The Gate of Fire (44 page)

"My lord." The black-haired girl bowed. "Please sit and break your fast."

The man sat, looking up in admiration at the supple forms of his attendants.

"Pray, good ladies," he said as they laid out the feast before him. "What are your names?"

The two girls with hair of red-brown giggled and hid their faces, but they sat close to him at either side, their thighs touching his. The black-haired girl knelt before him and poured wine into a cup of gold.

"My lord," she said, blushing, "we have any name you care to give us. Your will is ours in all things."

"Oh," the man said, and then had to stop as one of the younger girls had deftly slipped a choice bit of roasted meat between his lips. He chewed and his eyebrows raised at the rich taste. The girls smiled back at him, pressing close.

After another time, spent in delightful repast, he stood again and brushed his long hair back. He took the ends in his hands—his hair was dark, too, like the raven's tail, and glossy with good health. The two maidens with red-brown hair slipped away, carrying the dishes and plates of the feast. Memory tickled at his thought, but then fled when he turned to seize it. "What is my name?"

The black-haired girl had remained. He looked down upon her, cocking his head in puzzlement. Memory stirred again, far back in his thought. Her dark hair should not be straight, but rather a mane of curls, each catching the light like a black pearl. The girl bowed again, pressing her lips to his foot. "Your name is Arad, my lord, or so I have been told."

"Told by whom?" Arad reached down and touched the girl's shoulder. She rose up, slim as a reed, and nestled against the hard muscle of his body. "Who rules this place?"

The girl looked up, her eyes bright in adoration. Her breath tickled his chest. "The lord of all the world, master. This is his
an-na-ki
, his heaven upon the earth. You are the most blessed of his servants, dwelling among us in this garden."

Arad looked around, seeing only the pleasant walls of the tent. "What is outside?" His voice trembled, feeling strange fear at the thought that something unknown might lurk beyond the saffron and ultramarine walls. "I must see."

"No, my lord... is it not better to lie here with me, to have every pleasure to your hand?"

Arad turned and stepped out of the tent, though the delicate fingers of the black-haired girl trailed along his arm. Outside, he found himself on the top of a hill of green grass that swept down to a lake of cerulean blue. Orchards heavy with fruit rose from rich soil all around. Below, at the verge of the lake, maidens sported in the water, their tan bodies silhouetted against the warm waters. Above, a sky of pale blue-white covered the world, spotted with fleecy clouds and a warm, forgiving sun.

Arad felt the heat of that sun on his face and turned away, looking behind him. Twin mountains rose up in the distance, capped with snow. Storm clouds swirled over one, while the other stood in sunlight. A fragrant breeze caressed his face. He frowned, for a strong memory rose out of the depths of his thought, breaching like leviathan in the sea of his consciousness.

"I do not belong here," he said aloud, his hand going to his face again. "These are not the Offering Fields! Where are the guides and the judges?"

The sun flickered and grew dim. The maidens sporting in the waters looked up and then fled, crying out in dismay. Arad looked around in apprehension, seeing the rich orchards and fields of wheat shimmer and fade away. Darkness flooded into the world, and a dim, flickering glow emerged where the bright sun had once stood.

"There are no judges here," came a voice, strong and powerful and filled with great amusement. "There is only I, the Lord of the World."

Arad turned, and a dreadful chill touched his heart. Out of the darkness a figure came, tall and lean, with a narrow head and a sweeping mane of ebon hair. Robes of night fell from the figure's shoulders, and a shirt of blood red silk glittered like scales on his chest. Pale yellow eyes gleamed in the dim light.

"I know you," Arad said, forcing sound from a throat constricted by the memory of horrible and endless pain. "We struggled on the Plain of Towers—I cast out your creature, the
dhole
that you had summoned from the black abyss."

"Yes," Lord Dahak said, canting his head like a hunting wolf, a sly smile on his face. "But you failed, and the city was thrown down in ruin."

Arad staggered, remembering horrors and the wailing of tens of thousands.

"I broke the memory of the city," whispered the figure in the pooling darkness, "but I did not forget you, O my beloved pet. You I brought forth in state, though your body was torn and cold."

Arad remembered, and shuddered at the defilement of his body. He looked down, seeing smooth flesh and strong muscle where only corruption and worms and the bitter taste of embalming salts had been.

"Now you are strong again, your body restored by the breath of the keeper-of-the-dead. Your mind is almost whole; soon the healing will be complete and you will know all that you knew before, comprehend all that has transpired. Your skills will return."

"This pleases you?" Arad's voice was thick with contempt. "I will only raise power against you. I will strike you down and drive you from the world of men."

"Will you?" Dahak laughed, and stepped out of the shadow. Arad felt cold air eddy around him and realized that the beautiful garden had wholly vanished, leaving only a cold stone room with a bed of rushes and rough woolen blankets behind. "Serve me, O risen man. Show me the proper respect—the respect due your lord... No. Your King."

Arad opened his mouth, a furious retort on his lips, but found himself instead kneeling before the dark figure. Unbidden, though his mind raged against it, his forehead pressed against the rough stone of the floor in the "little"
proskynesis
. His mouth, though his will strove to silence it, issued words.

"Yes, dread lord. As you command, so I obey."

"Good," Dahak said, laughing, a chill sound reminiscent of children drowning under thick ice. "Rise up, noble Arad"—and in his singsong voice was a great laughter at some joke known only to the sorcerer—"rise up and come with me. There are things to be done."

In his mind, Arad struggled to command his arms and legs, but they followed the sorcerer eagerly.

C'hu-lo leaned against a wall of worked stone, idly looking out a tall, thin window. The window was tall—over five feet—set high on the peak of the mountain, and looked out over ramparts of black stone and walls of obsidian. From what he could see, a pitch of almost three hundred feet yawned under the sill, and there was neither a bar nor shutters to close it off. Far below, he could make out—for his eyesight was better than that of most men—the smokes and fumes that rose from the floor of the valley. The sight of that valley had troubled him as they had ridden up the long stone road from the Iron Gate. It was thick with buildings—storehouses, barns, foundries, tanning sheds, workshops—and all the appurtenances of a great city. The valley had been filled with people; men with spades and picks; soldiers marching in file, carrying long spears; women with heavy bundles—all coming and going.

He hooked a thumb into his belt, checking to see that the knife secreted within was still there. He and his men had submitted to a great indignity when they had yielded up their curved swords and bows upon entering the mountain. But no T'u-chüeh would go anywhere—even under guest-oath—without some kind of blade. Another, a flat-headed stabbing knife, was still in his boot. This hidden place intrigued him as little had done in years. There was a power here, a strong power. He smoothed his long mustache and turned away from the window. A fire burned in the wall grate, and there was wine and freshly killed meat on the table. He did not touch them. Instead, he smiled and carefully examined the walls and furniture.

His time in the court of the Celestial Emperor had not been wasted. He had learned a great deal there, under the unsuspecting tutelage of the ministers of the Jade Court. His fingertips found a crack in the wall counterclockwise from the door, and he rubbed them together. A little grit came away.

A door in use
, he thought to himself. He turned, alert, brushing the grit away on the side of the table.

The door swung open, and a naked man entered. C'hu-lo raised an eyebrow and smiled at the sight. It was not warm in the room. The man was dark brown, with long straight black hair and a noble profile. The man turned and stood against the wall. Another figured entered, and C'hu-lo snarled involuntarily, seeing something out of legend enter the waking world. An old prayer to the god of storms flashed through his mind, preparing his soul for immediate death.

"Ah," the figure of a man said, this thing with the eyes of a serpent and the cold aura of the corpse-feeders. "Lord C'hu-lo, once the
yabghu
of the western T'u-chüeh—those called the Hephthalite Huns by the Persian scribes at the court of the King of Kings. Welcome."

C'hu-lo inclined his head, as was proper when greeting the king of another nation. The cold thing waved a hand to the chair set before the grate.

"Please, sit with me so that we may talk. I am Dahak, the master of this valley."

Curiosity and great fear warred in C'hu-lo's heart, but the thing—for he knew without any doubt that this was no man, though it wore a man's shape—seemed polite and to understand the business of guest-hearth and hospitality. The steppe-lord moved carefully to the leftmost chair and sat, turning it so that he might see both doors. Lord Dahak sat as well, folding one leg under the other with easy grace. The naked man remained standing against the wall.

"I am still
yabghu
of the People Beyond the Rampart of Heaven," said C'hu-lo in a flat voice. "The pawn, the
toy
of the Chin, he who is named Shih-kuei is a false
Khagan
. Men follow him because they are sheep—worse, they are children who cannot tell an ewe from a wolf."

Lord Dahak inclined his head, showing his acceptance of this statement.

"Yet," the sorcerer said, "he commands thirty
umen
of strong warriors and you barely one. His hands drip with Chin gold, and you must murder and rob in poor villages for your supper. Is this not so?"

C'hu-lo had always accounted himself a sane person, and a sane person did not attack an enemy who could destroy him in an instant, so he held his tongue. The blaze of fury at his heart he held, and contained with his will, and turned it to stoke the old anger that he had kept for the architects of his defeat.

"This... this is so." C'hu-lo accounted himself a strong man, but admitting this thing before the slitted yellow eyes of the corpse-feeder made him feel weak and small. "I did not understand the power that was arrayed against me. It was deftly done, and I cannot admit otherwise."

"You were tricked," Lord Dahak said in a companionable voice. "The agents of the one called P'ei Kiu bribed your chieftains and whispered sweet words in the ears of the clan elders. Chin gold flowed in rivers to those who would acclaim the boy, Shih'kuei, as
Khagan
of the People. It seemed so reasonable to everyone—all but you, and those true men who rode with you."

C'hu-lo's heart burned with shame, hearing his downfall spoken of so easily. He had ridden with his own men for so long—men who knew never to mention the disaster that had thrown down their war chief from the pinnacle of power and made him a vagabond in the wilderness. Memories flooded into him, so strong that he failed to note the sorcerer had begun speaking to him in the tongue of his own people.

"But they were tired of war, those of the people who live on this side of the rampart." Now Dahak seemed to be musing, thinking over deeds and agonies long gone. "No matter that the people had assailed the very walls of the Chin capital within living memory. No matter that when the people were united they were unstoppable. Even Persia bowed down and paid tribute; even the mighty Rhomanoi sent embassies, begging for help. All of those things, they were forgotten, were they not?"

C'hu-lo looked up and froze, meeting the burning eyes of the sorcerer. Hot words failed on his lips.

"Did it please you, noble C'hu-lo, to take food from the hand of the very man—this one named P'ei Kiu—when he had arranged your shame and downfall? Did the wine taste sweet, when you raised a cup to the honor of the Chin Emperor in his very court?"

The Hun's face blanched, blood draining from his cheeks. He tried to stand, but he could not. The shame of his service in the Chin court, the depth to which he had fallen before he could take no more, burned in his throat and tore at his vitals. C'hu-lo gasped for air, hearing a tremendous rushing of blood in his ears.

"Calm, my friend," the sorcerer said in a lazy voice. "All of these things are past you now. Your long wandering in the wilderness—all these years of mercenary service, drifting from one court to another, always seeking some grain of the honor that you had lost—they are at an end."

C'hu-lo felt the cold touch on his wrist and looked down. Dahak had laid a blade—a curved silver dagger—across the Hun's wrist. It was finely tooled, with the markings of the smiths of Issyk-Kul upon it and a hilt of dark red stone. C'hu-lo knew the blade. He had placed it himself—a remembrance of childhood friendship and lifelong loyalty—in the great tomb of the last true
Khagan
of his people, Tardu, the noble grandfather of the pustule Shih'kuei. Tears, unbidden, sprang from his eyes and leaked slowly down his cheeks.

"How"—C'hu-lo picked up the dagger and held it in both hands—"the tomb is sealed... I rolled the closing stone myself..."

Dahak smiled and stood. "The tastes of the boy Shih'kuei are lavish, I am told. This came to me from a Rhomanoi merchant, who had it in turn from an Armenian. The tomb was robbed long ago, while you were exiled in Chin lands, and the contents sold or traded for slaves."

C'hu-lo could not move. The enormity of the crime threatened to shatter the world.

"You must gather strength to you, my friend." Dahak paced to the window and looked out, finding the view pleasing. He turned back, looking over his shoulder. "I offer you friendship and men and gold and arms. I, too, have been denied my patrimony. I intend to get it back, and you are a mighty captain. You can help me retrieve what is rightfully mine. We can aid each other."