"Mo ghrá," he cradled her to his chest.
Carrying her into the air, he intuitively made his way to the place Needa would have moved, someplace closer to the greatest number of wounded but far enough inside the city that she would not need to abandon her wounded if the enemy breached the first line of defense. He saw activity at Yalda and Zhila’s house. The women who bustled about tending the wounded shrieked when he fluttered down into their midst and he carried his wife inside.
"Needa!" he shouted. "Oh, gods! Needa! Please! She's hurt!"
“Mikhail?” Needa ran up to him, Yalda behind her leaning on her cane. “What happened to her?”
“Halifians took her. To set a trap for me!" His voice was a panicked sob. "Mama! She won’t wake up!” Crushing pain pressed into his chest. That dark void which perpetually ate at the edge of his subconscious yawned up at him, that place only she could fill. His heart felt …
Alone…
It reminded him of…
“Leave her,” Needa ordered. “Her breathing is regular and she appears otherwise uninjured. You must prevent the village from falling!”
He placed his wife down upon the spot where Needa gestured, resting his hand on the small bump in her abdomen. She felt … absent. Whatever was wrong with her, he could not feel her. His grip on the Cheribum killing meditations slipped, stripping him of his ability to remain an unemotional creature.
It reminded him of…
That black pit of anger, that ancient wound that screamed alone, melded seamlessly with that frantic emotion that someone had tried to take away his wife.
His mate…
His lifemate…
'Power. It is yours. Call upon it and avenge this offense to thy mate…'
His anger took him to that place where emotions no longer ran hot, but cold. Vast emptiness called his name, that place the Cherubim said he must never go. Power. It was his. It welcomed him home like a long-lost son. Bending to kiss his wife, he nodded to his mother-in-law.
"Take care of her while I end this," Mikhail's voice was an ominous rumble.
Needa drew back, her eyes wide as she clapped her hand over her mouth and gasped.
"Mikhail … your eyes!"
Taking to the air, he dropped right into the middle of the thickest part of the action, sword drawn, and let go of the last remaining thread which kept him him. Determined to teach the enemy what would happen to anyone who dared target his wife, Mikhail unleashed his rage…
Chapter 78
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.10 AE
Haven-1: Eternal Palace
Supreme Commander-General Jophiel
Jophiel
Supreme Commander-General Jophiel followed Master Yoritomo and the five Cherubim masters who'd dragged Lucifer to Parliament in silence. They muscled their way out of the chaotic forum where delegates cheered as though they had just beaten Shay'tan, and led her to the Cherubim battle-cruiser.
Jophiel stared out the portal at the retreating new seat of Alliance government as the ship made the hop to Haven-1. At least the protesters who'd thronged the Eternal Palace demanding Lucifer's return had begun to dissipate now that the Emperor had just been voted unfit to rule. It spared her the indignity of another iced beverage splattered on the front of her dress uniform while prostrating herself before the Emperor to answer for her crime of defiance. The Cherubim's armor clanked like the drumroll of a man being led to execution as they led her through the Pearl Gate to the empty Great Hall.
"Wait here," Master Yoritomo said.
They left her standing alone in the enormous throne room so large she wondered if she really could fit her command carrier inside of it. Eternal Light… What a joke! Here she was, supposed to be the Emperor's staunchest defender, and the moment Parliament had threatened her children, she had betrayed him.
She stared up at the vaulted ceiling where high above flew depictions of the Emperor, his armies, fantastical creatures who were long extinct from this universe, and the bright rays of sunlight emanating from a likeness of She-who-is which rumor said had been painted on one of the rare occasions SHE had descended into mortal form. Tall, angular, with white-blonde hair, golden eyes, and the gossamer wings of a dragonfly, an insect which existed on every planet because they pleased her, if not for her pointed ears and the fact her wings were clear instead of white, the goddess who ruled All-that-is could have been Lucifer's twin.
Or her twin, for that matter. She always cringed when people told her she and Lucifer looked alike. A freak resemblance caused by too much inbreeding.
The door to the little antechamber where the Emperor conducted his real business opened and closed. Jophiel's heart leaped in her throat with dread and relief at the sight of Dephar, the Emperor's most trusted advisor, shuffling in, his tall, serpentine frame hunched over his cane.
"Dephar," Jophiel saluted him.
"Supreme Commander-General," Dephar's yellow serpent-eyes narrowed into slits, but the expression was not hostile, merely one of scrutinization. "The Emperor has decreed your punishment for going to address Parliament when he specifically asked you not to."
Jophiel gulped and stood straighter, tucking her snowy white wings against her back. Her blue eyes met his yellow ones, determined to take her sentence with dignity no matter how horrific it was. Even if the sentence was death.
"I serve at the Emperor's pleasure," Jophiel forced her voice not to warble. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She resisted the urge to tug at the collar of her dress uniform, acutely aware of how hot the throne room had suddenly grown.
Dephar gestured up to the raised dais where the Emperor's throne sat.
"You are to sit on that cathedra until the Emperor figures out how to straighten out this mess you and Lucifer have made of his empire," Dephar sighed.
Jophiel's eyes shot up to the gilded throne, the seat of the Emperor himself. Was Dephar kidding?
"To sit on the Emperor's throne is treason!"
"In case you forget, dearest Jophiel," Dephar's voice was weary, "this Alliance no longer has an Emperor. Only a ceremonial god. In that respect, he figures he is no more qualified to do the job than you are. In all honesty, he has better things to do with his time. So have a seat and think about what a mess you have made of things now that Lucifer is in charge."
"Sss-sir," Jophiel saluted. She waited and realized Dephar would not leave until she had complied with the Emperor's orders. She climbed up on the dais and, with a glance to make sure Dephar was serious, forced her buttocks to gingerly descend upon the cushion, willing her ischial tuberosity to hold her flesh above the crimson cushion so as little as possible would violate the sacred throne.
With a nod of approval, Dephar shuffled back the way he had come, his cane clack-clack-clacking against the chequered marble floor.
"Dephar … wait!" Jophiel cried out. "He hasn't … left … again, has he?"
Dephar's yellow eyes looked sympathetic as his snout curved into an expression of pity.
"In case you have forgotten," Dephar said. "Our Emperor has been too busy trying to save Kunopego's foal to deal with Lucifer's intrigues."
"She is still alive?"
"For now," Dephar shrugged. "We shall see. Even gods have their limits on what miracles they can perform, as you know only too well from when he saved your son."
A well of emotion welled up in Jophiel's throat. Why had the power-mad mob forgotten this compassionate side of the Emperor?
"Why did he try to kill Lucifer?"
Dephar sighed.
"If the Emperor had wanted to kill Lucifer, he would be dead," Dephar's snout turned up with hatred. "Though perhaps it would have been better if he had killed him? Then the rebels would not have a figurehead to rally around while he figures out where Shay'tan stashed the human homeworld?"
"His wings…"
"An unfortunate mishap," Dephar shrugged as though he were talking about a spilled cup of caife. "The Emperor thought for a moment his son might be possessed by an Age
nt."
"An agent?"
"It's why SHE makes him linger here, you know?" Dephar gestured upwards towards the murals which graced every inch of the Great Room. "Because the power he commands is one of the few capable of interrupting an Agent's grip on its mortal vessel without killing the victim, though the eviction process is never pleasant."
"But those are just myths," Jophiel said.
Dephar's jaws twitched upwards in a weary laugh.
"On many worlds, you are just a myth!" Dephar gestured upwards at the frescos. "Perhaps it is time you educated yourself about the true history of the universe?"
Muttering a long list of other things he had to do today, Dephar shuffled out and left her sitting on the Emperor's throne, her legs dangling off the too-large cathedra like a little girl. She sat stiffly at first, but as the hours ticked by, discomfort forced her to scoot back to rest her wings against the backrest. When she did, her legs stuck straight out because the seat was too deep to bend at the knees. She was not up to the task of sitting here. Was that the lesson the Emperor wished to teach her?
She stared up at the ceiling, murals she had often gazed up at, but never really had a chance to look at before. She'd always thought of them as decoration, but as she sat there looking at them now, she realized they were more than that. To see the history of the universe properly, one needed to be sitting on the throne.
"Oh," she realized as the pattern of the murals finally dawned upon her. Starting at the carved entrance to the Great Room for which the doors were the trunk of the Eternal Tree, the first rib-vault which held up the cathedral ceiling showed a blue-winged fairy that looked a bit like She-who-is emerging from roots of darkness to take the hand of a man with eyes of fire and the head of a bull.
In the second vault, stars spilled forth from that union and lit the sky, but the third vault depicted the bull-man catching up all the little stars and devouring them while the blue-winged fairy wept. The fourth vault showed the blue fairy sitting with a lute, her mouth moving in song, while a creature took shape in the darkness from whence she had come. In her lap remained a single surviving star. The picture looked as though the blue fairy enticed the darkness to look at the miniature golden version of herself.
The fifth vault showed a tentacled black blob seize the bull-man and throw him to the ground. The bull-man regurgitated the stars, but they were no longer golden, all except for the one the blue fairy had been able to save. She knelt there, that blue fairy, weeping as she gathered up her devoured children and clutched them to her breast.
It struck a chord of empathy with Jophiel, who had nearly lost Uriel. It was why, despite her love for the Emperor, she had betrayed him to answer Parliament's summons. Having nearly lost one child, nothing would ever move her to abandon them again. Not even the Emperor.
The sixth vault-rib showed the small golden star, now recognizably She-who-is, touch the dark creature her mother had summoned with one hand while, from the other spilled forth her own stars, the universe in which they lived. This was part of the mythology Jophiel was familiar with, that She-who-is had spun the darkness of He-who's-not and used it to create the universe.
The rest of the rib-vaults depicted epic battles stretching back beyond the birth of the Alliance, including the rib before the one she sat under, the Eternal Emperor battling Shay'tan over this galaxy. It was when she glanced at the old dragon's hand, however, held upright the same way it was on the Great Gate, that she realized what she was looking at.
"They're not all dead?" Jophiel said aloud. In Shay'tan's hand sat one of the many broken stars, its light silver and dim. As he held it his eyes turned from black to the same golden color as the Emperor, the color of an ascended creature.
She got up out of the cathedra and moved under the vault where the blue fairy gathered up her children, and then followed the ribs up the Great Hall as the history of the universe moved through epic battle after epic battle. At each major turning point in history, the same two figures always sat at opposing ends of the Great Hall. On the side facing the Eternal Tree, the blue fairy gathered her armies as she tried to breathe life back into her devoured children, while on the side facing outward towards the world, the bull-man cast forth globules of a putrid green darkness as though they were marbles. Each time, a different winged champion came forward to battle the bull-man and evict him from the universe before he could get to She-who-is.
Three ribs made her blood run cold. Large swarths of the universe were destroyed, not by the bull-man, but the muscular black blob she now recognized as He-who's-not. Each time a champion failed, the Dark Lord stepped in and evicted the bull-man himself, but not without incurring breathtaking damage.
"Oh?" Most people thought of the Dark Lord as evil, the same way they thought of Shay'tan as evil, because everything he touched, he destroyed. Could the truth be a little more complex?
Jophiel traced the history of the universe again. Each time the bull-man and the blue fairy did battle, a different winged Champion came forward, most so ancient they jogged no recognition, but some she recognized as ancient gods. The last five ribs surprised her. Emperor Shay'tan?
In the last rib which showed the same image as depicted on the Great Gate, the Eternal Emperor moving in a chariot towards Emperor Shay'tan, at last she saw what the icon truly depicted. The two old gods were not hurling lightning and fire at each other! They hurled it at a puss-green globule which hid the image of the bull-man!
"The battle still wages today," she realized aloud. She went back to the doorway and traced the images again and again, each time picking up more clues about what had really happened, long before even the Emperor had been born. Fourteen billion years of history were recorded in that ceiling. If you knew what you were looking for, the fresco's provided answers. She stared down at her feet and realized the chess squares on the floor lined up with the roles each player assumed who was painted on the ceiling above. The citizens of the Alliance liked to joke they were little more than chess pieces to the Eternal Emperor, but looking up, she realized it was he who was being played.
She was not here to be punished. She was here because only if she saw it for herself would she understand what the stakes were. Dephar's words came back to her.
'He thought for a moment his son might be possessed by an Agent…'
The windows facing the garden had grown dark. Her neck stiff from looking upwards, she moved back to the throne, mindful that she had been given a punishment to serve out. Just when she thought her bladder would explode, not sure if her sentence included trips to visit the facilities, at last the Emperor made his entrance.
"Your Majesty," Jophiel sat, fingers clutched on the armrests, not certain whether she should leap off the throne and throw herself at his feet to beg for mercy, or stay put because that is what he had ordered her to do? She finally just scooted up to the edge of the chair so her legs didn't jut out quiet so ridiculously and gave him a salute, mindful of how awkward her wings must look sticking helter-skelter out of a high-backed chair with armrests that had not been built to accommodate her species' wings.
"You can come down now," the Emperor sighed. His shoulders sagged as though he carried the weight of the universe.
Jophiel skittered off, anxious to never have to sit on that throne again, and glanced up at the ceiling, pointing to the image of the Emperor and Shay'tan teaming up to rid the universe of the bull man.
"You're not here to rule the Alliance," she asked. "Are you?"
The Emperor shook his head. Despite being immortal, when he was in human form, he frequently manifested the same visible symptoms of weariness that a mortal creature would. He did so now, dark circles under his eyes and his wild white hair looking like he had not slept in a week.
"As Lucifer's mother used to accuse me of all the time," the Emperor said, "you are just a hobby. Something to pass the time while we wait for Moloch's next play." His expression was wistful. It was no secret the Emperor had disappeared after Asherah had died. E
ven though it had been 225 years, Jophiel could see her loss still pained him.
"And Lucifer?" Jophiel pointed to the star Shay'tan held aloft.
"Not that one," the Emperor gave her a curious look. "He's a different one. Their genetic needs are very specific. Only a special confluence of genetic matter enables one to manifest into the material plain. Ki strips them of their memories so they don't have to relive the trauma of their past lifetimes. Unfortunately, Moloch got his hands on that one and snatched it out from under the old dragon's nose. He still hasn't gotten over it … and he blames me. Which is why we're always at war."
"So why does Moloch keep killing them?" Jophiel asked.
"Kill them?" the Emperor said. "Oh. No. He doesn't kill them. It would be better if he did because then Ki could just send them back in a new body to try again. No. Moloch doesn't devour them to eat their flesh. He needs their energy to manifest his will. Ki can prevent him from incarnating into this realm in physical form, but she cannot prevent him from taking control of a willing host. One who is, perhaps, angry at his surrogate father?
"You thought Lucifer was possessed?" Jophiel asked. All of a sudden the Emperor's cruelty made sense.
"I hoped he was possessed," the Emperor said. "It is the nature of my gift. I may not be the most powerful old god in the universe, but lightning is one of the few forces which can interrupt the body's bioelectrical impulses long enough for one of Moloch's victims to break the Agent's hold without killing him."
"You were unable to free Lucifer?"
"That wasn't the problem," the Emperor shook his head. "At least, not while he was here in my palace. If Lucifer hates me, it is because he hates me. Not because Moloch is making him do something against his will. This rebellion, I fear, is entirely Lucifer's own doing."
Jophiel thought back to how cruelly the Emperor had treated Lucifer in front of his adversary's ambassador. It had all been a misunderstanding, but having seen Lucifer at Parliament, she feared it was now too late. If this evil bull-god still lurked around the universe, it didn't need to take control of Lucifer if getting him to wreck the Alliance was one of its goals. The Emperor had gone and botched that one all on his own.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 75