War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (28 page)

They continued west until the road ended at a small farm at the edge of the desert, and then they continued west upon the cold sand. Edris took the lead, confidently pointing out distant mountain peaks to Jengo and describing the paths the Vaari caravans used to cross the dunes.

Zerai squinted at the sky, noting how the stars seemed to dim. Then he looked behind himself and saw the soft pink glow on the eastern horizon.

Morning already? And still no sign of Darius’s army. Someone must like us.

He frowned up at the sky above.

I’d hate to know what life would be like if someone didn’t like us.

Soon after the sky began to lighten, Jengo called a halt. Everyone dismounted to sit on the sand in the lee of a tall dune as the cold of the night began to fade and the first faint traces of the day’s heat bled into the air.

“So where are we going?” Zerai asked Iyasu.

“Jerinoba.”

“The Vaari city?”

The youth yawned. “Edris thinks we’ll be safe there. Jengo agrees.”

“I’ve never been there. Is it some sort of a fortress?”

Iyasu shook his head and closed his eyes. “Far from it. It’s a tent city, an encampment of hundreds of Vaari caravans. They come and go throughout the year, so the size and shape of the city is always changing, but it stays in the same place, more or less.”

“Tents?” Zerai frowned. “Tents aren’t going to protect us from Darius’s legions.”

“No, but the desert will.”

“Armies can cross deserts.”

“Not this one. Not after today.”

“Why not?”

“Samira.”

Zerai shook his head. “Samira can’t shape sand. You know that.”

“No, but she can shape the rock underneath it. Edris says we’ll be passing over a rocky rise in the next hour or so, and she can make a barrier there.”

“A barrier?”

“Mm. Some sort of wall.”

“Covered in spears, I suppose.”

“She does like rock spears, doesn’t she?”

Zerai looked over at Veneka, who was snoring softly on her blanket beside him.

“You should stop asking her,” Iyasu whispered.

“About what?”

“You know what.”

“Oh, that.” Zerai sighed.

Not that it’s any of your business.

The falconer looked across their group scattered along the curve of the dune and saw Bashir cradling the body of Talia in a long, striped blanket that hid all but the woman’s hair. “What do you make of that?”

The seer squinted at the alchemist. “I understand why Veneka did it. I do. But I wish she hadn’t.”

“Any particular reason, or just a general objection?”

“Just the general. Nothing good will come of it, except more heartache. That man needs to grieve and move on with his life. Unfortunately, Veneka’s just given him a powerful reason not to.”

Zerai nodded. “Speaking of moving on, how exactly did you convince the Angel of Death to leave Tagal with us? And not that I’m complaining, but how long is she going to be with us? Exactly?”

Iyasu looked over at him. “She makes you uncomfortable.”

“She’s the Angel of Death. So… yes.”

“She’s no danger to you.”

“Still.” Zerai paused. “So what did you say to her to change her mind?”

“I suggested that if we worked together, we could put an end to suffering. For everyone. In the world.”

“Really? End all suffering in the world.” Zerai nodded thoughtfully at the brightening sky. “And you’re still feeling good about that suggestion? That plan? No second thoughts about perhaps over-promising to the Angel of Death?”

“Actually, I feel even better about it than I did last night.” The seer smiled up at the thin wispy clouds. “I know it’s not something I can really do, not by myself, not in one lifetime, but it’s still worth doing. And we
can
change the world, bit by bit, over the years.”

“Years?”

“Yes, years.”

After half an hour, Jengo called everyone to mount up and resume their journey west to Jerinoba. Zerai’s riding partner was still a bit dazed from the long night, so the falconer took the reins again and kept a sharp eye on the horizons all around.

Above him, Nezana soared ever upward on the rising desert thermals.

They had only crossed two dunes when Zerai paused at a crest to look back to the east and saw the dark cloud on the desert floor behind them. “Here they come!”

Everyone glanced back long enough to register with fear and dismay that a large company of armed riders were indeed charging across the sandy wastes, and then they themselves raced westward all the faster. It didn’t take long for them to sight the rocky ridge that Iyasu had described, and Samira herself was already standing on top of it, waiting for the prince and clerics to cross over so she could raise her barrier. But the sandy slope of the dune swallowed every pounding hoof, dragging the heavily laden horses down even as they reached upward, and so their progress slowed to a terrifying crawl.

After yelling and kicking his horse several times, Zerai slipped down from the saddle and hiked up the soft slope as fast as he could, dragging the horse by its reins. Everyone else was dismounting as well, and while some tried to push and pull their horses onward, many of the animals were abandoned altogether. Zerai grimaced at the wide, black eyes of his own horse, and then dropped the reins to run up the last dune with Veneka just a step ahead of him.

They were still several long lunges away from the sure footing of the exposed rock when the first bronze arrows began shrieking through the air and thumping into the sand all around them. The prince and his servants cried out in fear, and the weary soldiers held their small shields over their heads as they huffed and gasped up the steep, treacherous dune.

Zerai drew his blade and turned to smack the arrows out of the air. It took all of his focus to squint into the bright eastern sky and spot the black glimmers of death in time to dodge and strike, but he was faring well for the first dozen or so arrows. But then they began to fly thicker and faster than before as the whole body of the charging legion came within arrowshot and every man with a bow began to fire.

A horse was the first to fall, one of the large brown ones off to Zerai’s left. And then a soldier took a bolt through his shield and arm, and he screamed even as he continued to trudge up the sliding sand.

Zerai saw Veneka and then Iyasu vanish over the crest of the dune as they slipped past Samira, and he felt a tiny weight leave his shoulders. With a stern glare, he kept slashing at the falling arrows and step by step, he climbed.

The five footmen and maids clustered around Faris and Jengo finally broke and ran for safety, abandoning their prince only half way up the sheer face of the dune. But they also left behind the safety of Jengo’s blade, and only a moment later one of the footmen fell to the ground with a pale wooden shaft through his neck. The man trembled and pawed weakly at the sand as he slid back down to the bottom, and then lay still.

The rest of the servants climbed even faster, sobbing and shouting all the way. A second man fell, and then a woman.

“Samira!” Zerai hollered as he neared the top of the dune. “Save them!”

She looked where he pointed and gave him a small nod.

What was she waiting for?

And then he reached the top of the dune and scrambled back across the rocky ledge there to join the others and he saw what Samira had been doing. There, spread out across the width of the sandy ridge as far as he could see to the north and south, was the spiked crest of a rock wall. It had only risen as high as a man, but was tipped with a cluster of stone blades piercing the air at every angle. But the djinn cleric paused in her work to send a long stone arm down the face of the dune to catch each of the surviving servants, one at a time, and then finally she pulled Faris and Jengo up as well.

The last maid and footman both reached the top with an arrow to the arm or leg, but Veneka raced to their sides and soon had both of them fully recovered and hiding behind the wall, though both of them continued to sob and shake in each others’ arms. Jengo reached the top with only a single gash to his shoulder, and Faris arrived without a scratch on him.

As they all took shelter behind the barbed wall, Samira resumed her work in raising that barrier ever higher, lifting it up to three times the height of a tall man and reaching for miles to the north and south, perched upon the top of the soft, shifting dunes.

Zerai sat down hard on the sandy rock beside Veneka, wrapped his arms around her, and closed his eyes. It took several minutes for his heart to slow to its regular pace, and for his lungs to stop heaving and burning, but eventually his body recovered from the panic of the escape, and he found himself enjoying the westerly shade of the barrier wall.

He sighed and felt the knots in his back begin to unwind.

Safe. Even if only for an hour, we are, right now, safe.

As they waited there, a handful of arrows glided over the wall and clattered harmlessly on the rocky plateau a long stone’s throw from any of them. Zerai leaned against the smooth, cool stone wall and listened to the soft rumble of the legion’s horses crossing the last hard pan and beginning to climb the soft dunes. Men were shouting in the distance, and metal clanked and clattered dully.

And then a woman cried out.

Zerai jerked up and looked back at Samira, who now stood perched upon her spiked wall looking down at the approaching army. He called up to her, “Who is that?”

She called back down, “One of the servants at the bottom of the dune.”

He leapt up but Veneka spoke faster, “If she’s still alive, I can heal her. Bring her up!”

“I would, but the legion is very close now. I imagine the moment they see any movement, they’ll shower her with arrows as I pulled her up.”

“We can’t just leave her there. You have to try! Curl the stone arm around her to shield her, if you can.”

Samira frowned as she turned away, and Zerai thought he heard her mutter, “Of course I’ll shield her. I’m not incompetent.”

So he stood there, staring up at the djinn cleric, listening to Darius’s legion marching closer by the minute, waiting.

The woman screamed.

“What happened?” Veneka shouted.

A moment later, a stone tendril arched over the barbed wall and gently laid the body of the maid on the rocky ground. Zerai winced. He counted seven arrows in the left side of her body, which was awash in bright, fresh blood. Veneka dashed to her side and began gently pulling out the arrows with one hand while pressing her other hand to the woman’s chest and whispering her entreaties to channel the healing power of Raziel.

But after removing the second arrow, she stopped. Veneka sat back and sighed heavily. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” the alchemist said.

Zerai turned to see Bashir peering at them from a few paces away, with the carefully wrapped body of Talia lying beside him. The falconer nodded. “She can’t heal the dead.”

The alchemist whirled to look at Azrael, who stood silent and still, staring westward at the ancient stone pillars that led the way into the deeper desert. “Holy Azrael, you’ve only just freed this woman’s soul, haven’t you? It’s still near then. Please, bring it here!” He scooped up Talia’s body. “That body may be ruined, but this one isn’t. Bring that woman’s soul back and bind it to Talia’s body. Please, don’t let her die again.”

The angel turned slightly so that the side of her face was to him as she said, “I can no more bind that woman’s soul to Talia’s body than to her own. I am a knife, nothing more. I cut the soul free at the moment of death, and it is gone. Souls do not linger here, fluttering like cloth in the wind. They leave. They are gone.”

“It’s true,” Iyasu said. “I saw her soul fade. I’ve seen it many times. Souls don’t fly away into the air or into the earth, they just vanish, off to the next world or the next life, or wherever God sees fit to send them.”

“But…” Bashir cast a mournful look at him, and then at her, and then back at Veneka and Zerai, casting helplessly from face to face in search of some chance, some hope to grasp at. But they offered him none. He looked down at Talia’s blank eyes staring up, half-lidded, from the blankets in his arms. “But she’s going to die.”

“Yes, she is.” Azrael turned back to study the desert again.

The djinn shivered, but then looked up again. “You may be a knife, but there must be other angels with other commands over life and death. Raziel can heal the body. There must be one who can heal the soul!”

“If there is,” Azrael said, “I do not know of her.”

“And even if there were,” Iyasu said gently, “We could never find them in time, not before Talia’s body dies again. There are only a few hours left before she starves.”

Tears fell from Bashir’s eyes as he stared back at the seer. And then he whispered, “I am done.” The tall man turned and walked slowly away with his love in his arms, heading southwest away from the wall and toward the red, sandy canyons of the inner desert.

“Where are you going?” Samira called to him.

He didn’t answer.

Samira slipped down from her wall and dashed to the alchemist’s side, and whatever she said to him was said too softly for Zerai to hear, but Bashir said nothing back and continued on his slow walk down a rocky path into the shadows.

Zerai exhaled slowly as Veneka put her arms around his waist. He kissed the top of her head as he held her close.

“He wants to die with her,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“There must be something…”

“I don’t think so. I think… It’s his choice. And maybe he needs it to end like this. He’s been carrying her with him for forty years. Maybe there’s just no life for him without her.”

She held him tighter. “Promise me…”

“No, no promises.” He held her tighter.

I don’t want to even think about that, much less talk about it.

He leaned back a bit from her to cup her cheek in his hand, look into her bright brown eyes, and kiss her.

The wall thundered beside them, and sand rained down from the jagged spines across its top.