“It takes all sorts.” Zerai shrugged.
Iyasu nodded slowly. “My first act as his counselor was to help Faris chose a replacement. We chose his cousin Simon. A month later, Simon was dead. Murdered in his own bed.”
Iyasu wet his lips and curled his hands into fists on his knees.
Simon. Simon was the first. The first of how many? How many of died because of me? How many more…?
“And then?” Veneka touched his hand.
“Then Prince Faris and I chose another king, his cousin Darius, a soldier. He seemed level-headed, clever, and popular. I looked at him, at his soul. He was so bright, so decent. I was sure of it. But…” Iyasu shook his head as his hands trembled in his lap. “The day after his coronation, Darius executed the minister of trade. And then the minister of war. He took off their heads with his own sword in the council chamber.”
Iyasu choked on the words as the memory splashed across his mind’s eye, blood trickling over the marble tiles as he stood there, staring in shock, in silence.
“Day after day, more people died,” Iyasu rasped. “Good people. People I’d just become friends with. Here one day, dead the next. All executed by Darius and his cronies.”
“Why?” Zerai asked quietly.
“He called them traitors.” Iyasu shook his head and buried his face in his hands. “But they weren’t. They were good people. Honest. Kind. Even stupid.” He gasped out a little laugh. “There wasn’t a shred of cruelty or deceit in any of their souls. I know. I saw.”
“And you chose this man to be king?” Veneka frowned at him.
“I know!” He squeezed his eyes shut again. “You don’t understand. When I first met Darius, when I studied him, he seemed… fine. Good. I don’t know. I don’t know how I could have been so wrong,” Iyasu whispered as the burning tears trickled down his cheeks. “I’ve never been so wrong about anyone before.”
“So what happened then? Did Prince Faris take back his crown?”
Iyasu shook his head. “Faris locked himself away in his estate outside the city and wouldn’t let me see him. The last note I got from him said that he trusted Darius and that I should too.”
“Coward,” Zerai muttered.
“Yes, he is.” Iyasu lifted his head and managed a sad smile. “And until that moment, I liked that about him. Faris is very gentle and kind, and so very afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Nothing. Everything.” The seer sighed and wiped his face dry.
“So you left Maqari?”
“No, no. I stayed. I had to. I had to fix it.” Iyasu took a breath. “I had to fix him. I had to save the country. I had to do something. But Darius ignored me. Then he barred me from his meetings. And finally he threatened to kill me.”
Veneka’s eyes went wide.
“If I hadn’t been a cleric from Shivala, I think he would have done it, too.” Iyasu nodded. “I tried one last time to make him see sense, to make him stop the killings. He put his boot on my neck and told me I had until sunset to be out of his city.” He touched his neck. “He was crushing my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to do anymore. So I ran.” The tears fell again, silent and unacknowledged. “I ran.”
“Come here.” Veneka put her arms around him and he leaned into her and let himself sob and shake in silence for a few moments. “It’s all right now.”
“It’s not all right,” he whispered between gasps as he clutched at her arm. “They’re dead. Don’t you understand? They’re all dead! All those men and women, so many good people, all dead, because of me. And they’re still dying in Maqari. He’s taxing the people of Ovati to death. They’re starving. Dying every day. And now he’s going to invade Elladi. God, he’s going to start a war…”
His body ceased to be his own and became a quivering vessel of pain. His chest was shaking so hard he couldn’t breathe, his eyes were clamped shut, and his mouth was open in a locked rictus of indescribable anguish.
This was where the gifts of Arrah became an unbearable curse, his ability to see the truth of things, to see the past and foresee likely futures, and to imagine the real world far beyond his senses. He could see the poor farmers of Ovati being beaten to death by the tax collectors, the farms burning, the livestock being stolen, the children crying over their parents’ corpses.
He could see the Maqari soldiers marching south toward Elladi, beautiful Elladi and its capital at Sabah, the city of a thousand bridges. The bridges would burn, the houses would burn, and the soldiers would enslave anyone they didn’t butcher. The dead would be burned in piles and buried in pits.
He could see the bodies, bloody and broken.
He could see the charred bones, the skulls.
He could see it all.
“Breathe, Iyasu, breathe!” Veneka shook him, pressing on his chest, filling him with the healing grace of Raziel, trying to take away his pain, trying to bring him back to her.
Bit by bit, she succeeded, until he collapsed in her lap, no longer frozen in pain and horror. He lay on her, shivering and wiping at his face.
“I’m so sorry, Iyasu,” Raziel said above the fountain. “Suffering and death, yet again, for such petty reasons. We have all seen this before, and sadly, we will see it again. I’m afraid we must hope that Darius’s conquest is swift and the suffering as small as possible.”
“It won’t be.” Iyasu massaged his aching head as he sat up. He felt drained and exhausted, but his mind was clearer than before. “There’s something else. Someone else. Someone is attacking Darius’s soldiers and destroying their barracks and supplies along the border between Maqari and Elladi. Darius is furious. He thinks Elladi is preparing for war, or even to invade Maqari. It’s made everything even worse. So now he won’t just ride into the capital at Sabah and kill the king. He’s going to storm across the entire country and burn it to the ground. He’ll parcel it out to his generals to set up little fiefdoms where the survivors will become slaves. And their children. And their children’s children. It’s going to be nothing but suffering and death for generations.”
And it’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault…
“There has to be something we can do.” Zerai’s terse voice betrayed how much effort it took him to remain still and calm.
“Darius still needs to prepare his invasion, so we have some time. Days, maybe weeks. And we have something else.” Iyasu shivered and sat up straighter. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a year. “I’ve heard a rumor about these border attacks. It’s not an army. It’s not even bandits. It’s a lone Daraji woman. Just one, all alone.”
“Wait a second. You’re saying that a single woman is attacking Darius’s army? By herself? How is that even possible?” Zerai asked.
“And why has Darius not been able to stop her?” Veneka asked.
Iyasu nodded. “He’s tried. But the stories about this woman are… well, almost unbelievable. Destroying buildings with her bare hands, hurling armored men through the air. As strange as it may sound, I think she’s a Sophirim.”
“A rogue cleric on the warpath?” Zerai blinked. “Maybe we should be helping her.”
“No, we have to stop her,” Iyasu said. “She’s going to get everyone in Elladi killed, and then who will Darius turn against next? Naj Kuvari? Shivala itself? Open warfare between the west and east, slave armies dying by the thousands against the power of the clerics? No, we have to stop this, we have to stop it now, before it destroys us all.”
“All right, point taken, but still, how are we supposed to stop someone like that?” Zerai asked.
“You can’t,” Raziel said. “But I believe we can summon someone who can. Zerai, I will need the help of one of your falcons. Little Vashti should suffice.”
“Sure. Sending a message to the clerics in Shivala?”
“No, that would take too long. Odashena is much closer.”
“Odashena!” Zerai stared at the angel. “Why?”
“To summon
the djinn, of course.”
Chapter 2
Zerai
Lying beside Veneka was his home. Not standing near her, or looking at her, or anything else. Just lying beside her, touching her hand and her leg with his hand and his leg. It was perfect.
The heat of her skin, the cold of her feet, the tickle of her hair in his face, the softness of her small breasts, the wonderful roundness of her hips, the hard muscles of her arms, and the slow, husky sound of her breathing. That was his home, and in that moment as he lay beside her, the rest of the world could burn for all he cared.
Well, maybe not burn. But it could go away and give us some privacy for a while.
Zerai lay there in his home and watched the morning sunlight slip into their room through the open window. Outside, the city of Naj Kuvari would awaken slowly, everything from the delicate blossoms to the hungry birds to the playful children gradually coming to life, bit by bit. Inside, they awoke just as slowly.
“Did you sleep?” she asked without opening her eyes.
“A little,” he whispered into her hair. “But you… you had the dream again.”
“Did I hit you?”
“A little. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” She turned away.
“Okay.” He knew better than to say anymore, so instead he leaned forward and began kissing her cheek. And in that moment, all he cared about was kissing her perfect cheek.
She rolled toward him and smiled. “You seemed tired last night… at the end.”
“Well, I am only human.”
She pulled his arms more tightly around herself, and then ran her fingertips over his face, studying him closely. “You are worried?”
He stopped kissing her and sighed. “The djinn.”
“Djinn are merely people.”
“Dangerous people.”
“Human people can be dangerous, too.” She gazed at him with that unnerving intensity of hers. No frown, no squint. Just her wide, gazing eyes.
He looked back into her eyes and smiled a little. “You know, I’m a very wealthy man these days. I have lots of things I’m afraid of losing. So I worry. That’s all.”
“Oh really?” She moved closer. “Tell me about these riches of yours.”
“Well, I have these.” He kissed her lips. “And this.” He kissed her neck. “And this.” He kissed her breasts. He went on naming his treasures until he became too aroused to play the game, and then she rolled him onto his back so she could take him. She held his hands behind his head as she slid down onto him, and then briefly played at kissing his neck and biting his nipples to make him shudder and moan.
He grabbed her thighs and pressed her hips hard against his own to bury himself in her, to vanish inside her, held tightly in a place somewhere between pleasure and pain, a place that burned with how much he wanted her and ached with how much he needed her.
Their love-making was fast and hard, and a bit louder than usual. He pushed up and up, lifting his hips ever higher as though all her strength and the gravity of the entire world beneath his back were not enough to force them together, to bring her down over him, to grasp him, to own him.
She fought back, crashing down as she bit her lip, as she shoved him against the bedding, as she tried to take the rhythm from him and ride him so fast that all sensation became a blur, making him fight back to slow her down, to battle back into that perfect place where it felt the way he wanted it to feel. Crushed, controlled, buried, gasping. Fingers raked across backs and chests and arms, digging in hard.
When it became too rough, too painful, she pressed her hands against his thighs and healed his weakness, soothing his pain and restoring his strength, and so they went on, and on, and on. He came and she paused, but only for a moment before gripping him with her legs and riding on. She came and again she paused, quivering, barely breathing, then moaning loudly, and laughing. She kissed him hard, plunging her tongue into his mouth and he drank her in, wrapping his arms around her back, pulling their hot skin together as though he hoped to make them truly one flesh, lost in ecstasy.
Then she leaned back, smiling, and she started all over again. He gazed up at her face, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her skin shining with sweat.
I wonder if Raziel ever thought his healing gifts would be used quite like this.
Afterward, Zerai lay beside her watching the sunlight bleed across the ceiling. He should have been exhausted, and his muscles should have been screaming for an hour in the hot spring, but he felt fine. He felt strong. So he stood up from their bed and began dressing. He paused. “I don’t suppose this time we…?”
“No,” she said softly. “It’s the wrong time. We missed it this month.”
“Right.” He finished putting on his pants and boots. “You’d think with all the practice we get, we’d hit the target once in a while.”
“I told you.” Veneka stood and stretched. “I’m not ready.”
“I know, I just…” He smiled sheepishly at her. “I’m being greedy. I want more of you. I want a dozen little Venekas running around the house, screaming and laughing and healing their own skinned knees.”
“I know you do.” She smiled at him as she dressed. “Patience. It will happen, some day.”
Some day.
He looked at his belt and sword, and the mere sight of the dull leather and shining steel felt like miserable weights dragging him down out of paradise and back into the real world, into the old world. A world of cruelty and fear, a world of demons and death. He put the belt on and went outside.
He plucked a grape from the vine beside his door and glanced up at the white saker falcon perched in the young acacia on his roof. Nezana stretched his pale wings and leapt into the sky in silence. The falconer watched him until he soared out of sight.
Good hunting, old friend.
“Will you patrol the north road again today?” Veneka called from inside.
“No, I’m going to wait at the fountain. They’ll be here soon.”
She came out dressed in green stripes, and each stripe tessellated with a different pattern of blocks, lines, and other shapes to create a riot of patterns flowing down her body. “But Raziel sent Vashti only yesterday afternoon. It will take two days at least for the djinn to arrive.”
“Djinn are fast when they want to be. They’ll be here soon.” He rested his hand on his sword and went to the fountain.
He found Raziel, the crystalline Angel of Life, standing on the surface of the water with his six great wings folded gently around himself like a flower not quite ready to bloom. The angel held a small dark lump in his hand.
“Good morning,” Zerai said. “Sleep well?”
“Better than last night,” Raziel answered.
It had started as a joke years ago, and long after the joke had gotten stale it became something else, a part of the rapport between the being of light and the man of clay who lived side by side in the green city.
If he could sleep, what would he dream about? Heavenly spheres? Mustard seeds?
What sort of bed would an angel lie on?
Zerai smiled.
The angel looked up. “A smile? At this hour of the morning? Please share.”
“It’s nothing. I was just thinking how sometimes it’s uncomfortable when Ven and I are in bed together, trying to sort out where to put the bottom arm, you know, under you or under her, or over the pillow. And I was just wondering how hard it would be to sort out where to put the bottom three wings.”
“Plus the arm.” Raziel winked.
“Right.” Zerai glanced up at the angel’s hand. “What’s that?”
“A dead moth. I found it in the orange tree a moment ago. Beautiful thing.” Raziel gazed down into his palm.
The falconer said nothing. A moment later, the dead moth fluttered its wings and flew away, and the angel smiled serenely after it.
“Don’t worry about the djinn,” Raziel said softly. “They don’t mean us any harm. I don’t know the d
jinn well, but I do know their nature. I saw their beginning, born of smokeless fire. They are wise and honorable, but they are also passionate people, and their passions can be very, well, grandiose.”
“Unlike the petty passions of us filthy humans.” Zerai squinted down a grassy lane at a young boy sleeping in a flower bed.
The angel shook his head. “Humans live brief lives. It’s only natural for those lives to be filled with brief cares. That is not to say that your hearts are any smaller or colder than those of the djinn. Only that while humans look out at the world, the djinn look up to the stars.”
Zerai sighed. “You and your riddles.”
“I like my riddles.”
“I like riddles when they’re funny. Do you know any funny riddles?”
“One or two.”
“Try me.”
“Very well. When is a… Visitors.”
Zerai looked sharply around and saw the three strangers emerging from the shadows of a narrow street not far from the fountain. Two women and a man, all wearing dark robes of flowing silk with small bags and packs over their shoulders. There was something vague and indistinct about the shape of their bodies as they strode through the shadows, but they came steadily into focus as they approached the fountain until Zerai could see every thread of their elaborately embroidered clothing.
The djinn wore bloody crimson and dark amber from head to toe, punctuated by tight black leather around their waists and wrists and feet. Only their faces could be seen, revealing three beautiful youths with unblemished skin and strangely bright eyes. None of them smiled, and none of them glanced about at their surroundings. They strode swiftly with dire purpose, and Zerai quickly looked about them for weapons. He saw none.
He forced himself to take his hand away from his sword.
The three djinn strode past him without a word and went to stand before the fountain and its divine keeper. They bowed low for a long moment, and then rose up again.
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 2
