The Fire (13 page)

And then, of course, I got it.

Oh lord, how could I have been so stupid? Hadn’t I cut my baby teeth on puzzles like these? I wanted to scream and stomp and tear my hair, which might have been improvident in the circumstance, with that table of diners seated across the room.

But wasn’t that the very first puzzle I’d had to solve, before I could even gain access to the house? The missing digits of that ‘phone number’ – 64?

Not only was 64 the number of squares on a chessboard, but it was also the last code to the combination of the lockbox where mother had hidden the key to our lodge.

The chessboard provides the key!

Like the Red Sea parting, at last I felt I could see down that long, long file into the very heart of the Game. And if that first message held more than one level of meaning, so would the others, I was sure.

Just as I was sure, despite Mother’s seemingly paradoxical choice of invitees, that we were all somehow connected.

But connected how? I needed to figure this out, and now, while the players were all still seated around the table.

I slipped to the far side of the hearth where I would be partly concealed by the copper hood, and I extracted from my pocket the only one of the messages that was written in my mother’s own hand. It read:

WASHINGTON

LUXURY CAR

VIRGIN ISLES

ELVIS LIVES

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

Washington, D.C., was definitely at the top of the list. So maybe, just as the chessboard had provided the key to our house, this code would give the key to the rest. I racked my brain and then squeezed a little harder, but with Luxury Cars and Virgin Isles I could come up with nothing. I knew that the first three clues – DC-LX-VI – added up to 666, the Number of the Beast. So I took a fresh look at the bigger picture, starting with the next step. Bingo.

ELVIS LIVES

There were just two other anagrams you could create from Velis, my mother’s name: these were
evils
and
veils.
The Book of Revelation or Apocalypse, where the Beast appears, is where Saint John reveals what will happen at the end of the world. And from my word-mongering childhood, I knew that it also derives from something very similar to those two spellings of Mother’s name – apocalypse,
apokalyptein,
meaning ‘extract from the cover.’ Or revelation,
re-valare,
meaning ‘remove the veil.’

As for the last line –
As Above, So Below
– that was the clincher. And if I was right, it had little to do with that chess game hidden in the piano. That was just a ruse to shock me into paying attention – as it certainly had.

In fact, it was clear that if I hadn’t been so quick to jump to conclusions about Mother’s ability to form puzzles, I might have seen it at once. Indeed, this would explain why Mother invited us here to Colorado in the first place – to a spot called Four Corners, high in the Rocky Mountains, at the very heart of the four mountains that mark the original Navajo corners of the birthplace of the world. A cosmic chessboard, if ever there was one.

The entire message, all parts taken together, would read:

The chessboard provides the key

Remove the Veil from Evils

As Above, So Below

And if the chessboard provided the key to removing that veil, as Mother’s message suggested, then whatever it was that I revealed or discovered, here in the high country – like that ancient map we’d found – must be connected, just as I’d suspected, with that earthly chessboard ‘below.’

For as I knew, there was only one city in all of history that had been specifically created to resemble the perfect square of a chessboard: the city that I called home.

That’s where the next move of the Game must take place.

Shall we write about the things not to be spoken of?

Shall we divulge the things not to be divulged?

Shall we pronounce the things not to be pronounced?

– Emperor Julian, ‘Hymn to the Mother of the Gods’

The Royal Harem

Dar el-Makhzen Palace

Fez, Morocco

Winter Solstice, 1822

Haidée pulled on her veil as she hastened across the vast inner courtyard of the royal harem. She was escorted by two burly eunuchs she had never seen before this morning. Along with the rest of the harem inmates, she’d been awakened at dawn, aroused from slumber by a cadre of palace guards who’d ordered them all to dress and prepare themselves as quickly as possible for evacuation from the premises.

Haidée herself was peremptorily singled out by the chief of the guard, who had notified her that she was summoned at once to the outer court connecting the harem with the palace.

There’d been pandemonium, of course, when the women had understood the reason for this terrifying command. For Sultan Mulay Suliman, descendant of the Prophet and scourge of the faith, had just died of apoplexy. He was succeeded by his nephew, Abdul-Rahman, who would surely possess a harem and courtiers of his own to occupy the palace quarters. As everyone knew, in earlier such changes of succession there had been widespread auctions of human flesh, even mass carnage to eliminate all threat from the outgoing retinue.

Hence, as the concubines, odalisques, and eunuchs had dressed within the warm cocoon of the harem – embraced by familiar scents of rosewater, lavender, honey, and mint, in the only home most of them had ever known – there’d been frightened speculation among them regarding just what this shocking turn of events might mean to any or to each. Whatever it was, they could hold little hope.

Haidée, as a captive with no relationship to the royal family, didn’t have to speculate about what fate held in store for her. Why would she be called to the outer court, and she alone among all the harem’s occupants? It could mean but one thing. Somehow they’d discovered
who she was
– and worse, what that large lump of black coal was, which, eleven months ago, had been found in her possession and seized by the sultan.

Now as she crossed the open-roofed courtyard with her muscular escorts at each side, they passed the fountains of heated waters that splashed into basins as they did all winter, to protect the pools of fish. The filigreed white fretwork of the Moorish porticoes around the court had retained its lacy resilience for six hundred years, it was said, because the original plaster was mixed with the pulverized bones of Christian slaves. Haidée hoped this was not the fate that lay in store for her at this most critical juncture. She felt her heart pounding between excitement and fear of the unknown.

For nearly a year now, Haidée had been held here as an odalisque or chamber servant, in obscure captivity, surrounded by the sultan’s eunuchs and slaves. The royal palace of Dar el-Makhzen was sprawled across two hundred acres replete with magnificent gardens and pools, mosques and military barracks, harems and
hamams.
This wing of the palace, its chambers and bathhouses connected by courtyards and gardens with roofs open to the winter skies, could accommodate one thousand wives and concubines, along with an enormous staff to provide support.

But to Haidée, open as it might seem, it had been stifling beyond imagining. Locked away among hundreds of others here in the harem with its iron grilles, its doors and windows shuttered against the world, she was isolated, yet never alone.

And Kauri – the only protector and friend she’d had on earth, the only person who might find her imprisoned here in this landlocked fortress – had been seized by slave traders, along with all of their crew, the very moment their captured ship had been hauled into port. She could still vividly recall the horror of the event.

Off the Adriatic coast just before Venice, their ship was skirting the seaport of Pirene – ‘The Fire’ – where an ancient stone lighthouse had stood since Roman times warning ships off the rocky point. It was here that the last of the rogue corsairs, the notorious Pirates of Pirene, still plied their evil trade: selling European slaves into Muslim lands, where they were called White Gold.

From the moment when she and Kauri had first realized their plight, that their ship was about to be boarded by the Slovenian corsairs, they had known too well that this unexpected turn could prove a horror beyond all imagining.

The ship’s small crew and their two young passengers would certainly be pillaged of their goods, then sold at auction in the slave markets. Girls like Haidée were sold
into marriage or prostitution, but the fate of a boy like Kauri could be far worse. The slavers drove such boys into the desert where they castrated each with a knife and buried him in the hot sands to stanch the bleeding. If the boy lived he would be highly coveted and later could be sold at a premium throughout the Turkish Empire as a eunuch harem guard, or even into the Papal States to be trained as a castrato musician.

Their one hope had been that the Barbary Coast of Africa, after decades of bombardment by the British, the Americans, and the French, was now closed to all such trafficking. Five years ago under treaty eighty thousand European slaves had been released from North African bondage and Mediterranean lanes were again open to normal sea trade.

But there was still one place that accepted such human booty, the only Mediterranean land that had never been controlled by either the Ottoman Empire or Christian Europe: the sultanate of Morocco. A land of complete isolation – its capital tucked away from the coast, between the Rif and the Atlas mountains, at Fez – Morocco had suffered for thirty years under the iron rule of Sultan Mulay Suliman.

After the months she had spent as a captive servant in his harem, Haidée had by now learned much of this sultan’s rule, none of which had calmed her constant fears.

Though himself descended from the Prophet, Suliman had early embraced the ideals of the Sunni Islamic reformer, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab of Arabia. Wahhabi zealots had succeeded in helping the ruler of Arabia, ibn-Saud, briefly snatch back large swaths of Arabian lands captured by the Ottoman Turks.

Although this triumph was short-lived, Wahhabi zeal had ignited a fire in the heart of Mulay Suliman of Morocco, who’d ruthessly purged his religious house, without and
within. He’d cut off trade with the decadent Turks and the atheistic French with their ill-fated Revolution-cum-Empire; he’d suppressed the cults of saint worship among the Shi’a and dismantled the Sufi brotherhoods.

Indeed, there was only one people that Mulay Suliman had been unable either to control or suppress in these past thirty years of his rule: the Sufi Berbers on the other side of the mountains.

This was what had terrified Haidée most in these many months of her imprisonment. And after this morning’s revelation, she feared the worst. For Kauri, wherever he might be – if it had ever been discovered that he was both a Sufi and a Berber – wouldn’t have been maimed or sold. He’d have been killed.

And Haidée, who all this time had carefully guarded the secret Ali Pasha had entrusted her with, now would have not even the glimmer of hope that she’d ever again see the outside world as a free person. She would never be able to locate the Black Queen that was seized, recover it, and place it into rightful hands.

But despite her despair at this moment, as she pulled up her veil more tightly and passed with her escorts through the long open gallery that led to the outer court, she could not help clinging to the one thought that had run over and over in her mind these past eleven months:

When she and Kauri had first realized where their ship had been brought – just before they’d touched dock on Moroccan soil, perhaps to be parted forever – Kauri had told her that there was but one man in Morocco who might help them if they could ever reach him, a man highly regarded by the Baba Shemimi himself – a master of the
Tarik’at,
or Secret Path. He was a Sufi recluse known as the Old Man of the Mountain. If either of them managed to escape their captors, they must seek this man.

Haidée prayed now that in the few brief moments she might be permitted to spend outside this cloistered space, she could think and act quickly in her own behalf. Or all would truly be lost.

The Atlas Mountains

Shahin and Charlot reached the final descent of the last mountain range just as the setting sun touched the high peak of snowcapped Mount Zerhçun in the distance. It had taken three months to complete the difficult journey to this spot from the Tassili deep in the Sahara, across the winter desert into Tlemçen. There, they’d traded their camels for horses, more adapted to the wintry climate and mountainous terrain that lay ahead here in Kabylia, home of the Kabyle Berbers in the high Atlas Mountains.

Charlot, like Shahin, wore the indigo
litham
of the Tuareg, whom the Arabs called Muleththemin, the Veiled People, and the Greeks called Glaukoi, the Blue Men, for the pale blue tint of their fair skin. Shahin himself was a Targui, a noble of the Kel Rela Tuareg who had for millennia controlled and maintained the roads that crossed the vast Sahara – they’d dug the wells, maintained pasturage for livestock, and provided armed security. From ancient times, the Tuareg had been the most highly revered among the desert dwellers, by traders and pilgrims alike.

And the veil – here in the mountains as in the desert – had protected both men from far more than just the weather. By wearing it, the two travelers had remained always
dakhilak,
under the protection of the Amazigh, or Berbers, as the Arabs called them.

In their thousand-mile journey over often uninhabitable terrain, Charlot and Shahin had acquired far more from the Amazigh along their path than fodder and fresh changes of steeds. They’d also acquired information, enough to cause
them to alter their intended path north toward the sea and to divert west toward the mountains.

For there was but one land where Shahin’s son and his comrade might have been taken – to Morocco – and but one man who might help them in their quest – a great Sufi master, if only they could find him. He was called the Old Man of the Mountain.

Here on the bluff Charlot drew his horse to a halt beside his companion. Then he unwound his indigo
litham
and folded it into his saddlebag – as Shahin did, too. So close to Fez, it was best to be prudent in case they were sighted. The veil that had served as protection in the desert and the mountains might prove a great danger now that they had crossed the high Atlas into Sunni lands.

The two men gazed across the vast valley, sheltered by the high mountains, where birds circled below. This magical spot lay at the center of a rare confluence of waters: creeks, waterfalls, springs, rivers. There beneath them, surrounded by vegetation, spread a sea of tile roofs, lacquered a brilliant green and glittering in the slanted winter light, a city submerged in time – as in fact it was.

This was Fez, the holy city of the Shurafa – true descendants of the Prophet – and a sacred spot to all three branches of Islam, but most especially to the Shi’a; here on the mountain lay the tomb of Idris, great-grandson of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima and the first of the Prophet’s family to reach the Maghreb, the western lands, more than one thousand years before – a land of great beauty and dark omens.

‘There is a proverb in Tamazight, the Kabyle language,’ Shahin said. ‘It is
Aman d’Iman
– Water is Life. Water explains the longevity of Fez, a city that is in itself almost a sacred fountain. There are many ancient caves cut by the waters, concealing ancient mysteries – the perfect place to shelter
what we are seeking.’ He paused, then added quietly, ‘I feel certain that my son is here.’

The two men sat beside the flickering fire within the open cave above Fez in which they’d taken shelter at nightfall. Shahin had set aside his
talac
stick, which marked his noble rank among the Kel Rela drum group, and he’d removed his double-crossed baldric, the fringed goatskin bands the Tuareg wore crisscrossed over each shoulder. They’d dined on a rabbit they’d caught and cooked.

But what was left unspoken now, as it had been throughout their long journey, still lay just beneath the surface, whispering like shifting sands.

Charlot knew he had not completely lost his gift, but he could not command it, either. Crossing the desert he’d often felt the Sight tugging at him like a tattered waif at the hem of one’s burnoose. At those moments he’d been able to inform Shahin which men in the marketplace were trustworthy, which were rapacious, which had a wife and children to support, which had an ax to grind. All this was possible to him, as it had been from birth.

But of what real value was such limited foresight, given the daunting task that faced them just ahead? When it came to finding Shahin’s son, the Sight had been blocked by something. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see
anything
– it was more like an optical illusion, a shimmering oasis of palms in the desert, where you know there is no water. When it came to the boy Kauri, Charlot could catch a glimmering vision – but he knew it wasn’t real.

Now, in the flickering firelight, as they watched their horses nearby munching at the fodder provided from saddlebags, Shahin spoke.

‘Have you wondered why only the Tuareg men wear the indigo
litham,
yet the women go unveiled?’ he asked Charlot.
‘Our veil is a tradition older than Islam; the Arabs themselves were surprised to find this custom when they first arrived in our lands. Some think the veil provides us protection against desert sands; others believe it is against the evil eye. But the veil is quite significant to the history of our drum groups. In ancient times it was spoken of as the evil mouth.’

‘The evil mouth?’

‘It refers to the ancient mysteries: “those things that must not be spoken of by mouth.” These have existed in every land and culture for all time,’ Shahin said. ‘However, among the initiated these mysteries
may
be communicated by drum.’