Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

“No! Not unless you tell me what I am consenting to!”

  The djinni’s hands tightened. She had a nasty feeling he was barely holding back from shaking her, but that only made her more scared and more determined. “It’s…one of the laws of Solomon,” he rasped. “I can’t remove you without your consent. And I need to take you away now.”

  Ahleme stuck out her bottom lip. “Why?”

  “You’re in danger here. Please listen to me. I have to hide you elsewhere.”

  “Hide me?” That really did make her suspicious. “From whom? Or what?”

  Yazid rolled his eyes then swung her bodily around to face across her chamber. There was a flash of light and the pillars of glass—all of them, those close around her bed and those in the receding distance, every reflective surface her eye could encompass, lit with an inner illumination. She saw sunlight and clouds and hillsides and trees, and she gasped. Like the visions of Dimashq that Zubaida had shown her before, this false yet living landscape seemed close enough to step into, though trapped behind walls of glass.

  “There,” he grunted. “See it?”

  Ahleme tried to focus. She was looking down from a high place, she thought, at the head of a valley. Straight before her she could see the blue line of what she guessed was the sea. To either side craggy rocks rose to high cliffs. On the slope of the dry river bed below her something was moving.

  “What is it?” It was almost impossible to make out—a shimmer of light, a flicker of movement without shadow or solidity.

  “It’s an angel. I heard it singing. It’s crossed the sea and is heading this way.”

  “An angel?” The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. “Is it looking for us?”

  “I don’t know. But you don’t want it to find you.”

  “Don’t I?” She wrenched out of his grip to look him in the face. “Will it be angry at you for what you’ve done to me?”

  His face twisted. “Angry? It will kill us both.”

  She gaped. “Why?”

  “Because God decreed in the days of Noah that Fire and Earth must not mix. That the Sons of Flame shall not lie with the Daughters of Dust. We have broken the law, you and I.”

  “No we haven’t!” she shouted. “Not yet!”

  “No?”

  “And anyway, it wasn’t my fault! You stole me away!”

  “You think the angel will listen to your excuses?”

  “God is merciful!”

  “God may be, if He chooses. Angels are not.”

  “But they’re good!”

  He shook his head. “No. They aren’t. They’re only obedient.” He lifted his hands and gestured as if shaping his thoughts between them, clearly trying to explain something that he had never needed to teach another. “They are without free will, Ahleme. Their consciences are clear. Don’t you understand how terrible a thing that is? They obey the laws of God, and that’s all. They don’t struggle. They don’t know temptation, or confusion, or doubt. They have…no imagination. They can’t understand that someone else might feel differently. They can’t make allowances. They have no compassion, and no pity.”

  Ahleme bit her lip, turning back to the vision in the glass. The angelic form was larger now, as if level with the nonexistent watcher in the valley. Its shine flickered steadily, like the beat of many invisible wings, she thought. Or the flash of scything blades. She could see that its progress whipped up dust in a thin plume. And now a flock of birds flew out of the grass and the bushes, circling it. She could see them with throats wide, heads back, fluttering frantic wings to keep up.

  “Are they singing?” she whispered, mesmerised.

  “Yes. The Angels sing the praises of God, always. It’s the most beautiful sound in the universe.”

  The birds, fat little quail, flew one by one into the blurred boundary of the shimmering angelic body and disappeared in a spray of red mist, even their feathers reduced to shreds. They seemed insensible of the danger, vanishing one after the other. The angel did not slow or alter its course. Ahleme cringed.

  “Is this true?” she asked. She put her hand on Yazid’s bare arm. He felt cold to the touch and was clammy with sweat. “You’re not lying to me?”

  He shook his head, eyes fixing on hers. “Please,” he breathed. “I have to hide you.”

  “Where?”

  “Another…place. You won’t be found. Just let me take you.”

  She nodded.

  Gathering her in his arms, he put his hand over her eyes. She felt the floor drop from beneath her feet and for a moment her weight was all on him, and then just as suddenly there was a solid surface beneath her again and a thrumming noise in her ears. Her bare feet felt no cold though, nor any sensation of heat. They were curiously numb. She couldn’t feel the chill of Yazid’s flesh either, she realized, not even where his fingers rested over her eyelids. Nor did he remove that hand.

  “I’ve made you safe here,” he murmured low in her ear, audible over the background roar. “No harm will come to you while I’m away.”

  “You’re not leaving me!”

  “I have to go back to turn the angel away. I won’t be long. Listen to me, Ahleme, you mustn’t move. You mustn’t make any noise. It would be better not to open your eyes. Just wait for me.”

  “Where are we?”

  He growled with exasperation. “We are in the Realm of Hidden Fire, the birthplace and home of my people. Do you understand? There are djinn here who have never walked the surface of the Earth, and who have never been enslaved by Solomon. If you draw their attention, you will not be safe from them.”

  “Oh!”

  “Can you do this? Can you wait?”

  She nodded against his chest and dug her fingers into his skin, wondering why she could barely feel him.

  “Good. Remember, make no noise.”

  He was gone. She swayed a little then clasped her arms around herself. The roar seemed louder without his sheltering mass. She could feel her hair blowing a little in a breeze. She sniffed but could smell nothing, not even her own perfume. She rolled the pearls of her scanty top between her fingers nervously.

  It would be better not to open your eyes, he’d said.

  She screwed them tighter shut, but after a few moments her brow began to ache. She let her face relax. A red glow crept under her lashes.

  All around her, the roar of flames.

  Cautiously she opened one eye, then both—wide with horror. She was standing in the middle of a lake of fire.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In which the sea shows its reluctance and the fire too much enthusiasm.

  Tarampara-rampara-ram.

  They couldn’t lose the flies, no matter how far or fast they travelled. Whenever they stopped the Horse, there were always a few buzzing about their heads, but Taqla gritted her teeth and didn’t attempt a spell to drive them off. And when they reached the coast, the fat insistent flies of the interior were replaced by smaller ones that were less loud but more prone to biting, and a constant irritation.

  The coast was a narrow strip of white surf between low, yellow cliffs and the dark blue sea. It stretched to left and right as far as the eye could discern, without a sign of so much as a fishing village.

  Rafiq slowed the Horse Most Swift to a dancing trot along the sand. “Are you ready with the stone?” he asked.

  “Ready.” Taqla clenched the slip of jade in her palm.

  “Let’s get it right out beyond the breakers,” he said, turning toward the ocean and giving the Horse its head. They surged forward. They’d done this before. When riding from the Empty Quarter to the tower at Firuzabad, they’d charged straight out to sea, the Horse’s hooves drumming upon the waves’ surface. Taqla—to her shame—had been as nervous as a cat over the watery depths, but the Horse had coped as well with salt water as with marsh or dry land, and only the uneven pitch and drop of their progress had made it any different to any other terrain.

  This time it was different. As they rode forward, the sea retr
eated. With a great sucking sound it sank away before them and mounded up to either side, exposing the sandy bed of the beach and islands of coral. They were heading between two arms of the sea, just as Moses must have done when pursued by the soldiers of Pharaoh. As they cantered forward, the slope dropped beneath their feet and the walls of water towered up overhead. Rafiq made a noise of disbelief and slowed the Horse.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Taqla could smell the brine and the mud underfoot. She could see stranded fish flopping in exposed basins of sodden coral, and then, suddenly, a shivery glimpse of a great pale-bellied shark swimming in the blue wall above their heads. Its bevelled nose poked out through that plane into the air and then it twitched its tail and fled.

  “Is it the stone?” Rafiq wheeled the Horse in a wide circle, but the water withdrew just as swiftly as they moved forward. The way back to the beach had closed behind them and they were now pacing the sea floor at the bottom of a wide hole, a cone of air. Flatfish struggled in the muddy sand underfoot, panicked by their inexplicable loss.

  “Maybe.” Taqla brushed the sweat from her eyes, feeling nearly as frantic as the suffocating fish. She’d not anticipated—never imagined—such an unnatural reaction to the stone’s proximity.

  “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know!” she gasped. Then, “Take us back to the beach!” Inwardly she cried I’m not keeping it!

  Rafiq turned the Horse uphill and they mounted back up from the muddy depths through the zone of coral, jumping the craggy blocks. Behind them the sea roared in again, with a noise like satisfaction. In a few moments they were up above the surface again, in the clean air, and then they were on the beach, and when they looked behind them, the sea lay as calm and innocent as ever, blue waves sparkling as they caught the light.

  “Jump down,” said Rafiq. “I want to be sure.” He swung her down from the saddle then thudded away in a spray of sand, out to sea again. Taqla watched as he galloped a wide circle across the tops of the waves, exactly as they’d both expected to do only a short time ago—a miracle rendered normal.

  With a tattoo of hoofbeats, Rafiq rode in again, stopped the Horse a few yards from her and leaned forward in the saddle. “It’s the stone, isn’t it?”

  “The sea’s refusing it,” she said, her mouth dry.

  “So what do we do?”

  Taqla shrugged helplessly. Rafiq jumped down from the saddle, waved away a fly and reached for the waterskin.

  “Come on,” he said, uncorking the skin. “We’ve got to be able to think of an answer.”

  They sat in the sand, trying to conjure a solution for some time, and then Rafiq excused himself and went off up the beach to answer the call of nature. Taqla, left alone, rolled the innocuous-looking jade pebble between her fingers and chewed the tip of her finger through her veil. If they couldn’t sink the stone, they wouldn’t learn the whereabouts of Adhur-Anahid. If they couldn’t deliver their message to her then the demon-god Yaghuth wouldn’t give them the Egg. If they couldn’t return the Egg to the Senmurw then it wouldn’t grant them one of the fruits from its Tree. If they hadn’t a fruit with which to pay the sorcerer Safan then he wouldn’t answer the riddle for the House of Wisdom. Which meant they would not obtain the spell from the Scroll of Simon, and Rafiq wouldn’t be able to pursue the prize he sought.

  Her head ached. The flies around her ears were an incessant irritation. She groped her way to the answer at last, though. It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it made sense. With a feeling almost of physical pain she took the Bag That Holds the World from her belt. The little travelling pouch had the lustre of silk and a pattern, barely visible even by bright sunlight, worked into its cloth, a pattern that reminded her of clouds. Trapping her lower lip between her teeth, she set to emptying the Bag of all its contents, one piece at a time—the goathair shelter, the coffee and cooking pots, two sheepskins for sleeping upon, a bundle of kindling, her change of clothes and personal effects, rope and spare straps, three waterskins, parcels of dried food, her thick aba overmantle for cold nights, a purse of coins that Rafiq had given into her safekeeping. It made quite a sizable heap by the time she’d finished.

  Into the empty bag she dropped the tiny piece of jade, wiping her hand upon the sand the moment it was free. She knotted the mouth of the bag and then, because she was afraid that it wouldn’t sink, that it might be washed ashore elsewhere, she dropped the Bag That Holds the World back into the empty grain bag and she scooped sand in on top. When she tied off the second sack the little bundle was satisfyingly heavy.

  Her heart was slamming in her chest as she mounted the Horse Most Swift and spoke the words to wake it. Turning it toward the waterline, she let the mount fly, and they galloped down the beach and across the sea—hooves rattling on the wave tops, rainbows shining in the clouds of spray that hung at the Horse’s heels.

  Taqla should have been pleased to find her surmise vindicated, but she felt no better. She took the Horse right out over the deeps of the sea until the pastel corals were left far behind and even the cliff over the shore was a narrow stripe. Then she circled, and lifted the bag of sand out at arm’s length, and let it slip from her fingers. The little sack hit the water with a plop and sank instantly, only a glimpse of pallor burned in her mind before it vanished forever. Taqla knuckled her queasy stomach with her fist then turned back to the beach, the salt wind burning her eyes.

  Back on dry land, Rafiq was standing over the heap of belongings, his brow knotted.

  “It’s all done,” she said when she’d brought the Horse to a halt.

  “I trust you’ll be able to replace the bag easily?”

  Taqla slid from the saddle, planting her feet in the sand. She felt like some indefinable part of her ached. “I doubt it,” she muttered. “It came from China.” It had been woven by one of the Eight Immortals, she understood—though she had no idea who those personages might be.

  “Then why did you throw it away like that?”

  She turned to glare at him. “It was the only way.”

  “Was it? You didn’t even ask me—you just took off!”

  She felt her hackles rise. “Should I have asked your permission?” she demanded.

  “I thought we were in this together!”

  “So now you tell me what I may do with my own property?”

  He threw up his hands. “I just meant, we might have come up with another way if we’d both had time to think about it. It’s stupid to waste something so precious if there’s an alternative!”

  Taqla started to shake. Her voice came out in a rasp. “I did it for you and your quest, in case you’ve forgotten. Like all the magic I do. And don’t you dare call me stupid.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Do you think this is easy? You think I like raising the dead and grubbing round among corpses and carrying you halfway across the world and putting up with that—that thing I was carrying?” Her voice was starting to break apart. “I had to get rid of the stone,” she managed to croak before she had to cover her face with her hand because she was starting to leak tears and she couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing her cry—and she didn’t even know why she was weeping except that the jade had filled her with such loathing, and she was feeling physically sick at the thought of having thrown away her precious Bag That Holds the World. She was so busy fighting her swollen throat and stinging tears that she was only half-aware of his hands suddenly on her shoulders, one of them moving to her face—

  A hail of flies swept between them. Both Taqla and Rafiq recoiled, finding themselves yards apart. Between them formed a black cloud, a shape of swarming sandflies and waterfleas and black wasps, roiling into the outline of a human being.

  “It’s gone,” the shape buzzed. “I am free.”

  Taqla choked back her unborn sobs.

  “Keep your promise,” Rafiq whispered.

  “I will. Adhur-Anahid lives and rules in the city of Bokha
ra,” said the dead King of Kings. “And now I go.”

  His voice disintegrated into the buzz of a hundred thousand desert insects as the swarm broke up into a formless cloud that spun away into its individual parts. For a moment Taqla was blinded by the rush of insect wings in her face and she staggered a little, swatting at those that bit her exposed skin. When she’d recovered her composure, she turned wide eyes and wet cheeks—the latter mercifully veiled—to Rafiq again, her jaw clenched to offset the lingering tremble of her lips.

  He bit his own lip, his gaze intense. “Taqla…”

  I’ve made him doubt my strength, she thought, despising herself. She drew herself up straight. “So where on earth is Bokhara?” she asked.

  Ahleme remembered Yazid’s injunction to make no noise, and she managed not to scream. She put her hands over her face instead and stared out through the cage of her fingers, her gasping breath loud in her own ears.

  She should be dead. That much was clear. She should not be able to stand here and still breathe, or bear the terrible heat. Yet it was a heat that she couldn’t even feel. Under her feet was a pillar of black obsidian no wider across than her own shoulders, and it jutted from a heaving sea of molten metal that stretched to the horizon on every side. She could see by its glow, red hot in most places, white where bubbles of flaming liquid pushed to the surface and burst. Everything was in constant roiling motion, like in a pan of simmering sugar syrup. The air shimmered with heat. Ahleme lifted her eyes to heaven, but overhead it was pitch-black, without stars. She couldn’t even tell if she was outdoors or in some immense underground space because there was only the sea of fire and the rock at her feet and her, quaking and shrunken, a pale dot in an incandescent world.

  No wonder the angel couldn’t follow her here, she thought. This must surely be Hell.

  When she held out her hand, she could see the red glow upon the undersurface, but she felt nothing. That had to be Yazid’s doing. He had put some sort of protection upon her. Despite her surroundings, she shivered. How long would it last, this immunity? Would it last even if the angel killed him? Not that she could imagine that happening. He was too strong and too protean, surely?