Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (12 page)

And then Samira stood up from her stone chair and said, “Well, that’s enough of that. Sister Kiya, will you please assist me?”

All eyes turned to the archer, who only took a brief moment to consider the position she was in before she nodded. “All right then. Let’s try it.”

Hand in hand, the company left the safety and warmth of the shelter and trudged out into the blinding cold. The flying ice and falling snow stung their skin and eyes, but Zerai kept them moving at a steady march back over the bluffs and down to the water’s edge. In those few minutes, everyone began to shiver uncontrollably and they huddled together on the frozen sand. Only the child Nadira, tightly cradled to her mother’s breast, seemed untroubled by the cold.

Samira strode forward and extended her hand over the frothing, icy waves. Instantly the waves began to dance before her, swaying left and right as they swept up into the vague shape of a boat’s hull. Kiya stepped into the water and knelt down, touching the angry sea itself. Bright white crystal veins raced across the face of the water, crackling and crunching as the brine began to freeze. The ice boat rose up out of the water in rocking sweeps like the flowing of waves, first rising at one end and then the other, until the entire hull was formed of white, shining ice.

“Quickly now, everyone inside!” Samira yelled over the shrieking wind.

The entire company climbed over the side and slid down into the bottom of the ship. Zerai felt the ice leeching the heat from his backside and feet, shaving away the warmth of his body layer by layer. He tightened all of his muscles as he crouched down, trying to force his body to stay warm by sheer will and desire.

And then suddenly the air was still, and that stillness made it feel twice as warm. Zerai looked up and saw that there was now an arching roof of ice covering the boat, shielding the passengers from the cruelty of the storm. No more hail or snow fell on their unprotected skin, and they all quickly brushed the ice from their hair and clothing to dry off. Their breath still steamed in faint clouds, but within a few moments everyone stopped shivering and they looked at each other quite calmly, and waited.

The ship lurched and groaned as its frozen hull ground over the harsh sand, and then they were free, floating and rocking on the angry waves of the Sapphire Sea.

Kiya slid down inside the cabin with them through the small hatch near the rear and Adina rushed to dry her off and warm her shaking arms, but the archer sat down and placed her bare hands against the white ice to keep it frozen solid.

“Is it working?” Veneka asked.

“Yes,” Kiya whispered as she wiped the sweat from her face. “We’re sailing now.”

“And you can keep the ship together?” Zerai asked.

Kiya nodded, again wiping more sweat away from her eyes. Her skin was flushed bright red, and her breathing was shallow. “As long as I can stay awake, yes. I’m more worried about hitting an iceberg than melting in this weather, but yes, I think I can do it.”

Zerai glanced at Veneka and the others.

That’s not a great answer. It could take two days to reach the far shore in a storm like this. If only we had a second Juranim…

“Where is Samira?” Talia asked as she rocked little Nadira in her arms.

“She’s on the deck, sailing the boat.”

“Exposed?”

Kiya nodded. “She said she would be fine.”

Talia frowned. “Djinn are born of smokeless fire, but we… they’re not indestructible. There are limits.”

“Then let’s hope we get to Shivala before Samira reaches her limit.” Zerai breathed a slow, hot breath onto his cold hands.

“We will take turns caring for her.” Veneka nodded at the other healers from Naj Kuvari. “Every half hour, one of us will go and restore her. And you as well.” She looked pointedly at Kiya. “You’re taking all the heat from this boat into your own body. The fever could kill you.”

“I know,” the archer whispered. Already her eyes were half-lidded and her body began to slump down. Adina kept wiping the sweat from her lover’s face and arms, whispering words of encouragement as she tried to keep Kiya comfortable.

Zerai kept looking over at little Nadira, and saw how calm and sleepy the girl was. She sucked absently on her left thumb as she reached up to play with her mother’s hair.

At least she’s safe for the moment.

He frowned.

Wait. Did they ever say why Talia was coming with us? Did Bashir know something about the eastern djinn? Did I miss something?

He sat up and was about to ask Veneka, but he couldn’t stomach the notion of starting a conversation with her now, even exchanging a few harmless words felt like lying. Talking about anything over than their future, or lack thereof, seemed wrong now. So he said nothing and chewed on the question of Talia and her little Nadira in silence.

For countless hours, they sat together in the dark, cold cabin of the ice ship and waited. The ship groaned and crackled as it sliced and smashed its way through the storming waves, and the hail drummed louder on the roof over their heads. The healers went up on deck, one by one, to make certain that their captain remained alive and safe, and Veneka stayed close beside Kiya, watching the archer for signs of heat exhaustion.

“How do you suppose Iyasu and Azrael crossed the sea?” one of the young healers asked suddenly.

Zerai looked up. “They flew, I guess.”

“Even through a storm like this?”

The falconer shrugged.

Several times Zerai thought he might strike up a conversation with Adina about life in Shivala, or with Talia about life in Odashena, but each time he couldn’t find the words to begin, and the cold drained away his will to try. So he sat and stared at his feet, and waited.

His eye lids drifted lower, and lower… and lower…

Zerai awoke to screams and shouts, and a titanic cracking sound as if the entire world were breaking in half right beneath him. He blinked and stared in confusion at the dark white world around him until he remembered the ice ship, and everything that had happened. He saw that the others were also just beginning to wake up, although some were already cogent enough to be terrified of the huge black crack in the bottom of the ship and the waves of clear sea water lapping at their feet.

“Everybody up!” Zerai roared as he stumbled to his feet. The boat went on lurching and rocking from side to side, and his mind was still only half awake, but his body was willing to move whether his thoughts were clear or not. He could only see dim gray shapes in the dark interior of the ice ship, but he could see enough.

The falconer grabbed Veneka and Talia and pulled them to their feet, and they all clung to each other to keep their balance in the rolling cabin as the rest of the healers stood up with them.

“Kiya!” Adina was shaking the Juranim, but to no avail. The archer had collapsed, her whole body pale and drenched in sweat. “Kiya! Wake up!”

 The healers descended on Kiya, pressing their hands to her skin and whispering their prayers in the name of Raziel, and while they succeeded in restoring the color to the archer’s hands, they could not wake her.

“What about Samira?” Talia cried. “Has anyone checked on her?”

Veneka was closest to the hatch and she instantly turned and bolted up onto the deck. Zerai felt his stomach lurch as she vanished from view as the hideous thought raced through his mind that he might never see her again.

He was halfway to the hatch himself when he heard her yell down to them, “Land! I see land! We are here!”

Everyone clambered up onto the icy deck, huddled and shaking against the fury of the blizzard. The world above and below was all black and iron and charcoal and flashing silver, and at first they saw nothing but the shimmering white curtains of the howling storm, but then a gust of wind parted the freezing rain and a new shape of dim white and dirty gray loomed out of the blinding torrent. A jagged wall of ice and rock rose from the dark waves, spearing upward far above their poor ship’s mast and spreading north and south as far as they could see.

“The cliffs of Imaya!” Adina yelled. “We made it!”

No sooner had she spoken than the ship screamed in a dozen crackling voices as its broken hull scraped across the vicious edges of some unseen mass of ice just below the surface of the dark waters. The entire ship groaned and snapped, and then shattered out from under them, and they fell silently into the frothing waves of the Sapphire Sea.

Zerai felt the cold of the water stabbing his skin like ten thousand needles and burning razors and he nearly screamed at the sudden shock, but instead he clawed his way back to the surface where the gathering darkness and the tossing waves made it impossible to see anything in any direction.

“Ven!” he roared. “Veneka! Talia!”

Something hit his legs and he lunged down to grab an arm, and the person he pulled to the surface was an unconscious healer, a girl named Danai. Struggling to keep both of their heads above the surface, he began kicking toward the snowy cliffs, screaming with every spare breath for Veneka, and for Talia. But he reached the pebbled shore without finding or hearing another living soul, and he dragged Danai up the beach with his arms and legs numb and shaking.

Collapsing to his knees, he kept pulling the cleric over the frozen stones until they reached the foot of the cliffs and he shoved her into a narrow crack in the rock wall. Then he rose to his feet on wooden legs and staggered back to the water’s edge to scream into the storm with his shredded voice, “Veneka! Ven! Veneka!”

Chapter 10

Zerai spent the night shaking, crying, and hating the world.

The crack in the cliff face was barely deep enough for two people, and with Danai shoved back as far she could go, he was left to wedge himself in with his back to the sea and hope he would live to see the dawn as the blizzard lashed his shoulders and spine with freezing spray and frozen daggers. After dragging Danai to safety he had stood on the pebbled, icy beach and screamed until his raw throat fell silent, and then he had run as far as he dared in the darkness, searching the pounding surf for survivors.

For Veneka.

For Talia.

For little Nadira.

But after an hour of screaming and running, he was too blind, too mute, and too exhausted to move, and the one thing he knew, the only thing he knew for certain, was that the girl Danai might live if he helped her, and might die if he didn’t. So he went back.

 Crushed against the jagged rock walls with the wind and hail whipping his back, Zerai made certain that Danai was still breathing, and tried to rub some warmth into her hands.

He tried to feel busy, to feel useful. Rubbing her hands, breathing on her frozen fingers, wiping frigid water and crystals of ice off her face and hair. But he knew that every moment he was safely tucked into his tiny cave, on dry land, breathing, Veneka and all the others were being dragged out to sea by the rip tide, crushed by icebergs, numbed by the cold, and one by one they were slipping under the cold salty waves to die in the dark, silent depths.

He could picture her in his head. He could see his beautiful Veneka down in the darkness, her arms and legs spread out, weightless in the water, her beautiful hair swirling slowly around her head, her sightless eyes gazing into the blackness as she slowly sank deeper, and deeper, until tiny creatures emerged from the shadows to take their first gentle bites of her cold, dead skin.

Zerai wept. Gasping and shaking, he wept.

And he hated. He hated the world for being a terrible place, and he hated the djinn for being terrible people, and he hated the magi for courting war and disaster, and he hated himself for ever suggesting that they leave their shelter and build a ship of ice, of all things, and he hated himself for leaving the beach and huddling in the cave instead of searching for the others.

They’re gone. Just like all the others. No reason. Just gone. And I’m still here. Again. Have to keep going, alone. Just like when I lost Nahom, at night, at sea, this same damn sea. One moment alive and rambling, the next… gone.

A moment came when he almost left the cave. He almost crawled out, intending to walk down into the storm, wade out into the sea, and let the storm swallow him up, reuniting him with all the others in death. But he didn’t leave. He stayed, and he tried to keep Danai alive.

I have to keep going.

Going where?

Why?

It doesn’t matter. I’m no magi. No one needs me. I’m just the falconer, the sword-arm. I could just go.

And maybe I should.

Maybe I should just go, leave this place and all its nightmares behind me, and just go.

Go anywhere.

Go someplace where they’ve never heard of magi, or djinn, or angels. And just live.

Somewhere green.

With my birds.

For a timeless while, he listened to the girl’s breathing, and then her eyes opened and he whispered to her to stay still. He told her where they were, and what happened. She didn’t react at first, but after a moment she closed her eyes and hummed softly to herself. Zerai watched the frostbitten blackness on her fingers melt away and the dark bruises all around her face vanished. Then, without opening her eyes, she reached out to take his hand, and he felt her holy gift healing his frozen, battered body as well.

Warmth and strength washed over him and through him. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Where are the others?”

He could only shake his head.

She stared at him as the meaning of his silence sank in. “So… what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I guess… we can try to find them.”

They crawled out onto the rocky beach to find the tide was much lower now and huge black rocks stood exposed to the pale starlight filtering down through the storm clouds. The wind was blowing to the south, and the icebergs were sailing to the south, so Zerai began walking south and together they scanned the beach for signs of survivors.

We won’t find them. They’re all dead. It’s just us now. How long do we search before I tell her? How long before we give up, and make our way to Shivala alone?