Heart of Light (6 page)

The hyena had been chosen because it worked against the more visible lion, and often won its victories in silence.

Thinking of the hyena and the jewel of power that belonged to Africa, Nassira felt a tug that pulled her outside her own body, to float free above it. From above she saw herself, like a beautiful ebony sculpture wearing a red caftan.

She floated farther, through the roof of her cabin and up till she could see the entire city settled into a midafternoon glow. The sun had declined from its noonday brightness and shone mellow and golden over the white buildings.

The city was too big and too crowded. She felt the pressure of too many humans, too close. Yet she seemed to fly over it, and felt a tug pull her in a southerly direction.

Nassira tried to focus on the point from which the pull came, and felt it grab at her mind like fresh pasture calling to starved cattle. She saw the picture of a townhouse emerge. It had narrow windows and a turquoise painted door. But before she could touch the place, she heard a sound. Not a real sound as ears would pick up, but a sense of giant flapping wings, moving closer.

The thought-entity that was Nassira—just a small point of consciousness floating above Cairo—ducked and turned and, with magic vision, saw a gigantic dragon—or the spirit essence of a dragon—mouth wide open, teeth glistening, bearing down on her.

She screamed and plunged, down toward the carpetport, sending an obfuscation spell toward the thing. The sound of wings stopped.

Nassira's spirit stopped also, just short of the top deck of the carpetship, where the last, straggling passengers said protracted good-byes to each other and the ship.

She remembered the dragon that had flown beside the ship and almost made them crash at the beginning of their voyage. But that dragon, having been brazen enough to appear in public and disrupt the commerce of the white men, had doubtlessly been killed by the British army or the carpetship company. Was she now seeing this spirit presence as a dragon only because her subconscious retained her fear of that beast that had almost made them fall from the sky?

Yet what beast had attacked her? Perhaps it was a misguided vendetta and nothing to do with her. Or perhaps a strange magic in this strange city. She floated up again, tentatively, away from the pale passengers and the polished mahogany decks of the carpetship.

She must locate the Hyena Men. She held the image of the hyena in her mind again, and she felt a pull and a call.

What are you doing?
A loud voice with a strange accent yelled in Nassira's mind-sense.
Why are you calling attention to us?

With her mind-sense, Nassira saw a young man's face, the owner of the mind-voice. Darker than her, he had more elongated features, ending in a strong, square jaw. Something about his accent—in English—or his bearing told Nassira the man was a Zulu. Three years ago, when she'd joined the Hyena Men, she hadn't even known what a Zulu was. But the Hyena Men came from all over Africa and comprised all nationalities.

She had found the Zulus disturbing. Large and fierce, they were altogether too inclined to have a good opinion of themselves and their collective accomplishments. Perhaps this put annoyance in her mind-voice now, a note of irritation as she said,
Who are you to question me?

I am Kitwana,
he said, and looked as though he'd declared himself lord and master of the universe.
And I work with the ones you seek.

The Hyena Men?
Nassira asked, and projected an image of a hyena, spotted and ferocious, looming over Cairo.

A flap of wings echoed in her mind-sense and the young man did something that looked like he cast a veil over the hyena.

Do not proclaim that name. There is something . . . an enemy we can't find, killing us in great numbers.

I need to speak to you. How can I do that, if not in mind-voice?

You know who we are and you know where. Come find us.

I do not know where you are. Not exactly,
Nassira said, and with her mind felt for the location she'd sensed before, trying to identify it more exactly.

No,
Kitwana shouted.
Do not do it again. Use your memory.

My memory is poor. Why can't I see it again?

The enemy. It will follow you.

What is he, this enemy? Colonial authorities?

Kitwana's mind-image shook his head.
I will talk to you when I see you,
he said.
After you identify yourself.

And with that he vanished, leaving Nassira wide awake and sitting on the floor of her cabin, within a circle of rocks from her distant homeland, and holding in one hand a branch and in the other the dried-up lion's tail.

She felt drained. And annoyed at the overbearing Zulu.

It was quiet in the carpetship. The servants must be debarking now, leaving the ship empty to be prepared for another trip. The regular personnel would have lodgings in Cairo for a few nights, probably in a building owned by the carpetship company. People like Nassira, who'd signed on for only one trip, must also leave their lodgings, but she had nowhere to go in Cairo. Nowhere, except to the Hyena Men.

DEATH BY FIRE

Nigel set out across Cairo with almost no directions
at all and nothing but a determination to find the safe house Widefield had told him about. He was supposed to go there if his contact failed.

He kept telling himself all would be well. Perhaps an un-British lack of punctuality had crept into the habits of these Cairo expatriates and they thought that they need not meet the ship exactly when it arrived, that a few hours later would do as well.

Nigel found himself in a neighborhood of broad streets paved with brick and faced on either side by grand mansions that looked as if they belonged in the better suburbs of Paris or London. The sidewalk was a mosaic of black and white pebbles, forming the sort of ingenious abstract designs with which the Muslims—forbidden by their religion from representing any creature in creation—artfully decorated their living space.

Nigel vaguely remembered that his Arabic teacher had told him about a governor of Cairo, a khedive, who for some great event had wished that Cairo looked like the great European cities. He had invited the dignitaries of the world to come to a great exhibition and he had paved the streets they were likely to walk and gave people great incentives to build mansions in the European fashion.

Nigel remembered Widefield's voice giving him directions, in the unlikely case they were needed, Widefield had said.
And if your contact doesn't show, young man, you are to go down the broad street facing the carpetship until you come to your first shrine to a Muslim saint. You will know it because it has a minaret and a wild profusion of people will cluster around it, praying and touching the thing. The Arabs build these things everywhere and believe that great virtue devolves on those who visit them. As bad as papists, what? They believe . . . but never mind. They are but heathens. Find that shrine, and then turn left down a narrower street and proceed down that street till you come to what looks like a church with one of those onion tops, like the ones the orthodox people build. There you will turn right . . .

Widefield's voice echoed in Nigel's mind as he walked past the broad white mansion in whose gardens palm trees crowded shoulder to shoulder with rosebushes. Past that he found himself very far afield, indeed. He was in an older neighborhood, far from the European-looking mansions and from any vestiges of Western civilization.

The streets could more properly be called alleys. This neighborhood branched into a maze of narrow streets that turned and twisted with no seeming direction. Facing the street, the facades of houses were white-golden, seemingly corroded by sun and sand and ages uncountable. The only windows were narrow slits far up the featureless walls. The ground underfoot squelched like mud and smelled like a midden. Nigel looked and felt as out of place in these streets as his dark, small tutor doubtless felt in Cambridge.

The women who walked past wore long flowing dresses and covered their faces with veils from behind which they looked with intent, dark certainty at the passerby. And the men, huddled in groups at the street corners, all wore ankle-length tunics and headdresses tied with cord. None of them stood much taller than Nigel's shoulder, making Nigel feel like a giant amid dwarves.

Nigel wondered briefly if he'd look less conspicuous had he worn native attire himself, but of course not. His face and his hands would still show. Pale and pinkish, they would betray his origins as easily as his suit did now.

Following Lord Widefield's instructions, Nigel turned down an alley scarcely wide enough to allow him to walk without touching either of the buildings on each side. The buildings went up five stories, to obscure the pearly-blue sky above. Here, in the alley, a permanent twilight reigned, and the smell of urine and old grease overlaid the spicy undertones that permeated all of Cairo.

A goat ran toward Nigel, bleating madly, pursued at a distance by a half-naked youth. Nigel squeezed himself against the wall as goat and boy went by him without so much as a sideways glance.

He passed a mausoleum—an opulent Muslim funerary monument dating from the Middle Ages—and squeezed between two unremarkable buildings facing a dreary, muddy alley. None of which kept it from being crowded and thronged with bowing and praying pilgrims. In the half-light, gold-etched tiles in front of the monument proclaimed this to be the tomb of someone who had been a direct descendant of the Prophet. Three houses after this would be the safe house. Nigel quickened his step, only to stop short of the house.

Like every other building on this alley, it was tall—perhaps five or six stories—and narrow, its upper levels indistinct in the permanent twilight of the alley. Its front had once been fully tiled, but many of the tiles had fallen off over what must have been centuries. The remaining tiles were white, engraved with blue arabesques. The stucco left behind by the fallen tiles was a dark yellow turning to brown. It looked like a toothless mouth, grinning wantonly at Nigel.

The windows, quite unlike those narrow, tall holes cut high up into the walls of most houses in newer and more prosperous parts of town, were fanciful, counter-curved shapes, resembling mysterious keyholes or voluptuous women's forms. Nothing like the proper and prim windows of England.

Nigel recoiled like a nervous horse rearing from the smell of an abattoir. For the deep-set, stone-encased doorway looked black and burnt.

A wooden door hung from crooked hinges and looked charred through. It seemed that a violent conflagration had torn the place apart from the outside, blasting the door outward and burning it whole in the same moment. Around the stone doorway, curious black marks showed, consistent with the shadows of the tongues of flame sweeping out of the doorway and imprinting themselves in black soot and darkened film of smoke upon the aged, golden stone. Looking up, Nigel could dimly discern the same marks around the stone parapets of the windows on the first floor. Yet the houses on either side looked untouched by the conflagration.

He felt his hair stand on end, and he grasped the walking stick in his hand with desperation.

Some of the houses in the poor districts of London used gaslight instead of the safer, but much more expensive, magelight. Sometimes, Nigel had heard, one of those houses would fill with gas from a leaking socket, till the whole exploded inside. But Cairo had no gaslights. Or at least, Nigel had never heard of it. Like most countries in the poorer continents, where magic had never been made the prerogative of the upper classes, Egypt kept its magic widespread enough that almost every peasant could command enough power to create light. Oh, nothing like the bright, civilized magelight of English magicians, but enough to guide one's way to bed, or to light one's way down the stairs. And it never occurred to the natives to want more. To read by magelight or to conduct one's social life on, into the darkened hours of the night, would never cross an African's mind.

So it was unlikely the explosion had been caused by gas. Besides, the houses on either side had remained untouched by any trace of smoke or blaze of fire. Gas, more often than not, took the whole block, even in those parts of London where houses stood farther apart than this.