Angelica (65 page)

“Gaaron!” someone else shouted, and he found himself in a circle of maybe twenty angels, hard to see in the dark by the starlight above and the firelight below. “They're attacking Velora!”

“How long have they been here?” he shouted back.

“I don't know!” the voice replied. He thought it was Enoch, but the speaker was so hoarse that he couldn't be sure. “We've brought—we just flew out here a little while ago—we've got bags and bags of rocks, we've been throwing them down—”

“Good!” he called. “Have you managed to hit any of them?”

“Too far away to tell,” came another voice. Ahio, he thought. “But I've seen some of their fire sticks shooting astray, and I think that's because we've knocked someone over.”

“You'll have to get closer,” Gaaron said. “Aim for their heads as best you can. But not too close—you don't want them to turn their fire sticks on you.”

“Gaaron, what else can we do?” Chloe.

“Nothing yet,” Gaaron replied tersely. “First I must pray for thunder.”

There was a general exclamation at that and a moment of rough air almost impossible to negotiate as all the angels crowded closer to hear more. But Gaaron pushed himself a yard or two higher, away from their questions and their dangerous wingbeats.

“Ahio, come with me,” he directed. “The rest of you—closer to Velora, and don't stop flinging down your stones. I do not know how long it will take the god to respond to our prayer.”

“But Gaaron—”

“But can you be sure where the lightning will strike?”

“Gaaron, the city will be leveled in half an hour!”

“Gaaron—”

“But, Gaaron—”

He ignored them all, left them all behind with a determined downbeat of his wings. The god was so far above them that he could not see the danger that threatened. Gaaron must go practically to Jovah's doorstep to ensure that the god could hear.

He pointed his chin upward and followed his own trajectory as high as he could go, up through the black heavens and into the regions that belonged solely to the god. It was so cold that his feathers turned to frost; the blood in his veins
iced over. The air was so thin that his head pounded with pain, and a thin soprano shrieking began sounding in his ear. He could barely breathe this high up. He was not sure he could sing.

He hovered a moment, investing great energy in each drag and uplift of his wings, letting his lungs accustom themselves to the knife-thin air. He was so light-headed that he had forgotten Ahio was to follow him, and so he was astonished to see a pale, fluttering shape materialize beside him in the uninhabited reaches of space.

“Gaaron,” Ahio said, and his beautiful voice sounded tinny and faraway. “This is too high.”

“We will sing from here,” Gaaron said, and opened his mouth to begin his prayer.

The notes fell out of him like sparks or fireflies—tiny, beautiful, and winged with fire. He saw them drift away from him and spiral upward, as if wafted by invisible smoke on summer air. He sang one entire verse before Ahio's voice dropped in, dark and smooth as polished amber. Their voices blended, and the images faded, and now the world around Gaaron was turned to music. The stars sent up faint trumpet blasts; the wind soughed through with an oboe plaint; and the braided voices of the angels gained force and beauty as they chorused their way up the chilly ramps of the atmosphere to the dark, vaulted chambers of the god.

They sang for an hour, their voices growing more powerful with every melodic line. Their lungs filled up on this insufficient air and their hearts beat in quick, metronomic strokes to send the blood racing more industriously through their bodies. Ahio's voice glided under Gaaron's, providing a structure, a place to gather; Gaaron's voice leapt upward from the springboard of Ahio's strength. They flung their prayer to the god's attention, and felt it go crashing through the windows of Jovah's house.

Yet, no thunderbolt fell. No lightning erased the stars.

Once again—singing the prayer over again from the beginning. Gaaron felt himself starting to tire. His wings were woven of icicles; the feathers tinkled together like crystal quills. He weighed a thousand pounds, two thousand. If he folded his wings and plummeted to the earth, his impact
would destroy Velora and every invader within fifty miles. He was so cold he could not distinguish any sensation, internal or external. He was cold enough to be the source of winter itself.

But he kept on singing, and Ahio sang beside him.

And the lightning did not snarl down, and the god remained silent.

“Gaaron!” Ahio cried, suddenly breaking off his dark harmony. “Gaaron,
look
!”

And Gaaron, who was already staring upward at the stars, stared even higher.

Above them, so high they could not possibly fly that far, the heavens were riddled with fire. Streaks of light flew from an invisible source to an unseen target, and then it was as if the stars themselves exploded. Sheets of light turned to coruscating color, then a great aureole of glittering particles shimmered and disappeared. Again, the bright, soundless, blooming illumination of the sky—the cascading run of colors, from violet to emerald—then the shattered halo of light—then darkness.

Surely it was his imagination that from below them came a desperate outcry of terror and alarm?

“Keep singing!” Gaaron shouted, pausing long enough to take one deep breath. And then he plunged back into prayer, invigorated and determined. He had no idea what that convulsion of light signified, but that it was the work of the god, he was certain. And that it had come in response to his supplication, he had no doubt.

Once again, he prayed for a thunderbolt. Once again, the heavens opened up into an opal devastation, and sparks rained down like ruined stars.

And then the air grew dense, or else so starved that it was impossible to take it in. Gaaron could not breathe, could not produce a note, and as if from far away, he heard the sound of Ahio choking.

“Down!” Gaaron coughed out, and folded his wings and dropped.

He was a bolt from the god, he was an arrow from a crossbow. He fell like a creature with no restraints. Down, down, down, a descent so rapid that his skin heated up and
his frozen wings began to curl with smoke. He could see the mountain taking shape below him, see the fires that marked Velora separate into their individual towers of flame. The sounds of destruction and lamentation rose in a faint cacophony to his ears. He unfurled his wings so sharply they made a snapping sound, and he felt his whole body jerk backward. He lashed the air until he had stabilized high above the city of Velora.

The invaders appeared to be gone.

More prudently, he dropped closer to the ground, trying to reconstruct what had occurred. The fires still raged all around the city, but no new ones flared up while he watched. He could see small shadowy shapes hurrying in all directions below—residents seeking water to put out the flames, mothers searching for their lost children, couriers bawling out their news. But these were all figures crisscrossing one another inside the city limits. No massed marauders were huddled outside Velora, mapping out a new strategy or preparing a new assault. All of Jossis' friends seemed to have disappeared.

Gaaron dropped lower, trying to read even more of the story. Littered around the burning city were dark shapes broken on the ground—the bodies of dead invaders, Gaaron guessed, brought down by his angels' primitive weapons. But surely the angels could not have killed all of the invaders who had been here. There had not been enough rocks in their arsenal. There were not enough bodies on the ground.

Perhaps they had seen the detonations in the sky and been frightened away by the god's display of might. Perhaps they knew, if they torched one more city or leveled one more town, they, too, would be annihilated with divine fire.

But Gaaron could not really understand it.

The air rocked around him, and he was once again in a circle of angels, all beating their wings at once. “What happened here?” he called out. “Where did they all go?”

“Gaaron, did you see the light in the heavens?” Zibiah cried.

“Yes—three times—like the sky was on fire.”

“They saw it, too—it frightened them,” someone else took
up the story. “Some of them saw and pointed, and then they—and then half of them disappeared.”

“Some of them stayed, and pointed more fire sticks at Velora—”

“But then the light in the heavens came again—”

“And again—”

“And more of them disappeared each time.”

“But they kept
pointing
,” Enoch added. “After that first flash of light, they kept pointing, and crying, as if something they wanted was up there in the sky. As if they thought it was in danger and they had to rescue it.”

“That makes no sense,” Chloe said impatiently.

“I know it doesn't, but that is what I saw—”

“Peace, we may never understand it,” Gaaron interrupted, throwing his hands out to signal for silence. “Wherever they have gone, they are not here now.”

“But Gaaron, will they come back?” Zibiah asked, her voice fretful. “We held them off today, but not very well, and Velora is almost destroyed.”

“I don't know if they'll be back,” Gaaron said soberly. He was watching a winged shape meander down from overhead, at a more leisurely pace and a better angle than he had chosen. Ahio, come to join the conference of angels. “But they are gone now. Let us do what we can for Velora.”

“What can we do?” Zibiah demanded, and it was Ahio's hoarse, thready voice that answered.

“Pray for rain,” he said.

Susannah huddled on the white floor in the white room, and prayed for stillness. She was sick with incessant motion. The chamber she was in seemed to dart and dive and whirl from side to side in random bursts of energy. Outside the oversize windows, the constellations seemed to jump and collide. Small flashes of light sizzled past her field of vision and disappeared. Twice she saw the whole black canvas of the heavens blanch to white, and then she closed her eyes and did not look again. She was sick from motion and apprehension.

But she did not pray aloud or expect the god to hear her. She could not imagine that even Yovah could see past these
sudden blinding spasms of light, or catch up to the spinning, plunging, rolling chamber in which she sat. She just said the words over and over again in her head, and hoped with all her strength that she would soon wake up.

And then the motion ceased. The room seemed to shudder to a halt and then fell into a silence so immense that it made her wonder what noise had been present before. She had the sense of a predator waiting, a feeling that impossibly delicate senses were alert and attuned to scents or sounds that she would never discern. Even the wall behind her seemed strung with anticipation; the floor seemed coiled and ready to pounce.

She stayed tumbled where she was and did not move.

At last a great sigh seemed to travel through the room—or perhaps it was not a sigh—there was a hiss of air and a low hum like one she had sometimes heard in the music rooms at the Eyrie. As if a machine had been turned on and was waiting for the next hand upon the dial.

At least it seemed as if the rocking and the spinning had stopped for the moment. And the huge, thin windows showed only the same placid stars they had showed before. Cautiously, Susannah pushed herself to a seated position. When the world did not dissolve into motion again, she stood up.

“I hope,” she said aloud, but very softly, “it is time for me to leave this place.”

For some reason, she had not expected the voice to reply, but it did. “Indeed, you have been most useful, but it is time to return you to your proper existence,” came the welcome words. “You must do one more task for me, and then I will send you home.”

She was not so sure about this task, but she was eager to go home, so she said, “Tell me what I must do.”

“Reverse my artillery to its former position,” he said. “I will talk you through the exercise.”

This was not so hard as it sounded, as it had not been so hard the first time, though it involved pushing a stubborn lever from one slot to another and punching a number of buttons in the sequence that the voice called out. Three times she had to wait while a deep, grinding noise seemed to originate in the floor beneath her feet, and then she had to flip a
series of switches. None of this made any sense; she followed the crazy, colorful logic of a dream. And waited for what the voice required next.

“There. Main artillery realigned, auxiliary guns realigned, shield engaged in self-repair,” the voice announced. “I thank you, Susannah. Your hands have performed functions that all my circuits could not.”

“You're welcome,” she said, because it seemed the polite thing to say. “May I go home now?”

“Do you remember the route you followed to this room?”

She glanced at the door, somewhat surprised to find it, after all this commotion, in roughly the same spot it had been when she entered. “I'm—not sure.”