They moved quickly around the wagons and horses, checking each body that they found. Iyasu recognized two commanders, the young Captain Ajith and the proud Major Toubia, both of their faces bloated, contorted, and discolored to preserve their final, painful moments of life.
But no Darius.
So he swept the edge of the area, tracing the circle of the outermost corpses, and he found a new trail. A crooked, uncertain trail already being swept away by the rising wind, but a trail all the same. It led north.
He followed the trail slowly, only half certain that it was a trail at all, and only half certain that it would lead anywhere before the wind erased it completely. But the trail kept winding around the rocky Pillars, and he kept following it, moving farther and farther from the wagons, until he turned and found a man sitting on the ground with his back propped up against a jagged boulder in the earth. The man wore a simple soldier’s breastplate, with his hair tightly braided back from his high forehead, a thick tuft of black beard on his chin, and a jeweled crown on his head.
“Hello, Darius.”
The man was gasping and shaking as he looked up through bloodshot eyes at the seer, and he spoke with pale blue lips, “Magi.”
“Dying?”
“Apparently.”
Iyasu felt a surge of satisfaction, which was immediately followed by a tide of guilt and remorse. “I’m sorry. If I had never chosen you, you would have remained a good man, a good soldier, and none of this would have happened. I thrust power on you, and you were not ready for it. I don’t blame you, not entirely. You played your part, but so did I. And I’m sorry.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Maybe.”
“A vaunted magi, a gifted seer, and you still can’t see anything, can you?” The dying man smiled and grunted, which maybe have been a laugh. “Well, I’ll kill you in a minute, and then you won’t have to feel sorry anymore.”
“In a minute you’ll be dead.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why?”
Darius peered at him. “You really don’t know? Don’t even suspect? All this time I was wondering when you would notice, so I kept you around, waiting, so I could learn from you what the signs were. But you never saw. Even now, you can’t see it.”
“See what?”
“My soul.” The warlord grinned.
Iyasu frowned and peered at the man more intently. It was still the middle of the afternoon and the light was strong, too strong to see more than a faint golden haze of the soul swimming about Darius’s head. “I can see it.”
“No, you can’t.” Darius groaned and pushed himself up to his feet. He leaned against the boulder, his breathing still labored, but his lips were no longer blue.
Iyasu stepped back. “You have a cure for the poison?”
“Something like that.”
Iyasu stepped back again and yelled, “Azrael!”
Darius chuckled. “Calling for the Angel of Death? Is that the only way a magi can kill? By begging some dark specter to slay me?”
“Not exactly.”
Azrael strode out from behind a rock tower and stepped in front of Iyasu. Her silk dress and black hair streamed to one side as the wind tore through the narrow space where they stood between the stone Pillars, and the warlord stared at her with curious eyes that were no longer bloodshot.
“Darius.” She lunged forward and gripped the man by his throat.
“No!” Iyasu grabbed her arm. “You can’t kill him. You know you can’t. Just stop. Please, just stop.”
“He’s caused millions to suffer, in Maqari, in Ovati, in Elladi. And now here in the desert, how many more would have died in Jerinoba? How many more innocents would have died in agony and terror because of this filth!”
“Too many.” Iyasu squeezed her arm. “Please let him go. He’ll go back to prison, and stand trial, and suffer the fate that the law demands for his crimes. Let him go, please.”
Azrael released him, dropping the man to his knees where he stayed, gasping and massaging his throat.
As they stood over the soldier, a new shadow fell beside them and Iyasu glanced up. “Samira. Feeling better?”
“Much.”
“Good.” Iyasu squatted down. “Now that you’re here, would you mind giving us a bit of shade? I need a little darkness for a moment.”
“Of course.” The djinn cleric did not move, but the sharp rocks around them began to ooze and slide upward to form a smooth dome overhead, blocking out the sun and plunging them all into a black cave. “Why do you need the dark?”
Iyasu cleared his throat and focused on Darius. “I need to look at his soul.”
Chapter 26
Azrael
The dome closed over them to make a perfect darkness. Azrael could see nothing, but she could feel the presences around her. Samira burned warmly behind them, her djinn spirit blazing fiercely but quietly, imbued with holy power. Iyasu knelt in front of her, his human spirit small and heavy like a smooth stone on a river bed, a solid point amid the swirling wilderness of the desert. And then there was Darius.
There was something wrong with Darius.
Azrael inhaled and a dozen people died, their faces flashing through her mind’s eye just slowly enough for her to see them all. The old and the young, the sleeping and the screaming, men and women, human and djinn. The flood rushed through her, all the tiny memories of fear and pain shrieking and wailing through her head. She saw rooms and stars and fields and snow, she saw sobbing families, grinning assassins, slobbering drunks, frightened thieves, and lonely alleyways.
She felt the heat and the cold and terror of each of them washing over her, filling her with a sorrow she had long ago stopped trying to describe to herself. She freed their souls to fly away to their next lives, their next journeys, their next services to the divine, leaving her alone with the memories, with the rage that always followed with those horrific glimpses into the heart of humanity.
And then she exhaled and a dozen more died.
“My God,” Iyasu whispered. “What are you?”
Darius grunted. “Can’t you tell?”
“Samira, the light, please?”
The djinn cleric peeled back her rock dome and let the sunlight spill back in on them, revealing the worried face of the young seer and the cruel smirk of the soldier.
“What is it?” Azrael asked. “What did you see?”
“It’s strange. When I first met Veneka six years ago, she was possessed by the spirit of Raziel,” he said. “Two souls in one body. One human and one angelic. And a few hours ago, I saw the soul of an unborn child, part human and part djinn. The different souls blend and blur together, almost like water.”
“Is that what he is?” Samira asked. “Is he possessed by a dead angel? Or by a djinn? Or both?”
“Neither.” Iyasu stood up and backed away. “Because he isn’t human at all. Are you?”
Darius stood up as well, his eyes clear and his body flush with health and strength. “Frankly, I’m shocked it took you this long to see it. Clearly, I overestimated the angelic gifts of the magi clerics.” As he spoke, his voice dropped to a deeper register and his words took on a strange accent, one that Azrael did not recognize at all.
“If he isn’t human, what is he?” the angel asked. Another heartbeat, another dozen faces in pain.
“He’s a djinn,” Samira answered. “I haven’t heard that accent in decades, but I would know it anywhere. He’s from the far east, beyond Shivala, from the lost city of Ramashad.”
“It isn’t lost,” Darius said. “Only hidden. For now.”
“How did you do it?” Iyasu asked. “How did you hide this from me? When we first met, your soul looked like any other human soul, and better than most. Honest and noble, just and self-sacrificing. How did you deceive me?”
“I didn’t, you idiot child.” He wasn’t smiling now. “I simply waited until you crowned Darius king, and then I killed him and took his place.”
; “A shapeshifter?” Azrael looked at Samira. “I didn’t know djinn could do that.”
“We can’t.”
“But he can, because he is possessed, in a way.” Iyasu nodded at the imposter. “A djinn with the spirit of an angel. But not a whole one, not like when Veneka was possessed at all. This is different. There are only traces of the angel about him. Only shreds.”
“Shreds are all I need to bring entire kingdoms to their knees, clearly.” Darius wiped his hands on his trousers and rested his palm against the pommel of his sheathed sword.
“But why?” Iyasu asked. “Why take Darius’s place? Why would you want to become a human king? I thought djinn hated dealing with humans.”
“We do, we truly do,” the imposter said. “Unless we’re killing them, of course. We don’t mind killing them in the slightest.”
“You don’t speak for Odashena,” Samira said. “We have always sought to live in peace.”
“And that is why you live in a hole in the ground,” Darius replied. “My people have loftier ambitions. And what better way to slaughter humans than by leading them to slaughter each other? As king, all I need to do is give the order, and thousands rush to their deaths for me. It’s quite wonderful. I’ve been meaning to thank you for that, Iyasu. Truly, it was most kind of you to make my war possible.”
Another breath, another dozen dead children and mothers and grandfathers. Azrael winced. One of them had been stabbed by a lover, suddenly and painfully, left to die slowly full of panic and regret and surprise.
She closed her eyes for a moment. The faces kept coming, the pain kept coming, always fresh, always sharp, much of it repetitions of things she had seen and felt millions of times already, but every now and again one would come through that was sharper, or crueler, or stranger than most.
She wanted to take the entire human race by the throat and inflict as much pain and fear upon all of them as they had inflicted on each other, and on her. She wanted to shove their faces in their own filth. She wanted to show them the grandeur and majesty of their world, of their cosmos, of their heaven, and then scream at them, how dare they waste it all, how dare they act like such miserable animals, how dare they…
She opened her eyes and looked at the creature called Darius. “How did you get this power?”
“I drank deep from the font of power itself.”
“How?”
He smirked. “No stomach for riddles?”
“How?”
“Go to hell, whatever you are.”
She lunged at him again, and this time Iyasu did nothing to stop her. She grabbed the warlord’s wrist in one hand and his neck in the other, and she hurled him against the base of a stone arch.
He slowly stood up without a mark on him. “You’re very strong.”
“So are you.” She rushed at him again, but he dashed around her, and she was forced to chase him, running and leaping through the rocky Pillars as the faces of the dead ran through her, fueling her rage. Her holy blood burned in her veins, and she felt her wings erupt from her back, her enormous, beautifully black wings stretching high and wide with heavenly strength. She kicked off the ground and flew like a striking hawk, slicing through the air and catching the djinn imposter by the back of his neck.
Azrael stopped short and the warlord swung in her grasp like a child’s toy. She turned and smashed him against a boulder. The rock crackled. She reared back and hurled him against the stone again, and again, and again.
The deaths trickled on and on through her mind. Shaking hands, stuttering tongues, twitching legs, and the voices, the last words, the last gasps, the last questions that would go forever unanswered.
She slammed the djinn against the boulder one last time and the rock shattered. Tiny shards exploded into the air and heavy stones tumbled and rolled across the ground as a cloud of dust and sand rose around them. She let go and the man fell limp to the ground.
Instantly his hands began to move and he pushed himself up again.
“He’s very strong,” Samira said quietly. “Let’s see how strong he really is.”
The ground exploded as two dozen stone spears lanced upward, and Darius leapt into the air, soaring high above the jagged spikes. But then a dozen stone arms arched up from the earth, curving across the sky with grasping stone hands, reaching for the djinn warrior. He drew his sword and smashed away the hands one by one, shattering each so that the petrified fingers rained down on the desert floor below.
The dust cloud around them rose higher and thicker, blotting out the desert horizon and the peaks of the distant mountains.
He landed on the side of one of the stone lances and perched there, grinning. He raised his sword, and then swept it down across his face and body, and in that instant he was transformed from an armored man into a robed woman, identical in every way to the cleric standing before him except for the jeweled crown on her head.
“Should I be impressed?” Samira said to her copy. “Or is this meant to confuse me? Am I meant to be frightened by the prospect of killing someone wearing my own face?”
The shapeshifter shrugged. “Let’s see if you are.” She flashed down the length of the spear and drove her sword at the Tevadim cleric, and the two of them vanished into a blur of racing legs and swirling robes as they battled across the broken rocky ground.
Azrael watched them flit from place to place, now on a ledge, now in the shadows, now atop an ancient stone arch overhead. She took Iyasu’s hand, ready to shield him if need be. And out in the wider world, more people died.
The two djinn remained atop the arch, still a blur of hands and feet, little more than a dark cloud of silk and loose hair. And then the arch cracked and spilled a load of dust from its center, and the two combatants each leapt backward, dashing to safety atop two distant pillars as the arch crumbled and fell.
“Do you have a name?” Samira called across the distance. “When I bring your remains back to Odashena, they will want to know whose ashes they are.”
“I am Jevad Tafir,” the warrior announced. Now he appeared as a man in dark red robes, his bald head shining in the sun. “A lion of Ramashad, and the first of many who will come to the west, bringing fire and ruin. Go back to Odashena and tell your masters that the time has come for the djinn to claim the earth. Humans have squandered their gifts. Their time is over, and their race has become an offense to the divine. Odashena may stand at our side, or be trampled underfoot. The choice is yours.”
He turned to look at Azrael. “Even you, Holy One, will have to choose where you will stand, for not even the angels are without their imperfections, and not even the angels will be shielded from the storm that is coming. The djinn will rise, and all others will kneel, or fall forever.”
“No!” Iyasu shouted. “No more wars. It’s over. You’ve lost. We know what you are!”
“Yes, but who cares what you know? You’re no one,” Jevad taunted. “You think you’ve defeated me? You’ve defeated a company of soldiers, but I have legions more. As long as I wear the crown of Maqari, I can lead these clay puppets to their deaths again, and again, and again.”
The Angel of Death gazed up at the djinn man spewing death, foretelling death, prophesying the misery that she herself would have to one day play her own small but painful role in.
Murder.
War.
Genocide.
And then she felt something else stirring in the desert around her. Many somethings, many spirits, gathering by the hundreds, by the thousands, throughout the Pillars of Abari. She smiled. “No, Jevad Tafir. You cannot lead them anymore.”
“And why not?” the djinn shouted.
“Because they know what you are now.” Azrael raised her black wings and the air roared, blasting through the corridors of the Pillars and sweeping away the great clouds of dust and sand from all around them to reveal the shining blades and grim faces of the legions of Tagal. They stood in the ravines and atop the boulders, they stood with swords and spears raised and arro
ws nocked. They stood glaring at the robed figure standing high atop the stone column, the figure still wearing Darius’s crown.
Jevad glared at them, his black eyes roving across the countless men crowding in around him. “This changes nothing! The war will come, and you will all die!”
Azrael let go of Iyasu’s hand as her wings unfurled like two feathered sails behind her, filling her with strength, pouring endless light and heat into her immortal body, and she flew. She moved like lightning, one moment still and the next moment traveling faster than thought, and she struck the top of the stone pillar with the djinn perched upon it with all the force of a moon crashing into the face of the earth.
The top of the pillar disintegrated into dust and fire, and the bottom of the pillar toppled and crashed to the ground. Shreds of silk floated in the air, their edges burning brightly, cinders flaming down around her.
She hung in the air for a long moment, her wings extended to feel the warmth of the setting sun behind her. Then she looked down into the crater below where the man called Jevad Tafir lay shattered and still. She floated down to the ground and let her wings fade away.
A stunned silence gripped the crowd, but only for a moment. The soldiers raised their weapons and cheered with a single voice, screaming triumph and freedom and relief, some with words and some with wordless noise. Azrael looked around at their jubilant faces and felt another dozen people die.
Iyasu came to her side and looked down into the crater. “Is he dead?”
“No.”
I cannot kill. But my ability to punish is limited only by his ability to survive. And it would seem he can survive a great deal.
The Angel of Death exhaled, and for a moment she wished she was alone in the deep desert, far from people, far from reality. Out there among the shifting sands, she could almost imagine that humanity was nothing more than a nightmare, a waking nightmare that filled her every moment with other peoples’ fears and anguish. Out there she could almost imagine that the real world was something far better.
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 29