A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “How far does manland go, exactly?”

  Golly twiddled his toes. “Well, it sort of starts where the forests give out, two, three days’ drive east of here. And it includes all the farm country on the prairies, and the farm villages. And it ends up three or four days’ drive north, where the badlands are, and three, four days’ drive south, at the border of Artemisia.”

  “How far west does it go?”

  “Don’t know as anybody’s ever said. These little old foothills along here, they’re in manland right enough, but once you get back in the real mountains, they don’t call that manland. They call that wilderness!”

  This more or less accorded with Grandpa’s version of matters. Everything east of the mountains, Grandpa said. All the cities and Edges and towns and farms as far as a person could go in any direction before running into forests or some other country. Abasio nodded to himself, pleased to have the matter confirmed. Manland was a sizable piece of ground, even though it was mostly open space.

  They trundled along. After a considerable time they came up a long ridge, and Abasio sat up straight, looking far ahead. “All that sparkle there, what’s that?”

  “Those’re the walls around an Edge, boy. Didn’t you never hear about Edges?”

  “I know about Edges! They’re where the people went who left the cities, but I didn’t know they’d look like that.”

  “It’s the morning sun on ’em.”

  Abasio stared at the glistening walls until they dropped over the ridge and he lost sight of them. For a while there was nothing but farms and fields with trees furring the waterways. Then, after a good many miles, they crested a rise and saw the walls again, coming up close on the right, farther away on the left, across the divided highway. Tall they were, and slickly shining, with complicated barricades at the top. No bushes or trees along them, either.

  Golly pointed upward, saying, “Weapons they call laser cannons up there, and all kinds of alarms. You try and climb that, the guards’ll pick you off like an apple out of a tree.” Then he looked back at the road and abruptly stood on his brakes, cursing.

  “Oh, shee-it!”

  “What?”

  “Damn goblins!” the trucker growled as they screeched to a halt. “Look at that, will you! They’ve cut a trench right across the road!”

  They climbed out, Golly muttering and hitting the side of the truck angrily. The excavation was two feet wide, four feet deep, straight-edged as a grave across both lanes of the road they were on, with another one to match across the two lanes on the other side of the grassy strip.

  “Shee-it,” the driver growled to himself.

  “What do we do?” Abasio asked, more excited than annoyed. “Do we fill it in?”

  “We do not!” Golly exploded. “I got other things to do with my time besides fillin’ in goblin trenches or defusin’ kobold bombs or any of that. My aunt Hettie, but there’s more of ’em every time I turn around! You help me get the flaps out.”

  They had to unload several crates of batteries before they could get at the flaps, solidly constructed minibridges that they lugged to the front of the truck and dropped neatly across the trench. When they’d driven across the flaps, they got out and went back to reload.

  Abasio was bent over the flap, trying to get a good grip on it, when he suddenly got a sick feeling, as if he were going to throw up. He took a deep, shuddering breath, frightened, wondering what was happening to him, and at that moment Golly put a hand on his shoulder and made a surprised noise, a little whuff of air. There in front of Abasio’s eyes were two sets of booted feet, and legs covered with shiny black stuff that looked stiff, like the carapace of a beetle. Golly’s hand was pressing Abasio down, so he stayed where he was.

  A voice said, “You.” The voice was windy and hot, as though it came across a desert.

  “Yessir,” said Golly, standing very still.

  “You travel this road often?” The words seemed to come from far away. Abasio shut his eyes and concentrated on breathing. The words came out here, but they started somewhere else.

  “Yessir,” said Golly. “All the time.”

  “On your journey today, have you seen anyone along the road?”

  Golly swallowed audibly. “Him,” he said, tapping his finger on Abasio’s shoulder. “Just him.”

  Abasio felt his head being lifted. Not by hands, not by anything he could see or feel. It was like somebody had a fishhook set into his scalp and was pulling. He could feel the pain of it, as his eyes traveled up the legs and the stiffly armored black torsos to two identical expressionless faces, and two pairs of hot red eyes. It was the eyes doing it to him. He could feel them like levers, pressed into his flesh, as though their gaze had physical reality. His feeling of nausea increased. He wanted to shake or vomit or yell, but that seemed like a bad idea. The easiest thing was to hold real still, like when you meet a bad dog or come near to stepping on a rattlesnake.

  “Did you see anyone?” the windy voice asked.

  “Yessir,” he said, aping Golly’s manner. “Two men walking along, goin’ toward Fantis—”

  “With a child? Children?” the voice demanded.

  Abasio had no particular reason not to mention the old man and the donkey, but this avid question brought back the feel of the toddler in his arms, her lips on his cheek. Though it was no doubt a very risky thing indeed, he decided the questioners didn’t need to know about every damn donkey.

  It took more resolution than he’d ever used before to tell them just what he did. “The two men didn’t have any family with them. When I saw them last, they were just two big men walking north along the highway.” The effort not to say anything more left him limp and wet all over.

  Without farewell, the two shiny figures moved away, also northward. Even sweaty and distracted as he was, Abasio noticed they moved faster than men should be able to move.

  “Shee-it,” murmured Golly, panting as though he’d been holding his breath. “That’s all I needed. Damn it to all hell, I went an’ peed my pants.” He pulled the fabric away from his groin and flapped it, cursing vividly, though in a subdued voice.

  “Who were they?” asked Abasio.

  “People call ’em walkers. Last couple of years, they’ve been all over the place, asking about babies. Little girls. Anybody seen any little girls that didn’t have folks. Any little girls bein’ fostered. Hellfire, the way people’re dyin’ all over, there’s always kids bein’ fostered. I don’t know what they think they’re lookin’ for.”

  Abasio, who thought he did, kept his mouth shut.

  “Show you something,” whispered Golly. He went over to the place the walkers had stood and peered at the earth, beckoning with one hand toward Abasio. Abasio went over next to him, looking down to see whatever it was.

  “There,” said Golly, stirring the grasses with his foot.

  At first, Abasio didn’t see what it was, but then he noticed the dry black fragments all over Golly’s bare toes, the grasses where the two things had been standing, dead and burned right down to their roots. Abasio looked the way they had gone, figuring he’d see footprints.

  “Nope,” whispered Golly. “They move too fast for that It’s just when they stand still a bit. You see places like that, stay away from ’em. You camp on toppa that burned dirt, pretty soon, you don’t feel so good.”

  He heaved a heavy sigh, as though deeply troubled, and then the two of them reloaded the flaps. They got back into the truck and went forward at a slow trundle for some little while Golly seemed of a mind to let the walkers get a long way ahead. Even now they had become small black dots, far down the plain.

  “What are they? Really?” Abasio murmured.

  “Boy, I don’t know. I try not to think.” And Golly began singing to himself, rather tunelessly For a long time, neither of them said anything more.

  Finally Golly seemed to get his spirits back, and the truck picked up speed as they rolled past the high walls, past the steel-spiked gates with t
heir guard posts. Through the gates, Abasio could see greenery, trees and lawns and flower gardens, with elegant houses set wide apart, and beyond them the squat, glistening towers where the Edgers worked.

  “What makes those buildings all lit up like that?”

  “Science, boy. These folks still got science. Used to be lights like that ever-where, you believe that?”

  They passed three sets of gates without even a wave from the guards, but as they were approaching the fourth, Golly muttered to himself and reduced speed once more.

  “Now if this ain’t the end! First goblins, then walkers, and now this!”

  The next pair of high gates was standing open, serving as a backdrop for a crowd of pale-skinned and brightly dressed people, all so clean-looking, they made. Abasio’s eyes smart. In the midst of them stood a girl clad in green, her hair a knee-length flow of pure gold, a flower wreath around her head, her feet in crystal slippers. Drawn up outside the gate was a melon-shaped carriage, red lacquer and gilt, polished so bright, it reflected the sun like a gem-stone, six white horses harnessed to the shaft and a coachman up top with a high plumed hat.

  “What?” murmured Abasio, awestruck.

  The driver shook his head. “She’s a Princess, boy. Look at her. A Princess if I ever saw one. They’re taking her away from her home in the Edge, off to a archetypal village, I’d say. Poor thing She’s cryin’, and they’re all pattin’ and pettin’ of her. Shee-it. This is goin’ to take a while.”

  He shut down the engine and twiddled his toes while Basio shook his head at the wonder of it. “There’s an archetypal village near our farm. Up over the mountain. I used to climb up the top of the gap and look down into it. There’s a Hero there, and an Oracle and a Poet, and a bunch of other archetypes. Do you suppose she’s going there?”

  “Does your village have a palace?”

  “It has an old castle, mostly fallen-in.”

  “I’d say no, then. No, that Princess isn’t for any old fallen-in place. She’ll go someplace shiny-new, probably with a Prince already there. Either that, or to an enchanted tower.”

  “Who’s the old fallen-in castle for, then?”

  Golly pursed his lips, thinking. “Oh, I’d say prob’ly a Ghost. Or a Wicked Witch.”

  Abasio shook his head slowly, reflectively, as he settled himself for a considerable wait. “No,” he said at last. “There wasn’t any Wicked Witch.”

  Somewhere, of course, there had to be a Wicked Witch.

  South and west of the Long Plain and the area known as manland, west of the land called Artemisia, past mountains and valleys, arroyos and mesas, at the top of a sinuous, canyon-climbing road, the Place of Power spread fingerlike at the eastern edge of a massive tableland where carved chasms fell away between the fingers, changeable under each shifting cloud or turn of season, now light, now dark, turning from rose to amber to gray in an instant, and in an instant rose again. Thunderheads often massed behind the towering rimrock, great cliffs of cloud spitting lightning and ruminous with thunder. Whether from this ominous backdrop or for some more consequential reason, the Place was considered to be strange and threatening, perhaps even dangerous. Some said that parts of it might be evil.

  They meant the Dome, a building squatting on the east-most canyon rim, bulging ominously upon that prominence like a lopped and swollen head. Fveryone knew the misshapen Dome had at one time been an observatory, used by astronomers, creatures of night, who had peered through its slitted eye nearsightedly into the heavens. Many thought the building was still used by creatures of darkness, though for purposes less benign, for now it was the Witch who went there, the Witch and her minions, shedding shadow behind them as a dog sheds hair, dropping a dander of malevolence to itch those who dwelt in the Place.

  The Witch’s given name was Quince Ellel, The Ellel, head of the Ellel clan. Quince Ellel had a longtime though unwilling servant named Qualary Finch. Although Qualary was not the only person to think of Quince Ellel as the Witch, no one called her that out loud. When Qualary spoke to her or of her, she said “Madam Domer” in tones of absolute subservience and groveling respect.

  Each morning, while others in the Place were having breakfast or talking with friends or engaged in other ordinary pursuits, Qualary Finch was standing immobile on the high, spidery platform beneath the rusty Dome, holding open a heavy leather-bound book, while the Witch, robed in black and masked in gold, read the words of her quotidian litany.

  “ ‘Hunagor is gone,’ ” she chanted in a harsh metallic voice, lingering over the words. “ ‘And Werra is gone.…’ ”

  Hunagor had died fifty years or more before, and Werra had been gone for at least two decades, but this made no difference to the Witch. Hunagor and Werra had been residents of Gaddi House, and the Witch hated all present and former residents of Gaddi House.

  “And always will,” laughing Berkli had remarked, not caring who heard him. “Ellel will not be happy until Gaddi House is rubble, then she’ll dance on the shards.” Berkli was The Berkli, head of his clan as Ellel was head of hers.

  Ellel had not been amused by his comment. When Ellel spoke of Hunagor and Werra dying, her voice pealed like dissonant bells, an enjoyment Qualary perceived but did not question. Qualary had learned painfully not to react to anything Ellel did or felt, not by so much as a tremor At home she’d held a stone weight at arm’s length for hours, practicing, so she wouldn’t let the heavy book quiver. “ ‘Heavy as cobble, heavy as lead, let the book wobble, I’ll end up dead.’ ” So she told herself mentally, quoting one of her many “Rhymes for trying times.” Her only chance of remaining unscathed was to remain unseen, unnoticed, taken for granted like a chest or a chair. While the Witch’s words fell in descending echoes among the blotched arches below, Qualary stood like furniture, utterly still.

  “ ‘… their heritage has been ended,’ ” the Witch cried triumphantly, speaking still of Hunagor and Werra.

  “Amen,” chanted the minions from the floor far below, the words coming as a hot wind, as a burning and stinking exhalation.

  Qualary bit the insides of her cheeks, steeling herself against that heat, that smell. The first few times she had been dragged up here, the Witch’s voice hissing obscenities, the Witch’s fingers twisted deep into Qualary’s hair, that hot stink had surprised her. She’d been only thirteen then, but now, twenty years later, she still bore the scars of Ellel’s initial chastisement. Now, even when the robed figure turned from the book to lean over the railing, peering downward, Qualary remained rigid, for she knew what lay below and had no desire to see it.

  Down there was a mosaic floor, set with the signs of the Zodiac and the orbits of the planets. The designs were shattered now, the tesserae scattered. Even if they’d been whole, Qualary couldn’t have seen them through the serried ranks of Ellel’s myrmidons, thousands of them, arranged in lines like necklaces, their complicated helmets mere beads of black or gold or red, so thickly gathered they completely hid the floor.

  They were not things of this time at all. They were utterly foreign to this age, creatures of an almost forgotten era, found in a vast and ancient cavern far underground, laid up like cordwood as they had been stored long ago against some unimaginable future need. The Witch’s father had found them. They had been his. Now they were hers.

  Her father had never used the things effectively, so said the Witch. Not that she said this to Qualary. She didn’t talk to Qualary She talked very little to anyone, but she sometimes murmured to herself when Qualary could hear.

  The Witch drew back from the narrow rail and ran her finger down the page until she found her place once more. An illuminator had been brought all the way from Low Mesiko to letter this book, to make these words gleam with gold and bright ink. Qualary sometimes wondered about that, about the Witch’s going to all that trouble when she had written the words herself and knew them by heart. The Witch needed no page, no writing, no servant to hold the book. Except that the gold and the bright ink and the motionles
s servant were part of the Witch’s aura, her design, her imagined self, her vaunting and voracious ambition.

  “ ‘Impotence holds the gate of Gaddi House. The time trembles,’ ” the Witch cried.

  The lips of the golden mask could not move, but the eyes that glared from the eyeholes shifted and glared, bloodshot and yellowed. Years ago, the Witch had shown her face. In recent years, she had shown only the mask. All in all, Qualary preferred the mask. It was inhuman and therefore easier to deal with. When Qualary had seen the person, face to face, she had expected human responses, humane attitudes, and had suffered for it.

  The echoes still ricocheted from pillar to pillar below. “Time, ime, ime, ime. Trembles, emmles, emmles.”

  Time always trembled, thought Qualary Something was always breaking apart or unraveling. As for Gaddi House, everyone said there was only one old man living over there: old, old Seoca, doddering his way toward death. And best he get to it, for if he didn’t die soon, Ellel would kill him! The Witch wanted desperately to get into Gaddi House That closed, enigmatic space infuriated her She assumed there were wonders hidden away in there, and she wanted to get her hands on them.

  The Witch moved to the rail and leaned over once more.

  “ ‘The days of Seoca are numbered!’ ”

  The words were almost a scream, far too loud for this enclosed space. The golden fortress of Gaddi House was only a few hundred yards away, on the rim of the mesa. Perhaps Ellel wanted the old man to hear her.

  “Amen,” her creatures chanted once more, the sound of their voices surging toward the high balcony like the rush of a boiling, inexorable wave. Qualary held her breath. Sometimes she woke in the night, dreaming of drowning in those voices, in that smell.

  The Witch’s voice rose in an impassioned howl. “ ‘What was false shall be true, what was true shall be false. Destiny calls the people of the Dome to stand upon the power of the place, to renew the might of man, to bring progress upon the earth!’ ”

  “Amen,” her creatures said for the third time, as they had been programmed to do. Qualary believed that Ellel valued the creatures most because they would always do precisely what they were programmed to do. Unlike creatures of flesh. Unlike human beings. Unlike Qualary herself, as the Witch frequently pointed out, who had to be repeatedly disciplined to assure she did what was required.