“Prophet?”
She stared up at him, and Samson realized he had been standing still for too long. He kissed three of his fingers and placed them on Saayna’s head to bless her.
“We have brought provisions for you and your order. My men will bring them up, but they will need your direction.”
It was only after a beat that he noticed his fingers were trembling against her skin. He tucked his hand back into his coat. “Go.”
Saayna hesitated. Her brows pinched, and there was something furtive about her gaze, as if she was trying to piece him together without his noticing. But then she scurried off, and he was alone with the Eternal Fire.
It roiled at his approach, though no flames rushed to meet him. He watched them split, separate tongues twisting away while others twined together. Vicious red bled to burnt orange to cool blue and then the slight bite of green. It was as if all the colors in the world could be found in the heart of a flame. He stood, hypnotized by the conflagration. Pity, how something so beautiful could wreak so much destruction.
He began to reach for a flame. Better to heal himself now before the priests came back. He imagined the fire looping around his body, sinking into his skin, his bones, chasing away the chill and filling him with a peace he no longer recognized. But even as he reached forward and curled his fingers, Samson felt resistance, as if someone was pushing against his hand and trying to pry it open.
“Come here,” he commanded.
At last, a tiny flame wrenched away from the inferno with a squawk.It danced within his palm, jittery and erratic, as if looking for an escape. Samson frowned.
In his mind’s eye, he followed the flames down to their roots as he had done before, in search of its savage song that spoke of the delicious tang of the earth and the clear notes of the wind. A song of old when the desert was a forest, and the forest had been an ocean filled with creatures deep. It had been thunderous, thrumming with power and a vicious vitality. He searched and heard… nothing.
Only the crackle of the flames, their whispers unknown to him.
Samson stumbled back, his heart thumping wildly.
He could taste it. Something foreign, a spice that salted the air with its tangy smoke. He whipped around, scanning his surroundings, but he saw no priest, no soldier, not even a curious bird pecking at the debris. Only the Eternal Fire remained. Only the flames stretched before him, crackling in a language he could no longer hear, and he did not know whether it was its silence or its refusal to greet him that hurt him more.
“Great Serpent,” he said.
And then it began to laugh.
Samson gasped as the Eternal Fire charged, biting his feet with soft pops, its laughter buzzing through his bones. He tried to push away the flames, but they merely toyed with him, snapping at his wrist, his knee, his neck.
“Listen to me!” he cried.
He attempted to fling off a flame that cracked his cheek, but it zipped away quickly in a laughter of sparks. The Eternal Fire swept in, trapping him. The air thickened with heat.Just walk through, he thought.I won’t burn.
A flame smacked his tricep, and Samson hissed in pain. He raised his bruised arm. A welt, black as tar, curdled his skin and just as quickly disappeared. The Eternal Fire attacked again. Samson fell to his knees, crying out as flames bit into his flesh, tearing away as he healed only to latch on again.
“Stop!” he commanded.
The inferno only roared in response, and it was then that he realized he could not feel the vigor of its vicious hunger or the heat of its power sizzle through his veins. All he felt was the sting of sudden betrayal.
The Eternal Fire was no longer his.
Get up, he thought.Get up, up, UP!
He crawled forward, gritting his teeth as the flames rained down their punishment. It was as if he was swimming against the current, each flame a wave beating against him. At long last, he reached the threshold, and the Eternal Fire roiled back.
Samson lay there, stunned. After a few minutes, sensation came back into his toes, his fingers, then the rest of his body. But he felt something different in his navel chakra: a cold so intense it bowled him over. His Agni shriveled, distant, weak.
You did not heal me, he thought.
The Eternal Fire yawned, the silence of its absent song roaring in his ears.
Samson pushed himself to his feet and ran down the landing, down the steps, down the burnt vestiges of the broken temple. He did not stop running until he saw the gleam of the tanker, and only when he was under the shadow of its wings did he finally collapse.
A soldier cried out in alarm. Others began to rush toward him.
I look feeble, he thought first. And then,I look mad.
