The Gate of Fire (27 page)

The sorcerer began to hum, deep in his throat, an inchoate sound that reverberated in the floor and the walls. Khadames felt weak again, and managed only though an effort of total will to remain standing. The sound, which had seemed so low and quiet, grew, filling the air and the world.

The light flickered in the pit and then went out.

Khadames blinked again, and squinted. In the complete dark, his eyes began to play tricks on him, summoning up odd white flashes and sparkling lights before his eyes. A slow rain of burning motes passed before him. The air itself seemed closer, and the walls of the room, even unseen, pressed against him.

In the darkness, the sorcerer moved and the hum changed, rising in pitch. High up, almost beyond hearing, Khadames began to hear a whistling sound, or an odd piping. Despite himself, he fell to his knees, kneeling at the edge of the pit, staring down into the utter darkness. The piping and whistling echoed in the room, though in his mind—almost paralyzed by fear—the general realized that though he heard those sounds, they did not come from the air. The knife grew heavy and began to slip from his fingers.

The sorcerer spoke, and that single syllable smote the air, ringing like a massive gong.

Khadames felt the floor rush up and crash against his face. His nose buckled and broke on the lip of the pit, and blood spattered into the air, freezing into tiny spheres and then cracking against the floor. Smoke boiled up from his exposed skin. He tried to cry out, but then all sound ceased and he stared into the pit in horror.

Darkness parted and showed abyssal black. Ten thousand tiny points of light burned in an ebon firmament. The cold that had gone before was swallowed up in icy darkness. Khadames clutched at the lip of stone, screaming in fear that he would be thrown off into that void of night. Great clouds of hanging fire burned and boiled in the titanic realm beyond the door that now yawned wide.

Khadames could feel the stones ripple and contort under his fingers as the door opened, flexing the world around him. There was a massive rushing sensation, and the pit inverted. Khadames clung to the stones, though they writhed like living flesh under him, and the pit became a sky above. At his side, the sorcerer remained standing, though now he did not look down, but out, into the void.

Something was coming, rushing across the abyss of space, there between the dead suns.

Something that blotted out whole constellations with the shadow of leviathan tripartite wings.

It came on searching, seeking for the door that now stood ajar. Khadames could feel it, though it was still unguessably far away, hunting in the sea of night. Hunting for the scent of living men and a green world under a yellow sun, where blue seas surged against a white shore. Planets cracked into powder in its passage, shattered by the beat of its wings. Suns, bloated and red, withered and were snuffed out, guttering down to coal-black cinders. Khadames scrabbled on the living stone, feeling the heat of blood pulsing under the rock, searching for the glass knife.

The sorcerer swayed, reaching out with a hand for support. Khadames forced himself to stand, though the reptile mind hiding at the base of his skull gibbered and screamed that they would fall up into the sky. Dahak clutched his shoulder, digging sharp talons into the general's jacket.

"The knife," the sorcerer breathed, turning away from the vast impossible shape that rushed closer and closer. The yellow eyes were lit with fire, and Khadames felt the knife pressing into his hand, cutting at the edge of his thumb. Over the sorcerer's shoulder, the sky was blotted out. Something writhed there, in that darkness.

Khadames reversed the knife, the hilt nestling into his palm.

He stabbed, twisting his body into the thrust, feeling the hot breath of the sorcerer on his cheek.

The flint blade met resistance, doughy and stiff, then something parted wetly, and the world inverted. The black sky was below, and the living stone cracked and shattered in the cold. An invisible fist slapped Khadames away like a siege engine's arm, and he felt stone crack against his back. There was rushing air and a shrieking wail. Then Khadames fell forward to sprawl on the stone floor of the room.

The sorcerer staggered back from the lip of the pit, wreathed in cold blue fire. Then he raised an arm, and fire crawled across his chest and upper arms to collect, pooling like mercury, in his open hand. He turned, his lean face lit by the glow. Khadames levered himself up, feeling every muscle and bone groaning in agony. The black knife jutted from the sorcerer's chest, a dark trail of blood seeping down his waist.

Dahak smiled and seemed to swell, filling the room.

"Oh, bravely done," the sorcerer cooed. "Now let us begin."

Nothing human remained in the burning yellow eyes, only an echo of the vast shape that had blotted out the stars.

But the stone door was shut.

The next day, the body that had lain on the slab in the cold room was carried to the height of Damawand, and priests anointed the corpse with oils and spices. Though their eyes had been put out, they labored diligently, laving the withered flesh with scented waters and daubing paint upon it. They worked in great haste, for the desire of their master was like a whip. Jagged stone surrounded the open space where the body lay, and the sky above was filled with troubled clouds. The sun rarely shone down upon the old mountain now, and the valley below was filled with dirty gray mist and smoke.

"This is an abomination!"

Scowling, Mohammed pushed through the crowd, the hulking shapes of the Tanukh at his back. Hundreds of men and women crowded into the square, dressed in their holiday finest. Mohammed pressed on, though the crowd was getting thicker and thicker as he approached the gates of the shrine. Around him, turbaned men carried tall poles with offerings and painted cloths hanging from them. Women, dressed in heavy dark dresses, held plates of grain and salt over their heads. A constant noise rose from the crowd like the surf on the distant shore. A tight wedge of Tanukh in black robes, Jalal among them, flowed after their commander. Their swords, still sheathed, held back the crowd like a steel fence.

Within fifteen feet of the temple, all movement ceased, and Mohammed was forced to step back and stretch, looking over the heads of those in the press before him.

Two great doors rose above him, each three times the height of a man, set into a large square brick building. The bricks had been polished smooth and then painted; first black, and then with thousands of tiny white, yellow, and blue stars. Above the doors a great yellow-white disk had been painted—the eternal sun—to signify the center of the vault of heaven. From his youth, when he had spent much time to little end in the precincts of the temples, Mohammed knew that on the opposite side of the building, a moon was painted. At the side of each door, statues loomed, carved from the desert stone in the shape of the gods of distant Greece. Apollo stood on the left, holding a great sun-disk, and Hermes on the right. The likeness was crude and stiff, nothing like the graceful marbles in Caesarea or Damascus, but that had not mattered to the artisans who had labored on them for years.

Jalal shouldered past his master and cracked the man in front of him on the head with the heavy iron pommel of his saber. The man slumped soundlessly to the ground, and Jalal stepped forward over the body. The other Tanukh pushed into the gap, shoving men and women aside. Mohammed opened his mouth to shout a command, but then a way cleared to the foot of the steps before the doors. He shut it with a snap and slid sideways into the gap.

At the top of the stairs, a phalanx of priests blocked passage into the temple itself. They were dour-looking men with long braided beards and heavy caps of black cloth sewn with topazes and garnets. Their long brocaded robes hung to their sandalled feet. Mohammed put his boot on the bottom step, and his eyes narrowed in anger. Some of these men had been acquaintances of his father, in the long-ago days when Abd of the Al'Quraysh had served in the temples of Zam-Zam. Now they held the door to the temple closed against his son, even on a day of worship.

"The Lord who made this world has no shape," he shouted at them as he advanced up the stairs. "You cannot give him a man's face! You are impious to confine him in a form of clay or wood!"

The priests glowered down at him, but did not answer. Mohammed stopped one step below them and put his hand on his saber hilt. Those nearest him flinched, but they did not move.

"You priests, hear me!" Mohammed's voice boomed off the metal doors and echoed across the throng packed into the courtyard. "The murderer of my daughter hides in your house of stone. I will have him, whether you will it or no. Stand aside!"

The priests did not move, and some in the rear ranks linked their arms. In the crowd behind him, Mohammed could hear a muttering rumble begin to rise among the people who had come to lay their offerings on the hundred altars within the sacred precincts. He could hear the Tanukh, too, spreading out on the steps behind him. He raised his arms and turned slowly, watching the crowd with an eagle eye. "Is this your god?" He jabbed a finger out, pointing up at the great weatherworn statue of Apollo. "This is a god of the Greeks, who live far away by the side of the green sea. Is this the god who watches over your flocks? Is this the god who breathes in the deep desert, raising the
kamshin
?"

The faces of the people in the crowd were confused or angry. It was hot in the noonday sun, and little wind made its way into the pillared courtyards of the temples. He caught Jalal's eye, and the burly mercenary shook his head minutely.

"I will show you the voice of the god who made the world!" Mohammed spun, drawing his saber in one quick movement, and it flashed in the midday sun as he clubbed the nearest priest on the side of the head with the pommel. The man's skull made a sharp cracking sound and he fell away, his arms and legs tangling with his fellows. The Tanukh gave a great shout and leapt up the stairs. The priests cried out and cowered away from the glittering blades. Some fell down the steps. Mohammed, sneering, pushed through them to the doors themselves. He put his shoulder to the right panel, feeling the heat of the sun-warmed metal burning through the cloth of his robes.

The door opened, slowly, creaking on ancient hinges. The close smell of incense and smoke and sweat flooded out. Mohammed stepped inside, his saber nosing forward to test the passage.

Around the cobblestoned square a great cluster of temples had grown up over the years. Domes and minarets sprouted from the decaying brick and stone buildings. Narrow passages wound between the temples of great gods and small, opening into unexpected courtyards and upon wilting gardens. Dim passages echoed with the chanting of priests and the stink of incense. All of Zam-Zam lay in a great bowl that had once housed a spring of medicinal repute. Now stone and brick buried the spring and the waters had been driven deep underground. Dozens of wells had tapped it dry, and only a bare trickle could be had. With the flight of water, the gardens had withered. At the northern end of the maze of whitewashed plaster, facing the city walls of Mekkah some miles away, a great vaulted gate stood.

In the shadow under the gate, a man sat, his lean, dark face creased by a little smile. He smoothed the fine hairs of his beard down and cut an orange in half with his saddle knife. Some of his men, marked by their white-and-blue turban braid, squatted in the shade as well. Some bore wounds from the fighting in Mekkah, but all were alert in the lazy way of hunting cats. Though the gate of the temple precinct stood open, these men held the way closed.

Uri Ben-Sarid looked up, hearing the rattle of hooves on stone, and in the barren upland that lay between the city and the temple he saw men approaching on horseback. Bone-white dust plumed behind them as they came, rising slowly in the still air. Ben-Sarid pushed away from the stone bench and stretched his arms. He yawned and then bit into the orange half. Juice dribbled at the edge of his mouth, and he wiped it clean with the sleeve of his robe. His men, watching with slitted eyes, had seen the dust as well, but they did not get up. Ben-Sarid nodded to one of them, and the tribesman slowly rose and walked off into the twisting passage that led into the city of the priests.

The riders came closer, coming at a good pace. Ben-Sarid stood at the gate, just within the shade cast by the great vault. There were more than a dozen men coming, maybe as many as fifty. He shrugged his tan-and-white robe off one shoulder, freeing his right arm and the polished horn hilt of his saber. Silver and ruby winked at the cross-guard. Behind him, there was a rustling as his men finally stood, and a light clatter of metal on metal as they drew their weapons. Those men who bore shields shrugged them into place.

Mohammed pushed aside a hanging drape, letting the thousands of tiny onyx beads flow over his arm like a snakeskin. Beyond it, a room opened up. This was the center of the great square building—this room without windows, pierced only by one narrow door—filled to overflowing with thousands of statuettes, idols, graven images, and painted icons. The air was thick, filled with the sweet, waxy smell of hundreds of candles that flickered around the circumference of the chamber. Narrow pathways wound between the looming shapes of great gods and small. On any day but this, a slow procession of penitents and priests would clog the corridor behind and spill into this room, making a slow circuit through it.

But today it was quiet and empty. Mohammed drifted into the room, his saber sliding through the gloom in front of him. Candlelight glittered in its steel depth, and Mohammed moved as quietly as he could. After a moment of listening, he moved to the right, following the twisting path around the tightly packed cluster of statues that stood at the center of the room. As he edged deeper into the room, the beaded curtain shifted a little, tinkling in an invisible breeze.

Behind the statues, the room was darker and Mohammed slowed, letting his eyes adjust to the light. There, at the back of the room, the walls took an unexpected turn. Old stones, still showing the marks of wind and sun, jutted out of the brickwork at an odd angle. A space had been cleared before this ancient remnant, and many small shoe-shaped oil lamps gleamed at its foot. Mohammed felt his heart lighten, seeing that the oldest shrine in this whole dilapidated place still received some small veneration. He bowed his head, feeling memories of his father curling up in his thought.