Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (13 page)

More than an hour passed before they found anything, and then they found too much. Three bodies, caught in the rocks, in a tangle of arms and robes and hair. Zerai stared at them.

Maybe they clung to each other to stay afloat.

Or maybe they panicked, pushing each other down to get one last gulp of air, tangling their clothes around each other, dragging each other under…

Danai recognized them all as her friends from Naj Kuvari, and she fell to her knees beside them, sobbing. Zerai felt sick as he looked down at the frozen, bloated corpses. Abasi, Damisi, and Hafsa. Two young men and one young woman, all alive that morning, all dead now.

Because of me.

Veneka is dead because of me. And so are Talia and Nadira. And now I… what? I keep going? Finish the mission to Shivala alone? I’ll be dead before the week is out.

Even if I survive, what then? Go back to Naj Kuvari and serve Raziel?

Or not. There’s no reason to go back now. And why would I want to see that place, that house, that bed…

No, I could go anywhere, anywhere in the world. I could go somewhere new, I could be someone new…

Danai touched each of the bodies, perhaps hoping that some last gasp of life might remain in them so she could restore them. But she stood up a moment later and backed away without saying a word.

Zerai started walking.

“We need to bury them,” she called out.

He turned and squinted at her. In the darkness her form threatened to vanish against the surging shadows of the sea behind her and the roiling clouds above. “How?”

“I don’t…”

“We need to find the others. We need to find someone we can help.” He walked on, trying to make himself believe that such a thing was possible.

“But what about Abasi? And Damisi? And Hafsa? They deserve better, they deserve… something, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do. But they won’t get it.” And he trudged away.

Kaleb deserved better. So did Yusuf, and all the others. Idiots who died for me. Died for nothing. We all die for nothing. We live for… what? To serve the angels and the magi?

Living in service, always risking my life but never having one of my own. A life, a home, a family. A family of my own…

He kept walking, but often forgot to look down into the surf for signs of the dead, or up to the beach for signs of the living. His eyes kept to the rocks and the sand at his feet, tracing a path from nowhere to nowhere.

“Is… is that a light?”

Zerai blinked and glanced back at Danai, and then followed her pointing finger up toward the base of the cliffs where a dull red glow painted the rock wall in angry hues.

Kiya?

He jogged up the beach with Danai just behind him and found the light coming from a deep crevice in the cliff wall. Ducking his head, he crab-walked into the small cave and followed the red gleam up a crooked slope until the space widened out to reveal a room-sized chamber where several bodies were huddled and sleeping around a handful of stones radiating an intense heat.

His eye landed first on Adina who stood apart in her blue robes, and he saw that she lay wrapped around the snoring little bundle of the baby, Nadira.

Talia…?

He scanned the others, but did not see the child’s mother. Instead he saw Kiya next to Adina, and then four more of the healers from Naj Kuvari in their green tunics and robes. And one of them had a thick pillow of black hair all around her head.

Veneka!

He hesitated, and then moved slowly and silently over to the woman to look more closely, to be sure. And it was her, it was Veneka, alive and breathing, asleep in the sultry cave surrounded by her friends. He knelt beside her and touched her arm gently, but instead of waking her he merely lay down next to her and closed his eyes. The stone floor was warm and the air hung hot and thick with sweat and salt, and he slipped away before he thought to say anything else to Danai.

He awoke from a poor sleep with an aching head and sore back. The heat and glow of the cave walls had faded away and a cool breeze was blowing in from the sea, where he could hear the waves crashing on the beach. A pale white light gleamed on the rocks down near the entrance of the cave.

Morning.

No one else was awake yet, so he sat up and stared at a crack in the wall, but his back hurt too much and he needed to move, so he stood and quietly made his way down through the cave and out to the beach where he could stand up properly and stretch and survey the effects of the storm.

Huge jagged boulders of ice stood on the beach, both high above the waves and out in the shallows, glistening in the morning sunlight that was just barely peeking out over the tops of the cliffs behind him.

He looked around for something to do. But there was no firewood to gather, no clean water to fetch, no food to find.

So Talia is gone… Samira is gone… and five, no six of Veneka’s clerics, all lost. Frozen. Drowned. Maybe the cold numbed the pain. Maybe it wasn’t too bad, at the end.

He looked toward the sharp rocks where he and Danai had found the three bodies last night. They were gone now.

Why are we doing this? What good can we do here? If an army of all-powerful magi couldn’t save Shivala, what are we supposed to do?

What am I supposed to do?

He took out the lure that he kept tucked in his falconer’s glove and whirled it over his head, and it sang out its warbling cry over the sound of the crashing waves. But there was no sign of Nyasha, or any other bird, that he could see.

“Zerai?”

He turned and Veneka rushed out of the cave and wrapped her strong arms around him. He slowly embraced her and rested his chin on her shoulder, and closed his eyes. She wept quietly, shaking gently, squeezing him tighter.

He tried to cry too, but there were no tears left in him. He’d spent them all the night before, mourning her, willing himself to let go of her, willing himself to go on living without her, trying to imagine a life and a world without her.

He’d huddled in the dark in a world without Veneka.

He’d walked a corpse-ridden beach in a world without Veneka.

And it hadn’t broken him.

But here she was, still alive. Everything he’d thought, everything he’d felt, it belonged in some other world where Veneka was dead. Because in this world, Veneka was alive, and last night wasn’t a cataclysmic change in his universe at all, because today would be the same as all the days before. They were still together. They were still going forward, together.

And all the long, dark night before meant nothing now.

He tried to forget it, as he tried to cry, and he failed to do either.

“What happened to you?” she asked as she pulled away from him.

“I found Danai in the water and pulled her to shore,” he said. “We spent the night in a crack in the cliff wall. What happened to you?”

“I found as many people as I could and we held each other up, and healed each other as best we could,” she said. “The current carried us along for a time, and then we washed up on shore together.”

He nodded. “Abasi, Damisi, and Hafsa are dead. We saw their bodies on the rocks, but they’re gone now.”

Veneka hesitated. “That leaves Kesi, Marjani, and Panya missing.”

“What about Talia? And Samira?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “I never saw Talia. I don’t know if she knew how to swim. And Samira, I saw her once. She said she would look for Talia, and she dove under the waves, and never came up.”

Zerai nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to care much that the djinn cleric was gone, but he knew the loss her holy gifts was grievous, both to their survival now and their purpose in Shivala. Still, it was Talia he dwelt on. The strangest, most remarkable person in world. A djinn man’s soul housed in the resurrected body of his own dead human wife, mother to his own child…

And I killed her.

I orphaned Nadira.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.

“What now?” he asked quietly.

“We should search the beach to see if any of the others survived and came ashore,” Veneka said. “But only for an hour or two. All our food is gone, and the storm is already gathering again.” She pointed to the angry clouds tumbling slowly across the northern sky.

He stood alone outside and watched the dark sea toss and churn with white foaming waves while Veneka woke the others and they emerged to begin the search. Zerai paused only to look at little Nadira sitting happily in Adina’s arms, sucking her thumb and staring out at the world with her huge brown eyes.

“Adina?” Zerai took her aside. “Why was Talia coming with us? And why did she bring the girl? We’re going into a war zone.”

“You didn’t hear?” Adina looked confused. “She told us back in Odashena. They wanted a seer to look at Nadira. Because she’s, you know, different. Special. They wanted to know if a seer could tell them anything about her.”

“Now? In the middle of all this?”

“They argued about it, a little. But Samira was afraid there might be another attack, and the seers might all die before they had a chance to see Nadira.”

Zerai sighed. “Oh.”

“She’s so quiet,” Adina said, smiling at the girl. “But so heavy.”

“Oh? Here, I’ll carry her for a while.” He took the child into the crook of his arm, surprised slightly by how much she weighed. It took a moment to get her settled against his side, straightening out her legs and dress, but when that was done he found himself face to face with a tiny person with huge brown eyes, soft fat cheeks, and soft curling black hair. Her eyes fixed on his, and she smiled, and blew a small bubble of spittle on her lip. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder and began picking at the hem of his tunic with her tiny, clumsy hand. Zerai touched her cheek for a moment, surprised by how very smooth and soft it was, and then he turned his attention to the long march ahead.

For more than an hour, they hiked along the base of the cliffs, calling out for their missing companions, but no one called back, and there were no signs of life anywhere along the beach. And so with a stern look and a sterner voice, Veneka called off the search and they turned back north, following Kiya along the narrow paths up through the rocky heights, making their way inland to find the road to Shivala.

Several times Adina or one of the healers offered to carry Nadira for a while, but each time Zerai shook his head.

Whatever has happened, this child, this little girl, is still alive. And whatever else happens, she’s going to stay that way.

No more risks.

No more dying.

No more of this holy war shit.

We’re going to live.

They hiked up through the icy passes of the Imaya coast until they reached the edge of the White Desert, an expanse of pale sand salted with ice that stretched out to the horizon where Zerai could see four black peaks at the edge of the world beneath the midday sun. And closer, to their left, stood the white walls of Shivala.

The falconer followed the clerics along the edge of the desert, speaking to no one, watching the dunes for signs of danger, and clinging tightly to the little girl on his hip.

Chapter 11

“I’ll wait out here.” Zerai cast an uneasy look at the doors of the audience chamber. He remembered them, dimly. Eight years ago he had walked proudly through those doors with Nezana perched on his fist and asked Negus Salloran to let him become a magi warrior. He tried to imagine that he took the rejection better than he remembered it.

“Why?” Veneka looked at him.

“I’m not a cleric. I’ll just wait here, with Nadira.”

“The queen asked about you,” Kiya said. “Just before we left, she asked me to find out how you were doing. She might like to see you again.”

Zerai frowned.

“And they’ll want to see Nadira,” Adina added.

Zerai frowned a little deeper. He looked at the four Sophirim warriors flanking the doors in their gray tunics and massive gauntlets, and then he glanced at the slender ministers in blue and white whispering halfway down the corridor. There was nowhere to sit in the corridor. “Fine. I’ll go.”

The doors opened and an elderly man in blue led them into a large room filled mostly with desks and tables where clerks and scribes and ministers were all bent over their papers, talking in hushed voices, and looking generally exhausted and anxious. Few eyes glanced up at the newcomers.

Beyond the sea of bureaucracy, they came to an open space around two white thrones where the master of Shivala sat, glowering at a sheaf of papers in his hand while two clerks stood uneasily before him. Salloran, Negus of Shivala, clad in white and black, his hairless scalp untroubled by any crown, clawed at his long beard with a massive, veined hand. After a moment of silence he handed the papers to the clerks and nodded, and they hurried away.

Zerai stared at the old man, despising him a little, pitying him a little more, and mostly wanting to avoid speaking. But the Negus’s gaze swept across the newcomers and fixed on him immediately.

“Ras Zerai? Zerai Djonn!”

Zerai stepped forward, still holding Nadira in his left arm, and he bowed his head. “Zerai Saqir, your highness.”

“Oh?”

“There never was a Zerai Djonn. I was… mistaken.” He knew he should explain more, explain that he had never been the prince of Azumar, that his closest friend Kaleb had been the true lost prince, that he was merely a falconer in the sometime-service of the Razielim, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to explain anything.

“And this is your daughter?”

Zerai paused, then chose to ignore the question as he nodded at the woman beside him. “Your highness, this is Veneka Mahova, the first of the new Razielim. She and her healers have come to help you and your people.”

And at that he stepped back and let the others talk. He ignored the introductions, the explanations, the recounting of their journey, and the condolences for those they had lost. He passed the time watching Nadira, who seemed to be fascinated with everything around them, staring in silence at the people and the papers and the light streaming in through the tall windows.