War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (12 page)

Zerai looked at Samira. “Well? Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“I’m watching and learning,” the cleric said. “This woman is very dangerous.”

“You don’t say?” Zerai started forward again and caught hold of the last soldier’s arm just as the Daraji woman thrust her fingers into his thick black hair and hurled him into the wall opposite. His head rebounded off the cold bricks and he fell to the ground in a heap. Zerai just looked at his empty hand.

She threw him so fast.

He blinked and realized he was now alone with the hooded woman. She took a step toward him.

“No, no, no, just wait a minute.” Zerai dropped his sword and held up his empty hands. “I’m not with them. I was in the Vaari camp when they attacked us. I’m from Tigara.”

The woman hesitated, then turned and started to walk away.

“Wait, please!” Zerai jogged after her and touched her shoulder.

Suddenly he was flying through the air, the street whizzing by in a blur below his head, and then he hit the ground and every bone from his tail to his skull blazed with sharp and burning pains. He gasped as he rolled onto his side, one hand going to his head and the other clawing at the ground as he struggled to push himself back up to his knees.

“Wait,” he muttered, shaking his head and blinking hard. “Just wait!”

“Surrender!” Samira glided forward out of the shadows. “In the name of Holy Raziel, I command you to surrender to us immediately!”

“Raziel?” The Daraji woman stared at the djinn cleric. “Raziel is dead.”

“He was, sort of.” Zerai struggled up to his feet, though the street kept trying to spin around and drop him on his side again. “But he’s fine now.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked him.

“Zerai Saqir.” The falconer paused, wondering what would be helpful to say. “I live just down the road from Raziel’s fountain.”

“No one lives in Naj Kuvari.”

“Actually, quite a few people do these days.” He risked a small smile. “Is your name Ayen Tanzir?”

The woman lunged at him with her bare hands, but the paving stones beneath her swirled around her feet, swallowing up her legs to the knee and sealing her in place. She twisted around to look at Samira. “A djinn cleric?”

“Holy Raziel has commanded me to bring you to him,” Samira said.

“I believe you.” The woman ripped her legs free of her stone restraints, scattering the warped rocks across the road in a wave of pebbles and dust.

“Why are you attacking people?” Zerai asked. He felt steadier on his feet, but the pounding aches in his head and back left him stiff and unfocused.

“Because I can.” She looked at him, her face a cold blank. “Because someone should.”

“There’s going to be a war if you don’t stop,” he said. “Thousands will die. You need to stop killing these soldiers.”

“I haven’t killed one yet,” she said softly.

Zerai looked down at the armored bodies and saw that they were indeed still moving and breathing, somewhat.

“They were killing the Vaari tonight, weren’t they?” she asked. “They deserve to die.”

“Then why didn’t you kill them?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Zerai gestured at the soldiers. “I’m betting you can. You have more than enough power.”

“What power do you think I have?” Her voice fell to a deadly whisper.

“You’re a Sophirim.” He shrugged. “You have the power to make objects heavier or lighter. You can hurl men into the sky, or crush them with boulders. It seems like more than enough power to kill.”

“Things often aren’t what they seem. And people almost never are.”

At the far end of the lane, Iyasu and Veneka ran into view, paused, saw Samira and Zerai, and started running toward them.

“Stay back!” Zerai shouted.

“Why?” The woman raised her voice and stared at him with two cruel eyes that seemed to glimmer with gold fire. “Because I might kill them? I won’t kill them. They’re not killers. And neither are you. Or this one.” She nodded at Samira.

“Look, I understand what you’re trying to do,” Zerai said. “Punishing the wicked, protecting the innocent. I understand. But there’s a warlord out there who is ready to raze Elladi to the ground because of what you’re doing. It has to stop.”

“Yes, it does. But it won’t.”

The woman began striding down the dark street past Zerai and toward the river.

“Stop where you are!” Samira called out.

The woman walked on.

Samira stretched out one hand in the cool night air and the street began to rumble.

“Careful!” Zerai grabbed the wall behind him. “There are people in these houses!”

“Then perhaps you should protect them.” The djinn cleric swept her hand to the side and the paving stones surged up from the ground as a hundred grasping hands, gray and red and black, all reaching for the Daraji woman’s legs and arms and clothing.

Dozens of the stone hands grasped their target and twisted aside, pulling the woman’s arms and legs out straight, restraining her as they lifted her off the ground. Zerai froze, watching in equal parts fear and fascination, as the hooded woman rose into the air at the center of a hideous multi-limbed creature of stone and shadow.

With a crackle and a crash, the stone arms shattered and hurled a thick gray cloud of dust into the air as the broken hands and arms rained down on the earth, and their captive dropped to the road. The Daraji woman paused amidst the chaos to shake the dust from her cloak, and then she walked on as though nothing had happened, leaving a small forest of twisted and shattered stone hands standing in the road behind her.

Samira raised both hands, but Iyasu ran to her side and grabbed her wrist, saying, “No, wait. Something’s wrong here. She’s no Sophirim.”

“What?” Zerai looked at the seer. “What else could she be? No one is that strong.”

“She is.”

Zerai frowned at him. “Well, yes. Because she’s a cleric.”

“Perhaps she isn’t.” Samira frowned as well. “But we can’t let this opportunity pass. We have her now, and we must capture her now.”

“How?” Iyasu glanced back at the crushed walls and street of the lane behind them and the disturbing grove of stone hands in front of them. “She’s too powerful.”

“There is always a way.” Samira looked back down the lane. “Bashir? It’s time to earn your favor.”

The alchemist emerged from the shadows and Zerai shivered.

Where the hell was he all this time?

A sharp throb in the back of his head tore his attention away, and he caught Veneka’s eye as he pointed to his backside. “Dearest, would you mind? I’m a little broken.”

The healer came over quickly, placed her hands on him, and a moment later he felt as fresh and whole as he ever had. But it came with its own sort of weariness, the knowledge that now he would have to go on, that there would be no rest, that this would be one of those terrible nights of running, and fearing, and hurting, until something coldly final happened to someone.

He closed his eyes and thought of Kaleb and Yusuf, and all the other boys he had lived with in the hills of Tigara, running from the soldiers, running from the demons. He thought of the nights when he had seen each of them die.

It was always just one more night. One more run. Just like any other. Except that night, someone wouldn’t make it back.

He looked at Veneka, at the stern focus in her eyes as she watched the djinn, at the lively way her hair dancing in the night wind.

Why did I let you come?

“What will you do?” Veneka asked the alchemist.

Zerai looked up and saw Bashir holding two needles between his fingers. “Sedate her?”

The alchemist nodded, and then dashed away into the darkness faster than the falconer could follow in the deep shadows. Samira blurred away after him like a gust of wind, and Zerai bolted after them both, running with all his heart and still feeling as heavy and slow as a brick as he watched the djinn flash into the distance.

He heard footsteps pounding behind him, and he nearly yelled for them to stay back and wait, but he didn’t.

If Tanzir gets her hands on me again, I’ll probably need Veneka. Again.

At each intersection or turn, Zerai paused to look in every direction because he had long since lost sight of the djinn and the Daraji woman. He studied the ground for tracks, but the city streets were mostly free of sand and dirt, and the shadows lay thick all around him. But each time Iyasu would yell from behind him, “Left!” or “Straight!” and he would run on, wishing he had the seer’s eyes.

And then he made a sharp right turn and found them.

Ayen Tanzir stood at the foot of an ancient stone bridge with her arm raised to shield herself. Embedded in the skin and leather wrappings on her arm gleamed no less than eight long needles, but there was no sign of sickness or exhaustion in her golden eyes. A trail of cracked and malformed paving stones led from her feet back down the road, and a thin cloud of dust was just beginning to settle around her.

Samira Nerash stood a few paces away at the side of the road, looking no more tired from the chase and the fight than Tanzir. The wind played through her dark crimson robes.

And Bashir stood farther back with a half dozen needles clutched in each hand. The tall, gaunt djinn hunched at the edges of the shadows, his dark eyes fixed on his prey.

“All right, everyone just stop!” Zerai shouted, his voice echoing down the empty city streets. “Just stop for a minute, and listen. We’re not enemies, and we don’t have to be enemies. Ayen Tanzir, we were sent here to find you because your attacks on the Maqari soldiers are going to cause a war, and we don’t want that. Do you?”

“No.” She stood tall and defiant, but she spoke with a grim sort of apathy, as though she didn’t expect anyone to hear her, or to care what she said.

“Good. That’s good.” Zerai smiled nervously. He wanted to get closer to her, to look into her eyes, to make some sort of connection that would keep things civil, but he didn’t dare take another step toward her. Behind him, he heard Iyasu and Veneka arrive in the street. “So maybe my friends here can put down their stones and their needles, and we can all just talk about this. The soldiers, the fighting, all of it. Maybe we can figure out a way to work together so everyone wins.”

“That is not our mandate.” Samira looked at him sharply. “The Holy One wants—”

“Raziel wants to save lives, and so do I, so I’m trying to save lives here,” Zerai barked at her, and then he looked up at the Daraji woman again. “Can we just sit and talk, please?”

The hooded woman slowly put her hand to her head and grimaced, her eyes squeezed tightly shut for a long moment. “The killing doesn’t stop. It can’t stop. All the pointless suffering and dying, the innocent, the children, the frail, the sick, the old…”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Zerai said gently. “To stop it.”

“It can’t stop. It never stops.” She put her hand down and turned her back to him. “Stop following me.” And she strode swiftly into the darkness.

Samira frowned at Zerai. “If you are quite finished, Bashir and I will proceed.”

“No!” Iyasu held out his hand to stay her. “No, let her go.”

“Absolutely not.” Samira shook her head.

Iyasu took a slow breath. “All right then. Bashir, you follow her. But
only
follow her, and watch her. Don’t try to hurt her. Leave us a trail, and we’ll follow you, and we’ll try something different in the morning.”

Bashir looked at Samira. She nodded, and he dashed away into the shadows.

Zerai nodded and clapped Iyasu on the shoulder. “Good thinking. Maybe with a good night’s sleep, we can figure out how to beat this cleric.”

“Oh, she’s definitely not a cleric,” the seer said softly.

Zerai stared at him. “Then what is she?”

Iyasu swallowed and nodded slowly to himself. “I think she’s an angel.”

Chapter 9
Veneka

“An angel?” Veneka stared at him. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain.” Iyasu lightly scratched the back of his right hand. “It’s nothing specific. It’s just a sense that I get from her, from the way she spoke just now. It reminded me of the way Arrah and Raziel speak, focused very much on the moment, and yet somehow outside of time. Powerful and powerless at the same time.”

“But she looks like a woman.” Veneka frowned, realizing a moment too late how pointless her observation was. “I realize that angels look different from one another, but there was nothing about her that did not appear human, not to me, anyway.”

“No, I didn’t see anything either,” the seer said. “Zerai’s right though. Let’s sleep on it and see what happens in the morning. Maybe Bashir will see some sign that will help us sort this out.”

“Yes. And besides.” Veneka glanced around. “We left Petra back at the camp.”

The group turned and headed back through the city streets toward the Vaari pavilion at the northern edge of Sabah. The healer looked back at Samira, who remained very still in the middle of the damaged road. She called to her fellow cleric, “Let her go. We will find her again in the morning.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” the djinn woman said. “I should go with Bashir. If not to capture her, then at least to study her myself.”

“There is at least one reason why you should not, besides your sister,” Veneka said. “I doubt you wish the people of Sabah to see their buildings and roads torn apart, or a forest of stone hands rising up from the ground. Such things would invite questions, too many questions, I think.”

Samira sighed and nodded. All around her, the cracked stones and eruptions and rubble gently melted back down into the original pattern of interlocking bricks and flagstones. Satisfied that all traces of the confrontation had been erased, Veneka walked beside the cleric and oversaw the other repairs along the way until they reached the Vaari camp.

In the carpeted pavilion, they found the shocked and grief-stricken artisans and pilgrims slowly filtering out into the night in search of places to sleep. Petra sat near the fires with the one-armed Vaari singer, and Veneka couldn’t help but inhale sharply when he leaned closer to the light and revealed the terrible scars on the side of his face that had claimed his eye, ear, and scalp.