War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

through any stone barrier you throw at her. And what if there is no stone or wood nearby? What if we find this Daraji woman in the desert, or a field? And if we find her in a city, will you tear down the walls around her to catch her? What happens to the people in those buildings if you do?”
    Samira turned to the angel. “If I can capture this cleric, I will. If I can do so without drawing attention to us, I will.”
    “That’s all I can ask,” Raziel said gently. “We are, among other things, trying to save lives.”
    The djinn cleric nodded. “Very well. We will go immediately. Will you be guiding us to this Sophirim?” she asked of Iyasu.
    “I… Yes.” The young seer looked across the faces of the djinn and his friends. “Immediately? It’s just that I only arrived yesterday. I wasn’t expecting to…”
    “If you require rest, I will proceed without you,” Samira said. “Tell me where to find the Daraji woman, and we will be on our way.”
    “No, no, it’s all right, I can go.” Iyasu stood up with a small sigh.
    Zerai looked at the seer’s face.
    He’s exhausted. Not to mention drowning in guilt and shame and self-loathing. And that business with the catoblepas yesterday… it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like him.
    “I’ll go too,” the falconer said grimly. “Sounds like fun.”
    Samira glanced at him for the briefest instant, a gesture of near total dismissal, before looking up at the angel again. “Holy One, we accept your task and will return in all haste when it is complete.”
    “Thank you.” Raziel bowed his head to her.
    The three djinn adjusted their bags and robes and looked pointedly at Iyasu. The seer blinked. “Right, well, I should get my things. It’s just over here.”
    He led the djinn from the square toward the room he had slept in the night before. Zerai watched them go, and then turned to look at the angel. The winged being was beautiful by any measure, strange and wonderful, terrifying and comforting all at once. But in all the years he had lived with this messenger from heaven, Zerai still felt none of the awe or majesty or inspiration that he knew the young Razielim and other pilgrims felt in his presence. To the falconer, the angel was merely a curiosity, a mysterious friend in crystal-blue flesh. And the knowledge that he felt no great stirring in his soul in the angel’s presence made him frown quite often when he was alone to think about it.
    “That looks like your thinking frown, or is it your worrying frown?” Raziel said with a gentle smile. “I told you, you have nothing to fear from the djinn. You can trust them, more or less.”
    “More or less?” Zerai raised an eyebrow. “You’re a world of comfort sometimes, you know that?”
    He paced back to his own home, knowing he should be hurrying a bit more so he could meet back with the others, but he wasn’t eager to tell Veneka what had happened, and what was about to happen.
    She took the news about as well as he expected.
    “I will join you,” she said matter-of-factly as she quickly gathered a handful of articles in a bag. “I will not allow Iyasu to hunt a crazed magi with a group of djinn by himself.”
    “I’ll be there with him,” Zerai reminded her.
    “Yes, but if these clerics get out of hand, hurling boulders and trees as they tend to do, then he, and you, will need a healer,” she reminded him.
    It only took the briefest flashes of memory, images of the two Sophirim brothers Eon and Saifu toppling massive stone pillars and hurling a ship’s mast, to convince him that a healer would be worth her weight in gold and ivory.
    “You’re right,” he said with a little shrug and smile.
    “Of course I am.” She patted his cheek and kissed his lips, and then walked out.
    He followed close behind, but when he saw the fountain again, the scene was quite different. Before the angel stood a single dark figure, the male djinn called Bashir, a tall and slender bit of shadow and silk