The Gate of fire ooe-2

by Thomas Harlan

  Jalal and Shadin were as solid as ever, their weatherworn, scarred faces at rest. The brothers had seen armies come and go, fighting in a hundred wars around the rim of the world. He supposed they had been born in some dusty frontier town-Rome's frontier? Persia's?-it did not matter. They had sworn themselves to him in the ruin of Palmyra and had not left his side since. Jalal looked back, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a hidden smile. The bowman had never been a general before and found that it suited him. Shadin nodded, too. The hulking swordsman would do whatever the situation demanded.

  Uri was another matter. The Ben-Sarid had always found Mekkah a hostile place because they lived apart with their own traditions, laws, and God. It must grate upon the proud chief to see his tribesmen subsumed into the Army of the Companions. The lean, dark man had the bearing of a prince. Was Mohammed his king, then? Mohammed lifted his chin in question, catching his boyhood friend's eyes. Uri shrugged and then nodded. Mohammed made a mental note to talk to Uri later, alone, to see what troubled his mind.

  The Quraysh turned back to Khalid and nodded slightly himself. The addition of five thousand fresh troops was welcome, even though most of the men who had followed the youth from the south were sailors. Then there was the matter of horses or camels for them-they had brought only a few hundred in their ships. The rest would have to walk. The Lord of the Wasteland had blessed them, though, for the capture of the Persian armory in San'a had netted them a full hundred suits of the lamellar mail favored by the Sassanid knights. The Sahaba now counted nearly eight hundred fully armored horsemen among their number.

  "Well met, then, young Al'Walid. We had been waiting for the next merchant convoy to come into the trap, but now that you are here, we will move north."

  Mohammed unrolled a map inked on a scroll of parchment. It had been part of the spoils of the governor's house. Spidery lines and crabbed little writing in the Imperial script showed the land between Leuke Kome at the southern end of the map all the way to the highlands of Nabatea and beyond, up into the Decapolis on the east and Judaea on the west. Mohammed traced a line overland from the port along the narrow arm of the sea that ran up to Aelana. "Our first march must be to follow the garrison road to the Roman port of Aelana, here at the southern end of Wadi Arabah. My intent is this, to make a strong raid into the Nabatean heartland, here beyond their capital at Petra, and see what forces have returned to the area."

  He looked up, his face grim. The singing voice that had first come to him on the mountaintop urged him to all speed, but he knew that he had to temper that with caution. He did not have an army of jinn at his disposal.

  "All of the Imperial Legions were stripped out of the entire Judean coast last year and sent into the far north to fight the Persians. The armies of Nabatea, Palmyra, and the cities of the Decapolis were smashed at Emesa and then ground to bits in the siege of Palmyra. If luck holds, there will be little to prevent us from ranging far and wide, unhindered."

  Jalal raised an eyebrow, his own eyes straying over the map.

  "And our destination, Lord Mohammed? We can strike as we please with this force, but the changes you have made and the training we undertake at your direction-these things indicate that you have more in mind than a simple raid."

  Mohammed smiled grimly. If the singing voice in his mind did not fill him with surety, he would have turned aside from his course as a sure road to death and bleached bones beside some desert road.

  "Our first destination is here." His forefinger marked the distance from the symbol that represented Petra to the north and east, to a square marked in red squatting at the center of the Decapolis. "The great Legion encampment at Lejjun. If memory serves, there is a great armory there and, more to my liking, a store of heavy siege equipment: rams, disassembled towers, ballistae, all kinds of artillery. Enough for two full Legions."

  The Arab generals raised their heads at this. The use of such equipment was known to all of them, but it was not the way of the tribes to spend effort against the walls of cities and fortresses. That was Rome's game, and its great strength. The desert peoples came and went like the wind, taking what they would and then retiring in the face of the plodding Legion. A siege? That was not in their blood.

  "What city?" Khalid leaned forward, his face filled with eagerness.

  "You will see," Mohammed muttered, looking down at the map. It was a long way to go to reach the great Legion camp, and anything could happen between here and there. "But there is little time…"

  "Mylord, if that is so, then let me take our fleet and some reliable men." Khalid's eyes were ablaze with his eagerness. His thin, well-manicured finger stabbed at the map. "While you advance along the coastal road, let me land at Aelana-even as I planned to land here today. By the time the Sahaba reach the port, it will be in our hands."

  Mohammed grimaced and opened his mouth to refute the boy's plan, but Jalal was leaning over the map, too, and there was a gleam in his eye.

  "Mylord," the thick-shouldered Tanukh said, "we can send the infantry by sea with all of the heavy supplies in the ships. Then we won't have to drag them across a hundred miles of desert and badlands. Wagons, too, if there is space in these fat-bellied coasters…"

  Then Mohammed did smile.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Island of Thira

  Groaning in pain, her limbs loose with exhaustion and trembling, Shirin flopped down on the bare cot that served as her bed. A thin cotton blanket lay across the pallet, and it possessed a prickly straw mattress that never failed to stab her in the back when she was trying to sleep. The dormitories for the ephebe of the Temple of the Huntress were neither gracious nor comfortable. One of the older sisters had mentioned in passing that the dormitory was one of the original caverns hewn from the rock of the island by the first Sisters. To Shirin's eye, they had not been improved since that time. She knew from experience that the higher chambers, cut into the cliffs above the lagoon, were both inviting and well furnished. The student dormitories, however, were not. She lay on her back, a little twisted to the side to avoid the worst of the prickles, and stared at the rough, gray ceiling in a daze.

  It was the end of another day of the backbreaking torture that comprised their physical conditioning. Unfortunately for her bruised and tortured muscles it was not the classical Persian gymnasium, filled with a lot of baths, massages, light sparring with a blunted spear or sword, recitations of epic lays by notable poets, or even ignoble lays conducted by sweaty would-be playwrights in the back of the towel room. It was hard work, harder than the late fall hunt or the exercises that Thyatis had put her through on the long trip by sea around Arabia. Shirin lay still, trying to keep the muscles on the insides of her thighs from seizing up due to sheer fatigue. Worse, the Princess had thought that she had been in good shape when she had arrived on the island.

  Someone touched the bottom of her foot, and she blinked awake. She had not realized that she had fallen asleep. The dim radiance from the high circular windows in the roof of the hall had gone, leaving only the pale guttering flame of a torch by the door. Her cot flexed as someone sat down next to her.

  Shirin's nostrils flared, and she knew that it was the Gothic girl, Claudia. Even in the spare confines of the dormitory, the willowy blonde managed to find some kind of sweet scent for her hair. It might be jasmine or juniper rosin. There was a touch on her arm.

  "Shi? Are you awake?"

  "Yes," hissed the Princess, suddenly feeling the throb of her upper arms and the insides of her wrists. A four-hour stint with the wooden man left the muscles of her arms like jelly. "What time is it?"

  "After dinner," Claudia answered with a smile in her voice. "I brought you some. Cook was not pleased, but I told her you were studying extra hard in the bibliotheca, and she relented."

  Shirin levered herself up and wedged her back against the smooth stone wall of the cavern. Claudia put a wooden bowl in her hands-it was still warm and smelled faintly of fish. Shirin wrinkled up her nose. The diet
of everyone on the island was, not surprisingly, mostly fish. The dark blue seas around Thira yielded an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes of fish-but it was all still fish. Shirin had never really liked fish. She took the cover off the bowl and put it aside. The warm, tart smell of fish stew assailed her nostrils and she sighed, picking up the spoon. At least there was a pickle.

  After she was done, Claudia took the bowl and spoon away. The Gothic girl had sat quietly on the end of Shirin's bed the whole time, which Shirin thought was a little odd, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to the barbarian woman. Shirin flexed her fingers, feeling the tremor in her muscles. It was a bad day, she thought sourly, when even your fingertips were sore.

  "Shi? Is it true what they say about you?"

  Shirin folded her legs under her as she had seen Lady Mikele do. It was more comfortable for sitting than squatting was. "What is true? And who are they?" Inwardly Shirin shook her head in dismay. The gossip in the Palace of Birds in Ctesiphon had flown faster than a shrike; why should the temple be any different?

  "The older girls-the ones who are about to go out into the world-they say that you are a princess, that you were married to an emperor. Is that true?" The Gothic girl's voice was tinged with a little awe and a little envy.

  Unseen in the dark, Shirin rolled her dark brown eyes. Oh dear, she thought, some things never change… "I will answer your question," she said with asperity, "if you will answer some of mine."

  "Oh, of course!" Claudia clapped her hands together in delight. Shirin gritted her teeth.

  "Very well," the Khazar woman said, "I was a princess and I was married to an emperor and I did live in a great palace in a rich and lovely city far away. It was like a dream, but eventually I woke up."

  "Oh, no… did something bad happen?"

  Shirin nodded in the darkness, though she wasn't sure that the Gothic girl could see her. "Ah, now, it's my turn to ask a question. You've been here longer than I-when can we leave this place?"

  – |Shirin took two paces, her back stiff with repressed rage, turned, and then took two more back. The cell was not large, only big enough for a woven reed mat on the floor, a bed no larger than Shirin's own cot, and a folding screen made of pale white paper painted with delicate images of birds and a mountain shrouded in clouds. An oil lamp made from a ceramic bowl and a wick provided a wan yellow light.

  "This is insane. I will not stay here on this fish-stinking island for another four years before I am allowed to see my children." The Khazar woman's voice slid unerringly upward in scale, trembling toward a scream of rage.

  "That is the rule and the law that binds the ephebe once they have sworn themselves to the service of the Goddess." Mikele's voice was quiet and calm, with only a hint of the lilting accent that normally colored her speech. "You have sworn yourself to her service-before the Matron, no less."

  Shirin spun savagely on her heel. She wanted very much to smash her fist into the calm, round face of her teacher, but raw animal instinct held her back. Her training had progressed well, but there was no way that she could face the supple skill of the master with her mind clouded with rage. The result would be painful and quick. "I will not abandon my children," she bit out between clenched teeth. "I will not come back to them after four years denned on this island to find them fully grown and looking upon me with strangers' eyes."

  Mikele nodded her head, letting the long wave of her unbound black hair fall over her shoulder. She had been combing her hair when Shirin had barged into her room. The Chin woman was sitting on the bed, her legs crossed under her, with a mother-of-pearl comb in one hand. Her hair was very long, reaching well past her waist. During the day, on the training floor of the gymnasium, she kept it bound up and held in place by long silver pins.

  "If you go out now," Mikele said in an infuriatingly calm voice, "you will place yourself and your children in greater danger. This is why Thyatis brought you to this place."

  "She brought me here to keep me safe!" Shirin's fists clenched hard, the knuckles whitening. "I am mewed up here for my safety? For my children's safety? Everything is for safety's sake!"

  Shirin bit her knuckle, her fine white teeth digging into the flesh.

  "I traded one prison for another, one with harder beds and worse food…" Her voice was a harsh whisper.

  Mikele stood, unfolding gracefully from sitting to standing like a crane dipping toward the water. "You are not here to be safe," she said. Her hands gathered her hair and pulled it behind her head. "There is no safety in this place, or any other. Remember that, Shirin. Thyatis brought you here to be trained, so that you could go about in the world with open eyes."

  "That is not what she said," Shirin muttered in a petulant tone. "She said that I would be safe here."

  Mikele nodded again, her quick hands braiding her hair and arranging it. "Thyatis loves you and wishes to keep you from harm. She is a sweet girl, but she is still naive in the ways of the world. Hiding you here will only delay the attentions of these Kings. This is a time for you-and it will prove little enough, even if you stay here the full term of years-to find some focus."

  Shirin hung her head. She had not thought about the agents of the Eastern Emperor that were still, doubtless, watching and listening in the eastern ports and cities, waiting for news of her to come to their ears. Her body and blood were the prize for these Emperors, and if she were found, her children would be forfeit.

  "While you and your children are apart," Mikele said, seeing Shirin's thought like a cloud in a clear sky, "each of you are anonymous. They could be any four youngsters, you any woman. But if you are found together, there will be greater danger. If you stay here, you will learn how to deal with that danger."

  The Khazar woman looked up, meeting the older woman's eyes. Fury burned in them. "I am not a prize," she said in a flat voice. "I refuse to be a bauble passed from hand to hand. I will find my children and take them out of the Empire, beyond the reach of Theodore's agents."

  "And Thyatis?" Mikele cocked her head to one side, her calm brown eyes fixed on Shirin. "What of her?"

  Shirin shook her head and stood, her full lips compressed into a tight line. "Thyatis can take care of herself. If she wants to come with me, we will be together. Otherwise, I will find someone else-someone who treats me as an equal rather than as a pretty necklace to be put away in a lock-box until festival day."

  Mikele turned up the sleeves of the long, roomy shirt that she wore. Her wrists were graceful and slim, though her grip was strong enough to match any man. A lacework of tiny white scars marked the insides of her wrists and arms.

  "If you leave without the permission of the Matron," Mikele said softly, "the Sisters will turn their backs on you. You will not have their help or guidance. If you leave now, before you have completed the training, you will not be fully awake or aware. You will continue to move in a world of shadows."

  Shirin shook her head. The loneliness in her heart and the longing to see her children again, to feel their arms wrapped around her neck in a hug, to see them laughing, was far stronger than the teacher's warning.

  "My children are more important than this training. They are more important than your sisterhood."

  Mikele arched an eyebrow at the spite in the words, but she said nothing as Shirin stalked out. When the Khazar woman was gone, Mikele leaned over and snuffed the lamp wick with her thumb and forefinger. She sat in the darkness, her breathing steady and even, eyes closed while she waited for the dawn.

  – |Surf boomed against the cliff, sending foam rocketing into the air. It fell in a sparkling mist on the black rocks, making them shine and glisten. Shirin, her hair bundled up under a straw hat, clung to the cliff face, feeling it tremble with each blow of the waves. Her tunic was soaked with spray, clinging to her like a skin. In the stiff wind it was cold on her flesh. A hundred feet above her, the top of the cliff leaned out over the precipice, held together by a verge of fat-leafed shrubs and a scrawny tree. Below her, the sea thudd
ed against the walls of Thira, surging with enormous power in its blue-green depths. Shirin grimaced, feeling her toehold slowly slipping as seawater flung up from the wave tops pooled around the toe of her boot.

  She reached out and snared the lip of a jutting piece of stone. The cliffs were old lava, fused by the terrible heat in the core of the ancient mountain. They were pocked with air bubbles and cavities. Some of them were big enough for a man to stand up in. Shirin got a good grip, though the edge of the lip was sharp and it bit into her palm. Putting her weight on the handhold, she swung forward, letting her foot slip from the toehold. Her boot found another. Slowly, she inched down the face of the cliff.

  Waves hammered at the shore, billowing white with foam. Ahead of her, though, there was a slick glassy section of water that lapped at the foot of the black cliffs. Pillars of twisted black flint rose up in the sea before it, breaking the force of the waves. A boat could go out from the shore there and make it to the open sea without being smashed into kindling on the reefs. Shirin was sure of it; she had seen it with her own eyes.

  – |Following her midnight dispute with Mikele, Shirin had begun to pay attention to the other students and teachers. After two weeks of watching, she had determined that there were 437 women living in the confines of the island. The kitchens made fish stew everyday, too, and only rarely lamb or venison. Despite that, there did not seem to be any fishing boats or dorys in the harbor caves around the lagoon. There were two more of the light galleys and a sturdy hulled merchantman with a sail and mast that could be taken down, but nothing that passed for a ketch.