Heart of Flame Read online

  Dedication

  To Adam M, with thanks

  Author Note

  This book is a work of fiction, intended as entertainment, and should not be construed as an attempt to accurately depict the places, events or culture of any real historical period. I have included a number of deliberate anachronisms in my fantasy version of 9th Century Arabia.

  Janine Ashbless

  Chapter One

  In which snow melts in the High Atlas.

  Not all the world belongs to Man.

  In the thin air over the mountain range something moved, high above the stony wastes of the middle slopes and the upper line of the pines, something pale against the deep sky and dark against the snowfields. An observer, if there had been one, might have seen that it was eggshell blue in color, rippled with subtle shades like shadows on ice. A long strip of silk, sheer and delicate, it undulated like a live thing as it hung in midair, snakelike where no snake had any right to be. And it moved against the wind, not with it.

  Scudding over the glacial slopes, the silken banner closed upon a shoulder of the mountainside from behind which steam was rising. Cresting the saddle, it paused momentarily, describing a loose-woven knot. The rise concealed from below a sheltered bowl of rock that had, until recently, been full of snow. Now meltwater was trickling over boulders and tunneling into the snowdrifts below. The source of the heat was a rent in the hillside, a pool filled with the sullen glow of heaving lava. On a spit of rock jutting out over the magma knelt a man.

  It would not have been possible to mistake him for human. No human man could have crouched there in that heat without his lungs being scorched and blistered at the first breath. Besides, he was taller than most men—and broadly muscular too, though his height made him look sinewy—and all over the ash-colored skin of his bare torso and arms and scalp were tattooed lines of a script that seemed to crawl and flow in the heat ripple. He was staring into the air that danced directly over the centre of the magma.

  The silken veil descended to the shoreline and coiled about itself as if encompassing an unseen column. As the coils tightened, the shape described beneath took on feminine curves, and then suddenly there wasn’t a wisp of silk there at all, but a slim young woman with feathery white hair. She was naked except for a broad belt of spun silver that draped her loins and hung down to her perfect ankles, and her nipples were pale blue, like ancient ice. She stared at the rippled muscles of the man’s back.

  “Yazid!” she said in a silvery voice. “Here again?”

  The man glanced over his shoulder. Black arched brows were the only hairs that ornamented his head. His irises were as colorless as ice and his mouth downturned with displeasure. With a grunt he reached into the lava at his feet and scooped a handful out, flinging it in her direction. She held out her hand and the molten glob of rock flew apart into a scatter of glowing pebbles that spun round her before shrinking, losing their color and becoming a hanging veil of uncut crystals, a diamond halo. He showed no particular sign of surprise.

  “Isn’t there any place I may call my own, Zubaida?”

  She ignored his protest. “Is she so beautiful that you have to watch her night and day?”

  “Judge for yourself.” With a hand that had been plunged unscathed into molten rock but looked quite ordinary, except that the nails were black and curved to points like the talons of a bird of prey, he indicated a mirage that hung in the heat shimmer—the figure of a woman in an embroidered robe of peacock blue. Zubaida strolled forward along the edge of the magma pool for a clearer look.

  “She is beautiful,” she admitted. “For a mortal.”

  The visionary woman was sitting alone by a pool of water, one knee folded up, one hand playing idly with the strings of pearls looped about her throat. Her face was still and pensive. The object of her gaze was a small book whose open pages revealed elaborately written text. Her youthful skin had none of the pallid tone of her two observers and her long hair fell in dark curls, netted by a glinting filigree of sapphires and gold thread.

  “The most beautiful woman in all the lands of Al-Sham and of Persia.”

  “But still,” Zubaida said, “only mortal.”

  “Only? Ahleme is of the bloodline of Solomon and Bilqis, though she doesn’t know it. Don’t you see the resemblance?”

  “She looks…somewhat like the queen used to, I suppose.”

  “A perfect scion, after all these centuries.”

  Zubaida’s delicate features rearranged themselves in an expression of restrained dismay. “What are you planning, Yazid?”

  “I’m thinking that she would look well in my bed.”

  “Is that your idea of vengeance?”

  “And that if she were to bear me a child…”

  “A child?”

  “Heh. I thought that might discomfort you.”

  “That’s…unthinkable.”

  “Yet I have thought it. And it seems good to me.”

  “She’s a Daughter of Earth! Toy with her if you like, but—a child?”

  “A son of the blood of Solomon and Bilqis, and of our blood. Don’t you see? He would have the power of our people—and he would have the authority to erase that which his forebears wrote.”

  For a long moment Zubaida stared, her eyes diamond pale like his—and diamond hard. “If you were not my brother, then I’d denounce you before the Court of Angels.”

  Yazid smiled, not pleasantly. “If you were not my sister, then I’d kill you first.”

  She drew herself up taller. “Besides, you cannot remove her against her will. It is written. You know that.”

  “But she will come with me willingly. Already I have sent dreams to woo her.”

  “You’d dishonor all our tribe for the sake of a half-breed child?”

  He rose, a fire in his pale eyes. “I will risk dishonor, Zubaida, so that once more we might all be free.”

  Chapter Two

  In which a wanderer and a sorceress meet, and it is shown that it is not always easy to act like a man.

  The streets of Dimashq-al-Sham, accounted by its inhabitants the oldest inhabited city and Mother of the World, were crooked and crowded and no place for a woman to walk unaccompanied. Even veiled and in company there were places a woman couldn’t decently be seen in and conversations she wouldn’t be allowed to hear, so the sorceress Taqla bint-Yusef chose to venture out in male appearance that day. Because she liked to feel the sun on her face when the narrow lanes opened up into little squares, and the air on her skin when the parched breeze of summer moved down the sticky alleyways, she went as a humble man clothed only in loose trousers and a little sleeveless jacket open at the front. And because she didn’t wish to attract attention, she went in the masculine guise she wore most often—a youngish man with a broken nose and pleasantly ugly features. He was known, by those few who remembered him passing through their lives, as Zahir of the household of Umar, in the Souk of Glass.

  Umar, of course, did not exist any more than Zahir did. Both were masks Taqla wore at her convenience.

  She loved going out in public this way. Her own house was secluded by its high walls, and the hubbub of the streets rarely disturbed the calm within. To have that sanctuary, and then to be able to emerge from it into the clutter and color and noise outside, filled her with delight. She loved the glint of light on copperware and the smell of roasted mutton and the banter between buyers and sellers. She revelled in the sunbeams that rode the dust between the awnings and the sizzle and pop of roasting nuts on the charcoal braziers at street corners.

  In Zahir’s guise, Taqla wandered up Straight Street, which was indeed a lot straighter and a great deal broader than the other thoroughfares of Dimashq, and idled through the bazaars that lined it, each twisted
passageway a souk specialising in a particular trade—woodwork or perfume, textiles or spices, sweets or soap. It was said that in Dimashq one could buy anything—cosmetics and slaves, silver and brassware, carpets, musical instruments, shoes, olive oil, incense and water pipes. Fruits of all kinds were grown in the city’s famous orchards and the finest meats came from the flocks grazed on the slopes of the mountains to the north and west, or along the banks of the river that headed out to die in the desert to the east. The illiterate could have a scribe write or read a letter for them, the sick could seek the refuge-hospitals set up to give them succor, the begrimed could cleanse themselves in the many public bathhouses. The only problem, Taqla often thought, was that you couldn’t be in a hurry for any of these things because nothing in Dimashq was found quickly or accomplished urgently. “Patience is the key to the house of happiness,” ran the local proverb.

  So she rested awhile in a coffeehouse and played three games of backgammon with the local champion, graciously losing two. She listened to the blind storyteller who held court behind the Great Mosque of Caliph Al-Walid and gave him a silver dirham for his story. She haggled for a length of silk rope, which was in theory the goal of her perambulation that day, and struck a reasonable bargain but not so much as to be remembered for it. With the coil of rope worn across her chest, she bought a white dove in the Street of Birds and released it at the foot of the Citadel, in memory of her great-grandfather who had been executed there in the days of the Umayyads, when the practice of sorcery was less tolerated.

  These days, now that Dimashq was diminished in greatness and no longer the seat of the caliphate, there was far less danger for those who studied the Art of Solomon, though perhaps not so much because of moral laxity as the fact that the city’s rulers now lacked the power and the will to force the issue.

  Above all, Taqla gathered news. She heard that Ahleme, eldest daughter of the amir and commonly accounted the most beautiful woman in Dimashq or even all Al-Sham, had, with her entourage, visited a holy shrine up the Barada river and that, although nobody had been permitted to look up from the ground as she passed on camelback, lilies had sprung up along the banks in her wake. Taqla smirked privately at this. She heard that a flock of birds with bronze plumage had been seen near Halba and had laid waste to a village before being driven off by soldiers banging copper pots. That the amir had appointed a Nasrani as his personal doctor. That the price of bread was rising again. That a stone had fallen from the crumbling north wall of the Citadel and killed a goat but narrowly missed a child, by the grace of God. And that Rafiq the Traveller was back in the city.

  This last interested her most immediately. There were several merchant-masters in Dimashq who were wealthy enough to equip whole caravans east to Samarqand or south to the coast where the trade vessels from India and Africa docked, but Rafiq was the only one young and restless enough to make the journey with his men. It was always possible he had come into possession of something on his travels that might be of interest to her, so Taqla amended her ambling path through the quarter to take her to the Caravanserai Al-Jurraia, the warehouse that Rafiq’s family owned and where he rented rooms to lesser merchants. She was reasonably certain that he would be somewhere in the vicinity if he had recently got back, or that someone there would have his goods list.

  Two streets from the caravanserai, she was passing a barber’s shop when she happened to glance under the awning and saw a small crowd of men all squatting on the ground. They listened raptly to the customer on the stool, who was having his beard trimmed and his throat shaved and yet was talking calmly while the knife swept up his skin. Taqla paused, wincing inwardly. How did men do that—let a stranger hold a blade to their necks? She was glad that as Zahir she had no need to submit to a shaving. She simply re-imagined him anew, every time she cast the spell.

  “…and in the city of Shibam the houses stand eleven stories high, as high as our Citadel tower, even though they are only made of mud-brick,” he was saying, his chin lifted and his eyes on the roofline, “and on the tops of these towers stand hollow statues of lions that roar when the wind blows through them.” The barber flicked his blade under the man’s jaw.

  Taqla’s eyes narrowed. The client was a reasonably young man, his small beard unmarked by gray hair. He was plainly dressed, but he did carry a scimitar sheathed at his hip. She dropped to her haunches at the back of the audience and whispered, “Friend, who is that man?”

  Only half a glance was cast in her direction. “That’s Rafiq the Traveller. He’s been south to the land of Saba, from where Queen Bilqis came to visit King Solomon the Wise. He’s about to seek audience with the amir.”

  Taqla allowed herself a mental pat of approval. The instinct of a sorcerer is a thing to be cultivated and in the most acute of cases allows them to see the paths of Fate. She had found by chance the man she sought.

  “And from Saba comes frankincense and dragon’s blood, which is a medicine most difficult to get hold of and most expensive for that reason. The dragons live upon an island off the coast and are slow-moving beasts that feed upon the leaves of certain palm trees. With my own eyes I saw them. They’re gray and scaled and larger than a camel, and to draw their blood a man must run in with an awl and drive it between the scales behind the forelegs. When the blood runs out it dries in droplets upon the scales, and when the beasts sleep it can be scraped off. But the men must take great care, because should one drive the awl too deep and cause it pain, it would turn its head from the palm crown and look down, and these beasts are so venomous that a single glance is enough to kill. From Saba I bring a bowl of dried dragon’s blood for our amir, and the bowl is of ivory carved in the shape of a sailing ship, the sails and even the rigging carved from ivory too, and the hull set with green emeralds and black pearls.”

  Taqla felt a stab of interest.

  Rafiq carried on talking, encouraged by questions from his audience and barely interrupted by the barber’s ministrations as he was shaved and rinsed and a flame was patted to his cheeks to scorch off any stray hairs, then had perfumed oil massaged into his scalp to finish off with. Taqla waited patiently as he wound up his stories, stretched, paid the barber, distributed a few coins to the inevitable beggars who pressed forward, and then took his leave from the company. Only then did she approach him and bow. “Peace be upon you.”

  “And upon you.”

  Close up, she found him a handsome, vigorous man, dressed plainly but in finely woven fabrics. His thick black hair was tousled by the massage and he had rather a strong nose. His dark eyes held a good-humored glint—when he took in her appearance, he didn’t assume an air of irritated superiority as so many merchants would. But when she reached out with her sorcerous instincts, she thought, That affability is a mask. There was something else underneath. She cleared her throat.

  “You’ve recently returned to our city, friend. I trust you are well after your travels.” It would be astonishingly rude to launch straight into business talk, so for a few moments they exchanged the usual pleasantries. Then Rafiq spread his hands.

  “You must forgive me, my friend, but today I’m truly busy. I must get changed and go seek audience with the amir this afternoon to report upon my caravan’s fortunes, and you know that one can be kept waiting for hours in the outer courts…”

  “Might I have a moment of your time to walk with you and talk of purchases to be made? I’m Zahir abd-Umar, whose house is in the Souk of Glass.”

  “And what does your master Umar wish to buy?” Rafiq gestured for Taqla to fall into step beside him as he walked.

  “You spoke today of black pearls.”

  Rafiq shrugged. “I did.”

  “They’re not black but gray, with a great lustre and a dimpled surface?”

  “That’s them. They’re very rare, being taken from shells that grow at great depth.”

  “But not so desirable as the ordinary ones in the eyes of most. Not so pleasing to look upon.”

  Rafiq smiled. �
�Yet your master would have an interest in them?”

  “Have you any for sale?”

  “Some handful, of different sizes.”

  “Then my master might, if they were of good quality.”

  “Is he a sorcerer?”

  Taqla nearly stumbled. She shot him a hard, unguarded glance and he gave her a crooked smile in return. “What makes you say that?” she blustered.

  “I’ve heard that a string of one hundred thousand black pearls will make one invisible to the Djinn.”

  Some people hear too much, she thought. “Perhaps it’s true,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t know. I’m sure my master wouldn’t either.”

  “Maybe he’s just a collector of rare pearls,” Rafiq suggested dryly, and she was so busy trying to read his expression as she walked that she didn’t see the man coming in the opposite direction until his shoulder clipped hers, hard. She opened her mouth to protest, just as the man’s foot swept her ankle from under her and she went flat on the alley floor, hands in the dust and face inches from a heap of donkey droppings.

  Her first sensation was a wave of humiliation and hurt, and at that she felt the spell that held her in male shape fracture. She took a sharp breath and shut her eyes, seizing the enchantment with her will, concentrating on the rush of anger that swept through her blood while the spell, as fragile as all shapings were, shifted momentarily in her grip like a pot riddled with hairline cracks. The spell settled back into place. Only then did Taqla open her eyes and try to gauge her surroundings.

  Her first suspicion, that the assault had been instigated by some crony of Rafiq’s, turned out to be very wrong. The merchant-master had backed up a few paces now and wasn’t even looking at her; his concentration was fixed on the two men who had stepped between him and her. They were dressed in robes of the same striped cloth as each other and were holding knives. Rafiq put his hand on his sheathed scimitar and they laughed, shifting forward.

  “Son of a dog,” sneered one.