War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (37 page)

She opened her eyes and looked at the creature called Darius. “How did you get this power?”

“I drank deep from the font of power itself.”

“How?”

He smirked. “No stomach for riddles?”

“How?”

“Go to hell, whatever you are.”

She lunged at him again, and this time Iyasu did nothing to stop her. She grabbed the warlord’s wrist in one hand and his neck in the other, and she hurled him against the base of a stone arch.

He slowly stood up without a mark on him. “You’re very strong.”

“So are you.” She rushed at him again, but he dashed around her, and she was forced to chase him, running and leaping through the rocky Pillars as the faces of the dead ran through her, fueling her rage. Her holy blood burned in her veins, and she felt her wings erupt from her back, her enormous, beautifully black wings stretching high and wide with heavenly strength. She kicked off the ground and flew like a striking hawk, slicing through the air and catching the djinn imposter by the back of his neck.

Azrael stopped short and the warlord swung in her grasp like a child’s toy. She turned and smashed him against a boulder. The rock crackled. She reared back and hurled him against the stone again, and again, and again.

The deaths trickled on and on through her mind. Shaking hands, stuttering tongues, twitching legs, and the voices, the last words, the last gasps, the last questions that would go forever unanswered.

She slammed the djinn against the boulder one last time and the rock shattered. Tiny shards exploded into the air and heavy stones tumbled and rolled across the ground as a cloud of dust and sand rose around them. She let go and the man fell limp to the ground.

Instantly his hands began to move and he pushed himself up again.

“He’s very strong,” Samira said quietly. “Let’s see how strong he really is.”

The ground exploded as two dozen stone spears lanced upward, and Darius leapt into the air, soaring high above the jagged spikes. But then a dozen stone arms arched up from the earth, curving across the sky with grasping stone hands, reaching for the djinn warrior. He drew his sword and smashed away the hands one by one, shattering each so that the petrified fingers rained down on the desert floor below.

The dust cloud around them rose higher and thicker, blotting out the desert horizon and the peaks of the distant mountains.

He landed on the side of one of the stone lances and perched there, grinning. He raised his sword, and then swept it down across his face and body, and in that instant he was transformed from an armored man into a robed woman, identical in every way to the cleric standing before him except for the jeweled crown on her head.

“Should I be impressed?” Samira said to her copy. “Or is this meant to confuse me? Am I meant to be frightened by the prospect of killing someone wearing my own face?”

The shapeshifter shrugged. “Let’s see if you are.” She flashed down the length of the spear and drove her sword at the Tevadim cleric, and the two of them vanished into a blur of racing legs and swirling robes as they battled across the broken rocky ground.

Azrael watched them flit from place to place, now on a ledge, now in the shadows, now atop an ancient stone arch overhead. She took Iyasu’s hand, ready to shield him if need be. And out in the wider world, more people died.

The two djinn remained atop the arch, still a blur of hands and feet, little more than a dark cloud of silk and loose hair. And then the arch cracked and spilled a load of dust from its center, and the two combatants each leapt backward, dashing to safety atop two distant pillars as the arch crumbled and fell.

“Do you have a name?” Samira called across the distance. “When I bring your remains back to Odashena, they will want to know whose ashes they are.”

“I am Jevad Tafir,” the warrior announced. Now he appeared as a man in dark red robes, his bald head shining in the sun. “A lion of Ramashad, and the first of many who will come to the west, bringing fire and ruin. Go back to Odashena and tell your masters that the time has come for the djinn to claim the earth. Humans have squandered their gifts. Their time is over, and their race has become an offense to the divine. Odashena may stand at our side, or be trampled underfoot. The choice is yours.”

He turned to look at Azrael. “Even you, Holy One, will have to choose where you will stand, for not even the angels are without their imperfections, and not even the angels will be shielded from the storm that is coming. The djinn will rise, and all others will kneel, or fall forever.”

“No!” Iyasu shouted. “No more wars. It’s over. You’ve lost. We know what you are!”

“Yes, but who cares what you know? You’re no one,” Jevad taunted. “You think you’ve defeated me? You’ve defeated a company of soldiers, but I have legions more. As long as I wear the crown of Maqari, I can lead these clay puppets to their deaths again, and again, and again.”

The Angel of Death gazed up at the djinn man spewing death, foretelling death, prophesying the misery that she herself would have to one day play her own small but painful role in.

Murder.

War.

Genocide.

And then she felt something else stirring in the desert around her. Many somethings, many spirits, gathering by the hundreds, by the thousands, throughout the Pillars of Abari. She smiled. “No, Jevad Tafir. You cannot lead them anymore.”

“And why not?” the djinn shouted.

“Because they know what you are now.” Azrael raised her black wings and the air roared, blasting through the corridors of the Pillars and sweeping away the great clouds of dust and sand from all around them to reveal the shining blades and grim faces of the legions of Tagal. They stood in the ravines and atop the boulders, they stood with swords and spears raised and arrows nocked. They stood glaring at the robed figure standing high atop the stone column, the figure still wearing Darius’s crown.

Jevad glared at them, his black eyes roving across the countless men crowding in around him. “This changes nothing! The war will come, and you will all die!”

Azrael let go of Iyasu’s hand as her wings unfurled like two feathered sails behind her, filling her with strength, pouring endless light and heat into her immortal body, and she flew. She moved like lightning, one moment still and the next moment traveling faster than thought, and she struck the top of the stone pillar with the djinn perched upon it with all the force of a moon crashing into the face of the earth.

The top of the pillar disintegrated into dust and fire, and the bottom of the pillar toppled and crashed to the ground. Shreds of silk floated in the air, their edges burning brightly, cinders flaming down around her.

She hung in the air for a long moment, her wings extended to feel the warmth of the setting sun behind her. Then she looked down into the crater below where the man called Jevad Tafir lay shattered and still. She floated down to the ground and let her wings fade away.

A stunned silence gripped the crowd, but only for a moment. The soldiers raised their weapons and cheered with a single voice, screaming triumph and freedom and relief, some with words and some with wordless noise. Azrael looked around at their jubilant faces and felt another dozen people die.

Iyasu came to her side and looked down into the crater. “Is he dead?”

“No.”

I cannot kill. But my ability to punish is limited only by his ability to survive. And it would seem he can survive a great deal.

The Angel of Death exhaled, and for a moment she wished she was alone in the deep desert, far from people, far from reality. Out there among the shifting sands, she could almost imagine that humanity was nothing more than a nightmare, a waking nightmare that filled her every moment with other peoples’ fears and anguish. Out there she could almost imagine that the real world was something far better.

“We need to know how he became so powerful,” Iyasu said.

“Do you really?” Jevad opened his eyes and slowly sat up with a wince. “But then, I suppose that is what you do, isn’t it, seer? You study. You watch. You peer beneath the skin. Well, perhaps it’s time to turn the tables.”

The warrior flashed out of the pit and snatched Iyasu from Azrael’s side, and in the time it took her to blink and see another dozen faces crying out in their final moments, Jevad had Iyasu pinned against a stone pillar with his fingers digging into the young seer’s neck.

“No! Stop!” She reached toward him but did not move. “Don’t kill him!”

“Kill my hostage? Not yet. He’ll live long enough to see me escape, at least. But once I’m gone, I cannot guarantee his survival. In fact, quite the opposite.”

“Samira!” Azrael looked up at the djinn cleric still standing atop her own pillar a short distance away, surrounded by grim soldiers.

“I’m here,” the cleric replied.

“Iyasu…” The angel gazed into his eyes. He tried to speak but the hand on his throat choked off his words, and so all he could do was nod and close his eyes.

Everyone moved at once. Jevad began to fade into a blur of red silk and dark sand, with the white robes of the Arrahim flying from his bloody fist. Samira vanished from her perch in a burst of dust and a swirl of black robes. And Azrael raised her wings and flew.

She flew forward, straight into the red blur of the djinn warlord and caught his throat in her hand, slamming him to a sudden halt that released a shockwave that rippled through the earth and roared through the air like a thundercrack. Iyasu was ripped free from his captor by the force of the impact and his body tumbled through the air to smash into a boulder, where he crumpled and fell to the ground. But Azrael barely saw the blood begin to trickle across his face before Samira appeared at his side, wrapped her arms around him, and vanished again.

He’s safe now.

The Angel of Death held the djinn warrior in her hand, dangling from his neck. But he did not struggle, or gasp, or even grab her arm. He smiled.

“How can a djinn have the power of an angel?” she asked.

He said nothing.

She smashed his head against the rocky ground and raised him up again. A dozen dying faces cried out in her heart, and she felt a gasp of relief that none of them were Iyasu. “Tell me!”

He said nothing.

Again, she slammed his body against the ground, and against a boulder, and through a crooked pillar of ancient desert rock. The dead and dying men and women continued to flow through her, sobbing and shrieking and silent. “Tell me!”

He bared his teeth and hissed, “We took it.”

And he vanished.

“NO!” Azrael screamed at her empty hands and whirled in search of her prey, but he was gone, gone completely, and no trace of his strange spirit remained in the Pillars of Abari. And instead of the djinn warrior, she saw the dirty, sweaty, confused faces of the legion, wave upon wave of men dressed for war, armed for war, marching out across the desert to kill, to slaughter, to butcher.

She stood tall and cried out to them, “Go back to your homes. Go back where you belong. Throw down your weapons and live in peace, and never kill again. Never!”

The crowd trembled and murmured, and a voice called back from the multitude, “Who are you?”

She curled her hands into fists, and then opened them wide as she spread her magnificent black wings and leapt into the air high above them for the second time and shouted, “I am Azrael, the Angel of Death!”

The sound of falling steel shrieked over the hot wind as thousands of swords and spears crashed down upon the sandy rocks at their feet. Some of the men stood transfixed as though turned to stone themselves, and some turned and ran, and still others dropped to their knees and pressed their faces to the earth.

But the faces of the dying continued to stream through her, and the pain of watching them for the familiar features of the young seer grew too great. Azrael folded her wings and streaked across the sky westward. The wagons and horses, the poisoned soldiers, the wounded company, and the jagged walls of the desert itself all passed in a blur of light and shadow.

There, there they are!

She saw the people and horses, instantly recognizing the shapes of Faris and Jengo, and the djinn spirit of Samira and the holy power in Veneka as the healer bent over a still figure. Azrael landed on running feet as her wings vanished and she fell to her knees at the seer’s side. Veneka leaned back, taking her hands away, and Azrael scooped the slender body up and pressed it tightly to her chest as she closed her eyes.

The faces of the dead marched on, their voices soft and garbled, their souls raging and grieving. So many faces. Dark and light, smooth and wrinkled, bare and bearded.

But none of them were his.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

“So am I,” he whispered back.

Chapter 27
Iyasu

The young seer sat at the top of the palace steps, gazing out over the roofs of Tagal as the sun rose directly in front of him, forcing him to squint at the bright glare spreading across the sky and shining on the calm surface of the Leyen River.

Four days. Four days without Jevad. Four days without war. Four days of peace.

A pair of lazy feet chuffed and shuffled across the stone floor toward him, and he smiled. “Good morning, Zerai.”

“Morning.” The falconer sat down with a thump and proceeded to gnaw on a piece of lamb.

“Up all night again?”

“Faris is very good at celebrating.”

“Well, he has a good reason to.”

“Yes, but how long will it last?”

Iyasu glanced back over his shoulder to look down the long shadowy corridor of the palace. “Well, as long as Jevad doesn’t come back, I think it will last a very long time. Faris is a perfectly decent person and he will be a perfectly decent king. Thanks to you, I think.”

“Me?”

“You and Veneka. I know she healed him. I’m so sorry that I never realized… I just thought it was the pain of his size, not a pain in his bones. I can’t imagine how that’s shaped his heart over the years. And that little stunt you pulled in the canyon helped him more than you know. Fighting monsters, saving children, getting him to trust his own body, his own strength. He’s healing, inside and out. I think he’ll do just fine now.”