Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (28 page)

He shouted at her to be still, to close her eyes, to try to stay calm, but she continued to thrash as the roses and thorns continued to grow, and the more she tried to touch her strange growths, the more she hurt herself, and the more she cried out, and the more she thrashed. Iyasu crept backward, glanced one more time around the cave for some tool or inspiration that might help a half-woman, half-serpent who had swallowed a holy seed from the tree of life, and finding none, he fled.

Iyasu stumbled out of the cave into Azrael’s arms, shouting, “Woman snake, growing thorns, get back, get back!”

No one moved, choosing instead to stare at him, so he grabbed Azrael’s hand and bolted away from the cave. “Run!”

They all dashed back down to the water’s edge and spun around just in time to see Marana emerge into the bright light of the afternoon sun. The strange woman reared up on her scaled and thorny tail far taller than Rahm as she wailed and gyrated, still trying to rip the beautiful red flowers from her chest and alternately trying to smash the thorns from her arms by hurling her hands against the rocks around her.

“What is that?” Rahm drew his sword.

“A woman called Marana.” Iyasu shrugged and waved at the rampaging figure. “Cursed by the ancient Razielim into being half serpent, and cursed by my bad luck to bring her a beetle from the Gaokerena. Which she ate, along with some sort of holy rose… seed. Bulb. Thing.”

“Really? That poor creature. I’ll make it quick.” Rahm trudged warily back up the path with his sword raised.

“No, no!” Iyasu grabbed his arm and turned back to Azrael. “Rael, how long would it take you to carry her to Naj Kuvari?”

The angel blinked. “Flying without stopping? Two days at least. As many as four if she’s too heavy. And depending on the storms when we reach the sea.”

Iyasu grimaced and looked back up at the woman gasping and shrieking as her body continued to blossom with red roses and green-white thorns.

Four days? She won’t last that long.

“No, what can we, there must be, where… aha!” He grinned and shook Rahm’s arm. “Simurgh! She can fix this, right? She helped your mother in childbirth, she can fix this!”

The warrior frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Well, can you summon her?”

“That was my father,” Rahm said. “I cannot summon angels.”

Iyasu spun around again. “Rael?”

“Yes.” The Angel of Death spread her black wings and vanished into the sky in a soft jolt of thunder that hurled dust and smoke into the air.

Hadara turned to Iyasu. “How long will she be gone?”

“No idea.”

“I should do something.” Rahm watched Marana shriek and smash her thorny hands against the rock wall. He took a hesitant step forward. “Something.”

“Maybe the water will help,” Iyasu said. “Maybe it will dull the pain. Marana! Marana!”

The woman covered in roses fell quiet for a moment, gasping for breath as she held her shaking hands away from her body. She stared down at the seer with blood-red rose petals framing her dark brown eyes.

“Marana!” Iyasu waved to her. “It might feel better if you rest in the river. Let the water carry you, and cool you. Please try it. Help is on the way, if you can just try to stay calm for a few more minutes.”

Casting grim looks at the three people by the riverbank, Marana began to slither and slide down the path toward the water. She breathed in short, shallow hisses through clenched teeth, and let her viciously sharp arms dangle in front of her. Raska, who had been watching the creature thrash in wide-eyed apprehension, now danced away, turned, and galloped along the water’s edge back the way they had come and disappeared around the next bend.

Rahm and Hadara quickly stepped away from the path, giving the stranger a wide berth. Iyasu moved more slowly, and the princess grabbed his arm and yanked him to safety as the serpent-woman slid past him and eased down into the cold waters of the river. Iyasu saw the fierce anguish and rage in her eyes melt away as the cool waves rippled over her skin, and she slipped all the way into the water, floating on her back with her arms and tail outstretched and only the beautiful red blossoms on her face and chest above the surface, like a drifting island of flowers.

The seer gently pulled away from Hadara and went to squat at the water’s edge. He smiled at the serene expression on Marana’s face, saying, “There. You see? We can get through this. My friend will be back with a cure in just a few minutes, and then everything will be all right. I promise you. You’re going to be all right.”

Marana moaned softly as yet another red rose pushed its way up through her skin and blossomed forth on her cheek. Her thorny hand rose up out of the water and began to reach for the new flower.

“No, don’t touch it,” Iyasu said quickly. “Just put your hand back down in the water. You can do this. Just don’t…”

The woman in the river spasmed and gasped, her face twisted and lined as she clenched her teeth, and then her hand whipped up to clutch at the red bloom on her face, plunging dozens of long sharp thorns into her cheek and nose and lip. She screamed.

Iyasu saw her body contort into a bent and coiled tangle of limbs and splashing water. He saw her tail flash out of the river, flying like a bullwhip, straight at his face. And then he didn’t see anything at all.

He opened his eye. His mind instantly gathered new information. He could hear yelling and splashing in the distance, and his hands were cold. He was lying on his back on the rocks with the water lapping at his feet. Only his left eye was open, and the right side of his head was on fire. He reached up to his face, only to have a strong hand grab his wrist and hold him down. He turned his head and saw Hadara leaning over him, her face grim, her eyes nervous.

“Iyasu? Iyasu? Can you hear me?” she was saying.

“Mmm, yeah,” he mumbled. “What?”

“Hold still.” She tore a strip of cloth from her sleeve, plunged it into the river, and then proceeded to wrap the cold, dripping bandage around his head. The cool water was soothing, but the pressure of the cloth on his skin set his face on fire anew, and his hands flew up to stop her. But she was kneeling on his right hand, and she fended off his left hand, and with a few grunts and mutters, she got the bandage securely looped around his face, covering his right eye and cheek and jaw. “I think you’re okay.”

“What happened?”

“She hit you. With her tail.” Hadara looked out at the river. “We need to move. Can you walk?”

“Mm.” He sat up, only to have the world inside his head turn cold and hollow and start to spin violently to the side. “Nnn.”

“I’ve got you.” The princess levered his arm over her shoulders and heaved him to his feet, and then helped him to stagger up the path, away from the river. They didn’t go far before she set him down again, propped up against a rock so he could see the water, where two figures were shouting and moving in bright, watery blurs. But then Hadara knelt down in front him, blocking his view. “How’s the pain?”

“Where is she?”

“Azrael will be back soon.”

“No… Marana…”

“Oh.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Rahm is dealing with her.”

“Oh.” His mind ticked over for a moment. “No. No! Don’t hurt her!”

“She almost killed you, Iyasu.”

“Not her fault! Not… Don’t hurr… stop…” The burning pain in his face was rapidly changing into a horrible web of aches and throbs that ran from his chin to his temple. “…stop him.”

Hadara sighed and turned back to the river. “Rahm! Try not to kill her!”

“What?” the man yelled back.

“Don’t kill her!” she bellowed.

“Why?” he yelled.

“Just don’t!” she ordered.

He didn’t answer, but she seemed content to turn her back on him and focus on the seer. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“Mm. How’s my face?” he mumbled. His jaw wouldn’t quite move right, and when it rubbed against the bandages, the pain made him shudder.

“Still attached, just a little less pretty.” She offered a strained smile.

“Mm.”

A soft whistling in the air prompted him to look up, not that he could move his head much or see much, but a moment later he heard the feather-light impact of an angel’s feet on the ground nearby. “Rael?”

“She’s here,” Hadara assured him.

“What happened?” Azrael asked.

A sudden shadow over his face told him that the angel was leaning over him, her black hair veiling the sunlight from his face.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Help her. Help her.” He waved lazily toward the river as he closed his one eye. The throbbing in his skull was getting louder, and the darkness helped.

Sleep would help.

“Iyasu! Iyasu!” Azrael shook him.

“Nnn! Help her!” He spoke as clearly as he could manage, but he didn’t open his eye.

He then heard the women talking as he felt his consciousness melting down into the warm darkness of exhaustion. But soon he felt hands on his neck and head, moving the bandages, jostling him around, and he forced his mind up through the clouds of sleep and dream to the clear light of wakefulness to peer into Azrael’s dark brown eyes, eyes laced in golden fire.

“Is she all right?” he whispered.

“I need to help you first,” she said.

He swatted her hands aside with a weak hand. “Her. First.”

He saw the hesitation in her face as her hands hovered over him. But then she nodded and dashed away, taking her cool shadow with her and leaving him in the glare of the sun. He heard more shouting and splashing as he squinted up at the thin white clouds above, and then she was back again, dark and gold, her Daraji chains and coins jangling quietly around her hips and wrists as she moved.

“I gave her the dew of the Gaokerena,” Azrael said. “She’ll be fine. Now lie still.”

He lay back, no longer having the strength to argue, or even to lift his head. The pulsating waves of scratching, burning pain marched through his head like an army of fire ants and it took all of his will power to keep his eye open as she stripped off the bandages and grimaced sadly at the sight of his face.

“I wish Veneka was here,” she whispered.

“That bad?” He tried to smile, but his face refused. “Well, we’ll see her again, sooner or later. A few weeks with a few scars isn’t going to kill me.”

Although a few hours with a nasty infection might do it.

She said nothing as she applied a cold cloth drenched in strange scents that he could not quite place. He smelled a bit of jasmine and garlic and honey and smoke all swirling together, but whatever it was, it took away his pain, so that this time when he closed his eye he slept, and truly slept, and did not dream except in flashes of color and vague sensations of being happy and confused and young.

When he woke up, the stars were glittering overhead and Azrael was sitting beside him. Marana slept peacefully on the sand, the thorns no longer corrupting her hands and tail, though many of the soft rose blossoms still bejeweled her neck and face.

But Rahm and Hadara were gone.

Chapter 23

“They said they couldn’t wait any longer,” Azrael said. “I tried to wake you, but you were so exhausted, and then they were gone. That was hours ago. We could catch them, maybe, if we flew, and if they’re traveling in the open.”

“No, it’s fine.” Iyasu gently prodded the dull aches in his cheek and jaw beneath the fresh bandages. “They have their lives, and we have ours. Let’s just be grateful for what help we were able to give each other, and move on.”

“Really?” Azrael raised an eyebrow. “We saved them from a lifetime in a Dalyamuun prison.”

“And they led us to Simurgh, which is more than I could have hoped for, so it’s fine.” He started to peel back the bandages a little to uncover his right eye, but the angel stopped him and smoothed the cloth back down.

“Leave it alone. The dew that Simurgh gave me will stop your pain and help you heal, but it won’t put you all back together again,” she said softly. “We’ll need Veneka for that.”

“So… my eye?”

She shook her head.

Iyasu shuddered and tried to put the thought of his missing eye, his useless milky orb, out of his mind. He failed. And the nauseating thought of such a delicate organ being smashed and shredded into pulp, and still being inside his head, only served to dredge up another, older nightmare, the memory of having his hand bitten off, of seeing the meat and bone of his arm exposed. Veneka had restored his hand within a matter of moments, but not even a thousand newly grown hands could erase the sight of the inside of his body, of his own young brown flesh being reduced to red and white horrors.

He swallowed.

And again.

“Are you all right?” She touched his back.

“Yeah, just give me a minute.” He went on swallowing and breathing deeply until the memories faded enough that his stomach stopped trying to heave its meager contents out onto the ground. Eventually he managed to nod at their remaining companion and ask, “How is she doing?”

“Better. The dew took away her pain, too, and stopped the thorns, but it left the flowers. I don’t know why. But they don’t seem to trouble her now. I held her until she fell asleep. She was shaking, but now I think she’s all right.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

“No, I know you’re not injured, I mean, are you all right? You and Simurgh were…”

“Oh.” She paused and shrugged. “I think so.”

“Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But you can.”

The Angel of Death shrugged again. “It’s fine. It’s nothing new. We don’t always get along. Angels, I mean. Most of us are so closely tied to our purpose,
who
we are blurs with
what
we are. And I am Death. So it’s not surprising that some of my sisters and brothers don’t care for my company. Death destroys so much that they create. Knowledge and wisdom, love and devotion, family and happiness. They build their castles in the sand, and I am the wave that wipes away all their beautiful works. I know they don’t really hate me, they don’t blame me.”