his forgiveness silently, promising I’d do anything to retrieve him, to save him, I ran.

  We barely got inside before the gates crashed closed. Imprisoning us with the rest of Cahraman, probably forever.

  As I forced myself to follow Cora among the mayhem, the ring flashed.

  Heart stuttering with a burst of hope, I wished things it had granted me before. To calm the panicked masses we passed among. To heal the pain of my bruises.

  But it still answered none of my wishes. The flash hadn’t been a surge of power from within. It had been a reflection of the fiery wound Nariman had slashed across Sunstone.

  The ring was inert, useless.

  Even when it had worked, it had proven too weak to stand against Nariman’s will and magic. Let alone against a genie’s power. But it could have helped until I figured out what to do next. Now I didn’t even have its capricious power as back up.

  I was back where I started, back on the streets. But this time I wasn’t only in a world I didn’t recognize, like when Nariman had first dragged me to the Folkshore, I was in a world plummeting into magical madness.

  This time, it was going to take far more than my wits to survive, to help my friends or right my wrongs.

  This time, nothing might be enough to save me or them…or Cahraman.

  Chapter One

  Two Months Later

  It was nostalgic. In a macabre way, granted, but still nostalgic. To be back on the streets, squatting in a decaying hole, and stealing for a living. Not to mention always in danger of being caught.

  This was a growing possibility now downtown had become far emptier. After Nariman’s takeover, there had been generalized panic that had led to stampedes and riots where hundreds had been injured. After the first acute phase of shock at the horrific changes, there had been a mass exodus to as far as possible within the kingdom from her seat of power. The army, now under her magical compulsion, had terrorized whoever protested her warping their land, or her status as queen, into submission.

  Now, sixty days into the reign of Queen Nariman the Terrible, the people had settled into a new daily grind, but no one left their homes except for absolute necessi
ties.

  Businesses still ran, people still lived in their distorted houses, schools reopened on an off, and trade, to the extent dictated by survival, continued. But what had once been a blossoming kingdom with peaceful inhabitants and crowding tourists had become an isolationist, military state, with every alley patrolled by Nariman’s army and an enforced curfew effective after sundown. And it seemed that the people had given in to their new bleak status quo.

  But whereas everyone else had their place in Sunstone’s society from their lives pre-Nariman, I had no choice but to fall back into petty crime.

  Everything we’d had, along with everything I’d stolen from the palace, remained in the luggage now buried outside in the desert. Cora and I had only the clothes on our backs when we’d rushed into the city before the gates had slammed shut on this new reality. There were no jobs on offer, with strangers like us being treated with outright hostility in fear they were informants of the queen. And I wouldn’t consider leaving Sunstone to another part of Caharaman, not while Cyrus and all my friends remained imprisoned in the palace. This had left me with one option; stealing everything we needed to survive from scratch.