Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  He could, in fact, read Greek, having spent a year as a very young man in Antioch, up on the border where the Caliphate of the Faithful met the Byzantine Empire. The two were deeply hostile to each other but that didn’t stop trade of various kinds taking place over the borders, and there being many Greek speakers living in caliphate territories. Certainly his reading was rusty, but that didn’t stop him wanting a look at the scroll he’d put so much effort into finding.

  He scanned the text, finding the first part densely written and near gibberish. The list of ingredients for the potion was easy to spot though, being set in its own paragraph. Firstly, the heart’s blood of an immortal. Second, the wine of Hades. Third, the seed of understanding. Fourth, sand from the depths of an unsailed sea.

  Then he found the fifth ingredient—and as he read the line his jaw clenched.

  Fifth, the maidenhead of your mother.

  His first response was to be both offended and revolted, and the two together were so strong that he nearly flung the scroll away. What stopped him, and what proved stronger still, was puzzlement. How in the name of munificent God did Taqla think that she could get hold of such a thing? If his mother were still alive—which she was not—and still in possession of her maidenhead—which was patently impossible—then she would be in Dimashq where she’d lived her whole life. What was Taqla up to?

  He stared blindly out across the city. Below him, the crippled man took a leap from one rooftop to another and scrambled like a spider up a buttress, but Rafiq was so distracted in his bewildered anger that he didn’t even consciously register the motion until some seconds later.

  With a lurch of his stomach, he realized he’d misread the scroll. The text did not literally say mother. It said she who loves you most, but the phrase was so common that he had automatically glossed it.

  She who loves you most.

  Understanding pierced Rafiq like a knife blade, cold and keen, at a point located between his heart and his stomach. He lifted his head and took a deep breath, and when he swallowed, the taste in his mouth was as metallic and bitter as blood. He read and reread the words.

  From the alleys all around, dogs were howling.

  Something crawled up over the edge of the caravanserai wall, and at last Rafiq managed to turn his vision outward. The object was a hand. An old man’s hand, the skin wrinkled and blotched with age spots. It was joined on the sill by its twin, and then a head rose into view between them and grinned, revealing a mouthful of blackened stumps.

  What? thought Rafiq, suddenly cold with alarm, kicking to his feet and snatching up his sword from the rug. This decrepit ancient had just—impossibly—climbed the wall of the caravanserai.

  “Peace be upon you,” the stranger said, boosting himself effortlessly up onto the top of the wall. His pupils reflected the lamplight with a green fire, like the eyes of a desert fox.

  “And upon you also.” Rafiq’s throat felt like it was full of glue. “And upon all the Pale People.”

  “Heh.” The old man laid his right hand upon his bony breast in acknowledgement and let his illusory appearance slip for the briefest moment, revealing the pallid dog jaws beneath the human disguise. Drool gleamed in the lamp’s glow. “You travel quickly, and by daylight, we note. But we heard the sound of your horse’s hooves. Not like any other steed in this land, that. Where’s the sorceress?”

  “Nowhere you will find her, friend.” Rafiq threw aside the rope belt from his scimitar.

  “Heh—Don’t worry yourself. We know the Law of God better than you. We don’t hunt within city walls. Only the meat of the desert is given to us for our sustenance.”

  “God is merciful.”

  “And you have found mercy, my friend.”

  “Yet you pursue us still.”

  “On an errand of honor. A debt must be repaid.” Reaching a hand inside his stolen, blood-smirched clothes, the ghoul drew out a small object and let it dangle from its fingers—a thong on which was strung a small blue beetle in the style of old Egypt. Rafiq had often seen such jewels and understood that they were looted from tombs. Some were of turquoise and others only faience. He couldn’t tell from a distance which sort this was, but he remembered seeing one just like it recently.

  “That belongs to Safan the Seer.”

  “Safan is gone.”

  “Dead?” He tried to keep the creep of horror out of his voice.

  “Gone.” The ghoul smirked, showing teeth too large and savage for the mouth of any human. “We’re grateful. Tell the sorceress that. Taysafun is ours.”

  “I’ll make sure I do.”

  With a twitch, the ghoul dropped the necklace at Rafiq’s feet. “She can have it.”

  “Her gratitude will be beyond measure.”

  “You never know, meat.” With a twitch the ghoul swung itself partially over the wall edge and hung there for a moment on its arms, eyeing Rafiq up. “Peace be upon you and all your descendents,” it cackled. Then it dropped and was gone.

  They plunged earthward, the two of them together, Ahleme wrapped in Yazid’s embrace, and as they fell the clouds rolled back as if the fire in her veins was boiling them away. She couldn’t be afraid, not now, not any longer. Glory danced in her very fingertips, and she felt as though should he let her go, she too would fly. She didn’t resist when he flipped her in his arms, her back suddenly to his chest, though she did cry out when she saw the landscape twinkling below her, but it was in shock and delight, not terror. A lake—no, a string of lakes—reflected the blue sky like a necklace of sapphires, set in lush shores greener than any she had ever seen and cupped by towering snow-clad mountains.

  They fell until they were only moments above the surface of the largest lake and then Yazid scooped her slight weight in his arms and they flew, faster than a falcon, above the water. Ahleme glimpsed waterlilies and flocks of ducks and low boats before they were just as suddenly scudding over dry land—meadows full of blazing wild flowers, rising to foothills, and then there was snow beneath them again and rising walls of rock and they were ascending the bright mountain air like it were a palace stair. Then there was a shoulder of the mountain below her and Yazid brought them to a halt, hovering in midair, while the ice on the flattest point of the ridge cracked and rose and twisted, forming shapes like filigree, like poetry frozen in midair, to make an elaborate bower no bigger than two people might occupy.

  With a wave of his hand, the djinni snatched a shred of mountain mist and turned it to a pelt of thick gray fur, which he flung down to line the nest. Then they sank gently together between the intricate ice walls and Ahleme’s feet at last touched ground again, sinking into the pelt to her ankles.

  They stood together in silence while she got her breath back, Yazid’s arms furled about her nakedness. Without warning the invisible skin that had protected her from both heat and cold dissolved, and she shivered as the keen air struck those parts not embraced by his warmth. Her nipples puckered in protest and he cupped one breast tenderly.

  “Where are we?” she whispered. The elaborately sculpted ice walls did nothing to hide the view of the lake below and the mountains about. This was not the same view as she had seen from the Palace of Glass, nor anything like the barren mountain slopes she’d glimpsed there.

  “This is the land of Kashmir,” Yazid said, his voice the rumble of a purring lion, “the most beautiful of all places in the world. Do you like it?”

  “Very much.”

  “I had to destroy my house. I shall build a new one here and you will be the jewel in its heart.”

  For a fleeting moment Ahleme thought of her books and her lute and all her possessions, destroyed with the Palace of Glass. Then she brushed them from her mind and turned to face him, looking his body up and down and searching it with her fingertips. She found long pale scars, as thin as thread and straight as the edge of a sword, and almost invisible on his ash-white skin. A starburst of scar-tissue was centred on his chest. “The angel hurt you,” she exclaimed, starting to s
hake. “He cut you open.”

  “He wished to examine my heart. He found no guilt.”

  “I thought he’d killed you!”

  “Oh, Daughter of Earth,” he murmured, gathering her in his arms and laying her down among the furs, drawing the pelts over them both to shield her. “I would suffer it a hundred times over for this.” His own body made the roof of her tent and she was filled with warmth. Then he kissed her mouth, and she felt the embers lit within her fan to a new glow. “Were you afraid?” he asked, as he drew back to let her catch her breath.

  She nodded once, unable to speak.

  “There’s no need to fear anymore.” His smile was fragile, his pale eyes intense. His body warmth surrounded her with the scent of cedarwood. Face-to-face, each drank in the sight of each other, strangely uncertain at this moment, holding it at the cusp as if it might shatter. Ahleme knew the touch and the taste of him intimately, yet at this moment she was pinned by the weight of awe, as if a mystery were being revealed. She touched his face and trembled.

  “Cold?”

  “No.”

  Very gently he stooped to kiss the rise of her breastbone, his mouth moving with exquisite delicacy on her skin. Ahleme made a little moan. She didn’t resist when he moved to one breast and then the other and kissed each soft mound in turn, his lips closing over the buds of her nipples, his tongue swirling in circles and plucking them against his teeth. She only squirmed her thighs a little against his. She didn’t protest as he worked his way down her body a kiss at a time. She didn’t even think to use the defense Zubaida had gifted her with.

  Yazid had learned patience. He was unhurried in his banquet, tasting each inch of her skin, drawing the furs over to keep her warm where he had left his trail. When he reached the meeting of her thighs he sat back a little and lifted her right leg, wrapping it over his shoulder before he stooped again. His hot breath and exquisite kisses caressed her inner thigh, working their way up to the mound that she’d kept plucked and velvety, and the sweet little pout of her cleft. It was warm and moist and yielding, just as her mouth had been.

  He’d never tried this before. Until this day, Ahleme would have refused him outright. Even now, as she looked down the length of her body and saw his bowed shoulders and his head working between her legs, she could hardly believe it was happening. She flushed as he slid a finger deep inside her, and would have denied that she could be so wet if the evidence had not been overwhelming. But hardest of all was believing that anything could feel so good as did the lap and swirl and tease of his tongue. Even the nip of his teeth was a revelation. She arched her back and wriggled her thighs and clutched at his head, her cries growing more and more unguarded as the vestiges of her honor were overrun by the armies of pleasure. And when they stormed the citadel and threw down her sovereign dignity, she squealed and begged and flung the furs open to bare her quivering breasts to the chill, her skin flushed and glazed with sudden damp.

  He lifted his head after a final kiss, delight balanced across a knife-edge with trepidation. Then he slid from under her thigh and rose over her while she was still lost for words, and guided the blunt-prowed tip of his member to the harbour it had sought so long. “Flower of the Earth,” he groaned under his breath. “Ahleme.”

  Ahleme bit her lip. She knew only too well from hand and mouth how thick the girth of that member was. “Will it hurt?” she gasped, sliding her hands over his torso.

  “Both of us, as one,” he groaned, exploring her for entry, slippery with her wetness.

  “Don’t stop,” she gasped, daring to command him one more time.

  He didn’t. And it did hurt, despite all his attempts to be gentle—but only briefly, and then the sensation was beyond all imagining as he filled her and pressed her down and spread her wide, so wide that she couldn’t close herself off from the pleasure with which he filled her, so much pleasure that she was brought to bursting. Then he held her tight in his arms and cried her name as he moved upon her, and all around them the snow burned with a pale flame.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In which many betrayals take place.

  When Taqla returned from the bathhouse, Rafiq was sitting, waiting for her by the light of a single lamp. She’d expected him to be excited but he was somber, almost motionless, his eyes fixing upon her with a look that she’d learned to associate with bottled ire.

  “Is everything well?” he asked. His voice was low, on the other hand, not harsh at all.

  “Yes.” She sat herself down, slightly gingerly.

  “Did you get it?”

  She showed him the scrap of silk between her fingers, folded tight in such a way that the blood didn’t show. He didn’t need to see that, she thought. “All done.”

  Rafiq caught his upper lip in his teeth, eyes narrowing. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that, as if he were stripping her of her veil and her defenses and staring into the depths of her soul. But he only nodded, and said nothing.

  “I’ll brew it now,” she said, turning to the little brazier he had ready.

  So for the next watch that was what she did, working in near silence under his gaze. She put the sand into the bottom of the pot and heated it. She put the two pieces of cloth in to char with the sand, and she crushed the seed from the Tree of Knowledge in the mortar. She’d obtained the fifth ingredient with her teeth set and her eyes dry, but she wept silently when she broke open the seed and pounded it to flour. Yet she was careful to wipe the tears away with her sleeve and not to let them fall into the mix. Tears were too magically potent and she didn’t want them to interfere with the spell.

  Once every dry ingredient was in the pot, she set it to heat until the combustible ingredients were reduced to soot and ash, and then she mixed in the wine from Safan’s flask and let the mixture reduce to a gritty black paste. There were no grand invocations to make at this stage, no dramatic gestures, only a few lines to be sung repeatedly under her breath. Anyone observing her at work would only have seen a couple sitting together, she preparing food over the fire and humming while her husband watched. A harmless and domestic scene.

  “That’s it,” she said when the mixture had cooled somewhat. She poured in new wine and stirred the lot together as it hissed and spat. “It will be efficacious, I imagine, for as long as it remains in your body—a few days at least. You need to drink it at dawn so that we have the maximum time to ride. We’ll have to leave the city and find somewhere to set the Horse up before the sun rises.”

  “You’re coming with me, then?” It was the first time he’d spoken in an hour.

  “Of course,” she answered. “We’re in this together.” She opened the new flask, ready to decant the philtre.

  “Yes.” Rafiq looked thoughtful. “But I do think I should ask you now—you said you had a means by which I could capture the djinni. I think you should teach me. Once we’re on the road, things might come to a head quickly and there not be time for a tutorial.”

  Taqla was relieved that whatever it was he’d had on his mind, it wasn’t an argument—unless he expected her to argue over this point. It was undoubtedly true that if it came to leaping about and seizing things, Rafiq was better at it than she. She remembered how quick he’d been to get her into shelter in the temple of Yaghuth. “It’s a ring,” she said, drawing off the thin bronze one with the incised Hebrew characters. “You must touch the djinni—that’s the hard bit—and command him, ‘In the name of Solomon the Wise, I bind you as my slave.’ It’s very simple.”

  Rafiq repeated the line then took the ring from her. It had fitted on her third finger, but he had to slide it over his smallest. Taqla set her jaw against her inner pang of loss.

  “Well, I suppose we should get a few hours’ rest,” he suggested. “We’ll need to be up soon enough. Not that I think I’m going to be able to sleep.”

  She clenched her damp palms. “It’s your last night in the city.” Maybe forever, she could have added, but there was no need. “Go find a coffeehouse if y
ou prefer. I’m sure there are…diversions to be found in Baghdad.”

  He looked at her with a little frown and then almost visibly shook himself. “No. I don’t think so,” he said in a gentle voice. “I’ll ask the servants to bring up two fresh narghiles and something to eat. Have I told you the story of my journey to the Isle of Madagascar? You will be amazed at the things I saw there. I have to tell you about the trees…”

  “The trees?” she said with a faint smile.

  “Oh yes!”

  So they spent the rest of the evening relaxed together, he reclining, she sat up against their saddle, talking through old adventures while the stars turned overhead and Fate hurried to meet them.

  It was a basic call of nature that woke Ahleme. She lifted her head from the furs, took a breath of the mountain air, and then rolled to look at Yazid. The djinni lay asleep. She’d never seen him sleep before, had not even been sure that he did, and the sight fascinated her. He had no need of the furs and lay on top of them, naked in the rosy evening light, his beautiful muscular body in prefect repose, his chest rising and falling. Unconscious, he looked a little less human than he normally did before her, she noticed with some amusement—his ears were definitely pointed. She grinned to herself. She wanted to slide her fingers down his ribs and his ridged stomach and to provoke the thing that lay curved and smooth between his thighs. She wanted to lick his dark blue nipples and see if they would respond to her teasing as they were so clearly refusing to respond to the cold.