War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (22 page)

“Is it?” Iyasu glanced at him. “We’re just going to sit here in the dark and wait for hundreds of complete strangers to poke each other with pointy metal sticks, until enough are dead so you can either become their king or their last victim.”

“Well, when you phrase it like that…”

Iyasu closed his eyes and rubbed his hand.

It’s the little things. There used to be a smooth scar there, and a dry patch there, and a little bump there. All gone now.

He opened his eyes and looked at the gray shape of his fingers.

Strange. It’s been hours since I really thought about it. It doesn’t feel so wrong anymore. I guess if I just ignore it long enough, I’ll forget altogether. And maybe that’s for the best. I can’t spend the rest of my life afraid of my own hand.

He chuckled out loud and the sound echoed through the temple.

“What?” Jengo said.

“Nothing.”

They sat and listened to the clangor of metal and stone and flesh for a quarter hour before the noise began to fade as the rhythm of battle slowed, and then stopped. Iyasu leaned closer to the door to listen. “It’s Taharqa. He’s out there.”

“Really?” Faris stood up.

“Yes.” Iyasu smiled sadly as he heard the general’s muffled words. “We’ve won.”

They cleared away the barricade and emerged onto the temple steps, which earned them a few surprised looks and brandished swords from the men below, but they quickly recognized the large prince and his tall bodyguard, and the commanders converged on their sovereign to congratulate him on his victory in the square and to plan their next move.

Iyasu stood by the prince, only half listening and making occasional eye contact with the grim old men around him. His gaze kept sliding away to the small gaps between the men through which he could see the bodies of the dead lying all around him, slowly painting the stone tiles of the square in horribly dark shades of red.

All these men were alive an hour ago. They had wives and children. They had favorite songs and foods. And now…

They’d be alive right now if I hadn’t come back, if I hadn’t…

“We should go,” he said abruptly, cutting off General Digna. “Every moment here is a moment for Darius to summon the rest of his armies to find us, or for him to escape us. We need to reach the palace immediately.”

“I agree.” Taharqa nodded. “We’ll form up and move out, and continue this conversation in the royal audience chamber with His Majesty upon his rightful throne.”

Iyasu nodded and started walking away by himself, stepping carefully over the bodies.

“There he is, Iyasu!” Zerai and Veneka ran up to him and the healer gave him a quick hug. “We were so worried. Where were you?”

“Hiding.” He looked over their shoulders and saw a two-eyed Edris standing just behind them, looking queasy and unsteady. “Is he all right?”

Veneka sighed. “Mostly.”

As they headed across the square, she explained how she had restored the singer’s face and arm, and Iyasu felt a small surge of pity and kinship with the Vaari man for a moment, and maybe in another time and place he would have felt more, but Iyasu was tired and his mind raced with visions and thoughts of violence that made him feel ill.

They marched through the dark city streets with soldiers and archers and mounted warriors all around them in companies and columns, filling the broad avenues from wall to wall as more and more units fell into step at their sides.

Iyasu counted them in a glance.

Seven thousand now. I never thought we’d find so many, certainly not at night. Taharqa and the others must be more popular than I gave them credit for. Hm. It’s nice to be wrong, from time to time.

When they reached the outer gates of the palace, the seer counted more than nine thousand men with the prince, but through the iron bars of the gates he could see a glittering ocean of eyes and blades waiting for them.

Another battle.

He sighed.

More screaming, and bleeding, and choking…

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Are you all right?” Veneka touched his arm.

“I didn’t want this. War. Here, Elladi, wherever. I didn’t want to cause more of this.”

“I know,” she said softly. “But it’s out of our hands now. This is what we need to do to put Faris back in power, to stop the border wars, and to stop Azrael.”

“Speaking of which, I’m surprised we haven’t seen her yet,” Zerai said. “With this many soldiers in one place, you’d think she’d leap at the chance to punish a few thousand wicked souls all at once.”

“Be careful,” Iyasu said. “She may still come.”

The commanders rode with their prince closer to the van of their army and called out to the men behind the walls, “Open these gates, in the name of Faris Harun!”

And faintly they heard a voice reply, “To march against the king of Maqari is treason, and the fate of all traitors is death!”

Iyasu rubbed his eyes. All around him he saw men, young men, all of them tense and nervous, scared and anxious, or worse, coldly resolved to the doom of their profession.

There must be something I can do. There must be… Arrah, sweet Arrah, lend me your eyes, for mine have failed. Show me the third path between killing and dying, show me the way to peace, please.

He opened his eyes and the first face he saw was that of Samira Nerash. “Samira?”

“Yes?” She stood wrapped in her dark robes, her black hair gently teasing out from under her headscarf in the brisk night wind.

“Can you stop an army for me?”

“No. Not for you, and not for God himself,” she said quietly. “Fifty men was more than I could manage on my own. An army is far too many.”

“What if you didn’t have to fight them each, one by one? What if you could just push them aside all at once? That wall you made on the road, the one that Azrael shattered, it was massive. Could you do that again?”

“A wall? Where? To what end?”

Iyasu peered up at the gates where the commanders and nobles continued to shout orders and threats at each other. “What about two walls? You could make a corridor straight from the gates to the foot of the palace. Just wall off the soldiers inside to the left and right so we can ride straight through.”

“Maybe. But their archers would slaughter you as you passed.”

He frowned. “Not a corridor then. A tunnel. Can you make a tunnel?”

Samira raised her head and gazed boldly at the gates. “It’s a long way from the gates to the palace.”

“But can you do it?”

“Of course I can.” She strode away. “Stay here.”

The djinn cleric went over to Jengo and spoke to him for a moment, and then she began walking slowly through the ranks of soldiers toward the wall. Jengo dashed to Faris and spoke to the commanders, who stopped yelling at their counterpart inside the palace.

Iyasu held his breath.

Please let this work.

Samira stopped and raised her hands. The iron gates ripped apart and each curled up against its hinges, laying the path through the walls wide open. But before the men on either side could approach the gap, the street began to rumble and shudder beneath their feet. As the men staggered away from the crushed gates, the ground between them began to rise like a serpent slithering up from the depths of the earth. In the courtyard, a long mound of stones heaved itself up, one lurch at a time, with each lurch making the mound longer and wider.

As the mound rose, the soldiers standing on it stumbled, fell, and rolled off it to either side. Second by second, the mound grew larger as it stretched farther and farther from the gates, reaching out to touch the steps of the palace. And then the front of the mouth groaned and crumbled apart, splitting into a toothless maw of hard clay and soft sand that revealed the long empty tunnel inside the mound.

“Now!” Jengo roared, and the prince’s men charged into the earthen passageway, stampeding on foot and saddle, surging past Samira like a river around a mighty tree.

Iyasu’s eyes widened.

Yes! They can reach the palace, and Darius’s men are trapped between the tunnel and the walls. It’s working!

And then he saw Darius’s soldiers attack the earthen walls of the tunnel with their swords and shields, gouging and stabbing and digging with any hard weapon or tool in their hands.

No, no, no…

More and more of Faris’s men charged into the tunnel, and the sharp-eyed seer watched the first of them begin to emerge from the far end and dash into the palace. But in the courtyard, dozens and dozens of Darius’s soldiers clawed their way up onto the arching tunnel roof to chip away at the rocks and paving stones protecting the invaders.

“Samira!” Iyasu ran toward the cleric.

“I see them,” she said.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“This is harder than it looks.”

“I know, but… please! Just a little more, a little longer!”

“I don’t have any more,” she whispered, and he saw the djinn woman sway on her feet.

“No, no!” He grabbed her back and arm, trying to steady her and keep her focused on the tunnel at the same time, but she was sagging against him.

Zerai and Veneka raced up to them and helped to catch the slight weight of the djinn woman, but even Veneka’s healing touch could not stop Samira from closing her eyes and falling completely into Zerai’s arms.

“Oh no, please, not now.” Iyasu patted the woman’s cheek and shook her hand. And then he heard the tunnel collapse.

It happened all at once. The peak of the roof in the center of the tunnel caved in, taking several diggers with it as countless surprised and pained shouts echoed from inside. And then the rest of the tunnel walls fell inward in huge chunks and sections, burying the soldiers inside under tons of rock and earth. In moments the smooth arch of the tunnel had become a ragged pile of rubble, and precious few voices cried out from inside it.

“No!” Iyasu pressed his useless fists to his head as he stared past the gates. But even still, the prince’s army charged into the courtyard, now leaping and climbing up over the remains of the tunnel to fight the queen’s defenders man to man.

As the battle spread from the gates back into the courtyard and forward into the street, Zerai turned with Samira in his arms and jogged through the ranks toward the nearest door, the entrance of a large house across the street from the palace walls, and he kicked the heavy door down as he hurried inside. Iyasu let Veneka pull him away from the battle, and vaguely he noted that Edris was following with one hand on the seer’s back, and together they ran into the house behind Zerai and shut the door.

Iyasu slumped to the floor. “Why? Why does this keep happening? Why does it always end in death? Why?”

“I do not know,” Veneka said softly. “Maybe it is a test.”

A stair creaked and everyone looked up to see a short woman with iron gray hair in a dazzling dress of white, teal, and gold descending the steps toward the strangers huddled by her door. She frowned at them. “Idiots. Why were you out in the streets tonight? Don’t you hear what is happening?”

“Don’t you?” Iyasu stared up at her wizened wrinkles and thin lips and stern eyes. “There’s a killer on your throne, and killers in your streets, and now the only people dedicated to law and peace are dying on your doorstep. How can you just stand there?”

She stared back at him as coldly as a stone. “Just stand here? Young man, my family has lived in this house for seven generations. We are, and always have been, loyal supporters of the crown, and if the crown happens to be worn by a man who chooses to go to war, then that is who I shall support.”

“The crown?” Iyasu closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall. “How very convenient for you, to let a golden hat tell you how to live your life.”

“There’s a reason we have traditions, young man!”

Iyasu shook his head. “I’m not going to argue with you. How can I, when you have so many arguments displayed right here?” He nodded at the sitting room to their left and the dining room to their right, each one filled with exquisitely crafted chairs covered in silk pillows that shone softly in the shadows, cabinets and tables covered in etched glass and gold wire, floors covered in elaborately patterned carpets from distant lands, and even decorative vases and tiny sculpted figures standing upon miniature columns and plinths in the corners of the room. “I can see all your reasons for supporting the crown. I see them very well.”

The older woman glared at him. “You have one hour. I won’t throw you out into that madness outside, but I won’t allow you to stay in my home either. One hour, and if you’re not gone by then, I will summon the city watch myself.”

Zerai thanked her for her generous offer, and they watched the woman retreat back upstairs, and listened to her footsteps return across the floor to wherever she had come from.

Iyasu sighed. “How can people be so…?”

“Because that’s what people are,” Edris said. “They’re just people. They’re scared, and weak, and when terrible things happen, most people just want to survive it all. We can’t all be holy warriors and magi heroes.”

“They don’t need to be heroes, they just… need to be decent. Kind. Sometimes I wonder if the only thing we need for compassion to triumph is for cruel people to do nothing. Powerful people. Rich people. Why are evil people so industrious?”

Edris pointed to the stairs. “This woman is doing nothing.”

The seer shook his head. “She supports a warlord. She threatened to throw us out.”

“Well, you were less than polite to her,” Veneka said with a gentle smile.

“I’m tired of being polite,” Iyasu whispered. He stared dully at a blank patch of the wall across the room. “I’m so tired of all of this.”

They sat in silence for half an hour, listening to the muffled sounds of men killing each other just outside. The noise rose and fell, echoing faintly down the streets. Metal sang, men screamed, and the people hiding in the house winced and jumped from time to time. Samira woke up rather abruptly and said that she had completely recovered from her exhaustion, that she was ready to go back into the battle, but Iyasu just shook his head again.