Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Plenty. This is a place where myth and legend are carved into the very fabric of the city. But so far there appears to be no sign of anything out of the ordinary.’

‘That doesn’t give me much comfort.’

‘The city is quiet for now. Let us enjoy this moment.’

Church examined the milky river of stars overhead. ‘I’m starting to wonder what I’d do without you, Shavi. Sometimes I’m afraid all my brooding is going to drive me insane. I worry about everything — about Hunter, there’s so much going on inside him, and Laura, the same. About poor Tom-’

‘And they are concerned about you. That is what friends do. Now …’ Shavi opened one of the books to change the mood. ‘So much about the Kingdom of the Serpent — and the war with the spiders — and the myths and legends of the world! All there, in the old stories. That secret history again, just waiting to be read with the right eyes.’

‘Gnosticism taught us a lot.’

‘But the symbolism in the myths is so much more potent!’ He began to read, summarizing as he scanned the pages. ‘So much, even in the Middle East alone. As with all myths, another story playing behind the words. In Hittite mythology, Illuyankas was the monstrous snake, or dragon, who waged war against the gods and was eventually slain. This tale was assimilated into Canaanite mythology as the struggle of the gods against Leviathan. Illuyankas’s death was believed to signal the start of a new era.’

‘So the dragon is the bad guy?’

Shavi smiled, but did not answer. ‘In Iranian mythology, the monstrous dragon Azhi Dahaka was supposed to embody falsehood, and was the servant of Angra Mainyu, the god of darkness. It is told that at the end of the world, Azhi Dahaka will break free of his chains and ravage the Earth. Even here in Egypt, the great serpent Apep is a force of destruction and chaos, who attacks the life-giving sun every day. Even in the mythology of the Bible, the snake in the Garden of Eden was demonised. For giving knowledge! How can that be a bad thing? The message of that story was that humankind was supposed to stay in ignorance-’

‘Not rise up, not reach its potential. You know, you might have a few Christian scholars querying that reading.’ Church grinned, but was briefly distracted by small fires springing up here and there across the city. A celebration of some kind?

‘Propaganda!’ Shavi continued. ‘Politics is everywhere. When a ruling power wants to maintain control, it creates stories that demonise the other side, to win over the hearts and minds of the population. As you well know, the Christian Church did this effectively when it first arrived in Britain and attempted to supplant the Old Religion. Witches were damned! The Horned God, representing the great power of nature, was cast as the Devil.’

Church’s attention was drawn back to the fires. They appeared to be burning on rooftops across the city.

‘In fact, the demonisation of women went hand-in-hand with the serpent-’

‘Yeah, I’ve read The Da Vinci Code,’ Church said distractedly.

‘-because women controlled the Craft, which is fuelled by the Blue Fire, the serpent power. You have only to look to Hebrew legend. Lilith was the first woman to be created — part woman, part snake. In the Old Testament she is a demon whose name means “storm goddess” or “She of the Night”, and her talismanic creature is the owl. And why did she become a symbol of evil? Because according to Talmudic legend she refused to lie beneath Adam and believed herself to be equal! The message again is clear: women, know your place! Do not use your power. And these stories have changed the thinking of generations. Just stories, people say. But stories create belief, and the imagination has the power to change ideas into reality.’

Church moved to the edge of the roof terrace. The fires concerned him; there was something unnatural in the way they danced. ‘What you’re telling me is that in this particular Great Dominion, the serpent was cast as the enemy.’

‘Yes, perhaps because there is a source of its power here. Maybe even the main source of the Blue Fire in the world. The original node of energy where the great serpent originated.’

‘The Garden of Eden.’

‘And that makes this a very dangerous place for us. The gods of Egyptian mythology may well be allied against the serpent-’

‘Working for the Void.’ Church gripped the parapet. More fires were mysteriously lighting, drawing closer. ‘And we’ve awakened them.’

With Coptic Cairo at his back, Hunter looked over what appeared to be a vast rubbish dump, but which he knew was one of the most important Islamic archaeological sites in the world: Fustat, the first Islamic city in Cairo, razed to the ground when the Fatimids took the area. Piles of rubble, isolated fires, trenches and apparently random holes were interspersed with occasional heaps of plastic and cans left by locals with less of a sense of history.

He’d wandered the length of Old Cairo, but there was no sign of Laura anywhere. He’d sensed she was in trouble while he was enjoying a late-afternoon coffee in the Cafe of Mirrors. He hadn’t discussed such an amorphous feeling with the others, and he certainly wouldn’t raise it with his former Government comrades, who would have mocked such a feeling as a by-product of a woolly mind. But he had acted on such blind instincts for much of his life, and he was convinced it was what made him good at the terrible things he did. With his current knowledge, he wondered if it had always been the Pendragon Spirit at play in him, in the same way it had clearly influenced Shavi’s spirituality, or Church’s leadership abilities.

Another fire erupted in the dark depths of Fustat. Kids, he thought, gathering for sex or drugs away from the eyes of their elders.

As he headed in the direction of the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, he was almost knocked over by a man in his twenties fleeing in blind panic.

Hunter grabbed him by the collar. ‘What’s wrong?’

The man had an intellectual look about him, stylish glasses slightly askew beneath long, curly black hair. He glanced over his shoulder fearfully. ‘The fires-’

‘Calm down. Who are you and what are you doing here?’

‘Fayed Osman. I’m an archaeologist. Let me go!’ He struggled, but couldn’t break Hunter’s grip.

‘I don’t want to give you a slap.’

‘It’s the fires, don’t you see?’ Fayed gestured to the small blazes springing up across Fustat. They were burning across the city, too. ‘They’re smokeless!’

A fire burst into life not far from the road, on a piece of rough ground amidst a network of trenches. No one could have ignited it. The intense yellow flames gave way to scarlet edged with green, and within them a dark shape appeared and began to grow, like an insect metamorphosing through all the stages of maturity in seconds.

What emerged was a blur as Hunter’s perception skated all over it without finding any traction, yet he got a sense of insectile limbs attached to an animal’s body and head, perhaps a wolf.

Fayed began to rave. Hunter’s own mind convulsed as the fire-being stirred madness in him. Still holding on to Fayed, Hunter ran back to the mazy streets of Old Cairo and only came to rest when he was sure the thing was no longer following. The unnatural insanity passed.

Hunter hauled Fayed into a dark alley filled with boxes of discarded vegetables and a scavenging dog. ‘You know what that thing was?’

Fayed shoved Hunter’s hand aside and gave a deep sigh as his panic passed, too. ‘I work for the Council of Antiquities. I was despatched to investigate reports of a disturbance in Fustat. The illicit trade in antiquities is extensive — looters descend when night falls. But it was the fires and the djinn-’