Incarnation: Wandering Stars Volume One (20 page)

“What happened here
?
” Ananel
asked
softly.

Enoch opened his mouth, but nothing came out. 
T
ears rolled down his cheeks as he
looked
up at the angel.

Ananel
stared down
at Enoch, while the others moved about the field, pointing, kneeling,
and whispering
to each other.

“I
—
c
an’t
—
c
an’t understand what they said,” he managed.

Ananel
knelt and cautiously placed
his hand on Enoch’s shoulder.  “If you will permit me to look through your eyes, I will reveal it to you.”

Enoch nodded, not even understanding what he was agreeing to.

Ananel closed his eyes.

Everything was dark except a sliver of night sky and road visible through the crevice to the left.  Semjaza’s
Iryllurym
flew past the opening, followed by the marching
Anduarym
.

Suddenly,
Enoch
was
flying
.  The
mountains
passed
beneath his feet.  The rough terrain slowly turned to
smooth fields.  The massive
arm
a
cross his chest, h
eld him securely
in the air
.

Enoch’s feet
touched the
solid earth again, and he felt his body gently lowered to the grass.

“Where is your Pri
-
Rada?”  Semjaza
asked, though the grin on his face said he already knew the answer.

The Speaker backed away slowly.  His body was tense with the anticipation of violence, but
he held his hands out to either side in a gesture of submission. 
“Unlike you and your treacherous ways, my Pri
-
Rada expected a civil meeting.  He sent only a small delegation
.
”

“Then he is an incompetent fool
,”
Semjaza replied
, advancing with his
vandrekt
in a ready position
.

The
Speaker
jumped back
suddenly
as he realized that Semjaza wasn’t
simply
trying to intimidate him
—he was going to attack. 
In a desperate, but pointless act,
the Speaker
put his hand up as if it would protect him.  “
Are you so foolish as to attack the
Amatru
?
 
It would be an act of
war
!
”

The stars were darkened as the formation of
Iryllurym
dove from the sky.

The Speaker’s escorts began to
shape
into flying angels
, but only a few made it off the ground
and even their
efforts were wasted.  The blades of the
Iryllurym
cut through their unguarded flesh with deadly precision.

Enoch flinched in horror.

Semjaza lunged forward and thrust his
vandrekt
into the Speaker’s shoulder.  The pain distracted the angel and kept him from shifting.

All around, the Anduarym
attacked the unarmed escorts.  Most were impaled where they stood.

One ran straight for Enoch.  His body suddenly straightened, then arched backward.

Enoch flinched
.

The escort dropped forward to the grass.

Enoch was frozen with fear.  He kept his head down for a moment until the grunts and screams eventually died down to silence.

The Speaker was on the ground.  He’d been stabbed multiple times in the torso, but none of the wounds were fatal.  Blood poured down his face from a laceration high on his head.  It was obvious that Semjaza was only toying with him.

Two Anduarym stood on the Speaker’s arms, pinning him to the ground.

Semjaza accepted
a
svvard
from one of his ground soldiers.  His gaze remained fixed on the speaker as he brought the blade suddenly downward.  The sharpened metal cut through skin and bone in one movement, until it lay embedded in the soil.

The Speaker screamed in
agony
and writhed on the ground.

The larger and stronger
Anduar
who stood on his remaining arm had to bring all of his weight to bear in order to contain the flailing angel.

Then, in a bold act of courage, the Speaker silenced himself.  Though his pain must have been unbearable, he refused to allow Semjaza to take pleasure in his suffering.

Semjaza leaned over him. 
“Go back to your world and tell
Ganisheel
that this is my realm.  I consider his presence here to be an act of war.  If I even hear a rumor of the
Amatru
coming here again, I’ll bring the war to him.  And he has no idea what I’m capable of or what I have at my disposal
.
”

Semjaza
look
ed
away briefly to revel in the strength of the soldiers at his command. 
Then he turned back to the Speaker. 
“If he persists, I’ll show him the depth of his incompetence
.
”

The Speaker tried to compose himself, staring defiantly into Semjaza’s eyes.  But his body was weaker than his spirit.  Tears fell from his eyes
and
blood poured from the stump where his arm used to be.  “You can’t come back from this,” he whispered.

Semjaza nodded, and his Anduarym released the Speaker.

Without hesitation, the
angel
shifted into the Eternal
R
ealm.

Ananel removed his hand from Enoch’s shoulder.

Su
ddenly, it was morning again and the
other
Myndarym
were now gathered around Ananel.  “
Semjaza used the prophet to stall and distract
the
Speaker
while he gathered his army. 
They slew the delegation, i
n
direct
violation of the terms of peace which govern
such a meeting
.
”

“Why would he react so rashly?” someone asked.

Ananel turned.  “He seemed offended when we talked in the throne room
—that t
he Holy One sent a prophet to us, but an army to him.  This w
as a show of force.  He
sent
the
Speaker
away with a warning for his Pri
-
Rada to never enter this realm again.”

Upon hearing
Ananel’s summary
,
some of the
Myndar
y
m
expressed disbelief, other
s
disapproval. 
Still o
thers kept silent.

“Isn’t this what he was supposed to do?  To protect us, if necessary?” someone asked.

“He wasn’t protecting us,” someone
else
countered.

“The
Amatru
were never supposed to know about us,” another offered.

“He’s declared war on the
Amatru
!”

Ananel held up his hands
.  “Please.  Please,” he stated, bring
ing
the group to silence. 
“We all feared this day would
eventually
come.  Semjaza has betrayed his end of our agreement. 
All of this is
proof that
he
was incapable of keeping
things quiet.”

“What about him,” someone asked.

Suddenly, all eyes were on Enoch.

Ananel spoke quietly.  “I had hoped that you could all hear his message for yourselves.  But I don’t think that matters anymore.  Semjaza has just sealed our fate.  The Amatru will
hold us partially respo
nsible for what happened here.”

“Can’t we send someone to plead for us?”
Make amends?”

Ananel shook his head.  “I doubt they’ll be willing to
discuss anything after such an egregious violation.”

“What are we to do then?”

Silence followed.  Enoch
suddenly felt very small an
d
insignificant—nothing more than
a
n unwelcomed
visitor
.

“We’ve all felt this change coming,”
Ananel continued.  “I, for one, expected it to come sooner than this day.  Nevertheless, it’s here. 
And now w
e have a choice to make.  Either we submit to Semjaza’s rule and give up our hope
s
of attaining freedom, or we go our own way.  Right now
!
”

“But he’ll come looking for us,” someone said.

“Where
would
we go?”
another
asked.

Ananel nodded slowly, with a determined look in his eyes.  “Wherever we want.
  This is our land, even more than it is his.  And he’s going to be busy preparing for war.
”

A breeze had picked up and was
causing the blades of grass to wave in unison.  The
curling mist
drifting over the plains
seemed to emphasize the silence that had fallen on the group.

One by one, the Myndar
y
m began to go their separate ways.  Without another word, Ananel
shaped
into his animal form and set off to
the north
with most of the Myndarym following him.
 
Within seconds, Enoch found himself standing alone on a battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of slain angels.

*   *   *   *

“
…but m
en don’t sing,” the elder argued.

Not in this tribe they don’t
,
Sariel thought.  “
T
he women do
.”

“Yes.  And my youngest daughter is the most talented.”

The recognition of Sheyir’s ability seemed awkward in his mouth.  It was probably the only time he’d ever expressed anything resembling
pride
or even approval of a female in his tribe.  Sariel wondered if he’d even heard Sheyir sing, or was his proclamation based on second-hand information
?

“Alright. 
Then I’ll
need the men to move to one side, and the women to the other.”

The elder
turned to the rest of the tribe gathered around the uncovered meeting area at the center of the village.  He
gave the order and the
y
split and reassembled as instructed
—with
the men now on the west side of the clearing
;
the women on the east.

“If you’re willing, this would be easier if you gave me authority to instruct them myself,” Sariel suggested.

The elder’s eyebrows dropped, but relaxed after a moment of hesitation. 
“Everyone will obey the visitor until I say otherwise,” he told the crowd.

“Thank you,” Sariel said. 
“Now, will all the women please step forward and assemble into one line.”  He waited for them to follow his command, then walked to Sheyir at the front of the line.
  “I want you
to
sing the same sounds as I do.”

Sheyir nodded.

Sariel sang one note, then waited as Sheyir mimicked it perfectly.

Sariel
then
sang two notes at a higher pitch.

Again, Sheyir repeated the sounds.

“Good.  Now a simple melody,” Sariel responded, singing several notes in a series, alternating up and down.

Sheyir mimicked it effortlessly.

“Thank you,” he said with a smile.  “Please step over to the side.”

Sheyir moved closer to her father.

Sariel stepped in front of the next woman and repeated the test
with different notes
.  This woman was able to mimic up to two notes, but couldn’t follow the melody.  After three tries, Sariel asked her to step to the other side of the elder and wait.

By mid-a
fternoon
, he’d made
his way through the remaining females of the tribe
.  There were
a total of
one hundred and thirty who could sing, or at least discern the differences between
sounds
.
 
From there, he
spent more time with
each one
as they sang
through a
multitude of sounds and combinations of tones.  As the last rays of sunlight disappeared over
Ehrevhar
, Sariel had the women separated into groups of similar abilities, based on the range of their vocal chords.  When the sun was finally set, the elder pronounced their work complete for the day.  Since the women had been occupied with other tasks, the evening meal would be much smaller than usual.