Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

The armored men knelt, moving in complete silence, and the heads made a wet sound as they struck the floor. Khadames, seeing the sightless, gouged eyes and the cruel wounds that had been cut into the faces, swallowed but did not move from his place.

Dahak stood again and he descended a step from the seat of iron. One hand flexed, and a long, tapering finger traced a sign in the air. "Who am I?" boomed out his voice.

The heads, lying in slowly spreading pools of blood on the floor, began to twitch.

"Speak, O priests of the fire, do you know me?"

There was a bubbling sound, and gore dribbled from the lips of one head. Its jaw muscles twitched and bunched, then the mouth opened.

"You are our master, O Lord of Darkness." The voice was foul-a gruesome parody of the speech of men-but the words were clear. Two of the hill-chieftains fainted, collapsing into the arms of the Uze who lurked behind them. These men were immediately taken away. Dahak turned to the Khawaj chieftain and smiled broadly, showing his fine white teeth. "So will all things bow to me; you not least, brave chieftain."

Somewhere in the Mare Aegeum

A skiff rode up the side of a long rolling swell. Deep blue water slid past, hissing, under the boat's prow, curling away from brightly painted eyes that stared out over the broad ocean. High above, gulls and cormorants circled, their plaintive cries faint in the afternoon sun. At the back of the boat a tall, young woman with braided red hair leaned into the oars. They bit the water, and the skiff cut into the side of the next wave and then slid over the top. The woman was deeply tanned by weeks at sea and wore a clingy red cotton shirt half soaked with sea spray. Thin braids wrapped with little blue ribbons fluttered on a stiff following wind at either side of her face, framing high cheekbones and firm lips. She squinted forward, storm gray eyes scanning the waters before her. She backed one oar, and the boat turned a little. "There," she said in a strong voice, "the walls of Thira."

Her companion, seated in the front of the skiff, half turned and stared up at the looming cliffs of dark stone that rose from the sea. A thick cloud of raven hair tied back with silver wire fell over olive shoulders and slim brown arms. The passenger was clad in a fine white linen toga not long from the shops of Alexandria. Silver bracelets encircled her wrists, and necklaces of gold and sapphire glittered at her neck. The passenger turned, enormous dark eyes smiling at the oarswoman. "No beach? No harbor? Must we scale the cliffs themselves?" The olive-skinned woman was laughing, her smile brilliant in a perfect oval face.

"Dear Princess," the red-haired woman said, "I promised you sanctuary and you will find it here. But have a little patience and some of the secrets of the island will reveal themselves to you."

"So you say, O mysterious one, but I wonder at your daring… the ship that brought us here is long gone, and my brother and children with it. Mayhap there is no one on this island at all! Do you want me all to yourself?"

The oarswoman lost her paddle stroke for a moment, her expression stilled, and studied the smiling face of her companion through slitted eyelids. She pulled the oars into their locks and braced them with one bare brown foot. Even with the tan that had slowly built up during the long weeks they had sailed in the hot waters of the Persian and Arabian seas, a wash of freckles was clear on her nose and cheeks. She stared away from her companion, out over the bright blue sea and the dark cliffs.

Shirin arched a fine jet eyebrow at the troubled expression on her companion's face. "Thyatis? I meant nothing by it-a jest. I know it must pain you to separate me from my children."

The Roman woman turned back, a little, at the light touch on her arm. Shirin had carefully moved the length of the slowly pitching skiff, picking up her skirts in one hand, showing shapely legs and small bare feet. She sat on the middle seat of the longboat they had purchased from the captain of the Pride of Ialysus the day before. The upper part of the dress had fallen away, revealing a smooth shoulder and necklaces that plunged into the cool shadow between her breasts. Thyatis frowned a moment, seeing the pensive look on Shirin's face. "No, Lady Shirin, I separated you from your children for everyone's safety. Once they are in Rome, the Duchess will take them into her care-and no one will know them or be able to match them to you. All know that your family perished in the wreck of Ctesiphon-who can threaten the dead? Who would guess that those house monkeys are of the noblest blood?"

Shirin laughed again, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She took Thyatis' hand in her own. Her own thumbs, smooth and manicured, rubbed unconsciously against the hard ridges of callus and muscle that defined her companion's. "So serious! I know I must be apart from them for some little while… The soft life of an empress does not prepare me well for what will come. You do me honor, bringing me to this secret place. I can bear to be apart from those squally brats for a little while-it will be restful, if nothing else!"

Thyatis nodded, quelling the conflict in her own heart for the moment, and released the younger woman's hand. She picked up the oars again and bent to them. There was still a ways to go to reach the island. Shirin turned back and settled herself in the prow again, curling her legs under her and leaning her arm on the gunwale of the skiff. The boat plunged down a steep wave. The sea roughened as they approached the rocky shore.

The walls of Thira towered over them, bleak and almost featureless. The island stabbed out of the bright sea, a nondescript stub of some ancient mountain that had remained above the waves during the Drowning. No sign of green marred the crumbling stone and twisted lava. The skiff slid down deeper and deeper troughs between the waves, and now the roar of their crash against the dark shore drowned out all conversation. Thyatis leaned into the oars, her face lashed with spray and the skiff crabbed to the side. A riptide rose up before the boat, a white boil of crashing water, and in the prow, Shirin pointed urgently off to one side. A dark spine of volcanic rock was momentarily revealed by the surging waves. Thyatis rowed furiously, feeling her muscles stretched to their fullest for the first time in weeks. The boat danced aside, swept around the black tooth by the next swell.

The cliff face before them-a sheer rampart of dark shale and glassy lava-suddenly split, drawing a shout of wonder from Shirin, and Thyatis shipped the oars. With smooth, practiced movements, she lashed one oar with a line from the bottom of the boat and slid the other back into the rear rudder lock. A wave swelled behind them, curling up out of blue-green waters. The skiff was carried up its inner face, and Thyatis held the steering oar free of the water, waiting.

The island and the horizon tipped as the boat rode up, higher and higher. In the front of the skiff, Shirin had wedged herself into the bottom of the boat, her arms hooked around the forward bench. Thyatis half stood at the back of the skiff, her head suddenly outlined against the brilliantly blue sky. She braced her feet on the thwarts, feeling the wave gather strength under her. Before them, a narrow passage appeared in the cliff, filled with the roar of the sea. The wave rushed into the slot and the boat rocketed down its inner face. Thyatis' hand was gentle on the oar, keeping the skiff balanced just before the wave crest.

Towering walls of jagged stone whipped past on either side, and the sea boiled against them. The air was filled with brilliant white spray. From the bottom of the boat, Shirin half saw arches of worked stone blur past above her, then there was a great roaring sound and the skiff spun around like a leaf on a mill-race.