Stealing Sacred Fire (13 page)

At the doorway to the king’s
private salon, they found his Magian vizier, Jazirah, in the act of
closing the doors behind him. He was exceptionally tall, like so
many of Nimnezzar’s closest staff, but his height was unusual in an
Indian. His face, which was contemplative as he emerged from the
salon, changed when it saw the queen and her daughter. It became
closed. He straightened up.

‘I am here to see my husband,’
said Amytis, stepping up to him.

Jazirah smiled, made a languid,
open-palmed gesture with both hands, bowed a little. ‘Madam, he is
not within.’

‘What has happened, Jazirah?’
asked the queen. She was irritated by the man’s oily politeness,
for she knew he had no liking for her. To Jazirah, she was a common
gypsy, risen above her station.

Jazirah pulled a quizzical
face. ‘Happened, my lady?’

Amytis composed herself for
argument, already bored by it, but Sarpanita touched her arm. ‘What
was that cry, Mama?’

Amytis turned. ‘Cry, my
daughter?’ She had heard nothing.

Jazirah stroked his chin, his
short, neatly-clipped beard, and kept silent.

Sarpanita glanced along the
corridor that led away from her father’s rooms. ‘From there,’ she
said. ‘I heard a cry. It was terrible.’ She raised her arm to
point, and its tawny flesh was pimpled as if from cold or fear.

‘Etemenanki,’ said the queen,
realising something. She eyed the vizier, who shrugged. ‘Is my
husband at the temple?’ she asked.

‘He may well be,’ said
Jazirah.

‘A strange hour to be
worshipping,’ said Amytis and began to walk in the direction
Sarpanita had pointed. Jazirah loped to catch up with her.

‘Perhaps not a good time to
intrude,’ he suggested.

Queen Amytis ignored him. ‘Come, Nita,’
she said, and her daughter came to her side.

In the days when the kings of Babylon
had ruled all the known world, a tower had been built, a great
ziggurat that was remembered in legend as an edifice designed to
reach up into heaven. The Tower of Babel. In the old tongue, it had
been named Etemenanki, and had been a fire temple, sacred in
earliest times to the Shining Ones, the men and women of an
advanced race revered as gods, and later to the god Marduk. Its
name meant ‘the Temple Foundation of Heaven and Earth’. The
original Grigori, known as Watchers, had visited a shrine at the
top of the temple, where they had lain with the comeliest daughters
of the city in the ceremony of sacred marriage. From these unions
had come the line of kings, who always bore Grigori blood. Later,
once the Grigori had melted away into hiding, men had assumed the
roles of gods and continued to re-enact the ritual. The ziggurat
had been destroyed and rebuilt many times. This was its latest
incarnation, constructed far from the site of the original.

Etemenanki dominated the city,
rising over it incredibly. Smoke from the eternal fires and their
offerings purled from its summit, visible only on the clearest of
days. Amytis knew what her husband the king had incarcerated within
the labyrinthine chambers beneath the temple. Tiy had told her
about the strange being Nimnezzar had brought back with him from
the tell. The king had refused to talk about it when Amytis had
questioned him, and had forbidden her strictly to enter the
chambers beneath Etemenanki until he gave word otherwise. It was
for her own safety, he said. She knew Nimnezzar was wary of
allowing his wife to view the captive. He was either afraid of it
or of its possible effect on her, or perhaps vice versa. Amytis was
patient. She did not push the issue, nor had need to. For the time
being, she could glean all the information she needed from Tiy.

Amytis guessed, or perhaps
instinctively knew, that something had occurred in the dark
passages of Etemenanki. Tiy had divulged that since his arrival,
some weeks previously, the strange captive had not spoken, nor
eaten anything but an occasional small fruit. Water, he drank
copiously, but it seemed the long incarceration beneath the earth
had damaged his immortal mind. He seemed, so Tiy reported, hardly
aware of his surroundings. The king had many scholars in his court,
some of whom were familiar with several of the ancient tongues. All
these had been tried on the visitor without success. No ancient
word, of any known dialect, attracted his attention. Now, Sarpanita
had heard a cry from the temple, and Amytis wondered whether her
husband had resorted to torture to coax a reaction from the
dead-alive angel.

A private walkway, used by the
royal family, led from the palace to a back door of the temple. On
the way there, Jazirah clearly realised that the queen would not be
stopped and became more communicative. ‘The king was roused from
his bed only a few minutes before you arrived, my lady. The temple
priests came for him.’

‘So what has happened?’

The vizier shrugged. ‘I was
just on my way to find out.’

‘Then we shall find out
together,’ said the queen. She knew her husband well enough to be
sure that, in the midst of a crisis, he would forget about how he
had refused her admission to the rooms beneath the temple.

The lower levels of Etemenanki
comprised a series of linked shrines. Above ground, on the rising
tiers, the flame was worshipped, and djinn conjured from the sacred
smokes, but sometimes the priests of Babylon needed to invoke the
elementals of earth and this was done deep underground. Here, the
king had imprisoned his find, perhaps so that he was as far as
possible from the flames, from which he might draw power and
escape. Penemue was an unknown quantity. He had apparently survived
for millennia, and no-one knew the extent of his power, only that
he could not be remotely human.

The queen and her companions
passed through several empty shrines, and then came to the door of
a room where a peering cluster of people was gathered, dressed in
the scarlet and orange robes of Magian priests. Amytis parted them
with a wave of her hand and, with Jazirah keeping pace, stepped to
the threshold.

Sarpanita hung back. She could
not speak, for her head was still full of the terrible cry that she
could not hear with her ears. Within the shrine, something suffered
and twisted in pain. She did not want to see it. She was
afraid.

Her mother’s body stiffened,
and Sarpanita knew she beheld something almost indescribable. Then,
she turned. ‘Come, Nita. Come here at once.’

Sarpanita froze. She heard her
father speak her name in surprise, then from within the room, Tiy’s
voice, ‘It is time, now.’

Something else within the room
became aware of her. She could feel it. And it drew her towards it
inexorably. Her feet moved numbly and the doorway came closer. She
had no choice.

He sat upon a great stone chair
within a cage of iron. His hair hung over his chest, a strange red
in colour, like slender metal wires. They had dressed him in plain
linen trousers and tunic, yet still his body seemed inhuman — too
big for the room. One of his hands, which hung over the arms of the
chair, could have crushed her head like a seed. His face was alien
yet beautiful; the face of one of the statues. He was looking
directly at her with eyes that were unnaturally blue. Penemue. I
dreamed of your name.

Slowly, Sarpanita approached
the cage and the angel watched her like a large animal would watch
a small creature coming towards it. She could not turn her head,
but heard her mother’s voice, speaking to her father.

‘See, my love. See! He
recognises her for what she is!’

The voice seemed to break a
spell and Sarpanita looked at her parents. Her father had his arm
around his wife’s shoulder, but it seemed as if he was restraining
her rather than showing affection. Tiy stood to the side; a dark,
wizened creature. Her milky blind eyes were like polished pearls.
The three figures seemed to be a long distance away; small and
unreachable.

The princess put her hands upon
the bars of the cage and the angel let his head drop to one side.
He tried to smile, although his face was haggard and tired. She saw
then that they had chained him by the ankles to the floor.

The king came up to her and put
his hands upon her shoulders. ‘My daughter, do you know who this
is?’

She nodded, whispered, ‘Yes. It
is Shemyaza’s brother. I dreamed of it.’ She felt her father’s
fingers convulse upon her shoulders.

‘He has lived for a very long
time.’

‘I know. You found him under
the earth.’ She wanted to say, ‘but he does not belong with us’,
and warn her father that to keep Penemue in chains might be
dangerous, for then his fierce brother would come looking for him.
But, as she also knew her father was not afraid of anything, there
seemed no point in saying this.

Amytis came to her husband’s
side. ‘When did he... wake up?’

The king flicked a quick,
sardonic glance at Tiy to indicate he disapproved of Amytis knowing
about the captive and that he understood exactly where her
knowledge came from, then relented and spoke. ‘Not long ago. He was
sitting there peacefully as usual, then jumped in his seat and let
out a great scream.’

‘Sarpanita heard it,’ said the
queen.

The king patted his daughter’s arm. ‘I
am not surprised.’

‘What are you going to do
now?’

‘Give him to the linguists
again. What else can be done?’ The king eyed his daughter. ‘Speak
to him, Nita.’

Sarpanita did not want to. If
she was to speak to this being, she should do it alone, not in
front of others. She shook her head.

The king made a sound of
annoyance. ‘You must. Can’t you see that he is aware of you?’

‘I don’t want to, Papa. I’m
afraid.’

‘Nita, this great angel is to
be your...’

‘Hush!’ interrupted Tiy, who
had so far remained uncharacteristically quiet. ‘It should be
carefully explained to the girl in private. Women’s talk.’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped the king.
‘In the ancient days, the daughters of the settlements were not
given careful explanations as to what must happen to them. We must
continue the tradition. We conceived this child for this very
moment, and who knows, our sacred act might even have influenced
the Shining Ones to allow me to find Penemue. She belongs to him
already, and on her, he will conceive the sons of a great
race.’

‘Yes,’ hissed Tiy. ‘That is
true. But she is only a child, great king. And you are a man. The
knowledge of this intimate subject should not come from you.’

Nimnezzar laughed. ‘You’ll get
your chance, old woman. My daughter is yours to instruct, as we
have discussed.’

Sarpanita listened to their
conversation without feeling. They wanted to give her to this
creature, who would tear her body with his great size, perhaps kill
and devour her. Angels were terrible creatures; she had always
known that. She wished her father had not found Penemue, yet over
the past couple of weeks, her body had thrummed to strange rhythms.
She had been waiting for something, her blood had been waiting for
it, and here it was.

‘Speak to your husband,’ said
the king.

And Sarpanita felt her blood
turn to dust. The angel shuddered before her, flexed his shoulders;
his nostrils quivered, scenting her. It made her think of bulls and
stallions. He moved his body upon the chair, trying to stand, and
but for the princess, everyone in the room took a step back from
the iron cage.

The angel uttered a groan and
collapsed back into his seat. Then he gripped the stone arms of the
chair and threw back his head, screamed out a single, deafening
word that shook the foundations of the ziggurat: ‘Shemyaza!’

Essex, England

The tall man rinsed his long, pale
hands at a small, porcelain sink, having already removed the
rustling plastic gloves. On his examination couch, his patient sat
rearranging her clothing in the afternoon light that came in
diffusely through the blinds at the windows.

‘Well, it’s all going
splendidly,’ said the man, a gynaecologist. ‘Only a few more
weeks.’ He remembered to smile as he turned round.

The woman smiled back, her face
radiant. Later, that might change when the realities of parenting
stubbed out the pink fantasy. The consultant thought suddenly that
he too might have had children once, but now his life was an arid
desert, and the past seemed inappropriate, somehow messy. He felt
disassociated from it and pushed the unwelcome, intrusive idea from
his mind. It was absurd. He lived alone, had never married.

The woman, his patient,
chattered on as she put on her coat. He uttered platitudes in
return. She really was in superb health and as far as modern
medical technology could predict, so was her budding child. There
was little to say to her.

At the door, she pressed a slim
hand into one of his, which was still slightly damp. ‘Thank you for
everything. You’re always so reassuring, Mr Murchison. Forgive me
for saying this — I hope it doesn’t sound too personal — but I
think you must have been born to look after the needs of the female
body.’

He smiled again, unembarrassed,
but unwilling to comment. ‘Thanks. You take care of yourself.’
Gently, he propelled her out of his office.

Once the door had closed behind
her, he went to sit behind his desk, which was virtually empty. She
had been the last patient of the day, yet he felt as if there was
something else he had to do before he could leave the hospital. All
day, he’d been plagued by strange urges to keep looking in his
diary. Had he forgotten an appointment? Perhaps it had not been
written down. He buzzed his secretary. ‘Pamela, is there anything
that needs my attention before I go home?’

A slight pause. ‘No, Mr
Murchison. Would you like me to bring you a cup of tea?’

‘Thanks, but I think I’ll just
be off.’