The air hissed all around her, and Azrael opened her eyes to see what new torment was about to strike her. She saw her skin turning sickly white, and she saw her long black hair shining like bronze at sunset, but she could not see what was making the air hiss and whine like ten thousand angry hornets. Zariel frowned, and even as he continued to burn her, he turned his head and looked to the east.
She followed his gaze and gasped. There in the wide gap of the city wall stood a mighty beast, a massive creature with golden skin and a lone rider perched upon its back. The boy wore bright blue and gold robes covered in armor plates all too large and too loose for his thin frame, but his eyes peered out across the battlefield with more cold determination than men five times his age.
“Kamil!” Azrael cried out.
The boy squinted in her direction and said nothing. He merely reached down and touched the head of the gigantic karkadann and a score of lightning bolts flashed from the beast’s huge horn, covering the length of the city faster than even Azrael’s eyes could follow, and the blinding charge struck Zariel squarely in the face.
The thunderclap rocked the entire city, shaking loose every stone and brick, sending thousands of people slipping and stumbling.
Zariel fell to one knee and pressed one hand to his eyes.
Azrael looked down at him, her mind still whirling as she felt the red firestorm grow slack for a moment.
My razor of death cannot turn aside his fires of change.
What can?
Can anything?
She blinked.
He didn’t want to turn me. He said I was broken.
Fractured.
Something inside me… scared him.
And then she knew what to do. She reached inside herself for that thread, that endless thread of faces and voices, the thread of Death that slipped relentlessly through the core of her own, ancient soul, and she pressed that thread outward, letting it ripple down her arms in waves of black flame until Zariel gasped and trembled in her grasp.
The red angel shook and tried to let go of her, but Azrael held tight to him, crushing his hand in hers.
“You think I’m broken,” she said. “You think I’m damaged.”
Zariel clawed at her arm with his free hand as the black flames rolled and roared toward his shoulders, and his own bloody wings began to flicker and fade.
“You think the parade of Death through my mind has done something awful to me, to my soul.” She pulled him a little closer and raised her black wings a little higher.
Zariel groaned as the black flames licked at his face, and suddenly his own red wings flared to life all the brighter, not with his rage or hate but with mad, blind panic.
“But Death is the ultimate change, brother,” she whispered. “And if you so desperately want to change the world, if you want it enough to murder the innocent and destroy the beautiful, if you want it enough to take away my love, then I will give you the greatest change imaginable.”
She pulled him closer so that they stood face to face, even as he fought to free himself, and she placed her other arm behind his shoulders to embrace him tightly, and whispered in his ear, “I give you Death.”
The black flames engulfed them both and in that moment, she could see nothing but dark fire, no sky or sun, no earth or walls, not even the faces of the dying, and for one brief moment, one terrible, wonderful moment, she felt a vast silence engulf her heart, her mind, her soul.
Azrael exhaled, tasting the sweetness of that silence. No one cried out, no one was terrified, no one was angry, no one was confused, no one was lost. It was only her, alone within herself.
And then the moment ended and she pulled back the thread of Death. The faces and the agony reappeared in her mind’s eye, the humans and djinn dying all over the world, and she let her holy fires recede into her luminous flesh.
The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky, and Zariel crumpled to his knees before her, clutching his head and weeping. His flame-haired acolytes stood back, their faces awash with confusion, saying nothing.
She heard a word, or two, and she knelt down beside her brother to listen.
“…sorry, so sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know, I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry…”
He wept and muttered, on and on as he rocked on his knees, clawing at his hair and eyes, gasping for breath.
“Now you know,” she said. “Now you know what I carry, what made me different, what made me run away all those lifetimes ago. It’s terrible. The most terrible thing imaginable. It’s the burden I carry every day as I walk through this world, protecting the weak, raising the broken, defying the corrupt, and even making love to a fragile little boy who couldn’t stop believing in hope and life and kindness and love… A burden so great that a mere glimpse of it weighs so heavily on you now that you can’t even stand up. Remember that, dear brother, when you wonder which of us is broken, and which of us is strong.”
Azrael stood up and left him there, crouched and crying. She looked at the clerics, the humans and the djinn, all their souls invaded and infected with the pride and arrogance and power of a fallen angel. With a golden flare of her eyes, she called out, “Raziel!”
And her gleaming blue brother appeared beside her, his face a calm glass mask even amidst the fires of war. “Yes?”
“Can you heal them?”
Raziel turned a curious eye on the throng before him. “Yes, I believe I can.” He spread his six wings of flowing crystal and glided forward among the warriors, and everywhere his wings touched them, the people’s hair faded back to black and brown and gray, and the fire left their eyes, and they staggered back against the broken walls of their city, casting shocked and miserable stares at the ruins of their homes.
Azrael stood and watched her brother go, and bit by bit she felt the heat and the rage around her fading away as the shreds of Zariel’s soul were cleansed away from the innocents. The sounds of battle ended abruptly with the last few staccato crackles of stoneworks falling in the distance and the last roars of fire overhead.
She looked around herself, seeing only broken things and broken people. There was nothing left of Shivala but rubble and despairing faces, and the sight of them only compounded the grief inside her. The world felt thin and unreal as she began to walk through it, past the wreckage of Zariel still sobbing on his knees, and past the gaping pit where her Iyasu lay. She sank down through the cool air to collect his body, and with great effort she lifted him again, one last time, and carried him up to the city where he was born.
I should take him… somewhere. That’s what people do, they take the body, and they prepare it, and they bury it, or burn… no, not burn…
With her wings folded, Azrael walked through the shattered streets of Shivala. A shadow fell across her, accompanied by the heavy rhythm of bronze hooves marching down the road beside her.
“You know, Simurgh said you would be good and useful one day. I wonder if she knew how right she would be. Or how soon,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“I wish I could have done more,” Kamil said. He gazed down at the body in her arms. “Iyasu… Everything he told me, about this place, about the djinn, and the war, it kept racing around my head. I wanted to do something. I wanted to help. And when we found Dalyamuun and the karkadann, I saw a way to help. It wasn’t difficult, escaping from the city. Stealing the karkadann was… well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m just sorry I wasn’t faster. I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.”
She nodded and swallowed. “You saved me. You saved us all.”
“No, you did that.” The boy squinted at her. “I only helped for a moment.”
“That moment meant everything.”
They passed the tear-stained faces of the clerics and blank stares of the djinn, and kept walking toward the only thing that seemed to have survived. The palace. All of the outer buildings lay in heaps of dusty stone, and the gardens had burned, and the windows had shattered, but through some miracl
e the small white mountain of the inner palace still stood tall above the desert plain.
There were people there, standing on the steps of the palace, slowly spilling out to investigate the stillness and silence. Azrael walked toward them, and their stares shifted between her and the huge mechanical creature beside her.
“He’s gone,” she said in a broken voice.
One of the clerics, a woman in Sophirim gray, came forward and took the body, took Iyasu, from her. “We’ll take of him. We’ll lay him to rest.”
“Don’t burn him,” the angel whispered hoarsely. “Please don’t burn him.”
“We won’t,” the woman said. “What was his name?”
“Iyasu… Iyasu Sadik.”
“Iyasu?” A tall woman with a tall nimbus of black hair pushed to the front of the crowd. “Did you say Iyasu? Is he all right?”
Azrael watched the horror and sorrow spill across Veneka’s face as she saw the body, and the angel began to cry all over again as she watched Veneka weep over the dead youth.
“Zerai.” Azrael cleared her throat, trying to steady her voice.
“He isn’t here,” Veneka said softly. “He left before the attack.”
“No… I saw Zerai. In here.” Azrael touched her temple. “I’m sorry.”
Veneka nodded slowly, her tears still falling, though whether any of them were for the falconer, Azrael could not say.
They were still standing together over Iyasu when a soft azure glow behind them blazed and faded to reveal Raziel standing on the scorched grounds where orange trees had once stood. More and more people shuffled out of the palace doors to see what had become of their city, and to stare at the woman with the black wings, and the golden horned monster, and the blue man made of clear shining crystal.
Among them came a tall man and a woman whose arms were covered in scars, and the crowd parted for them, and bowed their heads for their lord and lady, but Negus Salloran and Nigiste Makeda hurried to bow to the angels.
“Holy Ones,” the queen said, “What happened here? Is the war over?”
The Angel of Life lowered all of his six wings into a great train of crystal and glass on the ground by his feet, and said, “It’s over. All over. Arrah and Juran will deal with Zariel, and Tevad and Sophir will help your clerics rebuild the city. I have healed everyone who was still alive, but the dead are… numerous.”
There were more questions, and Raziel patiently answered each of them in his calm, droning voice, but Azrael wasn’t listening, and didn’t care. She nearly spread her wings and vanished into the sky, to find some mountain peak or desert cave where she could lie down and close her eyes and pretend to sleep, alone. But instead she began to walk through the streets with Kamil riding slowly behind her. She didn’t know what to say to the boy, so she said nothing, dragging her black wings across the ruins of countless homes, over ancient works of art and new clothes crushed by stones, over freshly baked bread and uprooted trees covered in bright flowers now coated in gray dust and black soot.
She saw none of it. Felt none of it.
All of that madness, all of that pain, and for what? For Yasu…
She paused. There were people walking toward her, people coming in through the western gate, people returning from the direction of the sea.
She didn’t want to be near people.
If I had only known what was happening, or where, or…
If I had just waited here in the city all this time and left Yasu back in…
If I had just shown Zariel true Death when he first touched me, then maybe none of this…
She shivered and sighed. There were no more tears left, but still her body ached and shuddered. The returning refugees began to pass her, staring at her with wide eyes and she realized they were staring at her wings, so she breathed deep and let her wings fade into the late day’s light as she stepped out of the dusty path and stood on a heap of rocks that had once been a library, judging from the parchments and leather book jackets scattered about. Kamil nudged his karkadann to step aside as well, but still he said nothing, content to merely be near her and follow her.
A passing woman stopped and stared at Kamil, and then shifted her gaze to Azrael. The woman held a small girl in her left arm and carried a bloody sword in her right hand. “You’re her,” she said.
Azrael looked down at her. “Who?”
“I remember you. Azrael. You don’t recognize me, I suppose. I asked you once to bring my wife back from the dead. But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.” Azrael frowned at the woman. “You’re him? The djinn husband’s soul in his human wife’s body?”
“I’m called Talia Bashir now,” she said. “This is my little Nadira.”
Azrael nodded.
Zerai’s Nadira too, I imagine. Precious little thing. I can see why he died for her.
“Did the others from Naj Kuvari make it?” Talia asked. “Are they alive?”
“Some. They’re at the palace. Others didn’t. Iyasu… didn’t.” She didn’t choke on the words. They came out quite clearly, though slowly. The words felt strange and disconnected from her, as though he had died ages ago in a far away land.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Talia paused. “Zerai… he died saving us.”
Azrael nodded. “I know.”
They both stood quietly as the crowd continued by.
“What will you do now?” Talia asked.
“I don’t know. You?”
“I don’t know either. Home, maybe, if the djinn will take me back. Although…”
“What?”
“I miss the sky.” She smiled sadly. “I miss this. The djinn live underground, and it makes me wish I had somewhere else to go.”
Azrael looked at the little girl, smiling and drooling slightly. Then she focused on Talia again. “When you lost your wife all those years ago, what did you do?”
Talia paused. “I went looking for a way to bring her back. I traveled the world.”
“Did it help?”
“For a long time, no. Then I died and was reborn in her resurrected body,” she said. “So, it’s hard to say. But I did get this little one, and… my life is better now than it was before.”
“Stranger, too.” Azrael stepped down from the rubble as the last of the refugees went by. “Would you want to travel the world a little more? With me?” She turned to look up at Kamil. “Would you?”
They both nodded yes.
“For a moment I thought I wanted to be alone,” the angel said. “But I don’t. I don’t know what I want now, but I don’t want to be alone again.”
Talia took a moment to breathe and look around at the devastation of the city. “I think I know how you feel.”
The two women turned and walked back out the western gate with the boy and his golden mount following close behind them. They paused on the beach and watched the sun begin to set as a lone eagle wheeled across the bloody sky, crying out against the quiet of the gathering night.
About the Author
Joseph Robert Lewis enjoys creating worlds in which history, mythology, and fantasy collide in new and exciting ways. He also likes writing about heroines that his daughters can respect and admire.
Joe was born in Annapolis and went to the University of Maryland to study ancient novels, morality plays, and Viking poetry. Outside of the world of fiction, he works with a lot of smart people to write and publish books about technology, software, politics, economics, and history.
Other titles by the author:
Ultraviolet
The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)
The Halcyon series of steampunk thrillers
The Europa series of dark fantasy adventures
The Chimera series of mythic fantasy adventures
Daphne and the Silver Ash
www.josephrobertlewis.com
Table of Contents
Angels and Djinn: Zariel’s Doom
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter
3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom Page 33
