The djinn cleric knelt to touch the earth and a wall of stone erupted from the ground in the middle of the road, directly in front of Azrael. The red rock thrust up and up, shaking the earth as it groaned and clawed its way into the sky. When it finally stopped, the wall stood as high as ten men and stretched a hundred paces from east to west, reaching far out into the tall green grass.
The hooded woman reached out to lay her hand gently on the jagged barrier before her. “Almighty God has decreed that all living things must die, and all creatures with souls must lose them at the moment of death. I am the knife with which God cuts the soul away, and I remember every cut. I see them now. The young, the old, crying, smiling, screaming, starving, falling, burning, bleeding, aching, freezing… It never ends.”
“Do you challenge the will of heaven?”
“No,” Azrael whispered. “I challenge the worthiness of humanity. To be given so much, a life, a world, a soul, and to throw it all away so recklessly, defying every commandment. And at such effort, such cost. Every day such multitudes go out into the world and bend all their strength and will to create suffering and death, to no end, not even their own survival, much less some perverse pleasure.”
Iyasu looked up sharply.
Darius. He already had everything this world could offer, and I gave him even more, and all he could think to do was to make that crown into a weapon.
And here stands Azrael, condemning our entire race for the same crime.
Could we really be so corrupt?
So pathetic?
All of us?
He sank down and sat in the road, and wept. Tears ran down his dusty cheeks and he choked on his sobs as he tried not to believe that all of humanity was nothing more than a nest of mindless, bloodthirsty vipers wriggling through rivers of their own blood and offal. But in his mind, the vision was all too real, too vivid. Centuries of war, centuries of slavery, centuries of hatred and murder and torture…
“I don’t hate God for making me what I am,” Azrael said. “I hate you for wasting what God gave you.”
The visions crashed through Iyasu’s mind in a maelstrom of faces contorted in pain, but he could imagine far more than just the anguish and terror of the victims because he had seen the lifeless gaze in Darius’s eyes, he had heard the hyena cackles of the killers, and he had watched how quickly and casually, how brutally and mindlessly innocents were murdered. And those memories came alive in excruciating detail, every flash of steel, every splash of blood, every bestial snarling lip on every coward giggling as he shoved something sharp through the warm, fragile flesh of a person who desperately wanted to go on breathing and thinking and feeling.
He saw them all, over and over again.
He imagined armies sweeping across the plains, and he pictured the individual soldiers kicking down doors, terrifying children and parents, hacking down people like trees, sculpting nightmarish scenes of gore and butchery in every home, stacking bodies like cordwood and burning them in heaps.
He imagined the women who weren’t killed, not right away…
And the children…
Iyasu pitched over and heaved the meager contents of his stomach in the dust as he sobbed and clawed at the ground, praying for oblivion, for sleep, for death, for anything that would silence the screams and banish the visions in his head.
I did it to them, me, it’s my fault, I did this, I killed them…
He blinked and shivered, and dragged his eyes up to look at the hooded woman still contemplating the stone wall before her.
And she knows. And God knows. Everyone knows…
He covered his eyes and wept until he couldn’t breathe.
And then he stopped.
When he finally looked up again, feeling cold and hollow and spent, he saw that no one had moved or spoken. The djinn still faced the angel, and the angel still faced the wall.
Azrael sighed and the wall of red rock towering above her shattered, exploding outward from its center to clear the road and hurl huge boulders out across the plain. Waves of dust full of sharp stone fragments blasted Iyasu in the face and he raised his arms to shield himself. Coughing, he lowered his hands and saw Azrael walking through the gap in the broken wall, still heading north.
“Where will you go?” he asked as loudly as his raw throat would allow.
“Maqari,” she said. “Tagal.”
“To do what?”
“To punish the guilty.”
The seer staggered up to his feet and into the arms of Zerai and Veneka who had finally caught up to him. They steadied him, and he pulled away to stand on his own. He screamed out, “You’re right! You’re right about everything. You’re right… but…”
The dark angel paused. “But?”
“But…” Iyasu swallowed. “But punishing the wicked won’t change anything. It won’t undo their crimes. It won’t save their victims. It won’t make the future better than the past. Punishment, vengeance, pain… it’s not enough, not nearly enough, to make a better world. Don’t you want to make a better world?”
And she said, so softly that he could barely hear her, “I am Death. I am the quiet knife and the still breath. I am the reaver of souls. I am not a creator of worlds.”
“But… you could be.” Iyasu let his hands fall to his sides. His chest ached and his throat burned. His strength and voice were gone. His eyes darted across the ground, not even searching anymore, just darting in confusion as his thoughts spun round and round, going nowhere.
Samira looked at him and then looked back at the woman in the Daraji clothing. “No more diplomacy. No more delays. Bashir, Petra, with me.”
Iyasu blinked and the three djinn flashed down the road like three streaks of shadow and light through the drifting clouds of dust. They converged on Azrael, and began whirling around her in a vicious storm of fists, knives, needles, and stones. The battle raged in a blur of blood-red cloth and dark hair and pale dust. At any given moment, Iyasu could only barely see a few fleeting images clearly.
Bashir’s bony hand as he hurled his needles.
Samira’s stoic face as she turned toward her enemy.
Petra’s naked leg as she thrust her foot between the angel’s sandals.
And all around the battle, great spears and mounds and arches of stone came roaring up out of the earth, some lancing straight at Azrael and some curving gracefully overhead before crashing down upon her. But all of them cracked and broke and shattered upon the darkly gleaming skin of the Angel of Death.
“Enough!” Azrael spread her wings once more, two great fans of black feathers that stretched across the width of the road, and as they expanded a powerful wind blasted the plains and sent the three djinn flying back toward the seer.
Iyasu stared at the angel as her wings faded to shadow and vanished into the air. She turned and resumed her journey north.
“It’s hopeless!” Petra yelled as she stood up and dusted off her skirts. “We can’t stop an angel.”
“We have to,” Samira said.
Bashir lurched up to his feet, his face lined and twisted with some horrible, silent pain as he stretched out his hand toward the angel and cried, “No! Please! Come back! I need you!”
The alchemist surged forward on his unsteady legs, but before he could vanish into a shadowy blur, Samira and Zerai caught his arms and dragged him back. He struggled against them, his neck drawn taught with a hundred pulsing veins as he strained against them, but after a few seconds of groaning through his clenched teeth his body fell slack and he crumpled against Zerai, his eyes squeezed shut as he shook and beat feebly on the falconer’s arm.
Zerai looked from Samira to Veneka and back in confusion. “Bashir? Why do you need her? What did you mean?”
The djinn pulled away, slowly rising to his full height, though his thin shoulders remained slumped around his bowed head. “Her soul… Azrael took her soul… I have everything else, but she, she took her soul, she can bring it back, I have to…”
Again
the alchemist turned and started after the angel, and again Zerai caught him and held him fast. “Hey, hey, calm down. Just tell us what’s going on. What are you talking about?”
Bashir stepped back and slowly took command of his breathing once more. When he was calmer, he said, “The bones I carry in my bag are the bones of a woman. A human woman.”
“I knew it!” Veneka glared at him.
“My wife.”
“What?” Veneka stared at the djinn.
“She died forty years ago during a plague,” Bashir said, gazing north at the dark figure slowly dwindling into the distance.
“Why do you have her bones?”
“Her bones and her ashes.” The alchemist sighed. “As well as purified water, salt, iron, and dozens of other materials. The materials of human life, all carefully measured and weighed and sealed away.”
“And what are you going to do with them?” Iyasu asked. “You can’t possibly think you can resurrect your wife?”
“No. I cannot bring my Talia back. That is beyond my skill,” Bashir said softly. “But it is not beyond the skill of Raziel or his clerics.”
Veneka blinked and then shook her head. “No, no. We cannot raise the dead. I can only heal the living.”
“You created an entire hand for Iyasu from nothing.”
“From him. From his living body,” the healer said.
Iyasu rolled his right hand into a fist and wrapped it up in his sleeve.
“You already asked Raziel, didn’t you?” Zerai said. “That’s what you were talking to him about, just before we left. He said it was something personal.”
“Yes,” Bashir said. “But he refused me. I waited forty years for the return of the Angel of Life, and he refused me.”
“Because it is impossible,” Veneka said.
“Not exactly.” The alchemist shook his angular head. “Raziel said he could only restore the flesh, but not the soul. When he said that, I thought my hopes were dead forever. But now, here is Azrael, the soul reaver herself. If she can call back Talia’s soul, then we can revive her body and make her whole again. Make her live again.”
Veneka glanced at Iyasu and Zerai. “No, I will not do that. I will have no part in it. It is wrong. She died, her soul moved on. That is the way of the world.”
Bashir stared into her with two dark pools of sorrow beneath his thin brows. “My Talia was only twenty-two years old when she died. We’d only been married half a year. Is that fair?”
“Life isn’t fair,” Samira said coldly. “And this matter is closed. Speak of it again and I will leave you imprisoned in stone at the side of the road until I am ready to return to Odashena.”
Bashir’s lip writhed and shook, but he said nothing as his dark eyes shimmered. Slowly, the tense circle around him stepped back and everyone turned to look at someone else, leaving the alchemist to grieve alone.
“So what now?” Petra asked. “Azrael is too powerful for us to drag back to Naj Kuvari.”
“Well, then we’re going to need some new ideas,” Zerai said. He nodded at the broken walls and spears and arches looming all around them like the ruins of an ancient city. “Because this is not working.”
“Clearly,” Veneka said. “But what can subdue an angel?”
“Another angel?” Edris shrugged. “Get another angel to fight her.”
“No, no more fighting.” Iyasu glanced at his hands. They wouldn’t stop shaking. “You can’t stop a wildfire with a torch. You can’t stop a flood with a bucket of water. More bloodshed isn’t going to end this.”
“What then?” Edris asked.
“Peace. We make peace.” The seer exhaled and his hands fell still. “We need to put someone honest and just on the throne of Maqari, someone who will end this peacefully.”
“And how do we do that?” the singer asked.
“We find the Crown Prince.”
“To oppose Darius and start a civil war? How is that going to stop the bloodshed?”
Iyasu paused as a new vision took shape in his mind’s eye, a vision of two armies poised to destroy each other within the walls of Tagal, and between them stood a black-winged figure. “I have a plan.”
Chapter 11
Zerai
On the second morning after the battle on the road, they sighted the city of Tagal on the banks of the Leyen River. Where Sabah had sprawled in a dazzling patchwork of towers and domes and bridges and shaded marketplaces, Tagal squatted like a fortress, a vast block of pale stone of straight lines and flat facades with level roofs and square corners. A dusty haze hung over the city, peppered with smoke and the shouts of soldiers giving and acknowledging orders in the distance.
“Well, as cities go, it’s fairly ugly,” Zerai observed.
“It’s functional,” Iyasu said.
“No, it’s definitely ugly,” Edris replied.
They continued down the dusty highway, but the traffic around them did not grow much louder or faster. Few riders or wagons passed them heading toward the pale city, and even fewer porters or merchants passed in the opposite direction.
Eventually Iyasu began directing them to take turns onto the roads to their right, angling away from the city gates and toward the river. Zerai kept his hand on his sword as he glanced up and down the lanes and alleys between the houses around them, but he saw no one. No men and women working, no children playing, no cats dashing about and no mice dashing before them.
“Is it supposed to be this quiet?” the falconer asked.
“No.” Iyasu pressed his lips tightly together.
“Where exactly are we going?” Samira asked.
“Prince Faris retired to one of his estates by the river,” the seer said. “It’s not far from here, and it’s not actually inside the city, so it may be safer for us to go there.”
“Safer?” Veneka frowned. “How unsafe is this place?”
“Well, there’s a call out for my execution if I ever return.” Iyasu managed a weak smile. “So for me, at least, it’s pretty unsafe.”
Zerai reached over and pulled the seer’s hood up over his head. “Are we going to have any trouble seeing the prince? He’s not exactly expecting us, and we’re not coming as ambassadors or anything. With his cousin slaughtering half the city, I wouldn’t be surprised if Faris isn’t in the mood to open his doors to strangers.”
“I’m no stranger,” Iyasu said. “He’ll see me.”
“I hope so,” Edris said. “For my sake.”
They continued quietly through the deserted neighborhood, casting wary glances through gaping doorways and windows at vacant rooms.
“Is everything all right?” Veneka asked the falconer.
Zerai looked at her. “What? Oh. Yeah, fine. Why?”
“You had that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The serious one.”
“That’s just my face.”
“No, really, are you all right?” she asked. “I would understand if you are not. I am not.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I am hunting the Angel of Death with an alchemist who wants to raise the dead,” she said calmly. “Nothing is right with that sentence.”
“Yeah, I know.” He paused. “So she kills people. She kills everyone.”
“No, not exactly. Azrael is not a murderer. She said it herself, she cannot kill people on her own. She is more like a gear in the machine of the universe. She does not create death. She is death. It is not something she does. It is something she is.”
“I guess. Still, she killed Kaleb. And Yusuf, and Nahom, and all the others.” He squinted at the sparkling glare dancing on the surface of the Leyen ahead of them.
“In a sense. But you cannot blame her for that.”
“No, I don’t blame her.” He paused. “But somewhere in her head are those memories. The memories of their deaths.”
Veneka nodded.
“She knows what Kaleb was thinking and feeling when they tied him to that stake and se
t him on fire.” Zerai spoke very quietly, not trusting his voice to stay steady, but it did. “She knows what his last moment was like.”
“Do you want to know what it was like?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“If she was standing here, would you ask her?”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think I could live with that.”
“Mm. You have not talked about Kaleb in a long time.”
Zerai tried to remember the last time he had mentioned the dead prince.
Months, at least. But then, why would I talk about him? That’s all in the past. Another life. Another world.
“You miss him.”
He nodded, but then smiled at her. “You know, I don’t really miss him now. He’s gone. He’s been gone for years. And that’s fine. I think I’m just still sad about that whole time, about how many of them…” He trailed off, not trusting his voice or his eyes to remain clear, and he needed to remain clear and strong. He cleared his throat. “So where are we going, anyway?”
“There.” Iyasu pointed.
At the edge of the river stood a tall house, three stories of pale gray stone with flat walls and square corners, and at one end stood a square tower that rose two stories taller than the roof, and a man paced across the top of the tower. At the base of the house there stretched wide green lawns with bright white walkways snaking around small, circular gardens of yellow flowers filled with blue butterflies. And all of this was visible through a massive, black, wrought iron fence topped with a line of shining spear-tips.
“What a lovely little villa,” Edris said. “I wonder if the good prince would appreciate the company of a skilled singer for a month or two.”
“I’m sure he would,” Iyasu said. “He does love music. And art. And food.”
“Be still, my jealous soul.” Edris grinned.
“And you really think we can convince him to depose Darius?” Zerai asked. “Because so far you’ve made it pretty clear that this prince hates the idea of wearing that crown, and with his streets running red with the blood of his own people, I can’t imagine he’s feeling eager to come out and play with his dear cousin.”
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 12
