Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (28 page)

She focused on her solar plexus, the place Papa had taught her to trace the 'threads' which bound all living organisms together, and attempted to trace it so she could contact her Papa. She only got so far before she bumped up against some sort of barrier. Her heart sped up as she remembered that other part of her vision.

The Evil One had claimed he intended to kill her husband…

Closing her eyes, she mentally traced the thread which connected her to Mikhail. That disembodied pain she'd woken up with in her chest grew so painful it felt nearly overwhelming. A putrid sickness infected the thread which bound them. She could feel him reach out to her, cry out for her, call her name. She could sense him drag her, kicking and screaming into that dark realm of the dead she had always feared.

"No!" Ninsianna squealed in terror.

The ebony-skinned woman grew louder, more insistent in her chanting. "Ibilisi, ibilisi, ibilisi."

Ninsianna pictured shutting off the flow of light which hemorrhaged out of her body into whatever evil fed upon her spirit. It must be a trick! An illusion sent to her so the Evil One could feed upon her life's energy the way he had these women.

No! She would not let him trick her again!

She blocked the vile thread, tore it out, pictured undoing it, cut it, destroyed it, severed it and made it go away. That could not be Mikhail! Her husband would never draw upon her energy thus!

Immediately the pain disappeared. Did the Evil One really think she was that stupid? First he had manipulated her with a vision of carving her child out of her womb, and now this? Mikhail was too powerful to be hurt the way the Evil One had just depicted and, if he really was hurt, wouldn’t she have felt something? Grief? Loss? A heaviness in her heart, as though some part of her had just died? No. She felt nothing. Only relief that the darkness was no longer there.

Why, then, did she feel as though she had just betrayed her husband?

Ninsianna began to cry. It was all just a trick to break her spirit the way the Evil One had done to these other women. Mikhail would save her. She knew he would. Sobs wracked her body until the sounds of the infighting women faded.

She must have fallen asleep, for when she awoke the lights in the room had dimmed and the other women had all turned in to bed. The bruised fruit taunted her from beneath the table, red with a large, brown spot on one side, reminiscent of an overripe pomegranate. She remembered all the times she had scorned her cousin Gita for scrounging moldy scraps of bread. This food, at least, hadn't been thrown onto the ground with goat excrement. If nobody saw her pick it up, would it still be groveling?

A rumble from her stomach made the choice for her. She was, as Mikhail liked to put it, eating for two. She quietly slid down off of her bunk, looked furtively from one side to the other, then grabbed the fruit as well as some half-eaten bread off the floor and scurried back to her bunk to eat it. Sweet juices dribbled down her chin as she used the half-eaten crusts of soft, delicious bread to catch every drop.

~ * ~ * ~

November 3,390 BC

Earth:  Village of Assur

Gita

The pounding on the door startled Gita out of a fitful sleep. Beneath her, she heard her father curse, and then a crash as the clay urn which held last night's mead shattered upon the floor of the hovel which was her home. She grabbed at the ropes which kept her hammock suspended above the living quarters. Once upon a time their house had a second floor, but it had long ago collapsed due to termites and lack of maintenance, leaving Gita with nothing more than a few floor struts from which to suspend her belongings.

"Go away!" her father Merariy shouted.

"Open the door, you lousy drunk!" a familiar voice shouted from outside the door. "Or I'll bash it down!"

Gita's eyes shot open. Her heart pounded in her throat as the awful truth brought tears into her eyes. Mikhail was dead. He was dead and now Immanu was coming to extract his revenge. Immanu pounded on the door so hard it caused dust to shake out of the rotted reeds woven into the roof above. Gita coughed as dust got into her eyes.

"You?" her father recognized his brother's voice. "Why the hell would I open the door for
you?
"

Gita glanced frantically up at the skylight which had been blocked off ever since the Halifians had used their house for ingress during the last raid. Oh, no! She'd forgotten about that. That would make her appear
doubly
guilty. The men who had gotten into the village to attack Ninsianna had come in through
their
house. It had caused tongues to wag, but
everyone
knew her father had never bothered to maintain the wall. Would they still believe that now?

No…

She grabbed her spear, the one Jamin had given to her, the person she was fairly certain had set up the ambush on Mikhail. Jamin … her
friend.
Sort of friend. As much of a friend as the highest-ranking male in the village could be to the lowest-ranking female he'd taken pity upon and given his cast-off spear. It was yet another symbol of her guilt…

"Papa!" Gita squeaked in terror. "Please don't let him take me."

Merariy was a bear of a man, with wild, grey hair, a bulbous nose, and the same black eyes he had passed along to his daughter. A lifetime of bitterness and hard drinking had shaped him into a squat mass of jaundiced, wrinkled skin. Only two years older than his brother, he might as well have been twenty.

Outside the door there were other voices, all of them raised, all of them angry. Merariy saw the terror in his daughter's face and, whether it was out of some long-forgotten paternal instinct, or simply to spite his brother, he grabbed a chair and shoved it against the door latch.

"Go to hell!" Merariy snarled. "You want her, you'll have to bash the door down!"

The shouting grew louder. Gita grabbed her tattered brown cloak, a gift cast-off from Shahla, her bow, her arrows, and yes,
damantia
! Jamin's spear! If she was to make a run for it, she needed a way to defend herself.

'I'm invisible … I'm invisible … I'm invisible…
' she chanted the childhood mantra which had always deflected unwanted attention, but it was never adequate when people looked specifically for her.

The voices outside suddenly quieted down. A new tap came on the door. Polite. Respectful.

"Merariy … please? The winged one has taken a turn for the worse. We think your daughter may be able to help us calm him down."

"Chief Kiyan?" Gita cried out with joy. He was still alive? Chief Kiyan was a practical man, but not a cruel one. She would explain to him why she
hadn't
believed Shahla's crazy story about Jamin flying down from the heavens in a silver sky canoe and giving her away in marriage to a beautiful, white-winged Angelic..

And more importantly, Mikhail was still alive…

Gita climbed down the rope, her heart buoyant that she had not lost her chance to make things
right
. Her father shot out an arm and prevented her from opening the door.

"How do I know yer' telling to me the truth?" Merariy drawled, his speech still slurred from last night's drinking. "Twice before my brother lied to pull one over on me. Why should I believe him now?"

"Because you have
my
word," Chief Kiyan said wearily. "And my word has always been good."

Gita's father hesitated, and then he shoved her back.

"Not good enough," Merariy said. "If Immanu wants her, let him speak the truth which has been festering between us all these years."

"Go to hell!" It was Immanu this time who uttered the curse, muffled by the door.

"Then fine," Merariy muttered. "Gita and I were having a grand old time talking about the way you and that snotty daughter of yours been looking down your noses at us all these years, talking bad about us while your own relations been starving."

"Papa," Gita whispered. "Please. Mikhail needs my help."

"You think I give a goat's behind about a winged demon and all those other fantastic creatures demanding to be worshipped?" Merariy poked a filthy fingernail into Gita's chest. "Weren't nothing but a bunch of old pictures on the wall of a cave, but your mother chose
them
over
me.
And now
you
want to run off with one of them?"

"No," Gita swallowed, horrified her father could see so easily through her dark emotions. "He's just … injured."

"Oh?" Merariy sneered. "And
you're
going to heal him?"

He began to laugh then, a cruel, mocking sound, as if she had just suggested the moon was made of goat's cheese. He whirled towards the door, wafting the scent of vomit and stale mead into the room as he moved towards the chair he had shoved there to block it.

"It's a high price you'll have to pay to get what
she's
got," Merariy laughed. "
If
she's got it, though I ain't never seen no sign of her mother's gift in her. Ungifted! Same as me, isn't that right, Immanu? Isn't that what you told everyone in the village? That our father should take
you
as his apprentice, and not me, because I was as ungifted as a rock?"

Silence.

Whispers from the other side of the door.

The air inside the house stifled with her father's labored breathing. Out. In. Out. In. If there was one thing she knew about her father, he was every bit as stubborn as Immanu, especially when he believed he was right.

"I should have never said those things," Immanu's voice filtered through the door. "Your gift scared our father. It was as if you had inherited only the dark side of him, but none of the light."

Gift? What gift? Never had she seen her father exhibit any gifts, except, perhaps, the gift to scrounge up his next vat of mead.

The hand which held Gita back trembled.

"I want you to tell
them
the truth, Immanu," Merariy's voice warbled. "All of them. And then I'll let you take her."

Why did it sound as though her father offered her up as a sacrifice?

"I lied," Immanu said. "I lied when I told everyone the reason my father rejected you was because you had no talent as a shaman."

Gita gasped. So did the other villagers who'd gathered outside the door, gawking for a bit of juicy scandal.

Her father pulled away the chair and opened the door. Gita blinked at the sunset streaming horizontally down from the western horizon. Had she really slept that long?

"Then why
did
he send me away," her father faced his brother. "He sent me away to the furthest end of the earth, to accomplish an impossible mission, and he never told me why."

Immanu sighed. His voice warbled as he answered Merariy's question.

"Because our father was unable to control the darkness within
himself
," Immanu said softly. " The dark power corrupted him. He only realized he'd lost the balance
after
it cost him the life of our mother."

Merariy clamped his hand over his mouth and turned his back as if he feared his brother might see. Tears welled in his eyes.

"Go," Merariy gasped at Gita. "But don't go wasting your gift on that winged one, because he don't see you. Mark my words, he ain't never going to see you!"

She shoved past him, outside where the dying sun reflected off of unsettled clouds, giving them the appearance of black smoke billowing out of a fire. Immanu's gaze burned with resentment. He wheeled without a word and headed back towards the upper ring, leaving her standing beside Siamek and Firouz.

Her father slammed the door against her back.

"Disarm her," Siamek said.

Her heart beat faster as she stared up at Siamek for understanding and he refused to meet her gaze. Firouz took away Jamin's spear and handed it to Chief Kiyan. The Chief took it, his expression cloaked. Gita stared mournfully at the lost symbol of self-reliance.