War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (33 page)

“Yes, I have seen the black poop.”

“There you go. We’ve already learned something!”

She laughed again. “You really think that is all it is? We are slow?”

“Maybe not slow. Just behind. But I’m not worried. All sorts of idiots have children, and lots of them do just fine.”

She laughed and punched him, and then kissed him. “All right then.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, okay.”

They lay back down and pulled each other close.

“I wish you had said something earlier,” he murmured.

“Me too.”

When morning came, Veneka rose with a smile and went out into the city to heal the sick and injured with a soft tune on her lips.

Chapter 23
Samira

As the sun rose, the djinn Tevadim paused on a rocky promontory to study the vast deserts ruled by the Vaari caravans and the Daraji nomads. All night long she had raced across the dunes and over the crumbling red mountains in search of tracks, or caves, or any other sign or refuge for a lone woman in the wild, but in the darkness she had found nothing.

She’s not a child. And she’s not my responsibility.

Samira lingered a moment longer to let the sun rise a bit more, and then she dashed away again. Her feet whisked over the soft sand and the jagged stone with equal ease, and the cool morning air wafted gently around her, even when she moved so fast the world threatened to melt into a vague blur.

She paused at a black mark on the ground, a sooty scar on a rock ledge sheltered from the wind. But the ash was too cold. She ran on.

Spiny lizards hissed at her. Large-eared foxes yipped at her. The only animals that made her pause were a small family of elephants slowly marching through a gully lined with small green shrubs as they followed a dark muddy line in the earth to some ancient watering hole.

Petra, you ignorant child. Trying to win at the game of life, of creation.

She watched the dark giants stride across the sandy ground, calm and unafraid, untroubled by the woman, heedless of predators, in need of no prey. Their massive tusks shone brightly in the early morning light and the gray sails of their ears wafted back and forth as they thrust the biting insects away. Small birds perched on their backs, quietly riding across the desert. She ran on.

She wove through the dunes, leaping lightly through the depressions, leaving no grain of sand unseen. She circled great spires of ancient rock, her gaze raking the shadows and ledges and cracks.

Still no signs.

The sun crept a little higher and the air grew a little warmer. The desert breathed in new colors, bleeding orange and pink and gold and red where only black had ruled throughout the night. Again she paused on the crest of a tall dune to survey the sandy wastes, and she sighted yet another stone tower on the horizon. She ran to it.

The moment she arrived her eyes fell on the dark red speckles at the edge of the rock where it emerged from the sand. The blood still glistened wetly. Samira paused to breathe and focus on the living stone beside her, ready to command it to flow and shift should she need a shield, or a weapon. And then she began to climb.

She was only a third of the way up the crooked tower of stone when a voice said from around the next corner, “You’re late.”

“It’s a big desert.” Samira stepped out onto the next ledge and looked down.

Her sister sat against the rock wall, half-curled up, leaning her head to one side. The small pool of blood around her slowly grew wider across the dry ground. “Not big enough.”

“You hurt yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Intentionally?”

“Yes.”

Samira sighed. “This is the clerical selection all over again. You screamed that you would kill yourself if I went to Shivala instead of you.”

“And you walked right out the door.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You didn’t even hesitate.”

“I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

“Yes, well…” Petra lifted her arm to display the red-black sheen on her abdomen.

“That looks painful.”

“It is.”

“Veneka will have you whole and healthy by the end of the hour. Can you walk, or do I need to carry you?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t be stupid. At least don’t be any more stupid than you’re already being.”

“I lost the baby.”

Samira blinked. “Is this really about the baby?”

“Of course it is.”

“All right then. Can I see it?”

“I left it in Jerinoba.”

“It?”

“Yes.”

“Was it a girl?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Mm.” Samira sighed and turned away. “You’re a despicable person, Petra.”

“I love you, too.”

“Well, I’m not going to let you die here. I’m going to drag your sad, miserable carcass back to the city, and Veneka will heal you, and you can go right back to spitting in God’s eye. How does that sound?”

“Oh, please don’t. I don’t want to miss the show.”

“What show?”

“Out there. The show.”

Samira frowned and turned to look out at the desert. As she scanned to the east, she saw a dark line of a shadow stretching along the border for miles where the rocky landscape of the Pillars of Abari met the soft, shifting sands of the east.

“My wall?”

“The southern end.”

She followed the shadow south until it ended abruptly, and then began again. “There’s a hole in my wall.”

“Indeed there is.”

“Darius has broken through.”

“Oh, you are a clever girl, aren’t you?”

Samira scanned westward, but the jagged spires of the Pillars obscured the rocky plateau as well as any forest. Aside from a few vague dust clouds, there was no sign of the army. “Wherever they are, they’ll reach Jerinoba before sunset.”

“And everyone will die, including your precious clerics.”

“No, I can stop them.”

“You can’t stop an army.”

“I can.”

“You tried. You failed.” Petra sniffed and groaned. “If I had made that wall, they never would have breached it. You still don’t understand the first thing about design, about strength and shape.”

“I would have loved to learn, if only you had bothered to teach me instead of spending all your time trying to get a human to impregnate you.”

Petra sighed. “Everyone needs a hobby.”

Samira turned and knelt to scoop up her sister, but Petra brandished a small knife at her. She backed away. “You’re going to kill me too?”

“I don’t care whether you live. I just want you to let me die.” She placed the tip of the knife against the small of her throat. “I’m done. I’m tired of this stupid world. I deserved to go to Shivala, not you, but I didn’t get what I deserved. And I deserved to birth that child, but I didn’t get that either. I never asked for any help, never cheated, never took shortcuts. I did the work. I deserved my rewards. But your God is a hateful, selfish thing.”

Samira glanced at the rock wall behind Petra, wondering how hard it would be to have a small, blunt stone strike her sister in the head and render her unconscious. And silent.

Petra pushed the knife harder against her throat. “Don’t do it. I will kill myself.”

“If you were going to, you would have already.”

“I told you, I want to watch the show first. I want to watch your little friends burn. They all worked so hard to save Tagal. They made it all the way to the palace, even put Darius in prison and a new king on the throne. And they still lost.”

Samira frowned.

“They still lost.”

Samira looked down at the Pillars again, searching for the army.

“You know what that tells me? That God isn’t good, and there is no free will. God is cruel and selfish and stupid, and we’re all just puppets for him to punish and abuse. So the wicked rule, and the righteous suffer, and die.”

Samira shook her head.

Is this really happening? Again? Thousands of lives hang in the balance, including the lives of Raziel’s cleric and the seer. The Angel of Death must still be brought to Naj Kuvari to answer for her actions, somehow. And here I am, dealing with Petra. Again.

“There is no meaning to this life or this world,” Petra continued. “It’s all just theater for a cosmic sadist.”

“I sincerely doubt it.” Samira inhaled and, without turning to look, she summoned a lump of rock to lurch out from the wall and knock Petra’s head back from the knife while a second stone hand reached for the djinn woman’s wrist to control the weapon. But when she turned to look, she saw her stone limbs standing stiffly in the empty air and Petra lay flat on the ground with the knife buried deep in her throat.

Samira dropped to her knees, yanked out the knife, and pressed her hand against the wound, but the blood had already stopped flowing.

Quickly to life and quickly to death.

She hovered over her sister with shaking, bloody hands for a moment, and then slowly sat down and closed her eyes.

I’m sorry, Petra. I wish… I wish it had been different. I’m sorry.

She opened her eyes and saw the blank-eyed face of her little sister staring blindly at the pale blue desert sky. Flecks of blood dotted her dark skin. Her black hair lay in snaking, ragged lines wherever it had fallen when she dodged away from the stone hand.

With a labored sigh, Samira reached out to wrap her sister in her dress and then picked her up, but then she paused and set her down again. She moved the body back into the crevice where she had first found her sitting, and then with a small gesture, she closed the rock walls in around the body in a perfectly sealed tomb. Then she let her hand glide across the rock face once, and she left.

She wanted to stop and sit, to think, to remember her sister. But there was no time. There were duties to fulfill.

Dashing over the rocky plateau, it only took her a few minutes to reach the distant Pillars of Abari and then only a few moments more to locate the army of Tagal. She silently flitted from pillar to arch to pillar, counting soldiers and horses and the heavy scorpios rattling along behind the oxen, and then she was gone before anyone knew she was there.

Back across the hard stone road, she raced to Jerinoba.

Petra… you could have had anything, any life. An artist, a teacher, a lover… a real lover. While I was sitting on a mountain with Tevad, year after year, listening to sermons and parables, you could have been building so much, doing so much…

If only you could have understood, but then, maybe you couldn’t. Maybe the rage and the self-pity were just in your blood. Maybe there was nothing anyone could have done to help you.

God knows, there was nothing I could do.

I saved you twice.  I thought I did it for you, but maybe I did it for me.

And today… today it was finally for you.

Find peace, Petra.

When she reached Chaggar’s Well, the djinn cleric flashed along the path that spiraled down to the lake and she didn’t stop running until she reached the tents at the edge of the city. Four were empty, and in the fifth she found only an unfamiliar woman sleeping on the ground as one of the prince’s maids sat dozing in the corner.

Where is everyone?

She was about to wake the maid and ask the question aloud when she heard footsteps outside and turned to see the singer Edris step through the entrance. His pale face and red eyes told her that he had felt very differently about the lost child.

“Where is she?” he rasped.

“Dead.”

He nodded.

“Where are the others?”

He shrugged and looked down at the sleeping woman.

She stepped into his line of sight with a frown and said, “I need to speak with the other clerics. Darius has broken through the wall and is marching here. He’ll be here before nightfall.”

The singer looked up at her sharply. “He’s coming here?”

“Yes.”

“But Jerinoba…”

“Everyone will die, exactly. So where are Veneka and Iyasu? And where is Azrael?”

He gestured vaguely at the entrance of the tent and muttered, “The market. One of the markets, I think.”

Samira hurried past him, leaving him alone in the tent, staring at Talia in silence.

Chapter 24
Zerai

“Where are we?”

Zerai grinned as he continued down the broken path that snaked southward beside the narrow stream at the bottom of the canyon. “We’re in nearly the same place we were when you asked five minutes ago.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Faris huffed as he hiked over a rocky mound.

“This is an excellent idea. Jengo agrees, don’t you Jengo?”

The huge warrior said nothing.

“That’s right, it is an excellent idea.” Zerai hopped lightly along the path, peering into the dark cracks in the canyon walls to either side. “Veneka healed your aching bones, and now this is exactly what you need. Fresh air, hard work, and a little time away from all the noise and the people.”

“But we should be planning what we’re going to do next,” Faris wheezed. “Darius isn’t going to simply forgive me for throwing him into prison.”

“You worry too much. Veneka is back there buying us a lot of good will right now, healing everyone in town. And I’m sure Iyasu is chatting up everyone he meets, so that quick little mind of his is probably already hatching a clever scheme for what we should do next.”

“Iyasu maybe be a skilled cleric, but he’s not as wise as I was led to believe. This entire debacle is his fault, after all.”

Zerai stopped and turned. He continued to smile, but it was a forced smile now. “Actually, Your Majesty, this whole mess is your fault. You were the one who insisted on giving the throne to your relatives instead of just taking it for yourself. If you had just put on your father’s crown in the first place, none of this would have happened. Thousands would still be alive, and you would be sitting in your palace at this very moment, instead of following me down this charming little stream. So let’s not blame the seer too much, all right?”

They carried on in silence for a few moments.