Perilous Prophecy Read online

  Ibrahim had never been a social creature. He liked books, grand architecture, and quiet spaces. His brain was nearly bursting with strains of poetry, texts in their entirety, and scholarly pursuits, yet he was suddenly made happy by the certainty that he was on his way to meet friends.

  “My mind is changing,” he murmured. “Why?”

  “You’ll see” was the only answer the multicolored angel would give.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Part of Ahmed Basri’s consciousness knew that he was dreaming, yet the hazy knowledge that he lay in bed was little comfort. He was witnessing something terrible that he could not wholly understand. It was a war. A horrific war. There were monstrous metal machines, roaring screams like angels plummeting from heaven. Or demons. Baffling abominations on an unknown shore under a colorless sky. This gray, muddy struggle had no kinship to anything he’d experienced in the golden warmth of Cairo.

  He had always held joy in his soul, since the very day he learned what it meant to do so, and these scenes of foreign terror shook him to the core. This was a warning, surely; why else would such portents be shown to anyone? And the dead. So many dead. Too many. Fear began to seep into Ahmed’s buoyant heart like water into a punctured boat.

  “The dead have no place to go,” he heard himself murmur, though he was not yet awake. “Help them,” he urged. “Help the dead pass.”

  Thus he exhorted the soldiers around him as the noise of those horrific mechanical beasts filled his ears. No one responded. They were too busy dying and becoming transparent shades, luminous yet sad. The air was gray—but not because it was a cloudy day in whatever country this was—France? He thought he heard French. Cairo had been overtaken by the French in the previous century; a bit of the language lived on in the city. But it wasn’t a cloud causing these thick, gray swirls. The air was gray because it was filled with the dead. The dead choked the sky.

  Ahmed feared for the joy in his soul. Who could see such horrors and retain hope or love? Who could gift happiness to others when such perils were in store?

  He fought back and was rewarded. Words sounded, in a language he’d never before heard but somehow understood:

  “Yes, Beloved. Foster your joy,” murmured a song of wind and stars, a divine voice. “For you are the Heart. You are a visionary, meant for great things. And you will attain them. In the beginning there were two lovers. These beings fought a greedy shadow that sought to spread misery across the land. We carry on their ancient quest to light the darkness. This is the last you will hear me speak, but I welcome you to the Guard.”

  A gust of wind whipped through his small room, making chaos of the modest flat that his parents kept immaculately tidy. He shot up in bed, awake. The morning sun fell warm and assuring upon Ahmed’s face, and something climbed into his soul like a man slides a silken tunic over his body. Music and light filled him to the brim.

  Had his vision called this herald, or had this herald caused that vision? He did not know, though they seemed linked. Neither was how he might expect mystical revelations to come, nor did they use the words of his Sufi teachings. But Ahmed had always known there was more to the divine than any man might grasp. He was sure that whatever he now carried within him was inherently good.

  Yet wasn’t he too young for such a gift as this? He had not studied long with his teacher and it seemed premature for him to receive such spiritual grandeur. He reeled from equal parts of desire to accept this intrusion as divine and a longing to reject it and reclaim familiarity and some sense of himself. But no further guidance came to him. His questions remained unanswered.

  The pale window curtains, whipping about in the unusually forceful breeze, drew his attention. When he looked out, he saw ghosts. Spirits and specters of all sorts mingled in the busy Cairo streets. Floating amid the thronging life was death, their gray forms a stark contrast to the golden hue of his city. He resolved to go out to them.

  “Mother, I’m going for a walk,” he called as he passed the apartment’s main room, where she sat hemming a robe, lit brightly by the sun. He recognized her as beautiful, her layered, thin robes splayed around her like the petals of an open flower. He recognized her as someone he loved. Yet it was as if he were suddenly looking at her through an inverted spyglass. She was as distanced as he was changed, and today would forever separate them.

  She nodded, her black eyes glistening with the soft peace she’d always had, and he knew he would always cherish that about her, though now from a distance. Whatever had taken up residence inside him was changing how he interacted with all he met: the dead and the living.

  Feeling quite calm despite these realizations, Ahmed was delighted when he was bade join new friends. Like faraway strains of music he felt their distinct heartbeats, feathers against his ears, pleasantly drowning out the bustling sounds of the city. Five other souls, he heard. With himself, six.

  The terror of his vision faded, replaced by his usual joy and an entirely new sense of power and wonder. His heart seemed to grow a new chamber, expanding to heretofore unknown proportions. Cast from the nest, he walked out into the world to test his wings. Whom would he meet? And should he tell someone about the vision of war that had first woken him to this new glory?

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Beatrice felt that her mind and body were suddenly, drastically, different. They were still distinctly her own, but at the same time, they were more. She was more. And so were the four people standing before her.

  In a side portico of Abu Serga, Beatrice stared at each in turn, first at a young man in robes that struck her as Sufi; her father had educated her on local cultural dress. Beside him stood a round-cheeked, buxom girl dressed in something quite French, her face white as a sheet. A tall British boy with strawberry-blond hair stood close to this girl’s left—he had to be British with those at once handsome and utterly ungainly features—and next to him was a stunning young woman with golden skin.

  This last was someone Beatrice recognized. While Abu Serga’s Coptic service was a world away from the Church of England, Beatrice’s father had satisfied himself that it was Christian, and they had attended services here regularly. Beatrice had seen the girl here but had never spoken to her; though they worshipped in the same place, to Beatrice, their worlds had felt so very different as to be a barrier between them.

  The quintet stared at each other, looking, Beatrice thought, as if they’d seen not one but a thousand ghosts. She almost laughed at that. Perhaps they had.

  After a long, assessing moment, Beatrice finally asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.” The red-blond boy shrugged and scratched his head. His accent confirmed his British origins; from the north, likely.

  In Arabic, the youth in the dark Sufi robes said that he was suddenly seeing ghosts. He grinned as if excited.

  Beatrice replied, her Arabic nearly perfect, “I saw a ghost, too.” She choked on her next words, forcing them out. “I just lost my … my beloved. He fell from the ledge”—she gestured upward—“and died.”

  The golden-skinned girl stepped forward. “I’m so sorry,” she said in faltering English. After a moment: “I’m Verena. Verena Gayed.”

  “Verena … like the saint,” Beatrice murmured, clearing her throat and straightening her body. Unraveling would not do. The girl smiled proudly and nodded.

  “George,” the Brit murmured, taking the cue for introductions.

  “I am Belle, and this is all very strange,” said the girl beside him in a thick French accent, looking nervously at George. The boy blushed, and all of him was suddenly as red as parts of his hair.

  The young man in Sufi robes smiled beatifically. “I am Ahmed. My eyes are open now to wondrous things.” His radiant expression faded. “I’ve seen terrible things, too, though, and I hope to gain their meaning.” After a moment he said, “We are missing one. We are supposed to be six, aren’t we?”

  That was true. Beatrice felt a sense of
these young people gathered from all walks of the city. She could feel them like echoes of her own heartbeat, and there was one more distant than the rest, though it was getting closer.

  “Come,” Ahmed said. “Let us greet the sixth.”

  He led them out the front door of the church and down a lane that led to a mosque. Beatrice’s mind was filled with a thousand questions and concerns: Why were they all following Ahmed without objection? But her worries fled when she sensed the strong persona they found standing upon a stone-inlaid star when the lane opened into a plaza.

  “I’m here,” said a rich voice in Arabic.

  The newcomer was a tall, golden-skinned youth in a long, fine tunic; Beatrice’s heart told her he was the missing sixth of their coterie. His gleaming black hair, neatly trimmed, curled around his ears beneath a beige cap. He was, she admitted to herself, distressingly handsome, and his wide black eyes immediately pierced her to the core. There was an aura of prismatic light all around him.

  “My name is Ibrahim Wasil,” he said. “I was led toward you by an angel.”

  That angel now stepped out from behind him, all light and color, the same creature who had comforted Beatrice earlier.

  “Hello, my beloveds,” she said, her quiet voice a compelling music.

  Beatrice wanted to scream. Nothing made sense. The world was spinning too quickly; the new things happening inside her were not tenable, not when her heart was broken. She needed a moment to—

  “Leader,” the multicolored angel prompted, staring at her. “Your fire, please.”

  Beatrice stared back. What on earth did the woman mean?

  “Oh, look!” Verena exclaimed, staring at Beatrice’s hands.

  Beatrice looked down to find that her hands were glowing blue. Cerulean fire wreathed them, fire apparently harmless to her skin. It was cool, energizing, tingling, and full of song. The voice in her mind had said she would carry fire, but for what purpose? What did it do?

  The moment she needed to clear her mind was apparently not to be granted. Instead, a wind whipped up, and Beatrice’s blood froze in recognition. This was the violent wind that had sent Jean to his death.

  No. Jean had been precariously balanced and foolish. The wind could not be blamed for his death. Suddenly he, and the love Beatrice had felt for him, seemed very far away. A whole lifetime apart.

  She stretched out her hand, moving her fingers in amazement as azure flame danced about their tips.

  The angel gestured, insistent. “Leader, send forth your fire to open the sacred space.”

  Beatrice set her jaw. If she was being called a leader and held fire in her hand, she might as well do as this supernatural being instructed; any heretofore unknown powers were about as sensible as every other odd thing happening all at once. She cast her arm forward, and a door appeared where there had been none before.

  The company jumped. The tall portal hovered in midair, bordered by hieroglyphs written in shimmering blue fire. Light beckoned them downward, inviting. Stairs appeared.

  Beatrice had cast fire from her hand and opened an impossible two-dimensional door into another world. A part of her trembling body wanted to faint, but she was too fascinated to dare lose consciousness. Had she not, in some way, asked for this? Had she not always hoped her destiny would be grander than that of an everyday Englishwoman?

  “Your sacred space is neither here nor there,” the angel spoke up. “It is eternal, and it exists only for the Guard. Its time and dimension are relative. So come. Join me.”

  Ahmed was the first into the void. He practically charged. Beatrice threw a hand forward as if to halt him, then gasped as an arc of flame leaped to life around the rest of them, licking harmlessly at the hems of their garments.

  “We’ve all gone bloody, stark, raving mad,” George murmured. Beatrice was glad someone else had been brave enough to say it.

  “Come!” called Ahmed’s voice from below. “It’s beautiful!” he added in English.

  Beatrice turned to the prismatic woman. “How do we know it is safe? If I am Leader, am I not now responsible for these persons’ welfare?”

  “You are” came the reply, “and it pleases me to hear you say it. This place exists to keep you safe.”

  Beatrice waited, but the angel did not continue. “That isn’t an answer,” she protested.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to grow accustomed to that.” The multicolored woman loosed a strangely bitter laugh.

  Though her words caused them uneasiness, the group moved to the threshold. It hummed with harmonic, audible energy. They were glancing in perplexity at one another when Ahmed appeared, running up the stairs.

  “Come!” he insisted. “It’s truly grand!”

  It was hard to say no to Ahmed’s enthusiasm or to his ineffably contagious smile. Giving a communal shrug, the more reticent members of the party descended at his heels.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the six found themselves in a circular stone room lined with pillars and illuminated by the light shining through a great stained-glass bird hanging far above, a fiery mosaic halo constructed around its feathers. Beatrice, Ahmed, George, Belle, Ibrahim, and Verena stared up at it, gaping. Beyond the pillars lurked a thick darkness that seemed to pulse and shift the way stars shimmer in a nighttime sky.

  The colorful angel had followed them down and stood beaming at the foot of the stairs. “What are you?” Beatrice demanded of her. Verena and Belle looked over as if her tone had been too sharp. Beatrice closed her eyes, fighting a wave of anxiety, and when she spoke, her voice held a more even tone. “Please tell us.”

  The creature eyed them singly, staring as if examining each of their souls. “Given your collective backgrounds, you may feel most comfortable thinking of me as an angel. I’m not human, though I feel as you feel and care as you care. I even bleed like you bleed, almost. I’ve been called many things, but names are immaterial. The Guards that have come before you call me their Lady, out of affection. But of all my names, Persephone is my favorite.”

  Their young eyes blinked away many seconds of silence. George coughed in discomfort, his cheeks again red. Everything the six thought they knew was now being redefined. Moreover, though she had not said so, none of them could quite get past the feeling of being near a goddess.

  “Why have you called us?” Ibrahim asked, in Arabic.

  “For the Grand Work” was the woman’s reply—words Beatrice heard both in Arabic and in English. She wondered if Belle heard French.

  While compelled by this divine figure, Beatrice was also confused and upset by her. She felt Ibrahim’s cool and intense gaze alternating between Persephone and herself—a gaze fraught with both distrust and attraction. Beatrice resisted the urge to look back.

  Ahmed spoke up. “What is that?” he asked. “What is your commission?”

  His words resonated off the walls, and now Beatrice heard Arabic, French, and English, nearly simultaneously. It was as if the room knew them or was learning them. This place was alive with all of their hearts, souls, and languages.

  The goddess threw forward a hand, her lovely face grimacing as if the act hurt her dearly. It was not without effect, however, and a black square became a rectangle and then a doorway. Another doorway in the air. Portals within portals: Was this an endless iteration?

  “Look. Learn,” the goddess said. “But never go in.”

  Beyond the doorway were long corridors, each dark and dank. Endlessly gray. Whispers and murmurs, though nothing intelligible. Shades. Hundreds—no, thousands—of shades, each floating listlessly down the endless corridors. Death. It was death, and so much of it.

  From deep down one corridor, a moving shadow drew closer. Tall and vaguely human in form, it glided with unearthly grace. It wore dread, rancor, and decay like a cloak. Red, burning eyes glowed in its tenebrous face, two terrible lamps that Beatrice was sure would cause madness if stared at for long.

  Hundreds of red eyes opened in the floor of the corridor, as if something ha
d just awakened to their presence, followed by hissing and a terrible dread growling.

  “What is that?” Beatrice exclaimed. Glancing at her companions, she found them paled, color draining from their faces, and shivering with fright.

  “That is Darkness; he is known as such,” replied Persephone with venom in her voice before twisting her arm and closing her hand into a powerful fist, and with a ripping sound the portal snapped shut. Beatrice and her companions could breathe normally once more.

  “He and his desires are what you fight. Fear him and his domain, but do not fear your Grand Work. Here, on Earth, you have power. You are the mortal arbiters between life and death. You have gifts, each of you, to help.”

  She turned to Beatrice. “You, Beatrice Smith, are the Leader. As you know.”

  Beatrice’s nostrils flared. Her posture straightened the way her mother—rest in peace—had always required. She set her jaw. While she wasn’t sure about Persephone, she was certain that, because she was a woman, if she didn’t accept the title of leader with authority and confidence, the rest would share a lack of faith. She set all fear of madness aside and accepted the mantle of power.

  Persephone turned to Verena. “You are the Healer. Some of the spirits you will face are truly dangerous. They will manifest violence upon those they’ve subjected to their possession. For them, you will need Verena’s hand.”

  Verena lifted her hand in amazement. It glowed with a faint warm light that limned her golden skin and glinted in her dark eyes, heightening her already prominent beauty and illuminating the fear in her expression. Beatrice couldn’t blame her. Only one hour ago they had been normal mortals going about their daily lives. Now they were the agents of gods.

  Persephone turned to Ahmed, who was staring at Verena in awe. “Ahmed. The Heart.” The Sufi smiled widely, his expression as radiant as the Healer’s hand. The other five found themselves smiling as well. Ahmed’s joy, like his smile, remained contagious.