The Gate of Fire (13 page)

The hill-chieftain, the wariness a little gone from his face, tasted salt and bread as well, then sipped the cup of wine. Seeing that he had done so, the others followed suit. After they had done this, they sat on the cold stone floor, crossing their legs under them. The sorcerer sat down as well, flipping the dark red robe behind him. He seemed completely at ease among them.

"You are well spoken," said the first hill-chief, his voice gruff. "You claim much, coming to the hidden mountain and making it your home."

"I only claim what is mine," answered the sorcerer in an even voice. The hill-chief raised an eyebrow at this. "I have been away a long time," continued the sorcerer, looking around the circle of chieftains. "But now I dwell here again—in ancient days, your forefathers served me well and swore mighty oaths to come to my banner when I called. By my right, I call you to do the same."

The chiefs looked around at the huge hall and the armored men standing by the side of the dais. Some looked up, seeing that above the throne a mighty flag hung down from the hidden ceiling—twenty feet wide and a hundred high, a dark, rippling surface that bore a wheel of twelve interlocking serpents in crimson upon it. One frowned, staring up at the banner, and tugged at his beard. Khadames guessed that the man was searching his memory for some tale of that flag.

"And who are you, to stand in the hall that Faridoon built and claim it for your own?" The black-bearded hill-chieftain's voice was mocking, and he made to stand up.

The sorcerer raised a hand, and his face subtly darkened in anger. He stood in a smooth motion. "That name has no place here now, Khawaj Ali. The brothers of the fire did not carve this hall from the mountain, or raise the fortress that stands about us. No, they came by it by treachery. They stole it." The sorcerer's voice rose, filling with an echo of thunder, and rattled from the roof. "I built this place! I brought it forth from the mountain. At my command ten thousand slaves raised it. At my command ten thousand slaves made these halls and tunnels. This is my place, this mountain called Damawand." His voice softened, standing still among the chiefs, who seemed ready to bolt. "Have you forgotten me so soon? Are the memories of men so short—once my name was known throughout the world, and nowhere better than these hills..."

While he spoke, the sorcerer had seemed to grow, standing now a head or more above the men who stood at his back. Too, the drums had begun a low, almost soundless beat, and fires had leapt up behind the throne and in the dark recesses at the sides of the hall. In this new light—all ruddy orange and flickering—great statues of stone emerged from darkness, flanking the great pillars and lining the arches of the hall. The first chieftain stood, his feet wide, with a fierce glower on his face. "Name yourself, then, stranger! You summon us but do not give your name. Say who you are, and let us have done with these mysteries!"

The sorcerer turned fully to face the chieftain, and again he seemed to grow. He pulled the wine-red hood over his head, and his eyes, now cast in shadow, gleamed and flickered with an odd yellow light. When he spoke, the floor trembled and a wind rose, making the torches flicker. "You do not know me by sign and deed? Then I will tell you, short-lived man. I am Azi Tohak—he who some men name Dahak. I am the lord of this place, this tower of stone, and lord of all the lands that lie under the sky."

The chieftain blanched and staggered a little. The other men gasped and began to crawl away. They could not escape, for at Khadame's signal, the Uze had crept up behind them and now formed a ring of steel around them. The curved blades in the nomads' hands gleamed red in the light of the fires that now roared up behind the throne. The sorcerer turned and mounted the stairs to his seat of iron. There he sat again, turning his countenance upon the hill-chieftains who now knelt, some whimpering in fear, at the base of the dais.

"Yes, now you remember me, not least from the tales your mothers told you when you were young. Yes, I am a lord of demons, a wizard, and a sorcerer who crosses the night sky on the wings of the great
byakhee
. I have returned to my place of power, and you will bow before me and swear the same oaths that your ten-times grandfathers swore when first I walked on this earth."

Of all the hill-men, only one remained standing—the first, the one named Khawaj Ali. His face was stern and filled with stubborn anger. Of all the chieftains, only he showed no fear. "This is not your place," he barked. "This is the fortress that Faridoon built! The priests of fire will cast you down again, as they did before. You and your dark master have no place here—"

Laughter cut him short, a bitter mocking laugh from the hooded man. Dahak raised a hand, and figures appeared out of the flame-shot darkness. They were dressed in full lamellar armor of steel bands from head to toe, and their helms were contrived to seem as the faces of horned and terrible demons. The red light washed over them, making them seem insubstantial. They carried long poles over their shoulders and from the poles, suspended by blood-matted beards tied around the shaft, were the heads of many elderly men.

"Here are your priests of fire, those who mouth the platitudes of a dead god," crowed the sorcerer, his hand outstretched. "See how they bow to me?"

The armored men knelt, moving in complete silence, and the heads made a wet sound as they struck the floor. Khadames, seeing the sightless, gouged eyes and the cruel wounds that had been cut into the faces, swallowed but did not move from his place.

Dahak stood again and he descended a step from the seat of iron. One hand flexed, and a long, tapering finger traced a sign in the air. "Who am I?" boomed out his voice.

The heads, lying in slowly spreading pools of blood on the floor, began to twitch.

"Speak, O priests of the fire, do you know me?"

There was a bubbling sound, and gore dribbled from the lips of one head. Its jaw muscles twitched and bunched, then the mouth opened.

"You are our master, O Lord of Darkness." The voice was foul—a gruesome parody of the speech of men—but the words were clear. Two of the hill-chieftains fainted, collapsing into the arms of the Uze who lurked behind them. These men were immediately taken away. Dahak turned to the Khawaj chieftain and smiled broadly, showing his fine white teeth. "So will all things bow to me; you not least, brave chieftain."

A skiff rode up the side of a long rolling swell. Deep blue water slid past, hissing, under the boat's prow, curling away from brightly painted eyes that stared out over the broad ocean. High above, gulls and cormorants circled, their plaintive cries faint in the afternoon sun. At the back of the boat a tall, young woman with braided red hair leaned into the oars. They bit the water, and the skiff cut into the side of the next wave and then slid over the top. The woman was deeply tanned by weeks at sea and wore a clingy red cotton shirt half soaked with sea spray. Thin braids wrapped with little blue ribbons fluttered on a stiff following wind at either side of her face, framing high cheekbones and firm lips. She squinted forward, storm gray eyes scanning the waters before her. She backed one oar, and the boat turned a little. "There," she said in a strong voice, "the walls of Thira."

Her companion, seated in the front of the skiff, half turned and stared up at the looming cliffs of dark stone that rose from the sea. A thick cloud of raven hair tied back with silver wire fell over olive shoulders and slim brown arms. The passenger was clad in a fine white linen toga not long from the shops of Alexandria. Silver bracelets encircled her wrists, and necklaces of gold and sapphire glittered at her neck. The passenger turned, enormous dark eyes smiling at the oarswoman. "No beach? No harbor? Must we scale the cliffs themselves?" The olive-skinned woman was laughing, her smile brilliant in a perfect oval face.

"Dear Princess," the red-haired woman said, "I promised you sanctuary and you will find it here. But have a little patience and some of the secrets of the island will reveal themselves to you."

"So you say, O mysterious one, but I wonder at your daring... the ship that brought us here is long gone, and my brother and children with it. Mayhap there is no one on this island at all! Do you want me all to yourself?"

The oarswoman lost her paddle stroke for a moment, her expression stilled, and studied the smiling face of her companion through slitted eyelids. She pulled the oars into their locks and braced them with one bare brown foot. Even with the tan that had slowly built up during the long weeks they had sailed in the hot waters of the Persian and Arabian seas, a wash of freckles was clear on her nose and cheeks. She stared away from her companion, out over the bright blue sea and the dark cliffs.

Shirin arched a fine jet eyebrow at the troubled expression on her companion's face. "Thyatis? I meant nothing by it—a jest. I know it must pain you to separate me from my children."

The Roman woman turned back, a little, at the light touch on her arm. Shirin had carefully moved the length of the slowly pitching skiff, picking up her skirts in one hand, showing shapely legs and small bare feet. She sat on the middle seat of the longboat they had purchased from the captain of the
Pride of Ialysus
the day before. The upper part of the dress had fallen away, revealing a smooth shoulder and necklaces that plunged into the cool shadow between her breasts. Thyatis frowned a moment, seeing the pensive look on Shirin's face. "No, Lady Shirin, I separated you from your children for everyone's safety. Once they are in Rome, the Duchess will take them into her care—and no one will know them or be able to match them to you. All
know
that your family perished in the wreck of Ctesiphon—who can threaten the dead? Who would guess that those house monkeys are of the noblest blood?"

Shirin laughed again, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She took Thyatis' hand in her own. Her own thumbs, smooth and manicured, rubbed unconsciously against the hard ridges of callus and muscle that defined her companion's. "So serious! I know I must be apart from them for some little while... The soft life of an empress does not prepare me well for what will come. You do me honor, bringing me to this secret place. I can bear to be apart from those squally brats for a little while—it will be restful, if nothing else!"

Thyatis nodded, quelling the conflict in her own heart for the moment, and released the younger woman's hand. She picked up the oars again and bent to them. There was still a ways to go to reach the island. Shirin turned back and settled herself in the prow again, curling her legs under her and leaning her arm on the gunwale of the skiff. The boat plunged down a steep wave. The sea roughened as they approached the rocky shore.

The walls of Thira towered over them, bleak and almost featureless. The island stabbed out of the bright sea, a nondescript stub of some ancient mountain that had remained above the waves during the Drowning. No sign of green marred the crumbling stone and twisted lava. The skiff slid down deeper and deeper troughs between the waves, and now the roar of their crash against the dark shore drowned out all conversation. Thyatis leaned into the oars, her face lashed with spray and the skiff crabbed to the side. A riptide rose up before the boat, a white boil of crashing water, and in the prow, Shirin pointed urgently off to one side. A dark spine of volcanic rock was momentarily revealed by the surging waves. Thyatis rowed furiously, feeling her muscles stretched to their fullest for the first time in weeks. The boat danced aside, swept around the black tooth by the next swell.

The cliff face before them—a sheer rampart of dark shale and glassy lava—suddenly split, drawing a shout of wonder from Shirin, and Thyatis shipped the oars. With smooth, practiced movements, she lashed one oar with a line from the bottom of the boat and slid the other back into the rear rudder lock. A wave swelled behind them, curling up out of blue-green waters. The skiff was carried up its inner face, and Thyatis held the steering oar free of the water, waiting.

The island and the horizon tipped as the boat rode up, higher and higher. In the front of the skiff, Shirin had wedged herself into the bottom of the boat, her arms hooked around the forward bench. Thyatis half stood at the back of the skiff, her head suddenly outlined against the brilliantly blue sky. She braced her feet on the thwarts, feeling the wave gather strength under her. Before them, a narrow passage appeared in the cliff, filled with the roar of the sea. The wave rushed into the slot and the boat rocketed down its inner face. Thyatis' hand was gentle on the oar, keeping the skiff balanced just before the wave crest.

Towering walls of jagged stone whipped past on either side, and the sea boiled against them. The air was filled with brilliant white spray. From the bottom of the boat, Shirin half saw arches of worked stone blur past above her, then there was a great roaring sound and the skiff spun around like a leaf on a mill-race.

Thyatis dug the steering oar in suddenly, and the boat leapt to the side. Gray-green walls of cut stone rushed past, and they were in a dark passage. Waves slapped against walls shrouded in the gloom, and then the skiff sailed out into the light again.

"You must stand and be seen," Thyatis said from the boat's rear. Shirin looked back and saw that her friend was drenched from her slicked-back red hair to the bare foot braced against one side of the skiff. The cotton shirt and short linen skirt were plastered to her muscular body like some wall painting from the City of the Great Kings. Shirin swallowed a little whistle and turned away. She stood, one bare foot braced against the prow and the other on the first bench. Nervously, she ran slim fingers through her thick hair. It was not as tangled as she feared. She looked up and around.

A great circle of gloriously blue-green water greeted her. Sunlight danced on the wave tops, barely obscuring the tremendous depth of the water. Shirin looked down and laughed aloud—a merry sound—to see a great school of orange and yellow fish darting through the water below the keel of the boat. Under them golden sand and thousands more fish swam in a lagoon of water clearer than the finest glass. Great towers of coral and sea fern rose from the floor of the hidden bay. Around the lagoon, high cliffs rose up, forming a ring of stone and rock hundreds of feet high. At the far edge was a narrow half circle of pure white sand, and there—where half of the encircling wall stood in shadow and half in sun—a pier of white marble thrust from the strand.