Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Arad could hear General Khadames shift his feet, and there was a hiss of indrawn breath.

The bowl moved as the twisted man reached into it. In the cell of his mind, Arad suddenly felt a chill as an old memory began to work its way out of the back of his mind. Very long ago, when he had been a small child living with his uncle in the sprawling metropolis of Alexandria, he had seen such a wooden collar. Something hot and tacky touched the back of his head. The twisted man's hands moved strongly, pressing a thick, waxy substance across the back of Arad's head. The man scooped more material out of the bowl, building it up quickly across the nape of the neck and the line of the skull. The substance was very hot and almost liquid. Some of it seeped down, pooling against the wooden yoke before it stiffened and set. Arad's nostrils twitched, and he knew by the smell that it was fine beeswax. The twisted man quickly covered the back half of Arad's head, then pulled the silk drape back away from his face, laying it back over the wax. Then he shifted around to the front, even as the wax was beginning to congeal and shrink against Arad's flesh.

Wax touched Arad's throat like a hot compress, and his body trembled. In the cell of his mind, Arad remembered what he had seen that long-ago day, and he began to whimper. The man worked swiftly, building up a thick layer of beeswax, pressed close into the flesh, up over Arad's chin, then mouth, then nostrils.

Arad's eyes flew open, defying the implied will of his master. The twisted man was bent close, his fingers covered with wax, his eyes squinting in concentration. Wax covered Arad's nostrils, being carefully moulded into the cavities and around the nose. Then the cheeks were covered. The wax seemed tremendously hot, and Arad's skin felt like it was being burned away. His whole head was almost encased in hot wax, and the heat was incredible inside the mask.

Arad gathered his strength, trying to ignore the sensation of suffocation that clouded his mind. His lungs labored to breathe, his nostrils to inhale, but there was nothing, only a choking sensation. Within the cell that held his mind inviolate from his body, Arad marshaled all the will left to him. A single burning point of concentration gathered, shining like the tip of a hot poker fresh from the forge. He settled his ragged mind, trying to center himself, trying to find some foundation from which to work.

There is no wall that does not have a weakness. He chanted an old litany from his master. One blow of his will, directed with infinite precision, might rupture the iron bands of thought that held him long enough for him to tear away the wax and take a breath.

The twisted man covered his forehead, leaving cylindrical pits clear where Arad's eyes stared out. His body suddenly ceased breathing, having discovered that there was no air to draw into the lungs. A trembling shuddered through him, making his hands twitch and rattle the bowl. Arad was distracted, feeling the blood suddenly stop moving in his veins. His heart thudded to a stop, leaving blood to lie stagnant in its cavities. The rush of life, sustained by ingrained memory and all the autonomic systems of the body, failed. Arad's thought careened wildly in its cell, filled with a crushing fear of dissolution. The blazing spark of will fluttered and scattered.

The twisted man leaned close, peering into the pits left for Arad's eyes. His quick fingers scooped wax from the bowl and made a matching cylinder. He looked again, his bright black eyes gauging the depth he would need. Arad stared wildly back out. His eyes were still working, though a thin veil had fallen across the world he could see.

The little old man pushed a cylinder into each eye with his thumb, closing off even that sight. The wax burned against Arad's eyelids.

Arad whimpered, his mind folding up into itself over and over and over…

– |A good road wound down the northern slope of Mount Alvand, broad enough for two carts to pass, with a drainage ditch cut on the uphill side. Afternoon haze lay over the valley below, and the chattering of birds in the trees was muted by the late spring heat. Arad strode briskly, a walking staff of blond wood in his hand and a felt hat with a dimpled crown on his head. His face and skin were still pink and raw from where the wax had been peeled carefully away in two halves by the twisted man and his apprentices. They had seemed very pleased with the casting. Arad's feet were bare, for he had become used to the lack of pain that his current state allowed. Though he would not feel more than the memory of a sunburn, his master judged that he should not peel overmuch, as it might attract flies. A carry bag was thrown over one shoulder with a bowl and some oddments.

He wore the off-shoulder tunic and robe of a traveling priest. That familiar touch soothed him, though the brittle laughter of the sorcerer riding in his mind reminded him that he had wandered far from that path. Arad passed under an arch of oaks, descending down out of the pinewoods into the thick lowland forest covering the feet of the mountain. Alvand towered behind him, rising up in the air to find peaks capped in snow the year round. Robins flashed past on the wing. It was a peaceful afternoon. There was a touch of thought in his mind, and at this command he began to whistle a merry tune.

In his mind, Dahak laughed like winter coming in summer, restless and watching.

– |Flame curled from broken rock, hissing and spitting yellow in the air. Arad paused, looking down in interest at the cracked shale tumbled below the level of the road. A ridge of toppled stone ran down from the slopes of Alvand, intersecting the High Road as it came from the mountain passes of the west to the gate of the city. The High Road ran toward the sunset like an arrow, heading over the Zagros massif and then down through narrow passes to the great plain of Tigris and Euphrates. This passage was the single fastest way from east to west in the realm of Persia. Armies, kings, priests, merchants, pilgrims thronged it by day. Here, where the road came up over the crest of the ridge on a long ramp of filled stone and rubble, a cliff had slid down, breaking open the earth.

A thick, cloying smell rose from the shale, and the air was filled with odd humors. Fires flickered among the rocks, and one flame burned continuously. In the early evening, now that the stars had come out, it cast an eerie glow over the crushed gravel of the roadbed. Arad resumed walking, his staff making a tik-tik sound. At this hour, well after any responsible fellow would be within four walls and under a roof with his feet up before a fire, the High Road was deserted. Soon he would come to the city.

There, whispered Dahak, crowding forward in Arad's mind until the man experienced a disorienting double vision as the loathsome touch of the sorcerer crawled in his own perception.

A city of circular walls, the Greek called it. Strong battlements, one within another, seven in all and within the innermost, the palace of the King of the Medes. The first, closest to the King, was gold, then silver for the great lords, then orange for the priests of the fire, then blue for the men who trade in goods, then red for the soldiers that raised such strong walls, then black. Black for those who till the fields and drive the lowing kine to the market. And finally, ringing all about, white and the abode of the foreigners that came to pay homage and obeisance to the King who is not to be seen.

Arad shook his head, trying to drive out the singsong chanting of the sorcerer. Arad was faintly aware that the tongue that Dahak used when in this incorporeal state was none that he had ever heard upon the lips of a living man.

The western door of royal Ecbatana rose up, strong and proud, out of the night. Torches blazed on the battlements, and fires had been set before the gate. The portal was flanked by two enormous stone lions done in an archaic style. Sturdy sandstone wings swept back from their shoulders, making their length from the proud nose to the curled tip of their tails twenty feet or more. They stood, trapped in stone, their grave faces staring west along the High Road. Countless years had weathered them, taking an ear from one and the tip of the wing from another, but nothing dulled their majesty. The firelight gleamed on them, making their old faces come alive.