Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  But once she was sitting up on the Horse and Rafiq swung into place behind her, it all went wrong. The moment he settled against her, even though he clung no closer than he’d done before and was in fact assiduously careful, she became overwhelmingly aware of his thighs enfolding hers, his groin against her backside, the bulk of his chest at her back. She was sitting within the compass of his arms and that was too much to ignore. The spell of shaping shivered into a thousand little shards. Taqla swore, threw her leg over the Horse’s neck and jumped to the ground.

  “What’s wrong?” Rafiq asked. Then he recognized how her clothes hung on her suddenly smaller frame. “Oh. I see.” With a sigh he dismounted too, leaning back against the Horse’s flank and folding his arms. He watched as she adjusted her headscarf. “What happened to the spell?”

  “The spell…” Taqla stomped up and down. “The spell is fragile.” She swore in a manner that would have sounded coarse coming from Zahir, clenching her fists. “I can’t keep it up if you get close. You’re—” She swallowed. “You know now that it’s an illusion. That weakens it. Your disbelief.” And I am lying to him again, she told herself in disgust.

  “Right.” Rafiq rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead. “Well then, I suppose you’ll have to stay as Taqla. It’ll look odd you wearing men’s clothes, but it can’t be helped. It won’t matter.”

  “No.” Her lip was stuck out. “You can’t sit behind me.”

  “Ah.” He looked away, but he didn’t argue with that one. “Then…maybe I should go in front and you sit behind me. That would be less…improper.”

  “No. No chance.”

  “Why not?” He wasn’t impatient this time. Exhaustion seemed to have humbled him.

  “Because then you will have to have to command and steer the Horse,” she admitted.

  “Is there any reason I can’t?”

  She didn’t answer. She just glowered.

  “Ah.” His eyebrows flashed as understanding sank in. “Look, I’m not going to steal your Horse, Taqla.”

  “That’s easy to say.” She was horribly aware that she was being pushed back into a choice between abandoning him or taking steps she never wanted to take.

  “I swear it on my life. And I’ve not lied to you yet.”

  She turned away and looked at the tumbled walls and the dead trees, knotting her fingers and twisting her rings.

  “We do have to get a move on,” Rafiq reminded her in a low voice.

  “Shush. Let me think.”

  He was quiet after that, though he watched her thoughtfully as she squatted and covered her head with her hands and wrestled with her insecurity and her mistrust. She couldn’t let him sit at her back. That was simply impossible. So she must let him sit before her. Or she could take the Horse and leave—and then he was on his own. What if he didn’t make it safely back to Baghdad? What if the Pale People were prepared to follow him into the city? Could she live with that dread, that not knowing?”

  “The command words are in Persian,” she said in a voice ragged with dismay, standing again.

  “That’s all right.”

  She looked him in the eye, unblinking. “There’s a command to bring the Horse to life and start it running. There’s another to stop it. In between, you just have to steer it by concentration of your mind. The Horse wants to run at full speed in a straight line. The really hard bit is getting it to slow when you need to. You’ll fight to keep it to a trot.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “The command to start it is,” she said, taking a deep breath, “in Persian, ‘In the name of Ahura Mazda the Most High God, run for me.’ To stop it you say, ‘In the name of Ahura Mazda the Most High God, stand still.’”

  Rafiq’s mouth opened as if he was about to say something, but no words came out. Only his eyes spoke his wariness. Taqla braced herself, marshalling her arguments. It’s only a form of words, nothing more, and doesn’t mean I’m invoking the infidel gods. It’s the form required by the Horse’s makers, and not my choice.

  But in the end he just lifted one shoulder in a shrug and nodded. A pragmatist, she thought. As all sorcerers must be. Which is why we don’t trust even each other.

  “Let’s get going then.” He turned to the saddle. “Do you want to get up first, Taqla?”

  “No.” It was a nice gesture, she recognized, but no more. If he did intend to dump her and ride off at any point, a good hard jab in her ribs would be enough now that he knew how to control the Horse.

  So Rafiq mounted and offered her his hand to help her up behind him. It stung, to have to sit at his back on the broadest part of the saddle and slip her hand into his belt, to see him survey the land then lean forward to speak in the Horse’s ear. For a moment black despair rose up in Taqla’s heart. She was once more female, and known as female in the eyes of the world, and thus inevitably had lost some of her power. Because of the shape of her body, the Horse Most Swift was no longer hers to control. Because of the slot between her legs she must put herself at this man’s mercy. She must fear him. She must placate him. She must never trust him. For a moment she was so angry that the world seemed to turn dark about her.

  Then he spoke the words and the Horse leapt forward with such a spring that they both nearly slipped from the saddle, and she threw her arms around him and held on with all her might, her cheek pressed to his back, his hair whipping in her eyes.

  Yazid didn’t reappear for nearly two days. When he did, he was a smoldering dark blue, and Ahleme, who had learned to take that color as a sign of his wrath, scrambled hastily to her feet and backed off.

  “That looks well on you,” he growled. Ahleme flushed from head to toe at the words. The clothes she’d found that morning had been no more than two narrow strips of white silk, one to wind about her hips and groin, the other to tie over her breasts—but both so transparent that her darkly golden skin glowed through.

  “Keep away,” she whispered. Her shame was beyond words, but the blood raced through her veins without the heavy nausea of true dread.

  He glowered at her. Then he lifted a piece of paper in his hand and began to read from it.

  Where have you gone—you who lit love’s flame?

  Across the sands I seek the light of your camp flame.

  When I approach, the ashes of your hearth are cold.

  You hurry ahead, and dawn turns the world to flame.

  The infidels worshipped fire upon the hills

  And tended day and night their sacred flame.

  So I offer all that my eyes see, all my thoughts;

  The furnishings of my life to feed my heart’s flame.

  You have made of me an idolater, lost to God.

  You have cast me still living into hell’s flame.

  Desire will burn me to ashes while you laugh

  And warm your hands over the dying flame.

  “There,” he said when he’d finished. “Did that please you?”

  “You wrote that?” she asked. Her eyes were wide with shock.

  “You think it’s rubbish, don’t you?” he snapped.

  “No…” So it wasn’t a good poem, not by a long way—the internal metre was all over the place—but that he’d written one at all astonished her. He’d written it for her. He’d listened to her. She couldn’t think of the last time a man had really listened to her.

  “I knew you’d laugh at me!” Yazid crumpled the paper and flung it down at his feet.

  “I’m not laughing.” She took a step toward him, almost inadvertently. He crossed his arms, blue and black flushes rippling across his skin. “Please. Can I hear it again?”

  He bared his teeth in contempt. They looked very long and white in his midnight-blue face.

  “Then I’ll read it,” she whispered. Step-by-step she made herself approach, and then knelt to pick the paper from the floor. She looked up at him when she was down there. His face was the color of a thunderhead, but all the anger had drained out of it. She knew she must appear absolute
ly vulnerable, kneeling there at his feet, but she could only guess at how tempted he found himself. Slowly and as gracefully as possible she stood again, smoothed out the crumpled paper, and then let her gaze fall to the inked lines.

  He wrote it for me. The thought sent her mind into chaos, making reading difficult. She took a long time.

  “Yazid…” She looked up. But he was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  In which both fish and fowl are encountered and a game of chess commences.

  Tarampara-rampara-ram.

  The swamps just north of Basra where the Euphrates and Tigris met were a new world so far as Taqla was concerned, a world of lush, green qasib reeds three times as tall as a man and as thick as his thumb, through which a maze of watery paths wound their way. It was a world of ducks and waterfowl, of the constant whispering susurration of leaves, of close horizons and sudden open stretches of silvery water that turned out to be bottomless black mud if you accidentally set foot in it. On the drier islands were tall groves of trees and, Rafiq warned, both lions and fierce wild boar. Though none of those beasts were encountered, there was no shortage of mosquitoes aiming to eat the travellers alive in their stead, at least until Taqla wove a charm about them both. The place made her nervous.

  There were people out here too, by all accounts. Rafiq called them the Madan, and said they lived on islands of heaped rushes and fished from narrow mashoof boats for a living.

  “Are they friendly?” Taqla asked.

  “Well, if you’re on the road, they’re happy enough to trade. They get very jumpy if anyone enters their territory though.”

  So they avoided the floating villages and their little herds of wading water buffalo, and since they were both city dwellers and had no skill at hunting or fishing, spent a hungry night huddled on an island. Rafiq, exhausted, managed the king’s share of sleep that time while Taqla sat watch and listened to the eerie calls of the night birds, her nerves prickling. She watched Rafiq too, finding a strange sort of satisfaction in the droop of his relaxed hand and the slow rise and fall of his chest. The vulnerability of the sleeping man spoke to something deep inside her.

  As soon as daylight permitted, they were in the saddle again, spiralling through the marsh at a steady canter. Light danced off the spray in their wake.

  “How will we find the Tree?” Rafiq asked once.

  “We’ll know it when we see it,” she reminded him, less sure than she sounded of seeing anything in the dense reed beds.

  “Whether we see it or not, we need to be at Basra before sunset if we want to eat today.”

  They spent hours riding through a labyrinth that seemed devoid of landmarks, before Taqla said abruptly, “There, turn down that channel.”

  The Horse swung down the narrow tunnel she had indicated, the reeds almost brushing their knees.

  “Why this way?” Rafiq’s tone was just the safe side of doubtful.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not the answer I was hoping for.”

  “Then just trust me.” An empty stomach made her sharp. “There’s more to being a sorceress than an expensive collection of toys, you know.”

  “I’d noticed that a tongue like a whip came into it somewhere,” he said, and though his back was to her, she could hear the rueful twist of his lips. Her impulse was to apologise, but that made her angry. Why should she apologise to him when he was the one being rude? Yet she could think of no riposte, so in the end, she said nothing.

  Then the reeds opened out to either side so that they emerged onto a stretch of open water, and Rafiq slowed the Horse to a prancing trot as they stared around them. There was a low mist here, rising about their knees like a faint steam but rendered more opaque by distance, and the sun had turned it to the palest gold color. Over the veil of mist, the darker bulk of what looked like treetops loomed ahead where there seemed to be higher ground, and circling over the upraised branches were a great number of birds.

  “Vultures?” said Taqla uncertainly.

  “I can’t tell. If this were the desert, then yes, there would be death up ahead there.”

  But this isn’t the desert, she said to herself, the skin on her neck turning to gooseflesh for no reason she could express. “We should head that way.”

  The Horse Most Swift picked up speed, its hooves thrumming on the surface of the water. Then, without warning, the surface of the swamp heaved up before them and something long and sleek broke the surface. By sheer instinct Rafiq managed to get the Horse to shy sideways and they just evaded the lunge, the flick of a finned tail, the gurgling splash. They wheeled to the left, kicking water into spray. The foul smell of disturbed mud rolled into their nostrils.

  “There’s something in the water!” Taqla shouted.

  “And it’s quick,” replied Rafiq through gritted teeth as the silver surface broke into a V-shaped cut and that something angled back toward them. It was impossible to tell what color it was because it had the same slick shine as the swamp itself, but it was possible to tell that it was big. Three or four times the length of the Horse at least, Taqla guessed.

  With a superfluous kick of his heels, Rafiq unleashed the Horse Most Swift’s pent-up speed, and they bolted away across the marsh. The lake fled beneath them. Taqla even risked a glance behind and saw only the ripples of their wake still spreading across the silvered mirror of the mere. In moments they were approaching the island ahead, and then Rafiq had to slow the Horse abruptly to stop them running up the shallow bank and colliding violently with the tree that grew there. In fact, he spoke the words to bring it to a halt just in time to stop the Horse on the foreshore, in a narrow margin between the arboreal giant and the swamp behind them—but at least, Taqla thought with relief, safely on dry land. They sat on the silver statue for a while and just stared.

  Birds shrieked and scolded and mewed overhead.

  There was only one tree on this island, that much was obvious from even a cursory glance. And it looked nothing like an apple tree. It was a great sprawling evergreen with thick handlike leaves and low-drooping branches that swept down to rest on the earth before rising to their tips. In the centre of this great green hillock was a trunk presumably, supporting the hulking mound of the central mass, but that center could only be guessed at from where they stood, so low were the branches and so dense the leaves. Taqla thought that maybe it was a fig tree of some sort, except that it bore in places clusters of white starlike flowers unlike anything else she’d seen before, and yellow fruit drooped high up among the farthest branches.

  “What on earth is that?” said Rafiq to himself in an undertone. Taqla followed the line of his gaze to a high limb.

  “A peacock?” she suggested, seizing on the outline of its long tail.

  “No, it’s not. The little thing sitting by its leg is a peacock.”

  It took a moment for Taqla to readjust her sense of scale. The whole tree was a perch for countless birds, and more circled constantly overhead, their calls making a chaotic din. But she hadn’t realized until now what sort of birds they were. Not vultures, or at least no more than one or two were vultures. There were swans and geese and gulls and herons and delicate snow-white egrets, hoopoes and peacocks as well as countless smaller fowl that she couldn’t name. There were eagles. And they were all smaller than the one big coppery bird Rafiq had pointed out. As she compared that to its smaller entourage, Taqla finally admitted to herself that it had to be bigger in the body than a camel—and that the Tree it was sitting upon was vast, by far and away the broadest she had ever seen.

  With a fluid movement Rafiq dismounted. “Do you think he’s the Bird King?”

  Taqla didn’t reply at once. She missed her books desperately, those volumes of lore that provided all the answers to such esoteric questions.

  “He’s not big enough to be a roc, is he? I mean, they’re the size of elephants.” Rafiq kept his voice low but sounded worried. He laid his hand on the grip of his sword. As if to mock him, a goose waddled past hi
s feet, plucking busily at the short grass. It didn’t even spare him a glance. Taqla swung down from the saddle. Now that they were still, she could smell a sweet floral scent, presumably from those starry flowers. It reminded her of night jasmine.

  “I’ve never heard of rocs holding court like this,” she said.

  “Think he’ll let me climb up and get one of those fruit?” He shook his head suddenly, and blinked. Then he looked back at her properly for the first time since their arrival. “The Tree of All Knowledge, both Good and Evil,” he said, his eyes a-glitter. “You’ve got to be tempted, Taqla.”

  She was so tempted she felt dizzy. “That was its parent,” she temporised. “I doubt this one is as significant.”

  “Maybe not. We can—”

  Taqla saw his expression change abruptly but didn’t have time to work out in what way. There was a noise, a huge noise, and she didn’t have time to recognize that either, other than that it came from behind her. There was just an enormous blow that struck her whole body, and then it went dark and she wasn’t on her feet anymore, and her last thought was What spell do I need? before it went so dark that even her thoughts winked out.

  Yazid had taken to the concept of wooing, Ahleme thought. His gift this day was an egg of polished crystal that felt warm as it nestled in the palm of her hand and trembled slightly. Then it split open and out came a sparrow of gold, every feather a work of art, with tiny sapphires for eyes. It flew around her head and perched on her finger and twittered as it preened its metal plumage.

  “Do you like it?”

  Ahleme did actually. It was a relief to see anything here that had a semblance of independent life, even if it were only a magic clockwork sparrow. But she didn’t answer at once. In Dimashq, or any human city, this little toy would be a priceless wonder. But she doubted that it had cost the djinni anything at all, neither money nor effort. It was only an amusing toy to him, a trifle for a woman-child. “Yes, but I prefer the poem,” she said, allowing him a tentative smile.