Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga)

by Anna Erishkigal

  He may have lacked Ninsianna's gift to make others see whatever she pictured within her own mind, but something in his demeanor must have been convincing, because the fear which rippled through the village was almost palpable. He had described the old dragon to the warriors one night, and now those tales proliferated through the village.

  "Bring up the one who claims to be a physician," Chief Kiyan said. "Set three warriors to guard him with swords. If he gives his word he will not escape, I would appreciate it very much if he tried to save my friend."

  "Varshab's wounds are far more serious than he could treat here," Mikhail said. "What will you do if, despite his best efforts, Varshab dies?"

  "Then we have lost nothing," the Chief said. He gestured oh-so-subtly to the crowd. "The captives get a little more time, and Varshab gets a chance to live."

  Mikhail read what had not been said. The Chief had little hope for Varshab. He simply purchased time for the villager's bloodlust to wane.

  Siamek let down a rope and stepped back as the lizard doctor climbed out of the hole. The villagers gasped. Doctor Peyman's green, scaled head darted back and forth like a prey animal surveying the grass for a lion, and then settled upon Mikhail, his gold-green eyes wide and guileless.

  "So you are the one who's been causing us so much trouble," Doctor Peyman spoke in Galactic Standard. He tucked his tail up tightly against his right side, a Sata'anic gesture of respect.

  "Why are you annexing this planet?"

  "If I tell you, you know Shay'tan will put a bounty onto my head."

  "If you don't tell us," Mikhail said, "the Chief of these good people will order them to flay you alive."

  "Flay me?" Doctor Peyman said, his expression perplexed. "Why would they do that? Didn't I offer them vaccinations and knowledge of healing?"

  "You brought them slavery," Mikhail said, "and force them to pay tribute to a distant god."

  The lizard tasted the air with his long, forked tongue. He tilted his head, genuinely curious.

  "And what of you, Angelic," Doctor Peyman said. "Your species is dying, and yet your Emperor drives you to extinction."

  Anger tore into Mikhail's gut. It must have shown by the way he flared his wings, because the warriors moved to stand firmly behind him.

  "I have found my one true mate," Mikhail said through clenched teeth. "And you took her from us."

  "It was not I," Peyman said. "But your own Prime Minister. He showed up three months ago and demanded we hand over the mate of the last living Seraphim."

  A warning ripple swam just beneath Mikhail's subconscious, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with the lizard standing before him now, and everything to do with a memory which kept refusing to come to the surface.

  "You took her from me," Mikhail said. "Where is she?"

  Doctor Peyman blinked, his gold-green eyes carrying that earnest fire that all good healers had.

  "We don't have her anymore," Doctor Peyman said. "You were a problem. Lucifer offered to take that problem off our hands. We gave him the woman in exchange for giving us these grain growing fields."

  "In case you haven't noticed," Mikhail said, "these fields are already occupied."

  "We don't want these people to leave," Peyman said. "Quite the contrary. Shay'tan has ordered that humans are to be integrated into the Empire as full Sata'anic citizens."

  "These are our ancestors!" Mikhail said.

  "And you cared so much about them that you lost them," Peyman said. The lizard sighed and then patted some dirt off of the front of his uniform. "Listen. You want them. Let your Emperor make a deal with Shay'tan. Those two always have some intrigue up their sleeves. Don't take your problems out on these people. We've become quite fond of them, you know? The ones who have already integrated into our city."

  City? A clue…

  "And which city would that be?" Mikhail asked. A city … to the north. Someplace. Those were two clues he hadn't had before.

  The lizard fiddled with his buttons and then tasted the air.

  "Perhaps I should be quiet now," Doctor Peyman said. "I believe you have several patients who are in need of my skills?"

  "You stabbed him," Mikhail said.

  "I didn't stab anybody," Peyman said. The doctor blinked using his clear, inner eyelid, indicating he was perturbed. "I am a physician. My job is to heal people, not kill them. That's the skull-crackers' job." He pointed to the other four pits which still had stones over them to prevent escape.

  "We have no facility to hold them," Mikhail said. "Until we do, they're just going to have to stay down in the hole."

  He directed the lizard to follow Siamek back to Varshab's house. As he did, the Chief ordered the crowd to disperse, leaving only guards to make sure the prisoners didn't push the rocks off of their holes. The rocks were heavy, but the Sata'anic soldiers were strong.

  He signaled for Homa and Gisou to wait. The two girls were part of his original eight archers, healers-in-training who had helped Needa care for him when he'd been sick. They were both just a few months older than Ninsianna, and when they spoke, they came off as giggly girls, just the kind of woman who would lull the earnest doctor into thinking they were too bubble-headed to pump him for information.

  "Do you both understand what you need to do?"

  "Yes, Sir," Homa and Gisou said together.

  He glanced at their shawl dresses, tied high around their like warriors.

  "The more feminine you appear," Mikhail said, "the less he will realize you are clever. He will recognize Needa is intelligent enough to be a threat, but you two? The more you act like silly little second-wives, the less wary he will be when you ask him innocuous questions about what landmarks are near the base and hints about the climate and terrain."

  "Wouldn't it be easier just to torture it out of them?" Homa asked.

  Yesterday morning's dream filtered back into the edge of his subconscious, not complete, but the image of an elderly Sata'anic man toiling in the fields. In the dream, that man had been a friend.

  "The lizards are just people," Mikhail said, "not so very different than you or I. That doctor was captured because he ran out of his ship to help his enemy. When you try to hate him, remember that. He is here because he made the mistake of trying to help us."

  Suitably mollified, the two girls adjusted their shawl-dresses into long, feminine drapes and made their way to Varshab's house, scheming about what kind of clues they hoped to elicit from the lizard man. Was the base near a river? Or was it near the sea? Was it on one of the other continents? He doubted it was incredibly far. Everything indicated the lizards were operating at the crimped end of a very lengthy supply line, one which had made them reluctant to waste their energy coming after him, but had caused them to go through mercenaries.

  "Gisou?" Mikhail called out at their disappearing backs.

  "Yes, Mikhail?"

  "Bring him a cooked fish and tell me if he eats it," Mikhail said.

  They gave him a curious look.

  "Tell him we are low on grain, but there is abundant fish in the river. If he eats the fish right away, come and tell me."

  "Should we bring him a rabbit or some roasted goat?" Homa asked.

  "He won't eat it," Mikhail said. "They can't digest it. Their stomach lacks some sort of enzyme. But he will eat fish if he has no other choice, though he will gag the first few times he takes a bite as they loathe the taste. Let me know if he refuses to eat it even though he is obviously hungry, or simply grimaces and swallows it down without complaint."

  Homa and Gisou looked at one another and grinned. These were the sort of intrigues the two girls were quite good at, although usually their mischief had to do with matchmaking one of their friends.

  They skipped off together like two little girls, leaving him to stare at Pareesa's nine-year-old brother, Namhu, who had taken to following him around like a second shadow. He actually smelled Namhu before he saw him, reeking of animal excrement and the musty stench of cave.


  "Hello, Namhu," Mikhail said. "I take it you found another bat cave?"

  "We did," Namhu said. He held up a stinky bucket. "It's about a quarter-day march from here. But why do you need so much bat poo?"

  Mikhail gave him a rare grin.

  "Let's just say we find ourselves in a really crappy situation," Mikhail said. "And if you understand how to refine that crap, you can get a few surprises out of it."

  "Refine bat poo?" Namhu asked. "Into what?"

  Mikhail bent down so he was eye-level with the boy he suspected would someday be every bit as gifted as his sister.

  "Magic," Mikhail whispered conspiratorially. "But don't tell anyone. Its forbidden knowledge. But if you and your friends bring me back thirty baskets, I will make it into something which will frighten even the lizard demons."

  "Out of bat poo?"

  "Out of bat poo," Mikhail said.

  Namhu gave him a mischievous grin that was so much like his big sister's that it made him think of the first time Pareesa had ever shot an arrow. Those had been good days, happy times, with him trying to win Ninsianna's heart. Oh, how he missed her, but for the first time in a very long time he had hope they might finally have a lead … if he could keep the bloodthirsty villagers from killing off the men who held the clues.

  Namhu skipped off, determined to help him on his secret mission. He, of course, left behind his next younger sister, what was her name? Pareesa had so many brothers and sisters that they all jumbled into a blur.

  "Hello," Mikhail said.

  The little girl stared up at him, every bit as unafraid of him as her bigger brother. He remembered this one's name was Zakiti.

  "Hello," Zakiti said.

  "Aren't you supposed to be home with your granny?" Mikhail asked. "We've got lizard people in the village now."

  "I'm not afraid of him," Zakiti said. "Rebsie will scare him away."

  "Who?"

  "Rebsie," Zakiti said. "You want to see him?"

  "Sure," Mikhail said. "Where is he?"

  "Here," Zakiti said. She held out a covered basket about the size of Ninsianna's sewing box.

  Mikhail settled his wings loosely against his back and kneeled so he wouldn't tower over the child. With Ninsianna missing and the village falling down his ears, he was desperate for any kind of normalcy he could get, even if that meant getting his feathers plucked by a five year old girl. Rebsie, he assumed, must be a kitten or a mouse, one of the animals children frequently kept as pets.

  Zakiti grinned and pulled the lid off of her box.

  'Rebsie' jumped at him.

  Mikhail catapulted himself skyward with a shriek that sounded most un-Angelic. He fluttered, just out of jump-reach of the creature, his heart racing, until he realized he'd just been made the butt of a joke.

  Zakiti burst into laughter, a childish giggle that bore just the hint of malicious mischief.

  "Don't ever do that again!" Mikhail scolded her.

  The almost cubit-wide camel spider scurried away, a harmless arachnid with a non-venomous bite, but one which nearly every sentient species in the galaxy had an instinctive fear of.

  An idea began to percolate in his mind.

  "Do you think you could get me more of those?" Mikhail asked.

  "What will you give me if I do?" Zakiti asked.

  Oh. This was that little sister. The one Pareesa cursed because she was forever blackmailing her to not tattle to her mother.

  "I could get you some honey cakes," Mikhail suggested.

  Zakiti pouted up her sweet little mouth and shook her head.

  "A pretty bauble for your hair?"

  Unh-huh…

  "A bucket of goats milk to give your mother?"

  "No," Zakiti said, giving him a calculating stare that was far too old for her tiny, five-year-old body. "Besides. Everybody knows you're terrible at milking the goat."

  "Well what do you want, then?" Mikhail asked. He knew she refused because as the next-to-youngest of seven siblings, the child had learned to drive a hard bargain.

  The child pointed up into the air.

  "You want me to give you the sun?" Mikhail asked.

  "No, silly," Zakiti gave him an unabashedly sweet smile. "I want you to carry me into the air."

  "Your Mama would never approve," Mikhail said.

  Zakiti picked up the lid of her basket and tapped it lightly back onto her box.

  "Then I guess you'll have to make sure she doesn't find out!"

  Zakiti skipped off in the direction the camel spider had just run off in. It wasn't hard to track the thing. Shrieks of terror wafted from the crowd. What was it with Pareesa's brothers and sisters that they were all far more precocious than their years?

  He rubbed the hole in his chest where Shahla had tried to carve out his heart. Oh, gods, he missed Ninsianna. Without her, this village was falling down around his ears! Why couldn't he have been born gifted as she had tried to teach him? To close his eyes and see where she'd been taken? What he wouldn't do now to have such a gift, but whenever he tried to do it, all he ever saw was images of an empty desert and an endless wind which sounded like a song.

  With an unexpected strategy under his belt, Mikhail made his way to the widow-sister's house where, for the first time today, perhaps he would be able to feel he was at home?

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Chapter 85

  February: 3,389 BC

  Earth: Village of Assur

  Yalda

  Few within the village were old enough to remember when Yalda and Zhila's husbands had died. Both sisters had loved their husbands dearly, but with small children to raise, neither had possessed the luxury of willing themselves to die from grief. They had turned to one another, two women who had always been close as sisters growing up, but who had become closer still once they'd combined their households to finish raising their children.

  The children had grown up, their sons had been killed in the same war which had brought Immanu and the Chief to power, and their daughters had married men from far-off villages, but the widow-sisters stayed together. After they'd grown too old to labor in the fields, they'd turned to an old family patron-goddess to help them ensure they would always have the things they needed. The widow-sisters came from a long line of fermenters and bakers, and the goddess who blessed them was Ninkasi, the goddess of bread and beer.

  Yalda reached into her beehive oven to peel off the hot, fresh flat breads plastered to the inner wall and plop them onto a wooden platter. She limped over to the table and plunked it down in front of their favorite guest, the man they adored as if he was a son or grandson.

  "Here you go!" Yalda said to Mikhail. "That's your last one! I'm all out of dough."

  The ridiculously tall Angelic glanced up at them with an expression akin to a little boy who'd just been given a treat for being good.

  "Thank you, Yalda," Mikhail grinned. It was an expression he rarely wore outside the confines of this house. "Are you sure I haven't eaten through the stores of barley I brought you?"

  Yalda reached out with fingers still strong from a lifetime of kneading bread and squeezed his arm like a roast she tested for doneness. While Mikhail was no longer emaciated, he was far thinner than he'd been before and he tired easily, no matter how hard he pushed himself to regain his strength.

  "You're still too thin," Yalda said. "To get bigger, you must eat! You won't fatten up on Needa's cooking, that's for sure!"

  Mikhail raised one dark eyebrow, too polite to speak ill of his mother-in-law, and yet he looked amused.

  "Stop baiting him!" Zhila called from the back room where her younger sister produced the yeast which made her breads rise. Zhila liked to call it her Temple of Ninkasi, but rather than icons and flowers, she filled the room with tall, narrow-necked ceramic vats of beer, of mead, of fermented fruit juices, and just about anything else you could ferment.

  Zhila carried in a cook-pot sized vat cradled to her chest the way one might carry an infant. As she walked, she held one hand out i
n front of her, for Zhila was almost blind, her iris's blue from cataracts. Despite this disability, Zhila was otherwise healthy, and it had been she who had first taught Mikhail how to throw a spear, back when he'd first come to their village. Zhila plopped the vat onto the table in front of him.

  "It's a special brew, just for you," Zhila said.

  Mikhail's expression instantly grew wary.

  "Oh, no, I couldn't," he said.

  Zhila cackled like an old broody goose.

  "What? Are you afraid I'll give you another hangover?"

  The widow-sisters had seen Mikhail fight dozens of enemies. They'd seen him survive not just one injury which should have killed him, but two. They'd even seen him survive repeated humiliation by Immanu's recalcitrant dairy goat. The one thing he was reluctant to take on, however, was a hangover, especially as his species seemed to nurture a woefully low tolerance to alcohol.

  "I put honey in it to increase the yeast," Zhila said. "It should fatten you right up!" Zhila patted her stomach.

  Yalda placed a long, slender straw made out of a river reed in front of him. As much as the Angelic claimed to eschew all forms of alcohol, he enjoyed their company, so while she and Zhila sampled their latest brew, Mikhail sipped politely as an excuse to linger. His in-laws marital problems had caused him to flee their house. He came over here most nights, and sometimes he avoided going home.

  They talked about the latest developments within the village until the big Angelic's wings developed a carefree spread. He was a serious chap, but around them he dropped that unreadable expression he used to protect his feelings. They talked about how dearly he missed his wife, what he would do once he found her, and interesting tidbits about things he remembered now that his memories had been restored.

  Yalda fiddled with her sip-straw. There was one topic of conversation on her mind today, and it was one which had been a significant drain on their meagre purse. Merariy, Gita's drunken father, had been blackmailing them for bread and beer, aware of how very protective they were of Mikhail's good name, especially given the earlier scandal involving Shahla. If the man blabbered the accusation to the larger village, they feared it would undermine Mikhail's campaign to retrieve his wife.