Jerusalem Fire

by R. M. Meluch

Roniva’s blue-black skin was mottled in places with wrinkles and scars. Her sagging abdomen was corrugated with marks of childbirth.

  Alihahd couldn’t contain his anger. “What kind of sadistic and barbarous ritual is this that they should degrade a dignified, elderly woman in this way!”

  Roniva gave him a dim smile and spoke to him directly, for she had no attendants anymore. Even her familiar was nowhere to be seen. “Too dignified,” she answered. “That is the issue. I am the single most powerful being on Iry. One begins to feel like a deity.” She spat ashes from her lips. “I am not.”

  “And you are aware of it. This is not necessary.”

  “For them, too.” She gestured backward. “One’s life is not entirely one’s own up here.”

  They hiked over a ridge. A blast of wind lifted a swirl of glittering snow around them. Roniva threw back her head and howled.

  Alihahd was puzzled that she could not overcome the cold. “I have seen you step in fire and stop a naked blade with your bare hand,” he said.

  “Ah. That was then. Now is now. I am naked and I am cold. How I hate this.”

  Alihahd wanted to give her his coat. He knew she wouldn’t take it. Trying to lift her spirits, he reminded her of her own greatness.

  “Not to flatter me,” she commanded. “I need to find some humbleness if I am to bear this. How beautiful the new-fallen snow.” She frisked away like a colt.

  Alihahd thrust his hands into the pockets of Hall’s parka as he followed her. He felt pebbles in the bottom of one pocket and he drew them out. They were the eight gemstones he’d brought to Hall from the valley.

  Roniva was delighted. “Give thou to me. Hast thou a zircon? I am in need of a zircon.”

  Zircon. Humility. Alihahd gave her all eight stones. She fingered them like prayer beads.

  Silent a while, Alihahd’s thoughts jumped. Then he blurted out, “Why did you kill Jinin-Ben-Tairre?”

  “I am getting old,” she said.

  Alihahd foundered in puzzlement. Wind fluttered the fur lining of the hood that wreathed his face.

  “I grow weary,” Roniva said. “An Elder is truly an elder, thou seest. I am . . . what is the number . . . one hundred and sixty years old. I could die.”

  Alihahd was amazed and still confused. “What has that to do with Ben?”

  “When I die, they could make him Fendi.”

  “What?”

  “Thou didst not know? He is a miracle among us. I had to kill him while I had strength. I’ll not have him rule my Aerie. He belongs with humans. I sent him back.”

  “That could be difficult,” Alihahd said.

  “Thou meanest because of the Na′id?”

  “Among other things,” Alihahd said.

  “Harrison White Fox Hall tells me much about the Empire,” Roniva said.

  “I know.”

  Alihahd had told Hall to stop maligning the Empire to the Fendi. It endangered the better part of humanity should the Itiri ever decide to break their neutrality and go to arms. Hall had replied, “Don’t use ‘better’ when you mean ‘bigger.’”

  “Alihahd, thou speakest not and thou art the one I would have speak,” Roniva prompted.

  Know thine enemy. She wanted to know the Na′id.

  “In true conscience, I cannot,” Alihahd said.

  Roniva made a questioning noise. She wanted to know why.

  Alihahd admitted, bluntly, “Because they are human and you are not.”

  The Fendi was not offended. Honesty did not offend.

  “I am afraid you will need to rely on Mr. Hall for your information,” Alihahd said.

  “Thou art a worse threat to the Na′id than is Mr. Hall,” Roniva said.

  “How do you figure?” Alihahd asked.

  Hall was dedicated to the destruction of the Na′id. Alihahd only wanted to break their stranglehold on free humanity and to avoid bloodshed.

  “Thou knowest them best,” Roniva said.

  “I do,” Alihahd said. “It has been a decided advantage.”

  “Harrison White Fox Hall tells me evil things about the Na′id. Tell me something good, canst thou?”

  Trapped. This woman always won what she sought. He could hardly not answer her, and he ended up telling her about the Na′id.

  He explained to her the Na′id ideology, before it had run afoul of itself. Its lofty ideal had been to eliminate the superficial barriers which divided humankind.

  Roniva countered, “They oppose color barriers, yet they despise thee for thine color. How is that?”

  Who had told her about his color? Hall. Damn him.

  Alihahd regarded his pale hands. He was sensitive about his strange color. It was difficult to keep emotion from his voice. “This is the color of a pure race. It is a symbol of many evil practices in the past—”

  “Thou art not a symbol. Thou art a man,” Roniva said. “Thou hast also been brainwashed by thine own enemy.”

  Alihahd wanted to protest, but he would need to tell her too much. He sighed. He couldn’t even reason with human Jews and Arabs. What made him think he was going to make an alien hear sense?

  It was comforting to know that all these irrational Itiri were staunchly neutral and wouldn’t set out with their deadly martial skills to threaten the Empire.

  All but one dead one.

  • • •

  An evil in their midst. The Na′id conscription base locked in on itself in unknowing terror. Brave soldiers feinted at moving drafts of air. A presence among them like a ghost—there but not there—had them cowering defenseless, because they didn’t know what it was. They, the arrogant members of the Na′id conscription force who with laughing pride called themselves Mushabriqu’s Press Gang—none of them was laughing now. Something was here. Damn it, something was here.

  • • •

  Without striking a blow, the evil in their midst reduced the entire base to grasping terror. Without striking a blow yet.

  A voice inside the stalking evil told it to wait. Thou art one. They are many. Yet they fear thee!

  The Na′id numbers were overwhelming. This conscription force had carried off the able-bodied population of an entire village by force. They must be reduced before they could be fought.

  I am the attacker. They defend.

  The advantage was in the role chosen. The Na′id could have been a hunting party stalking a lone cornered beast on their own ground. Instead, they let themselves be frightened, become the defenders, shrinking from a killer in the house.

  It was a night of fear. Slamming doors, heavy footsteps, a flutter of wings that was here and gone, the specter of a hawk, the shadow of a sword.

  Thou canst not slay them all at once.

  One had to start somewhere. Strategically.

  And, after the long night, just when the soldiers began to feel relieved and foolish, they flung the windows wide, and the gentle morning sun lit the courtyard where General Mushabriqu hung by his neck from the flagpole beneath the bloody flag.

  And so it began.

  • • •

  Night turned to the hour of the meteors. The snow had stopped. The clouds were gone. Under the clear sky, the temperature plunged.

  Alihahd warmed Roniva’s long toes between his hands. It seemed to him that there was something terribly arbitrary about the physical characteristics of the Itiri and their purposeless dimorphism. The aghara were too tall for the gravity and too fair for the irradiation on the mountaintop.

  A meteor streaked across the icy sky. Snow on the ground glinted like quartz flecks, crusty cold underfoot. Starshadows were hard-edged and black. Roniva yawned.

  Alihahd took her long-fingered hands and held them inside his coat against his chest.

  “This is abominable,” he growled.

  “Thou mayest go in if thou
art cold,” Roniva said.

  “No.” The cold never bothered Alihahd much.

  In the east the sign of the Mountain was rising, a random-looking jumble of stars that hadn’t formed a double peak in 100,000 years. Dawn was still hours away.

  Roniva took up their walk again. One hand slipped into Alihahd’s coat pocket as a human lover might do—as his wife used to do when they were young and still pretending to be in love for the public eye.

  “Are you not afraid of falling ill?” Alihahd asked. He worried about her in the wind.

  “We do not sicken,” Roniva said. “Most of us are immune to every disease on this world. Frostbite worries me.” She flexed her long fingers and toes. “Disease doth not.”

  “That’s incredible,” Alihahd said. “How did your people develop such immunities?”

  “We died by the thousands,” Roniva said simply. “Those that survived passed down immunity.”

  “A harsh method,” Alihahd said.

  “Nature’s method,” Roniva said. “We try to be at one with Nature.”

  “Nature is cruel,” Alihahd said. “Humanity is compassionate.”

  “Is it?” Roniva said.

  “Kindness is a human trait,” Alihahd said. “Which is not to say that all humans are kind.”

  “True enough that one does not often find kindness growing wild,” Roniva conceded.

  And Alihahd became disturbed by something that had only gradually crept into his awareness since he had come to Iry—the total absence of physical and mental defectives in the population. He asked cautiously if there were any.

  “Oh. Distorts. Of course they happen.”

  “Where are they?” Alihahd asked.

  “We kill them.”

  “That is inhuman,” Alihahd said.

  Onyx eyes flashed. “We are not human.”

  “I tend to forget,” he said, bitter. “The level of a civilization is measured by how it cares for those unable.”

  “Very noble,” Roniva said. “Very impractical at this point.”

  “Humans manage,” Alihahd said.

  “Is it true that human children are cruel to the deformed and the different?” Roniva asked.

  Alihahd’s white face colored. “Yes, but—”

  “Such treatment distorts the inside. The abused grow crooked. They carry much anger. That distorts others. They distort their own children. The spiral goes down.”

  “That is cold-blooded reasoning. These things can be overcome,” Alihahd said.

  “So who told thee we were perfect?” Roniva said. “You have your interstellar wars. Why dost thou begrudge us our private atrocities?”

  And who had told him the Itiri were perfect? The legends. He of all people ought to know the frailty of legends.

  “Is it true you have to kill someone to become a warrior-priest?” Alihahd asked.

  “No. That is not true,” Roniva said. But before Alihahd could breathe relief, she said, “Thou must kill someone to be a hanina.”

  A noise like the beginning of gagging escaped Alihahd.

  “Oh, one doth not go out and murder someone,” Roniva said. “It is not a thing to strive for. It happens or it happens not. It is no one’s goal to be a hanina. It is a burden. When one becomes an Elder, one gains access to the Archives. I know thou thought we had no written records. We do. They are kept in a cave in the desert. One can read things one would rather not.

  “Ours is not a shame culture, Captain Alihahd. We have no use whatsoever for guilt upon which some human cultures thrive. The Archives collect much dust.”

  “There is an ancient shame?” Alihahd asked.

  “There is. I shall not jump off the bridge for it.”

  “Your people do not fear death, do they, Fendi?”

  “No. It comes to all sooner or later. Preferably later.”

  Alihahd gazed at the sky. Another shooting star blazed across the Milky Way. “You must be formidable in war,” he said.

  “I suppose we would be,” Roniva said. “But we have not seen war in several lifetimes.”

  Alihahd’s brows drew together sharply. “How did you achieve that?”

  “No nations,” Roniva said. She crouched in the snow, tried to make a snowball, but the graupel would not stick together. “It is difficult to organize a war without nations. And thou knowest our attitude toward ownership. Humans kill each other for that handful of stones in thine pocket. We own nothing. So we have no property to protect. The ranga are docile. As for the aghara, we all become warrior-priests. We are strong. Only the weak and frightened must fight.”

  “All the aghara become warriors?”

  “Or they die,” Roniva said.

  “They are killed,” Alihahd interpreted.

  “The same,” Roniva said.

  “Why must an aghara become a warrior-priest?”

  “When aghara go their own way, war will return to Iry.”

  “Or when it comes from the stars,” Alihahd said.

  “Or that,” Roniva said.

  “You seem to be taking that possibility lightly,” Alihahd said. “A few thousand warriors and a handful of antique spaceships will not avail you against a modern fleet. Your people were introduced to high technology two thousand years ago and you’ve done nothing with it in all that time. Your science is stagnant.”

  “We have all we want,” Roniva said. “Why art thou worried about us?”

  “I swear I don’t know. I should let you all go to the devil. And you will go, if the Na′id find out that Itiri warrior-priests actually do exist. You wanted me to tell you something about the Na′id. I shall tell you something. They will turn you back into a myth as fast as they can seed your sun with a nova core. Sooner or later.”

  “I should hate to have to deal with that,” Roniva said.

  • • •

  When the eastern sky began to gray, Roniva climbed up the highest rise and waited with open arms for the coming of the sun.

  Alihahd dropped to one knee a distance behind her to watch, smiling that the long night was past and she was still here to salute the morning fire. The winds picked up her hip-length hair and fanned it out behind her like a sail. Sun gleamed on her black arms thrown wide. She cried out in the ancient tongue, a sound of exultation, fittingly barbarous to Alihahd’s ears. He expected nothing less or else from his savage warrior queen.

  She turned to him, and he rose.

  She returned to the Chamber of the Golden Dome. The warriors who had driven her out were still there, waiting to envelop her in furs and a jeweled robe when she came in. They brought her to the fireside and brushed her hair and dressed it in gold-and-tapestry ribbons. Her colored toques were replaced around her neck, and her jingling sword belt looped around her hard waist. A warrior brought her sword wrapped in felt. He bowed all the way to the floor at her feet, unwrapped the blade, and offered it up to her over his bowed head.

  She took it in a solid grip, reassured by its comforting weight, and then sheathed it.

  “Tell the Earthman the Fendi is grateful for his service,” Roniva said to the air. “Tell the Earthman he may go.”

  No one needed to tell Alihahd to go. He left the cave. This conversation was ended.

  • • •

  Alihahd sat on his neatly made bed, lost in thought. Vaslav came in, unwelcomely energetic and tried to talk to him. Alihahd changed his clothes, folded up the ones Hall had given him, and excused himself shortly. “I must return some things to Mr. Hall.”

  Vaslav scowled after him.

  Alihahd took the things not to Hall and Serra’s cave, but to the private cave on the third level. Alihahd didn’t want to confront Hall. He wanted to return the clothes and leave. He wanted to be alone, unseen.

  But he found a fire blazing in the hearth as if he was expected.

&nb
sp; Alihahd let his bundle drop onto the bed. Irritated. Of course he’d been expected.

  The fox-head meerschaum pipe had been left behind on the yellowwood table. Alihahd was tempted to pitch it into the crevasse. What would Hall think of that?

  Hall would laugh.

  Alihahd paced to the fire, stopped, regarded the pipe, paced. Hall was so sure Alihahd would not touch it.

  Hall was right.

  Alihahd touched the yellowwood tabletop with a gentle hand. He ought to pitch Hall into the crevasse. That was the real matter here.

  Alihahd lightly pressed his palms together and wove his long fingers together as if praying, and he gazed into the fire. Licking tongues of flame reflected in his pale eyes.

  He saw his own setkaza.

  13. Witch Wind

  THE TIME OF YEAR CAME when the wind Shandee would blow for twenty days straight, from the second of the River through the sign of the Wellspring to the seventh of the Veil—nearly half the winter. Caves were stocked with food and water, and denizens of Haven banded together for the long season. All six humans gathered in Serra’s chambers to weather the storm. They were sick of each other after a few hours, sick of the walls, sick of the howling wind.

  Alihahd kept to his singular schedule and intensified all his little rituals, an illusion of control and order in the helpless confinement.

  And he dreamed of being buried alive.

  • • •

  He woke in semidarkness, the edge of a dream fading from his mind.

  The sentinel from within her cave on Aerieside was beating out the hour for all the prisoners of the wind. Alihahd counted the bronze clashes. Seven. The hour of the eagles. Predawn.

  Alihahd sat up on the wide mattress, finally awake.

  He pulled on his boots, first the left, then the right. He went to the back chamber to wash and pass water. Serra’s back chamber with its nonporous refuse drain was the reason these caves had been chosen for the humans. Itiri excreted little water. Neither did they sweat.

  Alihahd rubbed salt on his teeth, did it twice, spat, and came back to his corner of the bed.

  He put everything in its place. He owned four changes of clothes by now, and he stacked what he was not wearing in order under the pillow. He folded his quilt, the woven blanket, the brown fur, and the silver fur precisely, in four folds, and set them on his sleeping place.