Seven Words of Power (7 page)

He knew the commandments; he’d laughed at them long ago, along with the other young men his age. Do not steal? He’d stolen gold and goats, tents and spices. Do not covet another man’s wife? He’d taken his enemies’ wives as concubines, and done with them what he willed. Love thy neighbor? He had raided neighboring tribes, and he had killed cousins who had challenged him for the leadership of Tarn Bitar.

Do not murder? Majid’s thoughts shied from that one.

“Kalif, look,” one of Majid’s warriors pointed at a sign in the souk, beside the stall of a spice merchant, “there is a new confessor.”

Majid searched for any mocking in the warrior’s tone, but could hear none. They knew about his obsession; he’d visited confessor after confessor in his quest for the salvation of his soul.

“I see the sign,” Majid said. “I will stop here for a while. My wives may buy goods while I am visiting.”

“Yes, Kalif.”

Majid’s bones cracked as he slipped down from his horse and handed the reins to one of his men. “Wait for me outside,” he said.

There was a man outside the tent, a devotee, wrapped from head to toe in the black wool of one who sought atonement for past sins.

That makes two of us
, Majid thought.

“The confessor awaits,” the devotee said, his voice muffled by the cloth, as he opened the tent. Majid stooped as he walked inside.

It took a few moments for Majid’s eyes to adjust to the dimness. The tent was small and low, with ragged carpets covering the ground and cushions spread around a table that stood at the height of his knees.

The confessor was older even than Majid. Her features had been weathered by the sun until the skin of her face was like creased leather. Her startling eyes were half-brown and half-green. She lit a stick of incense as Majid approached, motioning for him to seat himself.

Majid placed a silver coin on the table as he settled himself and then cleared his throat.

“I’m troubled by fear,” Majid said.

“There are many types of fear,” said the confessor. “Many sources. What is yours?”

“I was never afraid before, but now I sleep with a dagger under my pillow. I have guards follow me wherever I go. At night forty men guard my tent, and I still think it isn’t enough.”

“Is there one you trust?” the confessor asked.

Majid hesitated. “The one man I can perhaps trust, my son, has left on pilgrimage and still has not returned.”

“What is the greatest of the fears?” the confessor asked, drawing out each word as she spoke.

“I fear the repercussions of what I did as a younger man,” Majid said. "I have killed many."

“The sins of the past can follow us,” said the confessor. “Yet much time has passed. Why do you fear what happened many years ago?”

“That is what I do not understand,” Majid said.

The confessor was silent for a moment. “You are struggling with a guilty conscience. It isn’t this world you fear. Those you fear are all dead. The world you fear is the next.”

“Perhaps… Perhaps you’re right,” Majid said. “There are commandments I have broken. I haven’t always followed
hajjariah
, the way.”

“The best remedy for a guilty conscience is confession.”

“I have confessed. Yet the feeling remains.”

“Confess to me now,” the confessor said.

Majid barked a laugh. “How much time do you have? We would be here for an eternity.”

“What is it that troubles you the most?”

Majid wiped his hands over his face. “There is one memory that haunts my dreams.”

“Tell it to me.”

It was a long time before Majid spoke, and as he did, he looked into the distance. “I took a small camp. They were
lahsar
, those without a tarn. I rode in with my son at my side. We killed their men as usual, but I was angry that day, for one of my wives had promised me a son but given me a daughter.”

“A worthy reason for ill-temper,” the confessor said.

“There was a lack of spoils – they were so poor – which enraged me further. After we killed their fighting men we rounded up the children, lining them up on their knees in the sand. This is the usual way we judge our captives — which we will sell to slavery and which we will keep for ourselves. We made them watch as we burned the bodies of their parents and everything from their camp that we would not take with us. But I was not well that day, and rather than taking slaves, I ordered their heads cut off, even the little ones. The babes were simply too small, even for this, so I ordered my men to throw them straight onto the fire.”

“So you killed them all?”

“One escaped: a young boy. It was hot, and I wanted to take my men back to the oasis. I still remember the way he looked at me. His eyes were cold and dark, even though he was so young. I thought he would never survive alone in the desert, with no food or water, so I let him go. I have cursed myself ever since.”

“Ah,” the confessor said, “I see.”

“This is what troubles me. I dream that he somehow survived the thirst and heat of the desert, and that one day he will seek his revenge. In my dreams he makes it past my guards and into my tent. I am troubled that he will seek me in the afterlife.”

“I can help you,” the confessor said, “but I will need to pray for the solution. Come back in three days.”

“If you can help me,” said Majid, “I will shower you with gold.”

“Your gratitude will be enough, Kalif,” the confessor said. “My devotee will show you out.”

~

The black-clad devotee came back into the tent after the Kalif had left.

“What are your thoughts?” the confessor said. “You were there.”

“I am not sure,” the man in black said; his voice was troubled.

“Do you still seek his death?” the confessor asked.

The devotee didn’t answer for a moment, placing a pouch that clinked onto the table, which the confessor quickly swept up.

“He seems repentant,” the man in black said. “Yet he takes pride in the wealth his evil deeds have brought him. I have no wish to become like him; that is not the way. I can remember that day like it was yesterday. But would his death set me free?”

~

“Three days have passed, confessor,” Majid said. “My dreams are as troubled as they always were. I am even seeing that boy when I’m awake. I’ve doubled the number of guards around my tent, yet I still live in fear.”

“I have prayed, Kalif,” the confessor said, “and I have received an answer.”

“What is it?” Majid demanded.

“It is not this life you fear, but the next. Yet you have shown no actions that demonstrate true repentance. You still carry the wealth that you made from deeds such as the one that troubles you. And by seeking the protection of blood and steel, you are showing no faith in the Lord of Fire, who is the only one who can grant the peace you seek.”

“Yes, yes,” Majid said eagerly. “What must I do?”

“You must make a choice. If you seek forgiveness and are truly repentant, here is what you must do. You do not have to do it, which is what makes it your choice.”

“Tell me. I’ll do anything.”

“You must stand down your guards and take a single tent out into the desert. Take no weapons with you, for the Lord of Fire will know. You must spend one single night, out in the desert, not as a kalif but as a man.”

The Kalif’s face went white. “I can’t do it.”

“Why not?” the confessor said. “Hazarans have been spending nights in the desert since before your birth. Those you raided had no weapons. This is what the Lord of Fire asks of you. To show you are repentant, you must spend one night away from your blood-stained steel and your ill-gotten gains.”

~

Majid rode away from the Oasis of Touma a troubled man. He knew that the confessor spoke sense, yet the idea of spending a night alone in the desert filled him with terror. His guards were silent as they rode around him, and even the thought of them not being near caused his heart to race.

One of Majid’s guards looked at him and for a moment Majid saw the face of the boy from the camp, before the vision shifted and he realized he was simply looking at one of his men.

This couldn’t go on.

When he reached his luxurious encampment, so large it was a small city, Majid went straight to his tent to pray.

He prayed long and hard, seeking the Lord of Fire’s forgiveness for what he had done. The confessor’s words would not leave him. She was correct: he hadn’t shown true repentance, and it wasn’t this life that troubled him, it was the afterlife.

Majid sent one of his men to get him a small traveling tent.

He started to pack.

~

Majid had forgotten what it was like, out in the true desert, with no creature but his horse for company. Foreigners said the desert was quiet, silent even, but it wasn’t true. The wind howled past the rock formations that spotted the Hazara, and blew at the dunes so that the sands constantly spilled and shifted.

The gusts shook his tent, causing the buckles to jingle and the fabric to snap like the sound of a whip. Every moment Majid imagined someone was outside, fumbling with the knots, preparing to jump in and swing at him with a sharp scimitar, take his head from his shoulders, and leave it out in the desert for the sun to dry out.

Majid felt under his pillow, taking comfort from the hilt of the heavy dagger he’d brought with him. He wasn’t sure if the Lord of Fire bargained, but surely he could see that Majid genuinely sought forgiveness. He wouldn’t take offence at this slight change to what the confessor had said, would he?

When it came, his sleep was fitful.

~

Majid woke to the sound of heavy breathing. He had been having a nightmare, but this was different. Was he still dreaming? Majid looked up and screamed.

A man hovered over him.

In the darkness the man’s face was a void. As Majid’s eyes adjusted he saw that the man’s face was blank because his head was wrapped in black fabric. The cloth covered him from head to toe.

The man in black lowered himself so that he was looming directly over Majid, his chest rising and falling with passion and his breath loud in Majid’s ears.

“Who… who are you?” Majid asked.

“I am a messenger from the Lord of Fire,” the man in black said.

“You’re the devotee from the confessor’s tent. You’re him, aren’t you?” Majid said, his voice trembling. “The boy. I made a mistake. I left you alive.”

In one final act of desperation, Majid moved. “
Tish-tassine
,” he called, activating a nightlamp, bathing the tent in its bright glow and revealing the man in complete detail. At the same time he brought the dagger out from under his pillow.

Yet the man in black was faster. He grabbed Majid’s wrist and squeezed, until the dagger fell out of Majid’s grip. Majid felt the man’s speed and strength, and knew he was facing a warrior.

The man in black pulled the material away from his face.

“No,” Majid’s son said. “I am not him. But I was one of those who wielded the swords, and followed your orders.”

Majid saw that his son’s haunted eyes mirrored his own.

“You made no mistakes, Father” his son said. “You left none alive. The boy would never have made it out of the desert. But like you, I cannot find peace.”

Majid felt a blade slice across his throat, and as the warmth of his lifeblood gushed out, he wondered about the afterlife.

“You made me do those things,” his son said, “and one of us deserves to be free.”

Splice

Aleks could feel it coming. “Not now,” he muttered. “Please, not now.”

“As you all know, this is the most delicate part of the process,” Master Fyodor was saying, “so be careful. This is where your chosen strains join together, merging to become one.”

Aleks and six other young men hovered over their benches, peering down through the open holes of their transmuters with expressions of concentration as they watched their gloved hands work.

“You have a very brief window,” Master Fyodor said. “Those of you who are trying for a third strain must enter it into the primordial ooze within the next five seconds.”

The glowing symbols on the transmuter were hurting Aleks’s eyes. His neck ached from the bent angle, and he fought to control the shaking of his hands as he picked up the jellied pebble with his tongs and dropped it into the middle of the ooze.

“There,” he whispered. He’d added the third and final strain. He could close the seals on the transmuter, Master Fyodor would activate the runes, and in three days it would present him with a seed.

Then he felt it come again. “No,” he groaned to himself. He pulled his head away but he was too late. The familiar onset of a nosebleed was bad enough, but not here, not now!

With horror, Aleks saw a single drop of blood fall out of his nose and fly through the air, to slip neatly through the open viewing port of the transmuter and land with a sudden speck of red on top of the ooze.

“Students,” Master Fyodor said, “please step back from your transmuters.”

Aleks pulled back, looking hurriedly to the left and right, but no one had noticed that he’d inadvertently added his own blood to the primordial ooze.

“Please,” Master Fyodor said when he came to Aleks’s bench, “step back from the bench, Aleks. I’m looking forward to this. I can’t wait to see yet another of your marvelous creations.”

“Master Fyodor…” Aleks said.

Before he could say anything, his teacher had closed the seals on the transmuter and spoken the words that would activate it, incubating the primordial ooze and transforming it into a healthy seed. Master Fyodor then dripped essence from a small flask into a funnel on the incubator’s side, where it would be absorbed by the ooze and condensed in the seed.

Aleks had spent weeks gathering his three strains, building them from a multitude of other stock to give his seed the properties he wanted. It was to be a guardian plant – a small warrior to protect a field of crops from the ravages of birds and rabbits. What effect would the droplet of blood have? Would it have any effect at all?