Girl, Serpent, Thorn(28)

Soraya agreed, and after taking one last breath of the cool night air, she continued onward. She had never seen the inside of a dakhmeh, of course—only the corpse-bearers came inside—and so she walked in expecting the worst. Would there be corpses laid out, decayed or half eaten by scavenger birds? Would a yatu be committing some unholy ritual with parts of the dead? Every story meant to scare children away from the dakhmeh swam through her mind. If you step into the dakhmeh, or if you linger too long around a dead body, then the corpse div Nasu will find you and make you fall ill.

But as soon as Soraya stepped inside the dakhmeh, she no longer felt any terror or disgust—the only sensation was one of overwhelming emptiness.

The dakhmeh had two layers, she discovered, and she was standing on the top one, a jutting platform that formed a ring around the dakhmeh’s perimeter. And all along the platform were rectangular indentations, the right size for a grave. To her intense relief, each of the shallow graves was empty. There was no roof, of course, in order to grant access to the birds, and so the air was not as stale and foul as she had expected, and the stars still shone overhead.

The platform gently inclined downward to a pit at the center of the dakhmeh. Soraya carefully made her way down the footpath between the graves. There were three rows of them, and when she passed the third row, with the smallest graves, she realized these must be for children.

At the end of the platform, she hesitated. She saw a fire burning in the pit below, the source of the light they had seen from outside. But otherwise, she saw nothing and no one, and she began to regret telling Azad to stay behind.

Why should you ever be afraid of anyone? she heard Parvaneh’s voice asking her. And she was right, wasn’t she? Soraya was always the most dangerous person in any room. With this surge of confidence, Soraya sat on the edge of the platform and slid forward to land on the ground below.

A fine white powder rose up from the ground with the impact of her landing, and now Soraya knew what happened to the bones once the vultures finished their meal.

In the firelight, Soraya could make out the shapes of grates set into the wall—drains, she supposed, for rainwater. She went closer to the fire and found a waterskin and an empty bowl with the remains of some kind of stew. As Soraya began to wonder where the owner of these objects was, she heard a voice, like stone scraping against stone, from behind her.

“Who are you?” came the voice—a voice she recognized. “What are you doing here?”

Soraya turned at once to face it. In the shadow under the platform was a grizzled man, his gray hair and beard unkempt, his eyes red. He was not as tall as she remembered, but still, the sight of him made her want to shrink back, to escape the judgment of both him and the Creator. Why should you ever be afraid of anyone? she reminded herself again, and her fists clenched at her sides, grounding her.

“Do you remember me?” she asked him in a steady voice.

He stared at her blankly at first, but then he sucked in a breath and said, “Show me your face.” He came toward her. “Show me if you are who I think you are.”

Fear returned to her, but still she turned toward the firelight, removed her shawl with shaking hands, and pulled her hair away from her face to show the old man the rivers of poison under her skin, made visible by her rapidly beating heart.

His eyes shone when he saw her face, and he nodded slowly. “I remember you, shahzadeh,” he said. “I remember that night.” He snickered. “I frightened you, didn’t I?”

Her face burned with anger. I could reach out and touch him right now, she thought, and then see which one of us is more frightened. But no, she couldn’t harm him. She still needed him. “Have you been hiding away here all this time?” she said. “I thought yatu were more powerful than that. Can’t you use your magic to help you escape?”

His smile turned sour. “Why do you think no one has ever found me here?” He spread his arms wide. “I lay a spell on the dakhmeh’s boundaries, to keep away those who mean to do me harm.” His arms fell. “But without my books, I can do little else but cast petty curses on the villagers using the remains of their relatives.”

The word curses echoed in her mind like the hissing of a snake, reminding her of her purpose. “I could find your books for you, if they haven’t been burned,” she said.

He let out a skeptical snort. “I assume you want something in return,” he said.

“As high priest, you would have known the location of the simorgh’s feather. Tell me where it is.”

If her request surprised him, he didn’t show it. He only briefly considered her offer before nodding. “The simorgh’s feather is the heart of the Royal Fire,” he said.

“It’s inside the fire?” Soraya thought of the iron grate shielding the fire, of the priests who stood guard day and night to ensure no one extinguished it. If she could find a way to be in the fire temple alone, then perhaps Soraya could use some tool to take the feather from the fire. Parvaneh had said she would be able to return the feather once she was finished with it—Soraya could discreetly replace it once she knew the answer to lifting her curse. She could be free without betraying her family. Something like joy was beginning to ripple through her.

But as if he could hear the direction of her thoughts, the yatu was shaking his head. “You don’t understand. The feather is not inside the fire. It’s part of the fire. In any other fire, the feather would simply burn, but in the Royal Fire, it becomes part of the flames, giving the fire the power to protect the shah.”