Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  Rolling off the bed, she crawled wearily over to the table. The platters were scattered, the food strewn about on the rugs. She picked up a ewer that had held peach nectar. A small pool still remained in the hollow of its belly. Stifling a sob, she tilted the liquid to her dry lips.

  Chapter Six

  In which seekers come to the House of Wisdom, and a noble maiden falls.

  The Horse Most Swift didn’t stop to eat or drink, but with its feet it consumed the miles. Out into the desert it galloped, over stony ridges and the sweeping plains of grit where its gait could grow smoother, and Taqla grew used to the sound of its hooves going tarampara-rampara-ram and the hot sun overhead and the endless shuddering surge of the silver beast beneath them. The flat desert became a flat, cultivated plain before they reached Baghdad, but it made no difference to the Horse Most Swift. Even the Euphrates River shot past beneath its silver hooves with the same hollow echoing beat.

  The two riders didn’t talk because the Horse Most Swift was steered by her will and she needed to concentrate on avoiding collisions. A rock or a tree could rear up from the landscape and they’d be on it in moments. And this was a good thing because it kept her mind off Rafiq. He sat right behind her and his thighs bumped against hers—not that she retained any foolish hopes in that direction, but was uncomfortable to be reminded.

  At night, when the Horse Most Swift had drawn to a halt, she produced from the seemingly empty Bag That Holds the World, a goathair windbreak complete with struts, a bundle of kindling, a full set of pots for brewing coffee and enough food for both of them. Then there was time to talk, while the stars overhead wheeled around their axis and the moon rose over the empty land. Rafiq would draw from his clothing a wind-scoured slip of tree root or burnished bone that he had found while they were setting up camp, and carve away at it with a small knife while he spoke. The first night he whittled a fleeing hare and the tiny animal seemed to quiver with life in his palm.

  And after dinner she bundled herself up in a hooded aba of thickest wool to sleep, aware that the shape of Zahir was not likely to last while she was unconscious, and watched the fire through a chink in the stifling folds of cloth. She had to be careful to wake early and renew her disguise under her bedclothes and a mantle of dew.

  “So why aren’t you married?” she asked on the first night. It was a legitimate question even for a casual acquaintance, since it was so unusual for a man of his age and status not to be.

  Rafiq managed a shrug that involved both shoulders and facial expression. “I used to be, when I was much younger.” He drew a paper-thin sliver of wood from the back of the animal he was carving, and then his hands fell still. “But while I was away on a trading journey to Medina she cut her hand on the hasp of a gate, and caught a fever from that wound. By the time I came home, thinking to find my wife about to bear my first child, all there was for me to see was her grave—hers and the unborn child with her.”

  She made a noise of sympathy in her throat, moved by his brooding eyes.

  “I couldn’t even see her off.” His voice was soft. “That’s how necessary I was.”

  Taqla stifled the desire to touch his arm. “Did you love her?”

  He smiled, but sadly. “We used to fight all the time. I was very young, and very stupid. I thought that a wife was something like a bridle or a cart. Something that did its job well or badly. And I thought she was a bad wife because she nagged me.” His mouth twisted. “But when she was gone I missed her. And it dawned on me that she’d had a life and a death that I was barely a part of. Like I was the one who wasn’t real.”

  “There is no Fate but the one given to us by God,” said Taqla, her lips shaping the familiar sympathetic words automatically.

  “I haven’t married again. I feel…” He sighed. “It’s clear that the journeys I make are too dangerous to take a family with me. And I don’t want to leave another wife behind like that. So…” He spread his hands in a resigned gesture.

  “Or you could stop travelling.”

  “No.” He lifted his gaze, his eyes glinting in the low firelight. “I could not. Not yet. I am only myself when I’m on the road. When I stay too long in Dimashq, I become someone I don’t even recognize.”

  They entered the City of Peace on foot through the Bab al-Sham, the Horse Most Swift ravelled up into a ball of silver wire, and with its saddle concealed in Taqla’s travelling pouch.

  Baghdad was a terrible shock to her. She had rarely been outside the walls of Dimashq in her whole life, and never before this far. She tried to hide it, but she was occasionally aware that Zahir was gawping like a peasant. Dimashq was an ancient city built of brick and mud that had once been great but was now as slumped and purposeless as an elderly widow, its buildings piled one on another as if they had crashed down from heaven, every road a twisted alley, its grand houses falling inexorably into decay. Baghdad in contrast was a new city less than seventy years from its foundation, a planned city with a massive circling wall that was as perfectly round as the sun and with straight broad streets that led from every point to the palace at the hub, a city of hewn marble that gleamed by moonlight and glared under the midday sun. It sat on the west bank of the Tigris where three great pontoon bridges spanned the river to the parks and palaces of the nobles on the other side. It was a place of aqueducts and fountains and the main streets were not of beaten earth and dung but, to Taqla’s fascination, paved with bitumen and powdered limestone. She hadn’t imagined any city could be so grand. In those streets the clothes and the language were predominantly Persian, but everywhere there was such a mix of tongues and peoples in every type of dress that she couldn’t even guess where some of them had travelled from. She was secretly pleased that Rafiq had been before, that he could take rooms for them in a caravanserai he had a part ownership in, that he knew the geography and could lead them to the House of Wisdom. Not that it was difficult to find in the end because it stood next to the palace under the shadow of its green copper dome.

  Hundreds of feet above the milling crowds, on the very top of that dome, was the statue of a mounted warrior. When Taqla gazed up, his lance was at rest, pointing at the ground. The people of the city boasted that he would point in the direction of any enemy approaching Baghdad.

  The House of Wisdom itself was a square building with a tower for the observation of the stars and a grand courtyard, all surrounded by a garden full of flowering rosebushes. Small groups of people sat around in the garden playing chess and conversing. Above the main doorway was an inscription in gold lettering—

  The world is supported by four things alone: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave.

  Nevertheless Taqla was relieved to find that Rafiq, mindful of the fifth pillar of the world, had brought sufficient funds to pay various doorkeepers and functionaries, thus speeding the process of access to those of real importance. She was also impressed that he’d thought to bring a gift for the library—a bundle of the peerless paper of Samarqand.

  Rafiq, she had to admit, did this sort of thing better than she did. He’d insisted that they change into their best clothes before applying for an interview, which of course made sense, but also that they visit one of the five thousand bathhouses that Baghdad was reputed to boast, in order to clean up beforehand. That had given Taqla occasion for enormous anxiety. The prospect of her magical disguise failing while Zahir wore only a twist of cloth about his hips was not pleasant, but as it turned out, the proximity of so many near-naked men—paunchy and hairy, most of them—had only bolstered Zahir’s sense of masculinity. The only bad moment had come when they were broiling in the steam room. She’d been lying facedown on the heated surface of the marble island when Rafiq had stretched out beside her, his skin sheened with sweat, his muscles as sculpted as sand dunes. She’d had to crawl toward the centre of the slab where the heat was actually painful in order to wrench her mind off the way the beads of perspiration stood upon his
taut stomach, and had lain there with gritted teeth, pressing her forearms to the scorching marble. Luckily she’d been called away soon after by an attendant to submit to a soapy massage so ferocious that she’d thought her bones were being dislocated, followed by a deluge under a bucket of cold water that had truly put paid to any lingering lasciviousness.

  She was still aching from that massage as the two of them were shown into the House of Wisdom, and she welcomed the pain. Pain anchored her to reality, she told herself, and shot down the twittering birds of foolish fancy.

  The room they were ushered into and bade to sit down within was lined with niches, twelve rows of niches all the way to the ceiling, the higher ones only accessible by ladder. In every niche were piles of books and scrolls, each wrapped in a leather strap. Taqla’s mouth watered. She longed to look through the volumes.

  “Wait here,” the servant of the House said, backing away as a slave entered with a single cup of thick black coffee for each of them. It was a polite but not effusive welcome and the slave stayed to keep an eye upon them. Taqla clenched her fists as she sat upon her cushion. There were more books in this one building than in any since the Library of Alexandria, she had heard, on every subject from alchemy through mathematics to ethics. More were being added every day, with the scribes of the House translating documents from every language in the world and the scholars of science and philosophy writing all they knew. This place held more precious treasure, as far as she was concerned, than the whole of the caliph’s palace.

  Rafiq, less awed, stood and ambled over to look at a niche.

  “Don’t touch!” snapped the slave as he laid his hand upon a scroll. “The books are in particular order and are not to be opened.”

  “Just looking,” he rejoined mildly, turning his head to squint at the titles, which were tooled into the leather straps binding them shut. “The Book of the King—what’s that about?”

  “Medicine.” Taqla seized the excuse to join him at the wall. “And there—Ten Treatise on the Eye.”

  Rafiq looked suitably impressed. “The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos,” he read out, switching to the niche above.

  “Uh…it’s a Nasrani text. A collection of their holy stories.”

  Rafiq dropped his voice. “And you say that this Ibn-Ishaq is a Nasrani too? How does the caliph trust him with the House of Wisdom?”

  Taqla smiled. “He’s beyond reproach. He once spent a year in prison for refusing to concoct a poison for the caliph’s enemies, claiming that he had no right to bring harm to anyone.”

  Rafiq looked sceptical. “That makes him trustworthy?”

  “The caliph has declared him a man of virtue.” Taqla shifted to another shelf, her eyes devouring the titles—the Physics of Aristotle, the Geography of Ptolemy. She was only paying Rafiq partial attention, vaguely aware that he was drifting the other way down the shelves, until he spoke again, turning a scroll so he could read the title out.

  “The Book of Insects’ Buzzing? What does that mean?”

  Then she was on top of him and knocking his hands away from the shelf before she even stopped to think. “No! Get off it!”

  Rafiq stepped back and gave her a very hard look. “I wasn’t doing anything!”

  “Don’t even touch it,” she ordered, her stomach scrunched up tight against her heart. Then she grasped how strangely he was regarding her and tried to explain. “That one’s a magical text.”

  “Are you this bossy with Umar?” he asked pointedly.

  That hurt, to her surprise. “You are not my master,” she defended herself.

  “Praise God, the Merciful and Compassionate!”

  “Look, you don’t understand—that book is dangerous.”

  “To touch?”

  “Yes!” Then she took a deep breath. “Maybe. Just stay away from that sort of thing. It’s something you shouldn’t mess with. You have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “But clearly you do, Zahir abd-Umar,” said a voice behind them, and they both turned to see a middle-aged man with hair worn long in the Persian style and a gray beard, carrying their letter of introduction in one hand and a roll of papers in the other. Taqla bowed low, and in a moment Rafiq caught up and bowed too, though with greater reserve as befitted a free man.

  “Please, sit with me,” said Hunayn ibn-Ishaq after they had apologised for impinging upon his routine and he had waved away any suggestion that he might have better things to do than meet them, then enquired after their health and the health of Umar who had sent them. “Would you prefer that we converse in Syriac?”

  “It’s not necessary,” Rafiq said, sounding a little cool. He’d taken Ibn-Ishaq to be suggesting that they were uneducated provincials, unable to cope with proper Arabic.

  “A pity.” The librarian smiled faintly. “It’s my own first language and I miss the cadences.” His eyes flicked slightly to indicate the slave waiting by the door. The slave looked like he was a Turk, as far Taqla could guess, and presumably did not speak the language of Al-Sham.

  “If you so wish, Master of the House,” she said smoothly in Syriac.

  Ibn-Ishaq smiled. “You are kind.” He put Umar’s letter on the carpet between them. “Well, this is an unusual request. We get many people asking for copies of different books, or parts of books, and of course we do our best to honor such requests. But there are not many who would ask for an excerpt from this particular scroll.”

  “No?” asked Taqla blandly. She had corresponded with Ibn-Ishaq in the name of Umar for a few years, but that didn’t mean she knew the man. She was wary of condemning herself.

  “There are not many who would know how to use the extract you request, either. Your master being an exception, I now assume. An incantation of finding.” His eyes flicked to Rafiq. “Someone must have lost something very valuable.”

  They’d travelled so swiftly that the news from Dimashq hadn’t yet reached Baghdad. Rafiq looked noncommittal. “What one man holds as precious is worthless to another.”

  “And yet the second may bargain to his advantage.”

  “We’re willing to pay well for a true copy from the Scroll of Simon.”

  “In the original Greek,” put in Taqla. “Exactly as written.”

  “I’m sure you are, having travelled so far for it.” Ibn-Ishaq stroked his beard. “A true copy. That’s what your master has told you he needs, is it? Why do you think that is?”

  Taqla shrugged. “My master keeps his own council. Even I don’t know his plans.”

  “Then it’s a good thing that he has been so generous in the books he has loaned to us over the years for copying, and his name is favourably pronounced in the House of Wisdom. There are those—many of them, in high places—who would say that such a book as this scroll is dangerous and should be forbidden to the Faithful.”

  “Not nearly so dangerous as the one on your shelf there,” Taqla pointed out.

  “True. And if your master had asked for a copy from that I would have refused him. The Scroll of Simon…that is possible. In trustworthy hands it might do no harm.” He cast Rafiq another long look, weighing him up. “You are Umar’s agent in this, then? He describes you as a merchant-traveller.”

  “That’s certainly accurate. I hold the purse for this transaction.”

  “And the nature of the text does not alarm you?”

  Rafiq indicated Taqla with a tip of his chin. “Zahir has reassured me that the Art of Solomon is not just the provenance of the wicked.”

  Taqla bit the inside of her lip.

  The librarian tapped his fingertips together. “For the friendship we owe Umar then, I will instruct my scribe to make one fair transcription of this passage you request.”

  Rafiq nodded. “We are grateful. Shall we agree upon a price?”

  Ibn-Ishaq waved his hand languidly. “Very soon. Tell me, have you been to Saba?”

  “Yes. This year.” Rafiq looked quizzical, and Taqla wondered at the sudden change of subject.

 
“One of my scribes is working on a special project for a client. He’s collating all the riddles that the Queen of Saba asked King Solomon the Wise, with their answers. Sadly the sources are fragmentary, and some of the answers are missing or clearly incorrect, so we’ve had to search them out. This one for example.” He unrolled his papers and passed a slip across to Rafiq. “Have you heard it in your travels?”

  Rafiq blinked, picked up the paper and read it out loud. “Who is this man who weds two sisters, with no offense at his wedlock being taken by anyone? When waiting on one he waits exactly as well on the other too; husbands may be partial, but no bias is seen in him. His attentions increase as his beloveds grow old, and so does his generosity. How rare is that among married men!”

  Taqla frowned. She wanted—childishly, she knew—to answer the riddle before he did, and racked her brain. A man at a well with two buckets? she wondered. A porter carrying a yoke with two baskets? Neither answer fitted properly, and nor did any other she could think of straightaway. But when she looked up at her companion’s face, his expression was as discontented as hers.

  “No,” he grunted. “I don’t know the answer.”

  Taqla shook her head, irritated. Like all riddles, it left a feeling that the solution was imminent.

  “That’s a pity.” Ibn-Ishaq stroked his beard again. “I’ll tell you what. There is a man who’ll know the answer. He lives only a day or so’s travel south from here and is famous for his knowledge of such trifles. If you will go and get the answer from him, then by the time you return I will have a copy of the excerpt you requested awaiting you. There’ll be no other charge.”

  “That’s very generous. Why does it matter so much?” Rafiq asked.