Chapter 39 #3
I tremble. ‘I will use the Gates technique to save the tribes of the Camel Road. As for the rest of the continent – I will save the people, but I will not save the lands from the storm. People who have no land. have no power. Let the flood ravage the continent. Let the people flee and cower. Let them fear the Simorgh. This flood will remind humanity that we are forsaken before we start anew. People need fear to unite them. Is that not how the people after Nuh survived? A calamity so large, it can only be a holy omen.’
‘You despise your enemies for acting like they are god, yet here you are doing the same.’
This is my redemption. ‘I choose suffering. I am not worthy of anything else. If I save all of the lands, what of the Camel Road? I would rather live in the aftermath of destruction than in a state of constant violence.’
The soldiers I met who ended their own lives, they understood the concept of sacrifice – they knew people care only when someone is dead. We are naturally reactive beings. We need to see destruction to understand peace.
But the reason peace and freedom throughout the folds of history are so astoundingly rare is because they have never coexisted.
You must tear the page of one to bring the other into fruition.
And I’ve witnessed freedom: it’s the groundwork laid before me, people tearing each other apart because the only freedom they knew of was violence.
If taking away choice means peace, better this than none.
True freedom cannot exist in the maelstrom of constant war, coerced by the soldier who holds a sword above you.
Humans are elevated above all animals. Land becomes the measurement of success.
They toil over territory as if it’s endless gold.
But here, above, I see what the universe is: it’s vast, it’s immense – but humans are feebly confined to that world.
What happens when we are done, are other lands next?
Are the oceans? Another realm, as we are doing with the jinn-folk?
We are so greedy, we are pathetic. Lands will be taken, people will suffer, people will die, but I refuse to watch the cycles repeat.
I look up at the angel. ‘I ask again for the Eighth Gate of Heaven to summon the Third Heavenly Bird. Let me save the Camel Road.’
‘Be careful,’ it muses. ‘It comes with a great cost that you will not be able to bear. You were raised on stories of the flood; you were in Stone City, a once prosperous metropolis before a supernatural disaster ended its reign. These destructions that ended civilisations were not merely the Divine wiping tribes from existence – they were done by Eajīz like you, who begged for a solution and used the Gates technique to end entire eras. Stone City, the City of God’s Gates, even ancient jinn civilisations that were annihilated – these were by the Heavenly Birds led by Eajīz. ’
I see Mitra attacking the Camel Road from both fronts and the world trading on its substance. I see evil normalised. I see the ones controlling its numerical values controlling the world.
The thoughts weave through my morality and empathy, pulverising them to specks of clay. And I let them. It makes me feel human and not human; it’s nice. I am far removed. Here, choosing which land to protect from the other is a blink of time.
Is this how emperors feel upon their thrones, commanding war but feeling far from its consequence? I understand the thrill.
‘Each action has a consequence, and the repercussions you face are the wages of the past. For that, the test of the gates is bestowed to you.’ It pauses. ‘Remember, it demands a steep cost.’
Uneasily, I nod. Our surroundings drip into golden tears where the silhouetted gardens and animals melt into nothingness.
‘This is a power outside the confines of natural order. I, Keeper of the Gates, have warned you that you – a human – were led by your free will. But hold on to the true purpose of faith. Mercy is everywhere, like grains of sand. I hope with your actions, your people turn to goodness.’
‘If I do this, am I damned?’ I cannot help but ask.
‘Perhaps the Divine will deem that in your cosmic possibilities, you may turn to salvation. Or be damned like your namesake warrior who tried summoning the Simorgh and paid for it.’ The angel grips my face between its steepled hands, turning my cheek.
We are above the world in the lowest of the Heavens. The ground glows in stardust which expands into a gold lake flowing below the Mist Mountains, surrounding the vak-vak trees.
Pain coils my belly tight. In the centre of the alcove is a tall tree, its seeds pattering into a gold vortex of life, nourishing lands.
The Simorgh rests at the top of the Tree of Knowledge, floating above the Heavenly Sea, the brilliant creature who was born thrice. She is the Bird King; a peacock with the claws of a lion and the face of an everchanging human. But as I watch, her features morph to show my uma.
‘The Third Heavenly Bird burned in the world, watching eras end by human hands. Still, the Simorgh collected knowledge perched upon her tree. She embodied patience. She nourished warriors to protect mankind, collecting wisdom while maintaining peace.’ It points to her.
‘There she is. The Eight Gates are not offered, they are taken.’
I float down to the Simorgh, understanding I must enslave this creature.
The angel frowns. ‘You will hurt it?’
‘You said to take the gates.’
‘One creature of nūr walked down the path of justice. And now the other walks down the opposite.’
I smile. ‘The Simorgh was complacent. She could have conquered mankind and commanded us into obedience, so we would never war again. But she did not. The Simorgh has the luxury of being a peaceful creature. We do not. I reject her. I reject the firebird and her wisdom.’
‘Daughter of the Simorgh,’ my uma laughs darkly from the Simorgh’s countenance. ‘Slit my throat; I had done it to myself in the temporal world, so why not in this realm?’
‘Yes.’ My hands cup her face lovingly. ‘We both know only death, don’t we?’ I murmur.
With my blade, nūr wraps around the neck of the creature and I yank until its neck bleeds. Together, we plummet into the gold sea. It’s a strange feeling to be like the devil thrown from the Gates of Heaven, the angel staring down.
The last thing I hear is: know that though you have been given the power of the Heavens, for eternity you will be alone.
The rush of power ruptures my thoughts as we fall into a dark world.
Here, I seem to exist in a state before consciousness, like a soul suckling in the womb; my vision is muddled, peopled by murmurs and strange languages.
Shadows gnash until my bonds bleed from my skin, thinning and combusting.
The gold lines wilt like a flower blazing from the dirt only to slump from an early frost.
You abuse us. You cannot use us, the bonds hiss.
I am sorry, I say.
Visions dance around me: I see others before the angel, on their knees, begging.
I see Eajīz desperate, unable to save eras.
I count many – too many – who decided against saving Stone City, others who caused meteorite showers, ending wars, and yet others who allowed the destruction of the Jazatāh tribes.
Then I see a young boy with piercing hazel eyes before the angel, anger sweeping his movements, an anger I’ve never witnessed in him. But he, too, wisps away into the past.
A long, solid gold bond penetrates my heart. The hundred-bond line loops through my chest, and plunges into every Eajīz I see of the past and present, who used various Gates of Heaven, connecting us.
Suddenly, I understand what the Sepāhbad saw in me.
The truth steals my breath as I stare at the hundredth Heavenly bond extending outward from my heart.
Then my soul returns to my human body below Akashun. As his wet sword sinks into my chest, glyphs arise. The letters sear along my limbs like a hot wick.
‘What is this?’ Akashun snarls over the pounding rain; his blade cannot penetrate the gold bands formed by the letters.
With the one hundredth bond, my fingers ripple into nūr, a dense precision, sensing every hush of breath, every breath of bond.
My nūr-hands wrap around his throat, carrying us until we are in the sky. My left arm slices inwards. A crack, and then clouds split as nūr splinters from the Heavens. It surges into Akashun’s body, bursting him like snapped seams, his entrails scattering on the lands below.
Then I am falling, falling down Heaven like a shooting star.
The air suddenly ripples around me, a white void carving into the space. A gold creature thrusts its head out, screeching like a windstorm. Then it swoops down, catching me on its back.
It’s immense, with wings speckled in gold and blue, nūr bursting from its peacock feathers. Its long beak curves and pecks at me like a culled fledgling desperate for its orders.
It’s the Simorgh: the Bird King.
A metaphysical tide strikes my core. Every Eajīz must feel the way the Third Heavenly Bird threatens to snap all bonds from existence.
And we watch the world as balls of light shoot down from the Heavens, bringing storm winds across the mountains.
The trees begin tremoring before standing on their roots and whipping across the city, creatures scurrying after.
The clay cracks open like a great egg, swallowing throngs of people.
Jinn-folk manifest, flying to the cosmos to escape the great storm.
Below, Azadnians scream at the colossal shift as if the flood is dousing the parchment of the world. Waters rise from the roots, the land spits up its reservoirs, and the blue-black waves engulf the valley, by the angels under the Divine’s command.