War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (36 page)

“Are you anxious?”

He paused. “About what?”

“Seeing Darius again.”

“I saw him in Tagal.”

“Did you talk to him then?”

“No.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you want to know why he changed? Why he wasn’t the king you wanted him to be?”

“Of course I do, but… I don’t. Because there isn’t going to be some grand reason for it. It’ll be simple, and awful,” he said. “Some flaw in his character, in his mind, in the life he led before I met him. Something I should I have seen, should have realized. But I didn’t. I didn’t see it, and people died.”

“So you don’t want to talk to him now?”

“Not really.”

The Angel of Death nodded. “I understand. But I still think you should.”

She dismounted and with a sweep of her suddenly visible wings she leapt to the top of a tall arch of stone and peered into the distance, and a moment later she dropped gracefully back onto her mare’s saddle. Pointing to the northeast she said, “That way.”

A few minutes later Iyasu heard the first signs of life coming from the path ahead. Horses whickered in the stone corridors of the Pillars, and many small metal things jangled softly. Through the stone formations he caught a glimpse of a cluster of wagons, large armored things that looked too big to navigate the narrow paths of the Pillars. And as he rode closer, more details became apparent.

The wagons were not moving.

The horses stood in their harnesses, snorting out the dust and looking around warily.

A dozen men laid on the ground, mostly face down.

“What happened here?” she asked.

“It couldn’t have been Samira.”

“Then what did this?”

Iyasu dismounted and frowned at the scene. It was all too familiar in some ways. The fallen bodies, the eerie quiet, the feeling in the air that things had been very different just an hour ago. As Azrael paced slowly around the wagons, Iyasu studied the area. He saw the tracks of the men change abruptly from straight marching lines to ragged stumbles. He saw sand beginning to pile up around the wagon wheels as the wind quietly went about its work of destroying and hiding all things in the desert.

He didn’t see any blood.

Kneeling down, he rolled a young soldier onto his side to look at the youth’s face, and Iyasu saw a pale blueness about his lips and bloodshot lines clawing at his eyes.

Disease?

He stood up and noted the way the fallen soldiers had died, some clutching their throats, some clawing at the sandy earth.

No… poison.

“Iyasu!”

He ran around the nearest wagon to find Azrael standing on the far side, staring down at a hideous green and black puddle on the ground. He quickly covered his face with his sleeve and stepped back.

“Is this what killed them?” she asked.

He nodded. “I think so.”

He scanned the ground for other signs and found a faint patter of footprints leading away from the noxious spill toward the northern end of the silent wagons. He followed the trail, and as he came around a second wagon he saw a very different body on the ground. No armor. No weapons. Only a faded blue cloak and a pair of worn boots.

“Edris!” He knelt by the body and rolled him over, only to find the singer already dead with the same bloodshot eyes and pale blue lips. He let go of the body and stood up, his chest aching and head spinning.

Why is he here? What happened?

He saw the empty bag lying beside Edris.

Bashir’s bag. Edris took the bag. Edris poisoned the soldiers. But why?

“I don’t understand.” He looked at Azrael. “Did he do it to protect Jerinoba? Or even us?”

“No,” the angel whispered. “When he died, there was no anger in him, no rage at Darius. And no satisfaction in protecting his home.”

“Then what was it?”

“Pain. Grief. Emptiness.”

Iyasu covered his eyes. “The baby.”

Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I see it coming? I could have stopped him, helped him… Why didn’t I?

Because I was too busy to see it. Too distracted.

He looked at Azrael’s thoughtful eyes.

More than distracted. And now he’s dead. And all of these men are dead.

Because of me.

Again.

“Come on. We may not have much time before some other company of soldiers finds us here. Let’s find Darius.”

They moved quickly around the wagons and horses, checking each body that they found. Iyasu recognized two commanders, the young Captain Ajith and the proud Major Toubia, both of their faces bloated, contorted, and discolored to preserve their final, painful moments of life.

But no Darius.

So he swept the edge of the area, tracing the circle of the outermost corpses, and he found a new trail. A crooked, uncertain trail already being swept away by the rising wind, but a trail all the same. It led north.

He followed the trail slowly, only half certain that it was a trail at all, and only half certain that it would lead anywhere before the wind erased it completely. But the trail kept winding around the rocky Pillars, and he kept following it, moving farther and farther from the wagons, until he turned and found a man sitting on the ground with his back propped up against a jagged boulder in the earth. The man wore a simple soldier’s breastplate, with his hair tightly braided back from his high forehead, a thick tuft of black beard on his chin, and a jeweled crown on his head.

“Hello, Darius.”

The man was gasping and shaking as he looked up through bloodshot eyes at the seer, and he spoke with pale blue lips, “Magi.”

“Dying?”

“Apparently.”

Iyasu felt a surge of satisfaction, which was immediately followed by a tide of guilt and remorse. “I’m sorry. If I had never chosen you, you would have remained a good man, a good soldier, and none of this would have happened. I thrust power on you, and you were not ready for it. I don’t blame you, not entirely. You played your part, but so did I. And I’m sorry.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe.”

“A vaunted magi, a gifted seer, and you still can’t see anything, can you?” The dying man smiled and grunted, which maybe have been a laugh. “Well, I’ll kill you in a minute, and then you won’t have to feel sorry anymore.”

“In a minute you’ll be dead.”

“I doubt that.”

“Why?”

Darius peered at him. “You really don’t know? Don’t even suspect? All this time I was wondering when you would notice, so I kept you around, waiting, so I could learn from you what the signs were. But you never saw. Even now, you can’t see it.”

“See what?”

“My soul.” The warlord grinned.

Iyasu frowned and peered at the man more intently. It was still the middle of the afternoon and the light was strong, too strong to see more than a faint golden haze of the soul swimming about Darius’s head. “I can see it.”

“No, you can’t.” Darius groaned and pushed himself up to his feet. He leaned against the boulder, his breathing still labored, but his lips were no longer blue.

Iyasu stepped back. “You have a cure for the poison?”

“Something like that.”

Iyasu stepped back again and yelled, “Azrael!”

Darius chuckled. “Calling for the Angel of Death? Is that the only way a magi can kill? By begging some dark specter to slay me?”

“Not exactly.”

Azrael strode out from behind a rock tower and stepped in front of Iyasu. Her silk dress and black hair streamed to one side as the wind tore through the narrow space where they stood between the stone Pillars, and the warlord stared at her with curious eyes that were no longer bloodshot.

“Darius.” She lunged forward and gripped the man by his throat.

“No!” Iyasu grabbed her arm. “You can’t kill him. You know you can’t. Just stop. Please, just stop.”

“He’s caused millions to suffer, in Maqari, in Ovati, in Elladi. And now here in the desert, how many more would have died in Jerinoba? How many more innocents would have died in agony and terror because of this filth!”

“Too many.” Iyasu squeezed her arm. “Please let him go. He’ll go back to prison, and stand trial, and suffer the fate that the law demands for his crimes. Let him go, please.”

Azrael released him, dropping the man to his knees where he stayed, gasping and massaging his throat.

As they stood over the soldier, a new shadow fell beside them and Iyasu glanced up. “Samira. Feeling better?”

“Much.”

“Good.” Iyasu squatted down. “Now that you’re here, would you mind giving us a bit of shade? I need a little darkness for a moment.”

“Of course.” The djinn cleric did not move, but the sharp rocks around them began to ooze and slide upward to form a smooth dome overhead, blocking out the sun and plunging them all into a black cave. “Why do you need the dark?”

Iyasu cleared his throat and focused on Darius. “I need to look at his soul.”

Chapter 26
Azrael

The dome closed over them to make a perfect darkness. Azrael could see nothing, but she could feel the presences around her. Samira burned warmly behind them, her djinn spirit blazing fiercely but quietly, imbued with holy power. Iyasu knelt in front of her, his human spirit small and heavy like a smooth stone on a river bed, a solid point amid the swirling wilderness of the desert. And then there was Darius.

There was something wrong with Darius.

Azrael inhaled and a dozen people died, their faces flashing through her mind’s eye just slowly enough for her to see them all. The old and the young, the sleeping and the screaming, men and women, human and djinn. The flood rushed through her, all the tiny memories of fear and pain shrieking and wailing through her head. She saw rooms and stars and fields and snow, she saw sobbing families, grinning assassins, slobbering drunks, frightened thieves, and lonely alleyways.

She felt the heat and the cold and terror of each of them washing over her, filling her with a sorrow she had long ago stopped trying to describe to herself. She freed their souls to fly away to their next lives, their next journeys, their next services to the divine, leaving her alone with the memories, with the rage that always followed with those horrific glimpses into the heart of humanity.

And then she exhaled and a dozen more died.

“My God,” Iyasu whispered. “What are you?”

Darius grunted. “Can’t you tell?”

“Samira, the light, please?”

The djinn cleric peeled back her rock dome and let the sunlight spill back in on them, revealing the worried face of the young seer and the cruel smirk of the soldier.

“What is it?” Azrael asked. “What did you see?”

“It’s strange. When I first met Veneka six years ago, she was possessed by the spirit of Raziel,” he said. “Two souls in one body. One human and one angelic. And a few hours ago, I saw the soul of an unborn child, part human and part djinn. The different souls blend and blur together, almost like water.”

“Is that what he is?” Samira asked. “Is he possessed by a dead angel? Or by a djinn? Or both?”

“Neither.” Iyasu stood up and backed away. “Because he isn’t human at all. Are you?”

Darius stood up as well, his eyes clear and his body flush with health and strength. “Frankly, I’m shocked it took you this long to see it. Clearly, I overestimated the angelic gifts of the magi clerics.” As he spoke, his voice dropped to a deeper register and his words took on a strange accent, one that Azrael did not recognize at all.

“If he isn’t human, what is he?” the angel asked. Another heartbeat, another dozen faces in pain.

“He’s a djinn,” Samira answered. “I haven’t heard that accent in decades, but I would know it anywhere. He’s from the far east, beyond Shivala, from the lost city of Ramashad.”

“It isn’t lost,” Darius said. “Only hidden. For now.”

“How did you do it?” Iyasu asked. “How did you hide this from me? When we first met, your soul looked like any other human soul, and better than most. Honest and noble, just and self-sacrificing. How did you deceive me?”

“I didn’t, you idiot child.” He wasn’t smiling now. “I simply waited until you crowned Darius king, and then I killed him and took his place.”

“A shapeshifter?” Azrael looked at Samira. “I didn’t know djinn could do that.”

“We can’t.”

“But he can, because he is possessed, in a way.” Iyasu nodded at the imposter. “A djinn with the spirit of an angel. But not a whole one, not like when Veneka was possessed at all. This is different. There are only traces of the angel about him. Only shreds.”

“Shreds are all I need to bring entire kingdoms to their knees, clearly.” Darius wiped his hands on his trousers and rested his palm against the pommel of his sheathed sword.

“But why?” Iyasu asked. “Why take Darius’s place? Why would you want to become a human king? I thought djinn hated dealing with humans.”

“We do, we truly do,” the imposter said. “Unless we’re killing them, of course. We don’t mind killing them in the slightest.”

“You don’t speak for Odashena,” Samira said. “We have always sought to live in peace.”

“And that is why you live in a hole in the ground,” Darius replied. “My people have loftier ambitions. And what better way to slaughter humans than by leading them to slaughter each other? As king, all I need to do is give the order, and thousands rush to their deaths for me. It’s quite wonderful. I’ve been meaning to thank you for that, Iyasu. Truly, it was most kind of you to make my war possible.”

Another breath, another dozen dead children and mothers and grandfathers. Azrael winced. One of them had been stabbed by a lover, suddenly and painfully, left to die slowly full of panic and regret and surprise.

She closed her eyes for a moment. The faces kept coming, the pain kept coming, always fresh, always sharp, much of it repetitions of things she had seen and felt millions of times already, but every now and again one would come through that was sharper, or crueler, or stranger than most.

She wanted to take the entire human race by the throat and inflict as much pain and fear upon all of them as they had inflicted on each other, and on her. She wanted to shove their faces in their own filth. She wanted to show them the grandeur and majesty of their world, of their cosmos, of their heaven, and then scream at them, how dare they waste it all, how dare they act like such miserable animals, how dare they…