Stealing Sacred Fire

by Storm Constantine

  It would take several days to reach their destination.

  Shemyaza had been subdued all day, since they’d left Istanbul. He sat beside the driver in the front of the truck, while Salamiel and Daniel sprawled out behind on blankets. There was no air conditioning in the vehicle and only the breeze from the open windows provided any relief from the heat. A tinny, meandering strain of Turkish music spluttered from Hasim’s cheap cassette player. Salamiel smoked a chain of vile-smelling cigarettes and flicked through the English papers they had brought with them from the hotel. Salamiel seemed happy to follow Shemyaza’s lead. He didn’t question anything and was apparently enjoying the trip, as relaxed as if they were simply on holiday. At one point during the morning, Daniel asked Salamiel quietly if he thought Shem was all right.

  Salamiel glanced up at the back of Shem’s head, and pulled a wry face. ‘He’s fine. Leave him be, Daniel. He doesn’t need you to analyse him all the time. He’s just full of thoughts.’

  What thoughts, though? Daniel wondered what was going through Shemyaza’s mind. They hadn’t contacted Enniel before leaving England, and when Daniel had suggested it, Shemyaza had almost snapped at him. ‘Enniel is not involved in this. None of them are. It’s my business.’

  Daniel had been tempted to call Lily, but realised the consequences could be awkward. She would be concerned for his safety, and would therefore tell Enniel anything Daniel said to her. Perhaps Shemyaza was right. The Parzupheim should not be involved in this, nor any other sly Grigori cabal.

  Daniel found it difficult to talk to Shem now. They behaved like awkward strangers with one another. Daniel could not help but be slightly offended that Shem had booked a twin room for Salamiel and himself in Istanbul, while installing Daniel in a single room next door. Once, they had been close, making plans in the dark of a shared bed, dreaming the future. Daniel wondered whether he himself was responsible for this estrangement. When he and Shem had met in London, he knew he’d been cold and defensive. As a result of that, Shem appeared to have shut Daniel out of his personal life, and Daniel’s pride wouldn’t let him broach the subject himself. He realised there was no point in brooding about it now. Other, more important matters, must occupy all their thoughts at present.

  Daniel was uneasy about the journey. He was unsure whether Shem could maintain their safety or not, and knew that he would have to keep all his senses alert for signs of threat, on both a physical and psychic level. They were travelling into one of the most politically-sensitive areas of the world to look for someone who might well be nothing more than a terrorist. It hadn’t occurred to Shem that Gadreel might not welcome him with open arms.

  Unable to elicit conversation from Salamiel or Shem and unwilling to listen to the prattle of the driver, Daniel dozed as they travelled. He picked up one or two vague psychic suggestions of threat, which seemed to involve a woman, but the information was too nebulous to interpret.

  That evening, they stopped for the night at a small town. Here, ancient and modern Turkey again nestled uncomfortably side by side. This land had seen many empires rise and fall. Ottoman ruins lay everywhere, declining forlornly alongside the brash newness of petrol stations and glass-fronted shops.

  Hasim arranged accommodation, while Daniel and the others waited at the truck. Daniel took out the camera and ran off a few shots of the landscape. He felt they should be keeping a record of their journey. Salamiel disappeared in search of more cigarettes, and Daniel used the moment of privacy to mention to Shem the psychic impressions he’d received.

  Shem offered an unexpected response. ‘Yes, that will be the American woman.’

  ‘What American woman?’ Daniel asked. ‘What have you been keeping from me?’

  Shem shook his head in irritation. ‘It’s nothing. I found her outside the hotel in Istanbul. She wanted to kill me.’

  ‘Shem! I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned this before! When did this happen?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  Daniel stared at him, wondering whether this was a joke.

  Shem sighed deeply. ‘I’m changing, Daniel. I was drawn back to the city in spirit, and led the woman into the ancient heart. She is a follower of mine. And yet an assassin.’

  Daniel tried to keep his voice even. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She won’t follow us — immediately. Daniel, you mustn’t worry. She’s not a threat. There are other things…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This afternoon, something else intruded into my visions. I realised it’s something I’ve been dreaming of for some nights. Disturbing. It involves another Watcher. I couldn’t identify him, but he was in terrible pain — incarcerated, or being tortured. Would you see what you can pick up about that?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘I’ll try. Information’s not coming through too well. Seems you’re picking up more than I am.’

  Shem waved this remark away. ‘Just get on with it, Daniel. I don’t want your excuses.’

  They are not excuses, Daniel thought. As time progressed, he was seriously beginning to wonder whether his talent was deserting him.

  The following day, their journey towards the east began in earnest. It would have been easier to make the trip by plane, but Shem wanted to experience the country firsthand. He seemed to have no sense of urgency. Daniel was entranced by the landscape; here Shem’s heritage seemed very close. Despite the concessions to modernity, the land still retained the grandeur of its past, and a lot of its magic. A rolling vista of stone-strewn grassland stretched away to either side of the road. Occasionally, rocky outcrops rose up like heat-blasted, alien castles. Here, hidden within the scenery, lay the remains of the Hittite and Phrygian empires. Long before those races surged with conquering zeal across the Middle East, the Grigori had walked here. The remains of their civilisation had vanished. So many ruins; so many conflicting lives. Daniel extended his senses into the countryside and picked up fleeting images, but none that seemed particularly pertinent to their situation. Perhaps there was just too much information for him to interpret, and the important symbols were lost in a confusing maelstrom of ancient memories. Or perhaps the fault lay within himself.

  Shemyaza sat in the front of the truck, his eyes closed. He was very conscious of Daniel behind him, this strange new Daniel who was as cold and distant as a star. He was concerned about Daniel’s claims of losing his psychic ability. Could it be possible? Daniel could not know how much Shem relied on him, while doubting his own powers. Shem couldn’t help feeling that Daniel’s insistence on having changed was his small act of rebellion for having been abandoned after what happened in Cornwall. And all that had come before it. Daniel had had five years to mull over those things. Shem could sense his bitterness. Now, all he wanted to do was turn to his vizier and say ‘Help me, I am afraid’, but he could not speak. The episode with the American woman had shaken him as much as he sensed it had shaken her. It had been unexpected, a total, disorientating yanking-back to act out an archetypal role. He’d had as little volition in it as she, as if they’d been the puppets of higher powers.

  Shem opened his eyes, his head resting on his hand, his elbow on the rim of the open window. He gazed down at the blurred passing road, and it seemed an oily black streak was keeping pace with them. Shem blinked. He saw it was a black serpent, a cobra with folded hood that wriggled with unnatural speed beside the truck. As he stared at it, the serpent raised its head. ‘Shemyaza, I am the symbol of your doom. You journey towards your ultimate sacrifice. Have you no will of your own? Turn back. Turn back. Your father laughs down at you from Heaven.’

  Shem uttered a sound of surprise, which prompted Salamiel to call, ‘What is it?’ from the back of the truck. Shem could not tell him. There was no serpent on the road, no sly hissing voice in his head, only his own doubts and fears. He closed his eyes again, resting his head against the back of the seat. He saw Ishtahar before him, as he’d known her so long ago. She walked past him in the oaty gloom of a room shuttered of sunlight, fanni
ng herself with a palm frond. ‘Shemyaza, get rid of the boy. He watches us. You have no need of him now. You have me.’

  Had she ever said that to him? He couldn’t remember. He had lost her and now he had lost Daniel. Perhaps it was preordained that he should fulfil the final agonies of his destiny alone.

  Their next major stop was Sivas — at first sight a grim and forbidding town. The stark concrete buildings of the outskirts gave way to more historical sites in the centre, but apart from stocking up on supplies and a night in comfortable hotel beds, the group had no desire to linger. Daniel tried, and failed, to acquire some information about the Watcher whom Shem had glimpsed in dreams. Shem did not mention the subject that evening, and again seemed wrapped up in his own thoughts.

  From Sivas they travelled to Elazig, entering the Tigris and Euphrates Basin. Daniel felt his skin tingle to the echo of a thousand memories. If he closed his eyes, he fancied he could hear the thunder of hooves as warriors poured across the landscape. Ragged banners waved and fell; blood was spilled in an eternal libation to lost gods. In contrast, and like so many of the towns they had passed through, Elazig seemed relentlessly modern and scoured of its ancient heart, but once its environs were left behind, it was clear that the truck was venturing into areas of Turkey unfrequented by casual tourists. Nearer Diyarbakir, the land became more rocky and barren, providing a scant living for smallholders and herders. The harsh terrain shimmered and baked beneath the summer sun.

  The further east they travelled, the more the Turkish authorities became inquisitive about their presence. At every junction, armoured cars and troops could be seen, and there was a tangible atmosphere of tension in every small town they passed through. The truck was stopped continually, and dark faces, lean with suspicion, were forever peering into their belongings.

  Diyarbakir was a city of contradictions. It was contained within a wall of black basalt, built in Byzantine times; one of the oldest cities on earth, with a violent and dramatic history. Hasim provided a tour lecture, gabbling the names of lost empires: Urartian, Assyrian and Persian. Alexander the Great had once conquered this city, when it had been known as Amida. It was now hard to credit that such exotic people had ever once thrived there. Over the years, the city had spilled out of the walls, and its outskirts consisted of the now familiar modern, concrete buildings. Tower blocks soared in the pulsing heat. The city walls were punctuated by four main gates, as well as several smaller ones. Its remaining length was dotted with defensive towers. Hasim explained that a large Turkish military installation lay to the south, while to the north a NATO airbase provided a constant back-drop din of screaming jets and throbbing helicopter blades.

  The atmosphere in the city was chaotic; fume-gushing traffic hurtled around them in disorganised, honking streams. Nearer the centre, the modern buildings concealed edifices of ancient times, although there was evidence of extreme poverty and squalor along the narrow streets that coiled away from the main thoroughfares. The heat was almost unbearable and, to Daniel, the heavy, tense ambience of the place was equally oppressive. Here, Kurdish refugees had flocked for over a decade, driven from their homelands by war and persecution. They regarded Diyarbakir as their capital city, but the might of powerful nations around them denied them autonomy. Hasim installed his charges in one of the better hotels and went off scouting for a guide.

  Daniel sat in his room drinking heavily sweetened tea. A fan turned lazily in the air above him, complemented by a raging air conditioning unit that provided physical relief in equal measure to aural discomfort. They had reached the first of their destinations, but Daniel was anxious about what might come after. After all he’d seen and heard, it seemed the Yarasadi would be too concerned with their political troubles to accept Shemyaza as a representative of all they worshipped. Would they be seen as madmen or, worse, people who mocked the conflict of the Kurds? They had become distanced from the object of their journey, caught up in the grinding cruelty of the real world, where nations were oppressed and irreplaceable ancient sites violated and destroyed. The faint psychic impressions Daniel received only served to emphasise these things. The eternal conflict of angels seemed rarefied and unimportant in comparison.

  In the next room, Shem lay on his bed while Salamiel went out sight-seeing. He longed to bang on the wall to summon Daniel, needing help to banish the whispering, deceitful voices in his head. Only your death can bring back the knowledge of the past. Your soul must be snuffed out like an exploding sun. Run away from it, Shemyaza. Disappear into the world. Become Peverel Othman again. It is what you really want. You’re not a saviour, you never wanted to be. Others have shaped you in the image of their desires.

  In the past, when he’d been assailed by doubts, Daniel had been there to reassure him. Why couldn’t he simply go into Daniel’s room now and tell him the truth of how he felt. It seemed impossible. He must find Gadreel instead.

  In the morning, Hasim took them to a tea-garden; an oasis of calm in a shaded courtyard, separated from the noise and smoke of the street outside by thick walls. Here groups of young Kurds in Western-style clothes sat chatting together. Some sat alone, engaged quietly in studies, drinking Coke or small glasses of sweet tea. Daniel was struck by the way that the sexes mingled here without stricture; Kurdish women were not generally secluded or veiled.

  Hasim led them to a table beneath the branches of a spreading tree, and here introduced them to a young Yarasadi named Yazid, who was sitting waiting for them. Daniel was surprised by Yazid’s appearance, for he was quite pale of skin with thick, dusty blonde hair and dark blue eyes. His lively manner and fine features combined to make him very attractive. After the introductions were made, and everyone was seated with a drink before them, Yazid explained that he was eager for Westerners to witness the atrocities against his people first-hand and was therefore more than happy to take them into the mountains. He told them proudly that he was a peshmerga — a warrior committed to the struggle against oppression.

  Shemyaza questioned him carefully about Gadreel. ‘Your prophet has made astonishing claims — that you are descended from the angels. I thought the angels were spiritual beings.’

  Yazid nodded earnestly. ‘We were led to believe that, yes. The memory of our history has been hidden from us, but Gadreel made us remember. It is important that the whole world understands what is happening here. In the past, the Ancient Ones were wiped out and now we, their descendants, suffer the same fate. It must not happen. You will tell of our troubles, so people will know.’

  Yazid owned an ancient Transit van — even more rickety than Hasim’s vehicle — into which they piled their belongings. After bidding farewell to Hasim, who seemed as grieved to see them leave as if they were life-long friends, they began their journey further east. Yazid said they should go to the town of Van, on the shores of Lake Van, a vast inland sea surrounded by mountains. Here, he would be able to make provisions for them to make contact with Gadreel’s immediate followers, who were the only people who could feasibly arrange a meeting with the prophet.

  The roads were now almost impassable, so full of pot-holes that the travellers felt as if their insides were bruised by the constant jolting. The landscape became even bleaker. Yazid drove through the sites of military attack, Kurdish villages and towns reduced to rubble. Daniel felt as if he were travelling through the scenes of a post-Holocaust movie. The world had been scoured of greenery and those who survived had to scavenge in order to live. He forced himself to look upon the horrifying scenes: people squatting in the ruins of their homes that had been bulldozed flat; children riddled with disease from impure water; casualties of the fighting hobbling around with missing limbs and ruined faces. The people they saw sometimes had blond or red hair with green or blue eyes: true Kurdish stock with the physical traits of their long-forgotten ancestors still visible upon their bodies. Despite their adversity, the people were cheerful and welcoming. Daniel felt humbled by their spirit, then felt guilty, for his feelings seemed absurdly patro
nising. Shem seemed particularly disturbed by the torment he witnessed, perhaps because it evoked memories of what had happened to his half-human children many millennia before. Only Salamiel seemed unmoved by all they saw.

  They had come here seeking the past, and maybe they had found it. But not in the way they’d imagined.

  The countryside around them changed, becoming more mountainous; rugged and sparsely populated. The journey now became slower, owing to the increasing deterioration of the roads and more frequent check-points. On nearly every occasion, the travellers were grilled by suspicious guards as to why they were in the area. Now, their story had to be changed. They were a group of post-graduates from an English university, travelling to Old Van to visit the ancient tombs there. Yazid seemed unperturbed by these interrogations; Salamiel barely held his contempt in check, while Shem acted indifferently. Daniel, sometimes, felt sickened by the atmospheres he picked up. He could sense that violence was never far from the soldiers’ thoughts.

  Finally, they reached Van, approaching it in the late afternoon. The town was like so many others they had passed through; modern and grid-like, held in the splendid cup of the mountains. Both Daniel and Salamiel voiced their disappointment about the towns they’d visited. They had expected softly decaying cities of minarets and domes; not miles of concrete and glass. Yazid explained that Van’s appearance was mainly due to a serious earthquake which had devastated the town in the 1950s and had destroyed what remained of the ancient buildings there. Old Van, the original town, had been demolished by war in the early twentieth century, although ghostly remains of it still existed, arrayed around the Rock of Van, a huge natural formation that rose up beside the lake. The new town did boast an airport, and Yazid told them that there would be more amenities for travellers.

  As they drove in, the great Rock of Van was visible from the road, rising up from the sprawling remains of the old town. Shem began to speak quite openly about how this site had once been the location of an ancient Grigori stronghold, during the time of the wars after the Flood. ‘I have read the ancient manuscripts that describe it. Rituals were held on the shores of the lake, in the early morning and evening when the water shone like gold. The towers of the ancient city rose up around the Rock, and there was a palace built upon it, crawling over the stone like moss.’