“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.”
“But they don’t like you?”
“Mm.”
“I’m sorry.” He took her hand and felt her warm, strong fingers intertwine with his.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Nothing is.” She paused. “A little while ago I blinked and saw some people die. Maybe a dozen of them, all in a row, all at once. They all looked so alike. I think they were a family. And they were all scared, and surprised, and cold. I wonder if maybe they all lived together, and maybe it was snowing, and the roof collapsed.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I think about that a lot. Things like that. Wondering who they were, how they died.” She pulled up her knees and leaned against him. “But there are so many, and they never stop, or slow down, so I forget them. Even if I tried, I couldn’t remember them. Any of them. By tomorrow I’ll have forgotten that family. Their faces. There’ll be another family. And another.”
“But they’re not all bad, right?”
“No, they’re not all bad.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Some are quiet and serene, warm and grateful and happy. But I forget those ones even faster than the bad ones.”
“Mm.” He nodded and kissed her hair.
“Do you ever wish you weren’t human?” she asked softly.
“Sometimes.” He paused. “Do you ever wish you weren’t an angel?”
“Sometimes.”
They curled up together on the ground, wrapped in dirty blankets with dry, stiff blades of grass poking them, and went to sleep in each others’ arms.
The next morning they sat together at the water’s edge, washing their faces and drinking and exchanging awkward glances. The seer, the angel, and the flowery woman with a serpent’s tail.
They spoke all at once.
“I’m sorry about the seed,” Iyasu said to Marana.
“I’m sorry about your eye,” Marana said to Iyasu.
“I’m sorry about the choking,” Azrael said.
Iyasu frowned at her. “What?”
She nodded at Marana. “When I was trying to make her swallow the dew, I may have choked her. A little. I was worried about you and I was in a hurry, so I choked her. A little.”
Marana shook her head. “It’s fine. Thank you for saving me from that butcher.”
Iyasu rubbed his remaining eye.
Rahm. I wonder if he and Zerai would make good friends. Zerai. I wonder where he is this morning. Probably waking up in Veneka’s arms in the palace in Shivala. Unless he decided to have that unpleasant conversation already. Strange, to think of them not together anymore.
“Well, we need to get moving,” the seer said, standing up.
“Where will you go?” Marana asked.
“Fel Yaresh. It’s an old fort near here. We’re also told that it’s infested with peris.” He smiled at her.
“My house?” she looked at him, incredulous. “But why? I told you about the madwoman, didn’t I?”
“Actually, that’s who we’re going to see,” he said. “We need to talk to her.”
“You can’t talk to her, she’s lost her mind,” Marana insisted.
“I know.” Iyasu glanced down the river. “Hopefully, I can help her find it again. I have a little experience with that.”
“Really?” The serpent-woman absently stroked the huge red roses on her chest. “If you can heal her, do you think I could live there again?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I can’t promise anything. But maybe.”
“All right then.” Marana rose up to her full height, balancing on her muscular tail. “Then I’ll take you there. It isn’t too far, but the peris can be… annoying.”
They followed the edge of the river for the rest of the morning, and Iyasu found he had to jog most of the time to keep pace behind his legless guide. They saw little of interest. Rocks, water, brush, and fish. Pale gray clouds shrouded the sky, rumbling softly and letting the occasional spatter of cold rain fall on the hard landscape below.
Early in the afternoon, Marana pointed out a copse of trees at the water’s edge in the distance, saying it was a landmark and they were close to their destination. And indeed, when Iyasu found himself wading through the underbrush among those trees, he caught his first glimpse of the ancient fortress of Fel Yaresh standing in the middle of the river.
Cracked and broken pillars of pale red stone rose from the cold waters in straight lines, standing in silent, crumbling watch over the bare banks to the north and south, and Iyasu could see the dark gray path between the pillars just beneath the rippling surface, as well as the steps that plunged down into the depths at the eastern end.
“They used to hang thieves from the pillars,” the seer said.
“The bandits did?” Azrael asked.
“No. The Burzhians.” He started walking down to the water’s edge. “The civilized people.”
Standing with his toes in the shallows, Iyasu glanced around for some hint of the path or bridge that had once connected the shore to the island fort, but whatever had once stood there had long since been s
wept away by the spring floods over the centuries, leaving only a few rectangular stones at his feet, leading down into the river.
“It’s a short swim,” Marana said as she slipped into the water, her tail slithering behind her as she swiftly crossed the current to reach the submerged steps.
“Do you feel like swimming?” Azrael asked him.
“Not really, no.” He smiled at her.
The angel caught him up in her arms, and with a single sweep of her long black wings, she whisked them over the river and landed lightly on the pillared walkway where the cold waters moved swiftly around the soles of their feet, just deep enough to make the footing slick. Marana smirked at them as she emerged from the river and swept her long black hair back from her face, letting the sun shine on the rose blossoms on her neck and face. “Flying? Must be nice.”
“It has its moments,” Iyasu said, winking at Azrael. “Now. Where do you suppose our mad friend is?”
They all looked up at the grim red walls of the fort at the end of the path. The river lapped at the heavy doors, and dark green slime coated the lower stones where all manners of riparian grasses and ferns leaned out over the water. But high above the greenery and the softness and the flowing curves of life stood the dying, rotting angles of bricks and slabs and beams, punctuated by black cracks and gaps and holes.
Iyasu frowned. “We should go in slowly and quietly, and try not to startle her, or scare her. She’s probably in a fragile state, and might try to hurt us, or worse, hurt herself. All right?”
They approached the sun-bleached doors, pitted and desiccated as they were, but before the seer could touch them, he heard a terrible clatter of stones and boards from inside the old fort, followed by a smattering of incoherent shouts and wails. Footsteps raced about from stone floors to wooden platforms, and the flitting of tiny wings buzzed through the air.
“Or maybe we should just hurry up!” He looked at Azrael, who stepped forward and kicked the doors open.
They ran into the inner courtyard, a small dusty field of fallen timbers and broken flagstones where he saw the remains of several small wooden shelters along the walls that might have once been stables, or even houses, but now were little more than scrap heaps. But racing over and around those scrap heaps was a short woman with thick, tightly curling brown hair bouncing around her head, and enormous breasts bouncing around her ribs, as she scrambled and jumped and ran, huffing and puffing, in pursuit of a cloud of tiny winged creatures.
Peris!
They were small and quick, but nothing that the keen eye of an Arrahim couldn’t track and study in detail, even in motion. Each one had six delicate wings that looked less like those of a bird or insect and more like a collection of dried leaves shivering before a hurricane. From their torsos hung two human-like arms at the shoulders, and from their hips he saw… yet another pair of arms, identical down to the tiny three-fingered hands, and all of these limbs were held folded up against their bodies as they flew.
Atop their necks the peris had long, slender heads that rose to a gentle peak, with large black eyes and tiny mouths. And their whole bodies, where they weren’t covered in soft brown hairs, were covered in dark red flesh that would no doubt allow them to vanish utterly if they were to huddle against the pitted red stone walls of the fort or the surrounding hills.
“Is she in danger?” Azrael asked their guide.
“No, not from the peris.” Marana shook her head. “Only in danger of tripping and falling.”
“Yes, well, still, all the more reason to stop this before someone loses an eye.” Iyasu forced a smile, but saw how uncomfortable the jibe made his companions, and he shrugged it off as he jogged forward and called out, “Galina Bolad!”
The short woman with the bouncy hair snapped her head to the side to stare at him, and promptly tripped on a loose board and fell in a wild tangle of limbs, debris, and buzzing winged creatures.
Iyasu dashed forward to dig the woman out, swatting away the peris that whined in his ears like mosquitoes, and then helped the woman to sit in a cleared space among the refuse in the sun. She gasped for breath for a moment while clinging to his arm with a small, clawing hand, but then she grew calmer and relaxed her grip.
She looked at him. “Where’s your eye?”
“Oh, it’s around here somewhere.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t last, nor did it look genuine. “Are you all right? That was a bad fall.”
“Not bad, not bad.” She clucked her tongue and her gaze wandered blankly across the faces of the angel and the woman with the serpent’s tail. Neither one seemed to interest her any more than the rest of the scenery.
“Are you Galina Bolad?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, yes.” She nodded, her eyes still wandering.
He searched her face for clues, wondering whether she was truly mad as Marana claimed, or merely strange after centuries of loneliness. Her eyes darted, she chewed her lip, and her fingers plucked sharply at the colorless, frayed edges of a skirt that had once been red.
“You used to live in Ramashad, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Mm.” She nodded, her attention momentarily captured by the swarm of peris now clinging to the far wall like a coat of fluttering moss.
“But you left a long time ago?”
She slowly turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes slightly and tilting her head to one side. “You’re funny, for a djinn.”
“Well, I’m a human.”
“Oh.” She reached out and poked his nose with her finger. “Boop.”
He smiled. “Tell me, do you remember writing a book? It was called the Book of the Sun.”
“I once rode a wave of moonlight from one dune to the next, drinking in the stars and making love to the constellations of dead heroes who would never kiss me, but always came back to feel me from the inside,” she whispered.
He swallowed. “Really?”
This is going to take some time.
While Azrael and Marana sat together, talking quietly and playing with the impish little peris, Iyasu held Galina’s hand and gazed into the djinn woman’s eyes, gently asking one leading question after another, slowly teasing the woman’s identity out of her fractured memories, softly reminding her of who she had been and who she still was. Word by word. Image by image.
Hours passed.
The sun set.
They talked about sand and doorways, faces and mothers, clothing and music, fire and fireflies. And bit by bit, he walked Galina Bolad out of the shadows of her mind, quieting the voices, bringing her thoughts into focus, until her odd ramblings became clearer and he could see that she was no longer just a body sitting beside him and saying words, but a person, full and alive and aware. And frowning.
“How did you find me?” she asked suddenly.
Azrael’s campfire crackled loudly in the corner of the courtyard, and the sounds of the river churning past the foundations of the sinking fort echoed loudly against the night sky.
“The angel Simurgh told us where to find you,” he said. He gestured to the crumbling walls around them.
“An angel?”
“That’s right. She said you were in Fel Yaresh, in the care of the peris.”
“Care?” She gave the little beasts a wary glance. “Hardly. And why? To cure me? I suppose she wanted me to remember who I was, exiled to the wasteland of a human empire? Is that my new torment now?”
“No. I went to her to find the Book of the Sun, but she had already destroyed it. So instead, I came to you.”
Galina Bolad eyed him strangely, as though the very mention of the book itself made her uncertain of his sanity. “Why would you want that nonsense? I scratched it onto a sheaf of pages I found in a farmhouse, somewhere between here and Ramashad, ages ago. It’s nothing but gibberish. Or it was, anyway.”
“Simurgh didn’t think so.”
Galina shook her head. “What do angels know?” She froze, and then looked at him, and then away at Azrael.
“What
is it?” he followed her movements, worried that her mind might be slipping back into the foggy depths from which he had rescued her.
“Angels.” She winced.
“Do you remember something about angels? About Simurgh?”
“No… not Simurgh…” She frowned and massaged her forehead as if to coax the memories out by the strength of her fingers. “There was another.”
“Another angel? Where? Here? Or in Ramashad?”
“Home.” She closed her eyes, her whole face wrinkled in a grimace of concentration. “He was sickly pale like the men of the north, with wings of red fire. I remember…”
“Yes? What?”
“I remember him falling, a red cinder in the darkness, falling away from the stars.” She squinted up at the stars, and he wondered what sort of memory she had conjured up.
“What was he the angel of?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“No.”
Iyasu frowned. “Do you even know his name?”
“No… yes.” She blinked. “His name was Zariel.”
“Zariel.” Iyasu recalled the name, though dimly. One of countless angels he had studied as a child, little more than a name and a line from the histories of the eastern kingdoms, something about fire and dancing sand. He frowned as the words escaped him. They were words he had read before receiving the gift of Arrah, leaving the memory fragmented and drifting beyond a veil of watery time. “I don’t know Zariel. Who is he? What did he do?”
Galina looked at him, looked into him. “He burned.”
“What do you mean, Zariel burned?” Iyasu leaned forward. “He burned the city, or he himself was on fire?”
“There was an old man in the market, preaching.” Galina looked away at the stars again as she spoke, clearly unconcerned with suddenly changing the subject. “There were so many old fools in those days, one more didn’t matter. But people were stopping. People were listening to him. So I stopped. I listened. The old man said that a great judgment was coming. That Ramashad would suffer for its sins. That we needed to open our eyes and our hearts and learn to follow the path of… I don’t know, love, I suppose.” She shook her head.
Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom Page 23