War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (29 page)

Zerai pulled Veneka away from the wall. “What was that?”

Samira leapt nimbly to the top of the wall and looked out to the east. “They’re attacking the wall.”

“With what? Elephants?”

“No, scorpios.” Samira looked down at him. “They have two scorpios firing iron lances in unison.”

The wall thundered again and a handful of stone spikes snapped free and clattered to the ground at their feet.

“How long will the wall hold?” Zerai asked.

“Hours, maybe days,” the djinn cleric said. “But they will breach it eventually.”

“Then let’s not be here when they do.” Zerai began pulling the weary refugees to their feet. He struggled with Edris to get Petra upright as the djinn woman struggled to breathe, awash in sweat. Together they put her in the saddle of one of the few horses that had made it over the crest of the dune, and minutes later everyone was moving again.

“Do you still know where we’re going?” Zerai asked the singer.

Edris glanced at him and then gestured to the land ahead of them. The rocky ground lay in broken sheets and ravines, all covered in a vast stone forest of crooked pillars and arches that seemed to defy gravity in their unwillingness to topple over, no matter their unbalanced appearance. “In the center of the Pillars of Abari there is a massive stone bowl in the earth with a lake at its bottom. Chaggar’s Well. The city stretches around that lake.”

“So, what, an hour from here?”

“More like four, I think.”

Six hours later, Zerai sighted a change in the landscape ahead. All morning they had walked through the dusty paths of the Pillars, but now he saw something new, a dark streak across the ground that shifted in perspective until he came close enough to see that he was looking at the far wall of the stone bowl that Edris had mentioned, and at its bottom shone the still waters of a wide, shallow lake.

“Will we be safe here?” Zerai looked back through the stone forest for any sign of the legion, but saw nothing. “A few hundred archers on the rim up here could kill thousands down there.”

“Quite safe.” Edris glanced at him. “No arrow fired from here would ever strike Jerinoba.”

“Why not?” Faris asked.

“The wind,” Iyasu answered. He picked up a small stone and tossed it into the void, and a moment later the stone was whisked sharply to the south, tumbling into the distance until they lost sight of it flying toward the far end of the lake, to the shore opposite the tent city.

Zerai took a long breath. “All right then. Let’s hope they’re feeling hospitable today.”

“The Vaari are always hospitable.” Edris took the reins of Petra’s horse and turned toward the path leading down into the enormous well. “It’s the rompos we need to worry about.”

Zerai grit his teeth and shook his head.

Damn. It’s always something.

He started walking. “What’s a rompo?”

Chapter 20
Edris

As he led Petra’s horse down the steep path along the wall of Chaggar’s Well, Edris said, “Rompos are hares.”

“That’s all?” Zerai asked. “Desert rabbits?”

“Big ones with short ears. Scavengers.”

“Scavengers? You mean they eat meat?”

“Yes. Usually dead meat, but sometimes… not so dead.” Edris glanced up at Petra and saw how pale and wasted her face was. Dark bags hung under her eyes and her skin shone with sweat, but she was no longer contorting her face in pain and her breathing was very quiet. She sat very still in the saddle, one hand on her belly, staring out across the vast emptiness of the Well. “Petra? Are you all right? We’ll be there soon.”

She nodded, but said nothing and did not look at him.

Edris focused on the path. Loose stones lay everywhere to stab a careless foot or to turn a weak ankle, or even to send some poor fellow tumbling over the edge and down the sheer rock wall to the city below.

The singer let his thoughts run wild through the back of his mind as he stared at the path. Images of random children he had seen, images of his own parents, the sounds of women in labor, and names, hundreds of names flowing through his thoughts.

But the questions kept him quiet.

Will we raise this child together?

Or will she leave with the baby?

Or will she leave the baby with me?

The falconer’s white bird screamed and he looked up to see it wheeling overhead in a cloudless sky.

What would I do with a baby?

How would feed him? Or her?

He looked down into the shining wavelets of the lake where a handful of tiny boats bobbed with their fishermen.

Could I really carry a baby around with the caravans? I suppose I could. People do.

Women might see me as weak or soft if I’m always holding a baby… Or maybe not. Maybe they would see me as a worthy father.

Smiles and frowns flickered across his lips as he minded the path.

You have to carry babies, all the time. They can be heavy. But I do have two arms now.

And they cry. At night.

I like to sleep at night.

By the time they reached the bottom of the well, Edris had contrived in his mind a system of sashes to sling the baby over his shoulder, and had named four women he knew who might be willing to nurse the baby, and he was trying to decide whether he would want to name the baby after his parents, purely for the perverse pleasure of scolding someone with the same name as the people who had scolded him.

And then he looked at Petra again. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing so softly that he wondered if she was sleeping. But before he could reach up to check her, he saw the armed men walking out across the pebbled field between the edge of the city and the end of the path. The singer waved to them, thinking that at least one of them looked familiar. The warriors nodded back, and they met a moment later.

“Who are you?” The apparent captain of the guard wore a thick gray beard over his lined and scarred face, and he squinted at them all until finally fixating on Jengo.

“Edris Lumah,” the singer said. “I left only a few weeks ago with Abakar Chidimi, but I left him in Sabah a few days ago to help these poor people. We’ll only be staying a few days to rest and then we’ll move on.”

The captain laughed. “You’re either an idiot or the most unlucky liar in the world. I’ve never met Edris Lumah, but everyone knows the man only has one arm and one eye. We do not welcome liars in Jerinoba. Go and rest somewhere else!”

“No, no, wait.” Edris raised his empty hands. “I am Edris Lumah. I’ve been healed.”

Again the captain laughed and turned to his men to say, “The poor idiot’s lost his mind. He thinks he’s grown a new arm!”

“He did grow a new arm,” Veneka said. “I healed him.”

The captain turned his glare on her. “I’m tired of this joke. Take your lies back into the desert.”

“I am no liar.” Veneka stepped forward, despite Zerai’s quiet attempt to keep her back from the armed strangers. “I am a Razielim of Naj Kuvari.”

The captain eyed her robes of many greens. “A magi?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“Gladly. Are any of you injured?”

The men shook their heads.

“Oh, for the love of… here.” Edris pulled the short knife from his belt and sliced open his palm in front of them, spilling a few drops of blood on the dry earth. The sudden blaze of pain made him want to clutch the wound to his chest, and it took some effort to keep his hand extended so the guards could see it.

Veneka placed her hand on his arm, and the wound gently flowed closed again, and the pain faded away. Edris wiped the blood away from his palm. “See?”

The captain frowned. “It’s a trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” Veneka said.

“Then do it again.” The captain took his own knife and made a small cut on the heel of his own hand.

Veneka touched his arm, and the wound closed.

The captain stared at his hand, and touched his hand, and stared at her. “You truly are one of the holy magi?”

“Yes.”

Edris turned slowly to look back at the boy Iyasu and the dark woman at his side, and then at Samira Nerash at the rear of the group.

I suppose there’s no need to tell them we have more than just magi among us.

“Edris?”

He looked at Veneka. “What?”

“I was just saying, perhaps you could sing for these gentlemen, to show that you are who you say you are.”

“Oh, of course.” He cleared his throat, and sang out the first thing that came to mind, which was a lullaby his mother had sung to him as a child. The first lines came out a bit unevenly, as he hadn’t sung that lullaby aloud in many years, but he quickly gathered his composure and put his body into the music, as though it were one of the romances or epics that he usually performed in the streets of Sabah, and within moments he had all of the guards swaying slightly, nodding their heads, and one of them was even mouthing the words along with him.

“Fine, fine!” The captain waved him to stop. “You can stay in Jerinoba, but we will be watching you.”

When they reached the tent city, they were quickly surrounded by people, animals, and fluttering flaps of cloth that only let them see a few paces in any direction. A thin veil of dust hung in the hair as the wind played through the tents, whirling around the legs of the camels, and kicked up by the feet of running children.

As they threaded their way through the narrow paths between the caravan camps, Edris noted a few familiar faces gawking at him and whispering as they pointed in his direction.

I suppose there will be time later to awe my friends with my glorious two-handedness.

The singer led the way to an area away from the shore of the lake where he knew he would find a group of old and poorly kept tents set aside for guests, whether they were expected or not. In all his years of coming and going from Jerinoba, he could scarcely recall a time when they had ever been used, such was the hospitality of the caravan princes that no one would ever need to resort to the old, tattered shelters by the stone wall.

They were empty now.

With little explanation needed, the group divided itself into five small knots of friends and companions and entered the tents. Edris brought Petra to the entrance of the last tent, helped her dismount, and led her inside where he hastily contrived a bed from their blankets and robes. But instead of lying down, instead of turning on him with looks and words of pain and barely suppressed anger, she merely sat on the bed and stared dully at the wall.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it nearly time?”

She shook her head.

“When? Tonight?”

“Never,” she whispered.

The word ripped the strength from his legs and he sat down awkwardly beside her. “What?”

“It’s dead.”

His eyes darted to her huge belly, and he started to reach for it, but stopped short. Every muscle in his back slowly constricted until he couldn’t move at all and he felt his face growing tight and twisted all on its own. “What?”

“It’s dead, you idiot, or are you half-deaf now instead of half-blind?”

He swallowed.

My baby is dead.

He shook his head a little and narrowed his eyes at her. “Veneka. I’ll get Veneka.” He stood up and moved toward the exit, his mind a cloud of unformed thoughts and fears and panics and rages.

No, no, no, this isn’t supposed to happen, not now, not to me, not to my…

He hurried out of their tent and into the one where Veneka, Zerai, and Iyasu sat beside the Angel of Death, who was quietly rubbing the bronze coins of her Daraji belts between her long, veined fingers.

Iyasu looked up at the newcomer, and Edris could see the instant that the seer realized that something was wrong.

He already knows, the little brat. But I still have to say it, don’t I?

“Veneka, can you come? It’s Petra. It’s the baby.”

The healer stood and hurried out ahead of him, and he followed her back to his tent where he found Petra still sitting on her bed, but now Samira was standing in the far corner, watching her sister do nothing.

“Petra?” Veneka knelt beside the djinn woman. “Is it time? Is something wrong?”

“The baby’s gone,” Iyasu said softly from the entrance of the tent behind Edris.

The singer glared over his shoulder at the youth.

I already knew that. I didn’t bring you here to say that, I brought you to help. Why the hell would you even say that?

He looked back down to see Veneka moving her hands slowly over Petra’s belly and legs and arms and back… but the djinn woman ignored her. And after a few moments, the healer stopped trying and backed away. “I’m sorry.”

Petra shook her head.

“Did it…” Edris cleared his throat. “How did it happen?”

“The way it always happens,” Petra whispered as she stared into a bleakness only she could see. “I wanted it, I worked for it, and it was taken from me. For no reason at all.”

“You know the reason,” Samira muttered.

“Don’t you dare.”

“You knew it would end this way. God never intended—”

“Don’t talk to me about God.”

“God created our races from—”

“God can go to hell.”

Samira rolled her eyes and strode out of the tent.

Edris looked from the open sorrow on Veneka’s face to the weary sympathy in Iyasu’s eyes to the dead hatred in Petra’s gaze, and he turned to leave. But someone else stood in the way. Azrael.

“Did you… Did you do this?” The singer glanced back at Petra.

“I do not take lives,” the angel said. “I free souls.”

An image appeared in his mind, the image of a white-hot knife sliding into Petra’s womb and slicing away the fragile soul of his tiny, defenseless son, his beautiful, helpless daughter, with that divine blade cutting away their holy fire and leaving the rest cold and still. He nearly vomited on the hooded woman, and he shouldered past her and out into the glare of the afternoon sun. He strode quickly through the crowded streets, shoving people aside even as they recognized him and tried to speak to him, and he kept moving faster and faster until he stumbled free of the tents and people and splashed into the shallows of the lake.