Stealing Sacred Fire Read online

  Melandra chewed her lip, hoping to reassert her disguise. ‘Oh dear, this is kind of inconvenient.’ She laughed. ‘Trouble is, I’m late for the appointment. It’s my fault I’ve missed him. Do you know where Mr Jacobs has gone?’

  ‘No.’ The woman walked to the door and opened it again. ‘I’m afraid you must go now.’

  ‘Hey, I’ve been travelling all day! I have to find Mr Jacobs. There must be someone here who knows where he is.’

  The woman laughed coldly. ‘My dear, this is a private guest house. We do not pry into the affairs of our visitors. Mr Jacobs has left, and so must you. I’m sure your employers will understand.’

  Melandra sighed and tapped her foot for a moment, then reached into her large shoulder-bag. The woman’s eyes widened at the sight of the gun. ‘Shut the door,’ said Melandra.

  Hesitating for only a moment, the woman did so. ‘Explain yourself!’ Her voice was deadly calm.

  ‘I have to find Mr Jacobs,’ Melandra persisted. ‘Now, you know and I know that if we should have a little accident, if this gun should accidentally go off, no-one here will call the police. You’ll just die. Is Jacobs worth that? I’m quite prepared to kill you, lady, so just tell me: where is he?’

  The woman seemed to grow in stature. ‘How dare you threaten me, you little...’

  Melandra shot her in the leg before she could finish. The sound of it was louder than she’d liked, but then she hadn’t been that close to the target.

  The woman slid, still graceful, to the floor, stared aghast at the blood pouring from the wound.

  ‘I can shoot you quite a few times before you die,’ Melandra said. ‘Where is he?’

  The woman looked up at her with an unreadable expression. ‘Whatever you’re planning, you’re wasting your time. He’s at Heathrow, on his way out of the country by now, no doubt.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  Melandra fired again, taking the woman in the arm, nearly severing it. ‘I think you do.’

  ‘Istanbul.’ The woman leaned back against the door, blinking at the ceiling, her blood pooling around her. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’ Melandra walked to the door, opened it, pushing the woman aside. She paused for a moment. ‘Sorry about this, but I don’t want you making any phone calls.’ She put her weapon against the woman’s head and shot her, more quietly than before, then put her gun back into her bag and went out onto the street, closing the door behind her. ‘Bad security. They should have more sense.’

  Quickly, she walked down the street, then turned into a side road, making for the bustle of the main streets and the anonymity of the nearest tube station. First, she ducked into an alley and removed the wig and glasses, which she threw into a pile of cardboard boxes. She let down her hair and went back onto the street. Istanbul. She would follow him there.

  Chapter Six

  The King of Babylon’s Daughter

  Babylon

  The princess dreamed her father’s dream of war and victory. She hung somewhere up in the sky, looking down, and saw him ride a high-stepping grey stallion, amid a forest of fluttering banners that bore the seal of their royal house. His Magian generals rode behind him, dressed in robes of scarlet and gold. Her father looked so handsome; his coiled, oiled hair black against his uniform and his moustache shining like combed silk.

  The sun shone down and made the stench of war more horrible. The princess knew that angels had fought here, for the battle-field was a tangle of broken wings and blood. The bodies of the defeated had rained down from heaven to die.

  The king’s stallion stepped daintily on its polished hooves towards a rocky outcrop that rose up from the battlefield, which was otherwise quite flat. Here, on a shawl of wet redness that was spread out over the stone, a tall figure leaned against an erect spear, gazing down at the carnage. The princess was in no doubt that this was a prince of angels. He was a giant, tall and lean. His long, pale face was clean-shaven and he was clad in bloodied leather; his white-gold hair wound up on his head, decorated with what appeared to be human bones. Cruel and dangerous he seemed, yet so beautiful.

  The princess watched this angel warrior turn lambent blue eyes upon her father, silently watching him draw closer. Presently, fixing the king with an expression of disdain, he spoke, in a low voice that rang out like a clarion over the field. ‘Where is my brother, ruler of men?’

  The princess looked on as her father drew his mount to a halt beneath the rock, looked up. ‘Who is your brother, lord?’

  ‘He wears your chains, lies deep beneath Etemenanki, suffers in silence.’

  The princess saw into the mind of her father, understood then its workings; cunning and twisting. She knew that the king remembered the angel lord he had taken prisoner from a tomb, but he was not afraid. The prisoner was currency. ‘Penemue,’ he said.

  The giant straightened up, flexed his fingers upon the spear. ‘Deliver him unto me.’

  The princess saw sly patterns curl through the mind of her father. She saw the words he discarded, heard those he selected. ‘Lord Penemue has many enemies,’ he said. ‘He is under my protection. By what name are you known, lord?’

  The angel sneered then, and the princess knew he could see into the mind of the king as well as she could. ‘I am his sovereign lord. I am Shemyaza. And if you do not release Penemue, then I shall come for him.’

  The king bowed upon his horse. ‘But you are welcome always in my palace, lord. Return with me to the jewel of Babylon, and I will command a great feast be set for you. There, you may dine with your brother, in my house.’

  The angel nodded. ‘I shall come to your house,’ he said and various meanings twisted through his words.

  The princess woke up then, roused from her dream by the echo of a clamour in the house. All was silent now.

  She opened her eyes on the tawny darkness, blinked at the swaying canopies above her bed, where reedy chimes of metal swung like singing stars. Then, she heard feet running on the marble floors beyond the great double doors of her bedroom, as if they approached swiftly from a great distance, and she sensed a pulsing excitement in the air, like the memory of a shout in an empty room. They were not mortal feet.

  She was not afraid. Like her mother, she was a prize and knew no fear in the house of her father.

  Quietly, she slipped from between her linen sheets and cast aside the draperies that swathed her couch. Beyond, the room was vast and seemed empty; the bed a great splendid island in its midst, where she might lie enchanted awaiting kisses. A robe of dark silk lay in a puddle of fabric beside the bed. Without haste, the princess lifted it and pulled it around her shoulders, before venturing on her naked feet across the black and gold polished floor. Her feet left marks, like the feet of an angel. It was the heat of sleep seeping out from her.

  The princess was a part of her father’s dream of Ancient Babylon. She had been raised to believe in it, and knew no other life. She was Sarpanita, daughter of the Lord of the Four Quarters of the World and she lived in the house that was called the Marvel of the Land; the Shining Residence; the Dwelling of Majesty.

  Outside the bedroom, she found her mother Amytis, also belting her robe and surrounded by a bevy of hand-maidens — Egyptians, all adorned in the manner of antiquity.

  ‘What is it, Mama?’ Sarpanita inquired politely. She was wary of her father, for she had seen him kill, but for her mother she reserved a quiet terror, blended with awe and a sliver of love. Although Amytis had never raised a hand against her, and rarely spoke sharply, the girl appreciated that, given the opportunity, Amytis was capable of being far more deadly than her husband.

  The queen yawned, gave her belt a final yank. Her feet were slippered in pearled velvet, sewn with gold wire. ‘A commotion,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we have been invaded, though I think not. News, then, or a message.’ She shrugged and extended a honey-coloured arm like a shining serpent, out from her robe. ‘Come, my child. We must see for our
selves.’

  Sarpanita was pulled into the embrace of her mother, felt the heat of her body through the cool silk, the ripple of her muscles. The hand-maidens were left behind at the door to Amytis’ apartments. Their eyes were wide; fingers fluttered before their mouths.

  Before her marriage, Amytis had been a guerrilla fighter and was in fact a captive of war, which suited her husband’s designs admirably. Now, she was less fiery, but smouldered on, slinking and sliding around the palace, a dangerous cat-serpent wearing a gold collar, kept docile by fresh meat.

  Long ago, in the bed of their passion, Amytis had coaxed her husband’s dream from him. She knew how he regarded himself and was wise enough to realise that collusion in the dream helped consolidate her position at the king’s side. Amytis was not her original name.

  ‘Mama,’ Sarpanita said. ‘Where is Tiy?’ The old woman would normally be found in Amytis’ quarters at night.

  ‘I think she is with your father,’ Amytis replied, ‘but we shall see.’

  Tiy was a fearsome seeress, whom Amytis had brought with her from home, ostensibly as a hand-maid. Sarpanita was not sure whether she was related to this terrifying crone, because the relationship between Amytis and the seeress was odd and nebulous. The girl knew they practised strange, old rites in private together. Sometimes Amytis seemed in awe of Tiy, while at other times the old woman behaved like a servant. Despite the fact that Nimnezzar clearly despised the seeress, it seemed he was objective enough to appreciate her strong psychic abilities. Much to the disgust of the Magian priests who flocked around him, Tiy had become one of his close advisors. The fact that Tiy was at this moment with the king must mean that something momentous had occurred.

  Mother and daughter walked through the high-ceilinged corridors that were tiled in blue and decorated with designs of lions and trumpet flowers and the images of tall columns garlanded with leaves. Brass lamps depended from the ceiling, looking like censers. Electric light gleamed from them dimly like burning oil. ‘I dreamed of an angel king,’ said Sarpanita. ‘And names came to me: Shemyaza, Penemue.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ replied the queen. She squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. ‘You are a seeress like old Tiy, sweet child. The names are pertinent.’

  Amytis actually believed her daughter to be rather more than just a seeress. When the child had been conceived, Nimnezzar had come to his wife’s bed as Shemyaza and she had received him as Ishtahar. This ritual union had been fruitful — surely an omen — as before then she had never conceived with any man. Sarpanita was therefore an angel princess, not quite human, for her parents had risen above their mortal spirits to create her.

  Sarpanita, unaware of this aspect of her creation, only recognised the tone that meant she must not question her mother further.

  The king’s private apartments were some distance from those of the royal women, and they had to cross an open balcony to reach them. The courtyard below was filled with flowers, all breathing sweetness into the night. It was a special garden the king had designed for the queen, and all its blooms came alive at night. Amytis liked to walk there, slowly, in moonlight. She kept her peacocks there; all tame and named and collared, and there was a trefoil pool, where opal-white carp dozed beneath a mat of lilies.

  ‘Why did we hear them running?’ asked the princess, because all was tranquil in the garden. ‘It had nothing to do with us.’

  ‘There was no-one running,’ answered the queen, ‘but you heard it nonetheless. An echo through the grilles, that came from your father’s quarters, perhaps, or a premonition.’

  ‘But you heard it too,’ whispered the princess.

  Amytis laughed. ‘It is my business to do so.’

  They came now to the gates of the king’s apartments, where guards stood to attention. The gates were bronze, decorated with the images of striding, winged gods. The guards were ceremonial; they did not carry guns, but curved swords. When they saw Amytis and her daughter, they opened the gates for them. Amytis smiled at them vaguely and led her daughter past them.

  Beyond, a dark, columned hall-way unfurled before them, grander than the corridors of the women’s quarters. Noise could be heard here; the whisper of voices talking quickly and a sense of imminence in the air. Servants flitted across the passage-way ahead of them like ghosts. It was clear that the king had been roused, and that his staff hurried to attend to his wants.

  Statues stood motionless in niches; tall feather-cloaked men of black basalt, taken from the ancient city discovered by the king’s archaeologists. Sarpanita glanced uneasily at their long, stern faces and slanting ophidian eyes.

  Amytis paused before one of the statues, gestured at it. ‘He is one of the Arallu,’ she told her daughter, pulling her close against her side. ‘A frightening thing. A long time ago, the legends say that Great God Anu made a garden, which he called Kharsag. His messengers and warriors, the Shining Ones, attended him there, but some of them went bad and stole out of the garden in the night. They went down to the lower plains to seduce the daughters of men. A great war was caused by this. The children that the rebel Shining Ones conceived on their women were monstrous, and hunted down by Anu’s fierce warriors. Those who survived were forced into hiding. Some of their descendants became a demon race called the Arallu. They lived in the city your Papa’s diggers found. They lived underground to hide from the wrath of Anu.’

  Sarpanita shuddered. She knew vaguely of these things, but her mind had always shied away from them. ‘They are just stories,’ she said, in a small, precise voice.

  Amytis nodded. ‘Indeed they are, and yet remember you can make a story of playing with your kitten in the light and shade of your inner room. History is stories, some of it embellished to make it more colourful, some of it remembered only in half-light, fragmented.’ She squeezed Sarpanita’s shoulder. ‘My dear, Penemue was a rebel Shining One. For his sins, he was buried beneath hard, heavy rocks in a tomb of black glass. He did not die. The Arallu kept him hidden’

  ‘Why didn’t they set him free?’

  Amytis shrugged. ‘We may never know. I think it must be because they were afraid of his power. But your father is not afraid, little Nita. He opened the tomb, he took away the rocks.’

  Sarpanita swallowed convulsively. She did not want to think about what her mother was telling her, in case she remembered something that was buried deep within her mind, older even than her body, or her soul. ‘He’s alive?’ She felt as if dark, flapping pinions beat the air around her, invisible. For the first time, she knew fear in her father’s house.

  Amytis laughed softly. ‘He is not dead, my daughter.’

  ‘I dreamed of angels…’

  ‘The Shining Ones are remembered as angels in many faiths. It is just a name. The old stories were carried far across the world, and were changed along the way.’

  ‘Mama, I feel strange. It is as my dream described. An angel prince imprisoned in our city.’

  ‘That is your Penemue,’ said the queen languidly, pointing at the statue before them, ‘or rather his image.’ She smiled down at her daughter. ‘I think it is time you learned certain things. Your father protects you, because he looks upon you as a child, though of course you are not. I will take you to him now and we shall discover what the fuss is about.’

  At the doorway to the king’s private salon, they found his Magian vizier, Jazirah, in the act of closing the doors behind him. He was exceptionally tall, like so many of Nimnezzar’s closest staff, but his height was unusual in an Indian. His face, which was contemplative as he emerged from the salon, changed when it saw the queen and her daughter. It became closed. He straightened up.

  ‘I am here to see my husband,’ said Amytis, stepping up to him.

  Jazirah smiled, made a languid, open-palmed gesture with both hands, bowed a little. ‘Madam, he is not within.’

  ‘What has happened, Jazirah?’ asked the queen. She was irritated by the man’s oily politeness, for she knew he had no liking for her. To Jazirah, she was a
common gypsy, risen above her station.

  Jazirah pulled a quizzical face. ‘Happened, my lady?’

  Amytis composed herself for argument, already bored by it, but Sarpanita touched her arm. ‘What was that cry, Mama?’

  Amytis turned. ‘Cry, my daughter?’ She had heard nothing.

  Jazirah stroked his chin, his short, neatly-clipped beard, and kept silent.

  Sarpanita glanced along the corridor that led away from her father’s rooms. ‘From there,’ she said. ‘I heard a cry. It was terrible.’ She raised her arm to point, and its tawny flesh was pimpled as if from cold or fear.

  ‘Etemenanki,’ said the queen, realising something. She eyed the vizier, who shrugged. ‘Is my husband at the temple?’ she asked.

  ‘He may well be,’ said Jazirah.

  ‘A strange hour to be worshipping,’ said Amytis and began to walk in the direction Sarpanita had pointed. Jazirah loped to catch up with her.

  ‘Perhaps not a good time to intrude,’ he suggested.

  Queen Amytis ignored him. ‘Come, Nita,’ she said, and her daughter came to her side.

  In the days when the kings of Babylon had ruled all the known world, a tower had been built, a great ziggurat that was remembered in legend as an edifice designed to reach up into heaven. The Tower of Babel. In the old tongue, it had been named Etemenanki, and had been a fire temple, sacred in earliest times to the Shining Ones, the men and women of an advanced race revered as gods, and later to the god Marduk. Its name meant ‘the Temple Foundation of Heaven and Earth’. The original Grigori, known as Watchers, had visited a shrine at the top of the temple, where they had lain with the comeliest daughters of the city in the ceremony of sacred marriage. From these unions had come the line of kings, who always bore Grigori blood. Later, once the Grigori had melted away into hiding, men had assumed the roles of gods and continued to re-enact the ritual. The ziggurat had been destroyed and rebuilt many times. This was its latest incarnation, constructed far from the site of the original.