Kindling (Flame of Evil)

by Mick Farren

  As if to reinforce the presence of all the intruding negatives, and to prove that bliss could, at best, be momentary in such a time of conflict, blue-black clouds formed out on the oddly curved horizon of the purple sea. At the same time, a vortex of dust swirled up way down along the imaginary beach. Cordelia and Jesamine could perceive a djinnlike figure moving within the sandstorm, coming in their direction and obviously meaning them no good. The rider in the vortex was the same hunchback that Jesamine had seen on her own in the vision that T’saya had induced, but Cordelia actually knew the name.

  “Quadaron-Ahrach.”

  “Quadaron-Ahrach.”

  “We have to leave this place now.”

  “We have to leave this place now.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  The hunchback in the sandstorm was moving closer.

  “We must.”

  “We must.”

  “Now.”

  “Now.”

  The smell of swamp and bodies and cheap whore’s perfume enveloped them. Cordelia had Kemper’s penis in her mouth, and Jesamine was close by with her tongue lapping his scrotum. His cock was thick and engorged, and, unaware that the women had ever left him, he writhed with unattractive porcine pleasure. Kemper had the fingers of his left hand twisted in Cordelia’s hair and was forcing her to swallow more and more of him. The shock of return to this reality of total debasement was enough to cause her nearly to gag, but much more jarring and unpalatable was the sudden wrenching separation. Cordelia and Jesamine were once more isolated in their individual minds and bodies. A priceless gift had been taken away from them, and all that was left was a memory and the awareness that they somehow must get away from Kemper, and the environment of those like him, so they might conjoin again and explore what was so obviously a vast potential. Jesamine was one step ahead of Cordelia in this. She knew that she had to take Cordelia to T’saya. The old African woman would know what to do. Maybe T’saya could again use the herbs and potions to send them back to the dimension they had so recently fled, and maybe she would have something with which they could defend themselves against the waiting dangers. Quadaron-Ahrach might be the High Zhaithan, and his powers might be legendary, but they, too, had powers, and if they could only learn to use them in what time they might have left, they could carry the fight to him. Back in the Mosul camp, back in Phaall’s bed with the naked and contemptible young lieutenant, it all seemed totally impossible, but they had been to a place where the impossible was the norm. Cordelia raised her head and looked directly at Jesamine, quite as though she was able to read her thoughts. Cordelia would be willing to chance anything. What, after all, did the two of them have to lose?

  ARGO

  “She went down so fast.”

  Slide went on walking, staring straight ahead, and, when he eventually replied, his voice was cold. “That’s often how it is. Death in war proceeds according to its own timetable. Soldiers do not die with hands clutched to their breasts, exclaiming ‘Goddess, they have killed me.’ That only happens in plays.”

  “I’ve never seen a play.”

  “Never?”

  “Of course not. Before the Mosul came, I was too young, and afterwards there were no plays.”

  “Then you have something to look forward to, don’t you?”

  “You think so?”

  “You should hope so.”

  Again they walked in silence. The sunrise had come, and morning was upon them. It was a dangerous time to be traveling in heavily occupied territory, but Slide had explained that they really had no choice. They needed to put as much distance between themselves and the scene of the firefight as they could. The Mosul would be using the bodies and the scarred ground left by the encounter as the obvious central starting point in their search for the Rangers, and, although the enemy was probably unaware that Slide and Argo had been with them, they had no plausible excuse for being who they were, or where they were, and armed into the bargain. If they could not shoot their way out, their capture would be as big a prize as an entire company of Rangers if Slide was recognized. They had, however, found a sunken road leading in the right general direction that afforded them a degree of cover. Overhanging trees guaranteed that they would not be spotted from a distance, and Slide, with his apparently supersensitive hearing, and Argo, with his new but rapidly developing perceptions, had been able to spot other travelers coming in the opposite direction well before they spotted them. Twice already they had crouched in the overgrown ditch that ran along one side of the road, once while a platoon of Mosul infantry had slogged past, moving from one unspecified point to another, dusty and tired but singing an obscene marching song in a dialect so thick that it made the words scarcely recognizable. The second dive for cover had been at the approach of a chain gang of slave laborers, formerly free Virginians, yoked at the neck, linked by leg irons, and guarded by four soldiers and a whip-wielding overseer, unfortunates with shaved heads and emaciated bodies who had absolutely nothing to sing about.

  Slide, after the chain gang had passed and was out of sight, seemed to soften somewhat. It was possible that, in his own way, he was also affected by the death of Bonnie Appleford but had looked beyond his own form of demon grief and finally become aware how heavily the death weighed on Argo’s mind. It seemed as if he were attempting, in his own inhuman way, to offer what comfort he could. “You have to accept that those close to you are going to be killed in action, my boy. It’s an inescapable fact of combat.”

  “How do you simply accept that someone can be there one minute and no longer exist the next?”

  “Did I use the word ‘simply’?”

  “No.”

  “On the battlefield, loss goes with the territory.”

  “She was a soldier, right?”

  Slide nodded. “She was a soldier.”

  “And brave.”

  “I considered her exceedingly courageous.”

  “And she slept with me for the cause?”

  Slide sighed. “Get off it, boy. She slept with you because she so desired. That was her way for as long as I knew her.”

  Argo could not help, however, blurting out a small measure of his grief and confusion. “But did she desire me? Did I mean anything to her? Or did she do it just to fulfill some aborigine’s prophecy?”

  Slide’s face hardened. “This is about her, Argo Weaver, not you. Mourn her, but leave her memory in peace. Don’t dwell upon all the things you wanted to hear from her.”

  Argo shook his head. How could he not dwell on all of the unsaid words? “We hardly even talked.”

  “To be in love in wartime requires a very selective memory and a moratorium on what might have been. Bonnie, if anyone, knew that.”

  Slide stopped and abruptly raised his hand, than signed to Argo to edge to the side of the road. Once in the shadows of the leafy overhang, he sank into a crouch. Argo could sense nothing coming towards them, and frowned. “What?”

  “There’s a river up ahead, and a bridge. I think it may be guarded.”

  “Should we double back?”

  Slide shook his head. “Let’s ease on up a piece and take a look.”

  For some time, the sunken road had been descending a shallow but noticeable incline and, at the same time, becoming gradually less sunken. As they crept quietly forward, it reached a level with the surrounding pasture and then actually ran along a raised embankment to a brick-and-ironwork bridge that crossed a small and meandering river.

  “You sense anyone?”

  Argo concentrated the way he had back at the copse, but this time the answer came to him immediately. The simple but unquestionable fact, but with no accompanying vision. “Two men, under the bridge. In the water, out of sight.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They’re doing something, but I can’t clearly see what.”

  “And?”

  Argo focused again. “And horses, but they’re not with the men. I don’t get it �
�� Wait a minute. The horses are tethered on the other side.”

  Slide grinned dangerously. “Sounds to me like a couple of calvary men taking a dip after a morning’s ride.”

  Argo nodded. “That could be it.”

  “With any luck, they’ll have dropped their drawers on the bank and we’ll catch them taking the waters naked.”

  Argo shook his head. “I can’t tell. They seem close to each other, embracing or something.”

  “So what are we waiting for, Argo Weaver? Let’s take a look. May happen we can steal their horses and ride the rest of the way.”

  Argo blinked. He had become so accustomed to ducking and hiding, he needed a few seconds to make the switch to the idea of taking the initiative, but he still followed Slide as he advanced cautiously up the road. As they approached the bridge, Slide drew his oriental sword and one of his odd, flat pistols, and, when they were just a few yards from the first brick supports, he pointed to two neat bundles of clothes on the grass of the riverbank, topped by carefully folded silk turbans and a pair of highly polished spiked helmets. The word came out of Argo like a gasp. “Zhaithan.”

  “So it would seem. The military elite, if I’m not mistaken. All the more satisfying for us to bring them down.”

  With those words, Slide strolled almost casually to the riverbank. Argo knew it was hardly the time to protest or debate the course of their action, but he had lived so long under the occupation that the idea of even facing two elite Zhaithan terrified him. On the other hand, the current circumstances dictated that he had to follow with his still-unfired carbine at the ready. At the last minute, Slide turned and signaled silently that he wanted no gunfire. The carbine and pistol were for threat only.

  Argo might have been conditioned to fear the Zhaithan, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes. In the shadow of the bridge, and up to their thighs in water, two men in their mid-twenties, one a good deal taller than the other, were holding onto each other in blatant and flagrant sexual delight. Slide all but laughed out loud. “Maybe you didn’t know enough to recognize what they were doing, young Argo.” He raised his voice and spoke to the men in the water. “I believe, gentlemen, the charge is ‘for unlawful carnal knowledge,’ the origin, in fact, of the handy verb ‘to fuck’.”

  Argo did not believe him. Surely the charge would be rendered in Old Mosul, and that would call for a totally different mnemonic. It was hardly the time, though, for such details. Slide again spoke over the sound of the water, pointing his pistol at the same time. “I’m sorry to interrupt the passion, gentlemen, but it would be a good idea if you both separated and raised your hands.”

  The two Zhaithan sprang apart but then quickly recovered from their guilty shock. When they saw that Slide was neither from the Ministry of Virtue nor a superior officer, they stared at him in amazement. “Do you know who we are? You can’t threaten us. Are you quite insane?”

  Slide’s grin broadened. “Insane? Possibly, but I have a loaded pistol, so I can definitely threaten you. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m currently doing. I’m threatening your lives, and also suggesting you take me extremely seriously, sane or not.”

  “What do you want?”

  Slide ignored the question. “Oddly enough, I met my young friend here under the same circumstances, naked and disporting in a stream. Of course, he was with a young woman, but it still seems a bit like history repeating itself.”

  Even naked and under two guns, a Zhaithan could still lack patience, as was proved by the one who made the angry demand. “What do you want of us?”

  Slide gestured with his pistol. “I want you to come out of the water very carefully.” Then he laughed. “But I suppose it would be hard to be anything other than careful, seeing as how you’re both jaybird naked.”

  Under the muzzles of Slide’s pistol and Argo’s carbine, the two Zhaithan waded to the bank with looks of outrage on their faces, something that caused Slide even more amusement. “Considering you young men were just apprehended in a situation that I believe is a hanging offence in your army, you should maybe be thankful to bloody Ignir and equally bloody Aksura that it was just a couple of freebooting guerrillas that caught you. Is it true that a terrible steel device, a kind of expanding phallus, is used for executions in cases like yours?”

  The two Zhaithan reached the bank and climbed it dripping. “What now? Is it money you want?”

  Slide’s smile faded. “Money? What would we do with money? No, my friends, our motives are a little more personal than that. One of you Mosul bastards just killed my friend and this boy’s lover, so you might say what we want is payback.”

  The sweep of the sword took Argo completely by surprise, and the first of the Zhaithan probably never knew what hit him. The blow was not as clean as the one that had felled Bonnie’s killer, and the head did not come completely off. Instead, it dropped to one side, still attached to the crumpling body by a narrow strip of flesh. The second Zhaithan stood as though paralyzed, only making a move to save himself when it was far too late. Slide was already performing a balletic spin, which ended when he ran him clean through. The naked Zhaithan fell to his knees and then toppled and fell as Slide ripped out the steel. He then pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped the blood from the blade, at the same time looking enquiringly at Argo. “You feel better? A life for a life? In fact, two lives?”

  Argo thought about this and shook his head. “No, I don’t feel better. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”

  Slide nodded. “That’s the problem with revenge. It doesn’t really have the desired effect. It doesn’t bring back the fallen.” Suddenly he was brisk and businesslike. “Quickly now. Get into the smaller of those Zhaithan uniforms. And hook up that chainmail thing on the helmet. When it’s in place, it completely hides your face.”

  Argo could think of few things more repugnant than putting on the hated Zhaithan uniform. “I…”

  Slide gestured impatiently. “Yes, yes, it scares the shit out of you, but it’s only a suit of clothes like any other. And what better way to infiltrate the Mosul camp than in a costume that everyone fears and no one questions? Hurry it up, boy. Get into the uniform, and let’s make off with those horses.”

  CORDELIA

  The night had been long, and they had slept into the day, and, indeed, Cordelia only woke when she did because Jesamine was shaking her. “Come on, sleeping beauty, get up. Quit your sweet dreams and drag your ass out of that bed. It’s well past noon, and you and me have things to do.”

  “Do?”

  “That’s right, do.”

  Cordelia sat up and rubbed her eyes. She felt hungover, intimately abused, and the bad taste in her mouth was not all schnapps. “Has Kemper gone?”

  “He scuttled out of here hours ago. He was to afraid to linger. He kept compulsively checking the door, and, each time he heard a sound, he thought it was Phaall returning.”

  Cordelia looked around. If Kemper was gone, she did not want to think about him or the night before. She just wanted to take a little time to recover from all that had happened to her. She had been in an air crash, held prisoner, then spent the night giving herself to the disgusting little lieutenant. She knew that she was probably lucky to be alive, but now that Jesamine seemed to want to rush her into a whole new and unknown day, she momentarily baulked. “So what do we have to do? You have some kind of duties or something? I’m not certain I can move.”

  “You’re going to have to move, girl, and move now.”

  “Why? I thought Phaall was going to be away for days.”

  Jesamine was already dressing for the outside world. “We can’t count on that, and besides, there’s someone we need to see.”

  “Need to see? What do you mean, need to see? Is there some other officer I’m going to have to fuck to stay alive?”

  Jesamine’s previous sympathy wilted at Cordelia’s outburst. “You don’t remember what happened to us last night?”

  Cordelia avoided
Jesamine’s eyes. “I was trying not to think about it. I was pretending it was a dream.”

  In this, Cordelia was telling the absolute truth. She had been doing everything she could to keep from thinking about the purple beach and the shared hallucination and the passion that she and Jesamine had exchanged. She most especially did not want to think about the name that she had uttered as the hunchback had come at them down the beach. The name of Quadaron-Ahrach, the High Zhaithan, could evoke fear even in Albany. His knowledge of the black arts and the dark places was generally accepted to be superior to those of even the Shaman Grey Wolf and the Lady Gretchen, if for no other reason than that he was fully prepared to embrace and make allies with the forces of unearthly evil, where Grey Wolf or the High Priestess of the Goddess clearly would not. Any business that involved not only strange and prolonged hallucinations of such power, but also the name of Quadaron-Ahrach, was more than enough to scare Cordelia so deeply that she would hide from the idea any way she could. Cordelia might have been willing to ride in an airship, and even raise a pistol to the Mosul cavalry, but the machinations of the Other Side filled her with a profound unease. She had, of course, worshiped the Goddess since she was a small child, but that had been more an affair of ceremony and tradition, candles and pretty blue dresses trimmed with white lace. She had never embraced such Sunday trappings as any profound and functioning belief system. She had always gone her merry way and saw no cause to bother a deity with her problems. To believe devoutly in anything but themselves was not the way of Cordelia and her kind. The lower and middle classes were devout, while she and those like her adopted a pose of aristocratic cynicism, but she knew she could not remain cynical after what she had experienced, and the adjustment would take a little time. Time, though, was something that Jesamine was not about to allow her.