by Sara King
“They were hiding,” she whispered, frowning.
“Something was killing them,” Herr Drescher noted, having been reading over her shoulder. “It started with the Furies.”
Imelda considered. The Fury deaths were the first documented mention of the mysteriously destroyed temples. But what if the Furies had other names? What if all the mythologies of fearsome avian avengers were based off of the same breed of demon? What if they were all the same creature, serving the various gods of War? What if they weren’t angels at all, but a First-Lander demon that had worked its way into the common culture?
She rubbed her forehead, thinking. The Furies were thought to have died out a little over three hundred years after the Resurrection of Christ. A few years after that, angels grew wings in Christian art.
The Furies, according to the ancient Roman temple documents, had three forms. Fully human—so fully human as to be undetectable, unlike the slight off-forms and visual cues of dragons, Third-Lander demons, and other shapeshifters, most of whom had to maintain some conscious control over their shift to retain it. The next of the three forms was full Fury—a creature with the body and face of a massive human, but with talons, wings, feathers, an eagle’s beak, and scaly arms. And last was a mixture of the two—the modern Christian angel, a being of great radiance, a warrior of God who wielded a sword of white fire, and from whose wings shone the light of heaven.
Frowning, Imelda began comparing dates once more. The first appearances of winged angels were near Istanbul, around A.D. 385, documented on a Christian sarcophagus with a scribe’s simple inscription of ‘A Prince’s Holy Vision’ scribbled underneath. The last documented mention of a mysteriously destroyed pagan temple to a god of War was around A.D. 383, in Mesoamerica.
“Herr Drescher,” Imelda asked softly, “can you recall the date on that Bible you saw?”
“The oldest read, In the Year of Our Lord Three Hundred and Eighty Nine,” Herr Drescher replied. “She made me get a good look.” He was frowning. “I honestly thought she was joking. How could she have a Bible that old? They deteriorate.”
“Vellum can last thousands of years on its own, and she’s a magus.” Imelda considered, her migraine beginning to fuzz the edges of her vision again for the first time since she’d woken. In the olden days, before the advent of printing presses and modern typography, every part of the creation of a book was a painstakingly time-consuming and labor-intensive process. From the skinning, scraping, stretching, and drying of animal vellum to the tedious application of inks, powdered metals, and glues, it often took years to craft a single Bible, even with an entire monastery working on it. To have a Bible completed in A.D. 389, she would have had to commission it several years in advance.
Yet, it wasn’t until A.D. 382 that the Church itself had even begun canonizing the Bible with the Council of Rome. Further, nowhere in the Bible did it mention an angel having wings. Yet, right around that time, famous public visions of angels began appearing here and there throughout Christendom. Always radiantly winged and glorious, always before great crowds or important leaders, always resulting in massive conversions.
Imelda closed the archiving program suddenly. No wonder the Pope suffered a magus in their midst. “Herr Drescher,” she whispered. “I believe we just stumbled onto something that could get us both killed.”
He was looking pale himself. “You think Zenaida…”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “You’re not to leave my side unless to eat, shit, or sleep. You understand?” Then she hesitated, trying to think. Now that she knew of this, she felt like she had to do something about it. But what? Zenaida was clearly in league with the Holy See, if only by the fact that her existence was being overlooked. Could the Holy See know that it was dealing with a First-Lander demon?
Then, a more frightening question occurred to her. Would it care?
Sightings of angels by its faithful, after all, was one of the strongest supporting tenants of the Church.
…Just as harvesting the magics from those they killed was one of the Order’s greatest weapons.
The thought left a bitter taste in Imelda’s mouth, one that was beginning to chafe. How many of the Church’s principles had been built upon the wings of angels? Did it matter? How important were a few lies, in the grand scheme of things, if it brought more people to God? But then, on the other hand, what if the Furies were God’s messengers? What if the scholars had simply neglected to mention the other forms because it was common knowledge of the time? The equivalent of a modern-day scholar documenting the Pope riding in a car and stopping to explain the internal combustion engine under the hood.
She shook her head, feeling the glassy fuzz of her migraine building.
Herr Drescher saved her. “So this wolf, heading north…to the dragons? It is an angel? One that was…bitten?”
Imelda frowned. If there was one thing they all seemed to agree on, it was the sheer destructive power of a Fury. The Buddhists considered the Furies’ counterparts, the Garudas, to be the greatest slayers of dragons. Mythically exaggerated out of proportion, the Hindu and Buddhist texts both clearly stated that there was no creature more capable of killing a dragon than a Garuda. A Fury. An angel. According to Greek myth, deities of vengean—
“Our sister of vengeance,” the angel had said to her, in the awesome, many-faced image that could be easily likened to the Universal Form of ancient Hindu literature.
Too many connections. Too many questions. Too many interpretations. Groaning, Imelda dropped her head into her hands, trying to quell the migraine before it could form.
Beside her, Herr Drescher stood up abruptly and said, “It’s been five hours and we didn’t have dinner. You will eat. I promised your Father I would keep you fed.” He sounded almost panicked that he had forgotten.
Wincing as she peered at him through the hazy outlines of a migraine, she just nodded and got up. Not for the first time, her Padre was a steady source of reason in the turbulent ocean of her life. She’d been dead for several minutes and already she was right back to digging through the same mysteries that had put her on her deathbed the first time.
Someday, she thought miserably, You’re going to be the death of yourself, dearie.
Chapter 13: A Djinni’s Dance
The first blizzard of the season hit, ironically, once they had passed through the cold and windy slopes of the Alaska Range. Out on the sparsely-wooded, lake-pocked lowlands north of the mountains, there was very little shelter to be found aboveground, to which the djinni had vigorously complained for the last four hours. For her part, Kaashifah wanted to gain as much ground as possible during the daylight hours, when they would at least be able to see their enemies coming. His complaining, however, reached a crescendo at about the same time the wind began to pick up, pummeling them both with snow despite the shields that Kaashifah had woven into their wards.
“I can’t see why we can’t stop,” the djinni shouted at her over the howl of the wind. Though he followed her at arm’s-length, Kaashifah could still barely make out his big ebony form through the whipping snow around them. “It’s cold out here, mon Dhi’b.” The big Fourth Lander was bowed, hugging his naked chest, still stalwartly refusing to wear a coat.
“Fine, you insufferable wr—” she choked off the insult and gritted her teeth at him through the windswept blasts of snow. “Fine, djinni. We can stop here for the day.” She searched for a ley-line, but found fewer of them in the scrubby wilderness, where the spruce trees didn’t grow more than twenty feet. By the time she found one that was suitable enough to hold the bubble of earth up, once she had lifted it into place, the djinni had already begun complaining again.
“Oh for the gods’ sakes!” Kaashifah cried, making them a much smaller—and thus much less noticeable—fey-mound. She set the bubble to the power of the ley-line, then dug a hole in the side. “Get in there,” she growled, motioning.
The djinni slipped realms. Immediately afterwards, ‘Aqrab whined fr
om inside, “The ground is frozen in here, mon Dhi’b.”
Permafrost. Of course. Kaashifah fought the twitching in her neck to politely say, “Then wish it dry, djinni, or stop complaining.”
“I can’t make a wish for myself,” the djinni moaned.
“You can sleep in there, ‘Aqrab, or you can sleep in the snow. Or you can do us both a favor and go sun yourself in the Fourth Realm, for all I care.” When she got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the mound, however, the djinni was still sulking in a corner, arms wrapped around himself, looking miserable.
After Kaashifah had affixed the light, she went back out into the blinding white storm and stumbled around until she found some scraggly, man-sized black spruce trees and snapped off a few limbs, which she shook free of snow and dragged back inside to lay across the floor as a barrier to the icy dirt.
The djinni gave her attempts a sullen look. “Those are wet.”
Kaashifah almost threw the boughs at him. For almost two weeks straight, ever since leaving the mountains, he had done nothing but complain. Granted, the temperature had dropped by almost twenty degrees in those two weeks, and they were probably well into the negatives, Fahrenheit. Or had been, until the blizzard hit. Now, with wind-chill, it was cold enough to freeze one’s spit before it hit the ground.
“All right, djinni,” Kaashifah muttered. “I request pillows and blankets in addition to my meal tonight. After all, it’s not really a meal fit for a king if I have to endure the hard ground while I eat.”
The djinni cocked his head at her, his eyes widening in consideration. “That is true.”
“So,” she said, once she’d plugged the entrance to the dome, thereby stoppering the gusts of wind that had been sending drifts of snow into their sanctuary, “what will it be tonight?” She leaned back and eyed him. “Another painting? A sculpture? A sketch?”
She watched ‘Aqrab’s face brighten with mischievousness. “You’re asking for a greater boon, so I will require a greater boon in exchange,” the djinni said.
Kaashifah sighed. Never mind the fact that she was asking for his benefit. She simply had to wrap herself more tightly in shields and she wouldn’t be able to feel the cold at all. “Keep in mind,” she said, “that I only have so much time in a night, and I must sleep for at least part of it.”
“I would explore you, mon Dhi’b.”
Kaashifah froze. She reluctantly met his eyes, and indeed, there was sharp intelligence there. “You mean,” she said softly, her heart beginning to hammer in her throat, “like I explored you.”
The djinni shrugged. Then, with dangerous vagueness, said, “However I like.”
Kaashifah bit her lip at the mingled thrill of exhilaration and spasm of fear that fought within her under the djinni’s intense gaze. “Um.”
The beast shrugged much too casually, betraying his intense interest. “I could always eat smoked duck and barbecued ribs…”
Kaashifah let him continue listing foodstuffs, unable to fully concentrate due to her overwhelming mix of emotions. Fear, because it was wrong. Exhilaration because she was finding, more and more, that those big hands aroused something within her that she’d never known existed, a part of her that seemed to have been asleep for millennia. She’d actually been having fun each night. She couldn’t remember having fun before. It had always been frowned upon by her elder sisters, and growing up in the temples, she had quickly learned that to displease her elder sisters, even for an instant, often resulted in a beating the likes of which no mortal could ever know.
The djinni had apparently finished naming his wretched list, because he gave her a questioning look and tentatively said, “Mon Dhi’b?”
When she looked, there was compassion in his violet eyes, as well as a heartfelt plea. Still, she looked away, unable to meet his gaze. To have a man free to touch her, to explore at his whim… It was so terrifying that she couldn’t find the words to speak.
“Trust me, mon Dhi’b,” he whispered softly.
“I can’t,” she whispered, in anguish. She looked up at him reluctantly. “Please pick something else.”
The intelligence in his eyes was enough to make Kaashifah cringe as he surveyed her, and in that moment, she realized she was outmatched. Blessed Lord, she thought, meeting his analyzing violet stare, if this were a duel of minds, this man could best me. It was not a pleasant thought.
The djinni seemed to consider for several minutes, then sighed and fiddled with the needles of a soggy spruce bough. For a moment, Kaashifah thought he would actually choose another boon to ask of her, and, unbidden, she felt a flutter of disappointment.
‘Aqrab must have seen it, too, because instantly, the djinni’s gaze sharpened. “This is what I want.” The words, firm and challenging, left her with another stirring of excitement. And, meeting his eyes, she saw something that terrified her even more—he had seen. In that brief meeting of souls, he had seen that part of her wanted his touch as much as he wanted to give it.
Ares help her, she was so screwed.
“Um.” Feeling his gaze like the inferno of Hephaestus’s forge, Kaashifah quickly looked away. She could go without eating for a night, she supposed. But she also knew, beyond a doubt, that his bargain would be the same the next night, and the next, until she capitulated. Because he knew that, eventually, she would. Like a fool, she had shown him that much.
“Gods damn you, djinni,” she managed.
“You’re free to say no.” He crossed his arms across his naked chest and leaned back against the wall, watching her all-too-acutely. She felt her skin itch under his scrutiny. “After all, it is an abomination to your people, allegedly. A Fury can’t want to be touched by a man. That’s simply impossible, by her very nature. Though…” He hesitated, cocking his head at her. “If you’re the only Fury, I guess you get to decide what’s an abomination, do you not?”
“Don’t try to word-weave your way into this one, djinni,” Kaashifah growled. “Yes, it’s an abomination. Has been, and always will be. I can’t change that.”
…or could she? The djinni did have a point… With no sisters to flog her for the sacrilege, what was stopping her from making her own laws? Laws that allowed the creation of art and music? That didn’t place such horrible punishments on viewing the male form? Kaashifah quickly raked that thought from her mind before it could take hold. “An abomination,” she repeated, with more emphasis.
The djinni lifted a dubious brow. “Oh? I wonder if it was an abomination, back when the Furies were not all female.”
Kaashifah jerked her head up in startlement. “They were never thus.”
He blinked at her, looking genuinely surprised. “Then you’re younger than I thought.” And he waited, watching her with smug knowing over those huge crossed arms. The arrogant bastard.
Biting her lip, Kaashifah thought about it. Then a new wash of guilt hit her soul, realizing that she was considering his proposal. For food. “My sisters,” Kaashifah whispered, “would kill me if they knew what I’ve become.”
“Your sisters,” ‘Aqrab growled, leaning forward, “can suck my dick, Fury. If they are not dead, they should be. Show me in your Lord’s written hand where he has commanded you to be celibate.”
“It is known,” Kaashifah snapped.
“Known by who?” ‘Aqrab demanded. “The survivors?”
She did not like the way he said ‘survivors.’ “It was always done thus.” As long as she could remember. The rise and fall of three civilizations before this one.
“Not always.”
Kaashifah frowned at him. “Just how old are you, djinni?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Consider this: In any culture, in any region of the world, did the Lord of War tell his followers they couldn’t enjoy the arms of their lovers, in between bloodbaths?”
“Sparta,” she blurted, recklessly naming the most militarily-devout society she could remember.
He gave her a flat stare. “There are so many flaws to th
at, Fury, I don’t even know where to begin.” He started ticking off fingers, “They had to marry at thirty, namely because they were required of their country to spread the blood of their loins. They abducted their women, either in fact or in fun. In the field, they often screwed boys…”
“Enough!” Kaashifah cried. “Sparta was a bad example.”
“Indeed,” the djinni said, dropping his hand. He waited.
“The Amazons,” she growled.
‘Aqrab peered at her. “You mean the fearsome women who would raid their neighbors’ lands for male slaves to drag home and work their fields? Oh, and to please them in bed?”
She scowled at him. “Ornicatha.”
Both his eyebrows went up. “That was four human winters ago, mon Dhi’b. You must have been young.”
In actuality, she had been born a hundred years after the fall of Ornicatha, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She merely raised her head and glared at him.
‘Aqrab sighed. “You never saw it, did you?”
Flushing, she said, “I didn’t need to. I heard—”
“I saw Ornicatha,” the maddening beast interrupted. “And while, yes, it was incredibly regimented and highly militaristic and worshipped your Lord to a fault, it was much like Sparta and Amazonia in that its citizens were free to take slaves as they saw fit, and did so, with great pleasure. Unfortunately for them, venereal disease became so rampant that it was a major part of their downfall, as private property was virtually nonexistent, and after a month had passed, captives were expected to be delivered to communal pens beneath the great temples to the god of Fertility in order to propagate—”
“Enough!” Kaashifah cried.
But he continued, “History has shown that sex is necessary to continue the species, mon Dhi’b.” He cocked a curious head at her. “I’m sure that even the Furies were aware of this, as you didn’t die off over the ages.”