Ashes and Flame

by Aiden Bates

  “You must not merely comprehend them,” she said. “You must apprehend them at their essential core. You must read the soul of each symbol, yes?”

  He sat back in his chair, his expression slack. “Uh... I never thought of it that way.”

  She nodded to him. “Take the amulet out. Look closely at the spark within.”

  He did, holding it up cautiously to peer through the shallow dome at the trembling light inside.

  “Have you seen verses written on a grain of rice?” Laleh asked. “Look very closely.”

  Daniel did, drawing it close. I found myself leaning as if I could see what he was looking for. If it was visible to just anyone, I couldn’t tell. It was just light, to me.

  But to him...

  “I... what am I seeing?” He breathed the question with a worrying kind of awe, and looked up at Laleh. “Are those...?”

  She spread her hands. “I cannot be certain. But the book has been in the world for a very long time. Perhaps from the beginning, when it was but smoldering rock, seething with the promise of future life. But it has been said that as one reads the book, they are not so much reading, as being written.”

  “What happens when it’s finished?” Daniel asked. “What is it writing?”

  Laleh shook her head. “That I do not know. I do not believe anyone now living could answer.”

  “That’s not exactly helpful,” I grumbled.

  All eyes turned to me. Amy’s cool but disapproving; Daniel’s mortified; Laleh’s soft and flat as ever.

  “What’s he supposed to do with that?” I pressed. “It’s a gods-damned cursed book that he can’t stop reading.”

  “I did not promise a solution,” Laleh said. “Only what information I possess.” She returned her gaze to Daniel. “It may be that there is no power in this world or the next that can break the connection between your soul and the book. Perhaps it is your destiny to read, and be written. But it is evident to me that you are exceptional among the readers of the book.”

  “I’m not,” Daniel muttered. “And I won’t make it to the end.”

  My heart slammed against my chest. “Why?”

  He closed his eyes, and sighed before he opened them and sipped water. “Because when I started, I could go a few months between sessions,” he said. “And now... I can go a few days. So. Eventually, days will become hours, hours will become minutes, and then at some point I’ll sit down to read and just... not get up again.”

  I looked to Laleh. “Well... but maybe you can—”

  Laleh shook her head sadly. “It is well beyond my power.”

  Daniel rested a hand on my arm before I could stand and maybe flip the table or break something. “Rez... don’t.”

  “Well...” I stared around. No one was upset enough, no one was panicked enough, not one was red-faced and angry at the world like they should have been. “So, what? We just do nothing?”

  “Stop,” Daniel whispered.

  I couldn’t. “Nobody can figure an answer so it’s just ‘fuck it, let him die’ because, what, you’re curious about what happens? Does no one give a shit about Daniel but me? Amy—you’re at least being paid to give a shit, don’t you have something to say? Some other connection?”

  Amy’s eyes dropped.

  Laleh watched me, unbothered by the outburst.

  “You’re both fucking—”

  “Stop!” Daniel snapped. His fingers dug into my arm. He stood, and pulled me away from the table. “Come on.”

  “We have to—”

  “I said come on, Rez,” he insisted, and I let him lead me to the door to the deck and out.

  I closed the door behind us, and Daniel glanced at the house and then into the garden-like backyard before he walked down the short flight of steps to the grass and off toward the far end. I followed, frustrated and confused about why he wasn’t more afraid, why he wasn’t as pissed as I was that there were just no answers.

  “Have you just given up?” I asked as he came to a stop under a tree with small purple fruits—maybe plums—hanging from its branches.

  He bowed his head, his hands tucked into his jean pockets, and gave a heavy sigh before he turned and looked up at me, his face peaceful but sympathetic. “There are about a hundred stories about men and women who tried to fight the gods, and destiny. How’d that turn out for them?”

  “Those are just stories,” I pointed out as I rested my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “Your story isn’t finished.”

  “No,” he agreed, “but I know how it ends, Rez. Look... it will be years. It’s been ten so far, and at the rate of... I don’t know, decay, I guess, I’ve got another three or four at least before—”

  “Stop,” I breathed. “Just stop. There’s another way. I don’t know what it is, but there has to be. This thing... you’re not going to tell me that we’ve got some ticking clock behind us, that there’s a hard limit on how long I can have you, that you can have me, I don’t believe that and I won’t—”

  Daniel kissed me. Up on his toes, he slipped his hands around the back of my neck and held on as he pressed his lips to mine. I bent like some great tree, curling over him to shade him from some invisible sun as he held me fast, as if he could seal up everything I was about to say behind my lips so it would never escape.

  I wanted to cry.

  “Rez,” he said softly as his lips left mine, “there was always a timer. You just couldn’t hear it ticking yet.”

  He wasn’t wrong. There wasn’t a single story about some old hero that cried defiance at the gods, or at fate, and survived. It was the one lesson that flowed through every tradition, every religion, every cult that covered the world. No one fights the gods and wins.

  But none of those stories were about me.

  And as if the gods were suddenly paying attention, a peal of thunder cracked against the sky above.

  Okay, I thought, glancing up at a sky that was filling with clouds heavy with the promise of rain and lightning. Okay. Bring it, motherfuckers.

  18

  Daniel

  I had always wondered how it was that anyone was supposed to actually finish the book if it took so long to read. In Laleh’s bathroom, I rested my bag on the sink, and laid my hands on it. “You could have told me,” I muttered. “If you want to be read, if you want to write... whatever it is you’re writing... it would have been useful to know who was supposed to read you.”

  It didn’t answer. Not in any way that I understood. There was a distant pull, the first stirrings of the usual warning, but it didn’t come with any answers, or an apology, or some reassurance.

  What Laleh said made perfect sense. Ten years, six pages. In another sixty years, if I even lasted that long, I would only be about forty something pages in. I’d have to live to be hundreds of years old to read the whole thing.

  If it really was a manual for the gods, well... it was kind of obvious. You had to be immortal to make it to the end.

  “It’s not fair,” I whispered. “Why choose me? Why make me responsible for this? Why let any human anywhere near your pages if we’re doomed to never finish? Can’t you just let me go? Laleh is a djinn, she’ll probably live for centuries. Maybe she’s the one you need.”

  If the bitter taste of copper could be a feeling, I felt it knife into the back of my mind in response, and was briefly nauseous with it. “Stop,” I breathed, my eyes closed as I pressed my palms harder against the bag. “I know, all right? I know it’s me. I wish you could tell me why. Am I just unlucky? Did I piss someone off?”

  It was hard not to think that the gods paid more attention than they probably did. My mother had been devout. She’d made her offerings to Juno and Athena. I never saw the point. My father was from an old Etruscan family, and went to the sea to offer fish to Ani and Nethuns. He wasn’t a sailor, or anything like that, but his father and the one before him had been, going back a long way up down the family tree.

  Maybe it was something that came with age. Maybe I was gett
ing to be that age. I looked at the ceiling, at the stormy sky beyond it. “Sorry I didn’t burn grass in a bowl,” I said, though with the kind of bitterness that could only make it all worse. “It’s not like any of you actually do anything for us. Can’t you just let us live our lives?”

  In answer, another peal of thunder growled across the sky. The floor and walls trembled with it.

  If the book had some opinion on the gods, it didn’t give it.

  I shook my head, took it off the sink and slung the strap over my shoulder to wash my hands.

  When I rejoined the others, Rez and Amy looked like they were already prepped to go. We weren’t staying with Laleh any longer than we needed to. Rez in particular was frustrated and insisted that we needed to take some kind of real action.

  Laleh had given him a target, and a mission, which seemed to have given him something solid to grasp onto.

  “We sure this is a good idea?” I asked as I joined them. “I mean... I’ve got the amulet. It’ll be easier to hide, stay on the run, right? It’s worked for the last few years.”

  “It’s not a way to live,” Rez said. He eyed Laleh. “Are you sure that it will work?”

  Laleh inclined her head slightly. “Marid have no special love for Shaitan,” she said. “I have no reason to deceive you. Djinn are as mortal as anyone. Fire will kill your pursuer. You only need to be certain that you can secure them in place.”

  I glanced up as another groan of thunder sounded. For all we knew, the djinn was up there, hidden in the storm and waiting for us to emerge. Laleh certainly didn’t seem to be afraid of the other djinn, which made me wonder if it was afraid of her.

  Not that it mattered. She wasn’t about to fight my battles for me. “I’ll figure something out,” I said, and touched the locket under my shirt. “Thank you for this, again. Even if I don’t have to. It gives me a chance, at least for a little while.”

  Laleh smiled, and glanced at Amy. “If you survive, come and see me after. I will consider your offer in the meantime.”

  “You’d better,” Amy said. “See you around, gorgeous.”

  We left Laleh’s house, and piled into the car just as the rain began to pour. It would be another long drive ahead of us. According to Laleh, the best place to both meet the djinn and ‘commune with the book’ was, “As all prophets before you have discovered—the silent depths of the desert.”

  The quietest of whispers, she’d explained with her usual cryptic flair, could only be heard in the most silent of places.

  So our next stop was Utah, to a place deep in the Badlands. Both because Laleh believed that I might gain some mystical insight into the book there, and because it was hard for a djinn like the Shaitan to sneak up on you in the desert. And easier to take them out if there wasn’t anything critical nearby that could be damaged. Plus, Amy could try and train me up a little there, if it was possible, and I could afford to blow up on accident.

  I glanced back at Amy as we pulled out of the driveway. “What offer did you make Laleh that’s she’s… considering, I guess?”

  Amy shrugged. “Dinner. Twenty years ago. The woman sure does take her time thinking things through.”

  I grinned at Rez. “Told you.”

  The rain was torrential as we headed west. It was another long, long drive to get where we needed to go. Thirteen hours if there were no hitches. Along the way, Rez called his people back at Emberwood.

  “To the Badlands in Utah,” he said, when he was apparently asked where we were headed.

  His jaw clenched, and he seemed to wait for someone to finish. I could just barely hear the voice on the phone with the radio on, but they didn’t seem happy. “Well, you hired Amy, she took us to a specialist, that specialist gave us her recommendation and we’re following it. What the hell do you want from me, Nix, I’m doing what I have to.”

  Rez’s eyes cut briefly toward me. “That doesn’t matter and doesn’t change anything. I’d be doing it anyway.” A pause. He sighed. “I’ll need to pick up some gear. Probably… probably just three. One for Amy, and one for… I mean I need to keep Daniel in sight. And then we need a dummy tent. For the djinn. For the trap, Nix.”

  I wasn’t sure if Rez’s boss knew all the details about me and Rez. I wasn’t really all that sure I knew the details and I was involved with him. But from the look on Rez’s face, I suspected that Nix didn’t approve.

  “Not having this conversation,” he muttered. “After this, we’ll be coming back to the weyr. I hope. So do I have the budget or not? Thank you. I’ll check in before we leave service. Yeah, I know, Nix. Love you, too. Give Mikhail a hug for me. Right. Bye.”

  He hung up, and shook his head as he dropped the phone into the cubby under the radio. “We’ll stop in Colorado and pick up camping gear and supplies. No telling how long we’ll be in the desert.”

  “I’ll be there no more than five days,” Amy said. “That’s as long as I’m paid.”

  I did like Amy, but it was easy to travel with her and think she was here as a friend. I kept my expression neutral as the words stung at me. “Think you can get me using my magic in five days?”

  “Point's not to get you using it,” she said. “Just keep it from using you, kiddo. Big difference. I’ve done it faster.”

  Our talk had already made me start to think about my magic a little differently, so maybe she was right. The problem was, the part of me that accessed and activated my magic was volatile—my emotional body, one layer of twelve that made up what she called the Total Self—and because of that I didn’t have conscious control over it. No more than anyone else did, at least. And because of that, it acted like an emotion. Go too long repressing happiness, sadness, anger, fear—anything, really—and eventually it would come out on its own. Add to that the high energy states like anxiety and fight-or-flight level fear, and it was a powder keg that kind of surrounded me all the time. Knock it hard enough, when there was enough fuel, and boom. Up it went.

  Her advice had been simple enough to start with.

  “Stop repressing your emotions,” she warned me. “It creates friction, you could say. Instead, you have to acknowledge them, lean into them. Let them flow, instead of force their way out. Probably that’s why your magic did what it did, uh… back at the motel. You had a moment where you were embracing an emotion instead of fighting it. It’s not a lot of control, but it’s a little bit, and it could at least keep the more destructive events from happening suddenly.”

  I reached across the console between us and rested my hand on Rez’s thigh. I could feel that friction she talked about whenever I tried to remind myself that I just couldn’t fall in love with him. And honestly, it had been so long that I didn’t know if that’s what I was feeling or not. But I did want to touch him, be close to him, feel him against me. His voice made me feel better, safer. I could sometimes smile with him and really mean it, really feel it.

  Is there a checklist for being in love? If not, there should be. It would definitely make it easier.

  There was only so much ‘let it go’ that I could deal with, though. Hopefully, it was enough to let myself be around him, smile, enjoy the connection we had, without having to make some kind of commitment that I couldn’t keep.

  Rez put his hand on mine, and glanced at me with a kind, hopeful smile. The man was kind of ridiculous. No one was that optimistic. He knew what we were up against. The djinn was the easy part, in the scheme of things. We could probably do something about that if we acted as a team, set the right trap, sprung it at the right moment. And we had a plan that might actually work.

  But then there was the other thing. The book. And if he was as hopeful as he looked about managing that problem, then he wasn’t being confident or optimistic. He was just being an idiot.

  Well-meaning, but stupid.

  The book tugged at me.

  I know, I thought at it. Getting close to time. Just give me until we arrive in the desert. If we can take care of the djinn problem, I can finally read in
peace.

  The pull eased. Some.

  I drummed my fingers on the bag. If I asked… would you let me go? Choose someone else?

  To that, there was no response.

  I sighed, snuggled down some into the seat, and watched the rain pour down and the lightning flash in the distance. Rez squeezed my hand. Amy sang along tunelessly with the radio.

  If I squinted, it was almost like having some kind of little family.

  19

  Rez

  We were lucky enough to make it into Denver before everything closed. We’d left the storm behind, but I kept one eye always on the rearview mirror to see if some little storm cloud happened to follow us out of the clouds.

  I knew it was there; it had to be. What was it waiting for?

  Not that I looked forward to having it descend on us without warning, and it would almost certainly try to take us by surprise, but having it hanging over our heads was stressful. I kept that to myself, of course. If it was hard on me for a few days, well—it had probably come close to driving Daniel out of his mind.

  He was resilient. In a way, it was fucking remarkable. Not a lot of people impressed me. Nix did, some of the elder dragons at Emberwood did. Mikhail was certainly impressive. But the list wasn’t long, and I didn’t put people on it casually. Daniel, though—he was the kind of survivor who fought to live, even if he hated the circumstances he was dealt. And he’d been dealt a shitty fucking hand to play with.

  Up until now, anyway.

  We made our first stop at a place to get camping gear. Sleeping bags, bed rolls, two tents, a little camp grill and plenty of fuel, two coolers. Canteens, which Amy insisted we didn’t need given that she could pull moisture out of the air for water, until I pointed out that while she might have a limit to how long she could help, it was possible the djinn would wait until it was two-on-one instead of three-on-one.

  Once that was done, we filled the coolers with food and water. Not enough for a week alone, but in the desert there would be at least a few animals. I could hunt there, get us meat, even if it was just snakes and lizards for the most part.