Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"Mylord, if that is so, then let me take our fleet and some reliable men." Khalid's eyes were ablaze with his eagerness. His thin, well-manicured finger stabbed at the map. "While you advance along the coastal road, let me land at Aelana-even as I planned to land here today. By the time the Sahaba reach the port, it will be in our hands."

Mohammed grimaced and opened his mouth to refute the boy's plan, but Jalal was leaning over the map, too, and there was a gleam in his eye.

"Mylord," the thick-shouldered Tanukh said, "we can send the infantry by sea with all of the heavy supplies in the ships. Then we won't have to drag them across a hundred miles of desert and badlands. Wagons, too, if there is space in these fat-bellied coasters…"

Then Mohammed did smile.

The Island of Thira

Groaning in pain, her limbs loose with exhaustion and trembling, Shirin flopped down on the bare cot that served as her bed. A thin cotton blanket lay across the pallet, and it possessed a prickly straw mattress that never failed to stab her in the back when she was trying to sleep. The dormitories for the ephebe of the Temple of the Huntress were neither gracious nor comfortable. One of the older sisters had mentioned in passing that the dormitory was one of the original caverns hewn from the rock of the island by the first Sisters. To Shirin's eye, they had not been improved since that time. She knew from experience that the higher chambers, cut into the cliffs above the lagoon, were both inviting and well furnished. The student dormitories, however, were not. She lay on her back, a little twisted to the side to avoid the worst of the prickles, and stared at the rough, gray ceiling in a daze.

It was the end of another day of the backbreaking torture that comprised their physical conditioning. Unfortunately for her bruised and tortured muscles it was not the classical Persian gymnasium, filled with a lot of baths, massages, light sparring with a blunted spear or sword, recitations of epic lays by notable poets, or even ignoble lays conducted by sweaty would-be playwrights in the back of the towel room. It was hard work, harder than the late fall hunt or the exercises that Thyatis had put her through on the long trip by sea around Arabia. Shirin lay still, trying to keep the muscles on the insides of her thighs from seizing up due to sheer fatigue. Worse, the Princess had thought that she had been in good shape when she had arrived on the island.

Someone touched the bottom of her foot, and she blinked awake. She had not realized that she had fallen asleep. The dim radiance from the high circular windows in the roof of the hall had gone, leaving only the pale guttering flame of a torch by the door. Her cot flexed as someone sat down next to her.

Shirin's nostrils flared, and she knew that it was the Gothic girl, Claudia. Even in the spare confines of the dormitory, the willowy blonde managed to find some kind of sweet scent for her hair. It might be jasmine or juniper rosin. There was a touch on her arm.

"Shi? Are you awake?"

"Yes," hissed the Princess, suddenly feeling the throb of her upper arms and the insides of her wrists. A four-hour stint with the wooden man left the muscles of her arms like jelly. "What time is it?"

"After dinner," Claudia answered with a smile in her voice. "I brought you some. Cook was not pleased, but I told her you were studying extra hard in the bibliotheca, and she relented."

Shirin levered herself up and wedged her back against the smooth stone wall of the cavern. Claudia put a wooden bowl in her hands-it was still warm and smelled faintly of fish. Shirin wrinkled up her nose. The diet of everyone on the island was, not surprisingly, mostly fish. The dark blue seas around Thira yielded an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes of fish-but it was all still fish. Shirin had never really liked fish. She took the cover off the bowl and put it aside. The warm, tart smell of fish stew assailed her nostrils and she sighed, picking up the spoon. At least there was a pickle.

After she was done, Claudia took the bowl and spoon away. The Gothic girl had sat quietly on the end of Shirin's bed the whole time, which Shirin thought was a little odd, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to the barbarian woman. Shirin flexed her fingers, feeling the tremor in her muscles. It was a bad day, she thought sourly, when even your fingertips were sore.

"Shi? Is it true what they say about you?"

Shirin folded her legs under her as she had seen Lady Mikele do. It was more comfortable for sitting than squatting was. "What is true? And who are they?" Inwardly Shirin shook her head in dismay. The gossip in the Palace of Birds in Ctesiphon had flown faster than a shrike; why should the temple be any different?

"The older girls-the ones who are about to go out into the world-they say that you are a princess, that you were married to an emperor. Is that true?" The Gothic girl's voice was tinged with a little awe and a little envy.

Unseen in the dark, Shirin rolled her dark brown eyes. Oh dear, she thought, some things never change… "I will answer your question," she said with asperity, "if you will answer some of mine."

"Oh, of course!" Claudia clapped her hands together in delight. Shirin gritted her teeth.

"Very well," the Khazar woman said, "I was a princess and I was married to an emperor and I did live in a great palace in a rich and lovely city far away. It was like a dream, but eventually I woke up."

"Oh, no… did something bad happen?"

Shirin nodded in the darkness, though she wasn't sure that the Gothic girl could see her. "Ah, now, it's my turn to ask a question. You've been here longer than I-when can we leave this place?"

– |Shirin took two paces, her back stiff with repressed rage, turned, and then took two more back. The cell was not large, only big enough for a woven reed mat on the floor, a bed no larger than Shirin's own cot, and a folding screen made of pale white paper painted with delicate images of birds and a mountain shrouded in clouds. An oil lamp made from a ceramic bowl and a wick provided a wan yellow light.

"This is insane. I will not stay here on this fish-stinking island for another four years before I am allowed to see my children." The Khazar woman's voice slid unerringly upward in scale, trembling toward a scream of rage.

"That is the rule and the law that binds the ephebe once they have sworn themselves to the service of the Goddess." Mikele's voice was quiet and calm, with only a hint of the lilting accent that normally colored her speech. "You have sworn yourself to her service-before the Matron, no less."

Shirin spun savagely on her heel. She wanted very much to smash her fist into the calm, round face of her teacher, but raw animal instinct held her back. Her training had progressed well, but there was no way that she could face the supple skill of the master with her mind clouded with rage. The result would be painful and quick. "I will not abandon my children," she bit out between clenched teeth. "I will not come back to them after four years denned on this island to find them fully grown and looking upon me with strangers' eyes."

Mikele nodded her head, letting the long wave of her unbound black hair fall over her shoulder. She had been combing her hair when Shirin had barged into her room. The Chin woman was sitting on the bed, her legs crossed under her, with a mother-of-pearl comb in one hand. Her hair was very long, reaching well past her waist. During the day, on the training floor of the gymnasium, she kept it bound up and held in place by long silver pins.

"If you go out now," Mikele said in an infuriatingly calm voice, "you will place yourself and your children in greater danger. This is why Thyatis brought you to this place."