The Gate of Fire (7 page)

Mohammed's frown deepened, and a shade of fear flickered across his face. "The house of white stones? Who has died?" He stopped, his heart filled with sudden dreadful certainty. The girl remained prostrate; her face against the floor, but now Mohammed could hear the faint sound of tears dripping. He brushed past her and ran through the dim chambers of the house, forgetting to remove his boots as custom and civility demanded.

Mohammed halted, his right fist poised to rap on the frame of the door. His face remained impassive, though anger was close to breaking the surface of his control. Loud voices, muffled by the door, could be heard. He dropped his hand and consciously opened his fist, flexing his fingers.

"...be mine! They are Bani Hashim caravans, our camels, our goods! By what right do they go to him? He is no blood of ours—a hired hand that did too well! He owes his position to his..."

Mohammed grimaced and considered breaking down the door. Behind him, he felt the presence of Jalal close at hand. He raised a hand and gestured for the Tanukh to leave. The Northerner nodded, tucking a knife back into his shirt, and faded away into the dim coolness at the end of the corridor. Mohammed took another moment and mastered himself before knocking.

The door banged open, and a very angry woman of middle age looked out.

Mohammed smiled politely and stepped into the room, ducking his head under the lintel. "Blessings, Taiya, sister of my wife. Blessings, Hala, sister of my wife."

The woman who had answered the door turned her back on him and stalked to a low seat by the window. The other woman, Hala, stood and bowed gravely to Mohammed, then resumed her own seat. The window behind them was tall and narrow, showing a narrow wedge of the innermost garden of the great house. Hala met his gaze with sad eyes. She had been her older sister's favorite and had accompanied her nearly everywhere. Like Khadijah, she was plain featured, with intelligent eyes and a quiet, almost gentle manner. Mohammed bowed to her and took a chair that had been sitting in the corner of the small room.

It was cool and almost dark, with only a little light coming in from the garden window. Mohammed sat easily, though his heart was still greatly troubled, and waited. The other woman, Taiya, was the youngest surviving daughter of old Khuwaylid and—when he was alive—his favorite. She sat stiffly, looking at the window, fingers picking at the rich brocade of her skirts. Hala glanced at her sister and then turned back to Mohammed, her small hands folded in her lap. Mohammed summoned a smile for her, but he was sure that it seemed false.

"Brother, we feared that something had befallen you when you did not return with the caravan from Damascus."

"Something did," grated Mohammed, suddenly assailed by a stabbing sensation of guilt at the quiet words. "There has been a great war in the North, between Persia and Rome. The Persian armies under the command of their great general, Shahr-Baraz, attempted to capture Damascus. I became involved, and my return was greatly delayed."

"Involved?" Taiya's voice was quiet, but the anger in her voice was as bitter as spike-leaf tea. "With
who
? What was
her
name? Neither Rome nor Persia is any friend of the Quraysh. What is the business of our house to meddle in their affairs?"

Mohammed turned a little in the chair, facing Taiya squarely. "I met a man whom I would call my brother, if he were alive today. A true friend, for all that we met in a
caravanserai
in the foreigners' district of the Red City. He was driven to go north, to Damascus, and then to the City of Silk, Palmyra, and I followed him, for he needed my aid. How could I deny the brother of my heart?"

"You were gone too long," Hala said, her voice rising a little.

Mohammed nodded, still meeting her eyes. Tears threatened them, for Hala had loved her sister very much. Taiya, too, was on the verge of tears, but would fight to the end to keep this
poor cousin
from seeing them. "I know. There was a great battle at Palmyra, and we were besieged for many months. Flight was impossible. I barely escaped with my life."

Taiya suddenly stood up and paced across to the door and threw it open. She looked out into the passageway, saw nothing, and then slammed it closed again. "All the time she lay sick, Khadijah could think only of you," Taiya snapped as she returned to the window. "When she could no longer see, and the fever had settled into her bones, all she asked for was news of you—
you
, the wanderer! The husband who is never in his own house—who spent his brief time at home mewed up in a cave, sharing porridge with beggars and thieves!"

Hala stood and tried to take her sister by the arm. Taiya slapped her hand away, her voice rising still further. "You left her alone and she died! She trusted you when she trusted no one else—and you abandoned her! All she needed to live was your face, or your voice, and you denied her even this! At the end, she thought you had perished in the wasteland and then she died, sure that you would never come."

Mohammed stood, his face tremendously calm. Taiya flinched and shrank back from him, but he did not raise a hand. Instead, he pushed the chair away and knelt on the stone floor and bowed to the two sisters, placing his head on the woven sisal mat that lay across the center of the room. "I am sorry," he said. "Had I known, I would have done anything to be here."

He stood, and Hala stepped to his side, her hand smoothing his tunic, which had turned awry. Taiya just stared, her face a white mask behind the kohl around her eyes and the golden rings hanging from her ears.

"I know," Hala said, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, making long marks in the powder on her face. "It was an evil circumstance."

Mohammed's left eyelid flickered under the scar, and his face became a degree paler. "No... there is true evil in the world, but it is not circumstance. Do not say that this was evil; I have seen its face, and it did not pass this way."

"Evil?" Taiya whispered incredulously. "You know so much of evil that you can see it, touch it, feel it, declare its worth? Neglect is evil; indifference is evil!"

Mohammed's face darkened, and he seemed to grow larger in the room. "I have seen the face of true evil, sister of my wife. It is a dark shape that dims the sun, that shatters towers with its voice, which walks in the world in the form of man. Something that the jinn fear as they cower in the desert. Something that makes the world shake when it walks. It did not lay Khadijah low. I know, for I looked upon it from the rampart of Palmyra and saw my friend die at its hand. If it had come this way, there would be nothing left."

Hala's eyes widened, hearing an echo of fear and battle in his voice.

"Rubbish!" Taiya almost spit at him, but restrained herself at the last moment. "You do not care that my sister," she continued, "whom I loved best, is dead. Well, I do care and my family cares. You came late into our household, al'Quraysh, and you will not be master here now that she is gone. I do not care that you were Khadijah's husband—I will take those portions of our father's inheritance that are mine for myself."

Hala turned on her sister, her eyes flashing. "That is not our way! Mohammed and Khadijah wed, and he is her heir. Our clan is rich and prosperous from her wisdom and skill. She chose this man to be at her side, to make us stronger, to be our eyes in the world beyond the desert. Now that she is gone, he will lead us."

Taiya sneered at her older sister, twitching her skirts away. "Foolish little weaver! What did you do all these years but sit at Khadijah's footstool, smiling prettily and knitting? My husband and I made as much as this boy in her service. Our father made us rich! He is the one who raised up this house and made it strong. Without him, there would be nothing here but a hut and scrawny goats!"

Hala stamped her foot, ringing a bracelet of tiny bells around her ankle. "Stupid cow! Father made us a house and the beginnings of wealth—but Khadijah's wisdom delivered us riches! Never was a woman wiser than she, even if she could not bear a living son, or married twice. See him? He is her choice—she who is your master and mine in forethought and care. In life, you took her advice above all others. Now that she lies dead in the house of white stones, you would say she is a liar?"

Taiya did not respond, but stormed out, golden bangles at her wrists tinkling in the sudden quiet. After a moment, there was the sound of another door crashing closed at the end of the hallway. Mohammed stared after her and then sat down, holding his head in his hands.

Hala looked away, then slowly went to her seat on the window ledge. "Will you stay this time?" Her voice was faint. "Tell me what happened in the north."

"No," Mohammed said, raising his head up and looking out the window at the bougainvillea and jasmine in the garden. "This house makes my heart sick."

The sound of crickets chirping echoed off broken gray rock. A boot made of tooled kid leather with small silver studs passed over the stones. A man of almost fifty climbed the side of the mountain under a blazing sun. He wore a long desert robe of tan and white, with a burnoose wrapped around his head. His features were strong—a fierce nose jutted over a thick bushy black beard. His hands, large and scarred with the artifacts of many battles, were a dark brown and grasped at the stones to pull himself up over a ledge. The man's face was bleak, for his heart was greatly troubled.

The peak rose at the side of a deep, broad valley. The summit was bare of trees, though covered with scattered gray shrubs and thorny bushes. Great boulders littered the face of the mountain, all showing deep cracks and crevices where the merciless sun and wind had broken them down. A perfectly clear blue sky rose above the mountain, anchored by the white disk of the sun. There was little wind to break the tremendous heat of the day. Gravel crunched under the man's foot, and the still, hot air was filled with the voices of bees and crickets.

The man passed underneath a cliff of stone, covered with small spiky plants bearing tiny white flowers. In the bare fragment of shade that the cliff endowed, a scrub bush with dark red bark was growing. Triangular waxy leaves covered the branches. The man pushed through the thicket at the base of the cliff and climbed up a narrow passage between the stones. At the top the rocks were hot with the radiance of the sun. Now he could see the summit of the mountain, a tilted pile of barren stone and cracked rock. The air was heavy and hot, like a mourning cloth.

From the mountaintop, the whole world lay below the man in a vast sweep of desert and mountain and hills. The valley below him seemed far away, filled with a faint bluish haze from the cook fires of the villages and the city. No clouds could be seen in all that gigantic expanse of sky. The bowl of heaven shaded from a dusty bone near the horizon to a tremendously deep Chin blue overhead. The sun, standing high in the sky, was a bright flare of white. Beneath his feet, the mountain slept in the heat of the day. Here, exposed on all sides, was a breeze at last, ruffling his cloak and robes. He stood straight, his walking cane at one side, and slowly turned to survey the entire world.

The land was a rumpled quilt of flat plateaus and deep
wadi
cut by summer thunderstorms. Low mountains spiked up out of barren plains of salt pan and rocky fields. No green thing intruded into the sere desolation save below, within the shelter of the valley and the walls of the city. The man turned back, away from the openness of the desert. The valley was long and narrow, with hills marching close on either side and mountains rising behind them. Here, there was green, carefully tended and watched over. At the wells and along the slash of the streambeds, small fields and orchards sprouted from the gray-and-tan soil. He looked southwest, along the length of the valley of Makkah, and could, at the edge of vision, make out the green of the oasis of Zam-Zam. There was a deep well there, surrounded by pools and temples.

The man sat, his legs swinging off the edge of the great slab of sandstone.

The man lay on the mountaintop, his eyes closed, the heat of the sun burning on his skin. The hot wind continued to whisper across him, plucking at his sleeves. His lips were badly chapped, and his skin had become cold, even in the heat of the day. The walking cane lay by his side, thrown down. Even with his eyelids closed, he could see the brilliant blue sky above him. He hid in old memories.

Act!

The man's head twitched a little to one side, though his mind had wandered far from his body and the sound of a voice in the air around him took a long time to register. The sound hung in the air, clear and ringing from the rocks like the chime of a great bell.

Act!

The man's eyes fluttered open, and then he turned his head to one side, away from the merciless sun. His lips moved, but no sound came out. For an instant, he thought that he could see himself as if looking down from above, a battered disheartened man of later middle age, lying on sunbaked stones at the top of a mountain. Then he could feel the hot wind on his arms and legs and taste dust in his mouth.

Act!

The man levered himself up on one elbow and, squinting, looked around. Only sky and boulders were to be seen. The mountaintop was empty. The wind died, leaving a great stillness.

"Who is there?" The man's voice was plaintive and weak, barely a whisper.

I am here. I am in all things. Prostrate yourself, man, and listen.

The man tried to stand, but his legs failed him and he fell down. He bent his head, trying to use his arms to raise himself up. The rock beneath him crumbled, and his hands slipped. A sharp pain sparked on his forehead where the rock face cut it.

"What are you?" His voice was even weaker.

Listen, man, you whom the Lord of the World made from clots of blood, do you know His will?

"Who are you?" the man tried to shout, but there was no breath left in his body.

Do you make obeisance to Him, who made all that is? Do you render Him respect? Come to Him, and listen, and know His will in all things.