“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re an angry little child trying to spit in God’s eye, and angrier still because you know you never will.”
Petra returned to her ripples in the water. “The clerics should have taken me. I was creating beautiful sculptures when you were still trying to stop stuttering, at twice my age. The things I could have created if Tevad had summoned me…”
“And how much of your life have you wasted, crying and complaining about it?” Samira kept her eyes on the river, focusing on the motion of the pole through her hands as she touched the riverbed and pushed the punt forward, again and again. “We aren’t chosen by the angels for our own gratification. We’re chosen to serve, which is something you still don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand. I just don’t care.”
“Oh my. You don’t care. Will revelations never cease?”
Petra laughed.
“You should care. There are places in the world where people pray to wooden gods they created from dreams and nightmares, never knowing true grace or peace,” Samira said, repeating an argument she had made at least a dozen times before. “We are immeasurably blessed to live within sight and reach of so many of God’s messengers, knowing the truth of creation, of life and death, and even being allowed to play our parts in the divine symphony. But no. Petra doesn’t care.”
“I care about me. That’s something, isn’t it?” The younger sister smiled. “And God made me, so I’m exactly what he wants me to be. So who are you to question his creation?”
“I’m his instrument. I do his will.”
“You make boats to ferry about filthy little humans.”
Samira tightened her lips for a moment. “I do my duty.”
Petra chuckled softly to herself.
Samira let the debate die, and the forest’s songs filled her ears. Toads and locusts creaked and croaked all around them, and she began to swing her pole in time with the pulsing sound.
After a while she glanced down and saw that, in addition to the humans, both Bashir and Petra were also asleep.
I suppose there is nothing better for them to do. Though it’s a bit odd. I would have thought a man with Bashir’s reputation would never leave himself so vulnerable, especially when surrounded by strangers.
Perhaps he knows something I don’t.
Or perhaps he’s not asleep at all.
Hours passed and Samira contented herself with the simple, repetitive task before her. Lift pole, swing forward, drop pole, push, and repeat. The boat glided smoothly down the center of the shallow river and she occasionally reached down into the sculpted wood to make small adjustments to the shape of the hull to speed them on their way.
Long after midnight had come and gone, she looked down at her sister. Her breathing sounded louder, more labored. Frowning, she focused on her sleeping passengers and realized they were all breathing harder, and murmuring, and shuddering. She peered closer and saw the heavy drops of sweat on their faces. They were shivering.
What is this?
She immediately turned the boat and drove it hard against the river bank. Kneeling down, she shook Petra and shouted her name, but her sister remained senseless and groaning as though in pain, or fear.
Samira checked each of her companions and failed to wake any of them, even when she slapped the falconer repeatedly in the face.
No! I cannot fail in my task, not here, not like this!
With the help of a few nearby tree limbs and a humble word of thanks to Tevad, Samira quickly moved the bodies of all five sleepers to the shore and began checking them for wounds, for signs of poison, for anything that might explain their state.
She found nothing.
Something rustled in the leaves above her, and in a flash she spun around and sent a dozen branches spearing upward into the darkness. A high-pitched shriek blasted down from the canopy and something warm spattered her cheek. Still she peered up into the blackness, waiting.
The leaves rustled again, violently shaking and moving from her left to her right. Again she sent the trees to fight the unseen creature, lancing out into the deep shadows with a dozen more living spears, but this time there was no shriek, no sound at all.
She recoiled and covered her face.
What is that stench!?
A strange odor of rotting fruit burned her nostrils and she touched the blood on her cheek to inspect it. She sniffed her fingers and confirmed the source of the odor. She was about to reach into her bag to strike up a torch when a sickening pain swam through her head, and then the world blurred away as the ground rushed up to meet her falling body.
Her thoughts stumbled through shadows and mists, lurching on unsteady legs as she clutched her aching, throbbing head. Her next coherent moment was an image, a place full of green walls and streets.
Naj Kuvari. I’m dreaming of the green city. And I know that I’m dreaming… something is very wrong here.
Samira began to walk through the vaguely familiar city, wondering if she might find and consult with a dream-shade of Raziel himself, when she turned a corner and found Veneka standing alone in a small courtyard. The healer was staring down at the ground, and when Samira came closer she saw that there was a freshly made grave in the center of the space.
“Who died?”
The healer did not answer.
“Veneka, I know this is a dream, but I don’t know why I would dream of you.”
“She can’t hear you.”
Samira turned and saw Iyasu walking toward her. The young seer looked exhausted, from his shadowed eyes to his uncertain steps, but he gazed steadily at her, and she said, “Are you to be my guide here? Is this a dream, or a vision? A revelation?”
“Neither. This is a shared madness, a trap, a prison for our minds.”
“Are you… are you the real Iyasu?”
“Yes. It took me a while to break out of my delusion and realize that we were all trapped here together. This is the real Veneka, but I don’t know how to help her yet.”
“If this is a prison, who is our jailor?”
“I don’t know.” The seer didn’t appear to be particularly worried about that point. “Probably some demon that needs us to be unconscious in order to eat us, which means it’s probably fairly small and weak.” He knelt down and touched the fresh grave.
“So how do we get out?”
“No idea.” Iyasu shrugged. “Clearly it’s not enough to realize that we’re in a prison, or else you and I would be free of it now. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Samira paused. “I was hunting something in the forest above me. It’s blood fell on my face. I smelled it, and I collapsed.”
“While the rest of us were asleep.” The seer stood up. “This creature needed us to be asleep to trap us here. But you weren’t asleep. You may not even be asleep now. Not really. The smell of the blood may have drugged you. Interesting.”
“Where are the others?”
“Not far.” Iyasu pointed vaguely down the city lanes.
Samira frowned at him. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” He squatted down again to consider the grave.
The djinn woman turned and hurried from the courtyard.
I thought he had more sense than the others, but the boy is just as foolish, if not more so. Doesn’t he understand that we could all die at any moment?
She passed a large amphitheater cut into the floor of the city and a figure caught her eye.
Petra!
Her sister was standing on the stage of the theater, alone, silently gazing up at the rows of seats. Thousands of people sat there, but none were looking at Petra. Every person there was speaking to someone beside them, and many of them were sitting with their backs to the stage.
“Petra?” Samira shook her sister to no avail.
She’s being ignored by the crowd. This is her fear, her prison is her fear of being ignored, overlooked, rejected. So obvious, and so petty. This is pointl
ess.
She left the amphitheater and moments later found the falconer staring at a poorly made doll in his hand. Samira hesitated beside him for only a moment, and then moved on.
There’s no telling what that means.
A few streets farther on she came upon the alchemist Bashir sitting in the middle of the street. The gaunt djinn had folded himself up and wrapped his arms around his knees to peer down at a skull sitting on the ground in front of him. As soon as she saw the skull, Samira backed away.
The death-worshipping lunatic is exactly what everyone says he is. Obsessed. And perhaps even insane.
I never should have brought him. No favor is worth having this sort of viper in our midst.
Samira hurried back to the courtyard where Iyasu remained contemplating the grave beside the silent healer. “I’ve seen them. I have no idea what to do. Maybe if I destroy the city, it will force them to realize what is happening.”
“I doubt your gift will work here.”
Frowning, the djinn woman touched the stone wall of the house beside her and for the first time in countless years, nothing happened. Nothing moved. Nothing flowed. She called upon Tevad in her mind, praying more than she had in ages, but still the stone remained unchanged. Her impotence in that moment stunned her.
“It’s all right. I think I have it,” Iyasu said. “I know whose grave it is.”
“Whose? Her lover, the falconer?” Samira tried to focus on the conversation to forget the dizzying sensation of helplessness she was feeling.
“No. If it was Zerai’s grave, it would be decorated with his possessions, and probably some flowers too. Besides, it’s too small.”
“Then whose grave is it?”
“It’s mine.” Iyasu stood up. “Years ago when we first met, I saved her. Now she’s afraid that she won’t save me. She’s doubting her skills, her faith, her strength.”
“You’re sure of that?”
That doesn’t seem quite right, but I suppose he knows her better than I do.
The earth began to shift and crack, and the grave erupted gently to allow four slender fingers to shove up into the warm air.
Samira and Iyasu flinched back and watched in mute fascination as the fingers pulled up a hand, and then an arm from the unmarked grave. The flesh on the arm had shriveled and paled, and the filthy cloth on it hung in shreds, but the face that broke through the crust of the earth was clearly that of the young seer.
Iyasu nodded once. “Very.”
As the corpse continued to emerge from its earthen bed, Veneka began to sob. She covered her face with her hands, but remained where she stood.
“What do we do?” Samira demanded.
If there are corpses coming to life here, there’s no guessing what horrors are appearing near Bashir and the falconer. And if I can’t use my gifts to defend us…
“I think I understand now.” Iyasu stepped in front of Veneka, standing between her and the dead incarnation of himself. “Veneka, look at me.”
The healer continued to cry softly into her hands.
“Veneka.” Iyasu took her hands and gently pried them from her face.
“Behind you!” Samira dashed forward as the dead seer stepped away from its grave and lunged at Iyasu’s back. The djinn cleric tackled the filthy corpse to the ground, but it pushed her back, forcing her away no matter how much she tried to hold it down. She tumbled off to one side, but as the dead youth reached for his living counterpart, Samira hurled herself against it again, forcing it farther away. “Hurry!”
“Veneka, I need you to hear me. I need you to see me.” Iyasu placed his hands on her face, his fingers curled around her cheeks and brows to lift her lids apart. “Look at me, Veneka. Look at Iyasu. He’s alive. He’s very much alive. He didn’t die. You didn’t let him die. You saved him. Iyasu is alive. Look!”
Samira couldn’t see what was happening. All she could see was the dead man trying to shove her away, trying to claw its way toward the healer. She smashed her fist into its dry, thin chest, but it only went on reaching and shoving. Its bony fingers lashed out at her face, two of them catching the edge of her lip and wrenching her face to one side.
She spat the fingers out. “Iyasu!”
“Veneka!” Iyasu shouted into the woman’s face and suddenly her eyes focused on him.
“Iyasu?”
Samira crashed forward as the dead body went limp, and as they fell against the stones the corpse disintegrated in a cloud of gray dust. The cleric grimaced and coughed, and twisted around to sit on the grass and squint at the others. “It’s gone. We’re safe, for the moment.”
“Iyasu? Where are we? The city?” Veneka turned to look behind her.
“There’s no time for that.” The young seer pulled her across the gravesite toward Samira. “I need you to heal her, now.”
“Of course. What’s wrong with her?” Veneka knelt down beside her.
“Nothing.” Samira frowned. “I—”
“She’s been poisoned, or drugged,” Iyasu interrupted. “Quickly!”
The healer laid her hands on the djinn woman and Samira felt the world grow dim and vague and warm…
She blinked. The droning of locusts and bullfrogs filled her ears, and the soft churning of the river played just behind her. Samira sat up among the tall reeds, squinting through the darkness at the shapes of her companions lying on the bank of the river.
I’m awake. He did it. He figured it out. But that means…
The leaves above her rustled loudly as the branches shuddered against each other. Samira grabbed the nearest root in one hand and thrust her other hand skyward, and the forest answered her. Three hundred wooden spears flew up from the earth so quickly that they blew the scarves from the cleric’s head and sent her long black hair dancing through the warm air. The spears raced up into the canopy, some of them splitting and crooking to pierce the leaves at wild angles.
A moment later, a small black body thumped down on the tall grass nearby. Samira stood up and saw the misshapen bat lying very still with the broken tip of one of her spears through its chest.
It’s done.
With a sigh, she carefully smoothed back her hair and tucked it down into her robes where it belonged, and restored the layers of silken wraps over her head. She had just finished when she heard her companions begin to move and mutter behind her.
“You got it?” Iyasu asked softly.
“Yes. It’s here, whatever it is.” She pointed to the bat.
The seer limped over, rubbed his eyes, and glanced at the dead thing. “A blood drinker, but changed by the ancient clerics to paralyze its victims in dreams.”
“My people have a name for dream-walkers,” Samira said. “Vandellas.”
Iyasu nodded wearily and went back to help Veneka and Zerai wake up, and to explain in as few words as possible what had happened.
“So when I showed Veneka that she didn’t let me die, it shattered the illusion. Then she healed the toxin in Samira’s blood that made her fall unconscious, and Samira killed the… vandella.” Iyasu leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.
Zerai stared up at the dense forest of spears all around them reaching high up into the leaves. “I can see that.”
“Yes.” Veneka touched his cheek and gave him a stern look. “And there isn’t a scratch on us. Not on any of us.”
The falconer tightened his mouth, but nodded.
“So you saw our fears?” Petra pulled her sister aside. “My fears?”
“I did. But don’t worry,” Samira said. “No one cares.”
“And them? What are their fears?”
Samira shrugged. “The falconer was holding a doll. Something about a child, I suppose. Bashir was holding a skull.”
“No surprises there.” Petra glanced at the alchemist standing alone at the water’s edge. “How many of them did he kill, anyway? Eight? Nine?”
“More than that, I think.”
“Hm.” Petra’s glare softened. “And Zerai w
as looking at a doll? Do you suppose he’s afraid of dying childless?”
“Or of losing a child, perhaps.”
“What about the other one, Iyasu? What’s his fear?”
“He didn’t say.” Samira stepped back onto the boat and took her position in the stern with the pole on her hand. She looked over at the travelers, still sitting and rubbing their eyes and wiping away the cold sweat of the ordeal. The djinn woman cleared her throat and said, “Is everyone ready to go on now?”
Chapter 5
Iyasu
The next day found the young seer sitting on the river bank in a patch of warm sunlight and staring at the rippling surface of the water as visions of death rippled through his mind.
His thoughts dove deeper, trying to focus on the water, on the layers of cold and warmth, on the fish and the crabs, on the eels and snails, on the stones and roots barely exposed on the river bottom. He could see them all just from the thin lines and rolling peaks on the water’s surface, but there wasn’t enough life or mystery in the depths of the Dusk Leyen to fill up his thoughts.
Darius.
He split Malkat’s head just left of center, the blade passing through his eye before shattering his jaw. Three of his teeth landed beside my foot.
And Darius just walked away. Told someone to clean up the mess.
The mess.
My mess.
He could hear the others talking. Samira was searching for a teak tree to make their next boat, one that would be larger and faster, with sails.
To hurry us back into that cesspool, into that blood storm.
Iyasu drove his fingernails back over his scalp, hoping the pain would clear his mind.
It didn’t.
The group wandered apart. Veneka went with Samira into the forest. Bashir sat on the river bank farther downstream by himself. Iyasu turned his head ever so slightly to squint at the alchemist’s bag.
It’s three times larger than Samira’s bag. Lumpy, crooked, and heavy. The fabric has been rubbed in places, leaving them faded and frayed. And I can see the shapes of jars and bottles, but there are other hard objects inside it too. Lots of them. Tools, maybe. Or weapons.
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 5
