Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (23 page)

“I don’t know,” the djinn said.

“I do.” Lamia stood up, frowning. “Zariel was one of the teachers sent from heaven. Similar to the angels of the holy mount, like Sophir. But Zariel was sent to a city of evil to lift the people there out of the darkness.”

“Ramashad? Was that the city of evil?” Zerai asked. “Is that where he went?”

“I don’t know. Zariel is just one of a hundred angels I learned about as a child.” Lamia shook her head. “That’s all I remember. A city of evil. And I may not even be remembering that part right.”

“So who would know?” Samira asked. “The elders in Shivala? The seers?”

Zerai grimaced at the thought of ever seeing the white-robed Arrahim again. “If you’re going back to Shivala, I won’t go with you.”

“Shivala?” Lamia shook her head. “No, not any time soon. Maybe once they get their heads out of their asses and learn to play nice together. Maybe.”

“Well, the only other seer I know is wandering the east somewhere with the Angel of Death, so I don’t think we can ask him to help us right now,” Zerai said dryly. He stood up and paced away from the corpse, which looked more and more like a crude sculpture of stone and ash with each passing second. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me. I can’t fight these people, and even if I could, I don’t want to. I’m taking Nadira north, as far from this nightmare as we can go. You’re welcome to come, if you want.”

He paused, looking for some reaction from Lamia, hoping to see her nod and start walking. Instead the cleric sat down. “I don’t know. An hour ago we didn’t know a thing about the attack on the city, but now, well, here we are. The djinn is dead and we have an angel’s name. Zariel. I’m sorry, Zerai, but if an angel is involved somehow, this could be so much more than just a war. I shouldn’t be leaving. I have to try to save Shivala.”

“You just did. Danya’s dead.”

“But there could be more of them out there,” Lamia said. “A whole city of them, maybe.”

“All the more reason to leave,” he said. “And besides, all of the young and the old are safely away in Naj Kuvari. The only people left in Shivala want to be there. They can fend for themselves. They’re not your responsibility.”

“They’re people,” she said. “People are my responsibility.”

“So? You’re people. I’m people. Whoever is living in the next village are people. You can protect and serve anywhere in the world. There are plenty of people who need you. It doesn’t have to be Shivala, which has more than its fair share of protectors,” he said. “There’s no law that says you have to keep fighting. Or suffering. It’s not a crime to walk away. You’re a person too. You get to live too. If you want to.”

“Is that what this is? Is that why you’re leaving? To live?”

“Yes. I want to live. I don’t want to fight and kill anymore. I don’t want to watch people die. And I don’t want to know that anyone died for me. Because of me. No more fighting, no more dying. If war comes, then I go. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that.” Lamia sighed and stared out over the soft curves of the desert dunes. “I watched my friends die in the last attack. More will die if there’s another.”

“There may not be another,” Samira said. “This woman acted alone. She attacked the city alone. Perhaps she was the only one who wanted war. And now she’s dead. Maybe her war died with her.”

“Maybe.” Lamia frowned.

“The clerics have been looking for Ramashad for weeks now, right?” Zerai knelt beside Lamia. “And they haven’t found anything. There’s no reason to think you would either. And even if you did, you probably wouldn’t survive. If it hadn’t been for Samira, you and I would be dead right now.”

“That’s true,” Lamia admitted.

“Not entirely.” Samira cleared her throat. “If I hadn’t been with you, if I hadn’t helped you escape from the city, then Danya probably would have ignored you. She came for me. And if there are others out there, they might come for me as well. Djinn can feel each other’s presence.”

Lamia looked up at her. “That’s it. That’s the advantage we need. To detect them. To find them. If we can do that, then maybe we actually have a chance against them. Would you come with me? Across the desert? Would you help me lure them out, and fight them with me?”

Zerai grimaced as he stood up and paced away again, shifting Nadira to the crook of his other arm.

Samira nodded. “It is my duty, in Tevad’s name.”

The falconer clenched his teeth and said nothing.

They’re going to get themselves killed. Against one djinn, yes, they won. But if there had been two, or more? Not a chance. Not against djinn like this, djinn with power, unholy power.

Zariel’s power.

Zariel…

Who the hell is Zariel?

He studied the stars and guessed how many hours he had until the sun rose and the rocky path north would start to swelter with the rising desert heat. He looked back at Lamia, and he could see the conflict behind her eyes, the questions, the drive to do her duty warring against her personal feelings, her doubts, her grief… He still wasn’t entirely sure he could trust her, but she was his only friend right now, and that made all the difference.

He had been alone before. And he hated it. He hated it as much as he feared it.

“I need to get moving,” he said. “I need to get as far as I can before the sun comes up, and then find a safe place to rest.”

“Right.” Lamia stood up, but did not move to follow him. “Tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What would you be doing right now if you hadn’t found that little girl?”

Zerai looked down at Nadira. Over the past few days, the weight on his arm and the sight of the fat cheeks and the clawing of the tiny fingers had become his new normal, the way the world was supposed to look and feel. He imagined her vanishing, leaving him alone. “I’d be in Shivala, doing whatever Ven needed. Helping with the victims, I guess. And being quietly pissed off and miserable, for various reasons.”

“So the only reason you’re here right now is the baby?”

“No, she…” He frowned. “She’s not the only reason. But she’s the best reason.”

“Well, I don’t have a little girl, and if it weren’t for you, I’d be back in the city, following orders and being quietly pissed off for reasons of my own,” Lamia said. “This angel business is important, Zerai. So I’m going to look for the djinn city with Samira.”

“All right. Good luck with that. Try not to die.” He turned and started walking north. Then he stopped and turned back. “Maybe…”

“What?” Lamia peered at him through lined, tired eyes.

“Maybe you should go to the mountains. Talk to Sophir. Maybe the angels can tell you about Zariel. Maybe they can point you in the right direction,” he said. “Save you some time. Or talk you out of getting yourself killed.”

“Maybe.” She nodded. “Take care of her. And yourself.” Lamia walked to the edge of the stone table where Samira stood waiting to climb down to the desert floor.

Zerai watched the two of them slip down out of sight, leaving him alone between the stone and the stars, feeling the cold sea wind worming through his clothes. Nadira shifted and curled up tighter in his arms. He looked down at her and tried to hug her closer to his body for warmth. Then he looked north at the dark lines of the rocks and the dunes stretching on to the bottom of the night sky.

It’s so far. And there’s nothing there. No water, nothing to eat.

Plus the sun.

And the djinn.

Damn it.

I’m not going to make it on my own. Not in this place. Not carrying her.

An image flashed through his mind. He saw himself lying splayed on the sand, face down, not moving. Nadira lay screaming beside him beneath the blistering sun, her lips cracked as she wailed, and gasped…

He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled, and then hurried to the edge of the rocks and began to climb down after the others.

Lamia stood waiting for him on the next ledge. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, damn it.” He walked past her to the next rocky path downward. “Just go. Please.”

They hiked down to the edge of the dunes together and began walking east, trudging up the slippery sandy inclines and sliding down the far sides. As the sun began to rise, the paling sky limned four sharp black peaks on the horizon. Four islands, alone in the sea of sand.

When the sun rose above the mountain ridge and bathed the desert in the first blush of the day’s true heat, the three walkers stopped in the shadow of a dune to rest. They shared a little water and food. Zerai checked on Nadira, who seemed sleepy and grumpy, but otherwise untroubled by the constant walking.

“How far is it to the mountains?” he asked.

“Five days,” Lamia said.

“Five?” He stared at her. “Can we make it that far? That long?”

“It won’t take five days,” Samira said. With a groan, she stood up and limped to the top of the dune where she stood in the full light of the sun, her dark hair and robes dancing on the wind.

“What’s she doing?” Lamia asked.

“I have no idea.”

After a few minutes, Samira turned back and descended the dune, this time moving a bit quicker and with a more fluid step. When she reached the bottom, the djinn cleric said, “We can move faster now. If you’re ready.”

Zerai looked up at the sun-kissed lip of the dune and back at the djinn. “Did the sun just heal you?”

“Yes. Sun light heals djinn.” She raised an eyebrow. “We are the people of smokeless fire. Where exactly did you think smokeless fire came from?”

The falconer shrugged. “Very dry wood?”

Samira held out her hand to Lamia. “Are you ready to go?”

Lamia looked at Zerai. “You may want to close your eyes for this. And bundle her up a bit tighter. It’s going to be a bit windy. And sandy.”

Zerai wrapped his jacket around Nadira to protect her face as Lamia put her arm around him, and he felt his weight melting away, as though all the flesh in his body were turning to air and lifting gently off his bones. It was unnerving, but also stole away the little aches and pains that lived in his back and legs.

Then the cleric lifted him off his feet completely. He winced and closed his eyes.

You’re trusting them now. Completely. With your life. And her life.

You realize that don’t you?

He swallowed. “Let’s go.”

The wind struck him like a solid wall, smashing against his face and arms, threatening to tear Nadira from his grasp as the flying sand needled at his exposed skin. Zerai clamped his teeth together and tried to take tiny snorting breaths through his nose, but still he could feel the sand clawing up his sleeves and into his ears and through his hair, over his scalp.

With his eyes shut, all he could see were shifting shadows of black and red through his eyelids, and he had a vague sensation of rising and falling, but it was all muted by the relentless, screaming, tearing wind.

When they finally stopped, when the wind stopped screaming, when the sand stopped biting, when Lamia set him down on his own two feet and returned him to his natural weight, Zerai opened his mouth and coughed out all the grime on his lips as he dropped to his knees. He wiped his eyes and nose, and then checked on his little girl, to find her awake and kicking as soon as he loosened the jacket around her.

“Everyone all right?” Lamia asked.

He nodded. “Fine. Where are we?”

“See for yourself.”

He looked up and saw that they were no longer on the desert floor. The sandy dunes were far behind and below them. Now they stood on a rocky path, more than a third of the way up the western face of the northernmost of the four holy mountains. His eye easily traced the narrow path back down to the desert behind, and turning upward, he could also see that the path ended only a few paces ahead at a large amphitheater carved into the living rock of the mountain. Seated around the sides of that arena he saw dozens of young men and women, all in gray robes and tunics, all twisting their necks to stare at the newcomers.

And in the center of those young people, all alone, he saw a figure of pale gray stone, the shape of an enormous man made of rock and earth, clothed in moss and small leafy trees, with his legs crossed beneath him as he hovered effortlessly in the cool mountain air.

Zerai nodded. “Oh.”

Chapter 19

The angel Sophir had no face. The front of his head was a smooth, featureless blank of gray stone marked only with a few white streaks and veins, and dark green moss covered parts of his neck and one shoulder. The tiny trees on his arms and back raised their branches in joyous little gestures like acacias on the plains of Tigara, and faint flickers of white fire danced in his joints, around his elbows and the crooks of his fingers.

“Hello.” The angel’s voice rippled through the earth beneath their feet, a deep resonant voice that nonetheless sounded soft and gentle. “Welcome.”

Zerai stood up and felt the loose sand trickling down off his shoulders and out of his hair as he moved. Nadira squirmed about, so he hefted her up into a sitting position on his hip, where she promptly began sucking her thumb and patting his cheek a bit harder than he liked.

Lamia walked up the path and into the wide circle of the amphitheater, and Samira followed her. Zerai hesitated, wishing he had a moment to call for Nyasha, but failing that, he raised his head and strode into the arena behind the others, trying to keep his eyes on the faces of the clerics-in-training.

Eon once sat here. And his brother, Saifu. This was their life, their childhood. Here, with the angel.

Look at them. They all look so calm, so confident. Nothing more than curious.

And young. Fifteen. Ten. Five.

God, where was I when I was five? Running barefoot through the gutters of Azumar, probably.

Look at them.

The young clerics gazed down from their seats at the strangers. Not a single one of them coughed or shuffled or looked away. They were fascinated, and placid as a frozen lake.

“Holy Sophir.” Lamia bowed before the floating Angel of the Earth.