Chasing Embers

by James Bennet

  Miss Macha swore. Despite the violent intent on her face, the witch knew when to take flight. Her bikini-clad form slipped into the back of the Rolls and the wolves leapt after her, vanishing into the stygian depths. The passenger door swung shut even as the wheels started to turn. The Phantom’s headlights whitewashed the scene, the vehicle making a swift, silent turn in the car park before speeding away up the ramp. Ding dong the witch has fled.

  The stupid thought brought Ben to his senses. He took in the rider, who hung back, the horse trotting back and forth in some kind of chromatic bubble, a gaudy toy in a snow globe. The mask grinned back at him, silent and watchful.

  Knowing.

  Ben glared at Fulk. The slayer was struggling to rise in the spilt pool of oil. His boots slipped and he dropped to one knee, his sword and the motorbike out of reach. He froze, sensing Ben’s eyes on the back of his neck. Slowly, Fulk turned to face him.

  “Wait!” he said, and the echoes laughed. “I was only fulfilling my quest!”

  But Ben was already growing. Growing and deepening in shade, his flesh hardening, a sheen of scales. Muscles rippled. Haunches bulged. The last of the gabardine tore, expensive shreds fluttering to the ground. Like a plant watered on rage, his tail snaked out, thumping into the car park wall. A ridge of horns pressed into the ceiling, dust and grit showering down. Newly formed claws gouged grooves in the ground. Wings folded out into the space, bunching like badly pitched tents against the support pillars. His snout stretched toward Fulk, golden eyes beaming down. Fangs gleamed in the strip light.

  Fulk thrust out his hands and shrieked.

  “You can’t! You can’t! You—”

  The dragon roared. Deep in his lungs, hundreds of alveoli pulsed and opened, releasing a superordinary gas. The gas filled Ben’s maw, and then his back teeth were scraping together, causing a tiny spark. Fire cascaded into the car park. The motor-bike exploded, spraying parts. The antique tome went up in smoke.

  Fulk shrieked to shatter crystal. Then the flames engulfed him too. Doused in oil, he went up like a human candle. His blackened form twisted in the blast, his beard and skin crisping, the meat instantly charred. Scream cut short, the blazing slayer stumbled and fell, lay twitching on the ground. As Ben inhaled, the flames dispersing, the Black Knight was ready to serve.

  Ben felt his strength drain from him. He collapsed heavily, throwing up dust. A pillar toppled, broken blocks crashing on concrete. Then he was dwindling, dwindling, pulling himself in, wings and claws shrinking towards the pain at his core.

  A naked man curled up on the ground, shivering despite the lingering heat.

  Hooves clopped next to his ears. Ben made out a blur of red silk, pale hands reaching down.

  Someone said, “Well, I think you made your point.”

  Then all the lights went out.

  PART TWO

  Occult Bodies

  Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion.

  Egyptian proverb

  Kaw

  Dhuroob, Nugaal Province, Somalia

  The road, such as it was, puffed up under the old woman’s feet, her bare toes long and bird-like, not entirely human. Her bundled skirts swished through the dust. There was dust here to cover the world, dust on dust on dust. Dust on hunger. Dust on bones. Dust like ghosts haunting the air. The sky clanged against the horizon, a hot steel bell, the unforgiving clapper of the sun ringing through the hollow blue. Scarf tied around her head, leaning on a staff carved from a galool tree, old Dhegdheer walked from the place where the mirage met the real and into the village of Dhuroob.

  The hag sniffed. Death was everywhere. Huur, the Reaper, the Old Marabou, stalked the village ruffling his feathers, pecking at whatever scraps he could find. Death whispered in the cornfields, the stalks rustling like hair on a corpse. Death sang in the flies around children’s mouths, their shrivelled forms huddled around the dry village well. The Red Cross had rumbled on to the cities, abandoning the sticks. Dhegdheer could smell as much. Death was far from new to her. On a different day, with better luck, the hag might have feasted here herself, but jilal, the harshest season of the year, had stolen all the sweet young things and the gu rains would not come, leaving her with nothing. No bones to gnaw. No blood to drink. These days, children steered clear of the wastes and pickings were desperately slim. And the one morsel she had come across lately was following a trail of crumbs that Long Ear herself had left behind. Destiny had scratched the girl off the menu. Necessity rendered her safe. Now she served the will of the gods.

  And who, Dhegdheer pondered wryly, do the gods serve? The weeks since she’d met Khadra in Qardho had not been kind to these lands. A war somewhere drew foreign aid away, and despair rained where the skies would not. Millions starved, and it was down to Dhegdheer to do something about it. Dhegdheer, and the one human left in these parts who still meddled with sixir, spoke with the old spirits. Casting bones and staring into her fire, Ayan had come to learn of the Pact and the Lore, forbidden magic and sleeping gods…That was why, when searching for a suitable pawn, Dhegdheer had chosen Ayan to summon the Queen. Or at least to enable her summoning. Ayan might have an ear for the mysteries, but she was long past the age when her blood was of use, her innocence a memory. The woman had made the ultimate sacrifice, choosing her only daughter instead. She had taken the map and the shard that Dhegdheer had given her, shoved them into Khadra’s hand and sent the girl out into the desert.

  And now the Queen had woken. Now the dawn was near.

  Dhegdheer walked into the village, between the thatched huts that looked like so much debris blown here by the latest storm. She trudged past a dead tree, so sun-bleached and crooked it was hard to believe it had ever borne leaves. She trudged past the village well and those who slumped there, half alive among the piled corpses, clinging on to a desiccated hope. The dying watched her without passion. Passion here was over and done, and what was one more hallucination? One more famished dream? This hag who tottered by on her staff, plump, toothless, droop-eared and hunched, could not possibly be real. Her strange claws said as much.

  Dhegdheer moved on, forgotten as soon as her shadow passed them.

  Forgotten, she thought, as bitter as a brat’s bladder. Forgotten like all the hambo from the Old Lands…

  Forgotten, but not done.

  Not quite. Not yet.

  In the sandy circle in the middle of Dhuroob, where long ago effigies had burned and tribesmen danced, the old woman paused to take her bearings. Her left ear, the fearful appendage of many folk tales, detecting lost children in the waste, quivered and twitched. But this time she strained to hear magic not youth. A faint humming that she could not place fixed her attention to the ring of huts. She turned, a short, portly compass seeking the right doorway. She made out chanting, a muttered curse, a croaked prayer.

  Ah, there you are, storm stoker…

  She shambled up to the door and struck the corrugated surface with her staff.

  “Woman! Naag!” Her voice clanged along with the noise. “No use skulking in there like a rat. Come out here and face me!”

  The only answer was silence. The wind came up, stirring the dust. A bush rolled by, on its way to nowhere. Faint groans travelled on the breeze.

  Dhegdheer raised her staff again. Her years had not made her patient. Before wood struck iron, the door creaked open. A corpse stood there, bare-breasted and bent, wrinkled like a sheet fallen from a line. Her skull grinned without grinning, her cheekbones sucking in the light. Her braided hair shook in denial. Bones and beads clacked around her neck.

  She clutched her breast at the sight of Dhegdheer.

  “Demon! Why have you come again? What more do you want?”

  Dhegdheer grabbed the woman’s wrist, pushing her back into the hut.

  “Milk and peace, sister. May I come in?”

  “Demon! Dead thing!” The woman pushed back. She was strong for one in the Reaper’s shadow. “I did as you asked. I gave up my daughter. You will n
ever set foot in this house!”

  Dhegdheer shuffled backwards, her long toenails scraping in grit. She stood there a minute, hunched and panting, her eyes two cherry stones set in bark. Then she slipped her scarf off her head and wiped her greasy forehead.

  “You fool, Ayan. Have you no faith? The Queen has risen. The matter is done.”

  Ayan regarded the hag, this creature from folklore stood on her step. Her eyes caught a spark of sunlight. She snatched a mouthful of passing dust.

  “I thought…I dreamed…” She blinked away flies. “My daughter was successful?”

  “Yes. The girl is a beating heart for a ghost. Substance for shadow. Flesh for a dream. Your seed has sprouted wings and lightning.”

  The grin widened, a death mask attempting a look of satisfaction.

  “Then I am pleased. We are saved.”

  “You are dreaming.” Dhegdheer straightened up as much as she was able, flapping her scarf at Ayan. “Your flesh and blood sustains a goddess, but we are not saved yet. And salvation will not come the way you imagine.”

  “What do you mean? Look around you, hag.” Ayan thrust out her arm, a bony sweep that took in the shacks, the empty streets, the withered corn on the rise. “Look at all this dust and death. Once, long ago, this land was green. According to the tales, the rain fell when the Queen wished it. The sun shone at her command. If not for salvation, why would we wake her? You said that the Queen would bring the rains. You said that she would come and—”

  “No. That is not what I said.” A smile crept over the hag’s face. There was cruelty in it, and relief. She no longer had to pretend. “I gave you the map and the shard. I told you where to find the tomb. It was only your hope that said all the rest.”

  Ayan considered this. Despite her undernourished state, her sunken flesh and bony limbs, a spark still gleamed in her. Charms had sustained her where scraps of food could not, and no one had ever thought her unwise.

  Ayan considered. But she was not ready to hear the truth.

  “No. I have seen it in the flames. The Queen has risen, and soon the sky will grow black. Atiya will bring barwaaqo to us. God’s rain.” In such a dry land, it was small wonder the tribes had a word to describe – no, contain, catch like a vessel – the sacred importance of water. The holiness of rain. Ayan trembled and stretched out her neck, daring the hag to challenge her. “I have seen it. A serpent in the sky…”

  Dhegdheer was shaking her head.

  “No,” she said. “You are wrong. All tales have their ending, Ayan. All ages pass. Already the Lore is broken. The Pact has been undone. A new age is dawning. And it has no place for you.”

  Ayan’s grin shrivelled up like the nearby trees.

  “You have tricked me.”

  “I have guided you. For a higher purpose. Like in the old days, earthly tools for earthly ends. Human flesh,” Dhegdheer licked her lips, “to moor the divine.”

  Ayan spoke as though in a trance, the hag’s admission sinking through her shock.

  “The Queen will not come.”

  “The Queen will not come. She flew off into the world to claim her treasures. To awaken them, as we knew she would. Atiya is simply another tool. A door that some would open. Some would even defy the gods.”

  “Who would dare?”

  “Look into your fire again, Ayan. Tell me what some would not dare. Tell me where they draw the line on power. Tell me what quenches their thirst for control.”

  “No,” Ayan said. Her twig-like fingers trembled around her throat. “Khadra. My daughter. This cannot be.”

  “You will never see your daughter again. Not in this world, woman.”

  And even in this arid place, a little water flowed. The hag looked away from Ayan’s tears, her grizzled lips uncomfortably twisted.

  “You should have sought counsel when you had the chance. Instead, you placed your faith in monsters.”

  “Since when did the elders listen to a woman? A woman prattling about old fireside tales?” If Ayan could have mustered spit, she would have speckled the ground. “Besides, the elders are gone. Gone or dead. You caught me between the lion and the cobra, blinded by despair. Now you tell me my choice was for nothing, when you promised us a storm.”

  “Oh, a storm is coming. But it is not the one that you brewed.”

  Wind gusted in from the waste. It carried a strange mechanical drone, a hum in the air growing louder. Dhegdheer paid it no mind. She watched the woman, savouring her pain. Ayan put her head in her hands, mourning the loss of her child, the trap into which she had fallen. The beads around her neck shook with her sobs.

  “What is done is done.” For the first time in years, Dhegdheer tasted triumph. “The bones cast. The fire lit. Soon I might feast again, as I once did.”

  “Eater of children!” Ayan looked up, rage burning through her sorrow. “Liar! Bitch!”

  “Shout all you like. Three days from now, the sun grows dark and casts a shadow across the land. A shadow in which we all stand.”

  “Why have you come here, hag? Did you come all this way just to crow?”

  “No,” Dhegdheer said, and then her knife was in her hand. It was an old blade, and a trusty one, the edge black with dried blood. “Tongues mean tales and secrets stay secret in silence. Other eyes watch, woman. Other eyes see. No one must live to tell of the tomb. No one must learn of our plan. All tales have their ending, and your part in this one is done.”

  Dhegdheer raised the knife. Leaning on her staff, she lurched toward Ayan. The woman stumbled backwards, her hands raised, her throat too dry to vent a scream.

  The wind gusted, stronger than before. The droning sound filled the air. The corn shook like a sack of shells, and rags over windows set to flapping, pots and pans rattling like bells. Straw flew from thatched rooftops, whirling a yellow dance. Bricks tumbled from the pocked village wall, with its bullet holes like poems of war. All those battles had won was dust, and the same dust rose up now – a phantom army bombarding the village.

  Both women, human and otherwise, scuttled in retreat. The sun rolled in frantic clouds. Swords chopped at the flailing sky. Ayan yelled and Dhegdheer looked up, scowling at the intrusion. And Huur descends upon us! Even as the hag thought it, she realised she was wrong. This was no giant beak come pecking, no sudden deathly attack. The ruckus above came from the engines of man-made machines.

  Dhegdheer dropped her staff and knife and crouched down beside a wall, joining seamlessly with the shade. Then Long Ear wasn’t there at all. A hooded vulture perched on a window ledge, watching the helicopter land.

  As soon as the craft alighted, soldiers clambered out, bent low under the whirring blades. The craft was black and oddly marked, crossed swords over blank shields. The traditional motif had nothing to do with the UN, the Red Cross, the national army or any of the various factions currently fighting over the country. The soldiers’ uniforms looked unfamiliar, but in the vulture’s eyes they were instantly placed. The soldiers formed a koox, a local division upholding the much-hated Pact. They served the Guild, or the national arm of it. News of the breach in the Lore was spreading, and the hag guessed that the evidence pointed to Ayan. Pointed to her like a loaded gun.

  Dhegdheer was too late.

  The six men circled the doorway, AK-47s held high. Helmets shadowed their faces, their goggles reflecting Ayan’s alarm. She stood there like a charred tree, arms branched out to placate them. Her rags whipped around her like a cloud of bats, her braids thrashing in the wind. Horror and grief slipped from her face, replaced by grudging defeat.

  Oh storm stoker. Dhegdheer sheltered her head with her wings. Curse your human luck!

  One of the soldiers stepped forward, a captain by the look of him. He threw something at Ayan’s feet, a small ragged object. A little bag of grey fur. When the bag struck the sand, a shiny object fell out of it, a cylindrical shard of black rock, ringed by arcane symbols.

  The captain did not question her identity. The beads and the bones around A
yan’s neck betrayed her magical dabbling, and the fact that she was standing here, alive in a village that was mostly a grave, clearly seemed proof enough.

  “Mimsaab,” said the captain, his voice muffled by the steady whoop whoop of the helicopter blades. “You are under arrest. You must come with us at once.”

  “On whose authority? I answer to Eebe alone.”

  “Don’t make this difficult. The Lore reaches even here. You have meddled with the Pact and roused one from the Sleep. You have pried into private matters and are therefore subject to our judgement.”

  “What matters?” But Ayan knew full well. “I acted purely in the interests of—”

  “Destiny,” the man said simply. “Yes. We know.”

  “Necessity,” Ayan countered, and in that flyblown, barren place, she crossed her arms and glared to rival the sun. “Do you see a choice lying around here somewhere?”

  The man ignored her. He raised an arm over his head and made a rotor out of his hand. In one fluid, practised manoeuvre, the soldiers grabbed Ayan and dragged her between the huts, bundling her into the waiting craft. Like a snub-nosed bird, the helicopter took once more to the skies, shitting smoke and dust.

  Dhegdheer watched the craft dwindle overhead. Then she screeched in dismay. The woman escapes. She looked around her, smelling rot and ruin, and was surprised to find she had lost her appetite.

  The vulture flapped into the air, following the helicopter north.

  And the sands whispered mugdi, darkness.

  The sands whispered kaw.

  Death.

  ELEVEN

  The dreams of dragons are deep and dark, filled with the sound and fury of ages. Unlike human dreams, which stem from daily life, fragments culled from conversations, strangers glimpsed in smoky bars, car crashes, radios and headlines. Humans shape fear and desire into myriad chimera, brief and flickering in the mind’s eye. They dream quick. They dream bright. As quick and bright as their fleeting lives.