Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (16 page)

She stopped. “What?”

“Saifu Ebana. I know him. He knows me. He’ll vouch for me!” Zerai finally caught his breath and managed to stand a bit easier, but he kept his left arm wrapped tightly around Nadira and kept his khopesh raised and shining in the afternoon sun.

“Saifu Ebana’s dead,” she said.

“What?” His arm shuddered. “When?”

“Two weeks ago, in the attack.”

“Oh. God. I’m sorry.” His sword drooped for a moment. He had never been fond of the elder Ebana brother, but he did respect him, and he had grieved with him over the loss of his younger brother Eon. The memory of them both took some of the fire from his blood, and he shook his head slowly. “Rasa Meron. She’s with the Juranim. She knows me, too.”

“I don’t care.” She leapt at him, using her holy gift once again to make herself as light as bird, hurling herself easily through the air.

If there was one thing the falconer knew, it was how to stay calm when a large creature flew straight at him. He whirled to the side and wrapped his arm around the warrior’s neck as her shoulder struck his ribs, and he wedged his sword between his arm and her throat. He stood behind her, holding her tightly, careful not to crush the razor-sharp blade too firmly against her skin.

“Don’t do it,” he hissed in her ear. “Whatever little trick you’re thinking about doing, don’t. Don’t make the sword heavier, or your body lighter, or my body heavier, or any of it. I couldn’t exactly put Nadira down, so she’s right here, right behind you, almost touching you. So don’t you dare put her in danger. Or we all die together.”

The woman raised her empty hands. “All right.”

“Lose the gloves.”

The heavy gauntlets crashed to the ground. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. I want you to listen to me. Really listen.”

“Okay. I’m listening,” she said in a measured tone.

“Good. Now, I haven’t been in this city in eight years, and I don’t want to be here now. I came with the clerics from Naj Kuvari. This little girl’s mother died yesterday, and now she has no one, except me.” He swallowed and wet his lips. “I went to the Arrahim to make sure the girl was all right before I took her home. That’s all. And now I want to go. Peacefully, quietly. I’m sorry for your trouble with the djinn, I truly am, but there’s nothing I can do about that. So I’m going to leave. The Arrahim have no right to stop me. And neither do you.”

“I have orders to stop you,” she said quietly.

“Is that what Sophir taught you?” He tightened his grip on her by a slight fraction. “Is that how the angel wants you to use his gift? To follow orders? To control the weak? To steal children?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.” He glanced at Nadira, who began patting his cheek repeatedly and grinning at him. He frowned and tried to angle his head away from her, but the patting continued. “So what happens now? Are you here to oppress the weak, or protect them? Because they don’t get much weaker than a girl not two years old.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe the Arrahim sounded the alarm because they saw you were a liar.”

“Did they say that?”

“No.” She paused. “They only said the child was important.”

“Special, maybe. Unique, definitely.” He nodded into the back of her head. “But not important, not to anyone here. And there is no fate or destiny or divine plan that is going to stop me from taking her away from this place. You already sent all of your own children to Naj Kuvari. So if it’s too dangerous for your own children to be here, how can you justify keeping Nadira?”

“I’m not here to justify anything, I’m just following orders.” She paused. “But I’m not some lapdog of the Arrahim, either. Come back to the library with me.”

“You’re not listening. I’m no criminal. And she’s not your prisoner!”

“No. Not my prisoner. Under my protection. We go back, we ask the seers why they want the child. And if I don’t like the answers, then I make sure you leave safely, under my protection. Deal?”

Zerai debated the offer. It sounded too much like a surrender to him, but even as he tried to plan some last minute escape from the warrior in his grasp, his eyes wandered up and he saw a Juranim archer standing on the rooftop at the end of the street, taking aim at his head.

Waiting for a clear shot. So much for bargaining.

“Agreed.” He loosened his grip and she stepped away, massaging her throat and then gathering up her armored gloves. Zerai slipped his sword away and showed the archer his empty hand, and the Juranim lowered his arrow. Slightly.

“My name is Zerai Saqir,” he said. “And this is Nadira Bashir.” The little girl glanced up at the sound of her name with a toothy smile.

“Lamia. Lamia Vasara.” She slipped on her gauntlets as she studied him, giving him a moment to see how small and lean she was. It jarred with his memories of the Ebana brothers, two tall warriors who fought like angry gods against the ghuls and ifrits with their bare hands. She seemed nothing like them, except for her short black hair that just barely fell into her eyes.

They walked back to the library, slowly and deliberately, allowing a handful of other warriors to join them. The Sophirim that Zerai had hit in the head didn’t seem very pleased to see the falconer walking freely with his sword at his side, but Lamia silenced him with a look and he fell into step beside her, and said nothing.

When they reached the library, Zerai was surrounded by Sophirim and Juranim, and he was thoroughly regretting each and every one of his decisions that afternoon that had led him to this moment. He saw the Arrahim seers standing in their dusty courtyard, waiting to receive him, waiting to take Nadira away.

“I trust he didn’t prove too difficult to capture,” said the older woman who had sounded the alarm.

Lamia ignored the remark. “Why did you summon us? Why did you want him brought back here?”

“That’s a private matter, a very sensitive matter,” the seeress said. “I’m afraid we cannot discuss it at this time. But suffice it to say that we do need the child, and it would be prudent to keep this gentleman in custody for the time being. I’m sure you understand.”

“No, I don’t.” Lamia folded her arms over her chest. “We’re not your private police force. We don’t serve the whims of the seers. We serve the city. Now, I brought Saqir back here in good faith, and you’re going to answer my questions, or we let him go.”

The seeress blinked, clearly unprepared for any debate on the matter. “I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear, captain. Please bring them inside. Now.”

“No. Give us a reason, now, or we leave. Now.”

It was late in the afternoon. The shadows were long and deep, and the steady breeze in the open streets was rapidly cooling, but in that courtyard Zerai felt the air growing hotter. He glanced to his left where one of the Juranim stood with an arrow in her hand, and the tip of it was glowing a dull, angry red.

He didn’t dare turn his head to look back at all the others, but he could see Captain Lamia Vasara, and her male comrade, and one other Juranim to his right. Every one of them looked ready to break. Dark bags under their bloodshot eyes, countless bloody scrapes on their arms and legs, dirt and sand caked into their hair and hands.

Half of their closest friends were murdered two weeks ago, and they’ve probably all been on watch ever since then, waiting for the djinn to return, waiting for the call to war, waiting to be sent out to die.

Zerai wrapped both arms around Nadira and slid his right foot back slightly.

The seeress regained her composure and glared at the warriors. “This is not the time, nor the place, to be discussing the—”

“Then we’re leaving,” Lamia announced.

And as one body, the Sophirim warriors and Juranim archers all turned and marched out of the courtyard, and Zerai marched out with them with little Nadira weighing heavily in his arms.

Chapter 13

It was just past noon on the third day of their march through the mountains from the bronze city of Dalyamuun when Iyasu came to the crest of a ridge and saw a great sea of pale mist. The soft whiteness filled the vast emptiness between the jagged teeth of the golden mountain peaks, hiding the slopes and valleys completely, and the young seer walked down the path a few paces so that his feet bathed in the gentle current of the cool vapor.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“Vourukasha,” Hadara said. “The world sea. This mist bleeds out on every wind across every sky to every land, and its currents carry the seeds of all life. Look there.”

He peered off in the direction that she pointed and he spied a small eddy in the mist where the vapor swirled quickly and then slipped out beyond the walls of the mountains, carrying the tiny white motes of seed pods on its insubstantial breath up into the sky.

“Where do the seeds come from?” he asked.

Hadara smiled. “Where do you think? Come along.”

The tall woman led the way down the path, plunging into the mist with the grinning Rahm leading his stallion right behind her. Iyasu exchanged a curious shrug with Azrael and they too walked down into the wall of silvery fog.

It was nearly silent in the white corridors, with only the haunting calls of distant birds warbling and echoing off the mountain walls. The rocks themselves hovered in a state of indecision, half sharp and half unreal, as though wrapped in sleep and waking dreams. Iyasu guessed that he could see no more than five paces in any direction, and for the first time in a long time, he felt his gifted vision fail him. He could see no paths, no animal tracks, no signs of changing weather. Without his sight, his sense of the world around him contracted, making him feel small and blind and naked. But Azrael strode along as calmly as ever, and he took solace in her strength and fearlessness, even if he couldn’t share it.

The path meandered down, and farther down, plunging them deep into the mist so that even the sky faded beyond the layers of white vapor overhead. The air grew colder, and in its stillness it left a clammy sensation on Iyasu’s arms and face. He shivered and wiped his skin dry on his sleeve, only to have it glistening coolly a moment later.

After half an hour of steady hiking and seeing nothing but the endless white expanse of the sea of mist, Iyasu was about to ask where exactly they were going when a dark shape appeared in the fog. It loomed high and crooked above them, and as they came closer the object resolved into a massive column, bent and winding and covered in huge jagged flakes of bark.

“What sort of tree is this?” Iyasu peered up, but could not see any branches or leaves.

“Haoma,” Rahm answered.

Iyasu shook his head. The name meant nothing to him.

A few minutes later they passed a second tree covered in crumbling threads of brown and white, and it too twisted up into the mist without any sign of leaves or blossoms. But as Iyasu walked by it, he did see something sparkle in the crevices of the bark. Coming closer, he peered into the shadowed nooks and saw a strange procession of shining gold beetles, none larger than his thumbnail, streaming up and down the hidden paths of the tree’s inner skin. The ones marching up all carried tiny white motes in their pincers, and the ones marching down carried fragile drops of water on theirs.

When they reached the third tree, the fourth was immediately next to it, and there after the twisting, spiraling giants appeared on every side of them, closer and closer together. Iyasu looked up so often now that he sometimes stumbled, and Azrael had to steady him more than once so he wouldn’t crash to the ground, or into Raska’s flicking tail.

He stopped abruptly, staring upward. Two of the giant trees seemed to meet in midair, their trunks becoming entwined so that they continued upward as a single being.

These things… they’re not trees. Are they vines?

Moments later Rahm stopped and pointed to one of the huge brown trunks to their right. It twisted less than its sisters, and instead of spiraling upward, this one angled forward, reaching out from the mountainside at a gentle slope that was only slightly steeper than level. The tall warrior left the trail, saying, “Here. We’ll take that one.” He patted Raska and turned the horse loose to wander down the trail by himself while Rahm and Hadara approached the huge vine.

Iyasu followed them, ever more bewildered and curious, but not at all worried or afraid. Wherever they were going, the two easterners seemed quite confident of their path as they hiked up onto the strange plants, which were no wider than two horses standing flank to flank. Walking on the rough, broken surface of the huge woody tendrils proved harder than it looked, as nearly every foothold sloped away to one side or the other, and the plates of bark slipped and crunched beneath their weight, tumbling over the sides and vanishing into the mist below, which had already swallowed up their view of the ground. Now they walked through empty space with nothing but fog on every side, above and below, and the eerie calls of unseen creatures echoed through the void.

The seer continued to scan the skies all around, searching for the source of the strange warbling cries, and then he heard one that seemed far closer than any other, and he looked straight up, squinting into the mist. And there, directly above him, he saw a white shape slithering through the fog. It swayed and undulated from side to side, passing and passing on, its scaled belly rippling overhead in soft shades of silver and gray. And then a great pearl fin swished silently through the air, stirring the mist into a violent eddy that whirled and hissed as the force of the fin propelled the great beast across the sea of clouds.

And then it was gone. Iyasu looked back at Azrael, who had also witnessed the passing of the behemoth, and the angel shook her head slowly as if to say that she too had no idea what the creature was, or whether it was a danger to them, or whether she could protect them from it. He nodded, and continued on after Hadara, a bit faster and a bit quieter than before.

With every step, they climbed higher and farther out from the mountain, trekking ever deeper into the cold, wet expanse of white nothingness. Iyasu kept his eyes on Hadara, hoping that the fixed point of reference would keep him balanced with no landmarks in sight, but after three steps of this experiment, his sandal shot out from under him and he fell on his back, and nearly rolled off the huge vine but a hand grabbed his arm and lifted him back up, setting him on his nervous feet.