The Gate of Fire by Thomas Harlan Page A

began to feel a bitter chill seep through his clothes. He was warmly dressed, for the mountains of Irak and Tabaristan are unforgiving and prey to terrible storms. This seemed to congeal out of the air around him, cold fingers plucking at his sleeve and creeping around his neck. A sense, too, grew in him of an oppressive weight hanging over him, looming above, hidden in the darkness.
    The road ended at a narrow platform, perched at the end of a steep climb. The last length of road was carved from the side of a great cliff, and ended with an outthrust platform of stone. Great pylons rose out of the darkness below to support it, and curled around its lip like titanic fingers. Khadames reined his horse around and peered back, down in the depths of the valley. Far away and below, like the sight of fireflies at night, he saw the lights of the campfires of his men. The cold slid along his back and arms, for he guessed at the distance and knew that—should he look down from this precipice by the light of day—he would near swoon from vertigo. He turned away.
    A gate rose out of the darkness, hewn from the flank of the mountain. Forty feet or more across and fifty high it rose, a black mouth straddled by carved figures. A portal closed it with two massive valves of stone. Across their face, signs and symbols were graven into the rock face, line after line of them, swirling around a central figure of the Flame Eternal. At each side, the figures of men surged out of the dark rock, their bodies forming the side of the gate, their arms—outstretched to each other—the lintel. Their faces were still in shadow, far above the poor light of his tiny lantern. At the foot of the gate was a puddle of black silk.
    Khadames blanched and felt faint. The Flame stared back at him in the yellow cast of the travel lantern. In this place, even graven in stone, it seemed to leap and burn, shedding a fierce light. His right hand twitched to make the sign of the Lord of Light, but stopped, and he forced it back to his saddle horn. The remembered smell of burning flesh and the agonized screams of men echoed in his memory.
    If you love the fire so much, said a dreadful voice, then you shall have it.
    The sorcerer did not countenance that his men, his followers, even his generals, embraced the words of the prophets of Ahura-Mazda, he-who-rules-the-Universe-in-Light. Khadames had not opposed him on this, either, not after the slaughter in the temple at Sura. If you rode at the side of the dark man, you rode far from the light of the Beneficent One. The Persian swung down off of his horse, feeling his legs twinge in response. Now that they had reached their goal, his body—so long driven by his will alone—was beginning to rebel, demanding sleep, food, rest, even a bath. Regardless, he walked warily forward to the body slumped at the base of the mammoth gate. A boot of tooled leather jutted from under the flowing robes.
    Khadames knelt, and gingerly turned the man over. The sorcerer's head rolled back, bile-yellow eyes staring into nothingness. The once-handsome features seemed slack and lifeless, but breath still hissed between his fine white teeth. Khadames pulled his hand away, feeling moisture on his fingers. He stared at them in puzzlement: They were damp with tears.
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    The Uze, their figures bulky in thick furs and glinting with half-hidden armor, stood as one when Khadames rode back into the camp. Their felt tents, low and round, clustered like toadstools around the bulk of the sorcerer's great yurt. Each night on that long march from Syria, they had raised it, then unfolded their own in barrier around it. Tagai, their broken-toothed leader, moved slowly forward and reached up to take the limp body of the sorcerer from Khadames. His thick arms, corded with muscle and ridged with old scars, took the weight easily. The Persian dismounted, his face grim, and gestured for Tagai to take the body into the tent. The other Uze edged toward him, some