He wanted more than anything to call out for his mother, to see if she was all right, but he withheld that, too. He didn’t want to hear what such a cry might sound like if it echoed back to him in this place.
He dropped his hands to his sides and stood, puffing his hair out of his face as he breathed. Qiel felt cold. He retched onto the floor. Something was happening. Something his mother hadn’t told him about.
A noise came to him then. It was the sound of dripping. His chains felt cold and moist, and his breath became visible as mist in the darkness. Yes. This was new. This was dangerous. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
***
WHEN URIEL FINALLY CAME back to herself, she didn’t know what had happened or how much time had gone by. She only knew the scalding shame of regret. She had been fool enough to think that Anael wouldn’t be able to find her, and worse, that if he did, he would allow her to live out her life with Qiel in peace.
But no.
Her passion for destruction, her capacity for boundless hatred, had dissipated into dust over the last few centuries. It was scant enough as to have become immeasurable. “Anael,” she called out in the darkness, rising to a sitting position. A sharp pain in her temples followed this sudden motion, and she held a hand to her head in response to it. She sobbed. “Anael.” She hadn’t known the feeling of desperation in centuries. “Anael!” she screamed at length, bringing on fresh pain and dizziness. She pressed both hands to her head and fell to her knees, doubled over.
Then, a voice. “Ready now?”
She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. She sobbed again. Qiel had burned all the rebellion out of her heart. She hadn’t thought such a thing could ever happen. All the senseless hatred had fled from her since her son had come into her life, and she knew what love was by having tasted it. “Your servant will do whatever you ask of her,” she breathed. She could feel the wicked smile that spread itself on the hideous face of her foe in response.
“I will be Seer. You will bring me the Bloodstone, or your boy will never be free.”
“Your servant wishes to see her son,” she pleaded, breathing raggedly. She called out for him. “Qiel.”
Laughter. “Preposterous. I cannot risk that, and you know it. Do not blame me for what you have wrought. I know your capabilities, Uriel. You shall not see him until the Bloodstone is in my hand. How else can I know that you will prove yourself trustworthy?” Anael then paused, and Uriel could hear him pacing back and forth.
“You dishonor me greatly, half-breed. You failed to fulfill the bargain we struck. I cannot say that I am surprised.” He snorted.
Uriel felt a surge of anger. How ironic that you also failed to supply the plans and strategy that would have fulfilled your side of it, scum.
“As it happens,” Anael said, “especially with you sons and daughters of dust, as your lives wear on, you change. Your young passions wither and rot. The motivations that once were pure and undefiled—your many hatreds undiluted—wane as new seasons break over you.
“But I know and see much,” he spat at her. “I perceived that you were delaying, that you were lying to me, that something profound within you had changed and that you intended to dishonor both me and the agreement. I knew that your heart had softened toward your father even before I arranged for Yshmial’s magnificent entrance into your pitiful life. How poetic that a young man can seduce a woman such as you. It is a delicacy rare indeed.”
Uriel’s eyes widened briefly and then clamped shut against a swamping wave of grief.
“My task and aim are simple,” Anael continued. “I require that little red stone. You have both a weakness and a motivation, though they are both specifically different now. Oh, yes, motivation for you can still be found—a chink in your prodigious armor.” He stood. “I have found it. Now, bring me the Bloodstone, or your little boy will rot in his chains and I will throw his lifeless husk to the birds so that his bones may be picked clean. I will bring you to heel.”
She sobbed once more, but then managed to control herself. “Your servant will do as you command.” She looked up at him, a dark silhouette barely visible in the dank light of a solitary distant torch. “I will bring you the stone.”
She then vanished from view.
***
YAMANU SAT WITH ZEDKIEL by the fire late into the night, trying to be quiet, to sense what he was missing.
Outside Zed’s house, in the streets of Ke’elei, none moved but a few scattered sentries on their rounds. Most of the guards were on the wall or at the main gate as usual. Though appearances insisted by peaceful witness that all was well, Yamanu felt unsettled.
“I wish Kreios were here,” Zedkiel said.
Heaviness descended upon Yamanu. “As do I.” He fell silent for a moment. “I am afraid Kreios has gone very far indeed, that he intends—it is clear now—not to return.”
“I agree. I think further that he cannot. There is too much pain here.”
Yamanu looked at Kreios’s brother. “We all thought we knew what we were doing when we left paradise, did we not?”
Zed snorted, smoking his pipe, making ripples in the smoke that was pooling in his lap.
“And El allowed it.” He sighed deeply. “El will not be surprised that we are learning a thing or two under the sun.”
“We are learning about pain and loss.”
Yam gestured to the bedrooms where Zedkiel’s family used to sleep. “It was good while it lasted.”
Zed nodded darkly. “She . . . they . . .” He gestured to both bedrooms, including his wife and his child, “died of old age hundreds of years ago now. But the pain remains.”
“They lived good lives. Safe. And they now sleep, having been full of years under the sun. When El returns and paradise has come, when mankind has overcome, when they receive and share in the glory of El, the reunion will be sweet indeed.”
Zedkiel looked at his angelic friend. “We thought we knew. But none of us knew how badly it would hurt to bury our families in the ground until that terrible unknown day. None of us could have imagined such a thing.”
“Maria lived a full life, Zedkiel.”
The other angel was silent. Evidently he had nothing to say.
“Do you feel it too?” Yamanu asked, changing the subject to what was really foremost upon the minds of both angels.
“Yes. Coming at us from under the earth,” Zedkiel said.
“Yes.”
Yamanu puffed on his pipe, considering things. Whom can we tell? Anael’s counsel had grown dark indeed in centuries past, and the City of Refuge had become less and less resplendent, more and more like a festering scab upon the mountainside. There were hushed discussions amongst the Fallen, talk and rumor of some leaving Ke’elei for good, doing as Kreios had done. Perhaps there was a better life out there in the open.
Living cloistered like this seemed more and more reckless to Yamanu with each passing day, but it was not as if he could voice opinions like his to just anyone. Sentiments that were warm toward independence were frowned upon. Anael’s council made free thinkers a spectacle, ostracizing them in the public hall and holding them up to open contempt and mockery.
Yamanu sighed. It has come to this—the council lacks all sense. There can be no prophetic warnings anymore, no debates, no discussions. And even if we wish to flee, we must do it in secret. In the dead of night. If Yamanu and Zedkiel—and whomever else happened to be a sympathizer—wanted to leave Ke’elei, they would be required to use the shadowing arts against their own kind and brethren. They would be forced to hide from El’s own angels in order to take a chance at living by their convictions. Has such a thing ever been done, even thought of?
Yamanu reflected on these things. Increasingly now, he felt very strongly that the City of Refuge was not safe, and that they would be required to abandon it if they wished to make themselves so. How odd, he thought, that Ke’elei should become a prison. It was the exact opposite of the builders’ intentions. That meant t
hat there could only be one set of fingerprints on this latest development—they were all over it.
He shook his head and puffed on his pipe. His days were long and dark, and oh, how he craved for the light of day to dawn once more, and the feel of a sword in his hand.
CHAPTER XI
Elsewhere
THE KEEP OF THE Damned stood in Sheol high on a little snowy crag surrounded by incisor-like mountains on all sides. Bones were scattered in the yard and jutting through the snow. The house’s thatched-roof gables were ornamented by upward-reaching carved gargoyles at their peaks, and the eaves drooped and were anchored to the ground on flying buttresses. A wide stair of stone descended from the great hall to the muddy ground. At the top of the stair, iron-banded double doors of black oak barred the entrance on the terrace. It appeared to be cruciform, a dark church or great hall of kings, its ornamentation and proportion both Scandinavian and Gothic. Pure white snow draped in billowed blankets over the thatch on the roof of the hall and on its stairs, jagged icicles hanging down here and there.
Kreios and Cain approached.
A lone figure, cloaked in red, stood above them upon the terrace, blocking the way into the hall. “Hail, murderer king. What, dost thou now come to the Keep of the Damned, Cain?”
“Ifrit,” Cain said, standing tall.
The creature laughed at him.
“Master and ruler of the damned.”
Instantly Ifrit disappeared—a wisp, a wraith—and reappeared before Cain at the bottom of the stair. It stooped to whisper into his ear. “Art thou here now at last, my keeper?” Ifrit snarled, and Kreios moved for his sword out of instinct.
Ifrit grabbed Kreios by the neck and pulled him off his feet. “And who are you to come here to the realm of the dead?” he said, wheeling Kreios around. The red cloak flickered and decomposed into ash as the demon cast off its humanoid husk and grew in size.
The demon was colossal, winged in black like the sails of a great ship. One of its arms was the size of Kreios.
Kreios pulled free of the demon’s grip and then hovered over him with arms crossed. “There are many legends surrounding the mighty Ifrit. Are they mere folklore and myth, or are you the one whose name men speak in their nightmares?”
Ifrit roared and batted at Kreios, but he stayed just out of reach of the sharp claws that threatened to harm him.
“Who are you, Angel? How dare you speak of me as the one they call the Jinn. I am not a lowly genie. There is only one Ifrit. I was birthed under the sun from the blood of Abel, the first murder victim. The one who slayed that man now stands with you. Speak, or I will kill you quickly.”
“Ifrit,” Cain said, and then Ifrit turned away from Kreios. “Master of the Keep, this angel is the one called Death—Kreios, the Angel of El, Most High. He, not I, is your master.”
The change was complete and immediate. Ifrit cowered, covering his face with his many wings, bowing low and trembling. “Say true? I did not know or I would not have laid my hands upon you. I beg for mercy, Kreios; I am yours.” Ifrit again flickered, and like an old flame blown out, he changed form and reappeared as a man.
Kreios now spoke. “Ifrit, son of Abel, I know that you do not serve El or the evil one. You serve only death, and I am Death.” Kreios came down and stood before the bowed demon. He was not angry, for he knew the master of the Keep was not permitted to go to the world above. He was a simple slave of his function, unless something were to change. When Ifrit took a soul in death, it passed to this place in solitude. Kreios knew of the Keep of the Damned because the Books spoke of it.
Cain had once been the master of the Keep, but El saw fit to make him finish his punishment under the sun. But these stories were the kind only told in the wind.
Ifrit stood before Kreios, his face now showing a flicker of hope. “Is the time now come?”
Kreios nodded. “I need you to take me into your Keep, to speak to the ones I have called to be kept in this place.”
“I am the guard, the watcher of the gate and master of the Keep, but I have never entered there before, Kreios, Son of El. Only the first Master may bid us enter.”
They both nodded toward Cain. “It is time,” Kreios said.
“Lead us to your dead,” Cain commanded.
These words were like a key in a lock and the great doors obeyed, the sound of the withdrawal of heavy iron locking bars ringing out like a dark bell tolling for the dead.
The three mounted the stairs with Ifrit in front, Cain behind and to his left, Kreios behind and to his right. The doors into the hall swung open as they set foot upon the terrace. They crossed the threshold into darkness.
The doors closed behind them, sealing them inside.
Ahead of them were a dais and a seat like a throne, a censer hanging by a cord from the ridge beam directly over it. Red-hot embers burned in the censer, and the smoke rose from it continually.
Whispers from the shadows came to their ears, and they said the same word again and again, redoubled upon itself a million times over. “Cain.”
The three stood before the empty throne and looked up at the censer and the smoke that poured from it. In its weird light, Cain spoke. “You who murdered, hear now Death and obey.” The sound of his voice produced ripples in the great hall, and the three could feel the dead startle and dart like great schools of fish all around them in the darkness.
More echoes of whispers sounded. “Cain.”
Kreios spoke. “I have need of you once more. My voice called you to this place and now I call you from it. Rise to created life under the sun once more, and by fulfilling those works I will set forth, you will reap your reward.”
The whispers changed. They now resounded millions upon millions of times. “Ifrit.”
Ifrit spoke in response, confirming the command. “Let us rise.”
The smoke pouring from the censer increased, thickening and blackening, like ink in water. Finally the censer burst and fell, the embers it once contained raining fire down upon the dais and the throne, consuming it. The great doors through which the three had entered were now thrown open outward and tossed aside, their iron hinge pins bent and cracked.
The Keep was broken, and the dead poured out of it. Kreios flew out of the grave at their head, and the gathering darkness surrounded him. He was Death. Now all of his own were at his command.
CHAPTER XII
Arabia, 788 B.C.
URIEL HEADED TO DUMAH, the resting place of the cursed Bloodstone.
She knew where the stone was, had always known because in her youth she took it from the counterfeit Seer’s neck and killed him in his sleep. She’d hidden it, hoping that without the power it held, the world would leave her alone.
She hated that she had to bow to her new master most foul, Anael, the vilest traitor she had ever known. Mostly, though, she feared the Bloodstone and what it might do to her. For, though she did indeed have reason to leave her pact with Anael unfulfilled all these years because of her softening heart, most of her reluctance was bound up in a palpable fear of what effect the Bloodstone might exert upon her.
Dumah was in the middle of the great Arabian Desert. She hovered in and around the place, sensing her environs and shadowing her presence from her enemies, seeking out the Bloodstone. They were close, camped in the valley close to Mard Castle. It would be days, if not hours, before they found her hiding place. Time was running out, and now her son’s life too was on the line.
She could feel it calling to her. She began to move toward it.
Alarming thoughts began to resound within her soul. She thought of how the Prince of Darkness would desire an allegiance with one like her, how the power of his strategies would be amplified through her if she were to allow herself to become overwhelmed by the drug of the Bloodstone. She had heard many things about the Bloodstone and its associations with Lucifer, but now all rumors were cast aside and she knew—the stone embodied the Day Star himself. It was undeniable.
She flowed like fra
grance through the cracks in Mard Castle’s stone walls, her essence being drawn onward through chinks and breaks, upward into the highest of the four towers of the citadel. There, in a hidden part in the east wall, the Bloodstone pulsed and seethed with hatred, calling her onward to her destiny. Uriel did not manifest in the flesh, but used her essence to surround the object for transport.
That was when her plans failed, for as she embraced the stone, it sucked her down and into itself. She became a part of it then. Such an event she did not foresee. She did not have time to repent of her foolishness. She was overwhelmed with cold darkness. Her end was at hand. She was face-to-face with her worst fears.
***
QIEL THOUGHT OF HIS mother, and of the man who took him and chained him in the dark. Pulling again, he raged, twisting his body one way and then the other, but the heavy chains held him fast.
Something was happening to him. He vomited on the floor and realized that he was standing in water. It covered his feet, it dripped from the walls, and as if on his command, the water moved in, out … with the thudding of his heart.
A sound beyond the walls of stone thundered like the sea.
No. No, it is the sea.
“Mother.” It was a cry, a plea, and a prayer. He was afraid, so he closed his eyes and tried to act like a man. Qiel wasn’t sure why, but he knew these stones that had held him in his cell were not going to hold him much longer.
He pulled on the heavy chains with both arms at the same time. His back arched, the water rose, and with each pull, the ground under his feet bulged and relaxed, bulged and relaxed.
Were the stories true? Had the powers of the old ones vanished, as some believed? Or is it possible some still exist? Questions filled his mind, and then the memory of his mother falling in front of him by the hand of the man with the blowgun—dead, for all he knew—brought his attention back to the very face of all his fears.
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