Jophiel watched the video. The Prince of Tyre and the two Nephilim ships spaced out, a bright white ship that was similarly sized and shaped like the nut-brown Nephilim ones, although the Prince of Tyre had a traditional hull while the Nephilim ones appeared to be almost organic structures, and then one by one, all three ships blinked out of existence.
Jophiel stared, her mouth open.
"Where did they go?" Major Klik'rr asked from beside her.
A sickening feeling settled into Jophiel's gut.
"Earth."
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 88
February: 3,389 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Mikhail
Mikhail selected a long, black-brown primary feather that had sustained some damage from the pulse rifle and tugged at it, suppressing a wince, until the sturdy quill slid reluctantly into his hand. He justified the selection of a less-than-perfect feather by reminding himself it was a fitting momento, given the circumstances, and not for the more pragmatic reason that he was running out of primary feathers to get himself airborne. He placed it carefully into Varshab's cold, lifeless hands, crossed peacefully in eternal rest.
"May She-who-is grant you safe passage into the dreamtime," Mikhail whispered in the clicking Cherubim language, "and if there is a Hall of Heroes as our little protégé insists, perhaps someday I shall meet you there? For I know of no man more worthy than he who had the thankless task of keeping the peace."
Immanu sprinkled water over Varshab's forehead, invoking a prayer to She-who-is. Thankfully SHE decided not to make an unwelcome intrusion into the small, intimate death ceremony, attended only by the Chief, himself, Pareesa, and of course the shaman and the healer. Was this how he would end his days if he did not find Ninsianna? An enforcer? A strong-man who was respected and feared, but never really liked, because it was his duty to enforce the law? Perhaps he should have tried to fly to Dur-Katlimmu, if for no reason other than to notify the man's only surviving child that her father was about to die?
Needa refused to meet his gaze. She had not told them whether she had helped Varshab's death along with the hemlock she kept on a special shelf inside the house, but by the way the man had cried out in pain the last few hours of his life and then suddenly been gone, he suspected she had. The Sata'anic doctor had been shoved back into the hole, but thankfully there was no more talk about flaying the prisoners alive. The doctor had done his best, and Needa had made it known any man who lay a hand on them would receive no healer's help for the remainder of their lives.
"We return your body to the bosom of the goddess," Immanu chanted a sing-song prayer. "And pray your family will greet you at the entrance to the great beyond."
As the sun set, Mikhail helped them push the dirt back into the hole, the men silent as Pareesa wept for the man who had been a mentor. That task done, they picked up the yellow rocks they'd spent half the day gathering, even before Varshab had died, and used them to build a cairn around his body so no scavenger would disturb his peace.
It was the second grave they'd dug today. The first grave had been for the father of the girl who had committed suicide. It had been Siamek who'd found him and dug the grave. Immanu had refused to say the death ceremonies, but Mikhail noted the way his father-in-law's eyes darted to the second cairn.
Varshab's burial was much the way things were conducted amongst the Emperor's armies, nameless, faceless soldiers who expended their lives on behalf of the naturally evolved citizens who never truly appreciated their sacrifices. Had Mikhail not spent time amongst a people who wept and grieved, it might not have ever occurred to him that he should feel bothered that Varshab's passing had gone almost unnoticed. But it did bother him. It bothered him that this man who had given so much to bring order to their village was being buried without so much as a single family member in attendance, and nobody, not even him, had cared enough to go and tell the only family member he'd still had left alive.
Immanu recited the rest of the prayers, and then they all trudged solemnly back up the hill and into the gates, the warriors silent except for Pareesa's sobbing. It occurred to him that perhaps she needed a hug, as that's what most humans expected under these types of circumstances. While he wrestled with the appropriateness of such a gesture, ever mindful of Ninsianna's reaction, the whispers of the village gossips, and how his own in-laws might perceive the act of comforting his student, Ebad intercepted them and alleviated him of the responsibility by gathering Pareesa into his arms. Mikhail wasn't certain whether to be glad or sad. Despite her tender age, Pareesa was one of his most trusted friends. Perhaps he should have acted with more certitude? Quickly? The way he would have reacted had the assault to Pareesa been a physical wound rather than an emotional one?
They passed by Immanu's house on their way to the central granary, where the Chief and Immanu had taken up residence since one's house had burned down and the other had developed a marital disagreement with his wife. Needa paused, her expression lonely as she stared at her husband and then turned to enter the door.
Immanu turned to go. It was time for Mikhail to make his first attempt at being a gracious host, a task he had no experience performing.
"Please," Mikhail said. "Come inside. All of you. Yalda and Zhila sent over some bread and beer to make a toast in Varshab's name."
Needa eyed him warily. He had not consulted with her, fearing she would have told him no. Immanu had been given no warning, either, for it was likely he would have refused. The Chief, thankfully, intuited what Mikhail was trying to do and spoke up.
"Yes," Chief Kiyan said. "As I no longer have a house to hold a suitable gathering for one of my oldest and dearest friends, I am most grateful that you would open up your own house to toast the memory of a great warrior."
Mikhail relaxed his wings, thankful the Chief would obligate his in-laws to go through the motions of pretending they were still husband and wife. Homa and Gisou hurried in, laden down with a basket of fresh, hot bread and a jug of fine mead, the best of Yalda and Zhila's pantry. Actually, this entire plan had been Yalda's and Zhila's idea, their answer to his announcement he was considering returning to his ship.
The men and Pareesa sat around the rough, wooden table which had been set out in the courtyard with a bench. It was cold out, but the girls had gotten here first and lit the mud-brick oven they used to cook outside. Mikhail gave the girls a grateful nod. It had felt odd, to conspire with two giggly girls and two cackling old women to match-make a couple who already should have lived happily ever after. He watched their reactions carefully; the way Immanu sat on the bench closest to the street and Needa tried to escape into the kitchen; but when one thought the other wasn't looking, each person's eyes darted to the other.
A lump rose in Mikhail's throat. Varshab's death saddened him, but the death of Immanu and Needa's marriage made him want to crawl inside a cave and weep.
The Chief raised his mug towards the stars.
"To Varshab," the Chief said.
"To Varshab," they all echoed with disheartened voices.
They nursed the mead in silence. Mikhail grabbed the basket of bread and passed it awkwardly to his father-in-law. Immanu refused to meet his gaze. Things had been bad ever since Mikhail had woken up, but ever since he'd refused to let his father-in-law flay the Sata'anic prisoners, the man refused to speak to him at all.
It was brave Pareesa who finally dared rouse the angry crocodile sleeping in the center of the courtyard.
"Mikhail?" Pareesa asked. "If She-who-is is the goddess of All-That-Is, then why can't she tell us where the Evil One took Ninsianna?"
All eyes turned to him.
"I am not the demi-god your legend spoke of," Mikhail said softly. "As you all now know, I am nothing but a man. A man who is a little different than you are, taller, with different features and wings, but I am still mortal. I can be hurt. I make mistakes. And if I get hurt badly enough, I will die the same as you."
"But you rose up from the dead,
" Pareesa said.
Mikhail took a sip of his mead, stalling for time. He had given the matter some thought, but the best explanation was one which had been given by an old woman in a garden to an overly curious boy.
"The Eternal Emperor made us," Mikhail said, "because he had a need for soldiers." He stared up at the stars, the stars from whence he had come. "He wished for our species to protect your species, and others like you, so he made us a little stronger, a little faster, he gave us traits our species didn't originally possess. One of those traits is a better ability to heal."
"Why didn't he do that for us?" Pareesa asked. Her brown eyes glittered with questions.
"Because he considered you perfect the way you already were," Mikhail said. "And then he lost you. So he had no more chances to make sure everything had turned out all right."
It was Immanu who asked the next question. He did so staring into his cup of mead instead of meeting Mikhail's gaze.
"Why, then, can't She-who-is tell us where to search for Ninsianna?"
Mikhail took Pareesa's hand.
"Pareesa … this is your hand. Do you know what I am doing to it?"
"Of course," Pareesa giggled. "You are touching the tips of my fingers."
Mikhail ran his hand up to her wrist and turned it so it faced upwards. He traced his finger along a blue vein.
"What about now. Can you feel what I'm doing now?"
"Of course," Pareesa said. "You're touching my wrist."
"Wrong," Mikhail said. "I was touching your veins."
Pareesa peered at her wrist in the light cast off from the beehive oven, its lid left off so the fire danced and warmed their little group.
"But how was -I- supposed to know what you were thinking?"
"That's my point," Mikhail said. "Now close your eyes and picture your blood as it runs through your veins."
Most Ubaid only had a rudimentary knowledge of the human circulatory system, but he'd been surprised to learn they knew far more than he would have expected for a Stone Age culture. Humans hunted animals, slaughtered livestock, got injured, and died in battle. They knew where to hit a creature so it could be hurt or killed, and had tended enough battle injuries that most men understood that blood flowed through their veins and air needed to flow from hearts to lungs.
"I'm not sure how that's supposed to work," Pareesa said.
"Picture sipping mead through a river reed," Mikhail said.
"Pareesa shut her eyes. "I think I can picture it."
"It's your blood," Mikhail said. "How do you not know what it is doing?"
"I … I don't know," Pareesa said. "I never thought of it that way."
"Now what if I were to tell you that your blood was not a solid liquid, but it was made up of billions of tiny little animals we call ceallas," Mikhail said, using the Galactic Standard word for cells since there was no equivalent in the Ubaid language.
"I'd say that was pretty peculiar," Pareesa said.
"Well it's true," Mikhail said. "Your blood is not liquid, nor is any other part of your body truly solid."
Immanu leaned forward, his tawny beige eyes intently curious.
"Sometimes when I travel into the dreamtime to cure an illness, this is how I have perceived the information," Immanu said. "I see spirit animals, and they usually run in herds."
"What you see is likely the truth," Mikhail said. "Your mind tries to create order, so it will look for patterns, and then it will tell you the next nearest pattern to help you recognize what that thing might be."
"This is fascinating," Chief Kiyan leaned forward as well. "Tell me, Mikhail. You say you remember more about your past now. What is it like to walk in the house of a god?"
The shadows moved. Mikhail glanced up and saw that Needa had moved closer to their little group, intently curious about what he had to answer. Mikhail lowered his voice, so that it would force his mother-in-law to move even closer.
"It's not so different from going to meet a chief," Mikhail said. He flared his wings just enough so that it made him look bigger. "And like a chief, the Eternal Emperor sometimes bickers with the other gods. Sometimes he even makes mistakes; and like She-who-is, he frequently doesn't know what's going on within his own empire."
"But aren't the gods all-powerful?" Pareesa asked.
"Yes," Mikhail said, "and no. Think of how powerful the Chief is, and then picture the size of Assur and all its fields. Chief Kiyan does a pretty good job of keeping track of what goes on within his village, but sometimes, that's not enough. He is only one man, and there are many things which could go wrong."
"I never thought of myself of having something in common with a god," Chief Kiyan said.
"If what your son told me is true about the identify of this Evil One who came to snatch Ninsianna," Mikhail said, unable to help but flare his wings to their full extension, "then you're also not the only one who has a problem with getting his son to behave!"
They all fell silent and sipped their mead. Needa slipped closer and sat down on the bench next to her husband, about as far apart as they could possibly get and still sit on the same seat, but they were closer. Mikhail decided he'd better continue the story. He pointed up at the stars.
"Now picture that half of those stars belong to the Eternal Emperor Hashem, and then the other half belong to Emperor Shay'tan. Think of all the things that could go wrong, and how very hard it would be for just one man, even a god, to keep track of everything that is going on."
"How does he keep track of it all?" Needa asked this time.
"Watchmen," Mikhail said. "He sends out people like me to keep an eye on things and report back to him if something seems amiss."
"Does She-who-is have Watchmen?" Pareesa asked.
"She most certainly does," Mikhail said.
"Are you her watchman?"
"No," Mikhail said. He stared down into his cup of mead. "Ninsianna was. And it was my job to keep her safe."
"You did everything you could to prevent her from being taken," Chief Kiyan said. "No man worked harder to train our village to fight the lizard demons."
Mikhail ran his finger along the tip of his cup, nursing the mead and sipping it slowly so his well-known intolerance to alcohol wouldn't turn him into a sobbing drunk in front of his friends.
"The enemy who came at me was someone I did not expect," Mikhail said. "And I still can't figure out why Lucifer would take away my wife."
"Do you think he hurt her?" Needa asked.
Mikhail stared up at the stars. He shut his eyes, and then focused on the song which had taken up residence inside his heart ever since the night he had woken up from the dead, the night he had dreamed not of Ninsianna, but of a little girl long dead and in the grave.
Perhaps he had known Ninsianna before?
"Lucifer's grandmother came from the same planet as I did," Mikhail said. "The Emperor was obsessed with forcing me to take a wife. If Lucifer took Ninsianna, it was because he hopes to gain some leverage over his father either using her, or using our child."
"So you think he kept her alive?" Immanu asked.
Mikhail stared back up at the stars, where the sparks from the fire danced upwards towards the heavens.
"I am positive of it," Mikhail said.
They finished up the bread, and then started eating the acorns which Needa had thrown into the fire to roast while they had talked. Immanu plucked out the acorns into a wooden bowl, and then offered some to his wife, his expression a blend between wariness and hopefulness. Mikhail held his breath. So did everyone else in the little group. Needa reached out and took the nuts from Immanu's hand.
Mikhail met the Chief's gaze. It was a start.
They chatted some more until all of a sudden Pareesa stood up and pointed towards the western horizon.
"Look! A shooting star! Make a wish and maybe it will come true!"
"I wish for my daughter to be returned," Needa said.
"I wish for the same," Immanu said.
The couple
leaned against one another, Needa's head resting on her husband's shoulder.
Mikhail stared at the shooting star and froze. He stood up, nearly knocking his friends over with his wings, and then ran into the house to grab a pair of binoculars he'd retrieved from his ship at some point in the past.
"What is it, son?" Immanu asked.
Mikhail focused the binoculars on the horizon. The power cell had run down, rendering the infra-red and infrared heat capacity of the device inert, but the old-fashioned optical portion worked just fine.
The image was blurry, but the shape was too distinct to be mistaken for a star.
"That's a space shuttle making reentry," Mikhail said. He realized he had spoken in Galactic Standard and translated the words into words his friends could understand. "Somebody just descended from the heavens. When they do that, it makes a ring of fire."
"Could it be this god of yours come to find you?" the Chief asked.
Mikhail traced the ship until it disappeared on the horizon.
"North-north-west," Mikhail said. "Just where She-who-is said we would find their base."
The reentry trail gone, he focused the binoculars up into space, searching the thermosphere for a ship circling in low-Earth orbit. He'd taken to watching the S.R.N. Jamalan orbiting far out in geosynchronous orbit, where they parked battle cruisers when they did not wish to waste fuel fighting Earth's gravity, but a new ship that was sending down a landing party would definitely pull up as close as the troposphere.
"There," Mikhail said. "I see it."
"Is it the enemy?" Chief Kiyan asked.
Hope blended with that old, dark rage as the bright, white form of a ship he'd vowed to defend with his dying breath came into focus within his binoculars.
"Yes," Mikhail said. "That ship is the Prince of Tyre."
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 89
Galactic Standard Date: 152,324.02 AE
Earth: Prince of Tyre
Special Agent Eligor
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 88
