Kindling (Flame of Evil)

by Mick Farren

  T’saya came back from the range and looked into her face. “You getting it, girl?”

  “Oh … am I getting it.”

  T’saya resumed her seat. She seemed completely unaffected, and Jesamine tried to remember if the African woman had drunk her shot or not, but failed to summon the short-term memory. Instead, she looked round at the undulating patterns that flowed across the walls and floors of the magickal hovel. “This is all so pretty.”

  T’saya’s voice sounded a long way away, but also stern and serious. “If you want more than just pretty hallucinations, you will have to focus.”

  Jesamine wanted to giggle. “But I’m in fairyland. Why would I want to focus?”

  T’saya leaned forward and took Jesamine’s right wrist in her hand. Jesamine felt the roughness of the older woman’s hard-worked palm against her skin and smelled the garlic on her breath. T’saya was pulling her in, and, for the first time, Jesamine realized that this was no easy interlude of intoxication. She was suddenly frightened and attempted to pull away. “What do you want from me?”

  T’saya’s grip tightened. “I want focus, concubine girl. Focus, Jesamine, focus and tell me what you see.”

  “The black hunchback is watching.” Jesamine could now hear her own voice. It was also far away, and what it was saying seemed to have little to do with what she was seeing or thinking. She had not seen a hunchback; except, the moment that thought passed through her mind, he appeared in a place of fire and dense smoke, a bent and contorted figure twisted in a huge, carved chair like a throne for some ruler of the damned. The hunchback looked from left to right with glowing eyes, but somehow he was unable to see Jesamine or T’saya, and T’saya’s voice was instantly reassuring. “That old hunchback has his spies and his watchers, but he can’t see us.”

  “He’s looking for us. Why can’t he see us?”

  “Because he’s a fool.”

  “A fool?”

  “We operate in his blind spot. He only sees the men. He believes women cannot be a threat to him. He thinks we are beneath him, so he overlooks us.”

  The vision of the hunchback receded and was replaced by a formation of four gold stars interconnected by glowing lines of force. T’saya and Jesamine still sat in the shack where T’saya did her cooking, but, at the same time, they were in another place where meanings were multiple and stories could be told long before they happened. As the stars and force lines appeared, Jesamine heard herself utter two words in a language she was certain she had never known.

  “Mnabe Ctseowa.”

  T’saya nodded. “They call it a takla here in the Americas.”

  “Or just the Four?”

  “Can you see the Four?”

  The formation of stars abruptly changed position so Jesamine was looking at it from a radically different perspective. “I can only see the three because I am one.”

  T’saya pressed hard. “Can you see the three? Can you see them, girl?”

  Jesamine was suddenly very tired. “I only see the stars.”

  “Don’t give up now, Jesamine. One last try, okay?”

  Figures began to form behind the stars, but they were without faces or distinguishing features. The reality of the shack began to reassert itself. “I can’t see.”

  “Try harder.”

  “It’s no good. I don’t have the strength.”

  T’saya’s voice revealed a trace of impatience. “Of course you have the strength. You always have the strength when the need is strong enough.”

  “Wait!”

  The kaleidoscope in Jesamine’s mind stopped spinning, and she saw clearly. T’saya tightened her grip on Jesamine’s arm. “What is it?”

  A red-haired girl with white skin, frightened but proud, was shackled and struggling between two soldiers. “I can see her, but she can’t hear me, and she can’t turn and look at me. She is a prisoner. We can’t help her.”

  “Look for another. If we can’t help her, look for another.”

  “He is a soldier. He is near, and he knows me, but we can’t find him. There will be so many soldiers. How the hell do we find him in time?”

  “What of the other boy?”

  “How do you know of the other boy?”

  “I know.”

  “He comes, but he does not know me.”

  “But he’s the one from your dreams.”

  Jesamine nodded. The effort of the vision had caused her face to fall slack. “He is surrounded by soldiers, but he is not one of them, although they have given him a weapon. But they are soldiers of the enemy, soldiers from across the river.”

  “That need not be a bad thing.”

  “A girl is with them, a girl who knows much. She is not one of the Four, but she has powers. And…”

  “And?”

  Jesamine’s previously dull and drifting expression was suddenly animated by fear. “A demon!”

  “Can you describe the demon?”

  Jesamine started shaking her head and refused to stop. “No, I can’t. I can’t look at it. I won’t. If I look at him, he’ll see me.”

  T’saya spoke gently. “Then describe his shadow.”

  Jesamine continued to shake her head. “He casts no shadow.”

  “Look closer.”

  “I can’t. I’m afraid.”

  “Just relax and let the shadow come to you.”

  Jesamine finally stopped shaking her head. She placed her hands flat on the table and let out a long sigh. “I can’t do this any more.”

  “One final effort.”

  Jesamine took three deep breaths and closed her eyes. “The demon wears a hat, a black hat, and he carries a strange sword and weapons not of this world.”

  “Do you see his eyes?”

  “They are deep-hidden in his head.”

  T’saya let go of Jesamine’s wrist and laughed out loud. “Deep-hidden in his head?”

  Jesamine opened her eyes. “This is funny, old woman?”

  “Your boy who has a weapon but is not a soldier is with Yancey Slide.”

  “Who’s Yancey Slide?”

  T’saya rose from the table. “Yancey Slide is Yancey Slide, girl.”

  “I’m hooked up to folks who walk with demons?”

  T’saya moved to the range and poured hot water into a cup. “Yancey Slide is no Mosul demon. He’s a law unto himself, and, if your boy is with him, it means we’re all playing in the big game.”

  “But I don’t want to be playing in the big game.”

  “Jesamine, you don’t have a choice. If you find yourself in the big game, all you can do is sit down and play the hand you’re dealt. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I don’t even want to be dealt a hand.”

  T’saya placed the cup in front of Jesamine. At first the younger woman did not move. She simply stared at the colors in the steam that rose from it. “Drink that down. It’ll help clear your head.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just herb tea, with a little something extra.”

  “More magick additives?”

  “Just do as you’re told and drink it.”

  Jesamine picked up the cup by its cracked handle and put it to her lips. “Concubine girl always does as she’s told.”

  T’saya looked at her coldly. “Don’t be taking on an attitude. Not with me.”

  Jesamine sipped the tea, and, as T’saya predicted, she immediately felt, if not better, certainly a good deal more normal. The hallucinations faded, and she found herself once again in the reality of T’saya’s kitchen. “Damn.”

  “We just learned a lot.”

  “You can fucking say that again.”

  “We went in deep.”

  “You can say that again, too.”

  “Woman, you did good. You even surprised me.” T’saya pulled the biscuit barrel towards her, removed the lid, and offered it to Jesamine. “Eat something.”

  Inside were a half-dozen small honey cakes. Jesamine took one and put it her mouth. She felt drained
. “So I’m one of this Four, this Mnabe Ctseowa?”

  T’saya sighed. “Don’t look on it as a burden, child.”

  Jesamine chewed wearily. “How am I supposed to look on it?”

  “Maybe like you’ve got three on your side who don’t have no choice but to be on your side.”

  “Are you telling me that I have a power?”

  “Awesome, seen?”

  “But you had to force me to do everything.”

  “You just needed the encouragement to start.”

  “But now I have to find these other three?”

  T’saya shook her head. “I think you should just stay put, girl. It’s my belief that they’ll be coming to you sooner than you even imagine.”

  “So I do nothing?”

  “You listen for the voices and follow any strange new impulse. Those are the only highway signs, but, at the same time, be very careful. You will be going through some powerful changes, and the world doesn’t need to see that. In fact, if you’re feeling okay, you ought to be getting out of here right now. You can stay if you want, but now that we have our bet down, we don’t need to be undone by a detail, like some nasty-minded snitch who may have started wondering what we’ve been doing in here all this time.”

  Jesamine did her best to gather her wits in preparation for the outside world. She stood up, expecting to experience difficulties, but the herb tea seemed to have preformed its designated task, and aside from a little dizziness, which was probably just from the alcohol, she felt physically fine. She turned, kissed T’saya, and moved to the door. As she opened it, T’saya stood up.

  “You be careful, now, you hear?”

  “Oh, I hear you.”

  As Jesamine walked back past the goat pens, she looked covertly for signs of potential loitering informers. A couple of possible candidates presented themselves, but neither appeared worth taking seriously. Somewhere in the distance she heard drunken singing of a raucous song in some ugly provincial dialect, with a chorus that sounded like “When I was shagging poor Betty.” Wasn’t enough malfeasance going on in and around the camp to make a big deal over two chicks drinking a little redundant? The answer to that question had been so close to coming back in the negative when she had discovered the cloaked and helmeted Zhaithan waiting for her in the twilight that fifteen minutes and two glasses of schnapps were required for Jesamine to truly grasp how close she had been to coming mentally unglued when she had first seen the men from the Ministry of Virtue. Most slaves only spoke to the Zhaithan one time, and that was when they were taken away to be killed. As an officer’s concubine, she had learned a measure more of sophistication but still could only act anxious and abject in the presence of the Ministry men on the rare occasions they were invited to the Teuton officers’ mess. She had been sufficiently afraid of the Zhaithan when she had nothing on her conscience but illicit drinking, petty larceny, and masturbating the manservant. After her afternoon in T’saya’s hovel, she was now guilty, beyond any shadow of a doubt, of, at the very least, wanton psychedelia, necromancy, and plotting the actual downfall of Hassan IX. From the whipping post or a fast hanging, Jesamine had graduated to an infinitely prolonged and intricately agonizing death, should they take her alive, and she had grave reservations as to whether she measured up to any of the million unknowns that seemed to be bearing down on her. After being property for as long as she could remember, could she really start thinking and deciding and making choices not only for herself but for others? She sincerely hoped that another of the Four could handle spiritual authority better than her, and that at least one of them was not already broken down by Zhaithan conditioning.

  T’saya had counseled her to do nothing. She had told Jesamine to wait, to let it all come to her, but T’saya had failed to warn her, and maybe even failed to understand herself, how short that wait would be. The urgent whisper beyond the canvas-covered veranda provided evidence the wait was over. “Jesamine?”

  “Kahfla?”

  “Are you on your own?”

  “Yes, and drinking the colonel’s booze. So get in here fast before anyone sees you.”

  Kahlfa slipped silently through the door, still looking wary at the prospect of being in the quarters of a strange officer, even though that officer was miles away. “Hasn’t anyone wanted to know what you’re doing here?”

  Jesamine poured Kahfla a schnapps. “Relax. I got a pass that covers me for everything.”

  “Reinhardt?”

  “The ever-horny Reinhardt. He loves me. I even have an excuse for having you in here.”

  “You do?”

  “We’re planning for our masters’ return, if anyone wants to know.”

  Urman, the cavalry major who owned Kahfla, was also down at the crash site with some of his light horsemen. Although the mission was ostensibly that of the 4th Teuton Engineers, it did not prevent Phaall from bringing along some of his drinking cronies, and the men under them, in some manufactured support role, or, once there, stop them all from having a damned good time under canvas in the country.

  “Well, I came as quickly as I could.”

  “What?”

  “I came from the pavilion as fast as I could without being too obvious.”

  Jesamine had no idea what Kahfla was talking about, but she did not like the sound of it. “The pavilion?”

  “You haven’t heard? I thought you would have known all about it.”

  “Known all about what?”

  “The new bitch in the cage.”

  “There’s often a new bitch in the cage.”

  “They brought her naked and in chains with a transport requisition.”

  “Well, that’s to be expected. There’ll be more of the natives being brought up here, now the brothels in Savannah are slowing down as the men are all moved to the front.”

  “The requisition said she was the private property of one Colonel Helmut Phaall.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think he’s replacing you?”

  That was any normal concubine’s very first thought, and always-lurking fear, but Jesamine had ceased to be any normal concubine, and the memory of her vision was stronger than her ordinary self-interest. “Does she have pale skin and red hair?”

  Kahfla frowned. “How did you know that?”

  Jesamine had already made a dangerous slip. No matter how close they had been previously, Kahfla could know nothing of the business at hand, if only for her own protection. Jesamine recovered as best she could. “I heard some men talking. What’s she supposed to be? One of the survivors from the crashed airship?”

  Kahfla nodded. “That’s right. There were four of them, three men and a woman. They took the men to the Lady knows where for interrogation, but dropped the woman off at the pavilion. I guess they assumed that she was just along for the men’s amusement and didn’t know anything.” Again she looked puzzled. “But I thought you hadn’t heard about her.”

  Jesamine now was making it up as she went along. Lying to Kahfla made her extremely uncomfortable, but there was no way to avoid the deception. “I didn’t think anything of it because I didn’t know she was addressed to fucking Phaall.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “There’s not much I can do, is there?”

  Now the idea that Phaall might actually be replacing her was finally cutting through the revelations of the afternoon. If she was headed for the concubine scrapheap, sold off to a junior officer or worse, it would seriously undermine any grandiose plans for the future. “I suppose I should go and take a look at this bitch in the cage. I might as well know what I’m up against.”

  At least that statement was the unvarnished truth.

  CORDELIA

  Lady Cordelia Blakeney was naked in a cage. To add insult to injury, the cage was so low she was unable to do very much but crouch on all fours or lie in a fetal position on the less than clean blankets in the bottom of her cramped prison, and, since so many people seemed intent on coming and loo
king at her, she found the fetal position too exposed and vulnerable, and spent a lot of time crouching. Over the past few hours, after her enforced ride up the Continental Highway, manacled in the back of a Mosul army truck, she had been stripped, photographed, hosed down, and finally brought to her current confinement. All through these tribulations, she had demanded vocally to be accorded the status of a prisoner of war, but none of the Mosul men that she had encountered paid her any more attention than would have been given to a yapping dog being moved from one place to another. Cordelia was not sure whether the near-pornographic photographs or the hosing down with cold water had been the most degrading part of the experience. Was it worse to be stripped naked and forced to pose for a lieutenant with a huge brass and polished wood plate camera while his brother officers stood around like huntsmen displaying their catch, or to be soaked and buffeted against a cement wall by the jet of a fire hose while passing infantrymen stopped, stared, and guffawed? She did not, as yet, have the objectivity to decide, but the one thing she could not claim was that her capture was proving uneventful.

  The place in which she finally found herself had the general air and appearance of a nomad bordello somewhere in the Mosul’s Asia Minor homelands. It was crowded with women who were mostly young, and, for the most part, passingly attractive, although many had a sluttish resignation in their pose and posture. A scantily clad availability seemed the general theme of the dress code, and that, along with the claustrophobic lines of narrow beds, lockers, and bundled-up mosquito netting, told Cordelia that she had been brought to a congregation of bawds, concubines, body slaves, or whatever might be the current terminology among the hordes of Hassan IX, and she was expected to become another of them. The large pavilion was clearly where the women lived rather than plied their trade, and presumably, when their masters in the officer corps required service, the girls were summoned to the men’s own billets. The tent itself had originally been designed and constructed as a much larger and mass-produced version of the traditional Mosul urrt, but after two years of being rooted by the Potomac, the tribal pavilion of the endless grasslands had taken on some permanence in its construction, with the addition of a wooden frame, floor, and roof. The place certainly smelled the way Cordelia imagined a military bordello would smell: of musk and misery, bodies and bad perfume, dirty underwear, old laundry, stale cooking, nagging fear, and the pervading damp of the bottomlands beside the river. The only part of her current situation that she didn’t totally understand was why she was the only one in a cage, but she suspected it was some kind of orientation by ordeal, and sooner or latter she would be released, clothed, and put to the flatback work of the captive strumpet. How Cordelia felt about this prospect was something she had yet to consider. She was, as far as possible, restricting her worry to the trauma of the moment, and, very wisely she thought, crossing her bridges only when she came to them. She considered it the only way to preserve her sanity, and, as a prisoner of the Mosul, she needed all the sanity she could preserve.