Incarnation: Wandering Stars Volume One (18 page)

The angel on the left looked quickly to the other escort.

Unexpectedly
, they both rushed toward Enoch and
lifted him from the road.  They pushed him into
a crevice
in t
he sheer
face of the
nearby
cliff.
  It happened so quickly that Enoch didn’t even have time to resist
; t
hough it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. 
Their enormous bodies pinned him against the rock and he was helpless.  But in the
few seconds
of stillness that followed, Enoch realized that their actions were meant for his protection.

A low rumble moved through the ground and he could feel the vibration in the rock pressed against his
face
.
  Through a small opening between the cliff and the angel’s limbs, Enoch barely glimpsed numerous silhouettes shooting through the sky, their dark shapes only slightly lighter than the backdrop.  Slower in speed, but closer in proximity, more tall figures rushed by the crevice opening along the ground.

“Stay quiet little one,” one of the escorts whispered.

But Enoch didn’t need the instruction.  He knew by instinct to keep silent.

When the commotion had passed,
the angels
released their grip on Enoch and pushed themselves out of the narrow crevice.

Enoch
leaned away from the rock and followed his escorts back to the road. 
“What was that?”

“We must move quickly,” one replied.

“It looks like Semjaza only sent you to stall for time,” the other one said with disgust.

Enoch backed away
,
now
realizing that Semjaza had only asked him to go to the
Speaker
because he couldn’t move quickly with his tiny legs
.  “But…  I…”
he stammered, trying to find the words to express his own disgust.

“It’s not your fault little one.” 
The
nearest angel
stepped behind Enoch and lifted him off the ground, holding him securely with one massive arm acro
ss his chest.

Amid a dizzying
cloud
of sparks that swirled, then pulled inward, Enoch felt himself suddenly
thrust upward into
the air.
The road and cliffs passed beneath him in d
isorienting
blur.  H
is head swam and his stomach threatened to heave
until he noticed the other escort, who now looked like one of the winged angels he’d seen earlier, was flying beside him.  Then he realized that he was being carried by angels who could change their forms like Ananel.  That’s when the adventurous side of him, the
part that took delight in experiencing the beauty of the Holy One’s ways, could hardly contain his excitement.

I’m flying
.  L
ike a bird of the sky!

They kept the cursed man on the
western
outskirts of the village, in a small valley
in the foothills of
Ehrevhar
.  The one responsible for feeding him was the man’s wife, whose emotions were unreadable to Sariel.  She walked at a brisk pace, while Sariel wondered what
she had endured
over the past two years. 
He imagined himself in her place and what it would feel like to have your
husband
return
from a gathering expedition with a sickness
.  He is then
forced to live outside of the village
, which meant that you would also have to
accompany him. 
With your
status
among the Chatsiyram
dependent
on your
husband,
your life would also have changed in an instant.

“Where are the wives of the other men?” Sariel asked, as soon as the thought came to him.

“They are dead,” she replied flatly.

“Oh,” Sariel mumbled.  “I’m sorry.  Did they become sick also?”

The woman stopped walking for a moment and turned around.  Her eyes looked to be on the verge of tears, but the rest of her face remained expressionless.  “They got too close and the men killed them.”

“The sick men?” Sariel clarified.

“Yes.  They killed their own wives,” she answered,
then turned and began to
walk again.

“You saw this happen?” Sariel asked, not wanting to be disrespectful, but needing to understand the nature of the sickness.

“Yes,” she replied, picking up her pace.

“And now that the other men are dead, it’s just you and your husband.  And you haven’t touched each other in all this time?”

“He’s not my husband
anymore
,” she said softly without turning around.  Her voice cracked a little with these last words.

Sariel stopped asking questions after this and they continued in silence for half an hour before descending a hill into a
wide
meadow.
  Sariel scanned the terrain, looking for a tent or structure of some sort.

“Where does he live?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

“This way,” she replied simply without breaking her stride.
  Following a worn path through the knee-high grass, she walked with the confidence of someone who had made this trip many times before.

Gradually, the peacefulness of the valley became disturbed by an odd screeching and moaning sound that grew louder as they trekked across the meadow.
 
It sounded like a wounded anima
l.

“Is that your husband?” Sariel asked cautiously.

“He’s not my husband anymore,” she repeated.

“Of course.  I’m sorry.”

“He is always like this,” she offered, speaking the first words of their trip that were not in response to one of Sariel’s questions. 
“I believe that the sickness is angry to be trapped in his body.”

Sariel nodded slowly.
I believe you’re more correct than you know.

Suddenly, the woman stopped walking.  In front of her, the grass had been worn down to the earth and only the deep brown soil remained.  The path widened slightly and turned around a bend.  She looked at Sariel and inclined her head toward the widened path.

“Is this it?” Sariel asked,
lifting his head to peer over the grass.

“Yes.  I don’t know what you think you can do for him.  But be careful not to touch him.  If he lays his hands on you he will kill you.”

“Thank you,” Sariel replied to the woman
, then stepped past her to follow the worn trail.

It continued to widen around the bend until it opened into a small clearing of bare earth
, perhaps fifty feet in diameter
. 
At the center of the clearing, a low platform of latticed saplings was spread across a hole in the ground and fastened to thicker poles embedded in the earth around the perimeter.  Sariel realized instantly what he was looking at, and was disgusted at the thought.

The moaning and screeching was loud now as Sariel approached the pit.  Inching cautiously forward, he could see that the hole was roughly ten feet deep and twenty feet in diameter.  The latticed lid was constructed of tree branches as thick as a man’s forearm, lashed together at their intersections with long strands of grass.

Caged like a dangerous animal.

Abruptly
, a hand shot out from the edge and swiped at the air in front of Sariel’s feet. 
On in
stinct, he jumped backward.  The skin of the arm and hand was a sickly
,
yellow hue, covered in dirt.  The fingernails were long and jagged, nearly black.  Beneath the gaunt skin, bone and sinew could be seen in great detail. 
Then, the arm retracted and gripped the cage.  Something else pressed against the wood and the sound of sniffing could be heard.

Sariel closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself.
  When he was ready, he circled around
to
the south side of the hole to get a better look at the man.  As soon as he found a good vantage point, the screaming stopped.

There, clinging to the
lid and the earthen wall on the
side of the pit, was a creature that only vaguely looked human.  Its long
,
thin limbs stuck out at odd angles, clinging like a spider to the boundary of its confines.

As Sariel moved slowly around the perimeter, dark and lifeless eyes tracked his every movement from a bulbous head that swiveled in a cocked position, like a
poisonous
insect.
  Its naked and hairless body
was cut and bleeding in multiple places,
appear
ing
little healthier
than the skeletons by the lake of reeds.

“What do you want
with us,
C
hild of
L
ight,” it said calmly, with a complicated sound of several people trying to speak over each other.  “Have you come to destroy us?”

Sariel
s
hifted
his consciousness slightly toward the
E
ternal
R
ealm to see what he was really dealing with.  Instantly, t
he structured existence of the T
emporal faded away, revealing three demons that crawled over the spirit of the man, like spiders over the carcass of an insect.  They looked slightly stronger than their counterparts by the lake, no doubt due to their living host.

“What business do you have with this man?” Sariel asked
, taking a step forward
.

“You cannot have him!” they screamed in unison.  “He yielded to us,” one of them replied alone.

Sariel looked over the man’s body, seeking a
figurine
, but he was naked.

It’s in his stomach, along with the two from the other men
!

Sariel
clenched his fists
.  “Swallowing a
figurine
does not constitute yielding your will
.
”

One demon chuckled with a raspy cough.

Another crawled to the front of the man’s chest, its barbed talons digging in as it moved. 
“
The
Amatru
will never prevail, because they refuse to see the limitations of their own laws.”

This only angered
Sariel
more.
  He had trained for years and fought under the principle that the ways of the enemy
were
evil, through and through.  Yet, he had also lived through countless wars and seen millions of his fellow angels slaughtered.  And through the dizzying chaos, he’d come to resent the limitations that
were
placed on them.

The limitations we placed on ourselves.

This resentment
eventually turned into wondering how far each side was willing to go to achieve victory.  And hearing the demons words only stirred up the conflicting feelings of resentment and loyalty in his heart.

Sariel took a breath to calm himself, then stared hard at the demons.  “I’m going to give you one chance to yield your authority over this man.  When I return, if I find that you are still here, I will send you all to the void.”

One demon snickered at this.

Another peeked
out
from behind the man.  “If you were capable, you would already have done it.”

The third simply smiled
, its grotesque face distorting into an unnatural expression.

With his mind racing to provide an explanation for this madness, years of training and experience overtook Sariel’s thoughts and focused them on what must be done to correct the problem. 
Without another word,
he
turned and left.

*   *   *   *

Enoch’s
excitement lasted only a few seconds, before the escorts
left
the mountainous terrain and descended toward the grassy plains beside the road.  As they
glided to a soft and silent landing
, Enoch could already see that the gathering of angels was much larger than before, comprised of both Semjaza’s soldiers and the
Speaker’
s escorts.  When their feet touched the ground, the one holding E
noch
stayed in a crouching position
and lowered him gently to the
grass
.

The other
advanced cautiously on foot.

Semj
aza and his
wingless
soldiers
encircled
the
Speaker
and his
angels
, outnumbering them
four
to one
.
 
T
he unexplainable difference that Enoch felt when in the presence of each was now contrasted in a vivid way.  The
Speaker
and his angels looked out of place.  Their smaller, homogen
e
ous group appeared more colorful and orderly
, standing out against the nighttime backdrop of the fields
. 
Fully clothed, without
weapons of any kind, they appeared vulnerable.  Those under
Semjaza’s rule
were darker and muted in color.  Their
bare forms
were more muscular and varied
greatly
in size
.  The
parts of the
ir bodies
that were
covered
were
clothed
in protective raiment that reminded Enoch of the reptilian creatures that nearly ended his life.  In their hands they carried a variety of weapons that looked even more deadly than the clubs carried by the Kahyin.  These angels were
at home
in this
T
emporal environment
and
,
by the
ir
advancing steps
, it was obvious that
they
were aware of their advantage.