Archangel (51 page)

“That is not a fair test for Gabriel,” the oracle said seriously. “It is not reasonable to expect him to pass it.”

“Nobody ever said I was reasonable.”

“Let me explain to him—”

“I can make my own explanations,” she interrupted sharply. “If he bothers to ask me, then I will tell him.”

He shook his head; there was no soothing the troubled waters that lay between these two lovers. “Then you will sing tomorrow?”

She made a
moue
of resignation. “How can I not?”

He came forward, took her into a light embrace. She endured it for a moment and then pulled away. “Do not hate him forever,” Josiah said. “He loves you. But he has no choices either. In his hands lies the fate of the world.”

“And mine.”

“And yours. Do not blame him for gripping your hands rather too tightly. He is only trying to keep us all safe.”

She was still standing in the middle of the tent, feeling the contrasting pulls of physical exhaustion and spiritual turmoil, when Gabriel bent his black head and stepped hesitantly inside.

* * *

“Rachel—” he began.

She did not turn to took at him. “I know,” she said in an ironic voice. “You came as quickly as you could.”

“Well, I did,” he said cautiously. “It has been a difficult day.”

“In every respect.”

He came closer. “I wanted to ask you—”

She whirled on him. “I know what you wanted to ask me! Josiah has already asked me. Your brother has already asked me. Save Semorrah! Pray that the god intercede to spare the city.” She flung her hands out. “So? Go ahead. Ask me.”

He studied her with a close, troubled attention. When he spoke, his voice was soft, persuasive. “I understand,” he said slowly, “why you would want to see the city leveled into the water. I do understand. It is not just that you have suffered there—and that countless Edori have suffered there—it symbolizes every kind of suffering to you, everything terrible. Greed, and hatred, and abuse. I understand that it is not revenge that motivates you, but justice. And you have a passionate sense of justice. I understand all this, but, Rachel—it will not do.”

He put out a hand, palm up, in a curious and vulnerable gesture. “The city cannot be cleared, you know,” he went on. “The river has stopped rising, but the harbors are flooded, the bridge has fallen, and there is no way for angels to ferry thousands of people to safety. You remember your friend Lady Mary? She is in the city, carrying her unborn child. How many Edori slaves are there, watching the river rise and looking in fear toward the heavens? These are the people you would condemn to death if you refuse to sing tomorrow. You cannot believe in a justice as fierce as that.”

He left her deeply shaken. The gentle, almost kindly words unsettled her and dissipated much of her anger—but she had begun with a great deal of anger, and she still had plenty left. She gave him a shrug of feigned indifference.

“Innocent people have died before this, and will die again,” she said. “If I choose to stand silent beside you tomorrow, there is nothing you can do to change my mind.”

“Is there not?” he asked, very low. “Is there not some personal penance you would impose on me? You have complained before about my arrogance, my self-righteousness. I will become humble. I will beg you for their lives, if that is what you want. Ask me.”

She looked over at him, marveling. “How can it mean so much to you?” she asked. “You have no friends in Semorrah. The wealthy merchants hate you, and the others you don’t even know. If they died, you would not see their faces in your dreams.”

He gave a small shake of his head. “How can I explain to you?” he asked. “You will call it arrogance if I claim that the weight of all those lives lies heavy on me. You have always believed that Jovah hears every voice raised to him in prayer—well, I am not Jovah, but I hear the voices, too. Each voice. I am the safeguard of every soul on Semorrah, whether or not I know the faces. I have never in my life asked Jovah to throw down a thunderbolt to destroy another man—not because I didn’t believe that he would not answer me with lightning, but because I believed that every man’s life was sacred. Invested with a purpose and a divinity of its own. If I had been Jovah—” He stopped, troubled by the sacrilege of that, but went on. “If I had been Jovah, I would not have been able to smite the mountain yesterday. I would have let all of them live.”

“I would have struck them all down,” Rachel said swiftly.

He nodded. “I know. But surely you cannot extend the same fate to Semorrah.”

She turned away from him again. “And if I refuse to sing?” she asked over her shoulder. “Will you bring Ariel or some other woman to sing in my place?”

“You are angelica,” he answered. “It must be you.”

“While I live, I am angelica,” she agreed. “But if something were to cause me to die, suddenly, in the middle of the night—”

He made no answer. She swiveled back to face him. His blue eyes were locked on her so fixedly that she was momentarily dizzied. “But I forget,” she said softly, “how much you value human life.”

“Even to save Semorrah, I could not harm you,” he whispered. “To save the whole world. If you refuse to sing—tomorrow, or ever—so be it. The world will perish, and we will all perish. But I cannot raise my hand against you.”

It was impossible to draw a breath. She managed to speak with the sparse air somehow left in her lungs. “Very well, then, I have my terms ready,” she said. “I will sing tomorrow—and walk away from this Plain. You will return to the Eyrie without me, and you will not follow me, and you will not seek to bring me back. You will not set angels to scouring the countryside
looking for me. I will return for your next Gloria, and your next and your next. And you can expect no more of me than that for the rest of your days.”

It was as if he had not heard her. His gaze was so vivid, so intense, that it trapped her in an azure prison. Almost, he reached his hand out to her; she had the definite impression of an impulsive movement forcibly checked. She envisioned him laying his cool fingers against her face and peeling back her skin, peering inside her head, reading the coded text of the brain inside her skull.

“So,” he said, and again his voice was so low it was nearly inaudible. It was almost as if he were speaking to himself. “You were going to sing anyway, and all this anger is for me, for not believing in you.”

“Oh, no,” she said, with an attempt at carelessness. “I don’t care if you believe in me or not.”

He nodded, but not as if he were responding to her words— rather, as if he were acknowledging some unvoiced protest spoken soul to soul. “Very well, then, hate me for it,” he said, “but it is something I am glad to know.”

She jerked herself violently to one side, to escape the spell of his stare. “Very well, then, we understand each other,” she said curtly. “We sing tomorrow. At what time are the festivities supposed to begin?”

“The hour past dawn,” he said. “I will come for you. Will you be in Naomi’s tent?”

She would have been if he had not assumed so. “I will be here,” she said instantly. “I will be ready.”

“Sleep as well as you can,” he advised. “It will be a long day.”

As if she would be able to sleep this night. As if she would ever be able to sleep again. “Till tomorrow, then,” she said. He nodded at her and left.

He had not been gone three minutes when she began to cry. She was still weeping—silently, ceaselessly, in utter black despair—when Naomi came to her two hours later. She could not even tell Naomi the two things that made the tears run so bitterly down her cheeks: that he would not give her up even to save the world, and that tomorrow she was pledged to leave him forever.

* * *

Gabriel had not expected to sleep, but he did—dreamlessly, peacefully. The world held very few terrors for him now. The god had proved his existence; storm and flood had subsided at his prayers; and the angelica had agreed to lead the multitudes in the mass that would save them all.

True, Rachel would hate him for the rest of her life. But that was something he would wrestle with later, after the Gloria was sung, after the world was secured for one more year. For tonight, he would fall exhausted upon his cot just one more servant of the god. On the morrow he would awaken as Archangel.

He woke early, but he was not the first one up. He smelled cooking fires and cauldrons heating up even in the predawn dark. He rose, washed himself thoroughly and dressed with care. Black silk trousers were tucked into his black boots; a fine lawn shirt was fitted carefully over his shoulders and his massive wings. He wore a silver belt and his silver wristlets, and his eyes looked like jewels set deliberately in his face.

Leaving his tent, he went directly to Rachel’s and was not surprised to hear soft voices within. Naomi was the one who invited him to enter when he called out a greeting, but he had eyes only for Rachel once he stepped inside.

She was a statue of gold from her hair to her dress to her thin sandals. She wore a gold sash around her waist, thickly embroidered with sapphire-blue flowers in the pattern of her husband’s family, and sapphire earrings dangled from each ear. Her hair had been arranged in some impossibly complex fashion. Perhaps ten braids had been started halfway down her back, and tied, and the individual plaits had been linked together by a blue satin ribbon, creating in effect a shawl of her own bright hair. She had her back to him when he came in, but as he just stood there, staring at her, she turned to face him.

“Will I do?” she asked him coolly.

He nodded wordlessly. Naomi began chattering before he had marshaled his thoughts. “I have told the angelica she should wear the wristbands of the angels, but she says she left hers in the Eyrie. Could she borrow some? I know it is traditional to wear them.”

Rachel looked annoyed. “What do you know about traditions among the angels?” she asked.

“I know enough,” Naomi said firmly. “The angelica stands
on the Plain and raises her hands, and the sun catches the jewels in her bracelets. Isn’t it true, Gabriel? So you need bracelets.”

“I have brought her something she can wear instead,” he replied, crossing the tent. He had wrapped the slim package in a blue silk scarf. Rachel took it reluctantly from his hand.

“Is it a tradition to exchange gifts on the morning of the Gloria?” she asked.

“On the first Gloria, it often is. It is not required.”

She motioned backward, at her cot, and Naomi retrieved a long leather case. “I got this for you in Luminaux,” she said.

He could not believe it. She had bought him a present, and she still intended to give it to him. “I’m honored,” he said gravely. “Open yours.”

She unfolded the scarf and looked down a moment without speaking. “Let me see,” Naomi said, taking the package from her. “Aaah,” the Edori woman sighed. “These are so beautiful—”

“Put them on,” he said.

Rachel extended first her right hand, then her left, and Naomi helped her with the gloves. They were made of a gold net so fine that the latticed threads were almost invisible. Around each wrist were sewn circlets of sapphires, clustered together so densely that they looked like bracelets of solid blue. She turned her hands palm-up, palm-down, and the jewels glowed in the torchlight of the tent.

“Thank you,” she said with no inflection. “I will be happy to wear them.”

Naomi was smiling at him. “I know what she got you,” she said. “I’m the one who brought it back from Luminaux.”

He examined the supple case for a moment just to prolong the anticipation. He still couldn’t believe it. “From Luminaux, is it?” he said. “I thought perhaps I was getting a gift from an Edori craftsman.”

“This is better,” Naomi promised.

When he pulled back the flap and slid out the silver instrument, he was delighted and astonished. “A flute!” he exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted— This is so beautiful!” He held it to his lips, but pulled it away before blowing into it. “It is meant to be played, isn’t it?” he asked. “Or is it just ornamental?”

“It’s not a flute, it’s a recorder,” Rachel said. “And yes, you can play it. It’s supposed to be relatively simple to learn.”

He put his lips to the thin silver mouthpiece and breathed.
The sound that filled the tent was sweet, eerie and wistful. Tentatively he moved his hands, breathed again; the new note was just as pure, as otherworldly, as true. He pulled it from his mouth and gazed down at it in happy disbelief.

“This is—Rachel, it’s wonderful. Did I ever tell you how much I wanted to play a flute—or recorder, whatever? I’ll have to learn this right away.”

She was smiling faintly. “You mentioned it once or twice,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’m thrilled.” Then he realized that the silver chain should be slipped over his head so he could carry the recorder with him always, and he adjusted it around his neck and smiled even more broadly. “I wish I could play it now,” he said. “I’d play it for the god.”

“Next year, perhaps,” Rachel murmured. And he looked over at her, wondering what would have happened—between them and to the whole world—by next year’s Gloria. Some of his happiness faded.

There was a brief and awkward silence, but it was broken by voices outside. “Rachel?” a woman asked. “Gabriel?” a man called out.

“Maga,” Rachel said.

“And Nathan,” Gabriel added. “Time for us all to go.”

Naomi threw her arms around Rachel’s shoulders. “Sing with your whole heart,” she murmured into her friend’s ear. “I will be with the Edori, singing with you. Pray for all of us.”

She left the tent, the other two right behind her. “Don’t you look wonderful!” Maga exclaimed, pulling Rachel aside to admire her dress and her jewels. In the first faint light of dawn, Gabriel nodded over at his brother.

“Is everyone ready?”

“All gathered. Time to begin.”

They stood in the middle of the Plain, more than six thousand of them, and watched the sun come up over the low eastern mountains. Rachel took her place in the center of the great, quiet crowd. Semicircles formed around her, first the angels with their massed white wings, then the Edori, then the townspeople and farmers and wayfarers gathered here to listen to her prayers and offer their own to the god.