by Sharon Shinn
“What time do you want to leave?” she asked in a low voice.
“As soon as we’ve eaten. Tell Kaski or not, it is up to you.”
“And you alone will take us all that way?”
“I have asked Zibiah to come with us. I think that will be more comfortable for Kaski.”
Susannah nodded dumbly and turned for the door. She thought Gaaron might stop her on her way out, call her name, at least, but he did not. Not until she stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her did she realize that she was shaking.
Mahalah indeed was one of the most gracious women Susannah had ever met. Also the frailest, the smallest, the tiniest wisp of a woman. It seemed a wonder to Susannah that she could ever summon the strength to take her next breath, since her body did not seem constructed to withstand such abuse.
“Ah, the new angelica,” Mahalah greeted her, taking her hand. The oracle’s grip was more compelling than Susannah would have expected, and her black eyes were keenly watchful. “We must have time to sit and visit while you’re here, just the two of us.”
“Don’t let her tell you unkind things about me,” Gaaron said to Susannah. “She does not hold me in high esteem.”
“Nonsense. I value you just as I should. It is just that I know so much more than you do, and have such greater wisdom, that I cannot always accept your pronouncements the way your host does at the Eyrie.”
“Everyone always does exactly what Gaaron says,” Zibiah offered. She was standing a little to one side of the main group, allowing Kaski to rest her veiled head against her flying leathers.
“I’ll wager that you do not,” Mahalah said, sending Susannah a shrewd look. The oracle was still holding on to the angelica’s hand, and Susannah was surprised at the heat in the thin fingers. “The Edori are rather a wayward lot, and you do not have a look of submission about you.”
Susannah smiled. “I have tried to be docile and accommodating,” she said demurely.
“Do not tell me that you do not have a stubborn streak,” the oracle exclaimed. “I can read it in your face.”
Susannah’s smile widened. “I have not had an opportunity to show it,” she said, her voice still prim. “I would have to be very hard to please if I did not find life at the Eyrie satisfactory.”
Mahalah released her hand and turned to Gaaron. “Watch that one,” she advised him. “She is not so trouble-free as she looks.”
Clearly this conversation was not much to Gaaron’s taste. “And yet, it is not Susannah whom we have come here today to discuss,” he said pleasantly. “May we introduce Kaski to you? She is, as you see, a Jansai girl who has fallen under our protection.”
Zibiah gently pushed Kaski the few yards over toward Mahalah, who sat patiently unmoving in a high-backed wheeled chair. Kaski moved along with the angel, but she would not look up, even when Zibiah encouraged her to say hello.
“Yes, this one is very damaged,” Mahalah said in a soft voice—and then added something in a language none of them could understand. Susannah saw Gaaron give the oracle a sharp look, and she was surprised herself. The words sounded Jansai, though she had never heard of anyone who was not Jansai being taught the secretive, complex language.
At any rate, the speech had the effect of lifting Kaski’s head and spinning her around to face the oracle. She actually responded, issuing a few sharp, suspicious words that sounded like a question. Mahalah nodded and gave her an emphatic answer, making her hands into two fists for emphasis. Now Kaski launched into a torrent of words, she the silent child of no speech, and the three other visitors stared at her in wonder. Mahalah answered her, and then turned her attention back to the angels and the Edori.
“Yes, I think Kaski will do quite well here,” she said serenely. “I am glad you have brought her to me.”
Although Susannah could tell that Gaaron was eager to get back to the Eyrie, it was clear that it would be too rude to leave Mount Sinai minutes after delivering their bundle, so the two angels and the Edori stayed for another few hours. Susannah accepted the offer of a tour through the tunnels, which Mahalah narrated while she led the way in her wheeled chair.
“Here’s one of the guest rooms. If you ever come to spend the night, you’ll stay someplace like this. It’s nice, isn’t it? My own rooms look much the same, only a little bigger. . . . Down this hall are the dorm rooms where the girls sleep. I would show them to you, except they are embarrassingly messy, and I don’t want you realizing what a slack housekeeper I am. . . . That’s the audience chamber, you saw that when you came in. . . . The kitchens are that way, but even I don’t go into them, since I can’t cook. I bet you can cook, though, can’t you?”
“Camp food,” Susannah said. “Nothing fancy.”
“I can’t even do that much. Couldn’t roast a rabbit to save my life!”
“But you can speak Jansai, which makes up for your other deficiencies,” Susannah said demurely.
Mahalah cackled with laughter. “I can speak Edori, too,” she said, switching to that tongue. “And the old language, the one the settlers used when they first landed. And I’ve seen texts of other languages that came from that world we used to live on, and I can understand a few of those words, too. I’m good with words. Some people are good with math. Some people are good at cooking rabbits.”
“You speak Edori very well,” Susannah said. “You must have had a native teacher.”
“I did,” Mahalah admitted, but didn’t give specifics. She had wheeled into a large, high-ceilinged room. It was cluttered with books and furniture but otherwise gave the appearance of light and openness, though it was an interior room with no windows. Or perhaps that was a window against the far wall, looking onto a blue vista like sky or water. Susannah walked that way, drawn by the mesmerizing brightness of the rectangle of color.
Mahalah rolled up beside her. “That caught your attention, didn’t it? It’s the interface.”
“The what?”
“The interface. The device through which I communicate with the god.” Mahalah laid her hand against the glowing glass, and her flesh took on a strange appearance, dark and dull and outlined in black. “I use this keyboard here to write to the god, and his words appear to me on the screen.”
Susannah shook her head. “What?” she said again, a small smile on her face.
Mahalah laughed. “I know. Old technology. It doesn’t make any sense to us these days. But it is like—oh—writing letters to the god through the medium of this device. And having him write letters back.”
“I think I would be nervous if I received a message from Yovah,” she said. “Terrified, more likely. I would not want to misinterpret what he had to say.”
“And it is easy to do,” Mahalah agreed, dropping her hand back into her lap. “His words are cryptic at best.”
Susannah came a step closer. “May I touch it?”
“Certainly! Just lay your hand across the screen like so.”
Cautiously, Susannah put her palm against the cool glass, feeling a tingle like a charge of static against her skin. Nothing else. No vibration, no heat, no streak of shock. “It’s so curious,” she observed at last. “I have seen—technology—like this before.”
“You have? Have you been to one of the other oracles, then? Or—I know—the music machines at the hold are rather like this, aren’t they?”
Susannah shook her head. “In my dreams, sometimes. I dream that I am in a room filled with—what did you call them?—screens and keyboards, just like these. And some that are a little bit like this, but different, too. Rooms and rooms full of them.”
Now Mahalah was looking at her sharply. “How long have you had these dreams? How often?”
“Since I was a child. At first I did not have them more than once every month or two. Lately—almost every night.” She smiled. “I don’t know, maybe the god is trying to give me a message, if he sends me dreams about his machinery.”
“Kneel down here for a moment,” Mahalah said imperiousl
y. Wondering, but not for a moment hesitating, Susannah obediently went down to her knees in front of the oracle. “Bend your head forward—I want to see—” And without explanation, Mahalah began to run her small hands over Susannah’s scalp. “There must be—otherwise I don’t understand—but if you are having dreams—”
In moments, the probing fingers found the second Kiss embedded behind Susannah’s ear. “Aahhh,” Mahalah said on a long sigh. She kept one hand on the little nodule, and with the other tilted Susannah’s head up. “You have been doubly Kissed, did you know that?”
Susannah nodded carefully, so as not to dislodge the hands, but Mahalah released her anyway. “Yes. It is rare, I know.”
Mahalah leaned back in her chair. “So rare almost no one knows that such a thing can even occur,” she said.
“What does it mean? Something special?” Susannah asked. “Was the second Kiss the reason I was named angelica?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps that is part of the reason, I don’t know. As I said, Jovah is often mysterious. What I do know is that, once every three generations, according to the instructions the priests have lived by since the time of the original settlers, someone living in Samaria must be outfitted with this second Kiss. As I understand it, the choice is entirely arbitrary. No one knows in advance which priest will draw this rare Kiss, or on whom he will bestow it. No one knows what makes the Kiss special, or why its installation is required. Only that once every three generations, someone living in Samaria bears it.”
Susannah sat back on her heels, fingering the knob behind her ear. “And you think this second Kiss sends me dreams?” she asked.
“I think that the god tracks us all by the Kisses we bear in our arms,” the oracle said, seeming to choose her words with care. “I would assume he uses this special Kiss to communicate with you in some way. Dreams might be the way.”
Susannah was silent a while, thinking everything over, and then she smiled and stood up. “Well, then,” she said, “I will just have to try harder to understand what he has to say in these dreams.”
“Perhaps you might—” Mahalah began, but she was interrupted by an influx of angels into the room.
“Here you both are!” Gaaron exclaimed, striding forward. Zibiah trailed behind him. “You have been missing for an hour.”
“I was giving Susannah a tour,” Mahalah said.
“And I’m sure she enjoyed it, but we have to be heading back,” Gaaron said.
“Perhaps Susannah could stay with me a day or two,” Mahalah suggested. “I would enjoy her company, and I think Kaski would be glad to have her here.”
Susannah looked neutrally at Gaaron, wanting to read his face before committing herself one way or the other. True, she was worried about Kaski and she would like to see the little girl settled in, but she did not particularly want to spend a few days at Mount Sinai. She was tired; she had woken with a cough this morning, no doubt the result of shivering in the rain for half a day. And Mount Sinai was a strange place. She was getting used to living at the Eyrie, but she was not sure she wanted to try to understand the stone and silence of another mountain hold.
“Some other time, perhaps,” Gaaron said, answering for her. “These are rather perilous times, and I want to keep my angelica close by me at the moment.”
Mahalah turned back to Susannah. “But you will come visit me again—very soon, I hope,” she said in an unmistakably urgent voice. “Together I think we may be able to interpret some of the god’s wishes.”
“Of course,” Susannah said, bending to give the old woman a kiss on the cheek. “Let me know how Kaski does.”
A few more farewells, a quick walk through the serene corridors, and they were back on their way to the Eyrie.
C hapter T wenty-four
When the stranger was well enough to travel, the Lohoras moved. They were too exposed, there on the flank of the river, and there was a place practically within the Galo mountain itself where they would be sheltered from weather and able to rest for a while. The Lohoras had been making for this spot, in their typically circuitous way, for weeks now. It was protected on three sides by an overhang of precipitous mountain and was situated close to water that bubbled up warm from underground fires. As often as they could be found anywhere during the winter months, they could be found here—though, from time to time, making their way here, they had been sidetracked by the discovery of other delightful winter spots, or the chance encounter with a friendly band of Karditas, and turned from their purpose.
This year, nothing occurred to keep them from their chosen destination. Indeed, the recent events made them more eager than ever to find a place where they could settle in till spring.
They moved slowly, though. Not only did they carry a wounded man in their midst—healing, but slowly, and not able to walk on his own—but snow had fallen two days in a row, and much of the land was impassable. The men led the horses at the front of the caravan, to break through the drifts and create a trail of sorts for the women behind, but even so the going was rough. The trampled snow hid treacherous patches of rutted earth, where an unwary walker could turn an ankle. The snow itself was hard to walk on, slick as ice in spots and offering no safe footing. Those pushing carts in front of them moved even more warily, blundering through unbroken snowbanks and catching their rough wheels on buried obstructions.
Plus they were all cold. Dathan had made a pair of leather outer boots for Miriam, and she wore these over her shoes, stuffing layers of cotton between them for added warmth. But her feet were always frozen. She walked with her blanket draped around her to cover her head, her shoulders, and her torso, but the wind was wicked and knifed its way through to the unprotected flesh beneath. She had wrapped her hands in two pairs of gloves, but this only made her fingers clumsy, and did not keep them warm, so eventually she went back to one pair and paused every once in a while to blow on her fingers. Her lips were chapped; her cheeks, when she laid a palm to them, felt smooth and hard as river ice.
Yet most of the time she did not think about herself. All her concentration was on the dark stranger she had come to think of as her responsibility. The tablets that Yovah had sent down—was it a week ago now? she kept losing track of time—had effected a miraculous recovery in the burned man. Within two days, his fever was gone, he was sitting up in bed, and he was able to take care of his own bodily functions, though he was too weak to move far. He had eaten ravenously, though once or twice some Edori ingredient had made him so sick he vomited everything back up. Still, it was clear he was much better—and a little afraid of all of them.
Before he was well enough to walk, the Lohoras decided that they had to move on, and how to transport the injured man had been one of their chief points of concern. Ultimately, it had been decided that the contents of one of the carts could be redistributed, and that he could ride in the wagon, and that the men would take turns pushing it. Miriam had offered to take this duty sometimes, but Tirza had shaken her head. “It will be too heavy for you,” the Edori woman had said—and, once she tried it, Miriam realized this was true.
So she contented herself with foraging for the injured man. He seemed to have no trouble eating the tuber roots and dried nuts that could still be found by a careful seeker even at this time of year, at this latitude. So Miriam ranged well away from the bulk of the caravan, looking for the telltale signs of bushes and stalks poking up above the snowline. She dug up everything she could find, anything that looked edible, and took it back to Claudia and Anna to see if they could identify it. Most times, what she retrieved could be added to the cook pots, and the older women praised her for her good eye and hard work. Miriam always shared her finds with every cook in the camp—but she kept some of the best samples back to make into an evening meal for the stranger.
They had tried, at one point, to integrate him into the tent shared by Tirza, Eleazar, Miriam, and the others, but he had refused to lie still or settle. He had, in fact, crept out of the tent in the middle of the night, t
o be found the next morning curled in the snow before the dead fire, his wound reopened and his temperature dangerously high. So wherever he was from, the Lohoras concluded, kinsmen did not sleep together in warmth and comfort—or it was taboo to do so, or only citizens of the lowest classes disposed themselves in such a way. In any case, he did not like it. So they pulled out Bartholomew’s small, spare tent, and set it up close to the fire so he could have whatever warmth was available while the fire still burned; and that seemed to content him.
While they were on the road, Miriam went to this tent every night with an offering of food. The exertions of the day always had worn him out, and she would find him already stretched on his pallet, his black face looking strained and used up, his eyes closed. But he would sit up when she entered, take the food from her hungrily, and say something to her in a completely unintelligible language. She imagined he was thanking her, or perhaps thanking his god. Though she really thought his next actions constituted a prayer to his deity, for he would come to his knees, painfully, and hold the bowl up at about eye height. He would speak a few more words in a singsong voice, lay the bowl on the tent floor, touch his fingers to his mouth and his heart, and sit motionless for another few seconds, his eyes closed. Only then would he pick up the bowl and begin eating.
Miriam always waited in respectful silence while he went through this ritual. She was very sure that the god he prayed to was not the god she worshiped, and she wondered what Yovah thought of this strange man offering thanks to a god who could be found nowhere in the vicinity of Samaria. But she had learned, while traveling with the Lohoras, that the Edori were rather more liberal than the angels in their conception of divinity. They trusted their hearts and bodies to Yovah, but they did not think Yovah was the only god to be found anywhere in the universe. Dathan had taken Miriam aside one night, and pointed at all of the stars overhead, and informed her that, for every star, there was a god created specifically to guard that point of light, that planet, and any of the creatures that might live there. Over all the gods—and over all the stars and planets that they could see, and even the ones that they couldn’t see—ruled one great, benevolent spirit that the Edori knew only as the nameless one. His was the hand that had created all the worlds, and all the gods who watched over them—and he, no doubt, was familiar with the god to whom this stranger prayed, and he approved.