A Rosary of Stones and Thorns

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “He gave himself to me,” Michael hissed. “He did not resist!”

  “It’s true,” a pain-wet sound. Lucifer lifted his head, a thin line of black blood tracing one cheekbone.

  Mephistopheles met his liege-lord’s eyes and a soft, agonized sound escaped his tight throat.

  Michael shoved his sword into its sheath. Turning his back on the newcomers, he waved a hand. “You may speak to him, if you wish. It will be over soon enough.”

  Mephistopheles wasted no time. He sprinted to the broken body and skidded to his knees. “My lord!” Trying to find a place on Lucifer’s body that didn’t bleed or cave beneath the skin proved difficult, and Mephistopheles settled for a hand to the slick shoulder. “Oh, my lord, we tried. We tried.”

  “Sssh,” Lucifer whispered. “Do not despair. Michael himself has had a hand in our salvation.”

  Mephistopheles brought the cold hand to his lips and kissed the bloody fingers, wings so tightly folded they trembled.

  Stephen sidled past the seething Archangel, avoiding him. “Asrial!”

  “Stephen,” Asrial murmured. She touched his arm, the other still folded around Chris. “You came home.”

  “We went to Heaven, looking for a way... but it’s not in our hands anymore.”

  “Was it ever?”

  Marie hugged her mother as Michael talked with the captain of the angelic legions. The air had thickened enough to distort the sun’s clear rays, and Stephen frowned at the haze that obscured the nearby trees.

  Brad whispered, “Asrial, you look... pretty good. You feel okay?”

  Asrial glanced at the demon hunched over the body of his liege-lord, then at the rigid back of the Archangel and the equally wooden bodies of the angels of the Eighth and Ninth Choirs. Turning her eyes back to Brad, she said quietly, “No, Brad. I do not.”

  Michael finished his conversation and strode past Lucifer and Mephistopheles to face the host of Hell.

  “Now. It is time for you to return to God’s breast. All you need do is give up your ill-born righteousness. Seek in your hearts the humility that God adores and turn your backs on Hell and the one who betrayed you into sin and damnation. Who will be the first?”

  The silence that immediately followed Michael’s last ringing word was the expected pause separating speakers. The pause that followed it might have been interpreted as uncertainty, or fear.

  But it lasted far longer than that. The last ray of the falling sun painted the shadow of the archangel across the princes, guards and Fallen of Hell, but none stepped forth.

  Mephistopheles glanced up from his vigil at Lucifer’s side, brows lifting.

  The archangel raked the serried rows of dark-winged angels with a glower. “Do not be afraid. God will welcome any of you back who chooses to repent.”

  Still they held fast.

  Marie slipped one hand into Brad’s and the other into her mother’s.

  One of the princes stepped forward, sword gripped tightly in one hand. His wings arched on either side of him as, very calmly, he spit at Michael’s feet.

  A ruddy flush suffused Michael’s face from cheeks to throat. “So be it.” He turned away from them and stalked back to the host as the other archangels took his place, grim of face and swords drawn. The haze surrounding the edges of the field thickened.

  Stephen grabbed Asrial’s arm, glancing from the haze to the armies. “Come on. Quickly!”

  Chris darted away just as the lines broke and rushed for one another, dragging Marie after her.

  “Mephistopheles!” Asrial called, holding out a hand even as the priest looped an arm around her waist and pulled her bodily away.

  “He can take care of himself!”

  “Stephen, let me go—”

  “Dammit, Asrial! It’s too late! We can’t stop it now!”

  Asrial struggled against the priest’s grasp, the long sleeves fouling her arms as the armies met like tides across a bar of sand. Spears and swords tore away shards of the failing light, but the waking stars refused to nestle in the scythes of the hosts as they fought. The fog obscuring the field’s edges smeared away the trees, and Asrial tried in vain to separate the Fallen from those in Grace. She strained against the flesh that checked her, unaware of the tears that streamed over her chin and down her throat.

  The exact time when Stephen’s grasp became an embrace was as indistinct as the time when the dusk gave way to the night. Asrial pressed her cheek to the priest’s stubble-lined jaw, blocking out the sounds of the battle and quivering.

  Marie asked, “Where are they?”

  “It’s been at least an hour,” Brad said, holding her tightly. “They would have come out by now.”

  “Why....” Chris swallowed. “Why aren’t they all dead yet?” She forced herself to watch the writhing forsaken by the vespertine starlight.

  “My guess is that they have some small advantage,” Stephen said, voice rough. “Hell is harder on angels than Earth or Heaven. It’s like... like they’re fighting in lighter gravity, while the angels have to fight in heavier. It makes them faster.”

  “Not fast enough,” Chris said, shuddering.

  “My question is why we’re not dead yet,” Brad said. “Isn’t this supposed to be the end of Earth?”

  Stephen's eyes swept the edges of the field, marking the preternaturally thick mist concealing the trees and the campus. “I don’t know.”

  The grackle landed on the branch above the tree that sheltered them. It turned a bright yellow bead of an eye on the proceedings.

  Mephistopheles lunged as the last Prince fell in front of him; instead of a circle of live guardians around his liege-lord, there was now had a circle of dead ones. He was the only one left standing, one foot on either side of Lucifer’s shoulders.

  Michael faced him across the open space as the battle frothed around them and blood, golden and black, sleeted to the earth.

  Panting in the cold, Mephistopheles settled his right hand on the hilt of the sword above the left, holding it before him. His wings arched back and over Lucifer’s body.

  “I can’t let you have him, Michael,” Mephistopheles said, voice hoarsened by his raw throat.

  “I’ll have him, with or without your permission,” Michael answered, mirroring the demon prince’s stance. “In fact, I'd prefer to do it without. Your comrades are dying all around you.”

  “Better the Wind then to bow my head to you,” Mephistopheles growled. “Better extinguishment than submission to someone so ossified God’s light barely touches him! There is more of God in the worst of humanity than in your stone of a heart, Michael!”

  “Talk all you want, Fallen scum,” Michael said, advancing on him. “It won’t matter one whit in the end.”

  Mephistopheles lifted his sword.

  And then the singing came.

  It wiped the air clean of the cacophony of battle. Wordless and layered like endless gossamer veils, it cleared the thoughts of violence from the minds of those on the field. One by one the fighters dropped their swords and spears and their gazes lifted as if drawn to the dark blue sky.

  Stephen’s grip on Asrial’s body tightened so that she flinched, but she too stared at the sky, at the host descending from the tear in it like a thousand stars drifting toward the Earth. She recognized the music, recognized the skillful rise and play of each delicate measure, recognized the very voices.

  “They came!” Stephen whispered.

  From the rent they fluttered down like snowflakes: the slim shapes of female angels, wings spread as they dropped. The muted bronze light of their halos cast their faces in a warm glow that drove away the callous disregard of the stars... and each one bore in her hands a halo.

  Stephen ran into the field, pushing past the stunned participants of the battle, Asrial, Brad, Marie and Chris in his wake. He held up his hands to Ruth as she settled to the ground.

  “You came!”

  In her hands Ruth braced a disc broader than her shoulders, its paper-thin edge b
leeding a pallid light into the darkness. She folded her wings behind her back and inclined her head to Stephen. “I told you that I would.”

  Asrial stayed back as the humans approached the newly arrived angels. She glanced over her shoulder and started at the figure who dragged himself from the fray, a body cradled in his arms.

  The angel ran to him. “Mephistopheles!” She stopped a few feet away, swaying as she fought the urge to touch, to console, to ask.

  “He’s alive,” Mephistopheles said, his voice a dull rasp. He lifted his head to stare past her at the others. “Is it...”

  “They’ve come with the halos,” Asrial whispered. Saying it made it real somehow, so she repeated it. “They’ve come with the halos, Mephistopheles. Your halos.” Turning now to encompass all the Fallen staring at them. “All of your halos.”

  “W-what?” One of the Fallen said. His wings twitched. “What are you saying?”

  Asrial lifted her voice, sent it out to the entire field. “God has never forsaken you. He kept your halos living in Shamayim, for the day that you would return. He has always loved you and always will. And those of us who wish to do His will have brought them back to you. Your halos.” She took a deep breath. “Who will come for them?”

  The absolute silence on the field reigned until a roar of rage rent it past recovery.

  “NO!”

  Asrial flared her slender wings. “Yes!” she cried as the Archangel charged out of the field, his sword weeping black blood. “Yes, Archangel! His will shall be done!”

  “This is not His will, traitor!”

  “Isn’t it?” A new voice rang out from the sky as Gabriel burst from the thick mist dogging the trees. Deep hollows framed the archangel’s blue eyes, but his stare burned as he strode to join Asrial in front of the female angels. “Isn’t it, Michael?”

  “He has never shown me any differently! I am doing His will!” Michael said, his entire body shaking.

  “Are you?” Gabriel said. “What would it take to convince you otherwise, Michael? What about the death of forty innocent angels?”

  “What?”

  “Forty, Michael,” Gabriel said, each word growing in volume. “Forty angels, died in the shell or drowned in their own soulstuff before they could form their halos. Miscarriages from a Heaven poisoned by your hatred.”

  Michael gaped.

  “Don’t believe me?” Gabriel asked. “Then see for yourself!” He grabbed the bags at his belt and swept them in an arc. Their ties loosed and the starlight shattered against a thousand scarves of golden dust, the desiccation of the souls of forty angels. The dust swirled in Earth’s heavier air, thin patterns and whorls escaping to skid over the field, like oil on water.

  Michael’s sword dropped from his hand.

  Into the quiet stepped a female angel, holding a halo in her hands. In a dulcet alto, she called, “Ashmedai?”

  The angels stared at her until one of the Fallen pushed out of the crowd, his face contorted by a terrible hope. “Lady...?”

  She presented the halo and he hastily kneeled. The angel centered it above his head, then opened her hands and let it sink down, already beginning to spin, until it lit a soft gold and steadied. She stepped away, and as they watched the black was stripped from his wings as if by divine hand, leaving behind white banded with blue and cream.

  “Ksiel?”

  "Here!" a voice cried, and another of the Fallen ran forth.

  “Haroth?”

  One by one the surviving Fallen met the angels of Heaven and were crowned in gold and stripped of their darkness.

  Stephen watched from beside Ruth, tears welling from his eyes and refreshed every time a new demon kneeled and received His gift... and each time one didn't. For each of the Fallen that answered the call there was one that could not, body reduced to dust and a fallen sword. The tears were for those, too, until he could not tell whether they were joy or sorrow.

  Soon only two angels remained, Ruth and another. The second stepped forward, her hands bracing a warm disc the size of an archangel’s.

  Asrial went to her, faced her, her eyes pleading. The other female angel glanced at Ruth.

  The Choir Director still held the largest halo. She glanced over the field at the two remaining, then looked at Asrial.

  “Sister.”

  Asrial curtseyed, plucked wings arching. “I am here.”

  Ruth canted her head, one brow lifted. “Did you find it, young one... what you sought in Shamayim?”

  Asrial straightened. She cast her golden eyes to the ground to hide what dwelled there, then lifted them again when she’d collected herself. “Yes, sister.”

  Ruth regarded her for several minutes, then nodded once to the other angel, who handed her the halo. Asrial received it with reverence and turned. She wet her lips and her throat and molded her voice to the sweetness that the choir had demanded of her, before she’d Fallen to Grace.

  “Mephistopheles.”

  The last Prince of Hell placed Lucifer’s hand on his chest and rose. He approached Asrial as a wounded animal, wary, each step a battle.

  Asrial waited, patience in the curve of her thin body, in the stillness of her thinned wings.

  He stopped before her. “Lady.”

  Her eyes held a fulgent radiance not wholly owed to her halo or to the stars, molten gold and ringed with tears she did not shed. He kneeled then, stiffly, one knee pressed to the plowed and bloodied soil.

  She closed her eyes and released the halo’s edges. It sank through the golden mist that rode the heavy air of Earth, its leaden glow flickering, until it rested a few inches above his dark head.

  Only Asrial heard his soft, strangled gasp, so full of joy, before the black drained from his wings, leaving behind pinions the color of new milk, a white so intense they glowed even without the light cast by the broad halo.

  When Mephistopheles looked up at her again she saw her own eyes reflected: his no longer a dull, clouded amber, but the fierce metallic glitter of true gold.

  A tear dropped from Asrial’s chin at the sight of his countenance, and a fragile smile flickered over her lips before she returned to the Choir Director to receive the last of God’s gifts. This disc she took into her hands and carried to the figure lying prone on the ground, broken wings splayed over the torn earth.

  As she approached, Lucifer’s hand tightened into a claw. Asrial stopped, eyes widening, as he pulled himself to his knees, wings at awkward, unnatural angles from his shoulders. One arm hung useless, and his face when he lifted it was stained and misshapen.

  “Lucifer,” Asrial whispered. The halo heated in her hands, as if it could sense his nearness.

  He trained his eyes on her, a strength there she could barely grasp, just as the iron resolve that held him upright surpassed her understanding. Asrial stepped to him, her robe dragging across the ground with its hem of fallen stars. She held it out, let it descend to settle softly over his head.

  There it sat, somnolent, mirroring the shallow breathing of its owner. A single spark rose from it, hissing in the silence.

  Lucifer’s chest expanded as he drew in a long, low breath. At the pinnacle of his inhalation, the halo shot to life, spilling a white light brighter than any other halo on the field. His wings knitted together, his arm. His breathing eased and the wheezing of the air through his broken nose smoothed away.

  The black fled his wings like shadows before sunlight. Asrial backed away, shielding her eyes. When at last she looked again, Lucifer was gaining his feet. He spread his wings—magnificent wings!—and each single feather glowed a mirrored silver, reflecting the light of each halo on the field, of every pale star, blushing, smoldering oranges and gold and ghostly white in every feather in every shelf.

  The collected hosts stared at him as he rose; no longer the host of Heaven and the host of Hell, for there were no dark wings to mark the Fallen, no lack of the light of their halos to separate them from those whom had once been friends, fellow singers.

&nb
sp; Ruth walked to Lucifer. She lifted her chin. “My lord, it is almost morning.”

  Lucifer slowly twisted, surveying the horizon. A smudge of green had plucked the curtain of black away from the eastern sky. “My lady,” he said in his low baritone, “You are correct.”

  And he began to sing.

  The Star of Morning had not sung for centuries, and his voice had been shaped to fill the shells of Heaven. Earth had no power to pull it down; there was not enough entropy even in Hell to re-mold his voice into anything short of divine. Lucifer faced the east, silver wings fanned open, and lifted his voice to the sky.

  Asrial stepped to his side, looking to the coming sun. Her clear soprano rose above his, a descant unfettered by a mortal throat, a mortal range, a mortal beauty.

  The Choir Director turned to her angels, and the responsorial in all its delicate susurrus replied to the duet. One by one the restored Fallen cleared voices rusted by disuse and joined the others, filling in the lower registers until a symphony of thousands of voices wove together, and the power of their song was such that it could have pulled the sun free of the horizon had it been unwilling.

  Shoulders pressed tightly together, Michael limped away.

  With a full choir behind him, Lucifer and Asrial honored their God and brought the dawn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chris edged away from the field, overwhelmed by the music. Releasing the hand of her daughter, she stole into the forest’s thinning mist beneath the grackle’s silent aegis.

  “Michael?”

  Her voice felt tinny to her against the pressure of the choir. She glanced around, found the trail of what could only be his steps, and dogged them. The pressure of unexpected tears weighted her eyes until she found she was running, the ferns slapping her with wet switches of green.

  The broken plants and the dew-crushed footsteps stopped abruptly in a clearing. One step, two, three... and then none.

  “Oh, no... Michael! Michael! Come back!”

  Chris stumbled to a halt and pressed her fingers to her mouth, waiting until the urge to sob subsided. She ran her hands through her unbrushed curls, stopped with them tangled in her hair, pale elbows naked, her sleeves bunched at her shoulders.