Stealing Sacred Fire (30 page)

Salamiel frowned. ‘Which
is?’

‘I told you. Love. It is what I
must give and be.’

Salamiel uttered a scornful
sound. ‘Why don’t I just nail you to a cross? It seems like you
think you must you be a sacrifice again. Are you going to die?’

Shem shrugged. It unnerved him
how accurately Salamiel had just described his own fears. ‘I don’t
know. Probably. If that’s what it takes. Sometimes love is cruel.
Sometimes it goes beyond death.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing
this. I know you, Shem. You won’t accept sacrifice that meekly. You
fought your destiny in Cornwall. Have you really changed that
much?’

Shem forced himself to laugh.
‘No, I haven’t. I’m merely telling you what I’ve thought about
these past few weeks. It doesn’t mean I’ve wholly accepted it.’

‘Gadreel and the Yarasadi don’t
want love, Shem. They want action.’

‘No, they want change. The
Yarasadi believe that we, as divine avatars of Malak Tawus, herald
the advent of the last epoch of the old order. The world will not
end after this, but change. Humanity and the Grigori must move on.
This is the last chance, for both our races.’

Salamiel frowned. ‘And how will we
change?’

‘Humanity’s destiny is to
become more like us; Daniel is the symbol of this. Our destiny is
to regain our lost heritage, to become the Anannage once more, but
this time we will interact freely with humanity. There will be no
lies and no secrets. We will not guard our knowledge jealously, but
share it.’

‘A dream, Shem.’ Salamiel
sighed deeply. ‘Riding along here, I find it hard to believe. I
have lived too long and suffered too much. So have you. Ultimately,
you will rise up with fire. You’ll not be able to let yourself die
for this destiny.’

‘I may not have a choice.’

‘Oh, you will. It would not be
that easy. You wait and see.’

One night, they camped in what
Tahira called the Valley of Stones. It was a bleak, desolate place,
where incessant winds wailed between the dark cliffs on either
side. Tahira told them it was a place of ghosts, and that sometimes
an open mind might receive a message from the dead there.

No messages were forthcoming,
however, and in the morning, the company resumed their journey.
They found the cave entrance in the late afternoon. The horses
stepped around a corner in the path and there it was; a cliff face
that seemed to lean backwards into the landscape, lighter in colour
than the surrounding rocks. The cave entrance gaped blackly upon
it, like a giant stain. It seemed, from a distance, to have no
depth. A narrow, treacherous-looking path led up to a small rock
platform before the cave. Two other paths appeared to lead from
either side of the ledge, disappearing into dry and prickly shrubs
that hung precariously from the mountain-side. The area had a
strange atmosphere that made Daniel’s flesh prickle. Weird echoes
bounced from rock to rock, but were weirdly muffled. Wide-winged
birds circled above that looked suspiciously like vultures, even
though they were reputed to be extinct in this area.

Leaving their horses with Jalal
and the other Yarasadi at the bottom of the path, Tahira led the
avatars upwards. She climbed nimbly, like a ragged goat, her
brightly-coloured shawl and long grey hair flapping in the
wind.

At the cave’s entrance, there
were signs that others had been there before them; small bunches of
wild flowers had been left as offerings and were scattered,
wilting, over the hard, dry rocks.

Tahira had not been
exaggerating her description of the place. From the moment Shem and
the others stepped up to the entrance, they could see that the
entire interior was filled with bones, piles upon piles of them. A
warm wind seemed to emanate from the depths of the cave; it smelled
of singed hair. The scene within looked like that of a hidden
massacre: bleached bones, broken bones and bones arranged in
decorative heaps. They glowed like phosphorous in the afternoon
light coming in through the cave mouth. Farther back, ghostly white
lattices gleamed in the dark.

A few yards in from the
entrance, someone had cleared a small circular space. An uneven
stone floor, polished by generations of human feet, showed through
a scattering of grey ashes. Tahira turned around in a circle,
nodding her head. ‘I remember it,’ she said, and then pointed a
rigid finger at the cleared space. ‘This is where we must
pray.’

Shem glanced at Daniel and
raised his eyebrows. They were not here to pray, although no-one
enlightened the old woman.

Daniel examined some of the
bones. ‘They look like bird skeletons,’ he said, ‘there are still
feathers…’ He sifted through a clacking pile. ‘Some are recent,
too. Meat still on them.’ He looked around himself, shaking his
head. ‘This place must have been used for…’

‘Millennia,’ Salamiel said,
stepping forward and lifting a bone. Almost absent-mindedly, he
slipped it into his hair, behind his left ear.

Shem came over to them. ‘Birds
and goats and serpents. In this place, the people — perhaps my
people — once wore the wings of the vultures and flew in trance.’
He reached out and touched one of the white, delicate bones, but
withdrew his hand before lifting it free of the pile.

Daniel turned in a circle to
inspect their surroundings. ‘So where do we begin to look for the
key? Is it under the bones, or even one of the bones?’ He shivered.
The atmosphere in the cave was not wholly benign, and he sensed
curious presences feeling out for him.

‘I think you should try and
make contact with whatever spirit entities guard this place,’ Shem
said.

‘I had a feeling you might
suggest that.’ Daniel put his hands on his hips and gazed up at the
roof of the cave, which was blackened with ancient soot. He sighed.
‘Right, let’s see what can be done, but I want you, Gadreel and
Salamiel to share this meditation.’

Gadreel asked Tahira to wait
outside, and once she had left, the four of them arranged
themselves in a circle, sitting cross-legged on the ground. In the
silence, they heard the hollow, wooden sound of dislodged bones
shifting their positions. A dry carrion scent filled the air. It
was not easy to close the eyes and surrender sight to begin the
meditation.

Because Daniel wanted to
concentrate on whatever entities were present in the cave, Salamiel
led the group through the preliminaries of the meditation. He asked
them to visualise a cone of white, protective light growing up
around them. Once this was done, he invited any spirit forms that
might be present to make themselves known.

For a while, nothing happened
as everyone extended their senses out into their environment. In
his mind’s eye, Daniel could still see the interior of the cave;
the darkness, the jumbled heaps of bones. As he concentrated on
this image, he became aware that a fire was burning in the middle
of their circle. He could hear it crackling now and smelled the
pungent smoke — wood mixed with broken bone. A tall, hunched shape
was lurking in the shadows behind Shem’s back. It looked like a
shadow itself, but even as Daniel concentrated upon it, its shape
became more solid. Mentally, Daniel called out to this image, and
without hesitation, it came forth into the light of the flames.

Daniel forced himself not to
wince away. The figure before him was monstrous, in both height and
appearance. He wore a skirt of bloodied feathers around his hips,
while a cloak of vulture wings hung over his shoulders. The flesh
was still raw and red where the wings had been hacked from the
bodies of birds. Smooth white knobs of bone jutted out from the
shoulders of the cloak. The guardian’s face was fierce, his eyes
shadowed and predatory. His hands were curling and uncurling like
claws that yearned to tear and rend. His mouth was set in a
gargoyle sneer.

Daniel almost gagged from the
carrion stench that enveloped this entity. It took some effort for
him to ask it to name itself. The name came immediately,
aggressively: Rabisu. Daniel sensed that this was an ancient
spirit-form, perhaps placed millennia before by the Nephilim
warrior-priests who had used the cave. The guardian was most likely
a thought-form that embodied, in a limited way, the personality of
one of the priests. Its duty would be to remain there over the
centuries, guarding the sacred site. ‘Do you see it?’ Daniel asked
the others.

‘I sense something,’ Gadreel
said.

‘Shem?’ Daniel said.

He heard Shem shift restlessly
on the floor. ‘It’s the guardian. Tell him who we are and what our
purpose is.’

Daniel addressed the guardian aloud.
‘Rabisu, we are Shemyaza, Gadreel, Salamiel and Daniel. We are
searching for the key to the Chambers of Light. Is it here?’

Daniel saw Rabisu pull himself
up to his full height, which was at least seven feet. His eyes
sparked blue in a face that otherwise appeared almost featureless,
owing to the quantity of ash and pigment that was smeared across
it, augmented with dirt and grease. A voice boomed painfully in
Daniel’s head. ‘To whom does my key belong?’

‘To whom does my key belong,’
Daniel repeated. ‘Did you all hear that? You must answer.’

There was silence for a while,
then Gadreel said simply, ‘to us, its inheritors.’

Daniel saw the guardian draw
back his lips into a snarl. He made a sudden movement, as if about
to pounce. ‘No,’ Daniel said bleakly. ‘That’s not the answer.’

‘To Anu,’ Salamiel said, ‘the
first Lord. It is his key.’

Again the guardian snarled and
stamped his feet, sending a spray of bone-dust up into the smoke of
the fire. ‘No,’ Daniel said. ‘Think! Rabisu is impatient with your
answers.’

‘What do you think, Daniel?’
Salamiel said. ‘You’re the vizier. You answer the question.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘I don’t
know.’ His mind was whirling; it was impossible to organise his
thoughts. What was the answer? He felt the air move around him as
Rabisu struck out with hooked fingers towards his face. Daniel
uttered a gasping cry. He could feel the guardian’s power building
up, his impatience and scorn. They should not have considered
summoning him until they were surer of what they wanted from him or
indeed from themselves.

‘The key belongs to the
Yarasadi!’ Gadreel said. ‘This is their secret place of
worship.’

Rabisu growled and his long,
black fingernails raked Daniel’s brow. Daniel heard Salamiel and
Gadreel utter soft cries of surprise, and knew that the spiritual
guardian had left a physical mark. He could feel a trail of blood
begin to seep down his face.

‘Shem!’ Daniel yelled. ‘You
answer him! Speak! Do it now or everything will be lost! Say it,
Shem! Say what I know you can say!’

Shem stood up and Daniel opened
his eyes. The two realities were overlaid upon each other; the cold
cave in afternoon light; the fire and the guardian. Daniel blinked
blood from his eyes. Shem seemed contained and almost dazed, as if
his mind was elsewhere. ‘The key,’ he said, ‘belongs to me.
Shaitan. It belongs to me.’

Abruptly, the guardian uttered
a wild scream, which everybody heard, then jumped up into the air
and vanished. The company all opened their eyes and looked around
themselves in astonishment for a few moments, then Salamiel said.
‘I can’t see any key. Where is it?

Gadreel glanced at the ground
and sighed, ‘No key.’

Daniel shook his head. His brow
was stinging now; he felt dizzy. ‘We failed,’ he said. ‘I don’t
know if we’ll get another chance to speak with the guardian. It
won’t trust us, and probably won’t even make another
appearance.’

Gadreel slapped the ash-strewn
stone floor with the flat of her palms. ‘Damn! We should have been
more prepared!’

‘But how were we to know what
the guardian would ask?’ Salamiel said.

‘I should have known,’ Daniel
answered in a dull voice. ‘Site guardians often set riddles, ask
questions. Gadreel is right. We were too impetuous.’

Shem was staring out of the
entrance to the cave. Daniel looked up at him and sighed. Shem was
an unpredictable creature; he could not be relied on. ‘What do you
want to do now?’ Daniel asked him.

Shem did not answer, but walked out of
the cave. His three companions swapped a few incredulous glances,
then followed him.

Shem stood upon the narrow
ledge gazing up at the sky. Tahira and the other Yarasadi, standing
below with the horses, were looking up at him. For a moment, Daniel
wondered whether Shem was possessed by Rabisu, for he was acting
strangely. He laid a hand upon Shem’s arm. ‘What is it? Are you all
right?’

Again, Shem said nothing, but
slowly raised an arm to point up at the sky.

Daniel shaded his eyes with one
hand, and squinted to where Shem was pointing. He saw a pin-prick
of light against the clouds.

Gadreel came up beside him.
‘What’s that light?’

Daniel shrugged. ‘I’m not
sure…’

Suddenly the light began to
zoom towards them, becoming larger and brighter, until it hung
above their heads as a hovering sphere of radiance about two feet
in diameter. The Yarasadi below began to cry out in Kurmanji and
gestured at the apparition in surprise and fear. The sphere emitted
a high-pitched hum. It swerved to the left a few feet, then to the
right, before shooting off to the left, towards the cliff face
further along the path. Here, it collided with the rock and
exploded with a deafening blast. Everybody on the cave ledge
cowered down, while the Yarasadi below uttered panicked cries and
covered their heads. Stones showered downwards, and a cloud of rock
dust billowed out from the cliff face.

After a few moments, when
everything seemed quiet, the group straightened up, brushing dust
from their clothes and faces.

‘Incredible!’ Salamiel said.
‘Our own UFO.’