Zariel blazed through the air in a fiery arc and landed in a flowery inferno. But he stood there, sneering at his sister and glancing at the ashes, saying nothing for a long moment before pronouncing, “He corrupted you.”
She blinked at him.
Why bother to fight now? It’s already over.
“There’s something broken inside you,” the pale angel said. “Maybe later when I have time and energy to waste, I’ll do something about it.” And he strode away, summoning Jevad to his side with a flick of his finger. “We begin now.”
Azrael watched him go. She saw the wide-eyed horror and sadness in Hadara’s eyes mirroring what she herself was struggling to feel at all. Rahm still lay on his back, semi-conscious, offering nothing but moans.
Then a new flash of red light caught her eye and she looked up to see hundreds upon hundreds of trails of red fire streaking upward into the air, flying in strange formations toward the roof of the cavern where they congregated, their hellish light growing brighter by the moment, until suddenly a new light appeared. A pale, soft light poured down through a tear in the ceiling of the cavern.
The sun.
Azrael shivered.
The war is starting. And I’ve lost everything. For nothing.
Chapter 31
When the ground started to shake, Zerai froze in the center of the road and clutched Nadira to his chest. They had only just stepped out of the home of a tea merchant, a friend of Lamia’s who had graciously invited them to stay the night. And a long night it had been, dashing and leaping lighter than a bird across the highlands to return to the city, to tell the clerics about Kadir’s transformation, and to tell them that the wintry storms were ending, allowing their ships to leave.
But now, as the sun began to peer out over the world, over the peaks of the four holy mountains, and over the walls of the city of the magi, the earth began to shake, and it went on shaking. The sounds of breaking glass and pottery tinkled and clattered in the houses around them.
Lamia gripped the wall of the house to steady herself. “The last time this happened, the walls fell.”
“Damn these djinn.” Zerai knelt in the middle of the road as roofing tiles began to shake loose and crash to the streets around the edges of the houses. Nadira’s face turned red as her mouth turned down, but she didn’t cry. He stroked her soft curling hair as he watched for falling tiles.
Then he looked up sharply to see an enormous plume of gray dust fly into the air just a few streets away, erupting high above the roof tops as a high-pitched chorus of screams filled the air, and was suddenly silenced.
“That was inside the city!” Lamia yelled.
The clerics are all on the walls, and the angels are outside the walls. Everyone is watching the desert, but the djinn are already here!
Zerai staggered up to his feet, though the ground continued to shudder and spasm. He hollered down the street, “Everyone, listen! The djinn are inside the city. The ships! Get to the ships! It’s our only chance!”
Doors opened and frightened faces leaned out.
“The djinn are inside the city!” he screamed. “Get to the ships!”
The falconer grabbed Lamia and they ran. They shouted as they ran, begging the people they passed to leave their homes and flee toward the canal, but only a fraction of them left their doorways while the rest remained behind, gazing up at the rising plumes of dust beyond the roof tops with fear and confusion etched across their faces.
It doesn’t matter, Zerai thought grimly. There won’t be enough ships for all of them anyway. If they did all run, they would only die on the docks, fighting and climbing over each other to escape.
Still, when they reached the canal they found a flood of bodies pouring out of the lanes and up the planks onto the barges and xebecs moored there. The sailors were frantically trying to organize the evacuation, funneling bodies down into the ships’ holds, and some were already turning people away as they struggled to cast off and begin rowing away with their overladen hulls. Zerai craned his neck, trying to find a path to the nearest ship that was still taking people.
But then Lamia grabbed his arm and he felt his body growing lighter, his bones and muscled hollowed out in that strange cold way of hers, and she propelled him with terrifying speed and reckless power through the crowd to the edge of the quay where she reached out and thumped him and Nadira down on a small barge, where a startled sailor quickly grabbed his shirt to steady him and keep him from falling over into the water.
“Come on!” Zerai held out his hand to her.
“No, I have to go back,” Lamia said, melting back into the crowd.
He grit his teeth and watched her turn and run back toward the center of the city, back toward the thunderous quakes, back toward the battle she could not hope to win. But there was nothing he could do or say, she was already gone, and Nadira’s small fingers grabbed his neck, snapping his attention back to the problem at hand. He turned to the sailor. “How long until we can leave?”
“We’re nearly full now,” the man said. He was young with only a thin excuse for a beard on his cheeks, and his wide green eyes darted with fear over the mass of people gathering on the quay.
“Hey.” Zerai squeezed the sailor’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “It’s going to be all right. Just do your job and get these people out of here, all right?”
The sailor nodded and went back to his duties, and Zerai went to stand near the bow, out of the way of the men, and watched the city skyline as dust and shattered stones continued to fly into the air high above the tallest temple spires. Then the plank was pulled in to a dismal wail from the crowd on the dock, and the ropes were cast off, and the oars slipped out first to push the barge away from the quay and then to dig through the dark canal waters.
Zerai looked down the canal toward the huge tunnel carved by the Tevadim centuries ago through the massive red cliffs to allow the ships to pass from the safety of the canal out into the wilder waters of the Sapphire Sea. The tunnel yawned like a black chasm of oblivion before them as the barge eased out into the middle of the channel and crept toward the shadow of the cliffs.
Dust and gravel trickled and tumbled down from the ledges and cracks in the cliff face, splashing and plopping into the canal. Zerai grimaced as he looked back and forth between the tunnel and the eruptions in the center of the city. He called to the nearest sailor, “How strong is the tunnel, do you think?”
The grizzled old man squinted up at the cliffs and watched the steady streams of dust and stone chips falling into the water. “Eh. Never seen that before.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Zerai muttered. He scanned the looming cliffs for cracks, of which there were many, and tried to reassure himself that none of the gaps or crevices were getting any larger. Until he spotted one that was. A jagged bolt of darkness lanced across the top of the tunnel roof, and it was lancing longer and wider as more and more dust spilled from its gaping mouth. The falconer pointed it out to the sailor. “Look there. How bad is that? Look!”
The sailor glared at the rock wall. “Captain! The tunnel!”
The top of the tunnel separated from the cliff wall in near silence and crashed down into the dark waters of the canal with a deafening roar and a bright sparkling spray that showered the barge, the moored ships, and everyone on the docks.
The crowd on the shore screamed in despair, and what little order had kept them marching toward the ships now dissolved into utter chaos as the people turned and tried to flee the port. Zerai wiped the water from his eyes and from Nadira’s face, and as the white sloshing waves began to settle, he could see that the tunnel was well and fully blocked by huge sharp boulders for as far as the light could reach.
Zerai stared into the tunnel thinking mad thoughts of leaping overboard, scrambling over the fallen rocks, and swimming by himself out to the open sea.
There has to be a way out of this damn place. Why did I come back? I should have let Lamia go by herself. I could have rea
ched the next village by myself. I could have.
I should have.
A tiny hand smacked him lightly on the cheek, and he looked down at the little girl smiling up at him. She patted him again. “Da-da.”
His eyes widened and his mouth went slack and he wrapped his arms around her, pressing his unshaven jaw against her soft fat cheek. “I’m here. Don’t you worry. I’m here. And I’m getting us out of here.” He kissed her cheek and turned to yell at the sailors, “Get us back to the dock, we’ve got to get these people out of the city!”
It took longer than he would have liked, but soon the barge was secured at the pilings again and the people were streaming off to join the rest of the crowd, which was now divided by people fleeing back into the city and people standing around, looking frightened and lost. Zerai strode out into the middle of them, looking for some cleric or minister to take command, but there were none.
They’re all in the center of the city, fighting the djinn. Or dead. And why are there so many children still here? I thought they were all supposed to be in Naj Kuvari!
So he climbed up onto a crate, hefted Nadira on his weary arm, and shouted, “Everybody, shut up! We’ve got to get out of the city. Drop everything you’re carrying unless it is food and water. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Grab your food and your children and head for the western gate. Move fast and stay quiet. We don’t want any attention. When you get to the gate, keep going down the beach along the cliffs, and don’t stop. Do you hear me? Do not stop for anything. We could be walking all day and night, so pace yourselves. Remember to eat and drink, and feed your children. But whatever you do, keep your mouths shut! If the djinn find us, well…” He shook his head. “We’re dead. Got it? Now move!”
The people moved, and they stayed quiet, though Zerai suspected it was more out of fear of the djinn than any desire to follow his instructions. Still they did drop most of their luggage and began flowing out of the docks along the northern edge of the city, dividing up to take two or three streets in parallel, but they kept moving, quickly and quietly, and Zerai hurried along with them.
A few times he spotted small children without an adult, and he would grab the nearest man or woman and force the child’s hand into theirs, regardless of who they were, relative or stranger, and to their credit, the surprised adults all accepted their sudden charges without protest or excuse.
After several heart-pounding minutes of hurrying down the crowded lanes and shushing the scared people around him, Zerai reached the western gate, a pair of enormous red doors in a massive white wall that stretched across a broad gap in the red cliffs, a gate he himself had walked through once before many years ago. He paused to catch his breath and resettle Nadira in her sling across his back so he could better help the people in front of him. Many were struggling to balance their bags and baskets and children, and he took some aside to help adjust their loads on their backs or balanced on their heads before sending them out onto the beach.
And all the while, the ground continued to shake and thunder beneath their feet as dust and ash burst into the sky from the distant city streets. Sometimes a block of stone or even a wall of a house would fly into the air where it would seem to move as slowly as a fly in amber before crashing back down again. Great jets of red fire flared upward, painting the sky crimson and leaving vast clouds of black smoke to drift lazily over the roofs. Voices echoed everywhere, voices shouting orders and voices screaming in pain. Zerai tried to ignore them.
Eventually a few other young men and women took up places beside the gate, also helping the fleeing crowds to calm down and adjust their loads for the long march down the shore, and Zerai gratefully took his turn passing through the gate and down the sandy beach. It was a long walk to the water’s edge, and the red cliffs rose in grim-faced walls to dizzying heights on either side of them, but to the west the sky was merely gray and almost clear, while the icebergs sailing south with the current gleamed in the morning light as gentle passengers instead of deadly dreadnoughts.
Gulls and fish eagles filled the sky, wheeling and crying over the water as the rocking earth forced them out of their nests on the tiny ledges of the cliffs. Zerai squinted at the birds for a moment and then, with nothing else to do, took out his old falconer’s lure and whirled it over his head as he walked along the beach, letting its warbles and whistles blend in with the noise of the birds.
I hope you’re safe, Nyasha.
With every step, the sounds of battle faded behind him. Already the vast clouds of dust and smoke were hidden by the walls and cliffs, and soon it was easy to forget the inhuman warfare raging behind them. Zerai found himself walking near a group of young people, apparently friends, even schoolmates, who kept asking each other if they had seen this person or that person, or whether they thought this cleric was still alive, or if that person’s house was still standing.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zerai said loudly. They all looked at him with confused frowns. “Seriously, it doesn’t matter. Not right now. You’ll drive yourselves crazy worrying about people and things you can’t do anything about. Maybe those people are already dead. Maybe they’ll survive. There’s no way to know.”
“How can you talk like that?” one red-eyed girl asked.
“Because a lot of people I care about are back there right now, probably dying,” the falconer said. “And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. But I can keep myself alive, and I can keep her alive.” He thumbed at Nadira on his back. “Same goes for you. Worry about yourselves and each other right now. You can worry about the city and everyone else when you get back. Those people are fighting for you. So you do your part and you stay alive, but you can’t do that if you worry yourselves to death about things you can’t control. All right?”
The sullen youths nodded and angled away from him to walk in the thin white foam at the sea’s edge.
Not long after that, Zerai heard a strange noise coming from up ahead, and he soon found the source was a cave high above the water, a cave with a wide mouth that stretched far back into the cliff wall, and it was filled with people whose voices echoed out over the beach. He hurried up to the people sitting outside the cave and said, “You can’t stop here, we’re still too close to the city, we need to keep moving. We’ll make camp at nightfall, but until then, we need to keep moving away from the city!”
In response he only got a handful of weary, hollow-eyed stares.
“It isn’t safe here!” he yelled into the cave.
“It’s safe enough,” a man answered from inside. “No one’s going to find this place.”
“You did, you idiot,” Zerai muttered as he waded into the shadows among the people to get a better sense of how many people were inside.
Too many.
Fortunately when he looked back at the beach he could see the rest of the people moving on, heading down the shore. “Look, I know you’re all tired and scared, but we’re not out of danger yet. With those angels and djinn tearing up the city, this whole cliff could collapse. Remember what that one djinn did to the walls?”
This only earned him some uncomfortable shuffles and side-eyes.
“I’m telling you, this place is safe enough,” the same man said.
Zerai looked over and saw a tall, lean fellow in red-and-white striped robes sitting on a large bag. “What makes you think so?”
“Her.” The man pointed to the woman next to him. “She’s been living here and no one’s ever found her before.”
Zerai froze, and then he moved slowly toward the woman in question. She was thin and half her face was hidden in the shadows, but still, he knew her, and her name almost caught in his throat. “Talia?”
The woman looked up through tangled, ragged black locks and peered at him with bloodshot eyes set in a thin, wasted face. “Zerai?” Her eyes widened. “Nadira?”
He knelt beside her, and for a moment he could only look at her, assuring himself that it really was Talia Bashir and not some lost waif who
merely looked like her. And then he blinked and muttered, “Um, right, here, I…”
He gently lifted Nadira off his back and set the little girl in her mother’s lap where she promptly curled up with her thumb in her mouth and began to twirl a lock of her hair around her finger.
Talia shook as she wrapped her arms around her daughter and tears poured from her eyes. She clasped her hand over her mouth, though no sounds escaped her.
“We thought we lost you,” Zerai said quietly. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t swim, I was drowning.” She shook her head. “Samira found me, but then I lost her. I was cold, getting pulled down. But I kept fighting it, kept trying to swim. And then I came up, and I could breathe again. Everything was dark, but there were no stars. And echoes. I was in a cave, underwater. I waited, but no one found me, so I had to swim back out, underwater, to get to the beach. I don’t know how long I was down there…”
“I’m so sorry.” Zerai swallowed. “We looked for you.” For an hour. One lousy hour!
After a moment, Talia was able to sit up straight and catch her breath. “Did Samira make it? Is she all right?”
He nodded.
“And everyone else?”
He shook his head. “We lost some of the healers.”
“Veneka?”
“She made it, she’s in the city.” Somewhere.
Talia stroked Nadira’s hair and dropped her gaze to the girl again. “Is she okay? Did anything happen?”
“A lot of things happened, but Nadira’s fine,” he said quietly. “She’s never been out of my sight this whole time. She hasn’t pooped as much as she should, so I’m trying to get her to drink more water, but, um, she’s fine.”
Talia looked up at him again. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Zerai swallowed and sat back a little, not sure what to say or do. He pulled off his shoulder bag and pushed it toward her. “Here’s some water, bread, dates, almonds. She hasn’t eaten in a couple hours, I think.”
Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom Page 31
