Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (99 page)

Mikhail opened his eyes.

As with all his memories, the moment he awoke, they had a habit of disappearing. He clutched the brilliant, scarlet cape which had been rolled into the shape of a body and recognized it belonged to Ninsianna.

Ninsianna? Why had she already gotten out of bed?

He tried to move, but felt so weak his muscles refused to work. He held one hand up to block the sunlight shining in his eyes. How had his flesh gotten so emaciated and white? He vaguely remembered getting stabbed. How long had he been unconscious?

He stared at the red cape, two sets of memories warring for dominance. He needed to find the woman in the dream. He needed to find her because he knew she was not well. His chest hurt and his entire body felt weakened, but he would find her. He
had
to find her.

He forced himself to roll over onto his elbows, then forced himself upright so he sat seated on the bed. His chest hurt and his now-clumsy wings hampered his struggle, but he persisted, forcing the limbs to move. That was as far as he got before Needa pushed aside the curtain and stepped inside his bedroom without even knocking.

Mikhail's blue eyes met her brown ones.

"Mama?"

Needa's eyes grew wide. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out of her lungs. The clay bowl she'd been carrying slipped from her hands and shattered, casting water all over the floor.

He moved to help her, but he ungracefully fell backwards onto the bed, his wings flapping as he tried to right himself and was too weak to get his balance.

Needa screamed. She dropped the funerary shroud she'd been carrying and burst out of the room, calling her husband's name.

"Immanu! Mikhail has just risen from the dead!"

*****

Pareesa wormed her way through the small army which had taken up residence in his room and threw herself into his arms, knocking him off the pillows Needa had placed around him to prop him up and knocked him back into the wall.

"Siamek told us you were dead!"

A small cry of pain escaped his throat as her slender frame pressed against the bandaged hunk of mutilated meat which had once been his chest. He wasn't sure whether to hug her, or to push his little sidekick away and tell her that her unbridled affection made him feel uncomfortable. He glanced at his father-in-law for direction on how to deal with a sobbing adolescent.

Immanu grinned and moved his arms to mimic giving the girl a hug.

Okay … if Ninsianna's own father said it was okay…

Pareesa's slender frame shook as she wept into his neck, but the embrace did not feel uncomfortable as such affection had previously felt, but loving. Why had he never been able to sense such things before from any person except for Ninsianna? At last Pareesa pulled back and wiped her eyes, her arm catching a long, clear string of excretions from her nostrils. With a cry of relief, she planted a kiss upon his lips as though it was something she had done many times.

A flush of color warmed Mikhail's pale cheeks. So? What
else
had people been doing with his body while he'd lain in a coma at the brink of death? He turned his attention back to the debriefing the Chief had come to give him.

"Do you have any leads at all?" Mikhail asked, his expression grim.

"Not one," Chief Kiyan said. "Whatever secrets Shahla knew about the Evil One, she took that knowledge to the grave."

"There is one that knows," Immanu hissed.

"Gita told us everything she knows," Chief Kiyan sighed. "Shahla was insane. You cannot keep faulting the girl for not giving any credence to a madwoman. It is
my
fault for keeping your daughter's premonition from the other villagers."

"We should let Mikhail interrogate her!" Immanu said. "Now that he has his memories back, perhaps something will sound familiar?"

"Then it's a good thing I did not let you make a burnt offering of her as you intended?" the Chief said. "Isn't it, old friend?"

"She is
not
guilty," Pareesa glared at Immanu. "I have told you thus a thousand times!"

"Where is she?" Immanu demanded.

"I sent Siamek to the pit to fish her out," Chief Kiyan said. "Mikhail can interrogate her, not you. You've been so determined to catch her in a lie that you have never listened to a word she said."

Mikhail realized he had grabbed Ninsianna's red cape and clutched it to his heart. If this girl had information about how to get back his wife, then he needed to speak with her. A familiar scent wafted out of the cape and tickled some ancient part of his brain. It fired off an odd echo of Ninsianna and an older memory of a little girl who had dark wings just like his.

"Mikhail?" Pareesa looked at him expectantly, as if he had drifted off mid-sentence.

"I'm sorry," Mikhail said. He pointed to his temple. "I feel as though there are two of me living inside my head at the moment; old-me, and the new-me who was adopted into your village. I have two sets of memories, and sometimes I have trouble telling which one belongs where."

"Are your memories completely restored?" Chief Kiyan asked.

Mikhail shut his eyes. He remembered being sent here to shadow a suspicious increase in smuggling activity. He remembered his surprise as he'd intercepted a Sata'anic transmission broadcasting images of what appeared to be wingless Angelics and realized what Shay'tan may have stumbled upon. He remembered the Sata'anic patrol ship which had flushed him out from the dark side of this planet's moon and his last, desperate broadcast to let his people know he might have very well stumbled across their salvation.

And then he searched further back in his memories. His time as a Special Forces officer within the Emperor's armies. Raphael. Jophiel … his cheeks flushed as he remembered he had volunteered for deep space reconnaissance to forget the beautiful white-winged Angelic whose advances he'd refused. His time with the Cherubim. Jingu, the Cherubim queen, admonishing him it was time to come out of his self-imposed hermitage and find himself a queen.

And then … nothing. At around the age Pareesa was now, all memories of his childhood stopped. He knew something bad had happened to his homeworld in that detached way somebody might know a fact after reading about it in a history book, but there was no personal information or feeling attached to that memory, as though he had not been there. All he knew was that, after it had happened, he'd had nowhere else to go until the Cherubim had taken him in.

Mikhail opened his eyes. Everybody looked at him as though his words would speak some ancient prophecy which would be the answer to all their prayers. It was time to remind them he was nothing more than a soldier in the Emperor's armies.

"There are still gaps," Mikhail said. "But even if there weren't, I don't think the missing knowledge is anything profound." He made eye contact with his father-in-law, noticing the man's tawny-beige eyes. "All I know is that that Eternal Emperor possessed eyes just like your daughter."

"What does that mean?"

"Luminescent golden eyes are said to be the mark of a spirit which has evolved enough to ascend," Mikhail said. "It means your daughter stands on the cusp of becoming something more. It would explain why this Evil One went out of his way to abduct her."

"Do you have any idea of who this Evil One might be?"

Mikhail searched his memories. A white-winged Angelic? That could describe any Angelic in the Emperor's armies except for
him.
As for likely enemies, the Emperor had to constantly guard against such usurpers, but most of them were connected to Shay'tan.

"I have no recollection about a white-winged Angelic who might wish your people harm," Mikhail said. "My people are dying. When they find you, they will do everything in their power to protect you, not behave the way this Evil One has done." Mikhail frowned. "None of this makes sense. Why target
me?
"

"Perhaps this Evil One is in cahoots with this Emperor Shay'tan?"

"That's the only explanation which makes sense," Mikhail said. He clutched the red cape to his chest. Its scent ignited a warm, expansive feeling, along with that peculiar echo he'd noted earlier. He suddenly felt very tired.

Pareesa caught him before he toppled over.

"I've got you, sensei," his young prodigy whispered. "I won't let you fall again."

He tried to force open his eyes, but whatever force had sustained him had suddenly disappeared. Warm hands, loving hands, many sets of hands lowered him to the bed and gently removed the pillows from his back so he could rest peacefully.

"Everybody out!" Needa snapped. "See! I told you it would overtax his recovery!"

Grumbles. The Chief and Immanu filed out, discussing ways to figure out where Ninsianna had been whisked away to. If
he
was still alive, the hope now was that Ninsianna might still be alive, too.

Somehow, if she
hadn't
been alive, he thought he'd know…

Someone tucked a blanket around his shoulders. A peck on the cheek. Genuine affection. Mikhail's lip twitched upwards into a small smile.

"Mama," he whispered.

"Sleep, son," Needa said. "The sooner you get better, the sooner you can go retrieve my daughter."

He drifted off to sleep, his dreams filled with a song which flowed through the world like a river of love.

~ * ~ * ~

December, 3,390 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Siamek

Siamek rushed through the streets, shoving his way through the crowd which had gathered to hear the shaman excitedly tell them the winged one was resurrected from the dead. He shoved them all aside. Only the fact he was Mikhail's lieutenant enabled him to get through at all.

"Where is she?"

Immanu's joyous expression hardened.

"You said you threw her in the pit," Immanu said.

"She's not there," Siamek said. "The Tribunal exonerated her."

"The Tribunal ruled they did not have adequate evidence to return a sentence of death," Immanu said. "That is not the same thing as a judgment of not guilty."

Siamek's head swam with possibilities, all of them terrible. If Mikhail had not died, then Gita would not have left him, would she? Had Mikhail awoken and spurned the girl who'd spent six weeks impersonating his wife because she loved him? Had she run away in terror because Mikhail’s resurrection did not change the fact that Ninsianna was missing and presumed dead? Or had Mikhail blamed her just as Immanu had?

A disembodied sense of fear gripped at his gut and made his heart beat faster. Had something bad happened to her?

"What did you do with her?" Siamek took a step towards the shaman, his hand on the hilt of the Sata'anic sword.

"She relieved my pantry of its staples," Immanu said. He pointed towards the road which descended to the lower rings of the village. "Why don't you go ask her no-good father?"

Siamek suppressed the urge to throttle the man. He had always respected Immanu, but after Ninsianna had jilted Jamin, hard feelings had begun to fester between the different factions within the village. Ninsianna had always been fickle and her father encouraged her willful behavior. But the fact Gita had taken food was a good sign.

He pushed his way out of the ecstatic crowd, his heart pounding in his ears. Why hadn't he run back to tell her the Tribunal had returned a verdict of not guilty when Immanu had tried to force their hand?

Because Gita deserved to grieve, he had reasoned at the time. A party atmosphere had erupted after Pareesa had made her speech and, honestly, he could not bear to watch Gita weep over Mikhail's body when in his heart he wished it was
him
she loved. With much mead flowing and toasting to Mikhail's great deeds until the first rays of light had crept above the horizon, he had thrown himself into the eulogies. No one had expected Mikhail to resurrect himself from the dead.

He pushed faster through the well-wishers, guilt tearing at his gut. How could he forget her? When he had left, it had appeared as though each breath had been Mikhail’s last. Did she even know Mikhail had woken up from his fever?