Archangel (45 page)

His arms, his voice. “Hush,” he whispered, over and over again. “Hush, now, Rachel, precious Rachel, don’t cry. How could I let you fall? Hush, Rachel. Who would I have beside me but you? No one. No one. I would let the world be rent in half before I would sing with any woman but you.”

She was only half-aware of it when he scooped her up in his arms again and then knelt, bringing both of them to the ground. He wrapped her in something soft and warm, then laid her with amazing tenderness on the thick grass.

“I have to build a fire,” he said, still in that sweet, murmurous voice. “Stay here. I won’t go far from you.”

“Gabriel,” she said, but she said it so softly she was not sure
he heard her. She heard his footsteps move away, but she was not afraid. She knew he would come back. She closed her eyes and, even before he returned, she slept.

Upon waking, Rachel lay for a long time with her eyes shut, luxuriating in a sense of well-being. It was late morning; she could tell by the thickness of the light across her closed lids. She had never felt so rested, so warm, so secure, so content.

She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, willing the sensations to last. No thought, no memory; no truth. She knew better than to open her eyes, look about her, and discover the perils of reality.

If only she could live in this moment forever.

She lay motionless, afraid that any abrupt movement might shatter the illusion, bring her sharply into some dark, cold present. Yet her arms felt loose and relaxed, her long legs stretched out instead of curling inward as they usually were when she woke. So often she slept cramped with cold, huddled under some insufficient blanket, but now she was suffused with a glorious heat. She was enveloped in softness, a silken texture against her face, her throat, the flesh of her arms and legs. She turned her head cautiously from side to side, risking the destruction of the illusion, just to feel the play of that downy weight against her cheeks, her chin, the tip of her ear. She had never felt anything so incredibly soft, velvet-rich, feather-light, blood-warm—

Feather-light—

Very, very slowly she opened one eye. The world was fiercely bright; half-blinded, she clenched her eye shut again. Too bright; as if full sunlight filtered down through something immaculately white … She opened both eyes this time.

She was in a tent of white feathers, covered from head to toe by their snowy expanse. Below her was a white blanket, offering what padding it could against the hard ground. Outside, mid-morning sun beat down, adding its own iridescence. But she was inside, in a cocoon of mist and feathers—

She was sleeping under the quilt of Gabriel’s wing.

Which must mean that Gabriel was sleeping beside her.

Even more slowly, with infinite care, she reversed her position, inch by inch, until she was facing inward. Gabriel’s wing was draped so completely over her, touching the ground on either side of her body, that it was hard to orient herself in relation to
him. But surely that was his back, solid against the feathered white wall, and the shadow so near her head his own mane of tousled black hair.

Sweet Jovah singing, he had slept beside her all night, and kept her warm with his wings; and perhaps he did not hate her after all.

She did not move again, fearful of waking him up. She lay there and considered the events of the night before.

Well, he had saved her life. Surely he had been under some compulsion to do that, even if he hated her. She was, after all, a woman marked by the god, and as such, valuable by divine decree. He had been angry, actually furious—had spoken harshly to her, as he had more than once in the past—but she knew all about using anger to camouflage other emotions. And it was the reason for his anger that was intriguing—he had been afraid for her, distraught that she planned to take her own life.

Had he really said he would sing with no angelica but her? Had she dreamed that? And if he had really said it, had he meant it—?

Dearest Jovah, he would be flying her back to the Eyrie today, carrying her in his arms. He was so strong; he would not falter once, would not think of setting her down so that he could rest. Her face burned. Her whole body clamped together in one wave of embarrassment. How could she let him carry her all that way for all those hours—

Her unwary movement had caused her wrists to brush against the sensitive feathers. There was a quick, seemingly involuntary tightening of his wing upon her, and she felt his whole body shift. She froze, but the feathers twitched and lifted. Gabriel had rolled over and was peering in at her. Instantly the white light under the feathered tent took on a sapphire cast.

“You’re awake,” he said gravely. “How do you feel?”

“Lucid,” she said, surprising herself by being able to talk quite normally. “Better than last night.”

A quick smile passed across his face. “You were lucid last night,” he said. “Are you hungry? Naomi sent a few provisions with me, but there’s not much to choose from.”

“Naomi?” she repeated, sitting up. Instantly his wing fell away from her. The sun-warmed air suddenly seemed cool against her bare skin. “When did you speak to Naomi?”

“Yesterday—no, the day before. I went looking for you when Matthew said you were returning with the Edori. She helped me figure out where you were.”

“Then she’s at Velora?”

“Everyone is. Waiting for us.” He laughed softly. “At least, I imagine they’re waiting for us. Since I told no one—except Naomi—where I was going, everyone may be frantically searching for my body along the roads and mountains of Bethel.”

“So nobody knows where you are?”

“Or where you are. I’m glad I’m not one of the poor bewildered fools left behind to wonder what’s happened.” He had risen and gone to fetch the leather pouch that held their meager supplies. “We had best make haste back.”

She was ravenous. He gave her first choice of the food, and she ate more than her fair share, but he did not seem to begrudge her. He watched her with shadowed eyes. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me everything that happened to you at Windy Point.”

She thought of the long night barricading the door with her own body, the sessions of near-madness brought on by the ceaseless wind. “Maybe,” she said. “But one thing I do need to tell you. Leah—”

“She was there?”

“I didn’t see her. Raphael told me—” Rachel took a deep breath. “She’s not really the woman he was supposed to marry. Some Jansai princess. He killed that woman and put an angel-seeker in her place.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to refute the possibility, then slowly compressed his lips again. “It could be true,” he admitted after a moment’s stunned thought. “Jansai women are kept closely under wraps—none of us had met her before the wedding. But Rachel, that means—”

“I know,” she said. “It’s worse than we thought.”

“I keep thinking,” he murmured, “the Gloria is in just a few days. Then everything will be all right again. But then I think, he’s gone to so much trouble already to prevent the Gloria. Surely he won’t stop now.”

Rachel finished her food quickly and got to her feet. Gabriel stood beside her. “Then let’s get back as soon as we can,” she said.

He reached for her; the shock of his touch made her tremble involuntarily. He dropped his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know you’re afraid. But there’s no other way to get back in time. You’ll be safe.”

She smiled weakly. “I know,” she said, and stepped forward to put her arms around his neck. “I’m not afraid.”

At the Eyrie, all was mayhem. Someone had spotted them from a distance, so when they arrived, touching down on the central plateau, nearly a hundred people were awaiting them. Rachel was so weary that she actually clung to Gabriel as he set her on her feet, and he kept an arm around her when he felt her stagger. Voices, faces, questions, demands—images and words all ran together into a blur. Rachel knew that Gabriel had to be at least as tired as she was, yet she heard him field inquiries and rap out quick questions of his own. All she could do was stand there mute and exhausted.

“Here—Hannah—take her to her room. Give her something to make her sleep,” Gabriel was saying. He transferred custody of her dead weight to other hands, and someone began leading her away.

“No—” she protested faintly, but in truth it was all she could do to put one foot before the other to navigate the hall. Never before had her own room here felt so welcome.

“Would you like me to help you bathe before you sleep?” Hannah was asking. “You might feel better if you got cleaned up—”

So she looked a fright; what a comfort. “After I sleep,” Rachel muttered. “Thank you. I just want—I’m so tired—”

She was asleep before Hannah left the room.

It was late afternoon when she lay down, and night fell and was far advanced before she woke again, wondering where she was. It was not the arrangement of shapes and shadows that reassured her, but the blended voices of the angel singers, sprinkling their lullabies across the Eyrie.

It occurred to her to wonder if she would ever again sleep as soundly, as trustfully, as she had under the shelter of Gabriel’s wing, but then she was furious with herself for even thinking about it. She squinched her eyes tightly together to make herself go back to sleep.

It was relatively early when she woke again—an hour or two past dawn. She did not bother with her usual game; the instant she was awake, she opened her eyes and sat up.

“I’m not even going to look in the mirror first,” she murmured, standing up and finding all her muscles shaky. “I’m just going to take a bath.”

She showered and rinsed, showered and rinsed, in the warm falling stream of the water room. She was combing out her tangled wet hair when she stepped back into her bedroom to find she had company.

“Maga!” she exclaimed.

The angel turned at the sound of her name, then flung herself across the room with her arms outstretched. “Rachel, Rachel, we’ve been so worried about you! It’s so terrible! Raphael—and then you were kidnapped—and I still can’t believe what they’ve been saying.”

Rachel laughed. “Calm down. Let me get dressed. Tell me what you’ve heard and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Thus it was to Magdalena that Rachel owed her knowledge of what had happened at the landholders’ meeting. “Gabriel really threatened to change the face of Samaria with the weather patterns?” she said slowly. “And Ariel has agreed to it?”

Maga nodded, her face troubled. “She doesn’t like it—well, she
didn’t
like it, but now that we’re hearing all these awful stories about Raphael—well, it looks like Gabriel was right all along.”

“He is,” Rachel said absently. “But have Elijah and Malachi and all the others been told about—me, and Leah, and everything else?”

“I don’t know. But I heard—”

“What?”

“They say that people are already starting to gather on the Plain,” the angel said in a rush. “Merchants from the river cities, and Jansai clansmen, and Manadavvi … And Obadiah came back from the Plain late last night and said Raphael and Saul and some of his angels were already there.”

“Raphael’s coming to the Gloria?” Rachel said sharply. “But he doesn’t even believe in Jovah.”

Maga nodded. “Gabriel says he’s there for some kind of mischief.”

“Oh, no question.”

“So he left this morning to see what he could find out.”

Rachel had been standing at the mirror, still working out the knots in her hair. Now she turned and stared at the angel. “Gabriel’s
gone
? But he—I thought he would take me with him—” Abruptly she closed her mouth.

“He asked if I would bring you as soon as I could. Or Obadiah.”

Rachel turned back to the mirror. She was so angry she could scarcely focus on her reflection. Angry with him, angrier with herself. Of course he would leave her without a word; he had done it over and over again. Stupid to think that everything had changed just because of a night spent camping out in the cold. He would have kept anyone warm with a fold of his wing; it was merely a measure of courtesy. “I’d prefer to travel with the Edori,” she said. “They’ll be leaving for the Plain today, I’m sure. We’ll arrive in plenty of time.”

“But Rachel. Gabriel said—”

“Gabriel,” said Rachel incontrovertibly, “is not here.”

There was a flurry of attention to endure when she did finally emerge from her room, a troubled Magdalena at her heels, but Rachel bore that well enough. She did not mind so much when it was Hannah and Matthew and Obadiah inquiring after her adventures, but even so she did not have much patience for the constant retelling. She wanted to get to Velora quickly, back to Naomi’s tent, back to the Edori who cared for her.

She even allowed Obadiah to ferry her down to the city, and found a moment to wonder why she had ever been afraid to be carried up and down that insignificant mountain.

“You’ve changed,” Obadiah said quizzically, cradling her perhaps a bit closer than necessary against his chest. “Time was you’d have been faint or furious by the time we landed.”

“I’ve flown so much lately, I’m beginning to feel like an angel myself,” she responded in the same light tone. “Heights do not frighten me at all anymore.”

“Truly? Then let me take you for a little ride—” He dipped and spun crazily in the air, causing her to shriek and clutch his neck.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she cried, pretending to strangle him. But she was laughing; he was not alarmed. He did, however, resume normal flying after a breathless moment or two.

“If you aren’t afraid, why won’t you let me fly you to the Plain?” he asked. “Or Maga. Although I’m stronger than Maga. I should really be your first choice.”

“I want to travel with the Edori,” she said.

He touched down, a somewhat more graceful landing than the two she had experienced in Gabriel’s arms. Then again, Obadiah probably had had more practice taking women on pleasure jaunts through the Samarian skies.

“You just want to make Gabriel mad,” he said calmly. “As usual.”

She was about to deny it, and then she smiled. “And do you think I’ll succeed?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “As usual.”