“No.” Samira stared coldly at him. “We are not some band of wandering beggars or potters or singers. We have a grave task before us and we have no time for stragglers.”
“Stragglers?” The singer grinned at her as he continued up the road with Petra at his side. He took several long strides before glancing back again. “You’re the one lagging behind me, lady. Must be all that extra weight you people are carrying around. Left arms. Pfft.”
Veneka smiled and followed them. “Do you have a name?”
“I do.”
“And it is?”
“Edris Lumah.”
They continued on toward the lone baobab for a moment in silence.
“So where are we going?” Edris asked, smiling brightly. “I can’t help but notice we’re on the northern road to Tagal, which is not an entirely safe place to be these days. There’s been talk of war around here.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Iyasu said. “To stop the war.”
“Really? How noble,” the singer said. “And how does one stop a war, exactly?”
“By capturing the woman who’s been attacking the Maqari troops.”
Edris frowned. “Now, I don’t claim to know much about these things, but I do know that woman is dangerous. If half the stories about her are true, she must be a demon in disguise.”
“All of the stories are true,” Iyasu said. “But we’re not hunting a demon, friend. We’re hunting an angel.”
“A what now?”
Veneka strode past the baffled singer in order to keep pace with Samira, who was moving much faster now that the small house in the shadow of the tree could be seen. “Do you have a plan?”
The djinn woman looked at her sharply. “No. We can’t restrain her, we can’t poison her. I’m trying to admit to myself that our best chance at bringing this woman back to Naj Kuvari may be the young seer’s words after all, but I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. He is so fragile right now.” Veneka glanced back at the youth talking to the Vaari singer. “And he is still struggling with the loss of his hand.”
“What loss? He has two hands.”
“It would have been better if he had not seen the injury before I healed him. I wonder if he dreamt of it last night. I wonder if it gave him nightmares.”
“If it did, then he should sleep less,” Samira said. “You all should. It’s a waste of precious time.”
As they approached the small house, a dim figure emerged from its shadow and came toward them. Bashir glided toward Samira and said, “The woman is still inside. She pretends to sleep.”
“Pretends?” Veneka asked.
“Yes. She opens her eyes whenever she hears the wind in the tree branches, or a bird.”
The group stopped and stood at the side of the road, looking at the ancient house of dusty stone and rotting wood. The baobab tree loomed over it like a petrified monster, its small bare branches raised high above its enormous trunk.
“There is another possibility,” Veneka said quietly to Iyasu. “She could be the cleric of another angel, one unknown to us. A western magi, perhaps?”
Iyasu shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“So now what?” Zerai asked.
“Let me try.” Veneka started forward alone. “After all, I am harder to hurt than any of you.”
“I don’t like that plan,” the falconer called out.
“I know,” she called back.
As she approached the house, she slowed her breathing to focus on the healing warmth of Raziel, hoping to strengthen herself just a little to prepare for any pain that might be forthcoming. She reached the door and paused to listen, but heard nothing. She knocked. “My name is Veneka Mahova. I am a cleric of Naj Kuvari, a disciple of Holy Raziel. I’m a healer. I have no weapons. I only wish to talk. Can I come in?”
For a moment, silence, and then, “Come in, little sister.”
Veneka stepped inside and found the hooded woman lying on the floor on her side, her dark dresses and bright Daraji jewelry hanging and pooling around her body in awkward lumps and tangles. The healer sat down on the bare dirt floor across from her.
“Is Raziel really alive again?” the woman whispered.
“He is, and he is teaching a new generation of healers as we speak.”
“Good.” She paused. “I was surprised when he died. Angels are hard to kill.”
“My friend Iyasu thinks you are an angel, too. If anyone else had said it, I would not have listened, but he is a seer, an Arrahim, so I have to wonder… are you an angel?”
“I used to think so.”
“I am sorry, I do not understand.” Veneka leaned forward. “Is that why you did not kill the soldiers last night? Because you think you are an angel? Because killing is evil?”
“Killing isn’t evil. Killing is mercy. It’s the world that’s evil,” the woman said casually. “I’ve killed more people than there are stars in the sky. I’m killing them now. So many children. Their faces…”
Veneka nodded.
She is insane. An insane Sophirim? But perhaps with Iyasu’s help, I can heal her. I have never tried to heal madness, but Iyasu has…
“I’m not insane.” The woman looked up with bright golden eyes that seemed to glow faintly against the darkness of her cheeks and hair.
Veneka looked away, looking for anything to change the subject. “What is this place?”
“A house.”
“Your house?”
“At the moment, it is our house. It houses us. But when we leave it will crumble to dust and no one will remember that it was ever here. Look at the walls. Cracks. Scrapes. Gouges. A lifetime of violence etched into its skin and bones.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
“No one… everyone…”
Veneka took a slow breath. “Is it all right if my friend Iyasu comes in too? He would like to meet you, and maybe together we can help you.”
“Can you change the word of God?”
Veneka blinked. “No.”
“Then you cannot help me.” The woman sat up slowly, her hair and clothing only partially falling into place around her. “There is one thing that helps. I can show you.” She stood up and walked past Veneka and out the door into the dusty road.
Veneka followed her and in the distance, just beginning to march over the crest of a low rise, she saw a line of men coming down the road from the north. “Soldiers?”
“They’re coming to kill people,” the woman said as she placed her dark hood over her dark hair. “I cannot stop them. Their victims will die, in agony and in fear, men and women and children.”
“Why can you not stop them?” Veneka glanced over her shoulder to signal Zerai and the others that she was all right.
“I don’t choose who dies, or when. I simply kill them,” the woman said as she watched the soldiers march closer and closer. “I slice their souls free and send them flying away from this world, from this so-called life.”
“But you are not going to kill these soldiers?”
“No.” The woman began walking up the road. “It’s not their time yet.”
Veneka stood alone, pondering the stranger’s words, as her companions gathered around her to ask, “What did she say?”
“She thinks she might be an angel,” the healer said. “She spoke of death and dying and killing. She says she kills, but she does not kill. It made no sense to me.”
“And now she’s going to fight that little army there?” Zerai raised his eyebrows. “By herself? Unarmed?”
“And I wish her well,” Edris said loudly. “But isn’t that all the more reason for us to be moving away from this place? Perhaps to somewhere with fewer people with an interest in killing?”
“No, I need to see this,” Iyasu said. “Wait in the house, if you want.”
The singer looked back at the rotting shack. “Thank you, no.”
They all watched the lone woman walk up the road toward the column of armored men. She stopped
and stood in their path, and they marched past her, flowing around her like a stream around a stone. And when half the column had passed, so that she stood in the center of their number, the hooded woman raised her fists and screamed.
The mass of soldiers reacted like a single living thing, first flinching away from her, and then converging upon her with swords drawn.
They never reached her.
Ayen Tanzir ran riot through their ranks, moving nearly as fast as a djinn, smashing her bare hands through the soldier’s armor and hurling the terrified men across the fields where they fell like hail stones upon the earth. Mangled swords and broken spears flew through the air wherever the Daraji woman struck, scattering men and metal with every gesture of her hands.
Moments later it was over. The men lay strewn across the road and the meadows, groaning and gasping and shaking. Their weapons lay in shards and splinters in the grass.
And the hooded woman walked slowly away upon the northward road.
“I’m no expert.” Edris Lumah cleared his throat. “But she doesn’t act much like an angel to me.”
Chapter 10
Iyasu
The young seer paused, watching the hooded woman walking toward the horizon, and then he turned to the tall djinn alchemist. “Bashir, would you mind helping me? I’d like a word with her.”
The tall man glanced at him and then at the woman, and nodded. He hooked his arm around Iyasu’s slender waist, and then the seer felt a freezing blast of wind in his face for a long moment, forcing him to shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the wind was gone and he was standing in the road beside the alchemist. Now his companions were far behind near the old house and just beginning to hurry up the road after him, and Ayen Tanzir was only just about to walk by.
“Hello,” he said. “My name is Iyasu Sadik. What’s yours?”
The woman sighed and continued on.
He followed at her side. “I don’t pretend to know what you’re thinking or feeling. I could guess, but I’d rather just hear the truth from you. Who are you?”
“Death. Pain.” She shook her head. “A dying light.”
“You’re dying?”
“Always.”
“Always dying?”
Iyasu glanced back and saw Veneka tending to some of the injured soldiers as Zerai hovered over her with his sword in his hand. Edris lingered near them, and Petra did not pace far from the singer. Only Samira hurried to catch up, and when she did she stayed at a discreet distance behind the seer, walking quietly beside the gaunt alchemist.
How do you reach an angel? What can I possibly say that will make her stop?
“I know Darius Harun,” he said. “I served Prince Faris. I was the one who told the prince to put Darius on the throne.”
The woman stopped. “Why?”
“He was a good leader. He was, once. But he… changed.” Iyasu gazed up at her. She was half a head taller than him and when the wind nudged her dark cloak it revealed her bare arms, wrapped in ancient leather straps and bound in iron muscles clad in unblemished brown skin. “I saw him begin the killings in Tagal. The first ones, I was there. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.”
“I see.” The woman continued walking.
He hurried after her. “Please, can you tell me who you are?”
She whirled on him and grabbed him by the shoulders with hands that burned like white-hot stars. “I am your death. I will kill you, and everyone you love, and everyone you hate. And you’ll never see me do it, but I’ll see you. I see them all. I feel them all, for one blinding instant. The instant of death, the last moment of fear, doubt, regret, rage, sorrow, and chaos. That’s who I am.” She shoved him away and staggered up the road with her one hand pressed to her head.
“You’re death?” He stared at her. “The Angel of Death?”
She walked on.
The Angel of Death is a woman wandering alone down a dusty highway, shattering armies with her bare hands, and holding her aching head.
Iyasu’s mouth worked for a moment before the words began to come out, like a well needing to be pumped before the water finally gushed forth. “Azrael. You’re Azrael, the Angel of Death and Vengeance. In the library at Shivala I read about him, her, you…” He swallowed and willed himself to shut up.
She had stopped again, and now stood with her back to him. She turned and said, “My name is Ayen Tanzir. I was born in the Daraji Massif. I’m no angel.”
“No, no. You are an angel. I can see it clearly now.” He walked slowly toward her, and the sight of her burned his eyes as he saw for the first time the way the heat curled off her skin like smoke, the way the light danced in her eyes without reflecting the sun, the way the ends of her hair floated in the air without any breeze. And despite the light of the morning sun, he could almost see the pale haze of her soul wreathing her head. “You’re Azrael.”
She turned and raised her arms, and two enormous raven wings cascaded outward and upward from her back, hurling her hair and clothing into a flapping torrent around her body. Her eyes blazed so brightly that her dark irises vanished into pools of molten gold, and her hair drifted upward as small stones and clouds of dust rose into the air where they floated like leaves upon still waters.
“Yes, I am,” she whispered.
Iyasu felt his back and legs aching as every muscle in his body contracted. He couldn’t move his hands or feet, or even turn his head from the sight before him. The terror poured from his mind straight down his throat to his bowels, hollowing out his entire body so that he wanted to collapse in upon himself and scream and cry all at once, but he couldn’t.
He couldn’t even breathe.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and shoved him hard to the side, and a moment later he crashed down into the hard earth of the road. His view of the dark angel changed abruptly to that of dirt and pebbles, and the pain in his shoulder shook him loose, and he could move and think a little.
What just happened?
Looking up, he saw Bashir standing over him and Samira just beyond. The djinn cleric had her hands raised and a dozen slender spears of stone were thrusting up from the ground between them and the winged figure. But no sooner had the spears risen up than a blast of wind shattered them into a screaming rain of stone slivers flying out across the fields. The angel stared at them with her golden eyes, bright and blank, empty and without end.
Iyasu stood up clutching his throbbing shoulder. “Stop, stop!” He pushed past Bashir and grabbed Samira’s wrist.
“She is a renegade!” Samira cried. “An angel who defies the will of God!”
“No, she isn’t!” Iyasu pushed the djinn woman back with what little strength he had in his thin arms. “That’s not it at all. She still serves. She’s serving heaven at this very moment. And that’s the problem.”
He turned and looked up at the black-winged harbinger looming over him. “Isn’t it?”
Azrael, the Angel of Death and Vengeance, closed her eyes. Her wings faded into shadow and vanished, and as her floating hair fell back to her shoulders all of the stones and dust drifting through the air crashed back down to the road. She opened her eyes, revealing two dark irises that stared straight back into him, offering him nothing, telling him nothing.
“How many?” he asked.
“Billions,” she whispered.
“How long?”
“Eons.”
He nodded, unable to fathom those numbers into graves or days. Still in the middle of his second decade of life, the idea of a century seemed like more time than any person would ever need to grasp. But an eon? Ten thousand years…
And not just one. Eons. Tens of thousands of years…
Billions of deaths.
Billions of faces.
Billions of moments of terror and suffering.
He swallowed and found his throat almost too sore to do so. “I’m so sorry.”
She turned away.
“But this has to stop,” he said. “The violence has to sto
p. If you don’t, then Darius will just kill more innocents, and you’ll have to see and feel all those deaths. To stop those killings, you need to stop punishing the killers. You need to stop.”
The hooded woman paused, her hand tightening into a fist. “You can’t possibly understand.”
“I know that.” Iyasu looked away, hoping to see some sign on the western horizon that would inspire him, guide him, tell him what to say. But all he saw were acacias dotting the plain. The slender trees stood alone, their fragile branches spreading out to shade the earth, as well as a lone lioness lying in the grass far away. The huge cat raised its head to look at them, and then lay back down.
Iyasu clenched his jaw for a moment and looked back at the woman. “There’s blood on my hands. Every crime that Darius has committed, or will commit, is my fault. Every death, every moment of pain and fear. And I can never atone for that, never bring the dead back, never comfort the families for what they’ve lost. But I can still do something, I can help the people who are still alive. And so can you.”
“The ones who are still alive… just haven’t died yet,” she said. “They will.”
Iyasu nodded slowly.
She’s immortal, and every moment of every day is filled with more memories of death. How can I make her care more about our brief lives than her endless torment?
He turned, hoping that Zerai and Veneka would have some insight from their time with Raziel that might help, but before they could say anything, the alchemist strode past him.
“Holy Azrael!” Bashir clutched the straps of his bag. “You are the death of every person in this world. You take their souls.”
The hooded woman said nothing.
“Can you call a soul back?”
The woman studied the djinn man for a moment, but there was no curiosity or passion in her eyes. She turned away and resumed walking up the road.
Iyasu stared at the alchemist.
Why on earth would he ask that?
“Holy Azrael!” Samira strode after the woman with the Daraji chains jangling around her hips. “I know you cannot kill me, and so you cannot stop me from pursuing you. Holy Raziel has commanded me to bring you to him, and I will not rest until I have fulfilled that commandment.”
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 11
