Stealing Sacred Fire

by Storm Constantine

  ‘What happened?’ Melandra asked in a slurred voice.

  ‘They were killed,’ Shemyaza answered simply. ‘The Kephri beetle will carry their black souls forever beneath its great carapace.’ He straightened Melandra’s injured arm and peered at her wrist where the wound gaped wide. Her skin was covered in sticky blood from her finger-tips to her elbow and her clothes were soaked with it. It pulsed from the wound weakly now.

  ‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing you can do. We haven’t enough time.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Shemyaza ran one finger over the open wound. Melandra could not feel his touch. She felt no pain at all.

  ‘I don’t regret what I’ve done,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t think that. I don’t believe that hell is waiting for me.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Shemyaza said.

  To Melandra’s dismay, he put his mouth against her wrist. She could feel the smooth hardness of teeth upon her. Was he sucking her blood? She became filled with horror and revulsion and tried to wriggle away. ‘No!’ Her protest was weak.

  Shemyaza dropped her arm and transferred his grip to her head. He pulled her towards him, ignoring her feeble struggles. She saw his face loom large in her sight, like a mask. Then his lips were upon hers. She could taste her own blood. And something else. She became aware of an immense void around them, and something she could not describe was shooting towards them; formless light and heat. Her mouth, her throat, then her entire body became filled with it: a sheer energy-filled radiance that poured from Shemyaza’s soul, out of his mouth and into her own. She hung limply in his arms, submitting to this weird and shattering kiss. After only a few moments, he released her. She thought she would fall, but strangely her body was quite able to stand.

  Shemyaza wiped his mouth and smiled at her. ‘Forgive my importunity. I had to act quickly.’

  Melandra frowned. She did not feel weak at all. What had he done to her? She glanced at her wrist and saw the faint line of a scar. Her jaw dropped open. ‘You have healed me?’

  ‘Take up your bed and walk, Melandra,’ he answered in a faintly sarcastic tone. ‘Only don’t walk with me. You must go to Tiy at the Sphinx.’

  ‘I’m healed!’ Melandra said in wonder, still staring at her wrist.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Shemyaza answered impatiently. ‘Melandra, I have to go now.’

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘How did those pigs die?’

  Shemyaza pulled a face as if their miraculous rescue was of no consequence. ‘An ally of mine was looking out for us. I have felt her presence for some time, yet I do not know her. All I do know is that she released an ancient power, that of the scarab god, Kephri, which intervened on our behalf.’

  ‘Lucky,’ Melandra answered.

  He smiled. ‘Not luck, but fate. My work is far more important than the intrigues of any Grigori brotherhood. It would never have ended here in futile death, but I’m sorry you were hurt.’

  For a moment, they stared at one another in silence, then impulsively Melandra reached up and hugged Shemyaza tightly. Very slightly, her wrist tingled as she touched him, as if she’d been stung by a nettle there.

  His arms snaked around her and for the briefest of moments, he squeezed her body. ‘Go now. I have little time.’

  She let him go. ‘I feel that I failed you.’

  ‘No. You are my guardian, but there is nothing to guard me from now. Go to the Sphinx and wait.’

  ‘What for? Will you join us there?’

  He paused, then stroked her cheek with one finger. ‘I am always with you.’

  He walked away then, beneath the arch. Its shadows swallowed him. Melandra watched him go, wondering whether she should follow him discretely. She picked up her gun from where it had fallen and glanced at her wrist again. No, she would do as he asked.

  Melandra headed back towards the centre of Cairo, stepping purposefully over the bodies of the fallen Brethren without looking down.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Love Beyond Death

  ‘He’s not coming,’ Salamiel said. ‘We’ve been here half an hour, Daniel.’

  ‘He will come,’ Daniel snapped. ‘Have a little patience for once, will you!’

  Gadreel sat down next to the silent Penemue on one of the pews. ‘Something could have happened to him. How could we know?’ She stroked Penemue’s arm, who looked at her and smiled. ‘We should try to break through the gate to the crypt.’

  ‘Don’t do anything,’ Daniel said. ‘Just trust me.’

  ‘Trust you!’ Salamiel laughed. ‘You have no idea where Shem is. All you have is your blind faith and endless hope!’

  ‘Oh, just shut it for once, will you!’ Daniel snapped. ‘I’m sick of your sarcasm!’

  A voice echoed down the church. ‘Bickering, bickering! You are like children in a playground.’

  The entire company scrambled to their feet. A tall figure stood silhouetted in the doorway to the church, limned in tawny light.

  ‘Shem!’ Daniel cried, unable to resist glancing triumphantly at Salamiel.

  Shem sauntered down the aisle towards them. ‘Not kept you waiting too long, I hope.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Salamiel drawled. ‘We’ve been quite the tourists, enjoying the sights.’

  Shem walked past them all to Salamiel and draped an arm around his shoulders. ‘We must get to work. Where’s the crypt?’

  ‘Over here,’ Salamiel said. Together they walked towards the gate.

  Daniel felt hurt that Shemyaza had gone to Salamiel rather than himself. Salamiel was the trouble-maker, who asked awkward questions and argued for the sake of it. Why had Shem singled him out for affectionate gestures?

  The group assembled around Shemyaza at the gate, Daniel loitering moodily at the rear. Shemyaza examined the lock. ‘We need the key-keeper to open this.’

  ‘There’s no-one here,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Of course there is,’ Shemyaza replied. ‘There is always a key-keeper.’ He pushed through the bewildered group and went to stand, hands on hips, before the altar.

  Daniel was surprised to see that a bent, old priest was standing in the shadows near the pulpit. Had he been there all along, listening to their arguments? Daniel felt a shock course through his body. For the briefest of moments, he was sure that the old man was Mani. Then, the priest took a step forward from the shadows, and Daniel realised he was mistaken.

  ‘I am Shemyaza,’ Shem announced.

  The old man shuffled forward. He was dressed in a long, faded black cassock, his face as brown and wrinkled as a raisin. ‘I am John,’ he said, ‘and I have prepared the way for your coming, Lord.’ He raised his hands and champed his lips over his toothless gums. When he spoke, his aged voice boomed out with the strength of a fanatic. ‘The true light that enlightens every man has come into the world and the world was made through him. Yet the world knows him not. From him we will all receive grace and truth.’

  Shemyaza nodded imperceptibly, faintly smiling. With one giant step, he drew close to the old man and enfolded him in a long-armed embrace. The shabby black figure all but disappeared within Shemyaza’s hold.

  Nobody spoke. Daniel knew instinctively that John had been waiting in this place a long time for this moment; all his life, as had his father before him. The line of the generations appeared before Daniel’s mind’s eye: fathers and sons disappearing into infinity. Two thousand years of waiting.

  Shem released John from his embrace and stepped back. Daniel thought he could hear a faint sound as of rushing water, accompanied by the beat of hand-drums and ululating cries of tribal women.

  ‘I say to you,’ Shemyaza murmured, ‘that the hour has come when all the dead and the living will hear the voice of the fire and of the waters, the light and the darkness.’ His voice was low, but rang clearly throughout the old building. ‘For as the father had the light of life, so I, his son, also have light. Do not marvel at this, for the hour of judgement is here.’

  The exchange had been like
a ceremony, played out with ritual responses. Daniel knew now that they were in the right place, and that the entrance to the Chambers of Light lay very close.

  John lifted his chin, and took a key from a chain around his waist. ‘Come, Lord, I will open the gate for you.’

  Daniel glanced at the statue of John the Baptist. Was it possible?

  The old man went slowly to the gate and here spent some minutes fiddling with the key and the lock, but eventually, he turned to the group with a smile and pushed the iron gate open. Shemyaza nodded respectfully to the priest, then led the way down the steps. As Daniel squeezed past John, he looked at the old man. He was still chewing upon nothing, his red-rimmed, rheumy eyes gazing at the rafters overhead, his fingers clasping and unclasping before his chest. It was almost as if he was totally senile, unaware of what was happening around him, and had played his part through instinct alone.

  The steps were damp and worn, and led down to an ante-chamber that issued onto two low-ceilinged rooms. The air was moist and foul-smelling. On the right, the group discovered a musty vault that housed a single, unadorned tomb. The floor was submerged beneath half an inch of oily water. They could see an iron gate in the far wall, which appeared to lead to some kind of gully from which water was leaking into the crypt. Gadreel suggested that at some point the gully must have led to the holy Nile, before its course had deviated away from Old Babylon.

  Shemyaza looked around this chamber briefly, then ducked back into the ante-chamber. He entered the second room which lay directly ahead of the steps. Daniel was the first to follow. His eyes were drawn immediately to a slit in the opposite wall, where the rays of the evening sun shone through in dim, gilded beams. They illumined a small room that had a flagged floor covered in a layer of gritty dust. But at least the room was dry. Overhead, the ceiling was comprised of enormous, oblong slabs of stone. In the centre of the chamber lay what appeared to be a well-head, surrounded by a low wall of rough stones and covered by a black iron grille. Shemyaza walked to the well and beckoned for the others to draw near.

  ‘This is what we’ve been looking for,’ Shemyaza said.

  Daniel peered at the well. He could see that it was filled with dry earth, nearly to the rim of the surrounding wall. A strong musty smell rose out of it that reminded Daniel of a long-abandoned house.

  Salamiel laughed. ‘At last: the ceremonial gateway to the Chambers of Light.’ He clearly intended it to be a joke.

  ‘That’s right,’ Shemyaza said.

  ‘But…’

  Shemyaza silenced Salamiel with a wave of his hand. ‘Look at the floor around the well-head. Do you see those rough slots? There are six of them, and that’s where Qimir’s swords will be inserted. I trust you have them with you, Gadreel.’

  Gadreel nodded. ‘Yes. But there are seven swords…’

  Shemyaza ignored her observation. ‘I want you all to sit around the well in a circle, each of you behind one of the slots.’ No-one moved. ‘What are you waiting for?’ He glanced at the window behind him. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  The group assembled hesitantly around the well and sat down as directed.

  ‘Where are you going to sit?’ Daniel asked.

  Shemyaza did not answer, but gestured for Gadreel to distribute the swords. She took them carefully from her back-pack and handed them around the circle to the others. Shemyaza took the largest sword from her and positioned himself, standing, behind Salamiel.

  An air of urgency had come to fill the room, a tense expectation. No-one spoke.

  ‘Place your swords into the ground,’ Shemyaza said.

  Silently, the group obeyed. A couple of the insertion points were blocked by ancient dirt and it required some effort to pierce them with the swords, but eventually, all six blades rose firmly from the ground.

  Shemyaza nodded approvingly. ‘Now, place both your hands upon the pommel of your sword.’

  Once this was done, he withdrew the key crystal from his pocket and leaned forward to place it upon the centre of the grille covering the well. Then he straightened his spine, staring straight ahead, the seventh sword held upright before his face. Conjuring a halo of golden fire from his hair, the last of the sunlight poured around him and struck the crystal.

  The light entered and empowered the stone. Seven laser-like radials, of different colours, spat out from the crystal and struck each of the swords, so that every one of the bearers became bathed in a specific, pure hue of the spectrum. Shemyaza’s ray passed right over Salamiel’s head. He was enveloped in golden light, while beneath him, Salamiel was wreathed in a brilliant crimson glare. Daniel was enwrapped in green light, Gadreel in violet, Penemue in orange, Pharmaros in indigo and Kashday in blue.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Shemyaza said, ‘do not let go of the swords.’

  Now, the crystal began to emit seven distinct tones that, in turn, were absorbed by the swords. The blades vibrated in the hands that encircled them.

  ‘Keep your hold firm,’ Shemyaza said, ‘and concentrate on directing the energy you are receiving into the ground through the swords. The light around you is your colour. The crystal has chosen the sphere of your soul. Flow with it. Use it. Let the light draw substance from your spirit. The guardians of the upper gateway will see only the colours of the heavens.’

  The resonance of the tones grew louder, until they became a dissonance. The highest note was a shrieking stridency, which was almost ultra-sonic, while the lowest rumbled inaudibly in the chests of the avatars. The effect was extreme, but oddly harmonious.

  Daniel’s teeth were set on edge by the resonance. He wanted to let go of his sword, but forced himself to keep a grip. Presently, he noticed that the vibration now seemed to have extended beyond the sword, because the ground beneath him had begun to shake. He looked around himself and met the surprised glances of the other avatars. Only Shem seemed unmoved. Plaster flakes sifted down from the walls while, overhead, the massive blocks of stone in the ceiling shook ominously. If even one of them should shake loose, the entire group would be crushed to death. Daniel found that his lips were stretched into a rictus grin. His hands seemed welded to the sword.

  The intensity of the crystal lights grew brighter and the hum of the tones reach a painful crescendo that passed beyond the range of sound audible to living ears. Daniel felt as if he was being electrified, as if every atom within his body oscillated to the clamorous frequency.

  I can’t hold on, he thought. I’m going to burn alive, spontaneously combust.

  His muscles were spasming throughout his entire body: it felt like the pulsing tides of a thousand synchronous orgasms. Daniel soared on the overwhelming extremes of terror and ecstasy. When he opened his eyes, his vision was completely obscured by a vibrant green veil of light. Around him, the eyes of his companions had become burning orbs of coloured fire: gold, orange, crimson, violet, indigo, blue. Their mouths, like his, were stretched unnaturally wide to emit soundless cries. Streams of ether poured from their lips, filling the air with a boiling, multi-coloured mist. The sight was terrifying, but peculiarly beautiful. Now, Daniel knew what it was to be truly Grigori. He closed his eyes again and forced himself to flow with the energy, conduct it into the ground.

  Gradually, the trembling ground began to settle and the tones started to die down. The tremor lasted only for another minute. After the rumbling had fallen silent, a sound like that of shifting sand hissed out from the well-head. The group opened their eyes. The coloured lights had vanished; the chamber was barely illumined by the dying sunlight.

  Shemyaza rubbed his face; he looked exhausted. ‘You may let go of your swords now.’

  Daniel tried to release his grip on the pommel but found that his hands were rigid and immobile. Everyone else appeared to be experiencing the same problem.

  Shemyaza reached over Salamiel’s shoulder and removed the crystal from the well-head. The hold upon the avatars was released, and a powerful last discharge of energy threw them all backwards onto the floor.
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  Daniel was the first to stand up and nearly fell down again immediately. He felt so dizzy that whenever he tried to walk in one direction he found he was staggering in another.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Shemyaza said, smiling at Daniel’s reeling attempts to walk. ‘The disorientation will be short-lived.’ He put his arm around Daniel’s shoulders and supported him to the well-head. ‘Look, our work has been successful.’

  The soil which had filled the shaft was fast disappearing downwards, as if a plug far below had been removed. Daniel shook his head in wonder. ‘The vibrations have cleared the shaft.’

  The other avatars were rising slowly to their feet, brushing dust from their clothes. Like Daniel, they seemed dazed.

  Daniel’s dizziness had abated now. He pulled away from Shemyaza’s arm and leaned on the low wall to peer down into the lightless vertical tunnel. ‘We haven’t got to go down there, have we? There are no hand-holds. How could we manage it?’

  ‘You don’t have to go down there,’ Shemyaza replied. ‘But I do.’

  Daniel glanced up in surprise. He had envisaged that their journey into the Chambers of Light would involve visualisation. ‘This is absurd! You can’t go down there alone. Surely the journey through the gateway must be astral rather than physical?’

  Shemyaza shook his head. ‘No, the chambers are physical and so is their entrance, although some astral travel is involved. I shall go into them alone.’

  Salamiel looked over Shemyaza’s shoulder. ‘So, are you just going to jump down there, or should we have brought a rope?’

  Shemyaza turned round slowly and stared unblinkingly into Salamiel’s eyes. ‘Neither of those things.’

  Salamiel pulled a quizzical face. ‘What, then?’

  Shemyaza closed his eyes for a moment, then swallowed. ‘In order for me to enter the Chambers, all physical life must leave my body.’

  Salamiel stared at him mutely, while Daniel cried in a shrill voice, ‘What?’