Stealing Sacred Fire

by Storm Constantine

  ‘Do they commune through thought?’

  Tiy got to her feet and glided across the room in the unerring and nimble manner that always made Nimnezzar shudder. ‘More than that, I feel. Their language is that of dreams and memories. Sometimes, when I question her, she murmurs the name “Shemyaza”. I believe Penemue fills her mind with images of his brother.’

  Nimnezzar forced himself not to take a step away from the old woman, even though the musty incense smell of her voluminous robes filled his nostrils. ‘This Shemyaza,’ said the king, tapping the photographs thoughtfully with his fingers. ‘In a way, he is Sarpanita’s spiritual father.’ He did not expand further, confident that Amytis would have provided her aged mentor with every detail of her relationship with her husband.

  Tiy nodded. ‘Yes. It can be seen that way.’

  Nimnezzar knew Tiy was waiting for him to say something; the words that would act as a key to the lock upon her tongue. He had played this game in the past. ‘I am building Shemyaza’s city for him,’ he murmured, more to himself than to the woman. ‘Should I call him to me?’

  ‘In ages past, the Watchers offered their divine seed to enrich the blood of the royal lines,’ Tiy said, nodding. ‘Penemue, in his prime, would have been a great and powerful being. I have no doubt that should he once again unite with his brother-king, his faculties would be restored. And if Shemyaza has manifested in the world…’ She shook her head. ‘Great king, you need him. It is unthinkable that the empire of Babylonia could once again thrive without him!’

  Nimnezzar forced himself to stare into her face. He could detect no guile in her expression, and yet… ‘There is something we have not yet considered. My Magian priests have reminded me recently that in the form of the Peacock Angel, Shemyaza is worshipped as a god by the wretched Yarasads! Is it possible their adepts are as aware of Shemyaza’s manifestation as we are? If so, with whom will he ally: those who have worshipped him for millennia or Babylon, who seeks to recreate the sacred empire of the past?’

  Again, Tiy nodded. ‘Babylon has stamped upon the worshippers of the Peacock Angel. This could be a dilemma indeed!’ She grinned, displaying unnervingly strong teeth. ‘However, all is not lost. Whatever Shemyaza’s feelings on the matter, I am sure that Babylon can bring him to her breast.’

  ‘Speak,’ said the king.

  Tiy sighed patiently. ‘Since I came to your court, I have pondered long upon how best you may realise your ambitions. I made many journeys into the realm of spirit seeking knowledge. I learned that until Shemyaza has reclaimed the wisdom of his ancient ancestors, he will be virtually powerless in this world. Now is the time to secure him, before his strength waxes.’

  Nimnezzar looked sceptical. ‘He is the king of the fallen ones. Surely, his power will be great?’

  Tiy raised a finger. ‘Think of Penemue and his condition. Shemyaza too has yet to regain his full powers. You need him, Great King, because he has the power to rule the world. You need that from him. Therefore, Shemyaza must be brought to Babylon very soon, before he attains his strength.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Nimnezzar asked. He had no doubt by now that Tiy knew the answer.

  ‘I believe Shemyaza is searching for an ancient artefact of his people — an artefact that you too could use. You will find him in the old land.’

  Nimnezzar uttered an angry snort. ‘With the Yarasadi!’ He punched the table-top with his fists.

  ‘Yes, he will go to them. Their prophet will have drawn him. Remember the name: Gadreel too was one of the fallen ones.’

  Nimnezzar now paced around the table. ‘If Shemyaza is with the Yarasadi, it will be difficult to find or capture him. The Yarasadi are lords of their terrain. I’m unsure my men can best them in their own territory. There are too many secret places in the mountains where they can hide. I have no desire to waste my troops.’

  Tiy followed him and laid a hand upon his arm. ‘My sight can guide you into the secret places. All you will need is a force of warrior-priests, a small one.’

  The king glanced at her askance. Led by a blind woman into hostile territories: was this the action of a hero or a fool? ‘You know exactly where?’

  Tiy smiled. ‘Oh, great king, do not doubt what my eyes can see! In dreams, I have beheld a Cave of Treasures, where the artefact Shemyaza seeks has lain for millennia. Your Magians could never discover it, but Shemyaza will. All that is required of you is faith and trust. Remember, it is the way of human men to scorn the power of women, but do you not claim the blood of angels runs in your veins? Honour and revere the power of the female, Nimnezzar, if you would reclaim your heritage and become a god-king!’

  Sarpanita sat before the cage, deep below Etemenanki, absorbing the dream-images that Penemue sent to her. Incense smouldered, filling the air with smoke that smelled sweet, but which burned her throat. Sarpanita stared at her hands, which were folded in her lap. She could not look at the angel while he sent her the pictures, for his face was a distraction and her mind became filled with it.

  Over the days, she had learned much about the history of the Arallu. Penemue had not been able to witness the construction of their underground city firsthand, for by the time the first excavations were made, he’d been incarcerated beneath rocks in his life-tomb, but as he’d lain there, suffering beneath the weight of the stones, his mind had flown out of his body, and had witnessed much of what had happened. He’d seen the dour Arallu lords stalk the bare corridors, heard the screams of captive women, and had smelled the bloody incense the Arallu used in their rites. He had sensed their fear of Anu and his faithful Watchers. He had heard the stories of those who had been discovered by these loyal forces and how they had been murdered, their new cities destroyed so thoroughly that not even a memory of them would remain.

  The Arallu had found Penemue by accident as their human workers burrowed deep into the earth. His sarcophagus had been uncovered, in the place where Anu’s engineers had buried it. No-one was supposed to discover it, but they had.

  At first, the discovery had caused argument. Some had wanted to open the sarcophagus, while others, thinking that Penemue, if he survived, would take control of their city, had advised against it. Quickly, they had learned that their priests could communicate with the captive, and that he could be questioned like an oracle. They had been puzzled that he made no demands for release.

  Even now Penemue was distressed that he had been disturbed.

  Had he been asleep all these centuries? Sarpanita wondered.

  No, not asleep. Dead more than alive, but eventually the heaviness of the rocks and the eternal darkness lost their power to hurt his mind and body. He had felt weightless, insubstantial. His body had become merely a numb vessel to which his mind could return and rest, whenever astral travel became too tiring.

  On the rare occasions when Penemue pined for activities of the flesh, he had found that he could inhabit a living body. Sometimes, under ritual conditions, the Arallu would provide an unwilling host for him, seized from their human work-force. Otherwise, Penemue would steal a body, slipping into its owner’s mind without them even realising it. Through these vehicles of flesh, he could experience the pleasures of food and wine, of lovers’ bodies, even experience the act of killing. He could ride into battle without ever fearing death or injury, for his mind could quit the host body whenever he willed it so. Sometimes, gripped by a strange anger, he had driven his unwitting hosts to suicide. Or else, to experience the farthest reaches of emotion, he had killed the loved ones of the human vessel he inhabited.

  Sarpanita could not judge the Watcher for these acts. His mind, she knew, worked in a way very different to her own. It was not that he did not perceive a difference between good and evil, but that he didn’t see what she termed ‘evil’ as bad, or thought what she knew as ‘good’ was somehow worthy and desirable. Acts had consequences, as did thoughts. The tapestry woven from the different strands of consequence was valid, and if some of the threads required for its construction caused
pain to others, it was simply a necessary part of the whole.

  He asked her a question in the form of a feeling that invaded her heart, ‘Why have they woken me?’

  ‘Because you were there,’ she answered in her mind. ‘And you are what my father desires to be. He wants to rule like a god over his angels.’

  She sensed the Watcher’s amusement. ‘He wants me to be like the Arallu were in the past and breed a line of little kings for him, with you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered and he observed the distress in her heart without sending any reciprocal thought or feeling. She felt as if he’d touched her feelings somehow, held them and looked at them, and then put them down again, for they did not hold his interest for long.

  ‘It is a circle,’ Penemue told her. ‘I was incarcerated for tasting and honouring a human woman, and now I am exhumed for the same purpose.’ His humour was bleak. Perhaps he would not be able to perform in the way Nimnezzar wanted.

  ‘Now I am here in the air, it is difficult for my mind to roam,’ Penemue said. ‘I once saw a dim spark that was a tiny flame. All that was left of my brother and master, Shemyaza. I do not believe that he is dead.’

  ‘He will come here looking for you,’ Sarpanita said, to please him. ‘I dreamed of it.’

  ‘Shemyaza was love, but it was terrible,’ said the angel.

  And Sarpanita shuddered to think what kind of monster made the amoral Penemue think that way. ‘How can love be terrible, lord?’ she asked.

  The angel’s sigh was a dark breeze through her mind. ‘Shemyaza loved a human maid, a young woman like you. Their union was that of spirit and the earth. But it was forbidden, and they were discovered. Shemyaza lost his heaven for it. At first, he was a willing sacrifice and became the scapegoat, cast out into the desert, to atone for the sins of his brethren who had also taken human lovers. I was one of them. I saw his fall and turned away to eat the festival meat. In the desert, Shemyaza learned bitterness and hatred. He felt we had betrayed and abandoned him, that his sacrifice meant nothing. Eventually, he raised an army of half-breed Nephilim, terrible warriors, and filled with their father’s rage they ravaged the sacred ground of Eden. Many died, and our Father released the Deluge to cleanse the earth. Shemyaza was captured, his earthly body burned alive, while his soul was cast into the constellation of Orion, where it was sentenced to hang for eternity. Perhaps eternity is over, for now Shemyaza is free in the world.’

  Sarpanita listened to this story with rising dread. She was becoming part of this terrifying history. It was leaking into reality.

  In the afternoon, while the palace shimmered like a mirage, aching and white in the sun, a foreign woman came to the court of the king.

  A soft-footed courtier approached Nimnezzar in his cool, cavernous study, and here whispered of a fair-skinned Western woman, who had travelled long, perilous roads in a truck, with only an idiot Turkish boy for protection. The woman wished to see him.

  Nimnezzar raised his eyes from his work, and wondered for a moment what manner of female, Western or otherwise, could burrow her way through the morass of officials, protocol and obstructions that were set like a maze around his inner sanctum. He frowned. ‘Why are you bothering me with this? Who is this woman and what is her business?’ He looked around for his vizier, Jazirah; the shadow who normally eclipsed all intruding lights from his presence. He felt strangely vulnerable being accosted in this way, no matter how fearful the servant might be.

  The official bowed low. ‘Great King, she claims she is looking for a Watcher lord and that she has information you will find useful. She insists on speaking to you.’

  Nimnezzar had wooed the lands of the west; perhaps this woman knew she would not be dismissed out of hand. ‘Who does she represent?’

  The official shrugged. ‘She has indicated she represents no-one but herself, great king.’

  ‘Indicated?’

  ‘She will speak to no-one but you, great king. She is fearless and tenacious.’

  For a moment, Nimnezzar felt annoyed by the woman’s audacity. Perhaps he should order a group of his personal guard to molest and humiliate her for this effrontery. She claimed no connection to a government or official agency. He was mindful of causing diplomatic upset, but at the same time resented the way this unknown female felt she had the right to march up to his palace and demand audience. However, it was possible she really did have information.

  ‘Find Jazirah and ask him to question the woman,’ Nimnezzar said, and dismissed the official from his attention, carefully lifting a sheaf of papers before his nose. His minion backed, bowing, from his presence.

  Melandra Maynard felt as if she had invaded the court of hell. Here she was, through wits and impudence alone, sitting in an ante-chamber to the court of one of the devil’s followers. She could not believe she had achieved her objective. Her hands were steady on her shoulder bag, which perched upon her knees. The guards had divested it of its secret — the weapon — but did not appear to find it unusual that a woman would carry a gun of its type. She had surrendered it without argument. This was a cross-roads.

  In Istanbul, she had discovered it was possible to hire guides to take her anywhere in the dangerous east. People there lived with the troubles; they knew how to negotiate them. So, accompanied by a Turkish guide, she had made her way to Babylon. The journey had not been uneventful, and sometimes they had had to buy their way out of trouble, first with the Turks and then the Babylonians, but by degrees, they had made progress. Now, Melandra was in Babylon, in the palace of the king. She was quietly surprised that she had achieved her objective. It seemed to her now that the journey had been almost too easy.

  Of course, Americans were welcome in Babylon. Since the country was no longer Islamic, the West had lost no time in befriending the Babylonian government. In time-honoured tradition, the West chose to overlook the atrocities committed in Babylon’s name, in order to profit from the commerce of oil and arms. To them, Nimnezzar seemed tractable and co-operative in comparison with other Middle Eastern rulers. Babylonians on the street might glance askance at a Westerner, but officials couldn’t be more helpful.

  Melandra had been struck by the signs of prosperity she’d encountered in the country: copies of ancient monuments littered the stark countryside; new towns reared their columns and minarets towards the sky. Conflict in the north did not sully the tranquillity of life further south. It might not exist. In Babylon itself, the streets were wide and clean. The ugly old buildings of late twentieth century architecture were being replaced everywhere by elegant constructions of marble, granite and basalt. Traffic was restricted in the city centre, but there was an efficient, modern public transport system that looked like something out of an SF movie. Even the people were part of this expressionism; their clothes were neither Western-style nor traditional Eastern, but a newly-conceived meld of both, fashioned from soft, elegant fabrics. Babylon was like a fantasy artist’s impression of an exotic alien culture that had developed sophisticated futuristic technology. The ancient and the ultra-modern blended together to create an aesthetically-stunning whole. Only Melandra knew that this was the work of the devil. Its beauty was furled around a maggoted heart.

  Melandra found that the word Grigori acted like a cantrip — it opened doors and minds. Her guide, staunch at her side for the promise of American dollars, had led her to the right offices, speaking the words that allowed her access to the next platform of the game. The magic charm of the Grigori had broken every barrier until it had led her unharmed into the lair of the monster himself. At the last gateway, her guide had been taken from her. She wondered whether Shemyaza was already here in the city.

  Melandra sat for over an hour, thirsty and hungry in the cool, dark room. The journey from the walls to the heart of the palace complex had taken over a day, and she had neither eaten nor rested during this time. Now, she felt light-headed and reality seemed a plastic, unreliable thing. Fighting dizziness, she eyed with longing the pool in the garden vis
ible beyond the windows. Soon, she might find she had wandered out there involuntarily and was scooping aside the lilies to drink the water like an animal, lapping with dry tongue. Melandra did not want this to happen. She must remain in control and aloof. The first thing she would do the next time she saw someone — anyone — would be to ask for a drink. They would grant her that, surely, in this court of Pandemonium whose demons aped civility and manners?

  When the tall man came to her, she jumped in alarm, for she had not heard him approach. He was handsome and sinister, clad in embroidered silk robes, like a prince from the Arabian Nights. He looked at her with cold eyes, his lips smiling slyly, then bowed his head. ‘Madam, I am Jazirah, vizier to the great king, Nimnezzar. What is your business here?’

  Melandra put her bag onto the floor, feeling too ordinarily female with it clutched to her lap. She clasped her hands loosely on her thighs. ‘My name is Melandra Maynard. I am American. I believe, sir, that your great king and I have certain interests in common.’

  Jazirah laughed soundlessly, throwing back his head so that his jaw dropped open. Then he shut his mouth with a soft snap; a reptile capturing insects. ‘My dear lady, I am quite sure that many people would like to have interests in common with our great king, but that alone does not have them clamouring at our door demanding an audience. Your sheer impertinence and determination has aroused our curiosity. I hope the reason for your being here is a good one.’

  ‘Shemyaza,’ said Melandra. ‘I met with him in Istanbul. Is he here yet?’