Azrael smiled. “Yes, it is allowed.”
“All right, but that’s only half a plan,” the falconer said. “After you knock them down, what’s to stop them from standing back up? We’re not going to kill them all, are we? Most of them are probably just young men following orders, thinking they’re just doing their duty.”
My father was just a young soldier, doing his duty, dying to defend his prince. And now I don’t even know his name, let alone his face.
“I’m hoping that once we capture Darius, then Faris will be able to command his armies, with a little help from Azrael and Samira, of course.”
“Has it come to that? We’re planning on hope now?” Zerai shrugged. “Well, it can’t be any worse than Naj Kuvari six years ago. Although I do want to ask, now that the Angel of Death has kindly offered to help us, if maybe we should also be thinking about our other special friend. The miracle sleeping back in the tent.”
“Talia?” Veneka looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m just wondering if we should be trying to figure out what that particular miracle is all about,” he said. “What if Talia has a fast pregnancy like Petra did, and her baby is some sort of messiah that will bring peace to the land with, I don’t know, a wave of her hand. Maybe the baby can stop Darius.”
“Seriously?” She raised one critical eyebrow.
“I said I don’t know. I just think we shouldn’t ignore the miracle. Miracle woman, miracle baby. It might be important, right?”
“Maybe,” Iyasu conceded. “Or maybe Bashir is just being rewarded for all his decades of faithfulness. Maybe miracles like this happen all the time without us knowing it. Maybe Talia’s baby is just a baby.”
“Maybe.” Zerai intertwined his fingers with Veneka’s. “Oh, what do I know? Come on then, let’s go fight an army.”
Chapter 25
Iyasu
“Will you think less of me for having second thoughts about this plan?” Iyasu twisted in his saddle to look back at the vast emptiness of the Well receding behind them.
“I will keep you safe.”
“I know. Still. Things have a way of going wrong at the last moment.”
They rode a pair of Burzhian mares across the rocky terrain at a quick trot with the midday sun glaring overhead. Iyasu adjusted the light fold of cloth over his head, only to have the wind rip it away again and hurl some sand in his eyes and mouth.
“Would you feel better if Samira was with us?” Azrael asked.
“Slightly. I hope she finishes her walls around the city soon and catches up to us.”
“She will.”
Iyasu sniffed. There was nothing to smell, nothing to hear, and nothing to see. Already they were approaching the Pillars of Abari, the vast forest of impossible rock spires and arches, crooked and irrational piles of stone that refused to fall no matter how cruelly the desert wind howled against them.
“Have you ever seen Darius?” Iyasu asked.
“No. I began fighting his soldiers near Sabah, and then you followed me north. But I never encountered the man himself.”
“Any reason why?”
“There was no reason to. I could not kill him, and I did not think I could frighten him. But I did think I could frighten his soldiers, so I sought them out.”
Iyasu nodded.
“Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering, if you had seen him, what you thought of him.”
“You mean, if I had seen him, had I seen what you did not? Had I seen the evil lurking inside him?”
The seer frowned as the wind whipped his face. “Yes.”
“No one blames you.”
“Faris does.”
“He has only himself to blame. It was always within his power to stop this.”
“He was afraid.”
“And now you are too.” She rode closer to him, side by side, and looked him in the eyes. “You doubt yourself. Your skill, your power, your faith. There’s no reason for it. You did everything right.”
“But everything still went wrong.”
“Take it from an old soul,” she said. “Things will always go wrong. Things will always fall apart, break down, rot, and die.”
“You aren’t exactly lifting my spirits.”
“But from death comes new life, new hope, and new joy.”
“Ah.” Iyasu sighed. “So if we can just hurry up with the rotting and dying, we can get to the rebirth?”
“Essentially.”
Iyasu grimaced. “This is why no one likes change.”
“Because it is frightening and difficult.”
“Because it’s messy and painful.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Not quite.”
They entered the Pillars, where alternating shafts of sunlight and shade cast alternating waves of searing heat and aching chills across the seer’s back. Sometimes the columns of stone would block the wind and the world would fall blissfully silent, and sometimes the gaps in the rocks would funnel the wind into a shrieking torrent of clawing sand. He drew his robe and hood tight and tried to focus on the path ahead, a winding path that vanished behind veils of flying sand every few minutes.
A flash of steel.
“There.” Iyasu reined in his horse and pointed where he had seen the metal. “Soldiers.”
“Stay here.” Azrael slipped down from the saddle and strode forward with the wind whipping at her hair and dress. The bronze coins on her belts jangled fiercely.
Iyasu squinted through the trails of sand and dust in the air, watching the dark woman approach the line of armored men. As much as he knew that she was an immortal and divine creature, as clearly as he remembered the battle on the road from Sabah, he still felt a tightening in his chest as she walked, alone and unarmed, toward the enemy.
The wind stilled and the sand settled on the ground, giving him a clear view of the two dozen outriders in the scouting party, all with swords and spears raised, all converging on the bare-armed woman. She stopped and let them come to her.
She said nothing.
The soldiers leapt at her, lunging with spears and hacking with swords, all bellowing and cursing and growling like beasts and madmen.
None leering at her, none trying to grope her. No smiles, no grotesque chuckles. Look at them. They’re afraid. They’re terrified of her.
So they know what she is, more or less. And yet they still attack.
What hold does Darius have on them?
Azrael bowed her head as her shining black wings erupted from her back, and a thunderous shockwave tore through the hot air. Iyasu winced, and when he looked again he saw the men all lying on the ground, some of them bent and twisted around the bases of the rock pillars where they had been thrown, and struck, and dropped.
“It’s safe now,” the angel said as her wings faded like shadows in the sun.
Iyasu rode forward, bringing her horse with him. He noted that the men were still breathing. Barely.
“I wish Veneka was with us,” he said softly.
“They’ll live.”
“I know. I was just thinking about what Zerai said, about soldiers following orders, doing their duty. Darius makes war, we fight back, and these are the people who bleed and break for it all. It just makes me feel… sick.”
“Veneka will take care of them later.”
“Yeah.”
They rode on deeper into the shadowy paths of the Pillars. The wind gradually faded until it died away altogether and the only sounds were the hooves of the horses chuffing and echoing through the stone corridors.
“The next time, there will be more of them,” she said. “You should stay here where it’s safe.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“But I can’t be hurt. You can.”
“I know but…”
But what?
“…but I don’t want to leave you alone.”
She smiled at him. “I know. But I’ll be fine. Stay here.
”
He nodded and watched her ride farther up the trail. When she disappeared around the next bend, he continued after her.
“She said to wait.”
Iyasu jerked so violently at the voice that he nearly fell out of his saddle. His blood raced and thundered in his ears as he turned to frown at Samira. “You scared me.”
“Obviously.” The djinn cleric easily kept pace with his horse. “I saw the bodies. Were you hurt?”
“No.”
“Good. Now stay here. She and I will deal with the army.”
Iyasu sighed and nodded, reining his horse back and letting her rush past him in a swirl of dust that danced and floated in the still air. He counted to twenty, and then he followed her.
The first sound of the fighting was a man’s scream, followed by an arrhythmic clattering of steel on stone on steel. Then the voices erupted into a chorus of war cries punctuated by captains giving orders and men barking back in reply.
Iyasu urged his mare on faster and he came around the last turn so quickly that he nearly rode over two men lying in the path. Looking up, he saw a maelstrom of dust and stone and metal flying through the narrow confines of the Pillars of Abari, and the noise of battle was quickly rising from rage to blind fury and panic.
A vast cloud of brown and gray dust rose to swallow the men, leaving the stone pillars standing quite peacefully above the fray. But then the tips of two massive black wings thrust up from the cloud and began sweeping sharply to the left and right as the armored bodies flew through the air. Some men rocketed out of the cloud along the ground, rolling like cascading boulders until they crashed to a halt, and some men arched high above the cloud, their arms and legs flailing in terror, until they fell back to earth on top of their comrades.
With a sudden swipe of a black wing, the dust cloud parted and Iyasu saw Azrael standing in the center of the storm, swords and spears flashing all around her as the men closed in. But there was no blood on her bare arms and no cry ever left her lips. The angel brushed aside the blades with her naked hands and took hold of the men, one by one, to hurl them through the ancient stone labyrinth.
It was like nothing Iyasu had ever seen, and he watched with an unpleasant mixture of awe and sadness as the beautiful woman calmly and brutally devastated the ranks of the Maqari army.
It’s so stupid. Why aren’t these men at home, growing food, teaching their children, and enjoying the fact that they’re alive? Why is the only path to peace one that requires this… this mindless…
He shook his head and sighed.
Off to one side, an entirely different sort of battle raged among the pillars. Samira stood in a small clearing, her clothing covered in dust, her hands folded together over her waist, her head bowed slightly, her eyes half lidded. And as the djinn cleric meditated, half a legion of men covered in leather, bronze, and steel stampeded toward her from all sides.
And on all sides, she was defended by cruel hammers and lances of living stone that rose from the ground, piercing and swinging, crashing and crushing the soldiers a dozen at a time. The writhing stone weapons whipped and lurched high above the pillars like the tentacles of some primeval leviathan, awakened from its slumber beneath the desert and stirred to a blind fury against the men.
Iyasu closed his eyes.
When the noise stopped, he opened his eyes again and saw the ruin of the legion. Men lay in piles against the rock spires and walls, no longer recognizable as men, now reduced to mere heaps of half-clothed limbs and bruised faces. They coughed and groaned and shuddered in pain.
They’ll remember this pain the rest of their lives. Some will be driven far from any hint of violence, and others will be drawn all the more toward it, seeking redemption, vindication, or whatever it is people need when they’ve been shamed.
The violence will grind on.
Iyasu rode down the path and handed the reins of the second horse to Azrael and said, “Are you all right?”
“Of course.” She swung easily into the saddle. “Samira’s opponents probably fared worse, though. I hope Veneka catches up soon, for their sakes.”
“For their sakes.” Iyasu nudged his mount and they rode on past the bodies, past the faces, past the hateful looks in the staring eyes.
Don’t look at them. It won’t help. Don’t look.
He looked.
They rode into the small clearing where Samira still stood all alone, and quite still.
“Is everything all right? Are you hurt?” Iyasu couldn’t see a mark on her, and there wasn’t a single foot print within a dozen paces of her.
“I will be,” the Tevadim said. “I just need a little time.”
Iyasu nodded. “Take all the time you need. You’ve done more than enough for us. Thank you, Samira.”
Creating that many stone forms and weapons must have been exhausting for her, mentally. I doubt a human could have done that.
Samira nodded back, and slowly sat down on the dusty ground. Her movements were slow but graceful and fluid as she folded her limbs and became a small figure of silk flapping gently in the faint breeze.
They rode on toward the east and passed a handful of Samira’s stone spears still stabbing upward at vicious angles with the shattered remains of the army’s wagons and scorpios dangling from them high above the ground like wooden animals impaled upon monstrous thorns and left to rot in the sun. Iyasu stared up at the grim monuments to war and failure, and said nothing.
When the battlefield was behind them, he cleared his throat and said, “Darius should be nearby, along with his commanders and servants. They must be riding behind the army. But the rest of the legions should be a good ways off. The other companies will be spread out to the north and south, I think. If they’re still searching for us, they’ll be going a bit slower as they look for our trail.”
“Are you anxious?”
He paused. “About what?”
“Seeing Darius again.”
“I saw him in Tagal.”
“Did you talk to him then?”
“No.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you want to know why he changed? Why he wasn’t the king you wanted him to be?”
“Of course I do, but… I don’t. Because there isn’t going to be some grand reason for it. It’ll be simple, and awful,” he said. “Some flaw in his character, in his mind, in the life he led before I met him. Something I should I have seen, should have realized. But I didn’t. I didn’t see it, and people died.”
“So you don’t want to talk to him now?”
“Not really.”
The Angel of Death nodded. “I understand. But I still think you should.”
She dismounted and with a sweep of her suddenly visible wings she leapt to the top of a tall arch of stone and peered into the distance, and a moment later she dropped gracefully back onto her mare’s saddle. Pointing to the northeast she said, “That way.”
A few minutes later Iyasu heard the first signs of life coming from the path ahead. Horses whickered in the stone corridors of the Pillars, and many small metal things jangled softly. Through the stone formations he caught a glimpse of a cluster of wagons, large armored things that looked too big to navigate the narrow paths of the Pillars. And as he rode closer, more details became apparent.
The wagons were not moving.
The horses stood in their harnesses, snorting out the dust and looking around warily.
A dozen men laid on the ground, mostly face down.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“It couldn’t have been Samira.”
“Then what did this?”
Iyasu dismounted and frowned at the scene. It was all too familiar in some ways. The fallen bodies, the eerie quiet, the feeling in the air that things had been very different just an hour ago. As Azrael paced slowly around the wagons, Iyasu studied the area. He saw the tracks of the men change abruptly from straight marching lines to ragged stumbles. He saw sand beginning to pile up around the wagon wh
eels as the wind quietly went about its work of destroying and hiding all things in the desert.
He didn’t see any blood.
Kneeling down, he rolled a young soldier onto his side to look at the youth’s face, and Iyasu saw a pale blueness about his lips and bloodshot lines clawing at his eyes.
Disease?
He stood up and noted the way the fallen soldiers had died, some clutching their throats, some clawing at the sandy earth.
No… poison.
“Iyasu!”
He ran around the nearest wagon to find Azrael standing on the far side, staring down at a hideous green and black puddle on the ground. He quickly covered his face with his sleeve and stepped back.
“Is this what killed them?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so.”
He scanned the ground for other signs and found a faint patter of footprints leading away from the noxious spill toward the northern end of the silent wagons. He followed the trail, and as he came around a second wagon he saw a very different body on the ground. No armor. No weapons. Only a faded blue cloak and a pair of worn boots.
“Edris!” He knelt by the body and rolled him over, only to find the singer already dead with the same bloodshot eyes and pale blue lips. He let go of the body and stood up, his chest aching and head spinning.
Why is he here? What happened?
He saw the empty bag lying beside Edris.
Bashir’s bag. Edris took the bag. Edris poisoned the soldiers. But why?
“I don’t understand.” He looked at Azrael. “Did he do it to protect Jerinoba? Or even us?”
“No,” the angel whispered. “When he died, there was no anger in him, no rage at Darius. And no satisfaction in protecting his home.”
“Then what was it?”
“Pain. Grief. Emptiness.”
Iyasu covered his eyes. “The baby.”
Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I see it coming? I could have stopped him, helped him… Why didn’t I?
Because I was too busy to see it. Too distracted.
He looked at Azrael’s thoughtful eyes.
More than distracted. And now he’s dead. And all of these men are dead.
Because of me.
Again.
“Come on. We may not have much time before some other company of soldiers finds us here. Let’s find Darius.”
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 28
