War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (21 page)

Thank God!

He veered to his right and lunged toward the falconer. At the last moment he tripped and his injured leg refused to hold him anymore. Edris saw the look of surprise on Zerai’s face as the singer crashed into his chest and then slipped to the side and crashed into the closed door of the building behind him.

“No, no!” He felt Zerai and Veneka grabbing at his shirt and arm to catch him, but their fingers clawed uselessly at him in the dark, and he fell.

The door held him for a moment, but the old rotten wood crunched inward, and then gave way completely, spilling him into utter darkness. He threw out his arm to soften his landing on the floor, but the floor never came. His legs slammed down on the hard planks of an old stair case leading down into the blackness, but his chest and head kept falling.

The stairs have collapsed!

As he slid forward, his weight dragging him down toward the abyss, he frantically scrambled to reach back with his hand to grab the edge of the stairs and stop himself, but his weight and momentum were too much for his aching fingers. He grabbed hold of a splintering post that may have once supported a handrail, and his legs swung around and fell into the void, leaving him to dangle by his one, creaking handhold.

“Zerai! Zerai!” he gasped. He scanned the blackness frantically with his lone eye, but he couldn’t be sure if he was seeing the stars up through the broken doorway or if it was only the dancing motes in his own tired eye and panicking brain.

“Where are you?” Zerai hissed. The shadows seemed to shift in warbling shades of inky gray and purple, and then a hand gripped Edris’s wrist. “I’ve got you!”

“Pull me up,” the singer whispered. His shoulder burned and his lungs struggled to expand with each shallow breath.

“I will, just give me your other h— oh, shit.”

Edris felt the falconer fumbling to get a better grip on his one hand and arm.

“Ven? Ven, I need your help here.”

“Zerai!” she yelled.

Edris felt the falconer’s hand vanish and heard boots scuffling away up the stairs toward the door. “Wait! Don’t leave me here! Please!”

The steel sounds of swords crashing against swords and pinging on stone echoed down the staircase, and shadows swung violently across the handful of stars Edris could see near the top of the open doorway.

“Someone!” He felt something move, but he couldn’t tell if his own numb fingers were losing their grip or if the old rotten wood was disintegrating under his weight. The arrow in his leg began to burn and sting again, and he shivered as the blood continued to trickle down his skin. “Someone, please!”

“Here I am,” Veneka said softly.

“I’m slipping.” He felt her fingers wrapping around his wrist. “Can you pull me up?”

“I think not.” The sounds of swordplay continued to ring and clang and echo from just behind her. “Zerai?”

“I’m all right, just get him up!”

Edris closed his eye and tried to focus on his fingers, on holding tight to the post as though it were a part of his own flesh, as though… his shoulder spasmed and his hand nearly opened. “No!”

“I have you!” Veneka’s strong hands closed around his fingers, pinning them tightly to the post.

“What do we do?” he whispered. “I don’t want to die like this.”

“I do not want you to die at all.” The outline of her nimbus of black hair completely obscured his view of the stars and everything was darkness again.

“Ha!” He grimaced. “So you do like me.”

“I would not go that far,” she said softly. “But I cannot pull you up by myself.”

He choked on a laugh. “Veneka, please.”

She called over her shoulder, “Zerai?”

“What? AAGH!”

“Zerai!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s not deep.”

Edris heard the falconer panting and groaning as the sword clashes rang on and on.

“I cannot reach you,” Veneka said. “I cannot let go of Edris or he will fall.”

“I’m bleeding… quite a lot,” Zerai muttered.

Edris kicked his legs desperately, hoping to find some foothold or ledge, but his feet only swung through empty space, and the motion only tore at his burning shoulder a bit more.

“Edris? Edris?”

He stopped kicking. “What?”

“I am sorry. I do not know what else to do. I need to help Zerai.”

This is it. She’s going to let go. I’m going to fall, probably not far enough to die, but far enough to break something. And they’ll leave me here, in the dark, broken, bleeding, to die in the dark, all alone.

“Please, there has to be a way,” he sputtered.

“There is.” Her hands dug down even harder on his exhausted fingers, pushing several splinters deeper into his skin, but he barely noticed that pain at all because the entire left side of his body was suddenly on fire, and being torn apart, crushed, and sliced open by razors. The pain was more than he could comprehend, it was everywhere and so deep that there was no corner of his mind where he could try to hide from it.

He thrashed and kicked and screamed in the darkness as his body went on shredding and burning itself, the pain lancing and firing his skin and nerves and bones from the bottom of his spine up to the top of his skull.

And then it stopped and he felt fine. Better than fine, he felt strong. Even his aching shoulder felt solid and powerful. But something was wrong. The dim outline of Veneka’s hair against the starlight was blurred… doubled…

“My-my eye!” Edris blinked and shook his head and blinked again. “You healed my eye?”

“And your arm,” Veneka said. “Can you give me your other hand now?”

“My other hand?” He looked down and in the darkness he could see almost nothing, but he could feel the change in weight, the pressure on his left shoulder. A shiver ran down his side and he felt his new arm move as he flexed muscles and shifted bones that had become a dim memory in the years since the night when the leopard tore him apart. His left arm rose up, naked and clumsy, like a drunken snake. With a grunt and a twist of his shoulder, he reached up and grabbed the broken steps with both hands, and then with Veneka’s help he pulled himself up to safety.

As soon as he was sitting on the stairs, the healer dashed to the top to tend to her lover, leaving Edris to stare through his new eye at his new hand. He smiled as he curled the soft brown fingers in the faint light. Just a few paces away, Veneka prayed to God and Raziel to close Zerai’s wounds, and Zerai fought desperately against two armored soldiers, but Edris could only sit and stare at the lines across his palm.

It’s a miracle. An actual miracle. It’s real.

Still smiling, he leaned forward and stood up, and nearly fell off the stairs into the abyss as the weight on his left shoulder tugged him off balance. Frowning, he made sure he was steady and then took his first step toward the stars. His new arm brushed his side, and the sensation of skin on skin made him shudder.

Something’s wrong.

He paused to look at his left hand. It looked fine, it looked like a perfect mirror image of his right hand. He tried rotating his shoulder to get used to the weight, but every little shift of cloth against the virgin skin and hairs made him shiver, made his head swim, made his stomach lurch. Leaning against the cold stone wall, he squeezed his eyes shut.

What the hell did she do to me?

Opening his eyes, he tried lifting his arm and curling his fingers again, but every motion was either too sluggish or too fast.

Maybe it’s not done yet, maybe she stopped too soon.

Edris looked up. “Veneka?”

“Let’s go!” Zerai bolted out the door and Veneka dashed after him into the night, into a dark cacophony of men shouting and fighting and dying.

For a moment, Edris could only stare out at the bright glimmers of swords and arrowheads and shields beneath the stars, and the shining ripples in the reflecting pool around the boots of the men fighting in the fountain. Bodies lay in piles all across the courtyard, their arms and legs twisted into strange shapes where they fell.

Idiots. Killing and being killed, for what? Money? Crowns? Where’s the fun in that? They should all be asleep, or making love to their fat wives, or drinking their regrets away. And so should I, for that matter. But not this. Anything but this.

His left arm brushed against his side again, and he recoiled from it, lurching back into the wall again. Frowning, he wrapped his cloak firmly around the new limb so he could barely feel it, took a deep breath, and charged out into the darkness.

He dodged left and right, nimbly dancing around swinging blades and shields, ducking under spears, and leaping over bodies that threatened to trip him in the dark. Twice he felt a fist close on his cloak, and twice he ripped free, and ran on. After the first few moments, he saw Veneka far ahead, beyond a small skirmish, and he charged after her.

No sooner had he left the square than he heard the thunder of hooves racing into the square from the far side and he glanced back just long enough to recognize the beaded headdress of General Digna riding at the van of the cavalry, raising his heavy spear high over his head. Then the imperial soldiers swarmed the riders, and Edris ran for his life.

Chapter 15
Iyasu

The young seer saw the shadows moving along the rooftops, but by then he only had a brief moment before the arrows began to fly. He grabbed Faris and Jengo, but when he tried to tell them about the ambush, instead of running they both turned to look for their attackers. Which was a mistake.

As the first wave of Captain Alara’s men fell bleeding and crying to the ground, Jengo lowered his shield from Faris’s back and glared at the three arrows he had caught. “Run!”

The warrior and the seer grabbed the prince and ran as quickly as Faris could move, and by the time the second wave of arrows slammed into the front of the temple, they were safely behind an ancient obelisk covered in wind-worn glyphs.

Where is Veneka? And Zerai?

Iyasu peeked out at the square, but Jengo pulled him back before he could see anything clearly. “It’s all right, I think. Samira and her friends are moving up to the roofs. The archers will be disarmed in a moment.”

“You think she can save us?” Jengo asked.

“I do, actually. Why? You’ve seen what she can do. Don’t you think she can save us?”

“Perhaps. She’s not what I expected of a magi warrior. There’s something strange about her.”

“There’s something strange about everyone.” Iyasu grimaced as he glanced around for some other avenue of escape from the square.

“Are we safe here?” Faris continued to wheeze after their brief dash to find cover.

“No.” Jengo slammed his bow down in a crack in the street and deftly strung it. As he placed his first black arrow on the string, he said, “We need higher ground.”

Iyasu pointed at the side of the temple where a short flight of steps led up to a darkened doorway. “There. If we can get inside, we’ll be safer. The temple is a like a fortress.”

Jengo frowned. “All right, let’s try it.”

“Wait!” Faris grabbed Iyasu’s shoulder. “Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe we should surrender and see if Darius will be willing to talk.”

Iyasu shrugged sadly. “I’m sorry, but that will only get us killed. We’re committed. Our only hope now is to keep moving forward. With any luck, Digna and Taharqa will get here soon.”

“If we live that long.”

The seer nodded. “That’s the idea.”

The three of them darted across the narrow lane and up the stairs to the temple door. Jengo loosed three arrows and Iyasu saw five men fall, four of them impaled against the walls of buildings in pairs. He also saw the familiar shadow-blurs along the rooftops where Samira, Bashir, and Petra were making short work of the archers.

I hope they can spare a few lives. Most of these men are just soldiers, just following orders, just doing their jobs to feed their families and keep themselves safe. They may be on the wrong side, they may even be cowards or fools, but they’re not evil, not mostly. They shouldn’t have to die.

No one should have to die.

He massaged his right hand absently.

As Jengo attacked the temple door’s lock with a small knife, Iyasu continued to survey the battle as a hundred of Darius’s foot-soldiers poured into the square from the south and fifty men on horses charged in from the east behind a very angry-looking General Digna. The remains of Captain Alara’s men had formed a small defensive line by the front of the temple, and the noise of steel and wood slamming together, over and over, echoed through the cold city streets.

“I hope more are coming,” Faris muttered.

Iyasu closed his eyes to listen more closely over the din. “There are.”

“I know their legions had been reduced, but this?” The prince shook his head.

The door clanged and Jengo grunted with satisfaction as he slipped away his knife and propelled Faris into the dark interior. Iyasu hovered in the doorway for a last moment, watching the men in the square hacking each other to pieces, and just as his stomach was ready to churn, the young seer stepped back and closed the door.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lack of starlight, but soon he could see well enough to lead the others through the narrow halls to the central chamber of the temple, a place of meticulously designed and constructed pillars, mosaics, and screens, where tiny square tiles and small wooden beams had been assembled in enormous number to create dazzling displays of engineering and artistry.

He ignored it all to focus on the front doors, which were closed and barred, but also shook and groaned from time to time as the soldiers outside collided with it. “Jengo, help me.”

Together they moved a handful of benches and tables to further brace the doors, and then they sat together on their makeshift barricade to rest.

“What happens now?” Faris asked.

“We wait,” Iyasu said.

“For what?”

“Victory.”

Jengo crossed his arms and scowled in silence.

Faris sighed. “I suppose that’s all right then.”