Arabia, 788 B.C.
QIEL WATCHED AS THE city of Ke'elei sank forever down, swallowed whole by the hungry earth. He didn't believe in Sheol, but he was beginning to reconsider as his eyes saw things which they protested, stubbornly, were not real. Wave upon wave clapped together, capping in peaks of white foam rendered pink by blood and sucking down into the crater, drowning most of the Brotherhood army along with every inhabitant of the city.
The sea was no respecter of allegiances. All flesh tasted the bitterness of death in its swirling, icy grip.
Lying in Piankhy's tent, Anael lived on, laboring to breathe, the general of the Brotherhood armies stooped low over his face, straining to hear his last words. Piankhy spoke in a hush with Anael, whispers Qiel could not hear as he looked on from the other side of the general's tent. His mind raced searching for ways to escape his doom—it was his mother's life or his. All of his considerable powers were impotent now. How could he save his mother if he didn't know the first thing about how to find her? The best he could do was hold on and see where this game would spit him out.
Piankhy stood. "Anael is dead," he said as if the news should have made someone sorry.
"Good," Qiel said. "May he burn in hell for a thousand eternities." Qiel spat and watched as it soaked into the Persian rug on which they stood. "It's the least he deserves."
"And what of you, Qiel? What is it you deserve?"
Qiel didn't want to say. "Tell me what he told you."
The general walked to a nearby table and took up a pomegranate, polishing it against his sash. "Surely you don't really want to know."
"What deal did you broker with the old wretch? Tell me. I want just one thing now. I can certainly sweeten the deal for you."
Piankhy laughed. "Really? That is indeed surprising. I did not know you had . . . shall we say . . . eternal authority."
Qiel paused. The old traitor must have more power than I imagined. Thoughts crashed together in his head like waves, and in the wake of it he wondered if Anael lived on, if he had somehow become Seer forever, if he had, like a seed, gone dormant, awaiting the most opportune time. What if he is inside the Stone? Qiel could taste malevolence in the tent, hovering near.
"What say you?" The general turned loose of the pomegranate and slipped a hand beneath his sash. "Would you like to be the next recipient of this?" He withdrew his hand, producing a heavy iron chain, and from the end of it swung a stone so red it was almost black.
Qiel found himself holding his breath. He watched as the stone began to glow, as it began to swing like a pendulum ever closer to him, moving at last in defiance of all gravity, hovering at the limit of its leash, the chain stretched taut and horizontal from the hand of the Brotherhood general across the tent, the stone straining at its bonds, trying to get to Qiel.
"Mmm. It wants you, but do you want it?"
Qiel considered. "My mother—she lives?"
Piankhy shrugged. "I suppose so."
"Deliver her to me. Then I will take up the Bloodstone. I will be your Seer."
"Anael was crafty," he said, teasing the chain now only by finger and thumb. The stone hummed louder, pulsing, its red rich and decadent. "That was what he proposed to me, I must admit."
Qiel doubted this, but as the stone grew louder in his ears, his doubts began to fade.
"I could not have planned a better solution to our problem. I am gladdened that you came to a reasonable conclusion so fast."
The Brotherhood was lost without a Seer, a leader to steer the horde into all unrighteousness and every dark strategy of the just rebellion. And the line of Kreios, most powerful of all the Fallen, lay fallow and broken, disused, until Qiel was born. And activated.
Qiel's virtues were self-evident—he was human, he was angelic . . . and he would be, as soon as he agreed and fulfilled the terms of the contract, demonic. He could be the most powerful being on earth. "Only let Uriel go free. Then you may have me."
Piankhy nodded. He chanted an incantation in a dark tongue, words Qiel imagined Anael might have used. A cloud of vapor formed in front of Qiel's eyes and became a shadow, and in this shadow, he could see his mother's face. She was seized with terror. As fast as it had appeared, it was taken away, her essence blown to the farthest reaches of the earth.
The general laughed. "She is free. She is broken, but she is free. Now fulfill your duty and say the words that will seal the transaction, boy, the words that even now are burning in your mind."
Qiel fell into a trance and found his lips forming these words: "I pledge life and soul to the Brotherhood. This life is not mine; there is only the Brotherhood, the clean nothingness. I swear in blood I shall soldier for my Brothers. Brothers in blood, brothers in death, brothers in the fires of Hell. And I their Seer." The stone was close now and Qiel touched it, sealing the deal.
His world became red.
Piankhy wound the iron chain around Qiel's neck and bowed low, his face touching the ground. "My brother. My Seer."
* * *
URIEL THOUGHT SHE HAD died when the Bloodstone released her. All at once she converged into one place again, within the heavy black fabric walls of the tent. She saw a glimpse of her son, a sight that broke her heart, for she could see what was in his eyes. But it was over too soon and she was in the wind again, taken leagues away from him. With what little strength remained to her, she reassembled and collapsed on the face of the mountainside, gasping for air.
She breathed her first breath and squinted her eyes, feeling the pain of both.
Water was soaking her cloak. She scrambled to her feet, a mad craving rooted deep within her heart, an addiction of blackest passion for the stone. All she wanted was more, to be rejoined to the Bloodstone, to feel cocooned within its terrible facets again, and safe inside the nothingness of it. Red and beautiful, it was evil, wonderful.
But then she looked to the horizon. Over a small rise, she saw it and cried out. This is all that is left of the beloved city. The valley that was once bedecked in hopeful tones of green, open and bright and full that led up to the city, was now a slough of mud and the putrid stench of the sea, the dying, and the dead. The mountain, once white, was now nothing but a black hole. Water poured into it. As she looked on in disbelief, the water began to calm and diminish. The mountain, now sheared clean of the evidence, stood over a dark lake. The troubled surface spread itself in the well of the hole, a vast silent witness covering the affronts just under its muddy flood.
The torrent had taken the city and killed most of the Brotherhood army and anyone else unable to fly to escape.
Uriel was a part of that. She had killed her own family, had betrayed her own. Now she was left with nothing. The Bloodstone had confiscated everything and spit her out when she ceased to be useful.
In the dread space of this waste, her thoughts turned reflexively to her only son, Qiel. He was the only, the last person she loved. The last person she thought she could ever love. What has happened to you, son?
"Qiel. Where are you?" She flew over the lake, searching for survivors. She hoped and prayed to El that her son yet lived. Nothing remained—the last of the Brotherhood horde had fled. A lone tent stood on a lump in the morass of what was left in the valley.
She flew there because there was nowhere else.
Empty. All gone. Only lying on a cot in the tent was the shriveled body of Anael, already in decay. Her longstanding adversary, the only one who knew where her son might be—if he was still alive—and he lay here dead.
Uriel cursed the heavens and fell to her knees and wept. Her heart broke under the weight of her guilt. Qiel was lost. Her father was gone. Her family and friends were buried under a murderous sea. And it is my fault. She was a traitor, she was the one who had abandoned all, she was the one who had raised her fist to El.
This was her reward.
Wiping her face, Uriel stood. She had to find her son. She had to know whether he was alive or dead. One man would know. Yshmial. The boy's father.