War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (32 page)

Veneka moved the lantern back again, and saw the young man’s eyes go wide. “Are you all right?”

Iyasu nodded and strode out of the tent past them. Veneka set the lantern down by Talia and stepped outside with Zerai where they followed Iyasu and Azrael back into their own tent.

“Well, that’s a miracle, right? An actual miracle?” Zerai asked as they went inside. “Souls jumping bodies. There’s no explaining that, is there? That right there is the actual hand of God messing about with the world, right there, right in front of us, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps we should not call it
messing about
,” Veneka said as she turned to Iyasu. “Now, what was that about the light just now?”

Iyasu covered his mouth and looked away, and looked back at her again. “I saw it. I’m sure I saw it. It’s just… it’s too much. I don’t know…”

“Iyasu, spit it out,” Zerai said. “What did you see?”

“A soul.”

“Right, Hamza’s soul inside Talia’s body. Djinn inside human. What’s wrong, does it look strange?”

“No, no, not that.” The youth shoved his hands up into his hair and flashed a nervous grin. “It’s the other one. The other soul.”

“You mean Talia’s soul? She’s in there too?”

“No, no, not Talia.” He shook his head emphatically. “The other soul’s not around her head. It’s around her…” He motioned at his belly.

Veneka stared at him. “Are you serious? Are you sure?”

“Very.”

Veneka stared at him, and then at Zerai. “So, Hamza is now a human woman pregnant with his own djinn child that he conceived with her over forty years ago… and he does not know it yet?”

Zerai smiled and shook his head. “Sure. Why not?”

“This is not funny.”

“It’s a little funny. Listen, if you don’t laugh at these things sometimes, they’ll drive you crazy.” He sat down on his blanket, still grinning and shaking his head.

“We have to tell him,” she said to Iyasu. “Soon. Or he will figure it out on his own, eventually.”

The young seer nodded. “You’re right. Just not now. He’s in shock. I mean, she. Is he a she now? I don’t know what the right words are. Whatever the words are, we need to help her just deal with being alive like this right now, and we’ll get to the pregnancy when she seems ready for it.”

Veneka rubbed her eyes. “It is another hybrid child. Half human, half djinn. Does that mean she will lose the baby, just as Petra did?”

“Maybe.” Iyasu’s face darkened and he intertwined his fingers with Azrael’s. “But maybe not. A human mother with a djinn soul, resurrected by a holy cleric of Raziel. We already have one miracle sitting in that tent. Why not two?”

“But… what if you’re right and she has the baby, and everything’s fine?” Zerai asked. “I mean, what are the odds of this miracle happening on the same day that Petra loses her child?”

Iyasu’s eyes widened. “You’re not seriously thinking…?”

Zerai looked up. “Thinking what? That almighty God, creator of the entire universe, is currently engaged in a private rivalry with Petra Nerash over who can make the first djinn-human child?”

Veneka blinked. “Well, I would not say it in that way, but…”

They all looked at Azrael, and the angel shook her head. “I have no idea how or why the Almighty does anything. I never served in heaven, only on earth.”

Zerai shrugged. “Well, we can always ask Raziel when we get home. He seems to know these sorts of things. He won’t give us a straight answer, but he’ll say something.”

Veneka glanced over and saw that Iyasu was holding Azrael’s fingers. She tried not to let her thoughts wrinkle her forehead too much.

Really? With an angel? Is that… allowed? I guess they would know. But still…

“Well, putting the baby aside for a moment, are we going to talk about our other problem, or can it wait until morning?” Zerai looked around.

“Darius.” Veneka rubbed her eyes. “All I know is that tomorrow I will sit in the market and heal everyone in this city who needs me. I cannot think about Darius right now.”

“Fair enough. It can probably wait until morning,” Iyasu said. “Samira’s wall should hold at least that long.”

“Samira.” Veneka blinked. “I nearly forgot.”

“What?” Zerai frowned.

“Samira said something today, before she went looking for Petra. She told me to heal Faris.”

“What? Why?” Iyasu asked. “He’s not sick, is he?”

“No, but she told me about his…” Veneka paused. If Iyasu didn’t know already, then maybe Faris didn’t want him to know. And if Iyasu hadn’t noticed on his own, then it might pain him to know that he had overlooked the prince’s suffering. “She told me it might help him. I just needed to remind myself to do it tomorrow. That is all.”

There was a quiet awkwardness as Veneka and Zerai settled down on their side of the tent and then watched Iyasu and Azrael settle down together opposite them.

Zerai whispered in her ear, “They seem… close.”

“I know.”

“Should I ask him about it tomorrow?”

“No. It is not our business.”

“I know it’s not, but I’m a little worried about him.”

“And I am very worried about him. But if they need each other, and if they are not hurting each other, then I will not say anything.”

“All right.”

He kissed her neck and she rolled over to kiss his lips. He wrapped his arms around her belly and she felt him nestling down to sleep. She pressed close to him, but did not close her eyes. She tried to imagine what Bashir had experienced that day, what he had felt, and what he was feeling now.

She. Bashir is a she now.

She wondered if he would find a way to live his new life, to accept his new body, and even to learn to be a mother.

Her life, her body. Words matter. They can help. Or hurt. I have to remember the right words. I suppose it will not be too hard, since he looks and sounds nothing like himself anymore.

She looks…

She sighed.

Probably no one in all the world, in all of history has any idea what she is about to go through.

Veneka closed her eyes, and was about to wonder what it would feel like to wake up in Zerai’s body when she slipped away.

The nightmare didn’t waste time establishing a familiar place or the faces of her loved ones. There was no moment reliving some pleasant memory. It began with the screaming, the deafening and uncontrollable screaming pouring out of her whole body as she vomited out the raging spirit of the dead Raziel from her aching, burning mouth.

Dimly, she knew she was standing on an open plain where the grasses leaned over broad puddles of freshly fallen rain. An iron sky glared down with thunderous rumblings, and herds of panicked impalas, zebras, and wildebeests stampeded over the hills in the distance. And all around her, hundreds of slavering ghuls charged toward her.

She saw Iyasu, Zerai, and the other clerics standing all around her. She saw the fear on their faces as the demons raged closer and closer, bile dripping from their filthy fangs and blood weeping from their golden eyes. But she couldn’t move. She stood ankle deep in a cold pool of rainwater, screaming and aching, as the soul of Raziel clawed its way up and out of her body to hover in the air above her, curling and writhing like a serpent made of pure light.

But the serpent did not strike.

The ghuls poured over the last little rise and swept across the plain, pouncing on the clerics one by one, smashing the defenseless men and women to the ground. The demons sank their fangs and claws into their victims, and tore them apart, and began to feed even as their food continue to wail and scream and crawl through the blood-soaked grass.

Still transfixed with the white spirit standing in her open, screaming mouth, she watched through the corner of her eye as Zerai’s chest was torn open, and he fell.

Suddenly it was dark. The plain was gone, and the hungry demons vanished along with the dying clerics. The screams stopped, hers and everyone else’s. The dark water lapped at the stones at her feet, and the moon and stars floated silently on the little waves of the lake.

She knelt on the hard stones, feeling them digging into her knees and feet. Something cold and heavy lay across her outstretched arms, and something cold and wet dripped from her mouth. She looked down and saw the soft, gelatinous flesh of a dead marid in her hands and spread across the shore beside her. It tasted of metallic vomit, squishing and oozing in her mouth and down her throat. She tried to spit it out, to throw it up, but instead the cold demon flesh just wriggled deeper inside her.

Gagging, she fell backward on the pebbled beach.

The stars vanished. She stared up at the ceiling, confused by the blending of stone, wood, and thatch. The air hung hot and stale around her, with no breeze to caress her skin. There was a voice nearby, a quiet voice babbling in Dzenbayan. She started to turn and look, but then stopped. She recognized the room, the cell. She recognized the voice of the girl, her own voice. The babble was incoherent, repetitive, plaintive, desperate, begging for help, crying out for her mother.

Veneka lurched up, awake, gasping, sobbing. The cold claws of the nightmare released her, and the fear vanished, and she fell quiet and calm in just a few breaths. She wiped the tears from her eyes and sighed. It was still dark in the tent, and Iyasu snored softly a few paces away. Azrael snored a bit louder.

With a shiver, Veneka lay back down and turned to see Zerai watching her. “I woke you.”

“Yeah. A little more kicking and punching than usual.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

She nodded. He did understand, more or less. His own nightmares could be just as violent, but they were far fewer, and they’d been less and less frequent over the years. She tried to remember the last time he had had one. A year ago?

“It’ll go away eventually,” he said. “Just give it more time.”

“I know.” She swallowed. “Did I hurt you?”

“I’ll heal, one way or another.” He smiled.

She tried to smile back. “It’s a good thing no one else was nearby.”

“Who? Iyasu?” Zerai raised his head a little to look at the seer, but then looked down at her. “Are you… Wait, what do you mean?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“No, I want to talk about this.”

“Now?”

“Well, we can wait until after Darius kills us all, but I’d prefer now, yes.”

Veneka wiped her eyes again. Her whole body felt a bit sore and tired. “I meant what I said. I am glad no one was nearby to get hurt. I know sleeping near me can be risky.”

He paused. “Are you worried you would hurt our baby?”

She inhaled and braced herself. “Of course I am.”

“Oh, honey, no, you don’t need to worry about that. We can make a little bed next to ours. The baby doesn’t need to sleep right here between us. That’s nothing, that’s easy. Nothing to worry about. Is that what you’ve been worrying about this whole time?”

She wiped her eyes again, even though they were dry. She needed something to do with her hands. “It is not just that.”

“Then what?”

“Everything.”

“Everything what?”

“I…” She had imagined this conversation a hundred times, but now she couldn’t remember any of the ways she had tried to explain how she felt to Zerai in her head. “I do not remember my parents.”

He shrugged. “I never knew my parents.”

“I know. But… My earliest memory is that cell where they put me after I was possessed. All I remember is that cell, and then wandering in the forest, and then living on the island. It is all vague and horrible, but that is all I remember before I met you, before you and Iyasu saved me.”

“Hey, we just made you go for a long walk. You saved yourself, and Raziel along with you. That was all you.”

She smiled a little. “My point is that I know nothing about babies.”

“Neither do I, not really. But we have a dozen friends in Naj Kuvari who will help with that. And one of those friends has six wings and used to spend his evenings chatting with God, so I think we’re in good hands.”

“No, I mean…” She sighed and looked away.

“What? Tell me.”

“I have seen the families in the city. I have spent time with the mothers and their children, and when I go on my journeys I meet all sorts of families from different countries. And it always feels strange to me. Holding children, talking to them. I can never see myself like them.”

Zerai sat up beside her. “Are you saying you don’t want to have a baby at all?”

“No, not exactly. I do, I think. But what kind of mother am I going to be? I spent most of my life completely insane, alone. Even back home, sometimes I feel that I do not belong there, around people, in houses, talking.”

“You’ve never said anything about that before.”

“I know.”

“I don’t see it.”

“What?”

“I don’t see it,” he said. “Back home, you always seem perfectly at home with everyone. Is that an act?”

“I… I do not know. I think not. But I feel… like a fraud.”

“What?”

“I feel like I am just pretending to be normal, and that sooner or later someone is going to point it out, that I do not belong, that I am doing everything wrong, talking wrong, acting wrong.” Her voice wavered and she looked away.

He cupped her cheeks in his hands and gently steered her back to look at him. “You’re not a fake, and no one is going to call you one. You’re fine. You’re normal. I love you, and so does everyone else.”

“But…”

“Wait, just listen, please.” He cleared his throat. “I grew up in a gutter with a bunch of orphans, and then we went to live in the hills where we were hunted by demons and soldiers. I watched everyone I ever knew or loved get killed, one by one, year after year. You think I know what a normal life is supposed to look like? Because I don’t, not really. But lots of other people seem to know, and I spend a lot of time copying them. Not to be fake, but to learn. That’s all. We’re learning. We’re learning the things that everyone else learned as kids. We’re just a little slow.”

She stifled a laugh. “We are slow?”

“Well, not when it comes to divine healing or hunting monsters. But the home things, the family things, yes, we’re slow. But we’re learning. And when we have a baby, we’ll learn some more. Probably a lot more. I hear there’s poop. Horrible slimy black poop.”