Glen Cook - The Fire In His Hands

El Murid’s teachings banished animism, ancestor worship, and reincarnation. They elevated the family chieftain to the position of an omnipotent One True God. His brothers and wives and children became mere angels.

And the meddlesome brother became the Evil One, the master of djinn and ifrits and the patron of all sorcerers. El Murid railed against the practice of witchcraft with a vehemence his listeners found incomprehensible. His principal argument was that it had been sorcery that had brought on the doom of the Empire. The glory of Ilkazar, and a hope for its return, was a theme running through all his teaching.

The primary point of contention at El Aquila was a proscription against praying to the lesser gods. El Murid’s listeners were accustomed to petitioning specialists. They were accustomed, especially, to approaching Muhrain, the patron of the region, to whom the Al Ghabha Shrines were dedicated.

The boy’s path led him not to Al Ghabha but to the site where the imam, Ridyah, had found him. He did not at first know what drew him thither. Then he thought that he was looking for something.

He had left something there, something that he had forgotten. Something that he had hidden in his last moment of rationality. Something that had been given him by his angel.

Visions of an amulet came in snatches. A potent wrist amulet bearing a living stone. It would be, his angel had told him, the proof he needed to convince unbelievers.

But he could not remember where he had concealed it.

He scrabbled round the sides of the wadi that had prevented him from reaching El Aquila on his own.

“What in the world are you doing?” Nassef asked from above.

“You startled me, Nassef.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Looking for something. I hid it here. They didn’t find it, did they? Did they find anything?”

“Who? The priests? Only a ragged, desert-worn saltman’s son. What did you hide?”

“I remember now. A rock that looks like a tortoiseshell. Where is it?”

“There’s one over here.”

The rock was just a yard from where al Assad had found him. He tried lifting the stone. He did not have the strength.

“Here. Let me help.” Nassef nudged him aside. In the process he tore his sleeve on a thorn of a scraggly desert bush. “Oh. Mother’s going to brain me.”

“Help me.”

“Father too, if he finds out I was here.”

“Nassef!”

“All right! I’m here.” He heaved on the rock. “How did you move it before?”

“I don’t know.”

Together they heaved the stone onto its back. Nassef asked, “Ah, what is it?”

El Murid gently extracted the amulet from the rocky soil, brushing dirt from its delicate golden wristlet. The stone glowed even in the brilliant morning sun.

“The angel gave it to me. To be my proof to the doubtful.”

Nassef was impressed, though he seemed more troubled than elated. In a moment, nervously, he suggested, “You’d better come on. The whole village is going to be at the Shrine.”

“They expect to be entertained?”

Noncommittally, Nassef replied, “They think it’s going to be interesting.”

El Murid had noticed this evasiveness before. Nassef refused to be pinned down. About anything.

They strolled up to Al Ghabha, Nassef gradually lagging. El Murid accepted it. He understood. Nassef had to get along with Mustaf.

Everybody was there, from El Aquila and Al Ghabha alike. The gardens of the Shrines had assumed a carnival air. But he received very few friendly smiles there.

Behind the merriment was a strong current of malice. They had come to see someone hurt.

He had thought that he could teach them, that he could debate the abbot and so expose the folly inherent in the old dogma and old ways. But the mood here was passion. It demanded a passionate response, an emotional demonstration.

He acted without thinking. For the next few minutes he was just another spectator watching El Murid perform.

He threw his arms up and cried, “The Power of the Lord is upon me! The Spirit of God moves me! Witness, you idolaters, you wallowers in sin and weak faith! The hours of the enemies of the Lord are numbered! There is but one God, and I am His Disciple! Follow me or burn in Hell forever!”

He hurled his right fist at the earth. The stone in his amulet blazed furiously.

A lightning bolt flung down from a sky that had not seen a cloud in months. It blasted a ragged scar across the gardens of the Shrine. Singed petals fluttered through the air.

Thunder rolled across the blue. Women screamed. Men clutched their ears. Six more bolts hurtled down like the swift stabbing of a short spear. The lovely flowerbeds were ripped and burned.

In silence El Murid stalked from the grounds, his strides long and purposeful. At that moment he was no child, no man, but a force as terrible as a cyclone. He descended on El Aquila.

The crowd surged after him, terrified, yet irresistibly drawn. The brothers of the Shrine came too, and they almost never left Al Ghabha.

El Murid marched to the dry oasis. He halted where once sweet waters had lapped at the toes of date palms. “I am the Disciple!” he shrieked. “I am the Instrument of the Lord! I am the Glory, and the Power, incarnate!” He seized up a stone that weighed more than a hundred pounds, hoisted it over his head effortlessly. He heaved it out onto the dried mud.

Thunders tortured the cloudless sky. Lightnings pounded the desert. Women shrieked. Men hid their eyes. And moisture began to darken the hard baked mud.

El Murid wheeled on Mustaf and the abbot. “Do you label me fool and heretic, then? Speak, Hell serf. Show me the power within you.”

The handful of converts he had earlier won gathered to one side. Their faces glowed with awe and something akin to worship.

Nassef hovered in the gap between groups. He had not yet decided which party was truly his.

The abbot refused to be impressed. His defiant stance proclaimed that no demonstration would reach him. He growled, “It’s mummery. The power of this Evil One you preach... you’ve done nothing no skilled sorcerer couldn’t have done.”

A forbidden word had been hurled into El Murid’s face like a gauntlet. A strong, irrational hatred of wizardry had underlain all the youth’s teachings so far. It was that part of his doctrine which most confused his audiences, because it seemed to bear little relationship to his other teachings.

El Murid shook with rage. “How dare you?”

“Infidel!” someone shrieked. Others took it up. “Heretic!”

El Murid whirled. Did they mock him?

His converts were shouting at the abbot.

One threw a stone. It opened the priest’s forehead, sending him to his knees. A barrage followed. Most of the villagers fled. The abbot’s personal attendants, a pair of retarded brothers younger than most of the priests, seized his arms and dragged him away. El Murid’s converts went after them, flinging stones.

Mustaf rallied a handful of men and intercepted them.

Angry words filled the air. Fists flew. Knives leapt into angry hands.

“Stop it!” El Murid shrieked.

It was the first of the riots which were to follow him like a disease throughout the years. Only his intercession kept lives from being lost.

“Stop!” he thundered, raising his right hand to the sky. His amulet flared, searing faces with its golden glow. “Put up your blades and go home,” he told his followers.

The power was still upon him. He was no child. The command in his voice could not be refused. His followers sheathed their blades and backed away. He considered them. They were all young. Some were younger than he. “I did not come among you to have you spill one another’s blood.” He turned to the chieftain of the el Habib. “Mustaf, I offer my apologies. I did not intend this.”