Incarnation: Wandering Stars Volume One (31 page)

“
Min
n
va
n
i
r
,”
he began, calling them
friends
in their own language
,
which he now
understood
and spoke
fluently. 
“Thank you for your hospitality.  You have been kind to me.”

The gathering began to
press forward,
crowding in to hear Enoch.

“I held your petition in my heart, and I kept your words in my mind. 
Your repentance went with me as
I sat down by the water’s edge to
speak with the Holy One.  I had no assurance that He would hear your plea.  Though He always listens, speaking with Him is not the same as it is with you here in this place.  Nevertheless, I spoke to Him and waited.
  Then a vision cam
e to me and this is what I saw.”

Enoch recounted everything he witnessed, from the mist to the strange movement of the sun, moon
,
and stars.  He spoke of the
W
hite
C
ity
, t
he Keruvym and
Ophanym
, t
he One upon the
T
hrone and the multitudes around him.  Word for word, he repeated what the Holy One spoke, seeking neither to interpret the message
,
nor soften its rebuke. 
As instructed, he kept t
he prophecy of the Awakened
and the other visions
to himself
, b
ut in all other matters, h
e simply described everything as
it
had been sho
w
n to him
.

“…
t
ell them
,
‘Y
ou will have no peace.
’
”
he finished.

The Myndarym were clearly shaken by his words.  Some of them
dropped to
the ground and
buried
their faces in their hands.  Some paced the ground of
Kiyrakom
.  Others simply stood still, t
heir mouths open in disbelief.

Ananel was
in
tears
.

Enoch wanted to tell
them
that he was sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  He wanted to be
a friend to these magnificent creatures.
  But
these
wants
were overshadowed by something greater, something deeper. 
He needed—to
be
obedient to the Holy One
w
ho was now more real
to him
than ever before.  Enoch
had
never had any doubts about the existence of the Holy One, as others in his tribe.  But if he had, they would have been destroyed by what he
had
just witnessed.  So
,
with
great sadness, Enoch
backed away from the gathering of angels, then
turned and walked away.

Sariel pulled his wings inward and fell from the sky
.  As
the wind
ripped past his
skin
, his large
Iryllur
eyes could already see that something was amiss. 
The trees rose quickly to meet him, filling every part of his vision. 
At the last moment, he extended
his wings
and flattened his trajectory
, coming to a running landing in the grass field near the
center of the
Chatsiyr village.

Behind him,
three
massive felines burst through the trees and
sprinted into the clearing, their animal bodies
heaving great breaths of air as they
s
haped
into their angelic forms. 
Moving
rapidly
across the
field
, the group maneuvered around a grass hut and approached
the village center
, with Sariel in the lead.

As soon as his feet reached bare dirt, Sariel
came to a complete stop.  Where once
was
life and movement,
all was now
still and silent.  Everywhere he
looked
, he saw blood, spears, and the bodies of lifeless human
s
strewn about as on
the
countless battl
efields he’d experienced in his life.  But instead of soldiers, he saw humans who were innocent of the ways of war.

“NO!” he
roared,
his body shaking.

A flock of birds took to the air from
a nearby stand of
trees.

When the commotion passed Jomjael whispered, “What happened here?”

“
This is
Semjaza
’s doing
,” Tamael replied with calm assurance.

Breathing heavily, Sariel’s eyes s
canned the
village that had become his home,
looking desperately for any sign of Sheyir. 
His feet carried his body slowly from place to place, walking him through memories that he would cherish forever.  Gradually, the fog of sadness was pushed aside.  His
trained mind
began to suppress his emotions, allowing his senses to
collect
minute details—footprints,
blood spatters, the position
s
of the bodies—
to
reconstruct what had taken place. 
He saw
the stone-tipped spears of the
Aytsam
l
ying alongside the broken
k
hafars
of the Chatsiyram.
 
The
obvious disparity between technologies
only
confirmed
Tamael
’s
attribution of blame.

“
What does
Semjaza
want with the
Aytsam
,
or the Chatsiyram for that matter
?
” he asked, never taking his eyes off the gruesome
sights
.

“He’s using them
,”
Tamael answered
.

Sariel looked to the cold fire ring
at the center of the gathering area
.  In his mind he saw dancing flames and running children.  He saw smiling faces reflecting orange light.  He saw bright eyes filled with awe.  But with his physical eyes he saw
Yeduah
’s body draped over the
blackened
rocks with a spear
protruding
from his chest. 
Sariel
tilted his head
and stared at the lifeless form of Sheyir’s father
.
 
“
For what
?”
he
finally
replied
.

“
For years now,
Semjaza has been strengthening his resources
in the event of a confrontation with the
Amatru
.
  He’s
been
using the people to mine materials from the earth.  To build his fortress. 
To make weapons. 
They’re slaves to him.  Until recently, his ambitions only extended to the Kahyin tribes.
  They’re more numerous than the others, and physically stronger.
”

“It looks like he’s expanded his efforts since we left,” Jomjael added.

Sariel
remained quiet for some time, walking slowly from
one gruesome sight to another
as the Myndarym followed
.
 
The picture
that he’d been piecing together in
his mind was now
becoming clear. 
And the fact that the Shaper’s explanation was incomplete only reinforced how dangerous and mysterious Semjaza really was.

Sariel stopped walking as he neared the edge of the village.  The
trail of
footprints
left by the
Aytsam
transitioned from the damp soil into a wide swath of bent grass as it moved south and disappeared into the trees.  “If
he wants s
laves, then why did the Ay
ts
am kill so many?  And why did they take all the women and leave behind only men?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the trees ahead.
6
,
7

In the
ensuing
silence, he could hear the
shuffling
of the angels’ footsteps behind him.  He could tell that they were just now becoming aware of the fact that there were no female bodies among the dead.
 
When Sariel turned around,
he noticed their slack faces and eyes filled with tears.  He could see that they’d never looked upon a battlefield before.  And the sight of human slaughter was even more disturbing.

“Look what you’ve done
,” he whispered.  “
You should never have helped him.”

Jomjael
turned
away
.

Batarel
kept his eyes fixed on Sariel.

Tamael
’s head
slowly
dropped.  “
We never meant for this to happen,” he
replied
, his voice cracking slightly.

Sariel
could feel a deep
rage
welling up
inside him now.
 
It was not the kind of emotion
that would cause someone to react rashly.  Instead, it was the sustained resolution of someone who had spent hundreds of human lifetimes honing his skills of warfare. 
Slowly, methodically, he
pulled
a spear from the body of a nearby
Chatsiyr
man and
knelt to lift
another from the ground next to him.  He adjusted his grip and found the point at which the
stone-tipped weapons
balanced perfectly in his hands.  They
were crude and
fragile compared to the weapons he’d wielded in the past, but in this place they we
re apparently still effective.

“
You’re either with me, or against me,” he stated coldly.

Tamael glanced quickly at the others.  “We’re with you,” he replied.

Sariel turned back to the south and
unfurled his wings.

*   *   *   *

Sheyir struggled
for
breath, nearly choked by the tight
,
animal
-
hide rope around her neck
.
She was sitting on the ground with hands behind her back,
tied to the inside of a poorly constructed fence of tree branches which encircled hundreds of women.  N
ear her were dozens of other
Chatsiyr
women
and
many more
from other tribes.

“What do they want with us?” one of the women whimpered.

Across the grassy meadow,
on the
opposite side of the makeshift corral
, were groups of other women that appeared to be arranged by
when they arrived at this encampment.

“Gods want children,” another woman spoke.

Sheyir
twisted her head to
find who had answered
, but the rope
cut into her skin.
  “Who said that?” she wheezed.

“Take wives to make big men children,” the wom
a
n spoke again.

From the corner of her eye,
Sheyir located the woman only a few feet away. 
Though her words were arranged oddly, her language was nearly the same as the Chatsiyram. 
Her face was scarred and she appeared to have survived something terrible in her earlier years.
  J
udging by
her
clothing
, made of plant fibers,
Sheyir guessed that this woman was
also from
one of the
tribes descended from the Shayeth
am
, like her own people.  Perhaps their tribes even lived re
latively close to
each other.  Not that it mattered anymore. 
H
er own people and way of life
had been
decimated in a few, torturous minutes.