Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  “The stars of heaven, of course. They need to come and eat.”

  “The stars?”

  “Yes.” He ran his fingers across the brass pot. “Every night I call them into the sky so they may graze. Every morning I shoo them out again.”

  “And what do they eat?”

  “Our dreams, little chick, of course. Don’t you know that? And a good thing they do, or else we’d all go mad.”

  Rafiq raised his eyebrows with pointed significance. “You’re doing a fine job then,” said Taqla weakly.

  “Ah, but do I see any gratitude? Does the world beat a path to my door and strew it with rose petals? No. Only a few travellers with their questions. Questions, questions, always the same. Will I seize the throne? Should I ally with the Romans or invade them? Shall I rule all the earth? What about you two—do you want to rule all the earth?”

  Taqla shook her head as if trying to dislodge his words from the interior of her skull. “No. Our interests are, uh, humbler than that.”

  “I doubt that. No one comes to Taysafun without very good reason anymore. It’s accursed of God.”

  “We’ve come for the answer to a riddle.”

  “A riddle?” He smiled, wrinkling abominably. “I like a good game of riddles. It’s been such a long time. Come and sit with me.” Without waiting for an answer he scrabbled away over the boulders. Rafiq caught Taqla’s eye and shrugged.

  Safan led them to a ragged gap in the base of the pile of boulders, but thankfully he signed them to sit and wait before he disappeared into the darkness, sliding in with the practised facility of a scorpion under its rock. Taqla sat down, staring at the mound grimly. This was the first place in Taysafun she’d seen marble facing. Everywhere else all the marble, the ornate lintels and porticos, had been conspicuously stripped from the buildings that still stood. But this mound was made of great slabs of carved alabaster, cracked now and blackened by fire, crumbling to lime in some places. Just over the gap Safan had vanished into was a tilted and split stone bearing the winged disk sacred to the old Persian Empire.

  “Is he a sorcerer?” asked Rafiq quietly.

  Taqla nodded. “Be careful. Don’t give him anything without my say-so.” Don’t offend him, she might have added, don’t promise him anything, don’t believe what he tells you.

  Rafiq nodded and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  She twisted her rings, mentally preparing her defenses. No threat had yet been offered, but nothing about Safan inspired trust. What really worried her was that she couldn’t help seeing something of herself in the mad old man. Was this a forewarning of what she was to become, she couldn’t help wondering—deranged, repulsive, clinging to her life in a place where no normal human would live?

  With a rattle of small stones Safan reappeared bearing a cloth bundle. Grunting, he settled himself in the dirt, picking at the knots. “There. Yes. I have my best cups for you. No coffee, not for years now, but there is wine. I found it in the royal tombs. No vultures for the great kings—no, that would be undignified—tombs of hewn stone and treasures for the afterlife. Luckily for us the Pale People can’t stomach alcohol. They left that for me.” He held up a metal cup, very dented but obviously gold from its undimmed gleam, and sniffed the interior. “Just a little dusty.” Spitting into the cup, he wiped it vigorously round with the filthy rags about his waist. “There.” Then he poured from a leather flask a wine so dull a red it looked brown and handed the cup to Rafiq. “For you, the chalice of a king.”

  Rafiq looked pained but took the cup and lifted it to his lips, miming a sip. Good, thought Taqla.

  “And for you,” Safan said to her with a leer, offering a cup set with turquoises, “the drinking vessel of an infidel queen.”

  “Thank you,” said Taqla through gritted teeth. She had no intention of drinking, but it would have been grossly offensive to refuse outright. The cup was so heavy it was uncomfortable in the hand. She could quite believe it had been robbed from a royal tomb. The wine smelled like vinegar.

  “Drink it all down,” Safan cackled. “The best wine, this, fit for an emperor.”

  Rafiq gave a twisted smile. “Truly, a unique vintage. Incomparable.”

  “Oh then take it, take it. Save it for a wedding or something equally momentous. It’ll come in useful I’m sure.” He held the sloshing half-full flask out to Rafiq, and then added slyly, “For both of you.”

  Taqla gritted her teeth.

  “You’re the father of kindness.” Rafiq stoppered the flask with a grimace and slipped it into an inner pocket.

  “The guest is a king in my household. Have you any food on you, my royal visitors?”

  “Um. A little.” It was a relief to set the chalice aside and go looking in her bags. “Would you like some?”

  “I haven’t eaten in such a long time. The belly forgets, but the mouth remembers. I shall sew that up too, in time. Give me those dates. I smell their sweetness. Here,” he added, stuffing his mouth with Taqla’s food, “is a riddle for you. I went hunting, and those I found I threw away, but those I could not find I kept.”

  “Lice,” said Rafiq, not holding an entirely straight face.

  “Very good!”

  “Shall I ask you one?” With the utmost casualness he repeated the riddle of Hunayn ibn-Ishaq, which he’d memorised word for word as they walked. Taqla had to admire his cunning.

  But Safan was quicker-witted yet. “Ah-ah-ah! It’s against the rules to ask one that you don’t know the answer to.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “You’ve a liar’s tongue but not a liar’s heart. That’s the riddle you came to ask me about, isn’t it?”

  Rafiq admitted defeat with a smile and a dip of his head, though both were probably wasted on him. “As you say, old father. Your insight is what brought us here.”

  “I’d have thought your friend here would be able to solve it.”

  Taqla stiffened. Rafiq cast her a glance but answered mildly, “He’s a servant of wisdom, but he doesn’t know the answer to that one.”

  “Doesn’t he?” Safan sniggered and picked at the stitches of his eyelids. “Well, what will you give me for answering this riddle for you?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you have much use for money out here, Father, but we will pay you.” He caught Taqla’s alarmed look and added, “once we have agreed upon a price.”

  “So much choice then! He wrapped his sticklike arms around himself and rocked back and forth in delight. “A year of your life? Your nextborn child? Your innermost heart?”

  Rafiq started to look alarmed.

  “Heh-heh-heh. It’s been years since I had anyone’s arms around me. Perhaps I should ask a kiss from your boy.”

  “No,” said Taqla coldly before Rafiq could react.

  “You shy, ugly boy?”

  “I know what else can be stolen with a kiss,” she answered. “No, no tricks of that sort. We leave here intact. And no promises. No debts.”

  Safan hunched his shoulders, his dead-man’s mouth spreading in a lipless grin. “I see. It’s like that, is it? Well, I will tell you what I’ll accept as payment for the answer to your riddle. South of here, but before you reach Basra, there lies a great swamp that’s fed by the Euphrates and the Tigris. In the middle of the swamp is an island, and on the island grows a tree. If you want your riddle answered that badly, then you’ll bring me a fruit from that tree.”

  The prospect of being sent off on another errand knocked all the sense out of Taqla’s mouth. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I’m not negotiating. That’s my price for your answer.”

  “I know the swamp,” said Rafiq, frowning. “How will we know which tree?”

  “Oh, you’ll know it. It grew from an apple core that was thrown into the Tigris a very long time ago, in a garden at the river’s headwaters. A very old garden, do you understand? It’ll be unmistakable.”

  Taqla clenched her fists until her nails bit the sk
in.

  “It’s also forbidden, isn’t it?” said Rafiq, his voice grim.

  Safan laughed at that. “See these eyes of mine? I sewed them shut when I chose to no longer believe the illusions of the world. Bring me the fruit so that I might see with new eyes—that I might see all things as they truly are.”

  “That’s a lot to ask,” said Taqla faintly, “for a riddle.”

  “Then leave it unanswered. Go home. Give it up, whatever it is you are trying to achieve. It can’t be very important, can it?” Scuttling backward like an insect, he retreated legs first into his hole and disappeared from view.

  Rafiq then shook himself as if waking from a dream and when Taqla, blinking, looked around, she saw that somehow the night had crept up around them and the stars were all out overhead.

  “You might know something about magic,” said Rafiq, weariness and irritation fighting for the upper hand in his voice, “but, Zahir, you’re really no good at negotiation.”

  Ahleme had washed her hair and was braiding it up again. She’d discovered that the sunken bath in her prison would fill with fresh water, hot or cool as she preferred, at a word of command, that the bottles of perfumes and soaps and unguents at its rim never ran out no matter how much she used, and that there was always a set of clean though perilously scanty clothing laid out for her upon the bed when she had bathed. She’d also discovered that without the assistance of her slaves she was hopelessly maladroit at her toilette, and that it took hours to groom herself. So between eating and sleeping and trying to recreate the dancesteps she had once watched her slaves perform—it was shameful, but it was the only amusement she could think of on her own and she itched for exercise to relieve her frustration—she bathed a lot. She was aware that it might be cleverer in this place to let her beauty decay, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. And there was absolutely nothing else to do in her airy cell. She’d spent all her life surrounded by the women and eunuchs of the haremlek, and now she didn’t know how to deal with solitude.

  When she looked up, Zubaida was sitting on the bed, watching her with an oddly intense expression. Ahleme jumped.

  “Oh!”

  “I came to see how you were.” A smile crept up Zubaida’s face, reaching her mouth disconcertingly in advance of her eyes. “Well, by the looks of things.”

  “Yes.” Ahleme felt strangely embarrassed, as if it would have been more proper to be discovered broken and starving. “I mean…”

  “You have enough to eat and drink?” She swept a sideways look at the table, laden as always with tempting dishes.

  “Yes. Now.”

  “Good. Keep your strength up. But don’t let it soften your resolve, Ahleme.”

  “Of course not.” The suggestion that she might be bribed into concupiscence by a few goods meals was hurtful when what she needed was comfort and reassurance.

  “Your own beauty is your enemy now. So why do I see you working at maintaining it?”

  She stuck her bottom lip out and let her gaze fall to the carpet. “If I looked at myself and hated what I saw, do you think I would have the will to resist him?”

  Zubaida snorted. “You’re a strange people, you Children of Earth. Full of contradictions. Your strength becomes your weakness and your weakness becomes your strength, always.”

  Ahleme didn’t answer that.

  “Anyway, I came to tell you that I’ve been to Dimashq.”

  “Oh—is my father…?” Ahleme couldn’t finish the question. She couldn’t imagine what she should hope her father was doing.

  “The whole city is in uproar. Every man able to bear arms and ride is searching for you. The land is being turned upside down. Only hold out, Ahleme. Rescue is on its way.”

  She bowed her head, swallowing down the hope that filled her throat and made it hard to breathe. “Will they…will they be long?”

  “It’s up to you to refuse Yazid, however long it takes. Use the magic I’ve given you. Whatever happens, you must not yield to him.”

  She looked up from under her long lashes. “It’s not going to work. If I make him too angry, in the end he will force me from spite, or just kill me.”

  Zubaida’s mouth twisted at that. “No he won’t.”

  “He has a terrible temper!”

  “He won’t kill you.” There was such emphasis in her light voice that the glass bottles by the bath tinkled together. “He can’t. Haven’t you heard of Solomon the Wise?”

  “Of course.”

  “Hundreds of years ago he and the sorceress Bilqis made a great magic together to bind every djinni that lived, and they put upon my people great strictures in order to protect Mankind. One of his bonds was that whatever hurt a djinni does to one of your sort, he must suffer in himself.” She smiled, but oddly it did nothing good to her beautiful face. “If Yazid were to kill you, he would slay himself. If he wounds you, he feels the hurt in his own flesh.”

  Ahleme shrank into herself.

  “I said he can’t. You have nothing to fear, so steel yourself.”

  “That’s what the writing on his skin is, then?” she whispered.

  Zubaida nodded, and though Ahleme’s impulse was then to question her about her own glacial complexion, she thought better of it before the words left her lips.

  “That explains it then,” she said almost to herself.

  “Explains what?”

  “Why you leave us alone. Mostly.”

  “You flatter your race,” she said silkily, but Ahleme hardly heard.

  “And why you haven’t taken the whole world as your domain. I mean, with the power you have, you Djinn could enslave Mankind and rule the earth. Easily. But Solomon has stopped you.”

  Zubaida’s lips pursed. She lifted her eyebrows politely but couldn’t quite hide her derision. “Enslave Mankind?” she asked. “Why?”

  “Well, you could make us do anything you wanted.”

  “For us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would that be of any value?” She lifted her hand and a flame danced in her palm. It turned into an enormous ruby, then a rose with ruby petals, then a persimmon pearled with dew, then a golden mouse that leapt off her hand and ran away across the rugs. “I can do everything I want without the need for slaves weaker than myself.”

  “But—”

  “This house was molded by my brother out of his imaginings, because he desires to live here. It isn’t mine. I come and I go as I please. It’s his, and if he wants to unmake it and build another tomorrow at the bottom of the ocean, then he’ll do it in a moment. What does he need anyone else for? We Djinn don’t have servants or subjects. We rarely even live together, but you humans swarm in packs and fight for your place in that pack, as dogs do.”

  Ahleme bridled at the monstrous insult. “My father is not a dog, he’s a great—”

  “It’s hard for you to understand, isn’t it? We’re not like you. For us it’s enough to have power, but you want power over—you measure yourselves by how many others you can thwart. There are so many things we do have in common—love and anger and pride and joy and the law of God. But we don’t have the sickness that lurks in the heart of all men. We don’t have your terrible need for dominion.”

  Ahleme stuck out her bottom lip. “Then what is Yazid doing to me then? What does he need?”

  “Freedom. We need freedom.” She stood and walked away toward the edge.

  “Don’t go!” Ahleme gasped. “Stay and talk to me. I’m so—”

  But a cloud of white petals rose on the updraft and blew away over the chasm below.

  Chapter Eight

  In which many disguises are revealed.

  “Basra really isn’t that far,” Rafiq said. He was still sore with disappointment and his voice betrayed his mood. “I’ve done the Basra to Baghdad run. It’s a good-sized port, bigger than Ayla.”

  “You’ve been through the swamp?”

  “Well, the road skirts the edge, on an embankment. Yes, it’s a big swamp. But we�
��ve got the Horse Most Swift. We could be there in a day.”

  “It’s not the getting there that worries me.” Taqla shouldered her bag and looked around uneasily. The ruins of Taysafun had looked eerie enough by day. Under the glow of the rising moon every shadow and every broken doorway seemed cut from primordial darkness.

  “What does then? The Tree? Why?”

  “If such a sapling of the Tree of Knowledge does exist—and I’ve never heard of it, I mean my master Umar has never once breathed a word about it—then I think we’re getting in way over our heads.”

  “You’re afraid of the wrath of God?”

  “Look, a thing like that won’t just be sitting there waiting for every urchin boy to steal a handful of apples. It’s been kept secret. And what I’m scared of is that it’ll be guarded too.”

  “By something more dangerous than a djinni? That is what I’m looking to take on, remember. Umar promised to help me that much.”

  Taqla opened her mouth to argue and then shut it again, like a fish. “Can we have this discussion somewhere safer than the middle of a cursed ruin, in the dark?” she wondered.

  “Fine. If we cut south through the city, we can pick up the Basra road.”

  So they went that way, though Taqla was far from having made up her mind that she would be heading to Basra. What she wanted most at the moment was to get out of the ruins. Her mood didn’t improve as they walked either, though they stuck to the broadest roads where the shadows loomed less closely. Strange sounds accompanied their progress, the clatter of a falling rock to one side or another, a creak as if of a door—though all doors had long fallen from their hinges here—and once, from a wellhead, a hollow whispering. High in a tower whose crumbling state made it unlikely that anything human could have climbed up there, a pale light like marsh gas shone in a single window. Taqla warned Rafiq not to look at it and they pressed on.

  The palace of the emperors was the worst. Heading south took them directly in front of that monstrous façade and the black sweep of the central archway, so high that it seemed to be a second, and starless, night sky. She was grateful for the uncertain moonlight after that.