“Each other.” The angel’s voice boomed through the living rock beneath their feet. “Your brothers and sisters are killing each other. The war has begun.”
Chapter 20
Zerai stood beside Lamia and watched spears of ice lance outward from the distant mountain as jets of fire cast nightmarish lights on the dark crags and sparkling crystal edifices.
“Why doesn’t Juran stop it?” he asked. “Why doesn’t she take away their gifts? How can she let this happen?”
“The gifts of the angels are earned through years of study and devotion,” she said softly. “Once the angel has faith that the cleric will use her gift wisely, the gift is bestowed. After that, the cleric is free to act according to her own conscience.”
“So the angels won’t do anything?” Zerai turned to glare up at the gray giant behind him. “They just stand back and watch the slaughter?”
“God gives us all life. It’s up to us whether we cherish or abuse that gift. The gifts of the angels are no different.” Lamia shrugged. “It’s the price of free will.”
“Bullshit.” Zerai glanced down at Nadira, who appeared to be captivated by the flashing lights of the battle raging in the distance. “If you give a child a toy, and she abuses it, then you take it away. You don’t wash your hands of it and just let the child do whatever they want.”
“Are you saying we’re children?” she asked.
“Compared to them?” He pointed an accusing finger at Sophir. “Hell yes.”
“Well, I’m not an angel,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do to stop the Juranim.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a cleric! You can move mountains with your bare hands!”
“I’m just one woman.” She waved at the young apprentices all around them. “And they’re just children, most without any whisper of their gifts yet.”
“So you’re just going to stand here and watch it happen? People are dying!” He wanted to grab her and shake her and scream into her face.
You have all the power in the world! The gifts of the angels flow through your hands. How can you do nothing!?
He glared at her, but she turned away to watch the battle rage on in silence.
“You!” Zerai strode back into the arena, right up to the stone giant. “You can stop this! You can save them, all those children over there who are killing each other over politics and fear and whatever bullshit words got poured in their ears. Save them!”
The angel said nothing.
“Save them, damn you! Or what the hell are angels good for!?”
Sophir twisted his massive rocky body and peered down at the man holding the baby. “We each have our purpose in this world.”
“Your purpose can burn in hell for all I care!” Zerai screamed. “People are dying! Do something right now, or I swear to the God that made you, I will kill you myself!”
“Your rage is meaningless,” the angel intoned.
“You’re meaningless, you stupid pile of rocks! You claim to serve a god that created this world, and now you’re just standing there and watching it be torn apart!”
Zerai wished for all the world that he had the strength to swing his fist through the stone angel’s leg, to bring the giant crashing to the ground, but he had nothing to sling at the immortal except for his words and his anger.
Sophir slowly raised his arms and folded them across the moss-encrusted expanse of his marbled chest. “Very well.”
Zerai blinked. “Very well what? What do you mean?”
Before he’d finished asking the question, the falconer felt the now familiar queasiness of his body growing lighter and lighter, of his bones and muscles being hollowed out of their weight. As his feet lifted off the ground, Zerai saw that all the loose stones around them had also begun to float in the air, and all the young clerics in the arena were also adrift and looking around with wide, wild eyes.
Then the Angel of the Earth rose up from the ground and began to glide forward, and every floating stone and person glided forward with him, caught in the orbit of the gray giant, and together they accelerated away from the slopes of their home southward.
Zerai clutched Nadira to his chest with both arms as he watched the jagged rocks of the mountain’s eastern face fly past his feet, sometimes just below his shoes and sometimes so far below him that he could only see a gray blur of scree, boulders, and gaping ravines. Looking ahead, he saw the home of the Juranim rushing toward them, a craggy war zone of fire and ice, and with each passing moment the screams of the dying grew louder.
No, no, no! Not with me, not with her! Not here, not now! I can’t protect her from this!
Sophir, with his long legs pointed down together like a stone sword and his arms still folded across his broad mossy chest, flew down toward a clearing on the dusty slope that Zerai recognized as another amphitheater, but here there stood spires of ice and dancing tongues of red flame, and the bodies of the dying lay scattered everywhere, blackened by fire and frost.
And in the center of the chaos and carnage stood a living inferno, a pillar of red and gold flames that rippled upward in the vague shape of a monstrous woman with four great wings of fire rising from her back. She stood alone in the center of her arena, watching in silence as her children battered and burned each other until they no longer looked human.
Sophir landed in the arena, shaking the very bones of the mountain with a quake that reverberated for many long moments while his stone and human satellites swirled around him and gently came to land on the frozen and scorched ground. The Angel of the Earth gazed upon the face of the Angel of the Sky, saying, “What is this violence, sister?”
Zerai stumbled as his feet touched the ground, and he immediately ran toward a small niche between two boulders where he huddled down with his arms wrapped around Nadira. All around him he saw the Juranim in their black and red tunics and robes, running and leaping, lashing out with their bare hands at each other as they screamed in anger. Everywhere that the clerics’ fingers touched the stones or earth, vicious spears of ice erupted from the ground or shimmering blades of flame roared up at the sky, leaving the ground as black as the smoke rising into the air. Bright cinders and snowflakes fluttered down over everything.
“Civil war,” growled the fiery Juran. And then, all in a moment, her body froze solid into a glittering sculpture of pale blue ice, and her eyes flashed from red to white. “We learned that the clerics in Shivala are arguing over whether to stay in the city and defend it with their lives, or whether to abandon Shivala and save as many lives as possible. The Ras Council is divided between the hawks of war and the doves of peace. Strange accusations have been made against the seers, and vicious counter-charges leveled at the martial clerics. It took only a few minutes of angry talk here before fear and madness took hold.”
“Madness indeed.” Sophir surveyed the battle as his gray clerics huddled closer to him. “And they won’t listen to you?”
“I taught them to be steadfast in their duty, loyal to the end, as focused as they are fearless,” Juran replied. “Behold the result. Half are ready to give their lives to save the innocent, and half are ready to die for their city. I fear I have done enough, as it is.”
“It has happened before,” Sophir grumbled.
“And it will happen again,” Juran agreed as her body burst into flame again.
“Do something!” Zerai shouted from his hiding place. “Stop them!”
“Theirs is the freedom to do as they wish,” Juran said. Her voice shuddered like a flame battered by a cruel wind, but her words were as sharp as broken ice. “We cannot command them.”
“You don’t have to command them!” Zerai shouted over the chaos of fire and frost crackling around him. “Just stop them! Grab them, hit them, anything!”
“More violence?” Sophir looked at the falconer.
“Azrael does it all the damn time!”
“Azrael? What do you know of the Angel of Death?” Juran asked.
“Mo
re than you, obviously.” Zerai grabbed Lamia’s arm and pulled her down into the shadow of his boulders, and pushed little Nadira into her arms. “Keep her safe!”
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t answer. Zerai ran out across the open arena, passing between the stone angel and the burning angel, and spied two young clerics in red and black grappling on the ground, their skin blackened and blistered in cruel streaks across their arms and cheeks. Zerai dove on top of them, crashing in between and knocking them apart, sending all three of them sliding across a lumpy plate of ice on the ground.
The falconer slid away from both of them, but he snatched up a small rock and hurled it at the nearest cleric, clipping the boy on the temple and sending him sprawling unconscious. Scrambling on the slick ice, Zerai spun around to find the other cleric rising to her knees and pointing her deadly hands at him. He plowed right into her, driving his fist into her belly as her hands scorched the green sleeves of his shirt, and as she fell backward, gasping for air, he gently took the side of her head and thumped it on the ice, sending her into oblivion.
His chest heaving, Zerai turned to look up at the angels who had watched the encounter and shouted, “You see? It’s not that hard!”
Sophir raised his hand glittering with hidden ore and shaggy moss. “My children, go! Stop this madness!”
The clerics in gray hesitated for a brief moment as they exchanged glances with each other, but then they all snatched up a handful of stones and ran off across the broken landscape in twos and threes in search of the warring Juranim.
Zerai crawled across the treacherous ice and then staggered across the dusty, charred arena. He cast several tired glares at the giant immortals standing motionless there, but then sank down to his knees beside Lamia and took Nadira back. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you. I’d better go help.”
He nodded as she ran off to help her brothers and sisters, and Zerai massaged his throbbing hand and inspected his scorched sleeves as he listened to the clerics shout, and burn, and crunch stone all around him. To his relief, the sounds of battle quickly died down as the young Sophirim hurled their rocks and subdued the Juranim. Clerics in gray began to return to the amphitheater with clerics in red and black draped over their shoulders. The beaten and senseless youths were laid out on the ground, one by one, until the last cries and roars of flame and groans of ice had fallen silent.
Zerai crawled out and stood up. He was grateful to see that none of the dead or the injured were small children. He set Nadira down on her little feet, and the girl promptly grabbed his finger in her little fist, and she toddled along beside him as he walked across the debris-riddled arena toward the two angels. Juran shimmered, her red flames fluttered wildly, and one by one her limbs ceased to burn and became encased in glistening armor plates of ice as her fiery wings became vicious, jagged spines of blue-white frost.
“Well, now you know,” the falconer said to the gray angel.
“Know what?” Sophir asked.
“How Azrael would have dealt with that.” He coughed on a lungful of smoke. “You should get one of the healers from Naj Kuvari out here to take care of these people. The burns and frostbite look pretty bad. They’re going to be in a lot of pain when they wake up.”
“Probably,” Juran said. “Thank you for your help.”
“I’m just glad it’s over.”
“It isn’t over,” Sophir rumbled. “This was only the first tremor of war. What of the Tevadim? And the young Arrahim? And the rest of our children in the city? Violence breeds violence. It will grow before it dies. And many innocents will die, too.”
“They always do.” Zerai sighed. “Listen, I don’t know how you usually handle these sorts of problems, although, it sounds like you don’t usually handle them at all. But at any rate, if you care about these peoples’ lives, then you need to step in now, before they start dying again.”
“And do what?” Juran asked.
“Save them.” Zerai glanced at the bodies. “They’re fighting because they’re afraid, and they’re afraid because they’re dealing with an enemy they can’t hope to defeat. Djinn with the power of angels, with the power of Zariel.”
“Zariel!” Juran’s frozen face rippled with inner fire.
“Sophir can explain later. The point is, your clerics can’t hope to win because they’re not as strong as angels. But you are. Go to Shivala, both of you, all of you, and guard the city yourselves. Show everyone that you stand together, and that you’re prepared to defend them,” the falconer said. “You may not even have to fight. Just stand there. Let them see you standing together. I’ll bet that’s enough to help them sleep at night. And it should be more than enough to convince them to stop fighting each other.”
Sophir looked at Juran. “He may be right.”
“Go to the city? All of us?” Juran paused. “We have not left our mountains in centuries.”
“Hardly a reason to stay, sister,” Sophir countered.
“My point, brother, is that the humans will not be ready to look upon us. Most have never seen anything of heaven with their own eyes. We will be monstrous to them.”
Zerai admitted that the sight of the faceless stone giant and the burning winged creature of frozen blades made his bones shiver and his flesh crawl, and had he not spent his youth being hunted by the hideous packs of ghuls and the fiery ifrits of Tigara, he might well be terrified of the angels now.
And I haven’t even seen Tevad or Arrah yet. God only knows what they look like.
“It doesn’t matter if it scares them,” Zerai said, though he wasn’t sure he believed it. “You need to do it. You need to go to Shivala. If that means telling half the people to stay inside and cover their eyes, then so be it. It’s the clerics we’re trying to bring together, not the civilians.”
“He’s right,” Sophir said. “Let us gather the others and travel to the city together.”
“Very well,” Juran agreed. “And we can bring my children to the healers there.”
Zerai heaved a sigh as he heaved Nadira over onto his other arm. “Good.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Lamia frowning out across the broken landscape of melting ice towers and smoldering, skeletal trees. She said, “I don’t see Samira anywhere.”
The falconer scanned the slopes around them. “I don’t either. I don’t remember seeing her here at all, actually. I can’t imagine she was hurt. She’s too fast for that.”
“I don’t think she came over with us,” Lamia said.
“She’s back on Sophir’s mountain?”
“Either that, or she’s gone.”
“Gone?” Zerai wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Gone where?”
“Where else? To find Ramashad.”
The falconer closed his eyes. “Shit. You’re probably right.”
“I thought you didn’t care about her?”
“I care. A little. I don’t want her to die, if that’s what you mean.” Zerai looked at Nadira and thought of the last two years that she and her mother had spent underground, two years living in the djinn city of Odashena, two years of being feared and hated for being human, for being different, and all the while being protected only by Samira Nerash. “Shit.”
“Do we go after her?”
Hell no, I’m not going after her. I’m still trying to get away from this insanity.
Zerai looked around at the weary clerics and the two giant angels herding their people together. “We can’t. We’d never find her.”
“Then I guess we go back to the city.”
“Back?” He looked at her. “I’m not going back.”
“Well, you can’t stay here alone, not for long, anyway. And we’re five days’ hard march across the desert from the city,” she said. “You have to come back with us, and then you can leave again. Maybe on a ship this time.”
“Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “Maybe.”
“Come on.” She guided him towa
rd the gathering of angels and clerics in the center of the arena, and he let her move him into position, even though he wasn’t ready. He wanted time to think, to plan, to find another way out of this mess. But there was no time. And there was no way, not that he could see.
Sophir folded his moss-covered arms across his stone chest, and everything began to rise into the air once again. Dust and pebbles, clothing and hair, people and immortals, conscious and otherwise. Zerai winced as the mass was drained from his flesh and he began to float on the breeze, tethered by some unknowable force to the huge creature of rock and white flame. Once in the air, the great swirling mass of bodies and debris began to glide across the mountain side for a second time, again heading south toward the next peak and the next crater in the living rock where another angel and her students awaited them.
Nadira looked up suddenly and began to babble loudly in the falconer’s ear, and he did his best to shush her and gently jostle her in his arms, but to no avail. The little girl talked nonsense and giggled all the way, but Zerai, despite the exhausted grimace on his face and the painfully loud noise in his ear, didn’t really mind.
Chapter 21
For two days, Iyasu strode along at Rahm’s heels, occasionally glancing with mild envy at Hadara riding on Raska, eagerly climbing the narrow paths of the ancient red mountains and trudging through the cold, crisp snow on their way north until they reached the banks of the River Denda. Here they turned west and followed the coursing water until they spied the white foam and small drifts of ice on the far side, declaring to them that they had reached the place where the River Sestun came crashing down from the northern heights.
“Now where?” Rahm asked. “This is nowhere. No roads, no towns, no game.”
“The river’s full of fish,” Iyasu said as he continued down the bank. “We’ll be fine.”
“Full of fish, eh?” Rahm shook his head. “Did you read that in a book, too?”
“Yes. I did. But I know it’s true because I can see the fish. Can’t you?”
Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom Page 20