The warmth came, filling her hands with a soft buzzing of life, and the feeling of the cold, hard bones faded from under her fingertips, but she did not open her eyes. Instead she clung to the idea of Talia, the idea of a young woman in need of her help, in need of healing. Every few moments she moved her fingers slightly, and she registered the changes taking place. Soft things, warm things, were growing around the bones.
It’s nothing I haven’t done before. It’s no different from restoring Iyasu’s hand or Edris’s arm.
The soldiers went on shouting orders and swinging axes, and the old house continued to groan and shudder as it bled ash through its many splintered wounds.
The alchemist began to breathe faster and louder, and Veneka opened her eyes to see him wrapping his long thin fingers around a smaller, softer hand. She looked down and saw that all the jars were empty and her hands were now resting on the arm of a living, breathing woman. Talia was a short woman with wide hips and small breasts, and her reddish brown hair made a thick pillow around her head. Her lips were full and parted slightly, and her eyelids were opened just enough to reveal large, dark brown irises.
Bashir babbled something in a language that Veneka had never heard before, and he slipped his arms around his wife and lifted her shoulders so he could hold her close, gently pet her hair, and chastely kiss her cheeks and lips. The woman hung limp in his arms, eyes unblinking, chest only barely rising and falling.
Veneka moved back a little.
God, forgive me if this is wrong, but… I do not think it is wrong. It is a kindness.
The thumping of boots over their heads grew louder and faster. Men shouted, steel clanged, and the ceiling began to crack and splinter, raining the first few boards on their heads. Veneka shielded herself with her arm as she looked upward.
This is it. The end.
Zerai dashed to her side and they stood together, arms wound tightly around each other, staring into each others’ eyes.
He looks scared.
He looks beautiful.
“I love you,” she said. She kissed him hard before he could answer, sending her tongue surging into his mouth, digging her fingers into his unruly hair to hold his head tightly against hers so she could feel the heat of him, and smell him, and taste him for the last time.
The old house groaned, and the world caved in upon them.
Chapter 18
Iyasu
Smoke rose slowly in three places to the north of the palace. Iyasu squinted in the darkness, counting rooflines to estimate how far away the fires were.
“If you go, you may die,” Azrael said.
“My friends are down there somewhere. They don’t know the city like I do. And Faris will slow them down, if he’s still alive.”
“He is.”
Iyasu looked at the angel. “You mean…?”
“I haven’t loosed the soul of Faris Harun. Not yet.”
He looked back at the smoke.
Well, that’s something.
“I need to find them.” Iyasu started down the steps of the old library. They had been standing and talking on the high walkways between the massive pillars, a place that gave them an impressive view of the city, and it was a long descent back down to the street. He paused and looked up to see the hooded woman still standing in the shadows. “Are you coming?”
“Why?”
He blinked. “To help.”
“I cannot.”
“You can level an army with a wave of your wings. That would help.”
“I cannot interfere. I have my commands.”
“From God?”
She nodded.
“And what are those commands, exactly?”
“To free the souls of all living things upon the moment of bodily death, without exception or hesitation. And to never cause the death of any living thing through my own actions.”
“I don’t see a problem.”
“I can’t kill your enemies.”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone.” He smiled uneasily. “In fact, I don’t want anyone to kill anyone. But if someone were to attack me, I think it would be all right if you brushed them aside, or tossed them several city blocks away. Saving one person doesn’t have to mean killing another. Think of it less as battle and more as extremely timely punishment for crimes of violence.”
“It won’t change anything,” she said. “Everyone still dies.”
“But maybe we can change those deaths. Instead of moments of terror and agony, they can be moments of contentment, fulfillment, even clarity.”
Azrael tilted her head back to look at the stars. “Those deaths are… gentler.”
“Imagine a world of only gentle deaths.”
“Impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible.”
“Many things are.”
“Well, this isn’t one of them. Just imagine it. Imagine them flowing through your mind. Thousands of happy, contented old men and women slipping peacefully away from one good life in search of their next purpose in the universe. No more fear, no more pain. Just the gentle transition from one paradise to another. Can you imagine that?”
“That… would be a better world.”
He held out his hand to her. “Then come with me. At least try.”
The angel stared at him, small lines rising and falling around her eyes and forehead and mouth as countless unknown thoughts and memories and feelings and desires flooded through her ancient soul. And then her lip twitched. It was not smile, but perhaps, given practice, it could become one. And she said, “I suppose I am free to try, at least.”
She descended the steps and together they reached the dark streets and headed north toward the palace and the columns of smoke rising to blot out the stars. But they hadn’t gone very far before a dark shape raced up beside them and resolved into the familiar features of Samira Nerash.
“Finally.” She looked sternly at the seer. “I had to search half the city to find you.”
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“No.” She eyed the angel coldly. “Darius’s legions returned from Ovati and freed him from prison, and now they’re marching on the palace by the thousands. Faris is hopelessly outnumbered. Fortunately, he seems to have left the palace already. I was just there. It’s deserted.”
Iyasu rubbed his eyes.
Darius Harun. Darius Harun. What is it about that man that I can’t figure out? Why did he turn on the people? Why do the legions love him? Why can’t we have peace?
“I came to get you to safety,” Samira said. “You need to get off the streets. Darius will be looking for you.”
“I know.” Iyasu sighed. “Where is Veneka? And the others?”
The djinn cleric arched an eyebrow. “It’s hardly the time to be worrying about others. We need to worry about ourselves at the moment.”
He frowned. “What about your people, Bashir and your sister? Don’t you care about them?”
“Bashir is a monster, and my sister wants to become a monster in the eyes of heaven. They are not my concern right now. You are.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because I serve Holy Raziel, and he cares for your safety.”
“He cares about Veneka and Zerai, too. He cares about everyone!”
“I can’t protect everyone, but I can protect you. Come with me.” She took his arm and began marching him back toward the library.
He shook her off. “No. We’re going to find the others and make sure they’re all right.”
“We?” Samira looked from him to Azrael. “Are you a part of this now? Have you given up your obsession with punishing the wicked and starting wars?”
The angel nodded. “For tonight.”
Samira narrowed her eyes. “I hardly like that answer. But we both know there’s nothing I can do to stop you. So let’s hurry.” She turned and led them in the opposite direction.
“Where are we going?” Iyasu followed her.
“To get our people.”
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“You know where they are?”
“Of course I do.”
They hurried through the dark streets, sometimes seeing no one at all and sometimes seeing small herds of frightened people of all ages and states of dress running south away from the palace. They moved in silence until they finally turned a corner onto a broad boulevard and saw the roadway choked with soldiers all converging on a single house that bore the telltale signs of having been partially destroyed by a fire not too long ago.
“Are they in there?” Iyasu pointed to the house.
“They are.” Samira folded her arms across her chest. “But there are too many soldiers for me. Perhaps our new friend would care to lend a hand?”
Iyasu turned to Azrael as the immortal woman pushed her hood back from her hair to let the starlight fall on her face. The cold emptiness he had seen in her eyes seemed to have changed, given way to something more thoughtful, more alive. She studied the chaos in the distance, the men yelling and passing axes and hurling burnt timbers out into the street.
“Remember,” the angel said with her eyes still fixed on the soldiers. “No one will die.”
Iyasu reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “I’m counting on it.”
Azrael nodded and strode away. When she had crossed half the distance to the men, they saw her and some started toward her, shouting and leering. When she had crossed another quarter of the distance, two magnificent black wings unfurled from her back, stretching wide enough to scrape the dusty faces of the houses on either side of the broad boulevard, and the men fell silent as they raised their swords and spears. And then she struck.
Iyasu felt the shockwave only an instant after he saw the angel move her wings, and the blast of wind and dust hurled him back several steps until Samira caught his arm and held him steady. When the wind stopped stinging his eyes, he looked up and saw that most of the soldiers were lying scattered across the road like a child’s toys carelessly abandoned in the wake of some strange play. Coughs, groans, and unintelligible words broke the silence as the angel’s dark wings faded from sight.
“You see, there is another way, a better way.” Iyasu headed toward the burnt house.
Samira followed. “Yes, I suppose if one has the power of an angel, then one can stop a war without any loss of life. If only the heavenly father had seen fit to make us all angels.”
“I know, I know.” Iyasu waved her comment away. “I just meant, a good person with immense power can do immense good. That’s all.”
“The Angel of Death is hardly a person.”
“Of course she is.” He frowned at her. “Should I question whether you’re a person? You’re made of fire and can run like the wind, and live for centuries.”
“Wonderful qualities, I agree. But irrelevant to the question of my soul, my free will. Angels have neither.”
“You’re wrong on both counts.” Iyasu grinned. “Azrael can’t choose to be evil, but she can choose to do good. Which she just did, by the way.”
“And her soul?”
“It looks a lot like yours, actually.”
“Looks?”
“Didn’t you know? Seers can see souls. Human, djinn, and angel.”
They strode up to where Azrael still stood, watching the injured soldiers lie unconscious or crawl slowly away from her. She pointed at the empty doorway of the house. “I can hear them, in the cellar I think, but the building is collapsing.”
Iyasu peered inside and saw that the entire roof had fallen in and now lay piled upon the upper floors at his feet with many smashed articles of furniture trapped between them. A continuous patter of cracks and snaps filled the air as the damaged beams and planks crushed each other, swiftly running toward their mutual destruction. The seer saw it all in an instant and he reached back behind him to grab Samira. “Get them out, quickly!”
The cleric raised her hands just as the last beam crackled and the entire heap of shattered roofing and flooring plunged into the cellar.
“No!” he cried.
For the second time a blast of dust struck him in the face and he stumbled back as a handful of large wooden shards flew up at his legs and chest. “Veneka! Zerai!”
The silence was horrifying.
He stared down at the wreckage of the house, now all lying in a heap below the level of the street. Nothing moved. And then he heard a man’s laughter.
“Iyasu? Is that you?” The answer was muffled and distant, but it was clearly the falconer.
“Zerai! We’ll get you out!” Iyasu peered around Samira’s raised arms. “Help them, please!”
“I am,” the djinn Tevadim muttered.
“Zerai, are you all right?” he yelled.
“We’re fine,” Zerai called out. “We’re all fine. Just a little dust in my mouth. Tastes like moldy bread.”
Iyasu frowned only for a moment, and then beamed at Samira. “You’re amazing!”
Samira said nothing as she slowly raised her arms and the entire mass of crushed and shattered wood rose up and slid off to their right to reveal an arching wall of stone protecting the left side of the cellar. As the wall curled back and pushed the refuse away, the starlight fell on a small sea of faces.
Iyasu slumped against the doorframe. “Thank God.”
Samira cleared her throat.
“And thank you, too,” he added.
It only took a few moments for Samira to secure the unstable remains of the house with her new wall, and then she raised a flight of stone stairs from the cellar floor to help everyone back up to the street, and soon they were standing together in the cool night breeze. There was a brief flurry of happy, relieved embraces, but they were cut short when the last of their number emerged from the cellar.
Bashir stepped out onto the street with a naked woman lying limp across his arms. He looked from one person to the next, and in a small voice he asked, “What do I do?”
Again it only took Iyasu a moment to realize what had happened and he stared at Veneka, wondering what words or actions had prompted her to do this.
It doesn’t matter now. A body without a soul. I suppose it will starve to death in a few days, and then he’ll have to bury and mourn her all over again.
Bashir staggered forward, searching the faces around him, but everyone looked away, saying nothing. He paused by Veneka, who shook her head and said, “There is nothing else I can do. I can only heal the body, and hers is alive and healthy.”
The alchemist turned and when he saw Azrael standing away from the group, he lurched toward her. “Holy Azrael! Please, you’re the only one who can save her. Talia’s body is whole again, but her soul is still lost to me. Please bring her back to me now. We don’t have much time, and I can’t lose her again, I can’t watch her die again. Please, bring her back. Please.”
He held the body up a bit higher, and the angel retreated, saying, “I cannot.”
“But… you have to.”
“Her soul was freed the moment her body died.”
“But her body isn’t dead anymore, look!”
Iyasu plunged between them. “No, stop, there’s nothing she can do. It’s not in her power to call back a soul from wherever it has gone after death. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“No.” His eyes shone with tears and his lip twisted down. “No, there can’t… There has to be… She’s here, she’s breathing, she’s warm. It’s her, just look at her, this is Talia, my Talia, back from the dead!”
“It’s a miracle that you were able to do this,” Iyasu said gently.
“He wanted to see her face again,” Veneka said, gesturing to the collapsed house behind them. “One last time, before he died.”
Iyasu nodded at her and looked back at him. “I understand. I do. But nothing else can happen here. You need to be grateful for this moment, this chance to see her and hold her one last time. And then you need to let her go.”
Bashir shook his head and the tears fell from his eyes.
Iy
asu sighed and turned, and noticed the way the pale moon light fell across the huge curve of Petra’s belly. “Oh my.”
“Everyone, I hate to ruin this awkward moment with more bad news, but, well, there’s more bad news,” Zerai said. He was standing out in the middle of the road, looking north toward the palace. “More soldiers.”
“Can’t the angel get rid of them?” Edris asked. “Just, you know, send them flying into a nice cozy wall somewhere?”
“I can’t kill them,” Azrael said. “They’ll recover and return.”
“Well, we can kill them,” Edris said.
“No, no one’s killing anyone,” Iyasu said loudly.
“Then we can tie them up.” The singer pointed to a soldier wheezing on the ground nearby. “You knock them down, we tie them up. After a few days, it’s all over and no dies. Right?”
Iyasu frowned as he turned to the angel. “Could we really do that? Could you subdue tens of thousands of men for us to imprison, one by one?”
“I could.” She looked down at him, pressing her lips together as a few faint lines creased her forehead. “But do you have the power to control so many prisoners?”
Iyasu looked back at Faris and counted the five nervous servants hovering around him, all covered in dust and cobwebs. “We’d need help. And there’d be some danger. At any moment, a dazed soldier could attack the person trying to bind his hands. I don’t know, I don’t like it.”
They stood in the street and offered suggestions for how a dozen people could capture an entire army until the sounds of horses galloping down the road silenced them. They turned to look, and several hands strayed toward weapons.
“Jengo!” Faris smiled and waved at the lead rider.
A score of men on striped stallions clattered to a halt in the midst of the unconscious soldiers, and the southern warrior surveyed the scene in confusion. “What happened here?”
“We’ll tell you later,” Iyasu said. “Where’s Darius?”
“On his throne, while three of his legions pour into the city,” Jengo said. “They’re marching down every road, kicking down every door, and dragging everyone they can find out into the street. He wants you dead.”
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 21
