Conflagration

by Mick Farren

  Jesamine had brought a concubine’s wisdom to the relationship and had taught Argo the tricks of the body and the boudoir. At first, she had worried that her hard-learned expertise would condemn her in his eyes as nothing more than a well-trained slut with a deep bag of tricks, but, to her relief, he had responded with an amazed and boyish delight. Argo had provided a safe midpoint between Jesamine and Albany. He knew all about the dehumanization of Mosul rule, and the shameful compromises needed to survive, but he was also from the Americas and life in Albany was not so very different from his life in Virginia before the invasion. Argo had committed some of the natural gaffes of a country-boy-come-to-town, but he adapted with alarming speed and, although gaps of class would sometimes show, he got along well with the mindless young officers who flocked to Cordelia like moths to a flame, and could hold up his end in their endless conversations about horses, dogs, guns, and women, and also with their seemingly endless drinking.

  It had, in fact, been Jesamine who had introduce Argo to the refuge of alcohol, and he had taken to it like the duck in the adage, and drank increasingly more as they were caught up and carried along by the circus of notoriety. The start of their training had, of course, changed everything. They had all known it was going to be that way. They had not been taken to the City of Albany merely to become just a social sideshow. They had been tested in paranormal combat, and although they had prevailed, they knew an infinity of learning was ahead of them. What Jesamine had called the “honeymoon” had been exactly that, a brief respite of vapidity from their deep and dangerous role in the war. And Argo had been part of that honeymoon. Both T’saya and Yancey Slide had made it clear on the very first day. The vibrant sexual energy that played such a part in the linking power of The Four was not going to be put at risk by any off-duty romance. She might possibly have pined for Argo had she been allowed the time, but finishing each day physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted left no room for lovelorn distraction.

  Early in training Jesamine had learned that not even Yancey Slide totally understood exactly what The Four were, or how their powers really functioned. He, as much as any of them, was grappling with something new and unfathomable. Of course, by the same token, no one knew exactly what Slide was. T’saya was human enough, although the old woman from deep and mysterious Africa had delved deeper into the other realities than all but a few. She called herself a dream-teller and a dream-weaver, but that was not even the half of it. Slide, on the other hand, was impenetrable, incomprehensible, and supposedly inhuman. Not even T’saya was willing, and maybe not able, to explain Yancey Slide, if asked, and Slide always and absolutely refused to define himself. Just one time, the skeletally thin figure had taken the perpetual cheroot from his mouth and told her “I am a creature with plenty of time, my dear. I’m damned for eternity.” Jesamine had then asked him if had ever been a living man. He had merely made an unworldly gesture, and laughed his most hollow and sepulchral laugh. “Do I look like a living man?” Some claimed that he was a demon, but Jesamine considered that word too trite and easy. Argo had seen him take a fatal bullet and rise from the dead, and all of them had witnessed the non-human lapses, when his mind seem to vacate his body and go elsewhere, and heard him speak briefly in some unrecognizable tongue, as if confused as to where or when he had returned. Maybe T’saya had come closest to the truth when she described him as a being who existed in more than one reality at once, but that had only prompted Jesamine to wonder why, when The Four went to war in the Other Place, Slide was never there with them.

  During the long weeks of winter training, Jesamine had seen landscapes and encountered entities that had filled her with an awe beyond the power of words. She also had seen sights of such deep and unrelenting horror, her mind revolted at their recall. The highest point had been the trip they had all taken into the wild interior to the Secret Lodge of the Ohio. This aboriginal excursion had brought The Four to new plateaus of paranormal fear and ecstasy, and also had shown her there was far more to the Americas than just the East Coast and its invaders and immigrants from Europe and Africa. Although Jesamine was under no illusion that these original Americans were not without their own share of conflicts, she immediately sensed that the Ohio and the other tribes did not have the same ravening and all-consuming madness of the Mosul, and also didn’t share the men of Albany’s belief that everything in the world had been solely provided for their arrogant and unremitting exploitation. When Jesamine had first come to the Great Settlement of the Ohio, she had felt as though she was somehow coming home. The mountain village where she had spent her childhood could not have been more different from the Ohio’s winter quarters. Her first home had been a place of harsh sunlight, reflected from the white walls of the conical huts, softened only by the dry, blowing dust, but Jesamine’s people had also lived close to the earth, with a very basic understanding of their place in nature. In the close warmth of the Ohio’s bison-hide lodges, beside the frozen lake, and against the background landscape of virgin, pine-covered hills, the chill air seemed cleaner, and the people more in touch with the unseen that constantly surrounded them.

  The time that Jesamine had spent with the Ohio, especially the short day and two long nights on the glacial mountainside, with its coyote apparitions, eagle visions, and sheets of blue-white lightning flashing from other realities, had been quite enough to convince her that the aboriginal tribes were centuries in advance of anyone in Albany in their knowledge of other realities, and maybe knew more of such things than even the Mosul’s High Zhaithan Quadaron-Ahrach, or his exceptionally depraved and evil sister, Her Grand Eminence Jeakqual-Ahrach. Jesamine had also felt warmed by the open generosity of the Ohio, and how they had made her welcome beside their fires, and had shared all that was theirs with her, both material and spiritual.

  Thus it was, months later, when she heard that a detachment of Ohio warriors would be joining the expedition south, she had become determined to reacquaint herself with the native people, but at the time, she had never suspected just how deep that reacquaintance would go. She had met Magachee on the second day of the advance into Virginia. Jesamine had been resting her horse, leading it at a slow walk, and had stopped as a column of Ohio rode past. Out of nowhere, a voice had called to her. “Jesamine!”

  Jesamine had turned, and a young woman quickly dismounted and waited for her to catch up. She was dressed in white buckskins, and her face and arms were painted with the Ohio symbols of both war and ecstasy. Jesamine had not recognized the girl, but she already seemed to know this and quickly introduced herself. “I am called Magachee. We met just once. That night when the men were sent away, and the women were together.”

  Jesamine remembered the night. It had been an experience too intense to forget. “I’m sorry. There were a great many of you and only one of me.”

  Magachee had laughed. “I don’t expect you to remember me. We only spoke briefly. I was just happy to see you.”

  “You are traveling with the warriors?”

  Magachee’s smile fractionally faded. “Among the Ohio, we women fight alongside the men, if we so chose.”

  She saw Jesamine’s confusion, and quickly continued. “I ride beside a brave named Oonanchek.”

  “Oonanchek?”

  “You must come with me and meet him.”

  Jesamine hesitated, unsure of how to answer. “I…”

  “You have duties?”

  “No, not right now.”

  “Then come.”

  As they and their mounts walked side by side, some Albany infantrymen had leaned on their muskets, and regarded her with concealed smirks. Jesamine had scowled. “They never let me forget that I was previously a slave and concubine.”

  Magachee had halted and looked at her with a patient calm. “Our energies are needed to fight our enemy, not to deal with the complexities of our supposed friends.”

  In that instant, a bond of trust had been formed, but, even after they had talked a while longer about how dislocate
d Jesamine felt, Magachee’s offer came straight out of the blue. “Would be easier for you if you traveled with us?”

  The idea took her completely by surprise. “With you? With the Ohio?”

  “The army of Albany has regulations against such a thing?”

  “Not that I know of. They have a lot of regulations, though.”

  “Your uniform proclaims you a major?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you have no commander to forbid it?”

  “Not directly.”

  “So?”

  “If I traveled with the Ohio, it would confirm everything the bastards already believe about me; that I am a former slave and probably a whore.”

  “If they believe that already, what do you have to lose?”

  Jesamine hesitated. “But how would the Ohio react to such a thing?”

  “The Ohio do not judge.”

  “And what would Oonanchek think about me traveling with you?”

  Magachee had shrugged, but her eyes were dark and knowing. “We can only ask him.”

  And with that, she had swung herself back onto her pony, indicating that Jesamine do the same. When they found him, Oonanchek turned out to be a tall warrior with strong, confident features, and his long hair tied back in the beaded band of a mystic adept. Far from raising objection to Magachee taking in a stranger, he almost seemed to be expecting her. “You are Jesamine.”

  “And you are Oonanchek.”

  “And now we travel together.”

  That first night with her newfound Ohio companions had seemed like a cocoon of black velvet studded with fires and stars. Slow drums had been beating, and voices that sang with rich ululations helped drown out the raucous barrack ballads of the Albany soldiers. A pipe had been passed, and Jesamine had used her clout as a major to send for a bottle of Albany applejack. Perhaps Jesamine had loosened her inhibitions a fraction too much, or maybe what happened next was somehow preordained, but the conversation had become more intimate and self-revealing. Jesamine had told Oonanchek and Magachee much about her past, and the shame that she carried with her. She had told them how she missed Argo, and how it had hurt to give him up. She had told them of the strange dreams she’d been having since they had crossed the Potomac and come south, and of the two shining white figures who had walked in those dreams. She had even admitted that the figures scared her, and at that point, Magachee had placed a firm but gentle hand on Jesamine’s forearm. “Dreams may be warnings, but they are to be welcomed, not feared.”

  A sudden electric tingle had passed from Magachee’s hand to Jesamine’s arm and then suffused through her whole body causing her to gasp and then stare. “Are … you and Oonanchek these figures?”

  Magachee had smiled and shaken her head. “We are not in your dreams. We are two others.”

  “Others?”

  Magachee had said nothing. She had simply taken Jesamine by the hand and raised her to her feet. Then Magachee’s hands had gone to the fastening of her deerskins, and, in what had seemed like a single simple motion, the clothing had fallen with a whisper, so she stood naked and painted, facing Jesamine. In the instant, Jesamine had been gripped by a need greater than herself. As Oonanchek had remained seated, cross-legged on the other side of the fire, watching but expressionless, she had slowly unfastened the buttons of her Ranger tunic, and when she, too, was unveiled to the night, Magachee had taken her in her arms and, together, they had sunk down to the dew-damp grass. Jesamine had thrown back her head and groaned as Magachee had crouched over her, her lips brushing Jesamine’s body. Now a second, more powerful shock of contact left her breathless, and she heard her own voice, as if from a distance, sobbing in pleasure at the touch that was so different from the rough hands of men.

  “Ooooooooh…”

  And that was how it had all started. At some moment in the ecstatic darkness, she had opened her eyes to see Oonanchek standing over them, then he, too, had knelt to join them. And that had been the way of it for all of the subsequent days. Jesamine had traveled with the Ohio, only joining the ranks of Albany when duty required her. She knew that many were scandalized by her behavior, but she refused to care. While the sun was up, she rode, a solitary dark green Ranger, among the deerskins, furs, and feathers, the spears and muskets, and the flowing manes of their ponies. After dark, she, Magachee, and Oonanchek communed with spirits and with each other, exploring all of the possibilities of their minds and bodies, frequently under the influence of a quite extraordinary range of aboriginal intoxicants. She had laughed and she had moaned, she had groaned and shamelessly screamed as she had been taken to places unvisited even by The Four. No doubt she was the talk of the mess; the Mosul concubine who had been given a commission and an unprecedented promotion was now spending her off-duty in a three-way liaison with two savages. What her fellow officers would never grasp, as they swilled their gin and sniggered, was that it went far beyond any excursion into the unconventional. Magachee, Jesamine, and Oonanchek were what the Ohio called a takla, a confluence of minds, and among all the natives of America, it was viewed as a rare and special occurrence, and a source of great power for all those involved. Obviously The Four was Jesamine’s principal takla; serious, unbreakable, and daunting, and Magachee and Oonanchek totally respected this. What they had between the three of them was something entirely different, although, more than once, Jesamine had speculated that the two apparently separate takla might be related, and wondered if the interlude among the Ohio was some deliberately engineered relief from the awful responsibility of being one of The Four, or an auxiliary source of the strength to help her maintain her sanity. If it was such a seemingly fortuitous connection, how had it come about? Had it been caused to happen, and, if so, by whom or what? She had been taught by T’saya never to question what could not be explained. If it worked, one should simply accept it. Oonanchek had said the same thing. The interlude had brought all three of them a combination of both peace and ecstatic excitement, and her dreams of the white figures had completely ceased. Jesamine had been happy, and she accepted her happiness as a great if unexplainable gift.

  But now the interlude was ending. The gift was spent. In the tiny tent that Oonanchek had raised for the ritual of severance, the cut cord that was the symbol of their too-brief intimacy lay on the blanket in front of Jesamine, like something that had once lived but was now dead.

  “You are free, Jesamine; free to return to your companions, to The Four, to your true takla.”

  Magachee held Jesamine from behind, cradling and comforting her, stroking her hair, like a mother about to send a child out into the world. Oonanchek brought Jesamine’s uniform. Still dizzy from the smoke, she shook her head, then rose, still free and naked. Magachee leaned forward and kissed her thigh one last time. She took the uniform from Oonanchek. A small leather medicine bag lay on top of the carefully folded garments. She looked questioningly at him and he smiled. “A final gift. A part of us to take with you. And the summons for the Quodoshka.”

  Jesamine frowned. “I have nothing to give to you in return.”

  “You have given and continue to give.”

  “But…”

  “We need speak no more of it.”

  Jesamine nodded and slowly started to dress. Putting on the uniform felt too much like strapping on armor for a coming and terrible fight.

  RAPHAEL

  A lumbering fighting machine clanked and rumbled past, and his horse snorted and attempted to shy. Raphael Vega brought the animal under control, but with some difficulty. He had only been riding since he had arrived in Albany, and his horsemanship was still little more than rudimentary. The steam-driven mechanical monster was one of the older models, slower and less efficient than the sleeker and more compact petroleum-driven machines that had been supplied to Albany by the Norse Union. Smoke billowed from its stack, oil leaked like black blood from between its welded and riveted plates, and somewhere inside its cramped, iron-gray interior, a sweating crew included a stoker
shoveling coal into a boiler. That even the antiquated should be committed to the field indicated the desperate seriousness with which the coming fight was being treated. A few days earlier, he had heard talk among some of the staff officers. Field Marshal Virgil Dunbar, the Albany supreme commander, was personally leading the push to the south, and his long-term plan was to drive the Mosul all the way back to their original beachhead. Savannah was still the hub and nerve center of the Mosul American conquest, and it was there where they would first be surrounded, then contained. Finally, ringed with hastily constructed launch sites for Norse rocket bombs, they would be blown back into the Northern Ocean. The younger officers were completely optimistic. They had held the Mosul at the Potomac, and saw the coming task one of herding them like sheep for the entire length of the Eastern Seaboard. As far as they were concerned it presented no particular problem.

  The callow captains and junior lieutenants had not noticed Raphael listening or they might not have spoken so freely. Raphael knew they did not trust him. Not only was he one of The Four, and an over-publicized practitioner in the highly suspect paranormal arts, but he had also formerly been a lowly conscript in the Mosul infantry. Just to make matters worse in the eyes of these Albany aristocrats, he was a foreigner. Thus he failed on all levels; by criteria of class, occupation, history, and nationality, he was unacceptable, and yet they had to accept him, because they needed his powers, and also because, when he had been inducted into their army, he had been given the rank of major as a matter of convenience, and so, in the chain of command, he was technically their superior. Raphael also did not share the young staff officers’ view of the war. He knew too much about Mosul discipline and Mosul tenacity to believe the armies of Hassan IX could simply be herded back to Savannah like so many stray sheep. He kept his own council, however, and said nothing. Since he had come to Albany, Raphael had learned the knack of keeping himself to himself.