Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

The pillar shrank suddenly, rushing with a great noise down into the pit. The room shook with a booming sensation and without warning there was complete darkness. Dwyrin collapsed on his hands and knees to the cold marble tiles. Frost had formed on his eyebrows and skin. He shivered uncontrollably. All through the great room, a light ashy snow fell out of the clear air. It was terribly cold. Above, on the deck at the top of the room, the Greek officer and his men clambered to their feet, stunned and horrified in the darkness.

Dwyrin curled into a ball, trying to warm his limbs. It was so cold. His body shuddered, filled with a bone-deep buzz of delight and pleasure. Dwyrin felt sick; he had never felt like this before. The snow continued to fall, carpeting the floor and the rows of seats with a pale-white coverlet. Flakes settled onto his face, dusting his long braids.

– |The bloom of late summer was gone now, the cold air that had been held back from the valleys curled along the stream bottoms. The Roman army marched southward in bitter cold fogs and intermittent rain. Dwyrin bent his head, feeling chilly rain patter on his straw hat. A woolen cloak hung over his shoulders, and over that a cape of raw fleece. His boots slipped in the muck of the road-the rains had begun to turn the tracks that wound south toward the Euphrates into muddy rivers. The weather reminded him of home, though he was sure that his mother was not waiting at the end of the day, in a warm firelit house with a big bowl of mutton stew thick with onions. Instead, it would be a cold camp by the side of the road and moldy bread with a bit of salt pork.

Dwyrin was last in the column of thaumaturges, even behind Colonna, so he did not notice that they had entered a village until he had passed two or three ruined houses. When he looked up, he saw that the column ahead was turning left down a lane bounded by whitewashed houses and garden fences. The windows of the houses were barren and open, with smoke stains marking the walls above them. Their roofs were gone, or only a jumble of beams with charred ends. The mud in the street was thick with soot and ash, making a black muck that stuck to everything. The Hibernian shivered in his cloak-not from the cold, which was not nearly so biting as in his homeland, but from some unseen chill that seemed to fill the spaces between the houses.

At the little crossroads, where one road started up the side of a hill to the left and the path of the army wound down to the right, heading for the bottomlands of the river, he stopped. He heard a ting-ting-ting sound, like metal on stone, from the left-hand road. He looked ahead, seeing nothing but the backs of his comrades hunched under their hats, slogging down the road. The sound came again, a hammer or a pick it seemed. Rain continued to spatter out of a dark overcast sky. He hitched up his leather belt and adjusted the straps that held his bedroll and bags of sundries on his back.

Dwyrin hurried up the left-hand road, finding cobblestones under the sheet of mud that covered the path. At the top of the hill, set aside a little from the other buildings, was a solidly built square house with a peaked roof. Two dirty-white columns flanked the door, which had been broken and pushed aside. Unlike the houses on either side, it did not show signs of being burned, but then the roof was slate tiles. He paused in the doorway.

Within there was a central room, bounded by an arcade of columns. At the center, in a stepped depression, was a circular pit lined with dark stones. Dwyrin felt a chill on the back of his neck. He rubbed his arms. Weak gray light filtered in from a hole in the peaked roof. An old man, bent with great age, was sitting at the edge of the pit, striking two stones together. Below him, in the bowl of flint, there was a little pyramid of twigs and grass. Beside the pit a few lengths of wood had been gathered. In profile, Dwyrin could see that the old man had a strong, almost hooked nose and thick bushy white eyebrows. His cheeks were sunken, the skin stretched tight over the bone. His beard was long and parted into a fork.

"Are you cold, old father?" Dwyrin's voice echoed a little from the domed roof.

The old man looked up, his eyes dark in the dim light of the ruined building. "Everyone is cold, lad. The fire has gone out. See?"

Dwyrin stepped to the side of the pit, seeing that old coals still remained in the bottom in a thin layer of rainwater. The water was glassy and swirled with the shimmer of oil. The old man continued to strike one stone against the other, trying to bring a spark to the little pile of tinder. Dwyrin leaned over and slid the gear from his back. It clattered on the tiled floor.

"Let me," he said, rubbing his hands together. "I can make it go."

The old man looked up, his eyes bright under the ridge of his brow. He shook his head.

"No," he said in a gravelly voice, "this is my fire. I will take my time in lighting it."

Dwyrin sat, wrapping his arms around his knees, facing the old man. "Aren't you cold? The roof is broken, the rain… winter is coming."

"Yes," the old man said, nodding his head, "it will be a harsh one. Much rain, snow in the mountains. It will be difficult for all the people. But it is my fire, I need to take the proper time of it."

Dwyrin frowned. Fire was not something that took time. He saw that the old man's hands were trembling from the effort of striking the rocks together. He sat up, leaning closer.

"I've a flint…" he started to say, but the old man glared at him and moved to put his thin body between the pile of tinder and the Hibernian.

"This is my fire," the old man said, his voice even but insistent. "If you desire your own, make your own. Mine is not to be rushed or hurried. Fire will come at its own pace, in its own way. I make fire with two stones-one from the mountain of Ormazd and one from the mountain of Ahriman. In this way, the world is lighted."

The old man turned his back on Dwyrin. Ting-ting came the sound of the rocks. Dwyrin swallowed a curse and stood. Rain dribbled down his back from the hood of his cloak. He snarled. It would take the old man hours, or even days, to start his fire. Through the round hole in the roof, he could see the clouds lowering. They were heavy and dark-it might even snow. Ignoring the old man, he stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down into the filthy pool at the bottom.

The slick of oil was spattering out in rings as raindrops fell into it. The old dead coals were almost submerged. Dwyrin thought of the pillar of flame in the temple, now days behind. That whole valley had been dark when the Greek and his men had ridden forth. Dwyrin had not looked back, feeling ill and weak. The ancient building was pitch black, without even the light of the moon to illuminate it.

Dwyrin raised his hand, feeling power bubble up in him, rushing and quick, like a spring stream. The coals in the bottom of the pit began to hiss and the water to steam. This is so easy, he thought with a grin. One of the coals turned a ruddy orange and the sludge of water began to bubble and boil. Steam curled up from the surface as another coal caught, burning under the water. Raindrops spattered down, but they hissed away into more steam before they could touch the fiercely bubbling water.

"See, here is your fire for winter!"

Flames roared up, wrapped in scalding steam, and the room was suddenly hot. The water hissed away, leaving burning coals and a bright fire in the pit. Dwyrin turned, silhouetted against the flames, his face cast in red-orange relief by the hot light. He was grinning.

The old man had stood as well, his face dark as a summer thunderstorm. His eyes flashed in the firelight. "I see nothing. The way is finding the flame that is hidden and allowing it to come forth of its own volition. You are a crude boy, without restraint." The old man's voice was muted thunder.