Stealing Sacred Fire (12 page)

‘Istanbul.’ The woman leaned
back against the door, blinking at the ceiling, her blood pooling
around her. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘Well, thanks.’ Melandra walked
to the door, opened it, pushing the woman aside. She paused for a
moment. ‘Sorry about this, but I don’t want you making any phone
calls.’ She put her weapon against the woman’s head and shot her,
more quietly than before, then put her gun back into her bag and
went out onto the street, closing the door behind her. ‘Bad
security. They should have more sense.’

Quickly, she walked down the
street, then turned into a side road, making for the bustle of the
main streets and the anonymity of the nearest tube station. First,
she ducked into an alley and removed the wig and glasses, which she
threw into a pile of cardboard boxes. She let down her hair and
went back onto the street. Istanbul. She would follow him
there.

Babylon

The princess dreamed her father’s dream
of war and victory. She hung somewhere up in the sky, looking down,
and saw him ride a high-stepping grey stallion, amid a forest of
fluttering banners that bore the seal of their royal house. His
Magian generals rode behind him, dressed in robes of scarlet and
gold. Her father looked so handsome; his coiled, oiled hair black
against his uniform and his moustache shining like combed silk.

The sun shone down and made the
stench of war more horrible. The princess knew that angels had
fought here, for the battle-field was a tangle of broken wings and
blood. The bodies of the defeated had rained down from heaven to
die.

The king’s stallion stepped
daintily on its polished hooves towards a rocky outcrop that rose
up from the battlefield, which was otherwise quite flat. Here, on a
shawl of wet redness that was spread out over the stone, a tall
figure leaned against an erect spear, gazing down at the carnage.
The princess was in no doubt that this was a prince of angels. He
was a giant, tall and lean. His long, pale face was clean-shaven
and he was clad in bloodied leather; his white-gold hair wound up
on his head, decorated with what appeared to be human bones. Cruel
and dangerous he seemed, yet so beautiful.

The princess watched this angel
warrior turn lambent blue eyes upon her father, silently watching
him draw closer. Presently, fixing the king with an expression of
disdain, he spoke, in a low voice that rang out like a clarion over
the field. ‘Where is my brother, ruler of men?’

The princess looked on as her
father drew his mount to a halt beneath the rock, looked up. ‘Who
is your brother, lord?’

‘He wears your chains, lies
deep beneath Etemenanki, suffers in silence.’

The princess saw into the mind
of her father, understood then its workings; cunning and twisting.
She knew that the king remembered the angel lord he had taken
prisoner from a tomb, but he was not afraid. The prisoner was
currency. ‘Penemue,’ he said.

The giant straightened up,
flexed his fingers upon the spear. ‘Deliver him unto me.’

The princess saw sly patterns
curl through the mind of her father. She saw the words he
discarded, heard those he selected. ‘Lord Penemue has many
enemies,’ he said. ‘He is under my protection. By what name are you
known, lord?’

The angel sneered then, and the
princess knew he could see into the mind of the king as well as she
could. ‘I am his sovereign lord. I am Shemyaza. And if you do not
release Penemue, then I shall come for him.’

The king bowed upon his horse.
‘But you are welcome always in my palace, lord. Return with me to
the jewel of Babylon, and I will command a great feast be set for
you. There, you may dine with your brother, in my house.’

The angel nodded. ‘I shall come
to your house,’ he said and various meanings twisted through his
words.

The princess woke up then,
roused from her dream by the echo of a clamour in the house. All
was silent now.

She opened her eyes on the
tawny darkness, blinked at the swaying canopies above her bed,
where reedy chimes of metal swung like singing stars. Then, she
heard feet running on the marble floors beyond the great double
doors of her bedroom, as if they approached swiftly from a great
distance, and she sensed a pulsing excitement in the air, like the
memory of a shout in an empty room. They were not mortal feet.

She was not afraid. Like her
mother, she was a prize and knew no fear in the house of her
father.

Quietly, she slipped from
between her linen sheets and cast aside the draperies that swathed
her couch. Beyond, the room was vast and seemed empty; the bed a
great splendid island in its midst, where she might lie enchanted
awaiting kisses. A robe of dark silk lay in a puddle of fabric
beside the bed. Without haste, the princess lifted it and pulled it
around her shoulders, before venturing on her naked feet across the
black and gold polished floor. Her feet left marks, like the feet
of an angel. It was the heat of sleep seeping out from her.

The princess was a part of her
father’s dream of Ancient Babylon. She had been raised to believe
in it, and knew no other life. She was Sarpanita, daughter of the
Lord of the Four Quarters of the World and she lived in the house
that was called the Marvel of the Land; the Shining Residence; the
Dwelling of Majesty.

Outside the bedroom, she found
her mother Amytis, also belting her robe and surrounded by a bevy
of hand-maidens — Egyptians, all adorned in the manner of
antiquity.

‘What is it, Mama?’ Sarpanita
inquired politely. She was wary of her father, for she had seen him
kill, but for her mother she reserved a quiet terror, blended with
awe and a sliver of love. Although Amytis had never raised a hand
against her, and rarely spoke sharply, the girl appreciated that,
given the opportunity, Amytis was capable of being far more deadly
than her husband.

The queen yawned, gave her belt
a final yank. Her feet were slippered in pearled velvet, sewn with
gold wire. ‘A commotion,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we have been invaded,
though I think not. News, then, or a message.’ She shrugged and
extended a honey-coloured arm like a shining serpent, out from her
robe. ‘Come, my child. We must see for ourselves.’

Sarpanita was pulled into the
embrace of her mother, felt the heat of her body through the cool
silk, the ripple of her muscles. The hand-maidens were left behind
at the door to Amytis’ apartments. Their eyes were wide; fingers
fluttered before their mouths.

Before her marriage, Amytis had
been a guerrilla fighter and was in fact a captive of war, which
suited her husband’s designs admirably. Now, she was less fiery,
but smouldered on, slinking and sliding around the palace, a
dangerous cat-serpent wearing a gold collar, kept docile by fresh
meat.

Long ago, in the bed of their
passion, Amytis had coaxed her husband’s dream from him. She knew
how he regarded himself and was wise enough to realise that
collusion in the dream helped consolidate her position at the
king’s side. Amytis was not her original name.

‘Mama,’ Sarpanita said. ‘Where
is Tiy?’ The old woman would normally be found in Amytis’ quarters
at night.

‘I think she is with your
father,’ Amytis replied, ‘but we shall see.’

Tiy was a fearsome seeress,
whom Amytis had brought with her from home, ostensibly as a
hand-maid. Sarpanita was not sure whether she was related to this
terrifying crone, because the relationship between Amytis and the
seeress was odd and nebulous. The girl knew they practised strange,
old rites in private together. Sometimes Amytis seemed in awe of
Tiy, while at other times the old woman behaved like a servant.
Despite the fact that Nimnezzar clearly despised the seeress, it
seemed he was objective enough to appreciate her strong psychic
abilities. Much to the disgust of the Magian priests who flocked
around him, Tiy had become one of his close advisors. The fact that
Tiy was at this moment with the king must mean that something
momentous had occurred.

Mother and daughter walked
through the high-ceilinged corridors that were tiled in blue and
decorated with designs of lions and trumpet flowers and the images
of tall columns garlanded with leaves. Brass lamps depended from
the ceiling, looking like censers. Electric light gleamed from them
dimly like burning oil. ‘I dreamed of an angel king,’ said
Sarpanita. ‘And names came to me: Shemyaza, Penemue.’

‘Ah yes,’ replied the queen.
She squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. ‘You are a seeress like old
Tiy, sweet child. The names are pertinent.’

Amytis actually believed her
daughter to be rather more than just a seeress. When the child had
been conceived, Nimnezzar had come to his wife’s bed as Shemyaza
and she had received him as Ishtahar. This ritual union had been
fruitful — surely an omen — as before then she had never conceived
with any man. Sarpanita was therefore an angel princess, not quite
human, for her parents had risen above their mortal spirits to
create her.

Sarpanita, unaware of this
aspect of her creation, only recognised the tone that meant she
must not question her mother further.

The king’s private apartments
were some distance from those of the royal women, and they had to
cross an open balcony to reach them. The courtyard below was filled
with flowers, all breathing sweetness into the night. It was a
special garden the king had designed for the queen, and all its
blooms came alive at night. Amytis liked to walk there, slowly, in
moonlight. She kept her peacocks there; all tame and named and
collared, and there was a trefoil pool, where opal-white carp dozed
beneath a mat of lilies.

‘Why did we hear them running?’
asked the princess, because all was tranquil in the garden. ‘It had
nothing to do with us.’

‘There was no-one running,’
answered the queen, ‘but you heard it nonetheless. An echo through
the grilles, that came from your father’s quarters, perhaps, or a
premonition.’

‘But you heard it too,’
whispered the princess.

Amytis laughed. ‘It is my
business to do so.’

They came now to the gates of
the king’s apartments, where guards stood to attention. The gates
were bronze, decorated with the images of striding, winged gods.
The guards were ceremonial; they did not carry guns, but curved
swords. When they saw Amytis and her daughter, they opened the
gates for them. Amytis smiled at them vaguely and led her daughter
past them.

Beyond, a dark, columned
hall-way unfurled before them, grander than the corridors of the
women’s quarters. Noise could be heard here; the whisper of voices
talking quickly and a sense of imminence in the air. Servants
flitted across the passage-way ahead of them like ghosts. It was
clear that the king had been roused, and that his staff hurried to
attend to his wants.

Statues stood motionless in
niches; tall feather-cloaked men of black basalt, taken from the
ancient city discovered by the king’s archaeologists. Sarpanita
glanced uneasily at their long, stern faces and slanting ophidian
eyes.

Amytis paused before one of the
statues, gestured at it. ‘He is one of the Arallu,’ she told her
daughter, pulling her close against her side. ‘A frightening thing.
A long time ago, the legends say that Great God Anu made a garden,
which he called Kharsag. His messengers and warriors, the Shining
Ones, attended him there, but some of them went bad and stole out
of the garden in the night. They went down to the lower plains to
seduce the daughters of men. A great war was caused by this. The
children that the rebel Shining Ones conceived on their women were
monstrous, and hunted down by Anu’s fierce warriors. Those who
survived were forced into hiding. Some of their descendants became
a demon race called the Arallu. They lived in the city your Papa’s
diggers found. They lived underground to hide from the wrath of
Anu.’

Sarpanita shuddered. She knew
vaguely of these things, but her mind had always shied away from
them. ‘They are just stories,’ she said, in a small, precise
voice.

Amytis nodded. ‘Indeed they are, and
yet remember you can make a story of playing with your kitten in
the light and shade of your inner room. History is stories, some of
it embellished to make it more colourful, some of it remembered
only in half-light, fragmented.’ She squeezed Sarpanita’s shoulder.
‘My dear, Penemue was a rebel Shining One. For his sins, he was
buried beneath hard, heavy rocks in a tomb of black glass. He did
not die. The Arallu kept him hidden’

‘Why didn’t they set him
free?’

Amytis shrugged. ‘We may never
know. I think it must be because they were afraid of his power. But
your father is not afraid, little Nita. He opened the tomb, he took
away the rocks.’

Sarpanita swallowed
convulsively. She did not want to think about what her mother was
telling her, in case she remembered something that was buried deep
within her mind, older even than her body, or her soul. ‘He’s
alive?’ She felt as if dark, flapping pinions beat the air around
her, invisible. For the first time, she knew fear in her father’s
house.

Amytis laughed softly. ‘He is
not dead, my daughter.’

‘I dreamed of angels…’

‘The Shining Ones are
remembered as angels in many faiths. It is just a name. The old
stories were carried far across the world, and were changed along
the way.’

‘Mama, I feel strange. It is as
my dream described. An angel prince imprisoned in our city.’

‘That is your Penemue,’ said
the queen languidly, pointing at the statue before them, ‘or rather
his image.’ She smiled down at her daughter. ‘I think it is time
you learned certain things. Your father protects you, because he
looks upon you as a child, though of course you are not. I will
take you to him now and we shall discover what the fuss is
about.’