Rose of Fire

inquisitor began to laugh. The soldiers looked at one another, disconcerted, wondering whether Jorge de León had lost his mind. For most of them this was the last thought of their lives. They saw the inquisitor fall to his knees as a gust of icy wind swept through the cathedral, dragging with it the wooden benches, knocking down statues and lighted candles. Then they heard his skin and his limbs cracking, and amid agonising howls Jorge de León’s voice was lost in the roar of the beast emerging from his flesh, rapidly growing into a bloody tangle of scales, claws and wings. A tail punctuated by sharp edges, like the blades of an axe, fanned out like a gigantic snake and when the beast turned and showed them its face lined with fangs, its eyes alight with fire, they had no courage left to turn and run. The flames surprised them as they stood there, rooted to the ground. It ripped the flesh off their bones like a hurricane tearing leaves off a tree. The beast then spread its wings and the inquisitor, Saint and dragon all in one, took flight, passing through the cathedral’s large rose-window in a storm of glass and fire, then rising over the roofs of Barcelona.
    6
    For seven days and seven nights the beast sowed panic, knocking down churches and palaces, setting fire to hundreds of buildings and dismembering with its claws the trembling figures it found begging for mercy under the roofs it ripped off. Every day the scarlet dragon grew, devouring all it found in its path. Torn bodies rained down from the sky and flames from the beast’s breath flowed down the streets like a torrent of blood. On the seventh day, when everyone thought the beast was about to raze the city and kill all its inhabitants, a lone figure came out to meet it. Barely recovered, Edmond de Luna limped up the staircase leading to the roof of the cathedral. There he waited for the dragon to catch sight of him. The beast emerged from black clouds of smoke and embers, flying low, close to the roofs of Barcelona. It had grown so much that it was now larger than the church from which it had sprung. Edmond de Luna could see himself reflected in those eyes that resembled huge pools of blood. Flying like a cannonball over the city, tearing off terrace roofs and towers, the beast opened its jaws to snap him up. Edmond de Luna then pulled out that miserable grain of sand hanging round his neck and pressed it in his fist. He recalled the words of Constantine and told himself that faith had at last found him and that his death was a very small price to pay to purify the black soul of the beast, which was none other than the soul of all men. Raising the fist that held the tear of Christ, Edmond closed his eyes and offered himself up. In a flash, the jaws swallowed him and the dragon rose high above the clouds. Those who remember that day say that the heavens split in two and a great brightness lit up the firmament. The beast was enveloped in the flames that poured out through its teeth and as it flapped its wings it formed a huge rose of fire that covered the entire city. Silence ensued and when they opened their eyes again, the sky was shrouded as in the darkest of nights and a gentle rain of bright ash flakes was falling from on high, covering the streets, the burned ruins and the entire city of tombs, churches and palaces with a white mantle that melted when one touched it and smelled of fire and damnation.
    7
    That night Raimundo de Sempere managed to escape from his cell and return to his home to discover that his family and his book-printing workshop had survived the catastrophe. At dawn, the printer approached the Sea Wall. Debris from the shipwreck that had brought Edmond de Luna to Barcelona swayed on the water. The sea had begun to break up the hull and Sempere was able to enter it, as one would enter a house with a wall removed. Walking through the bowels of the ship in the ghostly light of dawn, the printer at last found what he was looking for. Saltpetre had partly erased the outlines, but the plans for the great labyrinth of books were still intact, just as Edmund de Luna had conceived it. Sempere sat on the sand and unfolded the plans. His mind could not encompass the complexity and the arithmetic that held that marvel together, but he told himself that there would be other illustrious minds capable of understanding its secrets. Until then, until the time when other men wiser than him found the means of saving the labyrinth and recalling the