War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  “Now!” Jengo roared, and the prince’s men charged into the earthen passageway, stampeding on foot and saddle, surging past Samira like a river around a mighty tree.

  Iyasu’s eyes widened.

  Yes! They can reach the palace, and Darius’s men are trapped between the tunnel and the walls. It’s working!

  And then he saw Darius’s soldiers attack the earthen walls of the tunnel with their swords and shields, gouging and stabbing and digging with any hard weapon or tool in their hands.

  No, no, no…

  More and more of Faris’s men charged into the tunnel, and the sharp-eyed seer watched the first of them begin to emerge from the far end and dash into the palace. But in the courtyard, dozens and dozens of Darius’s soldiers clawed their way up onto the arching tunnel roof to chip away at the rocks and paving stones protecting the invaders.

  “Samira!” Iyasu ran toward the cleric.

  “I see them,” she said.

  “Your hands are shaking.”

  “This is harder than it looks.”

  “I know, but… please! Just a little more, a little longer!”

  “I don’t have any more,” she whispered, and he saw the djinn woman sway on her feet.

  “No, no!” He grabbed her back and arm, trying to steady her and keep her focused on the tunnel at the same time, but she was sagging against him.

  Zerai and Veneka raced up to them and helped to catch the slight weight of the djinn woman, but even Veneka’s healing touch could not stop Samira from closing her eyes and falling completely into Zerai’s arms.

  “Oh no, please, not now.” Iyasu patted the woman’s cheek and shook her hand. And then he heard the tunnel collapse.

  It happened all at once. The peak of the roof in the center of the tunnel caved in, taking several diggers with it as countless surprised and pained shouts echoed from inside. And then the rest of the tunnel walls fell inward in huge chunks and sections, burying the soldiers inside under tons of rock and earth. In moments the smooth arch of the tunnel had become a ragged pile of rubble, and precious few voices cried out from inside it.

  “No!” Iyasu pressed his useless fists to his head as he stared past the gates. But even still, the prince’s army charged into the courtyard, now leaping and climbing up over the remains of the tunnel to fight the queen’s defenders man to man.

  As the battle spread from the gates back into the courtyard and forward into the street, Zerai turned with Samira in his arms and jogged through the ranks toward the nearest door, the entrance of a large house across the street from the palace walls, and he kicked the heavy door down as he hurried inside. Iyasu let Veneka pull him away from the battle, and vaguely he noted that Edris was following with one hand on the seer’s back, and together they ran into the house behind Zerai and shut the door.

  Iyasu slumped to the floor. “Why? Why does this keep happening? Why does it always end in death? Why?”

  “I do not know,” Veneka said softly. “Maybe it is a test.”

  A stair creaked and everyone looked up to see a short woman with iron gray hair in a dazzling dress of white, teal, and gold descending the steps toward the strangers huddled by her door. She frowned at them. “Idiots. Why were you out in the streets tonight? Don’t you hear what is happening?”

  “Don’t you?” Iyasu stared up at her wizened wrinkles and thin lips and stern eyes. “There’s a killer on your throne, and killers in your streets, and now the only people dedicated to law and peace are dying on your doorstep. How can you just stand there?”

  She stared back at him as coldly as a stone. “Just stand here? Young man, my family has lived in this house for seven generations. We are, and always have been, loyal supporters of the crown, and if the crown happens to be worn by a man who chooses to go to war, then that is who I shall support.”

  “The crown?” Iyasu closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall. “How very convenient for you, to let a golden hat tell you how to live your life.”

  “There’s a reason we have traditions, young man!”

  Iyasu shook his head. “I’m not going to argue with you. How can I, when you have so many arguments displayed right here?” He nodded at the sitting room to their left and the dining room to their right, each one filled with exquisitely crafted chairs covered in silk pillows that shone softly in the shadows, cabinets and tables covered in etched glass and gold wire, floors covered in elaborately patterned carpets from distant lands, and even decorative vases and tiny sculpted figures standing upon miniature columns and plinths in the corners of the room. “I can see all your reasons for supporting the crown. I see them very well.”

  The older woman glared at him. “You have one hour. I won’t throw you out into that madness outside, but I won’t allow you to stay in my home either. One hour, and if you’re not gone by then, I will summon the city watch myself.”

  Zerai thanked her for her generous offer, and they watched the woman retreat back upstairs, and listened to her footsteps return across the floor to wherever she had come from.

  Iyasu sighed. “How can people be so…?”

  “Because that’s what people are,” Edris said. “They’re just people. They’re scared, and weak, and when terrible things happen, most people just want to survive it all. We can’t all be holy warriors and magi heroes.”

  “They don’t need to be heroes, they just… need to be decent. Kind. Sometimes I wonder if the only thing we need for compassion to triumph is for cruel people to do nothing. Powerful people. Rich people. Why are evil people so industrious?”

  Edris pointed to the stairs. “This woman is doing nothing.”

  The seer shook his head. “She supports a warlord. She threatened to throw us out.”

  “Well, you were less than polite to her,” Veneka said with a gentle smile.

  “I’m tired of being polite,” Iyasu whispered. He stared dully at a blank patch of the wall across the room. “I’m so tired of all of this.”

  They sat in silence for half an hour, listening to the muffled sounds of men killing each other just outside. The noise rose and fell, echoing faintly down the streets. Metal sang, men screamed, and the people hiding in the house winced and jumped from time to time. Samira woke up rather abruptly and said that she had completely recovered from her exhaustion, that she was ready to go back into the battle, but Iyasu just shook his head again.

  “Don’t. Just don’t, please. No more. Everything I’ve done since I first came to this country has just caused more and more suffering. No more.”

  Zerai squeezed his shoulder.

  Just as their hour was about to end, the sounds of battle faded away, and without a word, Samira slipped out the door and dashed away. But she dashed back again a moment later in a blur of djinn robes to report that the fighting had ended. Bodies littered the street and the courtyard, and General Digna was dead, along with most of his riders, but Captain Alara now controlled the palace grounds, and Faris was inside the palace itself.

  Iyasu stared at her.

  We won?

  He swallowed.

  But what did we win?

  Quietly, they all stepped out into the street. Iyasu glanced around once and promptly vomited on the pale marble steps of the house. Burning tears poured from his eyes as he tried to shake away the sight he had just seen, but the image was burned into his memory. And besides, he knew he would need to open his eyes again to walk into the palace. So he opened his eyes and started walking.

  The mounds of flesh on the ground were scarcely recognizable as bodies. Limbs lay everywhere, and not neatly hacked off as a butcher might cleave a carcass, but sliced at strange angles, and left dangling by threads of skin and muscle. Organs, human organs in sickly white and purple and gray, shone bright and wet in heaps, some slowly slipping and sliding across each other. The metallic taste of blood hung in the sultry air, and the hideous stench of urine and feces stung his nostrils.

  The dead lay so close and thick that he had no choic
e but to step on a hand here or a bone there, and every step felt slick and made horrible sticking, sucking noises around his shoes.

  He vomited twice more before they reached the relatively clean steps of the palace.

  Weak, shaking, and cold, he led the way inside past a handful of weary guards that Alara and Taharqa had placed here and there. They passed down darkened hallways that seemed impervious to the light of the torches in the walls and in the braziers, and Iyasu found his way as much by memory as by sight to the royal audience chamber where he could hear loud, angry voices echoing.

  “Ah! Iyasu!” Faris waved him in. “Help us settle our first debate.”

  The seer shuffled across the cold black tiles past the shining white columns. He saw Faris seated on his father’s throne, though the ancient golden seat seemed to be straining to contain him. Beside the prince stood his loyal commanders, still dressed in steel, bronze, and blood. And kneeling on the floor in front of them, bound and held by two large men, was Darius Harun.

  The warlord sat on his knees staring dully at the man on the throne, no sign of injury anywhere on his body except for the blood on his boots and hands, no glimmer of fear in his dark eyes. The man looked bored.

  Iyasu’s whole body sagged beneath his thin white and yellow robes as he stepped into the light falling through the crystal roof of the chamber, and he said, “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “How shall we deal with this murderous traitor?” Faris asked.

  Iyasu saw the prince’s eyes darting, the sweating running freely down the sides of his face, and the slight tremble in his lower lip.

  Still afraid. Afraid to command, afraid to decide, afraid to act. Still the same Faris.

  “You’ll give him a fair trial, publish his crimes for all to know, and then, assuming your lordships find him guilty of those crimes, you will place him in a very unpleasant prison to live out the rest of his days.”

  Faris nodded, but the commanders frowned and turned to their prince to voice other opinions, most of which seemed to involve elaborate public executions. As the argument resumed anew, Iyasu sighed and looked down at the man kneeling on the floor beside him, and Darius looked up at him with all the concern of tired lion, secure in the knowledge that he could devour his enemies at any moment, when the inclination took him.

  “This is all my fault,” Iyasu said. “I’m sorry, for everything.”

  And he walked out of the room.

  Chapter 16

  Zerai

  “Wait, wait, wait. Say that again.” Zerai peered at Veneka’s face, wondering if he wasn’t quite awake and was having trouble hearing correctly.

  “I said, Faris crowned his cousin Mathias.”

  Zerai blinked. “But… We just… How long was I asleep?”

  She smiled. “Apparently, not long enough. It happened early this morning. Iyasu says they were up all night, rounding up Darius’s people and making sure the palace was secure. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Faris decided he still did not want to be king and he had his people find another one of his cousins, Mathias Harun, a goldsmith.”

  “A goldsmith is the king of Maqari?” Zerai sat up and squinted out the window at the piercing white light of the sun. They had slept in a small room in the east wing of the palace, a simple little space with an extremely comfortable bed in its center. But now that he thought about it, Zerai had no clear memory of how they had come to be in that room, or anything else that had happened after Darius was captured. “Fine, whatever. So did we save the kingdom? I mean, obviously we didn’t trick Azrael into appearing and stopping the battle. I’m sure Iyasu is beating himself up about that. But otherwise, it’s over now, right? We’ve got peace now?”

  “It would seem so.” Veneka stood up and finished belting on her green robes. “Faris, Jengo, and their comrades are going to stay in the palace to keep an eye on Mathias, but as long as this goldsmith does not try to start any more wars, all should be well. Azrael should stop her attacks and we can return home.”

  Zerai clawed his hands through his thick hair for a minute as he tried to massage the last shreds of bleary sleep from his brain. “Home is good. Are you hungry?”

  They explored the palace briefly, found the kitchen, and were given a hero’s breakfast by two very grateful cooks. Afterward they went in search of Iyasu, only to hear he would be in meetings with Faris and Mathias all day, so instead they went out to the courtyard to help with the grim business of clearing away the bodies, and the more miraculous business of healing the wounded.

  Zerai quietly went about his work, not at all horrified by the carnage, by the smell, by the feeling of things that belonged inside people instead of outside them. Though all around him, men were stumbling, gagging, and retching softly.

  Twenty years being hunted by demons will do strange things to a man, I guess.

  From time to time, he paused to watch Veneka heal a frightened young man, closing wounds and restoring lost limbs one by one. Just watching her made him smile, but the groans of her patients made him wince.

  Late in the afternoon, a rumor reached the courtyard that the new king would be addressing the people of Tagal at the Silver Tower, and so with the injured all restored and the dead mostly carted away, Zerai and Veneka joined the meager flow of people through the streets to the large market square at the foot of the tower.

  “Have you heard anything about this Mathias yet?” she asked.

  “Just a lot of laughing. Apparently, Mathias Harun is the most boring man in the city. Very precise in his work, very honest. But boring. Makes terrible conversation. Has horrible taste in music and food.” Zerai shrugged. “He sounds perfect for the job.”

  “He does.”

  Half an hour later, several thousand people had filled the square and a general swell of hope, tinged only with a few strains of fear and anxiety, ran through the crowd. When the large figure of Prince Faris emerged onto the balcony of the Silver Tower above them, the square erupted with applause and cheering and shouts of joy.

  “That’s a good sign,” Zerai said over the noise. Behind the prince, several other familiar faces appeared, including the triumphant Taharqa, the grim Jengo, and the weary Iyasu.

  When the crowd quieted down, Faris raised his hands and said, “My people, my good people of Tagal, I, Prince Faris Harun, come before you today with momentous news. We all know the terrible crimes committed by my cousin while he sat on my father’s throne. How could anyone have known that such a loyal soldier could become such a loathsome sovereign? And last night I could bear it no longer, so I gathered my wise generals and brave soldiers, and I removed Darius from the palace.”

  Again, the crowd roared with joy.

  “He has been taken to the ancient fortress on Gorenda Island, and will soon be tried and punished for his crimes against the kingdom.”

  More cheering.

  “But today is a new day, and a new king will take his place upon the throne. A king who is honest and fair and just, who is wise and cautious, as well as firm and clear-eyed. A man of peace. A man many of you already know to have these qualities. And so I am privileged to present to you now, the lord of Tagal, my royal cousin, His Majesty King Mathias Harun.”

  Zerai frowned and squinted as he tried to pick out the new king in the distance, until he suddenly realized it was the slender man whose simple jacket and cloak nearly blended in with Faris’s enormous robes. Beside his cousin, Mathias looked positively fragile, but Zerai reckoned him to be only a head shorter and most likely of average weight, though his uncovered head was quite bald.

  “My friends,” Mathias said a bit too softly. “Good sons and daughters of Tagal, thank you so much for being here today. It is true that we have endured many dark months this year, but those times are behind us, and today is a new day.”

  “Apparently, today is a new day.” Veneka squeezed his hand and smiled.

  He grinned back. “Apparently.”

  “We are a nation of laws, laws which were handed
down to us by many generations of wise rulers, but I believe we will best honor their vision by carefully considering the letter and spirit of the law in the years to come. For too long, the hard-working men and women of this city have labored under the byzantine regulations and machinations of a system of guilds and taxes that no one man could ever hope to comprehend in one lifetime, and so I shall set forth a series of endeavors to review and revise…”

  “Tax law reform? My God, he is boring.” Zerai laughed softly. “I think Iyasu will be very happy with this one.”

  Mathias droned on for several minutes about the issues that he would be addressing in the coming months and years, which amounted to an impressive list of grievances against required military service, road maintenance, the minting of currency, construction regulations, and other minutiae that Zerai couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to. Instead he passed the time by watching the people around him, enjoying their general happiness at their sudden change in fortune. The crowd murmured and laughed excitedly, almost exclusively about the fate of King Darius and not at all about the administrative plans of King Mathias.

  I don’t blame them.

  Zerai yawned. And as he tilted his head back, he saw something moving very fast out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to the right and saw a pair of men running along the edge of the crowd, pushing and jumping to get through the throng without slowing.

  “Oh no, what’s that?” He pointed at the runners as he reached for his sword.

  “Messengers, perhaps?” Veneka frowned.

  More and more heads turned to watch the two runners at the side of the square, and Zerai looked up to see Iyasu and Jengo pointing at the disturbance and whispering furiously.

  “This is going to be bad news.” Zerai sighed. “It’s always bad news.”

  A woman screamed.

  Zerai looked up frantically for the source, and then realized that it had been the prince’s scream. Faris staggered back from the center of the balcony as Mathias slumped forward over the railing with a single arrow lodged in his left eye.