Stealing Sacred Fire (10 page)

‘He’s summoned the world’s
surviving Magian priests to his court. It is said they were
scattered throughout Europe and India, still practising in secret
the ancient fire religion. The Magians who chose to heed the
summons are now his to command. I’ve heard that they perform
powerful rites for him, so that his soldiers become possessed by
djinn, who will be used to crush Babylon’s enemies.’ Meenah moved
closer and lowered her voice. ‘The media speak of atrocities
against my people, but they refuse to talk about the true
perpetrators. Nimnezzar’s warriors assault my people at night, in
the deserts and in the mountains.’

‘A powerful and… intriguing
man, this king.’

‘Intriguing?’ Meenah sounded
outraged. ‘He’s a mad-man, who wants the Arallu to return to this
world. Foolishly, he believes he will stay in control.’

Shem put his head on one side,
glanced up at the ceiling as if in thought. ‘Perhaps he knows less
of the Arallu’s reputation than he thinks. They are a particularly
blood-thirsty faction of the fallen ones, whose practices are
unmentionable in polite company.’

‘What do you know about it?’
the girl interrupted in a cold voice. ‘The name Arallu was revealed
to our prophet in trance. It is not a common term.’

Shem raised his eyebrows.
‘Really? Forgive me, but I have an interest in the mythology of
your part of the world. The term Arallu is not that unknown. They
were an off-shoot of the Biblical Nephilim, known also as the
Grigori.’

The girl stared at him for a
moment. ‘Nephilim, maybe. I’ve not heard of the other term.’

‘Your prophet appears
well-educated in ancient beliefs.’

‘It is more than that!’

‘I’m sure it is. Look, I’m not
mocking you. Where does this Gadreel hang around?’

Meenah frowned, but with
humour. ‘He does not hang around anywhere. He keeps on the move.
Has to.’

‘So how would I find him?’

Meenah’s mouth dropped open.
‘Why would you want to?’ Her mouth closed with a snap. ‘Hey, just
who are you? What do you want with us?’ Suspicion flared in her
eyes again and, more deeply, fear.

Shem raised his hands in an
appeasing gesture. ‘Don’t worry. I’m on your side.’

‘You’re a journalist, aren’t
you?’

‘In some respects, in others a
scholar.’

‘Half an hour ago, you claimed
to know nothing about what was going on, now you’re grilling me for
information and asking how to find our prophet! Also, you seem to
know a lot already.’ She stood up. ‘Thanks for the coffee, but I
think I’d better go now. People will be waiting for me.’

Shem looked up at her,
conscious of the afternoon sunlight slanting in through the high
windows. He knew he was bathed in it, reflecting it. If she was
truly what she claimed to be, surely she would realise what he was,
if only instinctively. Her eyes were wide, and she did not move
away.

‘Meenah...’ No, he could tell
her nothing. He smiled. ‘It’s OK. I enjoyed your company. Thanks
for bringing me here.’

She hesitated. ‘Who are
you?’

He raised his plastic coffee
cup to her. ‘A friend. Now go and find your companions. They might
be worrying.’

Dismissed, she left in a hurry.
Released from his influence, she looked as if she was desperate to
get away from him. He watched her straight back retreating through
the doorway, then drained his cup. Gadreel. Nimnezzar. He must
speak to Salamiel and Daniel about this as soon as possible. They
would have a journey to make.

When Daniel finally arrived in London,
and presented himself at Shem’s hotel room, Shem was shocked by his
appearance. There were now faint lines on Daniel’s face, which over
the years had become more angular and muscular than Shem
remembered. His eyes were clearer, yet strangely haunted. He seemed
much taller, his long, light-brown hair confined in a band at the
back of his neck, wisps of it escaping over his shoulders. The
ethereal beauty of him appeared to have solidified. He was a very
attractive young man, but hardly fey. The army jacket, combat
trousers, scuffed para boots and surly demeanour conveyed an
entirely different image to the one Shem kept fondly in his memory.
When Shem stood up to welcome him, Daniel stood unyielding in his
embrace. He seemed uncomfortable, perhaps embarrassed. Perturbed,
Shem held him at arm’s length. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Daniel shrugged and wriggled
away. ‘I had no choice. You told me that.’

‘Didn’t you want to come?’ Shem
smiled widely, inflected the question with innuendo.

Daniel held his eyes. ‘You left
me, Shem. Why? I couldn’t reach you. Your mind was closed to me.
After all that happened, it was cruel!’

Shem didn’t want to be drawn
into a conversation of this type. He was impatient with it. Daniel
was being peevish and too human. He wanted to say, ‘I didn’t grant
you longevity for this!’ but held his tongue. Instead, he told
Daniel about what had happened at the Yarasadi meeting.

‘So now you want to go to the
Middle East?’ Daniel said sarcastically. ‘A holiday; great! Let’s
dodge bullets in the sun.’

‘I told you a long time ago
we’d have to go there eventually. I want you to start work now,
Daniel. We mustn’t waste time.’

‘We’d never make it, Shem. The
obvious route is through Turkey, and it’s common knowledge the
Turkish authorities discourage any Westerners from making contact
with the rebels. We’d end up in prison, if not dead, before we even
got a sniff at this Gadreel.’

Shem shook his head. ‘Daniel!
Remember who I am. No human will bar my passage to the old land. We
must leave England as soon as possible.’

Daniel rolled his eyes. ‘You
said we’d talk about this first, remember?’

Shem sighed. ‘Things have
happened, Daniel. Stop behaving like a child. You are now a man.
Once, you soared in astral flight with me. You wore my wings and
took the gift of extended life. You can’t just back away from our
work together.’

Daniel held Shem’s gaze for a
moment, then relented. ‘OK. What do you want me to do?’

‘See what you can find out
about this Gadreel character. Salamiel and I are sure there must be
others of our kind around. We must find them.’

‘Then what?’

Shem’s expression became
distant. ‘I don’t know yet. There is something, and I’m driven to
accomplish it, but I just don’t know what it is.’ He flicked a
direct glance at his vizier. ‘It’s perhaps your job to find out.
What have you been picking up recently?’

Daniel frowned. ‘Nothing to do
with you, but then I haven’t been trying. For the last five years,
I’ve been learning about my psychic ability, from an academic point
of view, but I sort of closed down after you shut me out.’

Shem nodded. ‘You probably needed to
recuperate as much as I did. But you must open up again now. Flex
your muscles and dream for me tonight, Daniel. Dream as well as you
used to. Be my eyes and my ears.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘I hope
I can.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m older now. It’s not
so easy. I’m a different person.’ He sat down on a chair, sticking
his legs out before him. ‘It’s quite common, Shem. The younger a
psychic is, the stronger their ability. Perhaps you need a new
vizier now, another young boy, or girl, who’s starry-eyed and easy
to manipulate.’

‘I won’t listen to this!’ Shem
snapped. ‘Just get on with it! I only have one vizier, and that’s
you. I don’t believe you mean what you say. You can’t have changed
that much.’

Daniel laughed; it altered his
face considerably. Shem dared to think the Daniel he knew still hid
inside this prickly exterior. ‘All right, all right. I’ll see what
I can do. Perhaps I just don’t relish the thought of living
dangerously again.’

‘But that’s what makes life
interesting,’ Shem said.

Daniel was still grinning. ‘If
you can hang on to it.’

Dreams. It had all begun with
dreams. Daniel tried to compose himself for sleep, listening to the
crackings in the wall of the hotel. His mind seemed to skitter away
from allowing any psychic impressions to enter into it. Was he
afraid? He’d put up emotional barriers, but he’d always known that,
one day, he’d have to continue the work he’d begun with Shem. Give
in to it, he told himself. Open up.

Gradually, he felt the old,
familiar sensations creep up on him; the strange tension in his
head, behind his eyes; the presence of half-heard voices whispering
to him from far away.

In the past, he’d used the image of
Ishtahar to help him acquire psychic information. She was
Shemyaza’s lost love, the woman who, a long time ago, had been the
cause of his fall, and whose shade, even now, haunted the
boundaries of Shem’s existence. Shem might not speak about her
openly, yet Daniel knew that he hoped one day to be reunited with
her. Ishtahar’s spirit had become Daniel’s goddess. Through her
advice and encouragement, she had guided him through many strange
experiences, present as a shadow in his awareness.

In the darkness, Daniel
whispered her name. ‘Ishtahar, it’s me, Daniel. Are you there? Will
you speak to me?’

He visualised her form; a slim,
dark-haired young woman, clad in peacock blue veils. Yet the image
would not come easily. Had he lost her? For years, he had not
called upon her. Perhaps she felt shut out and abandoned, as Daniel
had done by Shem. Daniel regulated his breathing, tried to
concentrate on Ishtahar’s face, but all he could think about,
bizarrely, was Lily’s daughter.

His mind wandered, lost
concentration. He knew he should have called Lily this evening.
Before he’d set off for London, they’d managed to spend a couple of
evenings together at High Crag and had discussed what Daniel should
do.

On the first night, they had
chatted easily together, reminiscing more than anything, but on the
second night, Lily had felt confident enough to speak her mind more
stridently. She thought that Daniel should start putting his foot
down with Shem, to show he could no longer be pushed around.
‘Remember how he used to treat you, Dan,’ she’d said. ‘He drove you
ahead of him all of the way, to set off any traps that might have
been laid for him.’

While Daniel couldn’t dispute
her words, neither could he explain the complexities of his
relationship with Shem to her.

As they’d shared a bottle of wine,
Lily’s exhortations to him had grown louder. ‘Daniel, you must
stand up for yourself!’

Tired, he’d ended up sitting
before her, murmuring, ‘Mmm, mmm,’ to everything she said. It had
seemed easier than trying to tell her things he couldn’t even
articulate to himself.

Before she’d left the house,
Lily had said, ‘You must ring me as soon as you’ve spoken to Shem.
You will, won’t you?’

‘Mmm,’ he’d answered.

He supposed that, even then, he
hadn’t intended doing so.

That night, as he’d got into
bed, he’d glanced at the phone and remembered his promise, but he’d
felt unable to face her demands and advice. He knew she cared about
him deeply and secretly felt hurt that he’d not kept up their
friendship, but she didn’t seem to realise that constantly telling
him things he didn’t want to hear discouraged the contact.

He fell into a restless sleep,
thoughts churning round his mind, until he was unsure whether he
was asleep or awake.

Ishtahar stood waiting for him
at the threshold of dreams. She leaned back against a closed,
wooden doorway, set in a high, sun-drenched wall of mud bricks. The
sky overhead was a perfect blue, and the air was filled with the
scents of flowers and fragrant trees. Daniel walked towards her
along a road of dust and ashes. He could not perceive what lay to
either side.

Ishtahar looked about eighteen
years old. She was dressed, as always, in blue; a simple dress
belted at the waist with a cord. Well-worn sandals of kid leather
encased her feet. Her long black hair was plaited, and the rope of
it fell over one shoulder, undulating around the curve of a
breast.

She smiled in welcome, reaching out
with one hand to push open the gate in the wall. ‘Come, Daniel.’
She disappeared into a hazy, blue-white light.

Daniel followed her through it
and they emerged into a vast, terraced garden that soared up, slope
upon slope, until it disappeared into a dark haze of cedar forest.
It was an enchanted place, and Daniel knew it well: Kharsag, the
garden in Eden. Large white dwellings could be seen, partially
screened by carefully-placed foliage. These were the domains of the
Anannage lords and their households.

A host of people, whom Daniel
knew to be human labourers of both sexes, worked on the terraces,
baskets tied to their bent backs as they weeded and pruned among
the riot of foliage. Plants from many different climates flourished
together; fan-leaved ferns next to tiny desert flowers. Among the
huge, obsidian glass domes of the green-houses, waterfalls flashed
from terrace to terrace; rainbow light danced in the air. Once, in
a far distant life, Daniel had been born in this place, nurtured to
be Shemyaza’s vizier. How different his role had become in
comparison to the days of leisurely contemplation, when he’d scryed
the universe for his master, spellbound by rarefied ideas and
abstract thoughts. Shemyaza and he we now firmly entrenched in the
new century of their birth, as alien to their past selves as spirit
forms were to humans.

Ishtahar waited for him beneath
a spreading cedar, sunlight dappling her bare arms.

‘Why have you brought me here?’
he asked her.

Ishtahar pointed up through the
spreading branches. ‘Look, do you see that white building up there?
That is the house of Shemyaza.’

Reluctantly, Daniel followed
her gaze. ‘Yes, I remember it. Is that what I’m here to see? I need
to know about Gadreel. Shem thinks he’s still alive or has been
reincarnated. Tell me, Ishtahar, is he right? Are there other
Watchers waiting to be found?’