Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter XII

Arabia—788 B.C.

URIEL HEADED TO DUMAH, the resting place of the cursed Bloodstone.

She knew where the stone was, had always known because in her youth she took it from the counterfeit Seer's neck and killed him in his sleep. She'd hidden it, hoping that without the power it held, the world would leave her alone.

She hated that she had to bow to her new master most foul, Anael, the vilest traitor she had ever known. Mostly, though, she feared the Bloodstone and what it might do to her. For, though she did indeed have reason to leave her pact with Anael unfulfilled all these years because of her softening heart, most of her reluctance was bound up in a palpable fear of what effect the Bloodstone might exert upon her.

Dumah was in the middle of the great Arabian Desert. She hovered in and around the place, sensing her environs and shadowing her presence from her enemies, seeking out the Bloodstone. They were close, camped in the valley close to Mard Castle. It would be days, if not hours, before they found her hiding place. Time was running out, and now her son's life too was on the line.

She could feel it calling to her. She began to move toward it.

Alarming thoughts began to resound within her soul. She thought of how the Prince of Darkness would desire an allegiance with one like her, how the power of his strategies would be amplified through her if she were to allow herself to become overwhelmed by the drug of the Bloodstone. She had heard many things about the Bloodstone and its associations with Lucifer, but now all rumors were cast aside and she knew—the stone embodied the Day Star himself. It was undeniable.

She flowed like fragrance through the cracks in Mard Castle's stone walls, her essence being drawn onward through chinks and breaks, upward into the highest of the four towers of the citadel. There, in a hidden part in the east wall, the Bloodstone pulsed and seethed with hatred, calling her onward to her destiny. Uriel did not manifest in the flesh, but used her essence to surround the object for transport.

That was when her plans failed, for as she embraced the stone, it sucked her down and into itself. She became a part of it then. Such an event she did not foresee. She did not have time to repent of her foolishness. She was overwhelmed with cold darkness. Her end was at hand. She was face-to-face with her worst fears.

***

QIEL THOUGHT OF HIS mother, and of the man who took him and chained him in the dark. Pulling again, he raged, twisting his body one way and then the other, but the heavy chains held him fast.

Something was happening to him. He vomited on the floor and realized that he was standing in water. It covered his feet, it dripped from the walls, and as if on his command, the water moved in, out ... with the thudding of his heart.

A sound beyond the walls of stone thundered like the sea.

No. No, it is the sea.

"Mother." It was a cry, a plea, and a prayer. He was afraid, so he closed his eyes and tried to act like a man. Qiel wasn't sure why, but he knew these stones that had held him in his cell were not going to hold him much longer.

He pulled on the heavy chains with both arms at the same time. His back arched, the water rose, and with each pull, the ground under his feet bulged and relaxed, bulged and relaxed.

Were the stories true? Had the powers of the old ones vanished, as some believed? Or is it possible some still exist? Questions filled his mind, and then the memory of his mother falling in front of him by the hand of the man with the blowgun—dead, for all he knew—brought his attention back to the very face of all his fears.

Qiel knew he should be terrified, scared out of his mind to see water like fingers twisting through the cracks in the walls, raining down from the domed ceiling. But now he laughed, for it was becoming clear to him that the water was not here to harm him. He was the one bringing it here, and it was his to move however he wished.

With the final pull, the once-heavy chains came apart, snapping from his wrists as if made of dry parchment. The ground boiled under him, white water rushing in, lifting him up as the room filled.

Then, real dread grabbed hold of him. I do not know how to swim. I really am going to drown.

Thin rays of light pierced his dark cell from above, and as he struggled against the ceiling, he took one last breath and then sank under. He began to panic.

I am sorry, Mother. I have failed both of us.

More light filled the room as the far wall began to crumble under the weight of the water. Qiel watched this and began to hope again. The wall could fall, and he could be set free, but will it happen in enough time? The breath he had drawn was now stale, and his lungs burned with the effort it took to hold it. He burst and let it go, breathing in a lungful of water.

To his great surprise, it didn't hurt like he thought it would. He could breathe it. It was different, but breathing out and in a few times, he realized he was still alive—he would be fine.

The stones of the wall began to move farther apart and then fell away. He could see, as the waters poured out, that he was high up above the ground; his cell hadn't been subterranean, as he had supposed. He had been imprisoned in a tower.

Far below, in the oppressive light of the Arabian Desert sun, he could see one of the guards gaping in astonishment from the pile of rubble below and then upward to him as he stood on the edge of the ruined tower. Water poured from his broken cell and he coughed up what remained of it in his lungs. Twisting tentacles of water hung in the air at his sides, and as he lifted one arm, the tentacle reacted to his movement.

Qiel now felt this new power surging through him, and he heard the crashing of many powerful waves resounding in his head. As they broke over his mind, he and the water launched out of the tower into the air and down to the earth, crashing and breaking over the sands in a tide of irresistible power. The rush of the waters delivered Qiel into the wide open, crushing the lone guard under its weight. The waters then receded, absorbed into the dry sands that greedily received them.

He realized then that he had changed completely. He had become what his mother long feared he would become—one of the Sons of El.

Soaked, Qiel slowly stood to his feet and looked around him, blinking his eyes.

I'm free.

He turned and ran.