Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  Gabriel uttered a small exclamation that encompassed many things—frustration on his own behalf, rage on behalf of the Edori. “So there is no one left who might know—”

  “Naomi,” someone said.

  Gabriel swung around to identify the speaker. A young woman, in her early twenties perhaps, suckling a baby while she audited the conversation. “Who is Naomi?” he asked.

  “She was born to the Manderra tribe, but she followed a man of the Chievens,” the woman told him. “She was with the Manderras when they wandered through the Caitana foothills.”

  “Then she can tell me what happened to the village.”

  The young woman shrugged. “If the Manderras ever came upon the village. Who can say?”

  Gabriel struggled with his irritation. “And where can I find Naomi?”

  “With the Chievens.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. Where can I find the Chievens?”

  The middle-aged man who seemed to be as much of a leader as these people had spread his hands wide. “Who can say?” he said. “They may have gone to Gaza or to Bethel or to Luminaux. We will see them again at the Gathering.”

  “You mean, you have no idea where any of these people are at any time?”

  “Not until the Gathering. Then we tell stories of where we have been and what we have seen.”

  “You can’t even make a guess?”

  “We could guess. We know where we would go at this time of year. But look, we are here and the Chievens are not. Where else would you like us to guess? One place is as likely as another.”

  Gabriel waited a moment, until his anger had passed. “And the next Gathering,” he said. “When is it to be, and where?”

  “In the fields west of Luminaux, five months from now.”

  “Five months! But I don’t have five months to spare!”

  The dark eyes stared at him from the circle of dark faces. None of the Edori had a comment to offer on that.

  “I see,” Gabriel said after a long silence. “You have no more help that you can give me.”

  “We have told you what we can.”

  “Yes, and more than I could have expected to learn from you,” Gabriel said, rising to his feet. “It is not your fault I need to know more.”

  The middle-aged man rose too; the others remained seated. “Stay—eat the evening meal with us,” the leader urged him. “You are tired and angry, and you should be refreshed with food and companionship.”

  “I am tired and angry, and I am in a desperate hurry,” Gabriel said. “I thank you for your offer. And for all your assistance. But I must go now.”

  And he had left, knowing it was rude, knowing there was nothing he could learn during a night flight back to the Eyrie and that he should have stayed to show his appreciation. But he had spoken the truth: He was made restless by desperation, and he could not have stayed. Jovah guide him, where could she be?

  During the next two weeks, Gabriel made an erratic search through the three provinces of Samaria, looking for bands of Edori who might through some fantastic stroke of luck be the Chievens. He did happen upon two more small tribes, but neither of them were the Chievens, and no one in either tribe knew where the Chievens could be found, nor did they know anything of a small farm village in the Caitana Mountains.

  Once, when his route took him past Josiah’s mountain retreat, he stopped to see if the oracle had any more aid to give him. Unfortunately he did not.

  “All I can tell you is that she is still alive,” Josiah said. “I cannot tell you where she is.”

  “Then how is it you could tell me where she once was?”

  The old man gave him a faint smile. “Because when she was dedicated, a record was made of where the dedication took place, and where she was born, and who her parents were. I know she is still alive, because her Kiss is still animate—Jovah can still sense her existence. But as to where she is—” He spread his hands.

  “Very well. She’s alive. And she’s lost. What happens if months go by and I still cannot find her? And the day of the Gloria arrives. What then?”

  Josiah regarded him somberly. “That is a very serious question,” he said.

  “Will any woman do? Perhaps I can press Ariel or Magdalena into service—or, no, it must be a human woman—can I just find a mortal woman with a passable voice and have her sing the Gloria at my side? Will that satisfy Jovah? Or must it be this woman—this Rachel?”

  Josiah was nodding thoughtfully. “The answer is—I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Because, in the past, there have been times when the angelica has been unable to perform. When Michael was Archangel, thirty-five years ago, there were three consecutive years when the angelica Ruth lay too ill to speak, and their daughter sang at his side. And there are stories from even longer ago, when the angelica or the Archangel was unable to perform, and substitutes were found, and Jovah accepted the new voices. At least, he has never unleashed destruction upon us after a Gloria.

  “But the scriptures of the Librera are very strict,” he went on, his voice troubled. “It is written there precisely who is to attend every Gloria and who is to participate. There must be the Archangel, who is chosen by Jovah, and the angelica, who is chosen by Jovah. There must be angels from the three hosts; there must be Jansai and Manadavvi and Edori and Luminauzi. Representatives must come from every part of Samaria to join in harmony together, to assure Jovah that there is peace on the planet and good will among all peoples. And if the smallest part of this decree is overlooked, then Jovah will be angry and cast down thunderbolts, and he will destroy first the mountain and then the river and then the world itself.”

  Gabriel stared at the oracle. Josiah’s voice had been flat, almost matter-of-fact, but his words were chilling.

  “Then if I cannot find her—” the angel began.

  “Then, if you cannot find her, we may all be in grave danger. I don’t know—it may be that Jovah will understand, and forgive, and listen to whatever voice sings beside you. He has forgiven these other lapses. But in each of those cases, the angelica was, in fact, the angelica. The Archangel had not capriciously chosen to install someone who had not been selected by the god himself.”

  Gabriel rubbed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes. He was very tired. “Then I must find her, that’s all,” he said.

  So he continued his search, but he had no luck. Samaria was too big for one angel to cover thoroughly—and the Edori were constantly on the move. He could spend the rest of his life hunting one mobile tribe and never catch up with them. He would have to enlist the other angels from his host, have them quarter the three provinces and speak to every last Edori clansman.

  After the wedding, of course.

  Mentally cursing Lord Jethro of Semorrah, his misbegotten son and the girl who was fool enough to marry him, Gabriel returned to the Eyrie a few days before the event to collect his formal clothes and his brother Nathan. As always, he felt a sudden sense of deep peace envelop him as soon as his feet touched the smooth stone of the landing point. It was beautiful, the Eyrie—three terraces of interconnected chambers and corridors all carved from the warm, rosy-beige rock of the Velo Mountains— but it was not just the physical beauty that gave Gabriel the instant emotional lift. It was the singing.

  Night and day, at least two voices were raised in constant sweet harmony, the notes resonating throughout the whole compound. For weeks in advance, the angels and mortals who resided at the Eyrie volunteered to sing duets in one-hour shifts, then took their places in the small chamber in the highest tier of the compound. Night and day, entering the Eyrie—or waking, restless, in the middle of the night—or eating, laughing or brooding—this music came to a man’s ears and soothed him with the magic of harmony.

  For a moment, Gabriel felt all his tension lift away. But even the sweet voices of Obadiah and Hannah could not make all his problems right this afternoon. Gabriel listened for a moment, then strode to the nearest tunnelway, and entered the Eyrie complex.

&n
bsp; Candlelight and piped gaslight reflected back from the pale rock interior walls so that even at night and inside, the Eyrie glowed luminescent. Gabriel hurried through the tunnels toward the inner warrens, making his way through corridors that gradually widened into great halls and common rooms. Luck was with him; he made it safely to Nathan’s chamber without encountering anyone he had to greet with more than a nod and a smile.

  And he was still lucky; Nathan was there.

  “Gabriel! I thought I would have to leave tomorrow without you,” his brother exclaimed, rising up from his seat at a narrow desk. Behind him, Gabriel spotted white scrolls covered with black notations. Nathan was writing music again. “And then I wondered if you remembered the wedding at all.”

  “I remembered,” Gabriel assured him, stripping off his flight gloves and vest. Because more than half the inhabitants of the Eyrie were mortal, the entire complex was heated, and most of the angels found the temperature a bit too high. “And I considered forgoing the honor of singing at Lord Jethro’s son’s wedding, but I decided it would not be politically sound to offend the burghers even before I ascend to the position of Archangel.”

  “You’re in a foul humor,” Nathan observed, pouring wine for both of them without waiting to be asked. “I assume you have not found your angelica. Could Josiah not name her, then?”

  “Oh, he named her. Rachel, daughter of Seth and Elizabeth. He even gave me the location of her dedication—some backwater farmland in the Jordana foothills.”

  Nathan raised his eyebrows. He looked a great deal like his brother, though his eyes were a deep brown and his appearance was not so striking; yet the resemblance was impossible to miss. “Jovah has a sense of humor, I see,” he remarked.

  “The theory, according to Josiah, is that my angelica will possess qualities I do not. Since, as Josiah so kindly told me, I am arrogant, she, apparently, will be humble. Whatever. I am sure Jovah had his reasons for picking her.”

  “But you cannot find this plot of land, this farm in Jordana, where she is supposed to be?”

  “Oh, I found it. A little community. Homes, farms, a cluster of buildings. All—” Gabriel swept one hand before him. “All leveled to the ground some eighteen years ago.”

  “Leveled … By Jansai?”

  “They say not. I went to Breven. Although why the Jansai should tell me the truth when a truth like that would cause me to call down Jovah’s wrath upon them—”

  “Then, what happened? Where is she?”

  “I have not been able to answer either question in the past three weeks. The Jansai say the Edori may know. The Edori say, oh yes, perhaps a girl from a certain tribe may know, but we do not know where that tribe passes the winter months. And no one seems to have heard of this girl specifically. And I can’t comb every cave and campsite in Samaria looking for Edori who may know something about some vanished farm girl—but may not know a thing!—and I have about five months now to find her. And instead of continuing my search, I have to go play tame angel in Semorrah to prove that I can deal reasonably with the merchants, who do not like me much anyway—”

  “And they have reason not to like you, since you do not like them,” Nathan said, smiling a little. “But back to the problem of this girl. If—”

  “Rachel.”

  “What?”

  “Rachel. That’s her name. Josiah says she is twenty-five years old.”

  “If there are Edori who know where she is, can’t we go to the next Gathering and ask all the Edori at once?”

  “That’s my last hope. But the next Gathering is only three or four weeks before the Gloria. And if I wait till then, and no one knows a thing about her, my situation is indeed desperate.”

  “How desperate?” Nathan asked, alarmed.

  “Josiah says Jovah may not accept another woman’s voice. In which case—the end of the world looms. But I cannot credit that. If I am unable to find her, then I will sing and someone will sing beside me, and if Jovah has any mercy in him at all, he will accept who I bring him. But I would prefer not to make the experiment. Because Josiah seemed so doubtful—”

  “We’ll go to the wedding,” Nathan said decisively. “And then we’ll organize a hunt. You and I and ten or so of our angels. And we’ll search for the right Edori until the Gathering. And then we’ll go to the Gathering. And until then we will not despair. And for now you need to rest, because we leave tomorrow for Semorrah and all the delights in store for us there.”

  “Amen,” Gabriel said. “Let’s leave at first light.”

  So it was not in the best of moods that Gabriel arrived at the magnificent home of Lord Jethro of Semorrah, and his temper was not improved by the opulence of the wedding itself. It was only in the past forty years—during Raphael’s reign and the tenure of Michael before him—that the merchants had come to accumulate such wealth and prominence, so that the cities rivaled the holds of the angels as places of importance. Gabriel believed in a more literal translation of the Librera, which said, “Whereas each man differs from the other as the rose differs from the iris, yet is each one beautiful in his own way, and equal in Jovah’s sight.” Gabriel did not like to see one class of people gain dominance over another; he considered inequity a doubtful road to the harmony that Jovah required from his people. He had not troubled to hide his disapproval, which had made him unpopular with the merchants—and not a few of the angels.

  Still, he was to be Archangel. Knowing his views, Jovah had selected him from all the angels of Samaria. And now Lord Jethro and the Jansai, and even the angels, were stuck with him for the next twenty years. So he had been invited to the wedding, and he had come.

  He had even tried to be civil, although cordiality was beyond him. He found Jethro to be a shrewd, calculating, wholly untrustworthy sort of man, and the bride’s father cut from the same cloth. Young Daniel bid fair to follow in his father’s footsteps, and the lady Mary—sweet Jovah singing!—was small, shy, childlike and nervous, clearly a hapless sacrifice on the altar of intracity commerce.

  Raphael, of course, had fawned over her, with that practiced grace that pleased the merchants so well. He had sat beside her at the dinner and smilingly complimented her on her looks and her hair. She appeared to be grateful for the attention, chattering to him easily after the first few moments, during which she had seemed overcome by the honor. Watching Raphael charm her, Gabriel had grimaced slightly, then glanced over at Nathan. Nathan was grinning.

  So after dinner, Nathan had made his way to the lady’s side and paid her pretty attentions, and this had seemed to please her as much as Raphael’s conversation. Nathan was much more the diplomat and ladies’ man than his brother, and Gabriel was not above deploying him in this role, for it was one he was no good at himself.

  “Your brother seems to have won the lady Mary’s heart,” said a smooth voice behind him, and Gabriel turned to find himself face to face with the Archangel. As always, the first thing he noticed about Raphael was his sheer physical beauty. Hair, eyes, skin, even wings, had a tawny color to them; he was leonine, powerful and sleek. Yet aging for all that. Close up, Gabriel could see the fine lines around the eyes and down the cheeks. The beautiful hair was thinner than it had once been.

  “You did not fare so ill yourself” was Gabriel’s response.

  Raphael smiled seraphically. “She is a sweet child with a gentle manner,” he said. “It is a pleasure to converse with her.”

  “A pity to throw her into Jethro’s den,” Gabriel said, glancing around. The room was filled with landholders and bankers and petty burghers, most of them talking finance if Gabriel did not greatly miss his guess.

  “She comes from just such a den, though I’m sure neither our host nor our guest of honor would thank you for describing it so,” Raphael replied in a purring voice.

  Gabriel laughed. “No, indeed. I’m sure Jethro and all the others will miss your charming manner when they are forced to contend with me instead.”

  “And the day fast approache
s,” Raphael responded. “Tell me. I was hoping to meet your angelica here. But I have heard no word about her at all. Is it possible you are keeping her a secret until the day of the Gloria itself?”

  Raphael spoke with his usual melodiousness, but Gabriel thought he detected the faintest hint of malice in the tone. “I thought to bring her myself,” he said. “It did not work out that way.”

  “But you have found her? Jovah has identified her?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s identified her.”

  Raphael was watching him with those golden eyes. The direct question would be impossible to evade, but Raphael did not ask it. He merely gave Gabriel that sleepy smile that so many mortals found endearing. “Well, I look forward to meeting her,” he said. “Jovah’s choices are always instructive.”

  Which comment did not improve Gabriel’s mood either.

  He endured the hours in the ballroom, successfully pleading ineptitude to avoid having to dance (Nathan was one of the few angels who had mastered the art and managed to hold his wings close enough to his body to prevent their being trod upon by everyone else on the floor). Gabriel made polite conversation with the merchants who were standing near him, dodged the angel Saul most of the evening, and went to bed exhausted by the effort of trying to conceal his true emotions for hours on end.

  He woke in the morning conscious of two things—excessive heat and a dull ache in his right arm. The source of the heat was quickly identified—Jethro’s admirable servants had slipped into the room while he was still sleeping and built a fire, an amenity that was completely unnecessary for an angel. For the pain in his arm he could find no immediate explanation. He rubbed the muscles along his biceps, wondering if he had slept oddly during the night. In a few minutes, the soreness evaporated, and he forgot about it.

  It was a busy day. The wedding breakfast was elaborate, the marriage ceremony itself extraordinarily long and solemnly performed. The only part of the event that Gabriel actually enjoyed was the singing. But he always loved to sing.

  It was when he, Nathan, Raphael, Saul, Magdalena and Ariel were aloft and in the middle of the Te Deum that he realized why his arm had hurt so much that morning. The angels had joined hands to form a circle, Nathan as always managing to get hold of Magdalena’s fingers. Even as the swell of the music bathed him in a mild rapture, Gabriel watched them; he saw that Magdalena very properly had her face turned toward Jovah but Nathan’s eyes were fixed on the Monteverde angel. Angels could not intermarry—it was one of their few prohibitions—and it was a law that had never been transgressed. But Nathan had been in love with Magdalena these past three years, and time did not seem to be diminishing his affection.