Archangel (56 page)

“I feel sick,” Nathan said when they met each other in the center of the mausoleum.

“And well you should.”

“Raphael did this? To everyone who did not believe him, who would not go with him to the mountain?”

“So it would appear.”

“But he—they were his friends, his disciples—”

“Raphael had no trouble dealing death. He had done it for twenty years, though we didn’t know it. It was life he could not sustain.” Gabriel glanced around the room one more time. He was feeling remarkably detached from all this, but he was not deceived. It was merely the flip side of Nathan’s undisguised horror. It was too large for him to comprehend, so his mind dealt
with it coolly. He could not stand to examine the reality too closely. “Did you see Leah among the corpses?”

“No. You didn’t either?”

“No. She must be somewhere in the fortress.”

They found her, three levels up, in an ornate bedroom decorated in swaths of pink silk. She appeared to be sleeping; the three maids who attended her seemed to doze as well in their overstuffed rose-colored chairs. Gabriel was taking nothing for granted, however. He examined each woman, touched his fingers to each slack mouth.

“All dead,” he said to Nathan, and motioned him out the door.

They went through the fortress from top to bottom, efficiently, methodically, opening every room and closet to see if they could find any living refugees. There were none. They had one moment of strange excitement when, at the very top of the castle, they happened upon a narrow corridor down which they could hear patchy music playing.

“Someone’s alive,” Nathan whispered, grabbing his arm. “Gabriel, do you hear it? Someone’s playing a flute or something.”

Gabriel nodded, and they crept slowly down the hallway. It was a novice, perhaps a child, blowing fitfully on a reed pipe. They could hear first a single note, then a broken chord, then a single sustained note again. The doorway into the small room was open; this musician was making no attempt to hide.

But when they edged cautiously into the chamber, it was empty. They looked quickly at each other and then searched the room again with their eyes. There was no place to hide. No one was in here. For the moment, the music had stopped.

“Haunted?” Nathan breathed.

Gabriel was examining the door. It had been broken open with some kind of heavy weight, and the lock had been smashed. He showed Nathan, who shrugged.

They both jumped when the music started again, two notes, then one, then a minor seventh chord, all blown in concert with the rattling of the window casement as the wind shook the glass. Gabriel’s eyes went quickly around the room, following the pull of the music.

“Look,” he said, pointing first to one reed stuck in the wall, then another, as he spotted them. “The wind is the musician.”

Nathan’s eyes were wide. “Who would do this?”

“Anyone who lived in this castle and loved harmony. There was no other music in Windy Point.”

“Who, though? And where is he now?”

Gabriel spread his hands. “Dead, now, no doubt. Raphael seems to have left no one behind.”

“This has become an evil place,” Nathan said softly. Gabriel nodded.

They left shortly after that, making their way as quickly as possible down the winding hallways and out through the portcullis, into fresh air and sunshine again. Gabriel felt a tremor from shoulders to heels as he stepped outside the fortress. It was as if he shook off a malevolent spirit trying to curl between his wings and wrap icy fingers around his throat.

“Aloft,” he said to his brother, and they sprang in tandem into the air, rhythmically stroking their wings against the heavy, capricious wind. Gabriel angled himself upward, over the mountain, through the low-lying clouds, into the frigid layer of atmosphere where breathing was just barely possible. Nathan asked no questions, but followed closely. Gabriel slowed to a hover, his great wings sweeping the air with a steady motion, and raised both arms above his head.

When he began singing, he felt Nathan’s shock even in this cold, still place. He clenched his hands, keeping his arms upraised, and continued to sing. The air was so clear that his voice rang against it like a hammer against a chime. His breath was so warm, so heavy, that his words seemed to take bodily form and fill the empty skies around them with birdlike shapes. He forced his fingers apart, stretched his hands to Jovah and sang the prayer again. Behind him, Nathan added his baritone in harmony. Their voices climbed through the snowy atmosphere and reached the god’s ear.

Lightning shot between them, nearly singeing Gabriel’s wing. The Archangel fell back, lost altitude, and beat the air madly to regain balance. Seconds later, sound arrowed down after the burst of light, a rolling boom that sounded like glass crashing all the way down the stairwell that linked the sky to the earth. Then a huge explosion threw the sound back up to heaven, wave after wave of rumble and collapse.

Gabriel folded his wings back and began to drift downward, Nathan behind him. They landed somewhere in the Caitana foothills far enough away that they did not have to see how the
thunderbolt had sheared the fortress from the mountains, destroying every stone and stick of the castle in the process.

“Even so,” Nathan said over their campfire that night, “none of the problems that are Jordana have been solved.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “First, we have to pick a site and build another hold. Perhaps in the southern part of the province this time. Near the Heldoras, I think.”

“A fortress can wait,” Nathan said impatiently. “Who will watch over Jordana? Which angels? Who shall lead them? Someone who can deal with the Jansai, not to mention the river merchants—”

“I’ve already decided all this,” Gabriel said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“No, who?”

“You, of course.”

Nathan stared at him. Gabriel smiled, for the first time in this long, dreary day. “Well, who else?” the Archangel asked reasonably. “You’re the one I trust most.”

“But Gabriel—”

“I know. You’ll need help. We’ll send a third of the Eyrie angels, a third of the Monteverde angels. We will all be spread too thin, but we will do the best we can.”

“But Gabriel, I—”

“Of course you can do it. I know it will be difficult. Ariel and I will help as much as we can.”

“But—”

“And I certainly don’t expect you to do it without friends,” Gabriel said. “Ariel has already agreed to donate Magdalena. Permanently, of course. You do realize that this is a lifetime assignment. That you and your children and your children’s children will henceforth be citizens of Jordana—”

“
Magdalena
?” Nathan cried. “You and Ariel agreed—”

Gabriel smiled again. “This time, we are heeding the wisdom of Jovah,” he said gently. “The two of you seem to have been called together for a purpose. This is the only purpose I can think of. Will you do this for me? I can think of no harder task in all of Samaria and no man I would rather ask to assume such a heavy burden.”

“Yes,” Nathan said, his voice low and strangled. “Yes. But Gabriel, you knew I would.”

* * *

The next few weeks passed in motion. Gabriel flew between Breven, Semorrah, Monteverde, Luminaux, Mount Sinai and the Heldoras so often that he began cursing the slowness of his wings, wishing for a faster mode of transport. He could not imagine how anyone endured the tedious hours of travel on foot or even by horse.

Yet everything was coming together. He found the merchants, the Jansai, even the haughty Manadavvi, cowed and eager to come to terms. The liberation of the Edori was the first step, and next were the sworn oaths to leave all peoples in peace and in freedom. It would take him months or years to sort out some of the other injustices, particularly among the wealthy Gaza landholders and their tenants. But he had made a start.

He spent time with Nathan and Maga in the Heldora Mountains, watching the construction of the new hold. This was to be modeled more after Monteverde than the Eyrie, an open, accessible community in which mortals mingled with angels. So be it; angels had been aloof too long. Maybe it was time to find new ways into and out of the Eyrie, so that anyone could come there who wished … and any who were there could leave… .

But anyone who had wanted to leave the Eyrie had already done so, and showed no disposition to return.

It was late summer, and Gabriel had seen no sign of Rachel, heard no word. He had not really expected to, and yet he had hoped. He could not keep himself, still, from scouting out the campsites he saw below him during his long, wearisome travels, looking for Edori, for certain Edori, for one woman traveling among Edori. But he never saw her. He never got close enough to the ground to identify gold hair shining incongruously bright among all the dark heads clustered in the camps. He kept his word.

Two months gone by, nearly three. Nine more months, at the longest, before he would see her again. He willed the world to begin spinning faster, the days to shorten, the nights to whirl by. That next time, he would swear no vows, he would accede to no impossible terms. He would make no mistakes. The next time she left him, he would be right behind her.

Gabriel was in Velora when the strange rain began falling. He had stopped to check on Peter and the orphanage so that the
next time he saw Rachel, if he ever saw Rachel again, he could tell her how well all the children were doing. The Archangel and the schoolmaster had just stepped outside to complete their farewells when the rain began to patter down around them. Only it wasn’t rain.

“You’d think you were in Breven,” Peter remarked, holding a palm before his mouth to screen out the dry, drifting particles. “Sandstorm like this.”

“I don’t think it’s sand,” Gabriel said. All around him was the oddest, softest hissing sound as the tiny grains whispered through the air and sprinkled to the ground. He could feel the mealy buildup in his hair, in his wings. He fluttered his feathers impatiently to clear them.

“No, I believe you’re right. It’s—well, rice or something. Seeds, I think. Great Jovah, where is this coming from?”

“I have no idea.” Gabriel squinted up at the overcast sky and could see nothing but the swirling mist endlessly forming and falling. “I can’t even guess what it
is
.”

People were sticking their heads out of doorways and windows, cupping their hands to catch the strange bounty. The children had, by some primal telepathy, instantly realized something unusual was afoot and broken free of their teachers and their classrooms. They were already running through the streets, catching the falling seeds in their open mouths, dancing under the dry, slick rain.

“Oh dear. I’m sure they shouldn’t be eating this, whatever this is—” Peter began.

Gabriel laughed. “It’s falling from heaven,” he said. “Surely Jovah is sending it. It must be safe.”

“But what
is
it?”

“I don’t know.”

No one in Velora, in fact, seemed to know, but like Gabriel, many citizens seemed to have deduced that Jovah was sending them some kind of rare gift. Already, buckets and pans and cook pots had been set outside in front of doors and on top of flat roofs. Women walked through the streets with their skirts spread wide to catch the grains as they fell. Gabriel stopped a dozen or so as he passed them, asking, “Do you know what this is?” All of them smiled and shook their heads.

He flew back to the Eyrie to find a similar scene in the arena in the center of the hold. Every imaginable container had been
laid out on the open stone; the plateau was so crowded with trays and cauldrons and vases that he scarcely had room to land. He ducked quickly inside the first open door and shook the seeds from his hair.

“What
is
this stuff?” he demanded of the first person he saw, who happened to be Hannah.

She was smiling. “Don’t you know? It’s manna.”

“Manna?” He glanced back toward the plateau, still snowy with descending seed. “But it hasn’t fallen on Samaria in generations—”

“I know.”

“And why has Jovah chosen to send it to us again after all this time?”

“Someone must have asked him for it,” she said, meeting his eyes squarely. “It is said that Hagar herself first wrote the prayer that the god responded to with this gift.”

And then he knew where Rachel was, and that she wanted to see him.

Two days later, he left in the morning and arrived at the foot of the Corinni Mountains in the early afternoon. He had brought gifts with him, and he carried as well his silver recorder on its chain around his neck. In his free time (what little there had been of it in the past weeks), he had practiced. He now had a repertoire of six fairly creditable, albeit simple, songs.

As befitted a penitent, he made no attempts to ease or shorten his journey. He began on foot at the base of the mountain and toiled upward uncomplainingly. He was not used to this particular kind of physical exertion, but he was in good shape, and the climb did not tire him or curb his building excitement. Nonetheless, he paused to rest about halfway up the mountain, dropped his bundles and freed his flute from its case.

He played his six selections twice apiece, serenading the birds, the wild foxes, the trees, the god and anyone else who might be listening. The pipe sounded just right here on this steep slope made half of stone and half of forest; it could have been birdsong or rainfall or dawn wind. He was sure that his idle melodies floated upward, skipping over the cruel iron spikes and skirling into the small house at the top of the mountain.

Retrieving his packages, he continued the climb. The pathway narrowed till he felt his shoulders and his wings squeezing
together to avoid scraping against the metal railings. The tips of his feathers trailed behind him in the dirt. No glorious entrance for him. He would arrive humble and disheveled as any mortal man.

But when he crested the final hill and gazed down into the clearing around the cottage, he could not help smiling. Flowers rioted in three gardens, smoke curled from two chimneys, and the smell of baking bread drifted back to him like an invitation. Rachel was nowhere in sight. He picked his way down the small hill, crossed the yard and knocked hopefully at the door. Then he held his breath until she opened it.