Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Laughing, the young man turned back to the little recess. A surface of shining black glass had been revealed, just as he had remembered from long ago. The dagger tip cleared away the last of the ash around the stone embedded in the wall. After a moment, the Circassian shrugged and tromped off through the ruins to find his soldiers. The Persian stayed, waiting quietly.

"There, my pretty. You are still here and none the worse for this house-cleaning…"

Khalid reached out a hand and brushed away the rest of the soot. Something tinkled under his fingers and then rattled out to fall on the ground. "Ouch!" Khalid drew back his hand, seeing a thin new cut seeping blood on his forefinger. He stuck his finger in his mouth. On the ground lay three thin wafers of black glassy stone. They caught the sun and gleamed around the edges, but nothing escaped from their murky depths. "Careful, my lad…" breathed Khalid to himself, bending over the fragments lying in the dust. Delicately, he picked up one wafer with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed fragile, but the edge was razor-sharp. His thumb was still seeping blood from the cut he had received.

"Now this," Khalid mused aloud, "will make a fine gift."

"Those paltry things? A gift?" The Persian dihqan sounded almost insulted.

Khalid grinned and pulled a scarf of dark blue Chin silk out of his belt. He wrapped each wafer individually in the scarf and then wrapped it around them, making a thickly padded package. This he put into a leather pouch that he wore around his neck.

"Long ago, Patik, my father, demanded that I learn from the holy priests of these temple grounds. Such was a fate visited upon all the youth of my tribe-our schooling as it were. So I came here often." He waved a hand airily around, indicating the tumbled ruins of the temple. "I sat in these stifling rooms, listening to old men ramble about the history of the world and the doings of the fathers of fathers of men. Do you know what that was like, my Persian friend?"

Patik shook his head, his thickly bearded face revealing little emotion. He was a stolid one, was Patik, steady and sure. Khalid did not think he had an ounce of imagination. Still, he was a useful fellow to have about. He was quick and ruthless with men and he could ride and fight like a demon. Khalid had welcomed him when the Persian walked out of the wasteland and into the light of the Arab's campfire. Patik knew many of the tongues of the eastern lands-and by the chance of war, Khalid accounted more than one Easterner in his little band. These were uneasy times, and many a lion lay down with a wolf for safety.

"It was dreadful," Khalid continued, looking away at the clear blue sky, seeing something out of memory before him. "Boring and dull and useless… all save one old man who actually tried to teach us something interesting. Do you know who that old man was, Patik?"

Patik made a face and shook his head again. All of this made no difference to him.

Khalid spread his hands in resignation. "No matter. Of all the boring old men who have tried to shape my life, only he made some small dent in my thick head! But these little trinkets, they are going to become something larger than themselves-even as we are now larger than just men, Patik. Did you know, O reliable one, that you are walking at the edge of legend?"

"What? Here?" Patik said, looking around at the barren square and the piled rubble and the crews of men working in the sweltering heat of day to move stone and wood. Tanukh guards loitered in the shade of the pillared arcade and the entrances to the other temples. It seemed a quiet enough scene.

Khalid laughed again. "Never mind, my friend. Come, let us find a sword-smith-that should cheer you up."

The Egyptian House, Outside of Rome

Thunder muttered over the hills to the east, showing brief flashes of yellow lightning in a wall of dark gray clouds that had been gathering since morning. To the west, in contrast, the sky was still clear and blue, though the permanent haze rising over the city of Rome turned the setting sun into a huge orange ball of fire. Krista sniffed, smelling the odd lightning odor that always seemed to taint the air around the villa. She was warmly dressed for late spring, in a long gown of heavy charcoal gray wool. Her hair, usually unbound, was carefully pinned up in a bundle behind her head, and a shawl rode on her shoulders. She stood quietly beside one of the pillars on the western side of the house, watching the golden afternoon light creep down the walls of the portico. In that magical light the fading paint on the walls seemed to restore itself, showing again the brilliant frescoes of dancers and acrobats, of bulls and Minotaurs, which had once graced the long western face of the house. In earlier times this had been one of her favorite parts of the day-the sun almost setting, its slanting light burnishing everything with a warm golden aura, the air quiet, waiting for darkness to fall.

Now it was an important part of the day, a time where she needed to be alone, if only for a moment. Within an hour the sun would go down and the Prince's ceremonies would begin in the deep, cold cellars under the house. Thinking of the chill, she drew the shawl tighter around her. Up here, in the open air, it was still warm with heat from the day. There, in the depths below, it would be bone chillingly cold. During their previous stay the cellars had held a pleasant, even temperature. Now the Prince's exercises had leached the heat from the rooms and chambers until frost accumulated in the corners. Thick woolen hose graced her legs, too, and she wore stout leather boots.

Krista smiled, fingering the shawl and thinking of the nimble fingers of her Walach boys. They were clever with any kind of needle, thread, or fabric. The thought made her frown. Emotional attachments were proving dangerous enough as it was. She stood away from the pillar and turned slowly, looking first to the right and then to the left. The vaulted portico was empty, though she could hear noise from the kitchens. Satisfied that she was not observed, Krista raised a small silver mirror-a gift from the Duchess on her fourteenth birthday-and held it up to the sun. She felt the warmth of that distant orb glowing in her hand for a moment and then turned the mirror slowly until it faced the wooded hillside at an angle.

Her hand dipped the mirror once, then twice. Today, flew the signal.

– |"So," Maxian said, "we come to the crux of the matter."

The Prince stood and rotated a sheet of plain brown parchment on the table. A series of diagrams and symbols had been inked on the double-wide page. The table was crowded with scrolls of papyrus and burnished red-and-black bowls holding half-eaten pheasant, peeled fruit, and shelled nuts. The Prince traced a set of interlocking symbols with one long, thin finger.

"We still have not acquired the text of the original oath, but the tireless efforts of Abdmachus here"-the little Persian was sitting at one side of the table, his dull, flat eyes staring into empty air above the center of the oaken tabletop-"have yielded this much to us. The structure of the Oath-or curse, if you prefer-is built upon a similarity lattice. Well, I should say that it is built upon an interlocking series of lattices."

Krista was also sitting at the edge of the table, though she had commandeered a wing-backed chair with sweeping padded arms and thick cushions. She had a bowl of grapes, cut pears, peeled tangerine sections, and sliced apples in her lap. The little black cat had wormed itself into the crook of her arm and was lying across her stomach, purring like a little mill wheel. Krista's white teeth bit into a slice of pear while she listened with half an ear to the Prince. The little cat yawned, showing a pink mouth in the supple black felt of its face. It nosed at her hand as she reached into the bowl for more fruit. It wanted its tribute.