Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  Behind them the temple of Yaghuth gaped, its smashed doorway like a mouth from which the teeth had been beaten, and from which faint howls could still be heard.

  From then on things got worse.

  Taqla managed to slip Rafiq from his sling and lay him down in the sand, sending the Lion away a few paces. She could see that there were two spikes through his body. The lower pierced the outside of his right thigh and thankfully not the inside where the big blood vessels were. The higher went straight through his torso between his pelvis and his ribs, on the left side, just above the drawstring of his trousers, about a handspan of metal stuck out at his back, and half that much at the front. Blood was welling up and staining his clothes. She touched him fearfully, not knowing what on earth to do. He rolled onto his injured leg; the belly wound seemed to be giving him the more trouble. Rafiq’s eyes were narrowed to slits now, his neck corded with pain. He slid his hand down and touched the spearpoint jutting out from his belly, and hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Heal me,” he groaned.

  She wanted to scream.

  “Rafiq…I don’t know any healing!” she had to confess. Why, after all, should she? Healing was something you learned if you lived among others. Safe behind the walls of her home, keeping herself to herself, she had never needed to worry about injury. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry!”

  “Ah. Pity.” His understatement was bitter.

  “Just hold on.” She struggled to come up with a plan. It was impossible to imagine bundling him onto the Horse Most Swift. She doubted he would be able to cling on even at a walking pace, never mind when it was at full pelt. “I’ll ride to the coast, find a city, a doctor—I’ll bring him back before nightfall,” she gabbled.

  “No use.” His bloody fingers groped for her and found her wrist. His grip was clammy, his breath coming in tight twists. “It’s a gut wound. I’m dead.” He tried to crack a grin, and it was horrible because there was blood all over his teeth—either Yaghuth’s grip or the fall to the temple floor had broken his ribs, she guessed, and he was bleeding into his lungs. “Looks like you misread my Fate after all.” His attempt at levity was followed by a spasm of pain and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Don’t leave,” he whispered, slumping back onto the sand, his fingers locked in hers.

  Taqla ran her free hand over her face and slammed her fist against her breastbone, fighting down panic and despair. She made no cry, but inside she could feel a scream building. “Rafiq,” she moaned, her mouth twisted all out of shape, hating herself for being a sorceress who could do nothing. She needed help. She needed a miracle. Only then did she remember the Egg.

  It was the first time she’d looked at it since she’d used it to ward off the god, and one glance told her that something was wrong. In the temple of Yaghuth, the Egg had remained undimmed, its surface a mottled copper that gleamed like real metal freshly polished. But now it was patchy and dull, as gray as lead in parts, only a web of sunken coppery veins showing the original color. She had drawn too much power from it already, she realized queasily, and had come close to killing the nascent virtue it held.

  And now, sitting there with the Egg in one hand clasped to her breasts, the other hand clinging to Rafiq’s slackening grasp, she understood she had one more chance and another choice. But this time she must do it knowingly, and it was all but unbearable. This was the Egg of the Senmurw, the unique offspring of the Bird of Compassion, the holy creature’s chance to continue its line and its presence on the Earth. How could she possibly burn up that last vessel of grace? What right had she to deprive the world of its healing and its hope? Yet…how could she let Rafiq die?

  It was her choice. No one else was there to make it for her, or to bear the consequences.

  Biting the inside of her lip, she extracted her fingers from his and shifted the Egg to that arm, drawing it tight to her stomach. Rafiq didn’t resist her going, in fact he seemed barely conscious, his breathing shallow and immensely strained. As gently as she could, she wrapped her free hand around the spike that pierced his entrails. The slippery metal grated beneath the pressure of her fingers, not because it was loose in its sheath of flesh but because it was corroded to the point of collapse. She had no doubt that any attempt to pull it out would only leave shards of rusted iron embedded deep in him. “Help me,” she whispered to the Egg. “Help him.”

  Then she began her spell. She knew nothing of healing, but in Dimashq, under Umar’s name, she did have a reputation for being able to find things that were lost. She could call to small objects—a mislaid key, a ring that had slipped from a finger, a coin that had fallen down a crack in a flagstone—and draw them to her. Focusing her mind, she began to coax the metal in her hand with words only it understood. Gently she called to the iron spike, and it loosened in its socket. Blood began to well up from the wound and that nearly broke her concentration—she had never anticipated that it would be so hot—but she set her jaw and kept the spell going, the words spilling from her lips in a liquid babble. And as she spoke, she listened, and other words that she did not know formed themselves in her innermost ear, words whispered by the unborn creature cradled against her, words that knitted together torn tissue and repaired what was broken. She wove those words into her familiar sorcery. She wove too Rafiq’s name and her need for him to live. It took a long time. First the main stem of the spike came loose in her hand so that she could cast it aside, and then one by one the smaller flecks of metal followed, burrowing to the surface through the torn tissue, snuggling between her fingers like tiny animals begging for a caress. Every single piece had to be extracted, all the way from his back to his belly, and as they moved, the vessels had to be staunched about them. It was obvious that she was causing him further pain, but she had to ignore his reactions. She had to ignore the blood and the stink. She had to ignore the ache in her head and the guilt in her gut and everything but the task, until it was done.

  Then she did it all again, pulling his cracked and splintered ribs back into place before he drowned in the seep of his own blood into his lungs. Then she extracted the spearpoint through his thigh.

  She passed out at last without even knowing it, slumping forward over Rafiq’s chest as he lay there, the Egg of the Senmurw tucked against her belly like an unborn child—and now silent.

  Taqla woke when something touched the back of her neck. She opened bleary eyes on a shoal of moving lights, and as they focused, she recognized the glimmering outlines of ghostly squid drifting past her. Night had fallen and the moon was up over the Abu Bahr, recalling the dead ocean to life.

  The thought made her spasm and she shot to a sitting position, twitching off the cold thing that lay against her neck. Then she stared down at Rafiq, whose hand flopped limply to the sand. Moonlight didn’t make it easy to read his expression. She had to put a hand back on his chest to be sure he was breathing.

  “How are you feeling?” she rasped, her throat parched.

  “Thirsty,” he whispered. “Cold.”

  “Does it hurt anywhere?”

  He shook his head very slightly. Taqla wanted to fling herself on him and embrace him, but instead she contented herself with feeling for the pulse at his throat. It was thready but regular. She groped down his body, finding his shirt and trousers a sheet of black, stiffened blood. It would stink by tomorrow, she thought, running her fingertips over his stomach but finding no rent in the skin. “I’ll get you some water.”

  The Egg of the Senmurw fell from her lap as she stood, and for a moment she swayed, feeling dizzy. Under the moonlight it had no sheen, its metallic surface lead dull. She said nothing but she had to wipe at her face, with the back of her sleeve because her hands were too filthy, before setting the Egg by Rafiq’s head.

  Their little heap of baggage was half-hidden in a grove of ghostly seaweed. Taqla sorted through as quickly as she could, finding a blanket and a waterskin and some dates. Every so often she glanced over to where the pale bulge of the temple dome bulked above the
dunes. She couldn’t quite see the doorway from here but she knew that it gaped wide and the thought made her itch with unease. She felt nervous being separated from Rafiq too, as if his recovery might turn out to be an illusion after all, but when she turned back, he wasn’t lying still but, on the contrary, struggling to sit up. For a moment he almost succeeded too, before his arms gave way and he sagged back into the sand. Carefully she lifted his head and helped him sip from the waterskin.

  “I’m so weak,” he gasped when he’d had enough.

  “You lost a lot of blood.”

  “But you did mend me, after all.” He started to shiver, as if he hadn’t had the strength to before drinking. She ran her tongue over her dry lips, though he couldn’t see the gesture. When he found out what she’d done, he would start shouting at her, she thought, but he wasn’t strong enough to cope with that yet.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No. Oh…but I’d kill a thousand armed men for a coffee. If I could sit up, you understand.”

  “I would join you. Well, we’ll go find a town as soon as you’re fit to ride, God willing. But now you need to get some rest. Maybe you’ll be ready to move out, come the morning.”

  She spread the blanket over him and he curled up on his side like a child while she tried to scrub her hands.

  “I’m freezing,” he mumbled, shuddering.

  Without a word she went round behind him, slipped under the blanket and wrapped her warm body to his chilled one. She draped one arm over him, still cautious, making sure that her hand rested only on his arm, thinking how much broader his shoulders were than hers and how solid he was. Rafiq gave a little sigh and fell asleep immediately. She felt his spine relax.

  She stayed awake somewhat longer, watching the glimmer of the undersea denizens and feeling the blind gaze of the temple of Yaghuth between her shoulder blades.

  Tarampara-rampara-ram.

  Sunlight barely filtered through the thick canopy of the Tree, and they stood in a green-tinted gloom under the branches as if in a room roofed with leaves. Overhead birds of every species fluttered and hopped, most of them unseen among the foliage, but all their attention was on the great Senmurw bird before them, decked in glorious plumage, as regal as an emperor. It looked at them from wild orange eyes and uttered a fluting note with a questioning lilt.

  Taqla stepped forward. This was the first time she’d seen the Senmurw close up and its sheer size would have made her tremble even if guilt and awe hadn’t. It was beautiful. It made her feel like a small child. “I’m sorry, holy one,” she said miserably, unwrapping the Egg she carried in her arms and bowing to set it on the ground. The shell was now pitted and crazed with hairline cracks, all hint of color gone. That which had been warm and alive with power was now as cold as an egg of plaster.

  She stepped back next to Rafiq then, not because she thought him capable of defending her physically—he’d been tired and dizzy since the desert, though he was getting better—but simply to give the Senmurw space.

  Rafiq hadn’t shouted when she’d told him what she’d done. He hadn’t said a word in reproach or even looked angry, just thoughtful, his eyes shadowed with pain. But he had insisted that they return the dead Egg to the swamp near Basra. “She has a right to know,” he’d said.

  “She?”

  “The Senmurw. Of course it’s a she. How many cock-birds do you know of that lay eggs? She’s lost her only child.”

  If anything could have made Taqla feel worse, it was that. She’d been sick with self-reproach on the journey there, unable to even talk.

  Now the Bird of Compassion hopped forward across the leathery dead leaves underfoot, cocking its head from side to side to stare at the Egg.

  “What happened?” Its voice was a soundless echo in Taqla’s head.

  “It’s my fault, holy one,” she said. “My companion was injured, on the brink of death, and I made use of the Egg to heal him.” She swallowed. “I understand what a terrible thing I’ve done. I accept the punishment you choose to mete out.”

  Rafiq stirred uneasily and his fingers brushed the back of her sleeve, but she ignored him.

  The Senmurw arched its head and half-unfurled its great tail, sending reflected light dancing across the underside of the canopy. “Punishment, daughter? You mistake who I am. Do not ask me for punishment.”

  Taqla’s heart clenched. The prospect of being forgiven for a transgression so terrible was unbearable. How would she be able to live with herself? “I ask you to be just, holy one.”

  The Senmurw fluttered its wings. “Just? I know nothing of justice. What is just in this case?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I killed your offspring. I robbed the world. Please…don’t pretend it doesn’t matter.”

  From the Senmurw’s throat a strange warbling note issued. “Daughter! Do you imagine that love perishes by being exercised?” Standing on one leg, it reached out with the other claw and scooped up the Egg, turning it over to display it to the two humans. “It’s just the opposite! For three thousand years my egg lay untouched. Only because you used it to save is it now ready to hatch.”

  The great bronze talons clenched around the shell, which shattered like dry bread and turned to dust, leaving within the cage of the Senmurw’s talons a coiled bird of burning gold. It lifted its head and stretched out feathered wings, and as the Bird of Compassion opened its claw, the fledgling took flight, a miniature of its parent, and rose in a frantically beating spiral into the air. Its voice trilled like the highest of reed flutes.

  Every bird on the island fell silent to hear it.

  “Oh,” said Taqla as tears of relief began to spill from her eyes. She slipped to her knees, blotting hastily at her face with her veil. The fledgling rose higher and higher through the canopy, turning the green leaves gold as it passed until it slipped out of sight, though its song remained audible long after it had vanished from view, like that of a steppe lark.

  As lightly as a bird a hundredth its size, the Senmurw sprang to an overhead bough, plucked among the leaves with its beak, then dropped back to earth before them. It bent its neck and dropped an object into Taqla’s lap, something itself the size of an ostrich egg, oval and golden and fuzzy to the touch—the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

  “There,” said the Senmurw. “This is yours, daughter. And earned well.”

  Tarampara-rampara-ram.

  The fruit was warm in her hands and stayed that way even after the sun set. Taqla sat with it after they made camp among the hissing reeds, watching the play of firelight on its velvet skin. It smelled sweet too, as perfumed as a quince, and she couldn’t resist brushing it against her cheek.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” said Rafiq, dropping another stick on the fire. With his face underlit, his eyes were oddly shadowed.

  “Yes?”

  “The fruit is yours, Taqla. Not mine, not ours. It’s up to you to decide what you’re doing with it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He sighed. “The first time I met the Senmurw—and mind, I may not have been all that coherent, given the circumstances—she asked me what I had come there for and I told her that it was for a fruit for the Seer. I think she thought I meant you. I’m sure she did, in fact.”

  Taqla felt the strange urge to giggle. “You lied to the Bird of Compassion?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t lie, not intentionally. It was just a mistake. Which is why the fruit is yours. I won’t betray the Senmurw’s trust. She thought from the start that it was for you to eat, not some madman in Taysafun. So you can keep it if you want…and I’m sure you do. It must mean a lot to you. I won’t try to take it.”

  She groped for words. “You mean that?”

  “Would I have said anything about it if I didn’t?”

  “And what will you do, if I keep it for myself?”

  “Me? I’ll go back to being a trader in frankincense and coffee. There will be no harm done—except to the girl, which
is not our fault. And I’ll have lost nothing but a dream.” He smiled wryly, because dream was the literal meaning of the name Ahleme.

  Taqla stared at the fruit, hefting its weight in her hand, trying to imagine what it would taste like, what it would be to bite into that firm flesh, what it would be like to know all things.

  “Of course,” added Rafiq softly, sitting down opposite her across the fire, “if you do eat the fruit, we won’t need Safan. You’d know the answer to the riddle yourself. You’d even know where Ahleme is being held—we wouldn’t need the spell from the Scroll of Simon at all, would we?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if that’s the way it works. I mean, the last people to eat of the Tree of Knowledge…” She shivered. “Do you think they were thrown from the Garden for anything as trivial as being able to answer riddles?”

  “They were thrown out for disobedience, as I understand it—but you have permission.”

  “Then why was the Tree forbidden in the first place?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not a theologian, Taqla.”

  “I think it must be more a kind of spiritual knowledge conferred. A knowledge of mysteries.” What had Safan said—something about being able to see things as they truly were? She didn’t think that sounded entirely comfortable. It required hubris that even as a sorceress she did not possess. It was hard to speak, but she confessed at last, “I’m not certain I’m ready for that.”

  “Does it frighten you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, the choice is yours.” He sounded quite patient. “Only you can know if you want to take it on.”

  Quietly she covered the fruit with her right hand, as if comforting a small animal. The fruit did feel oddly alive, she thought, being so warm and fuzzy, and she could even feel the presence of a single pip like a heart centred in the fruit’s flesh. Tempting as such ultimate wisdom was, she was too nervous to really want it—or at least not tonight. Not now, while she was young and still had so much to learn by more mundane methods.