Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter XII

In the northeastern mountains of Turkey—Present Day

KREIOS LANDED ON THE outskirts of town and smoothed his hair. It was longer now, as it had been quite some time since his last haircut. He moved easy down the dirt road, wondering if the cursed man he sought was still alive. He suspected yes, or the Books were wrong.

They were never wrong.

After a mile's walk, he came upon a one-room house of stone, mostly dug out of the earth and fashioned from rocks that had been taken from the two fields behind it.

According to the Books, the man had taken no wife, and there were no children. There was no family, there were no forebears or ancestors left. There was no legacy but the earth and what the cursed man put into it—his toil, his sweat—and what he took from it—the harvest it gave him.

The farmer, an old man, lived like a soldier might. His conquests were not those that would spill blood—not anymore—but rather over the terrain itself. He was on his own out here in this wasteland. If he could not work, he would not eat. All he had was what he could grow. Kreios found a spot to sit under an old oak tree overlooking the solitary farm. He watched as the man stepped from the porch to begin his day. He looked at the man's hands. They were rough and weather-beaten, perpetually etched with dirt. Kreios hoped that his long life had been filled with misery and pain. If any of El's creatures deserved that, this man did.

He moved slowly toward his fields like a rusty hinge hanging on an old door, paying the angel of El no mind. Kreios wasn't sure if he was being ignored or if the man was simply that dull.

Kreios saw the goats. There were six of them, each with a tin bell that clanked like small voices from a different world. The man walked amongst the herd, rubbing his eyes and running his fingers through his short-cropped hair, gingerly probing the mark on his forehead. Still there, Kreios saw. Still unhealed after all these years. Kreios grunted in satisfaction; this was indeed the man he sought. He pulled a pouch from his coat and rolled himself a cigarette.

The man grasped a hoe that was leaning against the wall and walked toward a small patch of tilled earth to the side of the house. The sun was still low, concealed by the ridge to the south, and gray low-slung clouds in the interim carried snow with them. "Another day," he said and began working, hoeing out by the roots buckets of dormant floral grasses for the goats.

Kreios spent the next little while watching, thinking of what he would do with the cursed man. A plan was working in the deep parts of his mind, but it was not yet fully formed. Kreios knew that the Bloodstone was moving; soon a new Seer would emerge. He would need to be ready to strike before that happened.

The man walked over to the goat pen and threw the weeds and grasses on the ground in the middle. He used the bucket to fetch water from the well. Then he tended to his modest winter crop of beets, garlic, and potatoes, planted up against the wall of his house for at least a little shelter.

As the man worked, Kreios found his thoughts turning toward the ancient peoples. Where the man lived was not far from the Kara Su, what others might call the Western Euphrates, high above where it joined the Murat Su, the Eastern Euphrates, and then became one river. It was a high region of forest and brush far from where mankind had first trod the earth. Far from the garden that was now guarded by the angel of El with the flashing sword.

Here in the mountains by the Kara Su, the man was far from his old life, the past he had long ago fled. He was far from the mountains of Hijaz, where he had killed his brother.