War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (3 page)

“Yes, I’m fine.” She turned away.

“Okay.” He knew better than to say anymore, so instead he leaned forward and began kissing her cheek. And in that moment, all he cared about was kissing her perfect cheek.

She rolled toward him and smiled. “You seemed tired last night… at the end.”

“Well, I am only human.”

She pulled his arms more tightly around herself, and then ran her fingertips over his face, studying him closely. “You are worried?”

He stopped kissing her and sighed. “The djinn.”

“Djinn are merely people.”

“Dangerous people.”

“Human people can be dangerous, too.” She gazed at him with that unnerving intensity of hers. No frown, no squint. Just her wide, gazing eyes.

He looked back into her eyes and smiled a little. “You know, I’m a very wealthy man these days. I have lots of things I’m afraid of losing. So I worry. That’s all.”

“Oh really?” She moved closer. “Tell me about these riches of yours.”

“Well, I have these.” He kissed her lips. “And this.” He kissed her neck. “And this.” He kissed her breasts. He went on naming his treasures until he became too aroused to play the game, and then she rolled him onto his back so she could take him. She held his hands behind his head as she slid down onto him, and then briefly played at kissing his neck and biting his nipples to make him shudder and moan.

He grabbed her thighs and pressed her hips hard against his own to bury himself in her, to vanish inside her, held tightly in a place somewhere between pleasure and pain, a place that burned with how much he wanted her and ached with how much he needed her.

Their love-making was fast and hard, and a bit louder than usual. He pushed up and up, lifting his hips ever higher as though all her strength and the gravity of the entire world beneath his back were not enough to force them together, to bring her down over him, to grasp him, to own him.

She fought back, crashing down as she bit her lip, as she shoved him against the bedding, as she tried to take the rhythm from him and ride him so fast that all sensation became a blur, making him fight back to slow her down, to battle back into that perfect place where it felt the way he wanted it to feel. Crushed, controlled, buried, gasping. Fingers raked across backs and chests and arms, digging in hard.

When it became too rough, too painful, she pressed her hands against his thighs and healed his weakness, soothing his pain and restoring his strength, and so they went on, and on, and on. He came and she paused, but only for a moment before gripping him with her legs and riding on. She came and again she paused, quivering, barely breathing, then moaning loudly, and laughing. She kissed him hard, plunging her tongue into his mouth and he drank her in, wrapping his arms around her back, pulling their hot skin together as though he hoped to make them truly one flesh, lost in ecstasy.

Then she leaned back, smiling, and she started all over again. He gazed up at her face, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her skin shining with sweat.

I wonder if Raziel ever thought his healing gifts would be used quite like this.

Afterward, Zerai lay beside her watching the sunlight bleed across the ceiling. He should have been exhausted, and his muscles should have been screaming for an hour in the hot spring, but he felt fine. He felt strong. So he stood up from their bed and began dressing. He paused. “I don’t suppose this time we…?”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s the wrong time. We missed it this month.”

“Right.” He finished putting on his pants and boots. “You’d think with all the practice we get, we’d hit the target once in a while.”

“I told you.” Veneka stood and stretched. “I’m not ready.”

“I know, I just…” He smiled sheepishly at her. “I’m being greedy. I want more of you. I want a dozen little Venekas running around the house, screaming and laughing and healing their own skinned knees.”

“I know you do.” She smiled at him as she dressed. “Patience. It will happen, some day.”

Some day.

He looked at his belt and sword, and the mere sight of the dull leather and shining steel felt like miserable weights dragging him down out of paradise and back into the real world, into the old world. A world of cruelty and fear, a world of demons and death. He put the belt on and went outside.

He plucked a grape from the vine beside his door and glanced up at the white saker falcon perched in the young acacia on his roof. Nezana stretched his pale wings and leapt into the sky in silence. The falconer watched him until he soared out of sight.

Good hunting, old friend.

“Will you patrol the north road again today?” Veneka called from inside.

“No, I’m going to wait at the fountain. They’ll be here soon.”

She came out dressed in green stripes, and each stripe tessellated with a different pattern of blocks, lines, and other shapes to create a riot of patterns flowing down her body. “But Raziel sent Vashti only yesterday afternoon. It will take two days at least for the djinn to arrive.”

“Djinn are fast when they want to be. They’ll be here soon.” He rested his hand on his sword and went to the fountain.

He found Raziel, the crystalline Angel of Life, standing on the surface of the water with his six great wings folded gently around himself like a flower not quite ready to bloom. The angel held a small dark lump in his hand.

“Good morning,” Zerai said. “Sleep well?”

“Better than last night,” Raziel answered.

It had started as a joke years ago, and long after the joke had gotten stale it became something else, a part of the rapport between the being of light and the man of clay who lived side by side in the green city.

If he could sleep, what would he dream about? Heavenly spheres? Mustard seeds?

What sort of bed would an angel lie on?

Zerai smiled.

The angel looked up. “A smile? At this hour of the morning? Please share.”

“It’s nothing. I was just thinking how sometimes it’s uncomfortable when Ven and I are in bed together, trying to sort out where to put the bottom arm, you know, under you or under her, or over the pillow. And I was just wondering how hard it would be to sort out where to put the bottom three wings.”

“Plus the arm.” Raziel winked.

“Right.” Zerai glanced up at the angel’s hand. “What’s that?”

“A dead moth. I found it in the orange tree a moment ago. Beautiful thing.” Raziel gazed down into his palm.

The falconer said nothing. A moment later, the dead moth fluttered its wings and flew away, and the angel smiled serenely after it.

“Don’t worry about the djinn,” Raziel said softly. “They don’t mean us any harm. I don’t know the djinn well, but I do know their nature. I saw their beginning, born of smokeless fire. They are wise and honorable, but they are also passionate people, and their passions can be very, well, grandiose.”

“Unlike the petty passions of us filthy humans.” Zerai squinted down a grassy lane at a young boy sleeping in a flower bed.

The angel shook his head. “Humans live brief lives. It’s only natural for those lives to be filled with brief cares. That is not to say that your hearts are any smaller or colder than those of the djinn. Only that while humans look out at the world, the djinn look up to the stars.”

Zerai sighed. “You and your riddles.”

“I like my riddles.”

“I like riddles when they’re funny. Do you know any funny riddles?”

“One or two.”

“Try me.”

“Very well. When is a… Visitors.”

Zerai looked sharply around and saw the three strangers emerging from the shadows of a narrow street not far from the fountain. Two women and a man, all wearing dark robes of flowing silk with small bags and packs over their shoulders. There was something vague and indistinct about the shape of their bodies as they strode through the shadows, but they came steadily into focus as they approached the fountain until Zerai could see every thread of their elaborately embroidered clothing.

The djinn wore bloody crimson and dark amber from head to toe, punctuated by tight black leather around their waists and wrists and feet. Only their faces could be seen, revealing three beautiful youths with unblemished skin and strangely bright eyes. None of them smiled, and none of them glanced about at their surroundings. They strode swiftly with dire purpose, and Zerai quickly looked about them for weapons. He saw none.

He forced himself to take his hand away from his sword.

The three djinn strode past him without a word and went to stand before the fountain and its divine keeper. They bowed low for a long moment, and then rose up again.

“I am Samira Nerash,” announced one of the djinn women. “I am a Tevadim of Odashena, sent to answer the summons of Holy Raziel.”

Zerai raised a curious eyebrow.

A Tevadim? Why would they send a magi sculptor to deal with this Daraji woman? Why not send another Sophirim to handle it? Or two? Or ten?

“Welcome, Samira Nerash,” the angel said. “Thank you for coming so quickly. Who are your companions?”

“My sister, Petra.” The djinn cleric gestured toward the second woman beside her. “And the alchemist, Master Bashir. They volunteered to assist me in fulfilling your task, Holy One.”

The djinn man nodded slightly.

Raziel smiled. “Again, welcome, and thank you. Please sit.” He gestured to the soft grass where the students had sat the day before, but the three solemn djinn remained standing.

“Your message was brief,” Samira said. “I understand that there is a human cleric of Sophir that you wish me to subdue.”

“Possibly,” the angel said. “The Navean kingdoms stand on the brink of war, and this one cleric, this one woman, may be the cause of untold suffering in the years to come if she cannot be stopped. She may believe she is protecting the weak, she may even believe she is protecting the peace, but she is at this moment provoking a cruel warlord to lay waste to an entire country. If it is in your power to stop this, then I ask you to stop it.”

The djinn cleric stood silently for a moment, but no movement of her mouth or eyes betrayed her thoughts. Finally she said, “I was given to believe you called us here on an errand of divine necessity. Human affairs are not the concern of Odashena. They have their world, and we have ours. Our laws forbid us from interfering.”

“Oh really? Why?” Zerai asked. He stared into the woman’s dark, unblinking eyes in search of the threat that he felt in every step the djinn had taken into his home. “You don’t need to be afraid of us. We’re not contagious.”

Samira Nerash turned slightly to face him. “We do not fear your bodies. We fear your intentions. The last time Odashena revealed itself to the human kingdoms, it caused a war that nearly destroyed my country. Your people tried to take our city, our knowledge, and our lives. We will not make that mistake again.”

“Nor should you.” Iyasu paced quietly into the square. The young Arrahim wore his travel-stained white and yellow robes and carried a plain wooden staff in his hand. “Welcome. I am Iyasu Sadik, of the Arrahim.” He offered his hand to Samira, who merely glanced at it. Iyasu retracted the hand as he said, “We’re not asking Odashena to take sides in a war, and we don’t want to reveal the existence of the djinn to the world. Your privacy and your neutrality are safe here.”

The djinn cleric gave no sign that she was at all reassured by his words. “But?”

“But there is a warrior cleric in Elladi, and now King Darius wants her head on a spear,” Iyasu said. “Who is she? Why is she fighting? We don’t know, but she’s putting us all in danger. A war between the eastern and western kingdoms could rage all the way to the holy mount and the angels who dwell there.”

“Ah.” For the first time, a hint of concern passed over Samira’s face. “I agree, the rogue cleric could be a danger to the holy orders, and to the angels themselves. Very well, I shall complete the task and bring this cleric to your divine justice, Holy One.”

Raziel raised his six crystalline wings to catch the morning light and cast a dazzling array of rainbow lights across the square. “Divine justice is for the divine. For this cleric, an end to the violence will suffice. I would prefer if you simply bring her here. She may be in need of our healing gifts.”

“Actually, before you do that, before you bring the extremely violent cleric here to my home, could I just ask one question?” Zerai called out. “There’s just one small thing I don’t understand. How is a Tevadim going to stop a Sophirim? Don’t get me wrong, the gifts of Tevad are very beautiful and very useful, but I don’t see how a stone or wooden sculpture is going to stop a woman who can shatter trees and boulders with her bare hands.”

Samira looked at him coldly. “Are you a cleric?”

“No, I’m just a lump of talking clay,” the falconer said. “But I’ve known Tevadim and I’ve fought beside Sophirim, and if even half the stories about her are true, then I can’t see how you could possibly stop this Daraji woman.”

“These clerics that you have known, they were human?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is why you do not understand.”

Zerai gripped his sword. “Can you help me understand, or are you just going to keep trying to piss me off with your condescending, cryptic crap? Because unless I do understand it, I’m not going to let you put my friend’s life in danger, or risk killing thousands of innocent people in Elladi.”

“I see. You’re not going to let me.” It was softly spoken, not a question, not sharpened with anger or cruelty. The sentence was an icicle in the woman’s mouth. “Then I will teach you, for the sake of your friend, the seer.” Samira nodded at Iyasu, who nodded back with more than a little nervousness in his eyes. “Prepare to defend yourself, if you can.”

Zerai exhaled slowly as he drew his sword and approached the djinn cleric as her two companions moved swiftly aside to stand near Iyasu.

She’ll try to move into the shadows to hide, and to slip around me. I have to keep her in the light.

And she’ll need to touch the stones on the ground, or in the fountain wall, to use her gift. So watch the hands.