by Tad Williams
By the time the thing dug its way out of the wreckage I was crouching on the bumper of the N 35 bus on the other side of the Camino Real, heading south. I could dimly see the shadow snorting and sniffing in the ruins of the showroom, but apparently it didn’t see me clinging to the bus’s rear quarter panel, struggling for breath while I bled gently down the CalTrans logo and onto the asphalt that was sliding away beneath me.
It doesn’t really count as riding because I didn’t buy a ticket.
ten
that frightened
I jumped off the bus in the Miramonte district at the southern end of the city. After a long conversation with the nervous desk clerk of a chain motel (and a bribe with one of the emergency twenties out of my money belt) I finally had a place to stay-“hide out” might be a better term, but I had no idea whether hiding from the thing that had just attacked me was even possible. Still, angels, demons, and even powerful malign spirits can’t flaunt the rules of cosmic order-it’s just that some of the rules are different for us folks than they are for you folks. If the monstrosity had a physical body, and it most definitely had (very hot, very strong, very mean-remember?) then it was operating on the physical plane. It might be able to track me by scent or something else, but in a city of a million plus it would have to get reasonably close to me first. The thing had almost certainly been pointed in my direction by some guiding intelligence, but that probably just meant it would be haunting my familiar spots. As long as I kept moving I should be all right, at least for a while. All the same (and not that it would slow something like that down for more than a couple of seconds) I put the chain on the motel room door and jammed a chair under the knob.
I had stopped at a nearby pharmacy for first-aid stuff, so after I took care of my wounds, which were fairly minor under the circumstances, I could finally leave my bandaged, Bactine-smeared body asleep on the motel bed to answer the summons from my superiors.
I wasn’t really looking forward to whatever was going to happen to me upstairs and wanted to put it off as long as possible, so I took the long way in to the Celestial City. I could do this without getting in trouble because there’s really no time in Heaven: when you’re there is when you’re there. It’s all Now. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to explain unless you’ve done it.
Anyway, since it wasn’t going to make a difference to anyone but me, I took the long, slow way through the Fields, breathing the sweet airs and letting the sight of the contented faithful dancing and singing on those infinite meadows comfort me. There’s a reason we angels do what we do, I sometimes tell myself (especially when the doing part has been particularly unpleasant, frightening, or painful) and in my case it’s to bring deserving souls to this happy rest. Every success means another person gets to leave all misery, sickness, and old age behind and come to live here, forever young in the gardens of the Lord.
Thinking that way helped-it always does-but it didn’t make all my problems go away. Didn’t make the whole mess easier to understand, either.
What was this horned abomination that seemed so interested in ripping my head off? It had the stink of the deeper pits of Hell all over it, but it’s very hard to manifest something like that in the real world-that’s one of the reasons angels and demons look pretty much like regular folk when they reside on earth: it’s just a lot easier to maintain something ordinary. So someone had been exerting a hideous amount of power to make that monstrous thing appear in the first place and keep it hunting me, which it had obviously been doing for at least a few days. Who wanted to hurt me that bad?
I wondered if finding out what exactly that monstrosity had been would give me a clue about who sent it. It was big and nasty, that was all I knew for sure, and it sure felt like a demon, but there was something unusual about it that kept me from being certain. It seemed old, somehow-primitive. Even the Opposition’s meanest, most monstrous fetches can usually communicate, or give you the impression they could if they wanted to. The horned thing had seemed empty of any thought but violence, more like an idea brought to life than a thinking being. I’d never seen or heard of anything quite like it, but it was definitely out there and definitely interested in killing the crap out of me.
By the way, you may be wondering why I fought so hard not to get murdered when death isn’t permanent for my kind. You’re probably thinking, Big deal, angel-guy, so something ugly chews up your body-you can always get another body, right? But what you’re missing is a few key facts. First of all-and this is always an important point, especially to me-painful death really hurts. Nobody I know wants to get eviscerated by a monster with claws like red-hot gaff hooks, even if they felt sure it was just a brief detour on their journey through eternity. Secondly, there are occasional cases where angels (or demons, for that matter) aren’t or can’t be resurrected. That had happened to my first mentor, Leo, and Grasswax the prosecutor had just provided another unpleasant example of the phenomenon. Nobody talks about it much, at least in Heaven, but everybody knows it happens. Every now and then an angel is destroyed and can’t be brought back. The bosses always say that kind of “unsupported death” (charming euphemisms they’ve got, huh?) is due to the evil workings of the Opposition, but some of my colleagues over the years have whispered that it often seems to happen to the troublemakers-the kind of angels Heaven won’t really miss. Sacrilege, I know, but I’m just reporting what others tell me. I will say, however, that most of those others mentioned it to me because they were worried I might turn out to be one of those “difficult” angels.
So many questions. One that had just occurred to me was, why send a monster, a massive power-drain even for a strong Hell-minion? Why not just send a couple of lowbrow demons or human familiars with Uzis? If you bring in enough firepower you can pretty much kill any earthbound angel.
That gave me a very disturbing thought. Why was I so certain the thing had been sent to kill me? An even more frightening possibility was that it was meant to capture me.
I say this because although Grasswax the prosecutor had eventually died, he had clearly been tortured first, and even when you’re talking about Hell the motive for that is usually one of a very short list of things-plain old sadistic revenge, or wanting to set an example, or simply to extract information. When I considered that my current plight seemed to be tied to the Walker mystery and the subsequent fate of Grasswax (a fate which he had likely suffered because someone wanted to hear what he knew about it) I was pretty certain I didn’t want that thing to take me alive even more than I didn’t want it to kill me-and I really don’t like things killing me.
Restored a little by a soothing journey through the Fields, my angelic substance no longer stretched quite to the breaking point, I let myself be drawn the rest of the way to the Celestial City without any subjective experience of time. The journey’s not quite instantaneous-well, actually, it’s more than instantaneous, I guess, like one of those particles that can be in more than one place. You sort of flicker in one place until you’re flickering in another, and I can’t say it better than that. Anyway, when I entered Temuel’s office it was exactly when I was expected, but even so he seemed agitated and impatient.
“Come, Doloriel,” he said. My supervisor was definitely worked up about something: his light was uneven, smeary as a Christmas tree behind a wet window. “They’re waiting for us.”
A moment later we were out of the maze of light known as the California Building and just as quickly out of the North American complex altogether. The Mule and I found ourselves standing before the solemn gate of a palace I’ve never seen, or at least that I didn’t remember. (Another strange thing about Heaven is how hard it is to recall details when you’re back in a mortal body: each time you visit the place it’s sort of new all over again.) The vast edifice was made of pure adamant, which is a Heavenly way of saying “slabs of diamond as big as a mountain.” It did indeed tower high into the heavenly sky, which is a beautiful but more transparent blue than that of earth, with stars showing through. The
gleam of animate souls moving around inside could be seen through the substance of the tower’s walls.
“The Anaktoron of the Third Sphere,” Temuel said, and the hushed tension in his voice told me everything I didn’t already know about the seat of government for the whole of Earthly matters.
“What are we supposed to do here?” I asked, but didn’t get a reply. A moment later we were inside-clearly expected, too, since we didn’t even have to engage with the impressively terrifying angels guarding the palace door. We appeared on one side of a great stone table in a room that looked as large as Pasadena, with windows a hundred feet high letting in heaven’s pearly light. A river, an actual river, wound its way through the substance of the polished floor, bending widely around the table, and the music of the moving water was the only sound in that massive space. A quintet of brilliant shapes hovered across from us on the far side of the table-five important angels. Five very important angels, in fact, two who were male (in aspect), two female, and one that was neither.
“This is your Ephorate,” Temuel said, then named the waiting angels from left to right. “Karael, Chamuel, Terentia, Anaita, and Raziel.” Some of the names were more than familiar. I had never had the slightest urge to be called in front of any of them, much less all of them at the same time. An Ephorate is a judgement council, convened to deal with one issue. Nobody knew exactly how high angels got chosen to be ephors, but it meant that this was top-level, official business. Was I really worth that much attention? Had they summoned an Ephorate because I was going to be condemned? I didn’t know, but I sure hoped not. Whatever it was, though, I had definitely been called on the carpet bigtime.
“Welcome, Doloriel,” said the awesomely beautiful, merciful, and loving coruscation of light that was Terentia. She was all colors submerged in a brilliant sheen of whiteness and seemed to be the leader of this little gathering. “God loves you.”
I bowed my head. It was impossible to be in a room full of so much angelic fire and not feel overwhelmed, like a child in the presence of respected elders. It was even more impossible not to be afraid. “Thank you, Mistress.”
“We are concerned about events on Earth,” said the astonishing youth named Karael in his armor of glittering electrum, and just the touch of his mighty thoughts almost made me swoon. His colors were darker than Terentia’s, ripples of black and red gleaming through his brightness like stones in the bed of a fast-flowing stream. Karael was known all over the Celestial City. He was one of the militant angels, a veteran of the Fall, and in person he oozed power. I couldn’t help wondering what complicated heavenly protocols made him take a place behind Terentia in this gathering. “We wish to hear everything that you know about the soul known as Edward Lynes Walker.”
Hearing that, I felt a tiny bit less worried: Apparently this Ephorate was investigating the Walker case, not me personally. It wouldn’t save me if they decided I’d screwed up, of course, but at least the focus wasn’t just on Bobby D.
I told them everything I knew. Well, not every single dubious thought that had ever kindled in my secret heart, but everything else-Fatback, The Water Hole, Walker’s granddaughter and her idiot boyfriend, even my meeting with the Countess of Cold Hands. I won’t go so far as to say the higher angels can read minds, but I will say this: It would have taken a stronger soul than your narrator to hold anything important back while facing a group of them gathered as sworn ephors. I was damned frightened. You would be too if your immortal soul was literally on the line.
“Why would you go out of your way to speak to this Countess?” Anaita asked when I finished. “Let alone risk an incident of the sort you nearly caused?” She seemed the sweetest of all those gathered, her voice that of an innocent young girl, her appearance as delicate as a rainbow just before it fades into the sunlight, but I didn’t kid myself-“sweet” is relative when you’re talking about a creature who was probably spearing demons right and left in the last great war against Satan’s hordes. “Why would you put yourself in such jeopardy, Angel Doloriel? You know the creatures of The Adversary mean you nothing but harm.”
“Even a born liar can be useful, Mistress, if only by paying attention to the lies he chooses to tell and the way he tells them,” I said politely. “I wanted more information. I was upset on behalf of Heaven and disturbed that such a thing as the missing soul could happen.”
“This smacks to me of arrogance and pride.” Karael’s voice rumbled like a distant storm. It might have been hard to imagine Anaita smiting demons, but it was pretty obvious Karael probably smote a dozen or so before breakfast every morning, just by way of an eye opener. “You did not seek the counsel of your superiors. You did not address your concerns to Archangel Temuel or any others.”
“And, now, because of your well-known stubbornness, you have become entangled with one of Heaven’s dire foes.” Chamuel’s light was pearly and there were times when I could almost make out a manlike shape beneath the radiance, like something seen in a mist. “Someone has spoken your name to a dreadful primordial spirit-a ghallu, a slave of Old Night, which has put both your bodily raiment and your immortal soul, Heaven’s generous gifts, in danger.”
Which meant I finally knew what was after me, or at least its name, but I didn’t like the “soul in danger” part very much at all.
“We are also not pleased that you changed your earthly dwelling without consulting any of those who watch over you,” said Raziel, the sexless one who had been silent so far. Raziel was dark, if an angel can be dark, its light old and ruddy like a sunset. “You are a soldier of Heaven. To act without consultation suggests you do not trust the love that the Highest and the ministers of the Highest have for you.”
“That troubles me, also, Doloriel,” said Terentia. “Se raises a question I would have asked myself.” (Heavenly speech has a way of talking about the angels that are neither male or female without reducing them to “it”.) “I would hear you answer herm.”
This was perhaps my most dangerous moment in front of the Ephorate, because they were absolutely right, of course. I don’t trust Heaven-or at least not everyone in Heaven-to have my best interests in mind. I had developed this habit over years of petty disappointments and irritations, but sometimes it seemed to run deeper even than that, as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle or the claws on a badger.
“I…I was confused, Masters,” I said. “That’s the only defense I can offer. Caught up in time and earthly things, I judged that there would be a better moment to share everything with Heaven-as we’re doing now.” It was lame but it was all I could come up with, and at least there was a little truth to it. “If I’ve disappointed or sinned against the Highest, I beg pardon.”
“It is presumptuous to think that you might disappoint He who made you,” said Karael. “Did the whore of Hell say anything else to you-this Countess of Cold Hands?” He spoke her name with such withering distaste I had no doubt that if she stood helpless before him, then he would have blasted her to cinders without an instant’s hesitation. “Are you certain you have told us everything?”
Karael scared me. Just by standing there so bold and beautiful he made me feel like a miserable, dirty little sinner, and at that moment I couldn’t imagine telling him anything but the truth. “I have, Master. Did I do wrong?”
A pause fell over the gathering. I could dimly sense currents of thought running between the five of them but it was communication far too lofty and swift for me to understand.
Chamuel broke the silence. “Archangel Temuel, what have you to say? After all, Doloriel is your charge.” Chamuel hadn’t spoken much more than Raziel. His inner fires were banked low, at least to my senses, but he gave the impression of depth and solemnity: to gaze on his Heavenly form was to sense something vast and awesome lurking just out of sight.
The Mule took a moment to compose his thoughts, or at least that’s what I hoped he was doing, since it was also possible my personal archangel was getting ready to throw me under the bus. “I am
honored the Holy Ephorate desires my opinion,” he said at last. “Doloriel’s tradecraft is good. It is true that he can be one of the more headstrong spirits, but as you know, that is often the case with Heaven’s servants who exist in time on the plane of Earthly existence. And as we all know, there are occasions when such traits are useful. A more composed spirit might have succumbed to the hunting demon.”
“A more composed spirit might not have been pursued in the first place,” pointed out Terentia-a touch unfairly, I thought, but of course I didn’t say so.
“Then perhaps it is time we gathered Doloriel back into the heart of the fold,” said Anaita. “Perhaps it would be a kindness to let him return to the Celestial City and exult in the closeness of the Highest as we all do.”
For a moment, listening to her sweet Bo Peep voice, I really wanted that, despite everything that makes me who I am. Yes, I thought, bring me back to Heaven for good. Let me live here and sink into the glow and the warmth and the certainty. No more questions, no more responsibilities, no more fear of failing a needy soul…It truly seemed the nicest thing that could happen. Only for that moment, though. Then I got over it.
I said, “You’re too kind, Mistress,” but suddenly it all seemed different again, and I wanted nothing else in all of Creation except to get out of that ineffably beautiful, blissful place and back to stinking, dangerous, unpredictable Earth. Because that was where my work was, not up here in the shining streets and tranquil gardens of Paradise.