Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (18 page)

Iyasu pondered this for a moment. “Holy Simurgh, if I may ask, what exactly are you the angel of?”

“Many things, which are all one thing. Knowledge, compassion, insight, foresight. Together, you might call it wisdom,” she whispered. “The power of the mind to know what is good and useful in this world. I know that Kamil will be good and useful one day, just as the science of Dalyamuun will be, and just as my poor little Zal was, long ago.”

“Rahm’s father?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

The angel grinned. “He fathered Rahm.”

Iyasu glanced at the warrior, who seemed unmoved by his apparent importance to this most unusual servant of heaven. But then he looked back at the angel. “I’m sorry, are you telling me that you spend your time quietly manipulating peoples’ lives to make the world a better place?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sorry again, but where were you two years ago when a djinn stole the crown of Maqari and started slaughtering thousands of innocent people?” Iyasu glared at her. “Where was your wisdom then? What was good and useful about those deaths?”

“Nothing about death is good,” Simurgh said sadly. “But I cannot be everywhere, anymore than you can, or your beloved dark warrior behind you. It is not me, but wisdom itself, that flows through the veins of this world.”

“Wisdom? Don’t talk to me about wisdom!” Iyasu snapped. “What wisdom sent a seventeen-year-old boy to help govern a nation? What wisdom let that boy put a murderer on the throne? Where was your wisdom then?”

The giant angel swung her head down and pressed her huge dark nostrils against the cleric’s chest. “Listen. Listen to me. Wisdom does not create chaos, or problems, or disasters. Wisdom finds the solutions. But I suspect that in a world without problems, there would be little need for wisdom, and I would not be here at all. So tell me, little cleric, did you ever discover the identity of your djinn killer?”

“Late. Far too late.”

“But you did, didn’t you? And did you find a way to cast him out and restore peace to the land?”

“Barely. And at great cost.” Iyasu blinked and saw the body of the grief-stricken singer Edris in his memory as sharp and bright as the day the man had died. 

“But you did.” The angel withdrew her head and sat up tall and regal, stretching her copper wings high against the green walls. “And if you bring this blinding anger of yours to every problem you face, then it does not surprise me that it took you so long to find the wisdom you needed in Maqari.”

Iyasu trembled, his lip shaking between a grimace of rage and a rictus of sorrow. He turned away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m sorry.”

Azrael tried to put her arms around him, but he gently pushed her back and paced away, his head bowed and eyes closed. The images kept coming, the visions of blood-soaked carpets and glassy-eyed ministers, the dark red rivers slithering down the cracks between the marble tiles, the entrails spilled in the dust, the gray faces and blue lips of the dying, and the discarded limbs of the dismembered. And the screams.

The screams.

He shivered and nearly vomited on the soft white grass.

“Leave him alone,” Hadara called up at the golden beast. “He and Azrael are the reason we escaped from Dalyamuun, not your precious boy. The boy did nothing for us. He hid in his room while we fought and ran for our lives. So don’t be too proud of your precious wisdom.”

“If you had heeded my wisdom and spent any time with the boy, then maybe you wouldn’t have needed to fight and run for your lives at all,” the angel growled.

“Enough!” Azrael’s shout boomed through the clearing, shaking the ground under their feet. “Sister, we did not come here to trade angry words with you. We came seeking your help. Lives are at stake. War is imminent. And if you truly despise my gift of death, then you will help us now, or else be complicit in the deaths of thousands.”

Simurgh leapt to her feet and bared her fangs. “Do not toy with me, sister! I am no fool to be manipulated by fear or guilt.”

“This isn’t fear or guilt, this is the truth. I am Death. I am the moment of death, when all your precious wisdom fails and nothing but fear and sorrow remain. And do not pretend to understand what that means, not with me.” The soft white grass around Azrael’s feet crackled with tiny blue arcs of lightning, and the springy turf began to rise and wave dreamily in the still air. The dark angel’s hair floated up around her head, swirling in slow clouds of blue-black waves. And from her back, her two black wings unfolded and grew taller and broader than Iyasu had ever seen before, filling the clearing with black feathers that blotted out the sky and left them all in darkness. Golden fire danced and shuddered in the eyes of the Angel of Death as she said, “We come on an errand of desperation. For your help. For your knowledge. Our brother Raziel sent us to you.”

“Raziel? Why?” Simurgh still towered over her dark sister, and yet within the cold shade of Death’s wings, the giant canine seemed smaller and far less majestic.

“We seek the lost city of the djinn, and for that we need the Book of the Sun,” Azrael said. “If we do not find the djinn soon, they will emerge and overrun the earth with a new darkness, a new age of war and terror and death, armed not with flesh or steel but with the holy gifts of the angels.”

“Impossible!”

“I faced one such djinn myself, in Maqari,” Azrael said. “The battle was terrible, and if he had had even a shred more strength than he did, he might have destroyed me.”

“Where did they get this power?” Simurgh asked.

“We don’t know. That is why we need the Book of the Sun.” Azrael blinked her eyes and the golden fire vanished. Her hair fell in soft waves down around her shoulders, and the crackling waves of white grass at her feet lay back down, still and quiet. Her enormous wings faded away, allowing the light of the sky to once again fall upon them. “Now, dear sister, can you help us?”

“The Book of the Sun?” Simurgh frowned and looked away, and then tilted her head back to peer upward. “A dangerous thing. Full of knowledge. And madness. When I found Galina Bolad, she was raving, babbling, living in filth and eating sand. But the book… the book frightened me. Such knowledge should not be placed in anything so simple or fragile as a mere book.”

“Galina Bolad? She wrote the book?” Azrael asked.

“Yes. When the city of Ramashad vanished from the desert, she alone emerged from the ruins. A lone djinn woman, wandering the burning wastes.”

A sad silence fell over the group and Iyasu cleared his throat. “What drove her mad?”

“Whatever it was she saw down there, in the darkness, when the earth swallowed up Ramashad,” Simurgh said. “There was nothing I could do for her, so I left her in the care of the peris in the ruins of Fel Yaresh, years ago.”

“And what happened to the book?” Hadara asked. “Where is it now?”

“I took it,” the angelic creature answered. “It’s here.”

“Here? Where?” Iyasu scanned the clearing but again saw no signs of anything made by human, or djinn, hands.

“You are standing on it,” the angel said.

Iyasu looked down at the soft white grass, the limp curling threads of downy fibers piled up to his knees. He knelt and cradled a few pale strands in his brown fingers, and saw the tiny black dots and dashes.

Ink.

This isn’t grass. It’s shredded papyrus.

She destroyed the Book of the Sun.

The cleric looked up slowly. “What have you done?”

“Protected the world from an unknowable evil,” Simurgh said. “The fibers would not burn, and so I tore them to pieces and fixed the pieces here, where no one would ever find them, or take them, or read them again.”

Iyasu grabbed at the fibers, bunching them together in his fists, but he couldn’t pull them free of the ground. He tried to press them together, flattening them against his palm as he struggled to make sense of the tiny ink marks scattered along them.

No, no, no!

I can’t… I can’t see anything… it could take a lifetime just to piece together a single page…

No, no, no…

He let the strands slip through his fingers and spill on the ground. “It’s gone. What have you done?”

“What was necessary,” the huge angel replied.

“No, wait!” Iyasu leapt to his feet and dashed forward. “You read the book, you know what it said, you know the secrets of the djinn.”

Simurgh eyed him warily. “I read enough. I recall little.”

“Oh, no, no more games, you know what we need to learn!” Iyasu dared to grin for a second. “Yes, you do. You read it, you remember it. So tell me, Holy Simurgh, how do we find the city of Ramashad?”

The golden angel flared her enormous shining wings and bared her gleaming fangs. “I don’t know.”

Iyasu frowned. “Really?”

“Truly, I don’t.”

Iyasu paused. “But… we told you, lives are at stake. Whole civilizations may lie in the balance. Perhaps even the whole human race. You honestly don’t know?”

“I honestly don’t,” the angel said softly.

Iyasu searched the monstrous angel’s sad golden eyes for some other truth, some hidden knowledge, some hint as to what he should do next, but there was nothing in the angel’s eyes except weariness and regret. He stepped away, shuffling backwards until he bumped into a familiar body.

“I’m sorry,” Azrael whispered, her mouth dipping into his wild black hair so he could feel the warmth of her breath on his skin as she spoke. “It was a good idea. It was. I wish it had worked.”

“So do I,” he said. And suddenly he smiled and shook his head. “But that’s all right, because it’s still going to work.”

“How?” she asked.

“Simple. We’re going to get something better than the Book of the Sun. Much, much better.” He grabbed her hand and looked around for a way out of the clearing, but saw only the dense green stalks with no paths between them.

“What? What are we going to get?”

He looked into her beautiful dark eyes. “The person who wrote the book. Galina Bolad.”

“You will not find her,” Simurgh said coyly.

“Oh, I’ve read a map or two in my day. And I know exactly where the ruins of Fel Yaresh are,” Iyasu said, barely able to contain his smile. “It’s simple, so simple. The only thing I need now is to know where we are exactly. You, Rahm, you’re a worldly man, right? Can I interest you in another little adventure before you run off to save your lost king? If you have time, of course. It’s only the entire world you’d be saving.”

The huge warrior smiled. “I might be persuaded, if it won’t take too long.”

“And you, Lady Hadara?” Iyasu held out his empty hand to the princess. “Interested in saving the world? I could use a little help keeping my other guide from becoming too flamboyant, if you don’t mind.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “Why not?”

“Fine, good, right!” Iyasu turned back to Rahm. “We’re east of the White Desert, which puts us somewhere in southern Gengahar, aren’t we? So! I need you to take us north to the place where the River Sestun meets the River Denda. Can you do that?”

The warrior shrugged. “Of course.”

“Excellent, perfect. Then let’s go. Not a moment to lose now!” The young seer bowed dramatically before the giant golden angel. “Holy Simurgh, we thank you for your counsel and wish you a very good day. And if I’m ever in this part of the world again, I’ll be certain to be a better guest on that occasion.”

The angel chuckled. “I’m sure you will.” She turned a cool eye on Azrael. “Sister.”

“Sister.” The Angel of Death nodded respectfully, and turned to leave.

“Wait, wait!” Rahm glared at everyone. “I had a reason of my own in coming here. King Kavad. Eventually, I am going to face the demon in Messenad, and I still need to know where that is!”

Simurgh narrowed her eyes at the warrior as she slowly lowered her great head to the ground. “Go with the seer. You’ll find your lost king soon enough if you stay with him.”

“What? What kind of answer is that?” Rahm stared at the angel. “I don’t need riddles. I need directions.”

“And I provided both.” Simurgh laughed as she closed her eyes. “Good bye, little Rahm. And fare well. I’ll see you again, if you live long enough.”

She turned her head and settled down as though to sleep, silently dismissing her guests and ending the conversation. Rahm balled his hands into fists and made a half-threatening gesture at the golden immortal, but he gave it up and turned away with an exasperated grunt.

“Come on.” The warrior waved them toward the far side of the clearing, and then waded back into the green forest without another word.

Iyasu grinned and hurried after him, leaving the women to follow together. They passed through the verdant woods much faster than before, as Rahm’s long strides swallowed the distance in little time, and then they stepped out onto another rough, twisting brown root to begin the long descent to the ground, down through the cool white sea of mist.

The seer paused only once on the long trek down to catch his breath, and as he sat to rub the cramp in his calf, he noticed the golden beetles streaming by underfoot. Poking his finger into a crevice in the bark, he soon had half a dozen of the tiny creatures meandering around in his palm, each one carrying a tiny white mote in its pincers.

“Look at you. So small. So beautiful. And you have no idea what’s going on in the world around you, do you? Lucky little bugs.”

Chapter 15

“How long are you going to keep us here?” Zerai sat in the corner of the room, his back against two walls, with little Nadira sleeping soundly in his lap, her lip shining with drool.

“We’re not keeping you here.” Lamia paced across the room to peer out the window yet again.

“But you’re not letting us leave.”

“It’s not safe right now. We don’t know who might be taking orders from the Arrahim,” she said. “There’s no sure way to tell everyone what happened at the library. We could shout it from the towers day and night, but so could the seers. In the end, the clerics would just choose who to believe for themselves, and they’d probably side with their friends more than with the truth.”