The Dark Lord (57 page)

"Yes," Ráha said, concerned. "Aren't you tired? You have traveled a long way, seeking solace for the emptiness in your heart." She lifted a hand, pointing to the gates and towers. "What you seek, what your heart desires, lies within the city. An end to your labors, deserved rest, your family, respect, honor. A white beard covering old knees as you cradle your grandson in your arms."

"And the dead trapped in the dark wood, what of them?" Mohammed tugged at the scrap of a cloak around his neck and the decayed wool fell to dust between his fingers. With the movement of his limbs, the rest of his garments sighed away, falling in a brown rain around his feet. "I will not abandon the innocent."

Ráha raised her chin, pointing into the wood. "They cannot enter, my lord, because you are here, balanced between life and death. While you remain, they cannot pass into the city and thereby to the land of the dead."

Mōha said the same thing,
Mohammed remembered.
Is it true?

"You must choose to pass on," Ráha continued. "You are endangering those who still live." She smiled and Mohammed felt her compassion like a physical blow, a balled fist in his gut. "Every spirit fears change—and yours is very strong! It clings tenaciously to the memory of life. These are not your arms and legs," she said, gesturing to the weak, spindly limbs holding him up. Ráha's forehead wrinkled in thought. "This is the flesh of a dead man, withering in the ground. You must let go of this illusion of life. Free the multitude trapped in this terrible balance. Don't you hear them wailing, frightened, each alone in the darkness?"

"I do," he said. "But I will not yield to your foul master! My work among the living is not complete. The great and merciful one has set me a task, which remains yet undone. So, I say to you, malign spirit, I will return to the living world. I will not enter the city. Yet, by my absence, the dead will be freed to pass on, and find peace."

"But," Ráha said, perplexed, "your work
is
done. The Emperor Heraclius, who betrayed the cities of the Decapolis, is dead, his corpse only one among thousands, nameless and unmarked. Your people have been freed, your enemies revenged. Even now they claim a great destiny in your name. Your teachings will live on, forever. The allotted span of your days has come to an end."

"The lord of the wasteland," Mohammed said sharply, "sets the beginning and the ending of each man's life—yes, he who made men from clots of blood, from clay—he sets the rising and the setting of the sun! Not you, not your master, not his slave Mōha or any other power! I was struck down by treachery, my efforts incomplete! The voice from the clear air guides me, showing a clear and righteous path against evil!"

Ráha stepped back from his vehemence, an expression of grave concern coming over her. "Evil? My lord, all things have an ending. There is no evil in death, only the wheel of change, of life, turning as it has always turned. The means of change do not matter, only its inevitability.
All things end!
Even you, even I."

Mohammed licked his lips, overcome by a sensation of nervousness.
She is speaking the truth.

"O Man, observe," Ráha said, spreading her hands wide. A glittering circle opened in the air, through which Mohammed saw a thicket of pine and thistle. A stag crashed through the brush, followed by a swift, golden bolt of fur. The lion struck hard, massive jaws crunching into the stippled brown neck of the deer. Both animals went down in a cloud of dust and branches, the stag kicking, the lion's rear claws tearing bloody streaks across a heavy tan pelt. "Here is the engine of the world, of all creation! There is no permanence—only change—and in this world, men die. Women die. Everything passes with the turning of the wheel. New life springs from the old." Ráha looked up, her lambent dark eyes blazing. Mohammed felt a void open before him, saw scattered stars glitter on a field of sable. They grew, swelling enormous and dark, a doorway opening in the air before him. "Your time has come. Accept this."

A faint, ethereal wailing trembled in the air and Mohammed knew the dead were pleading with him, shouting in their faint voices, bending their will upon him for release. He felt the weariness of his bones, the fatigue settling in what muscle and sinew remained. Even his thoughts were slow, attenuated, stretched to the utmost. He heard temple bells and the chant for the dead, a slow, mournful dirge on a thousand voices. Drums rolled, echoing the tramp of sandals on a dusty plain.
A funeral procession,
he recognized.
It must be mine.

"No," Mohammed managed to gasp. He was on his knees again, barely able to stand. "I will not abandon my purpose. The judge of judges will account the deeds of my life, when I stand before him. Until that day, when the lord of the world commands me lay down my purpose, I will not surrender."

"Are you the maker of all things?" Ráha knelt beside him, a pale hand on his shoulder. "Are you the judge of good and evil?"

"No!" Mohammed drew away from her. "I am only a man."

"How can you know your purpose continues? This
is
the end of your time. You must pass on!" A tone of urgent pleading crept into her voice.

"No—I will not! I will not be driven by thirst, by fear, by temptation, by the blandishments of the spirits here. I will endure. A great evil has entered the world—a serpent with countless heads, arms, bodies—I have seen the dark power walking under the sun, cloaked in the shape of a man. The voice from the clear air has spoken, setting me to strive against
shaitan
and all his spawn."

Ráha shook her head in despair. "Still you seek to name evil. I ask again, are you the judge of judges?"

"I am not," Mohammed snapped, "yet the voice of the empty places guides me to a righteous life! My heart sings to hear him, showing me a certain path. I will not let the whole world die, consumed by the serpent, crushed in leviathan coils! I will not step aside, while there is work yet undone!"

The woman rose, lips pursed. She cupped her hands and a spark appeared, fluttering like a butterfly. The flickering glow lit her face with warm light. "You are not
listening
. Certainty is oblivion. Immutability disaster. Only in the motion of change—in birth and death—is there life. The voice speaking to you is only one of many, only part of a great chorus. Everything, even what you name
evil
has a place in that choir."

"No—" Mohammed recoiled. "Not the abomination! The Lord of Serpents is a stain on the perfection of creation!"

A beneficent smile spread across Ráha's features. "Creation is imperfect. In all things a flaw—even in the wisdom of your guide, this voice from the clear air." She closed her hands over the light sputtering between her fingers. Darkness flooded the air around them, drowning sight of the grass, the city, even the swaying branches of the fig. "You claim the power in the desert as your patron, saying he raised the race of men from clay, from blood, from the very soil. So he did."

A vision burst over Mohammed, stunning his mind.
A vast city rose up around him, cyclopean towers piercing leaden clouds, titanic shapes moving in the chill air. In the distance, mountains of ice encroached upon the city, glittering blue-white walls looming over soapstone colored buildings. Abandoned doorways yawned on streets tenanted solely by cold whirlwinds. A singular slate-gray tower swelled into view, colossal, every surface covered with deeply incised glyphs and signs. A window filled his vision and he looked down upon a great chamber, filled with shining, dark machines. Glimmering lightning flared in the shadows and something huge bent over a slab of mirrored black stone. Glossy rust-colored wings shifted, one pair, then four rising and falling around a ridged circumference. A tiny creature squirmed and writhed on the gleaming table, screaming endlessly. Bright red blood smeared silky fur. Stubby-fingered hands groped mindlessly at the air. Delicate white cilia descended, adjusting minute jewel-like tools.

Mohammed jerked back, horrified. Ráha was watching him from the darkness. The vision faded, the vast city falling away into dimness, buried by the relentless ice. The terrible cold lingered, pricking his skin as the tiny knives had worked in the living body of the furred creature.

"Did you think the birth of the race of men was pure? No—even in the beginning there was imperfection." Ráha drew close, her hands radiating a faint heat. The light between her palms glowed through her skin and Mohammed could see the outline of delicate finger bones. "From base flaw rose wonders unlooked for. The power, which presses the Sun and the Moon into its service, encompasses all things, men not least of all. Do not seek certainty, my lord. How can love grow, among such cold geometries?"

"Was—" Mohammed's horror choked the words in his throat. "Was this the face of the Wise One, who created men from dust, from a little germ..." He could not continue, stunned.

"Is the face of a newborn the face of a grown man?" The woman's voice was faint in the darkness. "Is the face of the grandson, the face of the grandfather? As the wheel turns, even the foulest act may plant a seed of joy. All things transform..."

Ráha opened her hands, letting stuttering, flaring light spill forth. Mohammed staggered back—in the flashing light, in the dark spaces between the warm golden flare, Ráha filled the world; enormous, blue-black arms like wheel spokes, reaching from earth to sky, myriad faces looking upon all directions and compasses. A thousand hands moved as one, a bending forest pressed by hurricane winds and delicate feet danced on the crown of the world, ringed with whirling, blazing suns. The man became aware of a tone, a singing single note, vibrating in the void. His eyes widened, and the last of his body cracked and crumbled into ash, rushing away in the wind from the abyss.

The woman closed her hands and the vision collapsed into a burning fire-encircled mote, then a shimmering cruciform letter, then into nothing. The golden light faded and the trembling tone faded away into the sighing branches of the fig tree. Even the sky snapped back into focus, a flat curtain of blue arcing overhead.

"Do you see?" Ráha said. "You must let go of this shell. You must go onward."

Mohammed could only feel the
thud-thud
of his heart. Even the woman's voice was very faint and far away. Glorious visions blinded him, and most of all, he heard a familiar, beloved sound, echoing in the spaces between his heartbeat, in the spaces between Ráha's words.

It is the sound of the morning of the world,
he wondered, overcome with fierce emotion.
The wind blowing in empty spaces. The tide. The moon. The roar of the surf on a barren shore. It is the voice from the clear air.

Iron shoes clattered on stone paving, drowning the jangle and clank of armor and shields. Khadames jogged wearily up a sloping, narrow street, shoulder to shoulder with a mass of Persian
grivpani
. The soldiers were clad in lamellar mail from head to toe, vision reduced to a pair of reinforced eyeholes in a conical helm. For the moment, while the column rattled into an octagonal plaza overlooking the Golden Horn, Khadames' helmet bounced on a strap over one shoulder. Sweating heavily in the bulky armor, the general needed to see more than he needed protection—at least for the moment!

A steadily increasing din echoed back from the three- and four-story buildings; a sustained hoarse shouting and the ring of booted feet on stone. Khadames, though he was bone-weary, gathered himself and pushed ahead, jogging through the mass of his column. The other
diquans
tramped on, one foot in front of the other, but Khadames knew they were exhausted. The heavy overlapping armor and plated shoes of the Persian nobleman was not made for marching on foot. They were designed for fighting from a powerful horse. But here in the confines of the city, in these narrow, twisting streets and overhanging lanes, among the rubble, their chargers were of little use.

Khadames jogged into the plaza, a spiked mace already in hand, small round shield strapped to his left arm. A crowd of men ran towards him, shouting in alarm. They were a disordered, panicky mob of Armenian mercenaries with braided beards and fish-scale armor. Part of the motley army the King of Kings had left to defend the captured city. Khadames cursed tiredly to himself, resting his mace on one shoulder.
What did they see, a ghost?
His voice, pitched to carry, rang out. "Persia, to me! Bannermen, to me!"

Some of the fleeing men slowed, staring in apprehension at the column of armored
diquans
stomping up the street. Khadames clouted one of them on the shoulder, bringing him to a startled halt. "Why are you running?" the general shouted. The Armenian blinked, panic fading as he saw stalwart men filling the plaza, then turned and pointed.

"The Greeks are coming!" he blurted, eyes wide. "The spear wall is coming!"

One iron-sheathed hand grasping the man's leather collar, Khadames gestured in an arc with the mace. "Triple line," he bellowed, harsh voice reverberating from the scorched, soot-stained buildings. "Prepare to advance at a walk!"

Persian
grivpani
spilled out into the plaza, rattling and clanking, forming up around the tall, golden standards of the house of Sassan. The generals' own battle flag arrived—a deep crimson sunflower on a field of blue—and Khadames took comfort from the familiar banner's presence. His forefathers had fought for nine generations under the watchful eyes of the
tavgul
. The Persian knights began to form their line, small shields braced, maces, longswords and spears at the ready. The older, more experienced men pushed up to take the front rank. Khadames paced west to the end of the formation, dark eyes scanning the men, looking for loose buckles, untied straps, anything to fail in the shock of battle, fouling a man's arm. The front of a temple, painted columns cracked and splintered by terrible heat, formed an anchor for their flank. Khadames was pleased to see his men were still game for a fight.

"You—what did you see?" The general turned to the hapless mercenary, now in the hands of two of his bodyguards. "Where were you, and why did you run?"