The Gate of Fire (53 page)

Maslama turned sideways and pushed through the mob. Everyone was standing so quietly that it unnerved him. He gripped the hilt of the sword tighter, feeling the wires that wrapped it dig into his palm. It was unnatural for the air to be so still, for everyone to be so quiet, in a crowd this size. He reached the edge of the Tanukh line and stopped. He was scrupulous to avoid meeting the gaze of any of the northern mercenaries. Up close they seemed very grim and terrible. Their faces were scarred and pitted, showing the echoes of a lifetime of battles.

The young man made to touch his face with his free hand. There was a scar there, too, gained from a falling timber in the Temple of Hubal as it burned. He stopped, wondering if the same bleak expression marked his face. He looked upon the Tanukh, seeing their well-worn weapons and sturdy armor. He felt the weight of his own shirt of mail and the heavy sword at his side.

Thoughts of his father, lying dead in the apse of the temple, roused themselves in his mind.

Mohammed looked around, seeing the lines of temples that surrounded the square, his dark eyes noting the presence of young men and children sitting on the rooftops. Matrons hung from the windows of the houses, their faces pale ovals in the shade. He felt, now that he looked out upon the sea of faces in the crowd, the pressure of their expectation. Here was nearly the whole population of the city, all waiting.

Jalal returned to his side, though some of the Tanukh were bulling their way through the crowd in search of Mohammed's flea-bitten mare. Mohammed jerked his head toward the mob of people beyond the grim line of the Tanukh and the other Sahaba.

"Are they waiting for me?"

Jalal nodded, shading his eyes with a thick-callused hand. "They have been coming for days. Many have heard that you listen to the voice of God on the mountaintop. Many have heard that you have torn down the temples of the sacred precincts and have driven out the priests. They are curious."

Frowning again, Mohammed began pacing, walking along the line of the Tanukh, looking over their armored shoulders into the eyes of the men and women waiting in the crowd. He saw men both rich and poor. Craftsmen, shepherds, potters, merchants, priests, scholars—and women and children. In this manner, he passed again around the old house and the stone. When he returned to the place just opposite the stone, he saw that the rangy, raw-boned mare was waiting. He swung up into the saddle with the ease of long practice.

In his heart, he heard the voice speaking, and he opened his mouth to let the words go forth.

"It was told to me that a band of jinn listened to the revelation of the god who speaks from the clear air." Mohammed pitched his voice to carry, sitting astride the mare. It was so quiet in the square that he was sure that many, perhaps all, could hear him. "They listened and then they said, 'We have been given guidance to the right path. We believed in this and henceforth we serve none but the merciful and compassionate one. That power that has taken no consort, begotten no children. We sought this god in the high heavens, and found our way barred by mighty wardens and fiery comets. We sat eavesdropping, but eavesdroppers find comets lying in wait for them. We cannot tell if this bodes evil to those of us who dwell upon the earth or if the great and compassionate Lord intends to guide us.'"

Mohammed paused, thinking that his throat was dry and parched. But it was not. "These jinn said, 'Some of us are righteous, while others are not, each of us follows different ways. We know that we cannot escape from the Lord of the Heavens while on earth, nor can we elude His grasp by flight. When we heard His guidance, we believed in Him and we knew this—he who believes in the merciful God shall fear neither dishonesty nor injustice.'"

While he spoke, his clear, strong voice ringing out over the great crowd, Mohammed slowly circled the old house and the black stone. The mare was content to slowly clop in a wide circle between the old house and the ring of the Tanukh. The great silence remained, so much so that Mohammed could hear the faint echo of his voice coming from the marble facings of the old temples at the edge of the square.

"Some of us who stand here are righteous men and some are not. Those who submit themselves to the way that has been revealed pursue the right path. Those who do wrong—they shall become the fuel of Hell itself."

As he said this, Mohammed shuddered, the brutal vision of Palmyra dying coming before his eyes. Now his throat was dry, and he swallowed hard, gathering his strength to continue. "If men pursue the straight path the Lord of the Wasteland will vouchsafe them abundant rain, and show them the proof of these words. He who pays no heed to the warning of the Compassionate One shall be sternly punished."

Mohammed paused and turned the horse. He stood once more before the black stone. He half turned in the saddle, looking back upon the old house with its smoke-blackened stones. "Temples," he shouted, raising his voice to be sure that all could hear. "Temples are built for God's worship; invoke in them no other god besides Him. When God's servants rise to pray to Him, a multitude will press around them. No one can protect you from God, nor can you find any refuge besides Him."

The mare turned at the nudge of Mohammed's knee, and he rode back to the edge of the crowd. He leaned on the saddle horn and searched the faces of those who pressed close. Some were weeping. Again, he thought of the dead city and the thing that had feasted within its walls. "A scourge is coming. I cannot tell whether the scourge the compassionate and merciful God has promised is imminent, or whether the Lord has set it for a far-off day. He alone has knowledge of what is hidden: His secrets He reveals to no one, save to the prophets He has chosen. He sends down guardians to walk before them and behind them, that He may ascertain if they have, indeed, delivered the messages of the Lord of the Wasteland."

Mohammed paused, meaning to speak, but his throat closed up. He tried to cough, but could not. A whispering buzz rose in his ears, and he suddenly felt his skin crawl with the invisible touch of thousands of insects. The mare reared, and Mohammed, clawing at his arms, fell heavily to the ground. The buzzing in his ears roared louder, drowning out the cries of his men and the shouting of the crowd. The sky darkened, and he tried to stand. A wind whipped across the square, blowing a wall of dust before it. Grit stung his face and eyes.

Jalal was shouting, trying to reach his chieftain's side. The wind held him back.

Mohammed staggered to his feet, standing at the center of the whirlwind. Beyond the rushing wall of air he could see the crowd surging back and forth. Many people had been knocked down and were being trampled. He felt faint, and the roaring sound in his ears was a sharp spike of pain. Enraged at the threat to the people in the plaza, his hand groped at his waist for his sword. It had fallen to the ground, torn from his belt.

He turned toward the blade, his shoulder against the rush of the wind.

A blow smashed into his back and threw him to the ground. Something flowed over him, and there was a scent of ancient dust and withered crops in his nostrils. He rolled, feeling the thick, muscular power that pressed against him. The skin of the thing, all unseen, was scaled and cold like a great serpent. A snarl of rage split his face, and Mohammed struggled, trying to pry the coils from his neck. Scales slid across his face, trying to crush his skull. His fingers clawed at it.

Hot breath washed across his face, stinking like the Pit. Mohammed cried out, feeling the air being crushed from his ribs. The sky cartwheeled above him, spinning, and a gray tunnel closed down his vision. The wind continued to roar, though he could feel his bones crack under the incredible pressure.

"O Lord of the World," he wept, feeling death close at hand. "Deliver your servant..."

Mocking laughter hissed in his ears, and then the pressure around his heart became too great.

Maslama was thrown down by the surge of panic. Men crashed into him, trying to flee the blast of wind that howled forth from the whirlwind. Rocks and small stones lashed the crowd, and they surged back. Maslama rolled under the feet of the stampeding people. Someone kicked him in the side of the head and then fell down, pinning him to the rough cobblestones. A roaring sound filled the air. People were screaming and shouting in fear all around. The young man, gritting his teeth against the pain that stabbed in his temple, surged up, trying to stand.

More men pushed against him, and he fell heavily on one knee. He threw up a mailed arm, fending off the elbows and arms of those running past.

Suddenly they were all gone. The wind buffeted him, and he bent his head against it. The desert robes shielded him from the worst, though his hands—bare and scraped bloody on the ground—were suddenly touched by a chill.

He looked up, one hand down to help him raise up, and saw the old stone house limned by crawling blue flame. A darkness covered the sky, and something titanic and foul was struggling at the center of the plaza. The Tanukh had scattered, leaving behind a drift of bodies. The crowd was pressed back against the walls of the temples, trying to force their way to safety. Beneath the coiling, rugose, tentacular limbs was a figure in a dirty white robe and battered armor, struggling on the ground.

Maslama crawled forward, his heart hammering in his chest.

Red shuddered at the heart of the thing and sparked across the stones of the plaza. A foul stench rolled off it like the odor from a freshly ruptured corpse. Maslama gagged, retching. Something squirmed across the stones toward him. He struggled to pull the sword from its sheath.

There were words—Maslama knew that he had heard them—but though he felt their shape and color and
knew
what they meant as they sounded, ringing clear and true and perfect in the air, he could put no name to them. With them, blooming like the sun suddenly breaking through the clouds on a day of heavy rain, came light. A pure white radiance flooded forth, and Maslama, squinting in the glare, could see that at their center was the figure of the man in the dirty robe.

The thing, the crawling leprous inchoate form that had loomed over the ancient ruin, shuddered and then turned sideways and folded itself up into nothingness. Maslama gaped, his mind shrieking at the impossibility of what it had—dimly—perceived, but then the light touched his face, feather-light, and all horror and pain and suffering was gone. The sword slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground.

All across the square the people—almost driven mad with fear and terror at the power that had protruded into their world—stopped. They turned, like flowers tracking the sun, and the light fell across them. Many cried out in joy, or fell to their knees, or fainted.

Only two men stood unmoved by the power that—briefly—flared into existence before the old house. One turned immediately and walked away into one of the streets of the city. The other raised himself up from the ground and brushed off his cloak. A brace of wain wrights had trampled him in their haste to flee. Outweighing him by five to one, they had won the argument.

The light faded, curling back into the shape of the man lying on the ground.

Khalid al'Walid looked about him, seeing the throng standing stunned in the wake of the efflorescence, and he rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.

"Well," he mused to himself, walking toward the old house and the supine form of the chieftain Mohammed. "This is the truth of the Lord. Let him who will, believe in it, and him who will, deny it."

High above, the sun moved in its courses in a bright blue sky.

The little blond maid, Betia, moved around the room lighting oil lamps. The lamps were set into brass holders shaped like conch shells and painted a light pinkish white. As each lamp flared to life and then settled into a warm glow, the room shrugged off the night. At the end of the room, a pair of double doors opened onto a balcony. Below the balcony the secluded garden at the center of the house lay sleeping. On other nights, the ornamental paper lanterns in the trees would have been lit, but not tonight. Betia returned to the head of the long porphyry table that stood at the center of the room and replaced the candle she had used to light the lamps in its archaic-style Greek candelabrum.

Nikos watched the little Gaul out of the corner of his eye. He was sitting by the window on a chair of painted wicker. The Khazars, despite the presence of couches and chairs, were sitting on the floor in the corner, throwing knucklebones and talking in low voices. Something about the slave had bothered him for some time, but he was just beginning to understand her place and purpose. The girl, who must have been no more than sixteen years old, was in constant attendance upon the Duchess. For all that—for all that he knew that she was an ever-present fixture—the Illyrian had begun to realize it was very difficult to mark her presence. It was more than the casual indifference of a citizen to a slave; that was a habit Nikos had never developed. In his profession it never paid to be unwary or to discount the inoffensive.

Smiling, Nikos realized the girl was very good. She was quiet and graceful. She did not drop things or bump into the edges of tables. She went barefoot nearly all the time and walked quietly.

That which does not draw attention is unseen
. Thyatis' voice drifted in his memory.

Betia placed green enameled bowls of shelled nuts and cut fruit on the tabletop and then departed. Nikos watched her go in interest, suddenly seized by the desire to follow her in his own quiet way and see where she went. But there was no time for that, and he put the thought away for a later time.

She must be
, he thought,
from the island
.

Rubbing the back of his head, feeling the bumps and knots in his skull and remembering each one and how he had gained it in the service of the Empire and then the Duchess, Nikos wondered if he ever dared broach the matter of the island with his employer. No one had ever talked of it directly, or spoken of it aloud in his presence, but Thyatis had been comfortable enough to mention that she had once been on the island. Nikos was sure, from watching the Duchess and her servants, and the masked women who came and went from the secret entrances of the house, that the island must be the fixture of a mystery cult. Nikos had considered poking about, just to see what he could see. He had not. Some things, he thought, were better left undisturbed.