Raider and the Lost Lamp
by Mythical Traveller

CHAPTER V


Shortly after re-materialising inside the lamp chamber, Clara realised that she had 
been re-dressed in the pink harem costume. She let out an irritated sigh and wasted no 
time in calling on her magic to change her apparel into a white blouse and track pants. 
After quickly looking her new outfit over, she walked over to the volume of Zhiasa's 
journal that she'd been reading earlier. It was still sitting open on the floor by the bed. 
The hi-fi that Clara had conjured into the room earlier sat silent. Clara waved her 
finger at it, silently commanding it to play a collection of her favourite REM songs, as 
her magic raised the book to a height where she could grab it without bending down. 
She layed down on the bed, and continued to delve into the journal.

Clara discovered that within two weeks of the night that they first made love, Zhiasa 
and Hal'hadin were wed. The journal contained detailed accounts of a few more 
sexual encounters, especially the events of the wedding night, although none were as 
graphic as the account of Zhiasa losing her virginity. Clara was severely tempted to 
slip her hand down her trousers and have a little fun while reading the spicy entries, 
but resolved to behave herself, fearing a repeat of her last embarrassing exit. 

It seemed that after the wedding, Zhiasa didn't return to the lamp very often at all, as 
the journal was only sparsely written in from that point onward. The remainder of the 
journal indicated that Zhiasa and Hal'hadin lived together very comfortably in the 
grand palace for many years and remained very much in love. A few years into the 
marriage, Zhiasa bore Hal'hadin his first son. The couple went on to have three sons 
in total and twin girls, who would later turn out to be identical. As far as Clara could 
tell, the children bought both Zhiasa and Hal'hadin much joy - there didn't seem to be 
any black sheep in the family. "...Apart from aunt Tukanni," Clara thought to herself.

Then the journal's tone became somewhat sombre. Some time after all the children 
had grown up, Zhiasa and Hal'hadin began to face the fact that Hal'hadin would not 
live forever. He was already beginning to show signs of age. Upon her master's death, 
Zhiasa would have been instantly pulled back into the lamp, to await summoning by 
her next master. Her sad, lonely life of servitude would begin all over again. Hal'hadin 
remembered the tales she had told him of this life, and dreaded such a fate ever being 
revisited on his beloved wife. He made his third wish, for Zhiasa to be free of her 
imprisonment, but to the surprise of both Hal'hadin and Zhiasa, the wish could not be 
granted. It seemed that Tukanni still had some nasty surprises for her sister, even after 
all these millennia. The enslavement spell had a clause built into it that prevented 
anyone from being able to wish Zhiasa free.

After the gravity of the situation had sunk in, Hal'hadin and Zhiasa realised that they 
would have to go to more drastic measures to end the princess's imprisonment. Even 
though they speculated it would probably kill Zhiasa, the couple made the difficult 
decision to destroy the lamp. Zhiasa wrote about how bravely her husband concealed 
his breaking heart, on the day that she asked him to destroy the lamp, as she could not 
bear to return to her old life. But destroying the lamp proved to be easier said than 
done, as the couple tried many ways of accomplishing the task but never succeeded. 
The strongest men in the lands could not even dent it with a mallet. The greatest 
elephants in the land could not crush it beneath their feet. The finest blacksmith in the 
lands could not stoke a forge hot enough to melt it. The wisest alchemists in the land 
could not concoct an acid strong enough to dissolve it. Many times the couple said 
tearful last goodbyes to each other, only to fall asleep that same night, holding each 
other tightly. Clara got the feeling that even though Zhiasa was becoming increasingly 
worried about the likelihood of eternal imprisonment, she was more even more 
grateful for the extra time she got to spend with her husband.

The journal was unclear about how long it was before the couple abandoned the idea 
of destroying the lamp. But one entry was penned with such heartfelt despair that it 
even bought a tear to Clara's eye. Zhiasa had lost all hope. She tried to comfort herself 
with the notion that she probably had many more years to enjoy with her husband, but 
ultimately, she was certain that an eternity of countless cold masters awaited her. 

The next entry however, was much less melancholy. Zhiasa had remembered once 
thinking that her sister's amulet might have had the power to release her. The cryptic 
message on the wall of the chamber implied that some kind of key was required for 
her release, and the amulet was just the right shape to fit in the opening below the 
message. Zhiasa knew that it was a long shot, tracking down a piece of jewellery from 
eight thousand years ago, but at least it was a shot. 

As her sister died childless, Zhiasa believed that the amulet should have been 
entombed with her. Hal'hadin immediately summoned the most learned scholars in 
the land to his palace. He paid them almost insane commissions to track down the 
whereabouts of the ancient queen's tomb. At this point the journal became 
frustratingly vague. It was clear that several years passed by, with many promising 
leads that would turn out to be dead ends, but Zhiasa hadn't included any details about 
the search, or the scholars' discoveries in her entries.

In her final entry, Zhiasa stated that one of the scholars in Hal'hadin's employ had sent 
word that he'd discovered an ancient stela, buried in the region of her old kingdom. It 
was worn and damaged, but there were writings on it that claimed a queen, who could 
well have been Tukanni, had been entombed on the peak where two suns join as 
one. As cryptic as this message seemed, the scholar seemed confidant that he knew 
where the ancient tablet was referring to. The lead seemed so promising that 
Hal'hadin and Zhiasa made immediate preparations to travel to the suspected site of 
the tomb and oversee the final leg of the search in person. They planned to meet up 
with the scholar en route, and then he would guide them the rest of the way.

Clara sighed as she quickly thumbed through the final blank pages of the book. She 
could only assume that the old scholar's theory had paid off, and they had found the 
amulet. Zhiasa would have been too ecstatic upon obtaining the key to her freedom to 
pen a final entry in her journal. One thing that was obvious was that she had definitely 
managed to free herself, and it was almost certainly with the amulet. The amulet... at 
least now, Clara knew what she needed in order to free herself. She couldn't recall any 
pieces like it being discovered in Hal'hadin's tomb, but then, she had disappeared well 
before the expedition there had been completed. It was possible that the amulet had 
been discovered after she disappeared. She would have to ask Jeff about that the next 
time he summoned her.

Clara spent the next several hours sitting at the desk, re-reading some of Zhiasa's 
earliest journal scrolls. She had a gut feeling that she might need all the information 
she could get about Zhiasa's kingdom. While deeply engrossed in a scroll (as she had 
been for much of the night), she felt a familiar tingling in her toes. She looked down 
at her feet to see the smoky cloud swirling around them. Not nearly as freaked out by 
it as she had been last time, Clara casually turned her attention back to the scroll and 
finished reading the sentence she'd been on. Within a few seconds she found herself 
standing in Jeff's presence, once again in Roft Manor. Jeff was wearing nothing more 
than white cotton briefs.

"Warwick's down the hall, knocking on your door. You'd better get back to your room 
if you don't want him to start wondering where you are," he said.

"Yes, I'd better. Thank you, Jeff," Clara replied as she began to walk towards the wall.

"... and you might want to change your pyjamas to something a little more English, if 
you don't want to get any weird looks," Jeff said. Clara looked down over her body, 
realising she was once again clothed in the harem outfit.

"Oh blast!" she complained. "It did this to me when I went back in, I think it must 
reset the wardrobe to default every time I move in and out of the lamp." Her magic 
transformed the costume into a set of full-body, cream-colored silk pyjamas. Clara 
even had the sense to give her hair the untidy appearance it would normally have after 
a rough night's sleep. "How do I look?" she asked, spinning around to give Jeff a 360-
degree view.

"Not bad," he responded.

"Thank you," Clara smiled, taking one last look at Jeff wearing nothing but his 
underwear. "See you at breakfast." She turned around and walked through the wall, 
into her own bedroom, chuckling to herself. She couldn't help but enjoy the poetic 
justice she'd just enjoyed; Yesterday she was the one that had been caught half-naked.


---------------

The three Rofts and Jeff sat down to breakfast together in the sitting room. The meal 
wasn't as formal or grand as dinner the night before, but it still came with full service. 
After breakfast, Clara changed into a sports bra and track pants and went for a run 
around the manor grounds, as she often did when she was home. She still wasn't sure 
how she was going to explain her disappearance to her parents, but she knew that she 
could not put the issue off any longer. Her main concern was her mother. The elder 
Lady Roft tended to worry about her only child, always running off to the most 
remote locations on the globe. Clara had always tried to spare her mother's nerves by 
not telling her about the perils she faced on her adventures. But this time Clara had 
fallen into a trap that she could not stay silent about.

One thing she was not prepared to do was lie about her absence. Growing up, Clara 
had spent much of her life globe-trotting, staying with her parents at the sites of her 
father's archaeological digs. She spent very little of her childhood in schools, certainly 
not enough time to make any real friends. The people she did spend a fair bit of her 
childhood with, the local men Lord Roft would hire (for generous wages) to work his 
dig sites, would often turn out to be rather unscrupulous characters. Clara learned at a 
young age that she could not leave a valuable unattended at a dig camp and expect it 
to be there when she returned. On more than one expedition, the family stepped out of 
their tent one morning to discover that their entire crew, and most of their equipment, 
had disappeared during the night. Consequently, Clara was a person who did not 
readily trust others and there was only a handful of people in the world whom she did 
completely trust, her parents being two of them. The trust she did have with these 
people was of the utmost importance to her, and that is why she would not lie to her 
parents about what had happened to her in Kazakhstan.

Clara was surprised, when she'd returned to the manor, to find that she'd shaved 
thirteen minutes off her previous record for the run. She realised that she must've been 
running at super-human speed, and was now quite grateful that she hadn't run into 
anyone on the way.

Although she could have magically changed into another outfit, Clara decided to do 
things the old-fashioned way. She stripped out of her running gear and had a long, hot 
shower, in the small bathroom near the pool. She dried herself and changed into a 
blouse and long pants that she'd left in the bathroom earlier. Having lived in a house 
tended by Warwick all her life, Clara knew his routine off by heart. It didn't take her 
long to find him and ask him to summon her parents and Jeff into her father's study, 
where she would await them.

Jeff was the last to be escorted to the study by the old butler. Once he had entered the 
room, Warwick closed the double doors of the study from the outside, and marched 
off to inform the rest of the staff that the Rofts and their guest were not to be 
disturbed. Then, with calm and deliberate speech, Clara explained the incredible 
situation to her parents, remaining truthful the entire time. She began by giving them 
the personal history of princess Zhiasa. Then she explained how, two years ago, she 
had found the exact same lamp that had kept the ancient princess imprisoned for all 
those millennia, and made the mistake of rubbing it. She went on to explain the events 
of the previous day, how Jeff had rubbed the lamp himself, summoning her out of the 
lamp and into his service. As Clara spoke, Lord and Lady Roft repeatedly turned to 
each other, with looks of disbelief. Jeff stood silently against the back wall, letting 
Clara handle the matter as she thought best. 

When Clara had finished her detailed monologue, a tense silence descended on the 
room. Lord Roft held his wife comfortingly as they both gazed at no particular point 
in the room. Their expressions laying somewhere between confusion and distress, as 
they processed the remarkable story their daughter had just told them, and the idea of 
her being enslaved by some nine thousand year old boobytrap.

"Now I know what you're probably thinking," Jeff said, breaking the silence after a 
few seconds, and if you're gonna go calling the nut house, I suggest you book two 
rooms. Because I saw all of what she just told you with my own two eyes, and I can 
assure you that she's fair dinkum." Lord and Lady Roft looked at each other in 
bewilderment, then at Clara.

"He agrees with me," Clara translated for her parents. Jeff wondered why Clara had 
just repeated what he'd just said, but said nothing.

"This..." the lord began, after a much lengthier silence, "this is unbelievable. I mean I 
was prepared to accept that Alladin actually existed, but the genie as well? It boggles 
the mind..."

"You've said it yourself, father, all legends have a basis in fact. The problem is 
figuring out how loose that basis is," Clara responded.

"Not loose enough in this case, it would seem," Lord Roft lamented. Clara nodded.

"Clara, what's to become of you, now that you've been... imprisoned?" Lady Roft 
asked.

"I remain Jeff's... slave," Clara stated, again through clenched teeth, "until he makes 
his third wish, or until he... dies, whichever comes first."

"Hopefully the former," Jeff added.

"My god!" the lady exclaim in horror.

"Just a moment... Earlier, you said that Alladin managed to free the princess from the 
lamp, now how did he manage to do that?" Lord Roft asked.

"With the amulet," Clara answered. "The same amulet that Tukanni used to keep 
Zhiasa in perpetual service to her can be used to open the symbolic 'doorway to 
freedom' inside the lamp. At least, that's what I assume..."

"You assume?" Jeff asked.

"The journal becomes very vague towards the end... Zhiasa was only speculating that 
the amulet might have the power to free her. It says that Hal'hadin sent numerous 
expeditions out to track down the location of Tukanni's tomb...."

"He actually set out to find an eight thousand year old Mesopotamian tomb?" Lord 
Roft asked, surprised.

"That's right," Clara responded.

"...Man after my own heart," his Lordship smiled.

"He was in love," Jeff said.

"He was indeed," Clara agreed. "In the final journal entry, Zhiasa claimed that they 
had found a promising lead, and they were going off to where they thought the tomb 
was."

"And where was that?" Lord Roft asked.

"'On the peak where the two suns join as one,'" Clara said, quoting the journal. Her 
answer was responded to with a room-full of puzzled expressions. "...I told you, the 
journal was very vague. But one thing we can be certain of is that Zhiasa DID manage 
to secure her freedom somehow, and it seems most likely that she did it using the 
amulet."

"...And what became of the amulet?" Lady Roft asked tentatively.

"I don't know," Clara answered.

"After eleven hundred years? It could be anywhere!" Lord Roft said despondently.

"Actually, I wanted to ask you about it," Clara said to Jeff. "I don't suppose they 
recovered it from Hal'hadin's tomb after I went missing?"

"I think they recovered several pieces of jewellery, maybe some amulets, what did 
you say it looked like again?" Jeff asked in an unsure tone.

"A lotus flower, with two buds on the stem."

"Nah... Doesn't ring a bell," Jeff said. Clara looked disappointed. "But that's not to say 
they didn't find it," Jeff continued. "They haven't published a complete inventory of 
all the things they found there, and there's been very little disclosed about the last 
objects they removed from the tomb. So far, they've only been releasing details on the 
objects as they complete their lab tests on them."

"I have some contacts that should be able to help us out there. Although I'll need to 
figure out what to tell them about where I've been for the past two and a half years," 
Clara said, already working on her story.

"Just tell them you needed to take some time off to go and find yourself!" Jeff smiled.

"Very well, Jeff," Clara said in an oddly indifferent tone.

"Oh shit! I didn't mean that as an order!" Jeff said, suddenly flustered. "You don't 
have to tell them that, if you don't want to."

"Thank you, Jeff. I believe I shan't..." Clara responded, sounding relieved.

"I think we can do without the humour, Master Rourke," Lord Roft said in a 
disapproving tone, shooting Jeff an intimidating glare from behind his spectacles.

"No, Father, it's all right. I think we're all still adjusting to the unusual situation, " 
Clara said, flashing Jeff a reassuring smile.

"Oh, Clara... This is simply terrible! We must get you back to normal as soon as 
possible!" Lady Roft said, clearly distressed by the recent display of her daughter's 
captivity.

"We will, Mother," Clara replied, with no false confidence. "We will."


---------------

Clara sat down in front of the 21-inch flat panel monitor on her desk. She used her 
magic to press the power button of the computer, which sat beside the monitor, and 
waited patiently for the system to boot up. The original purpose of the room she was 
in had been lost in time, but in recent years, Clara had converted it into her own 
personal study. It wasn't as grand as her father's was, but Clara still liked it. It gave 
her some space to spread out her research, being on the top floor gave it a great view 
of the estate grounds and, most conveniently, it happened to be connected to her 
bedroom via a secret passage.

When the computer had properly booted up, Clara opened her browser and logged in 
to her internet account. One of the perks of being on the premium plan was that they 
never shut down your account, even after two and a half years of inactivity. Clara 
chuckled as she noticed that she had 4106 new emails, almost all of which appeared to 
be spam. She clicked on the only email in her visible inbox that had come from a 
familiar source.

"Knock Knock!" Jeff said as he actually performed the action on the open door to the 
study. "Not looking at anything R-rated, are you?"

"Only photos of unwrapped mummies," Clara replied facetiously.

"Oh. I heard that they'd opened up a site like that! Just goes to show, there are some 
jobs that you can never be too old for," Jeff said as he strolled in to the room. Clara 
smiled. "Any luck?" Jeff asked in a more serious, but still cheery tone.

"I don't know," Clara said as she turned her attention back to the screen. "I just got off 
the phone with one of my old colleagues from the dig. He said he'd email me a 
complete inventory of everything they found there."

"What did you tell him about where you'd been for the last couple of years?"

"Well, two and a half years ago, I was found unconscious on a mountain trail in the 
himalayas by a pair of sherpas," Clara explained as she continued to scroll through the 
long, detailed list. "Apparently I'd had a mishap while climbing. Anyway, they carried 
me back to their village, where I awoke a couple of days later with absolutely no 
recollection of who I was or where I'd come from. I lived with the people there until 
about a fortnight ago, when I finally remembered where my home was. I made my 
way to the nearest settlement with a phone, and arrived back at Roft Manor only 
yesterday. Incidentally, I never want to see another jug of goat's milk as long as I 
live."

"Pretty convincing," Jeff said. "Except what were you doing in the himalayas?"

"I don't remember," Clara replied with a sly smirk. She continued scanning the email, 
becoming less and less hopeful as the scrollbar descended further and further down 
the screen. "Blast!" she cursed as the bar hit the bottom. "There's nothing on there that 
sounds even remotely similar!"

"Is there any chance he might have missed something?" Jeff asked, after a brief 
solemn silence.

"No. Dimitri is nothing if not meticulous," Clara sighed, clicking on the 'Log out' link. 
She turned off the monitor and rose out of the chair. "Zhiasa and Hal'hadin must have 
passed the amulet on to their children, and possibly they to their children... Meaning it 
could have been buried in any number of medieval Persian tombs that may or may not 
have been discovered, and that's assuming that it wasn't sold or stolen from the 
family. Father was right: it could be anywhere..." Clara said, with a false smile.

"Hate to play devil's advocate here, but are we even sure that the amulet still exists?" 
Jeff asked, treading softly.

"No. But Tukanni's spell made the lamp indestructible, so that bodes well for the 
amulet," Clara replied with optimism. She looked over her shoulder at the quietly 
humming computer. "Our best bet now is to search through every recorded object 
recovered from medieval Persian digs, and every recovered object of Mesopotamian 
origin," she said. "This could take a while..."

"I get the feeling that you could use a hand. Do you have another computer 
somewhere around here?" Jeff asked.

With her right hand, Clara made a pushing motion towards the wall adjoining the one 
the desk sat against. Instantaneously an exact clone of the existing desk appeared 
there, complete with chair and computer set. The new computer was even on, just like 
it's twin.

"I do now," Clara smirked.
