Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

Maxian stopped, looking up at the old men. In the unseen world, each was a haze of brilliant, coruscating geometric forms. Patterns flowed into almost definable shapes and then contorted again. They were strong, but he could feel their fear through the barriers and shields they had raised against him. He wondered that there were so few of them. The chambers through which they had passed to reach this place, the sanctuary of the Fire Temple of Ahura-Mazda, were rich and vast. Hundreds of priests could have labored here, not merely three.

Your brother's war drew them away, whispered his memory. They are fighting in the north.

The Prince smiled.

"I sent my messenger in open embassy," he replied, voice echoing from the looming figures of the statues and the unseen, distant roof. "He was refused, and rudely too. I will not be denied, for what you hold you hold as thieves, stolen from its rightful place. I would look upon the face of the Conqueror with my own eyes. You cannot gainsay me."

The shock in the three men was visible even to Krista, who had reached the end of the room. A hidden stair rose up behind the last statue and she crept up it, her hands outstretched in the dark, feeling across the dusty bricks.

The eldest man sagged for a moment, then stood forward, his shoulders stiff. "It is our charge to protect that thing of which you speak. Many have attempted to divine its secrets and all have failed. You shall fail too, but we will deny you even the attempt."

The old man struck the stones under his feet with his staff, a sharp cracking sound. The others raised their hands and a buzzing moan echoed from their mouths. Maxian felt the hidden world convulse and quake around him. The floor trembled and the fire in the pits suddenly died. The Prince raised his hands and spoke three words.

Lightning leapt from his hands, curling and snapping through the air. Alais and Gaius Julius, who had run forward to stand beside him, screamed in pain as the chain of lightning rushed over their bodies. The Walach boys screamed in panic and fear and bolted for the door. Ultraviolet fire crawled over the Prince, sparking from his eyes and open mouth. Behind him, at the doorway, the little figure of Abdmachus, forgotten since the kitchens, cried out in fear. The ring of lightning had leapt to him too, including him in the whirling arc of power.

The floor fell away as a series of great pits opened under the Prince and his two servants. Fire raged below, leaping high and sending streamers of flame high into the air. A molten pit seethed and bubbled below them. But the Prince did not fall. Blue lightning trembled in the air around him, raising the three of them up. The tiles had rotated away, leaving narrow walkways honeycombing the floor. The three old men cursed violently as the Prince and his servants alighted on the nearest one.

Maxian laughed and drew the seething power in the dead man, the animal woman, and the Persian into his heart. A wind howled into being around him, lashing his hair, and a sphere of pale-violet light sprang up. The old men raged, their ancient fingers stabbing toward him, but the torrent of flame they called forth was swallowed by the sphere or splashed away from it to fill the air with a hideous burning fog.

Krista fled up the stairs as the air behind her incandesced and was consumed. Wind blew past her in a rising shriek as the atmosphere in the great chamber was exhausted by the conflagration. At the top of the stairs there was a flimsy door of cottonwood panels that flew apart in the rising wind. She shoved the broken door aside with her shoulder and darted ahead. The room at the top of the great stairs was the temple itself, a great hexagon around a single pillar of fire that twisted and burned. Altars ringed the tracery of pure white flame. Six pillars circumscribed the room, and rich silk tapestries hung from floor to ceiling between them. The floor was slippery and she skidded to one side, fetching up against one of the altars. It was very smooth, almost slick to the touch under her hand. She stared around in amazement.

The floor was glass, a surface as still and smooth as a forest pool. The altars were polished Minoan marble, so well cut that it seemed to be translucent. The tapestries were woven with gold and silver wire, each one depicting a shining being with golden wings. Krista ignored all of that, though later she could remember the room as she had first seen it with complete clarity.

The floor jumped and there was a vast boom. Krista rolled across the floor into the shelter of one of the altars. One of the old men flew past from the entrance to the greater room and struck a pillar with a bone-snapping crunch. The body slid to the floor, leaving a glistening track of dark red on the marble fluting. Another of the priests staggered back, his face bleeding from tiny cuts, the air around him flaring with shock after shock against the half-seen geometries that protected him. As Krista watched, holding her hands over her ears to try to shut out the thunder and lightning crack, the air sparkled, and a fluid twelve-sided lattice crystallized out of the air. Then the lattice broke apart, raining pale-green fragments to the floor. The priest shuddered, clutching his chest. There was a liquid popping sound and he fell bonelessly to the tiled floor.

The air around her trembled and Krista risked peeking over the top of the altar. At the top of the steps to the great room, a wall of darkness shot with flickering blue lights had sprung into being. The oldest priest skipped back from it and then turned to run. Krista rose up off the floor, her left arm arrowing out. As the priest ran past the altar, her forearm caught him across the chest with a jarring shock. His eyes widened in complete surprise as his feet flew out from under him and he slammed onto the floor. In one movement Krista was down, her knee at his throat and her right hand reversing the knife. The old priest was gobbling with fear when she rapped him hard on the side of the head with the pommel. His eyes rolled up and he went limp.

Silence suddenly filled the temple room and Krista's ears were ringing. She dragged the old man's body aside and tied him securely with cord from a pouch on her belt. Her fingers tore a strip of his robe off, and she wadded it up to gag him.

The wall of darkness cracked open soundlessly, but as it faded away, the roar of flames from the fire pits inundated the room. Maxian staggered through, his face haggard. Gaius Julius held him up, his wiry arm around the Prince. Alais stalked ahead of them, her face lit with an inner fire. Her cloak was gone, torn away in the violence of the struggle against the priests. The red-orange light of the great room outlined her, raising highlights on her legs and arms.

She danced forward, her spear whirling around her.

Krista brushed her hands off and stood up.

"It's over," she shouted, over the hiss of flames. "The last priest is here."

Maxian grinned out of a soot-stained face, then his eyes rolled up and he fell heavily against Gaius Julius' side. The old Roman eased him to the floor, the glare of flames casting his lined face in deep relief. Alais swung the spear to a stop, pointed at the floor. She slid sideways up to Krista, who met her feral gaze with a slight smile.

"Oh, my dear," the blond woman purred, "I thought that you had fallen to your death. It's so good to see you alive." Krista smiled back, baring her teeth, white and sharp, though not so long as Alais'. "It's good to see you too, have you fed well today? Not so feeling so… ancient?"

Alais snarled at the snap in Krista's voice. The spear swung up off of the floor, but Krista stepped forward, inside the weapon's reach. The knife had reappeared in her hand. "You know what the Prince wants. He won't be pleased when he finds that you've slaughtered most of the inhabitants of this place…"