Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  “Yovah guard you,” Naomi said, kissing her a final time, then holding her horse while she mounted. “Ride with the god’s whisper in your ear.”

  The day was beautiful, but it was a good three or four hours before Rachel actually noticed that. Her mind was so completely focused back on the Edori camp that she had virtually no idea what kind of countryside they passed through, or whether they rode through sunlight or shadow. Matthew had to tug on her arm around noontime when he asked if she was hungry. Dumbly, she nodded.

  “Ah, Raheli, it’s not worth this great sorrowing,” he said, half-laughing and half-serious as they sat on a spread blanket and munched on dried food. “You’ll be seeing your Edori friends in just a few days. Naomi said she’d be in Velora before the week is out.”

  Rachel attempted a smile. “I know. It’s just I—I don’t suppose I even realized how much I missed her. It’s as if she were the one who might have been dead instead of me, and now I’ve found her alive again I almost can’t bear to leave her.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be riding back with me,” he said.

  For a moment she misunderstood. “Well, of course I do! I have to sing at the Gloria! You know that.”

  “Of course you have to sing, girl. I didn’t mean that you couldn’t go back at all. But you could wait a day or two and travel with your Edori friends. They’ll be in Velora in plenty of time.”

  Rachel lifted her eyes to his face, a suddenly arrested expression on her own. “That’s true,” she said slowly. “I could travel with them … But Gabriel didn’t want me to leave at all, and if I don’t come back with you—”

  “I’ll tell him where you are. A little delay, is all.”

  She chewed at the inside of her lip. “He won’t like it,” she said. “He’ll think—you know he’ll think that I’m not coming back.”

  “Well, but, if you are coming back, he’ll have no reason to think that, now will he?” Matthew said reasonably.

  She considered him, a small smile starting in her eyes. “Will you be able to convince him, do you think?”

  “I’ve the gift of speech,” he said loftily. “Why should he not believe me? Back you go, girl. Pack your horse and turn back to the campgrounds. I’ll make your excuses in Velora, and you can have a few more precious days to spend with your Edori sister.”

  It was with much more animation that Rachel readied her horse this second time. “You have been such a good friend to me,” she said, hugging Matthew quickly before swinging up on her horse’s back. “Tell Gabriel—tell him I will hurry back to him. Tell him I am returning.”

  Matthew laughed up at her from his place on the ground. “He’ll not doubt it,” he promised. “Hurry now. Ride with care.”

  She rode quickly, but not quite as carefully as Matthew would have liked. Although she had just passed through this territory an hour or so ago, she had paid so little attention that it did not look at all familiar. It was not possible to get lost, of course; she knew exactly where the Edori camp lay, and she knew that she was headed in that direction. Nevertheless, as she drew farther away from Matthew, she began to feel unaccountably uneasy. Her uneasiness increased as the sunny day began, rather rapidly, to cloud over and grow cool.

  She was perhaps two hours from the Edori camp when her palomino shied, pulling back so abruptly that Rachel almost lost her seat. She snatched at the bridle and held on while the horse danced in a complete circle, tossing its head and seeming unwilling to go a mile farther. Rachel peered forward down the trail, looking for something that might have spooked the horse, but nothing was immediately visible in the flat, wide prairie ahead.

  “Well, there’s obviously something up there that you don’t like,” she murmured, slipping from the saddle and letting the reins trail. “Something dead, maybe? Something we could go around? Let me take a look. Don’t you stray, now.”

  She took a few cautious steps forward, but nothing leapt out at her, and nothing in the landscape ahead showed any sign of menace. So more boldly she began to trot forward, noting the unmistakable signs of spring here in the southern plains—the greening of the grass, the flowering of the flame-colored berry bushes that bloomed earliest and died quickest, the musical query and response of the shrub thrushes who swooped and glided overhead with such energy that she could hear the beat and whisper of their wings—

  Their wings—

  She barely had time to glance up before they were upon her, three great airborne bodies descending in a terrifying mass of arms and legs and feathers. She shrieked and ducked her head, scuttling sideways, trying to flatten herself to the earth and run forward at the same time. Hands grabbed for her and missed, the nails scraping along her cheek. Another hand tangled itself in her hair, but she wrenched free, feeling the hair nearly rip from her head. The air around her roiled with the wind of their wingbeats; their shadows blocked out the sun as they swooped and hovered over her. She beat at their reaching hands with her fists, and screamed again, more loudly, more despairingly. They were all around her; there was nowhere to run.

  Someone gripped her wrists and someone else grabbed her once more by the hair. Then two arms went around her waist and the awful thing happened: She was lifted up, she was suspended, she was flying. The world below her careened crazily from side to side, then shrank, grew tiny, then began to stream by in a series of surreal, microscopic images. Trees, hills, the brown-and-green patchwork of fields, finger-sized rivers, palm-sized pools—they unfolded below her like small pictures of themselves taken from a strange, unnatural angle.

  Nausea overtook her, and she shut her eyes. Still she could feel the wind whistling past her, much too fast, much too cool. She was freezing; except where her side and her shoulder were pressed against bare angel skin, her flesh was absolutely icy. She could feel panic crowding around her face and lungs with an actual physical pressure, but she did not have the strength to fight it off. She was afraid to open her eyes again, afraid to get another sickening glimpse of the countryside so far below her that she could not even guess how high above it she was, but she had to know. She knew, but she had to be sure—

  Against her left shoulder, she could feel cold metal against her cold skin as the angel’s arm cradled her to his chest. Cautiously, squinting against the possibility of any true vision, she opened one eye and took a quick look at the angel’s nearest wrist.

  It was clad in a gold bracelet studded with rubies.

  She had, as she had thought, fallen into the hands of the Archangel’s disciples.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It had been named Windy Point because the sound of the wind was unceasing. Night or day, through any room in the high, stony fortress, the wind whispered in, soughed in, moaned in, shrieked in, came sobbing in. It dusted behind servants as they walked down the long, rocky corridors. It toyed with curtains, tapestries, the hems of women’s skirts. It sent the candles flickering, the fire to leaping, the glass balls of the chandeliers clinking together. And even in deepest summer it was prodigal with its diaphanous snow-cold kisses.

  They had flown all night and arrived in mid-morning, though Rachel had only the most confused impression of time, voices and events. She had lain ill for most of that day in a room at the very top of the tall, narrow castle. They had left her on the bed, but she had, with a single burst of strength, managed to rise and stumble to the fire, where she had lain ever since on the chilled stone hearth. There had been bouts of retching, moments of delusionary terror, and she was still shaking as with a fatal ague, but slowly she felt her body and her mind recuperating. It was through sheer force of will now that she drew herself up to a sitting position, dizzy though it made her, and tried to beat some sense back into her yammering brain.

  So. He had tried before, and this time he had succeeded. The man she hated above all others had taken her prisoner. Now it remained to be seen how he planned to kill her.

  She lifted her head and made herself look around her room. It had the feel of a garret, but perhaps,
in this pile of rocks, it was the most elegant the fortress had to offer. The flaky gray stone of the walls was interlaid with seams of mortar—the castle had not been, as it seemed, hewn whole from the rocks of the mountain, but painstakingly built, brick by brick, high up in this most inhospitable of terrains. The place was hundreds of years old, and this room, at least, showed every day of its five centuries of use. The mortar was cracked and blackened; the cloudy pane of glass in the single window did not fit snugly in its splintered casement; and everywhere along the join of wall and wall, or wall and ceiling, little finger holes made passageways for the wind.

  Rachel shivered and moved her eyes to the furnishings. The bed was wide enough, and covered with a thick quilt. Someone had attempted to brighten the dreary room with red rugs and a brightly patterned wall hanging. There appeared to be no separate water room, such as existed in the Eyrie, but there were eight or ten large jugs of water lined against one wall, and various pitchers and basins that could be used for washing. Certainly she was intended to make herself comfortable here.

  The thought made her smile bitterly.

  Mostly to see if she could do it, she rose to her feet and stood balancing herself for a few moments before the fire. From her standing vantage point, she continued her visual inspection of the decor. There was an armoire, a chest of drawers, a cheval mirror, a table and a chair; the one window, a single door. She circled the room to investigate each separate item.

  The armoire was sparsely filled with a few old dresses, somewhat shapeless but thick enough to be warm. The shirt and trousers she was wearing were soiled and torn. She would almost certainly have to change into clothes that Raphael provided. The chest offered undergarments, a set of bed linens, soap and other personal items.

  The mirror gave her back an image of wild hair, fanatic eyes and clenched hands, but she did not pause long enough to study the apparition closely.

  The door, naturally, was locked.

  For a long time she stood to one side and a little back from the window, unwilling to look out because she feared the view. She had never, to this day, had the courage to gaze from her one window in the Eyrie, terrified of the vertigo and nausea the height would evoke. She was not sure she could stand to peer out through this misty glass and see nothing but the gray tumble of rock down toward the blackness of some unimaginable ravine. And yet she had to look; she had to know what her chances of escape were.

  So she crept closer to the glass, and, splaying her hands over her eyes to filter out the worst of the vision, she glanced quickly out and then back in.

  But all she had seen was stone. Tall stone, slaty and streaked, rising instead of falling. She peered through the glass again, more fully.

  Her window looked out on a view of the jagged mountain face as it clawed its way up to an uneven apex. Craning her neck, she could see the very top of the snarling mountain, stabbing three crooked fingers at the dour sky. Nowhere was there any evidence of greenery—hardy mountain shrubs, indomitable ivy, even a weed—just the bony fingertips of the mountain poking holes into heaven.

  She, Raheli sia a Manderra, erstwhile Edori, erstwhile slave and future angelica, was imprisoned in her enemy’s castle at the very top of the world.

  Someone brought her food after what seemed like hours.

  She had not been aware of hunger until she smelled the aroma sifting in from behind the locked door; then she was famished. A key turned in the lock, and two men entered, one bearing a tray and one merely guarding the exit. Neither of them looked at her directly.

  “Who are you? Why am I here?” she demanded sharply, but was not surprised to receive no answer. The server bowed to her as he left, and the door was shut behind him. She heard the lock fall home. For a moment, she stared wrathfully at the closed door, but the lure of food was too strong. She crossed the room in a few quick strides and quickly consumed the meal.

  Only after she had swallowed every bite did it occur to her that the dishes could have been seasoned with poison. She did not have much experience with toxins, except for the lethal powders that were periodically set down in Lord Jethro’s cellars to keep the river rats from breeding, but she knew that a wide variety of them existed. Poisons that clouded the mind, poisons that caused hallucinations, poisons that could kill a man within minutes …

  Well, if he had wanted to kill her outright, Raphael could have simply had his angels drop her from the mountaintop, and she wasn’t so sure he needed a prescription to drive her mad. The constant whine and wheedle of the wind would accomplish that, if terror didn’t do the trick first. It seemed safe enough, all in all, to eat.

  No one else came to the door for the rest of the day. Night came swiftly, judging by the light admitted by the imperfect window glass, or perhaps the shadows of the mountain brought night to this place sooner than to other parts of the world. Certainly it did not seem as though the sun could successfully reach past those accusing sentinels of rock and bring light or warmth anywhere near this bleak castle. At any rate, the chamber became dark, and Rachel felt exhaustion steal over her. She crossed to the bed, doubled the quilt over to provide additional warmth, and slept.

  In the morning, as was her custom, she lay very still for a long time, not opening her eyes.

  Cold; that was the first thing she became aware of. Her body was drawn up into a small knot, her arms folded across her chest to conserve whatever heat her flesh could generate, and yet she still felt sore and cramped with chill. Next, the eerie, discordant music of unarticulated wind intruded itself on her consciousness. She pressed her eyelids together, gathered her body tighter, but it was no use. She remembered exactly where she was and how she had gotten here.

  But why was she here? What would happen to her next? Where was Raphael, and why had he not explained to her why he had taken her hostage?

  She shivered under the quilt and refused to stir from the bed.

  In an hour or so there was a commotion outside the door, and two servants entered again. One built up the fire, while the other laid down a breakfast tray. She waited until they left, locking the door behind them, before she threw off the covers and ran for the heat of the fire. They had brought extra fuel as well, so that she could stoke the flames when they died down. At least they did not plan for her to freeze to death—or starve.

  No one came to speak to her; the day spread before her blank and gray and just a little menacing. To keep herself from thinking, she passed the hours doing voice warm-ups, running up and down the scale in half notes and then, as the tiresome day progressed, quarter tones. She practiced her intervals next, major, minor and dissonant, and then turned to breathing exercises.

  Finally she remembered the learning pipes tucked in the trousers she had been wearing when she left Matthew, and she dug these out and taught herself how to play their thin, simple music. When she tired of this, she went back to the voice exercises. She did not have the heart to try real singing—somehow the notion of true music in this place was unthinkable, impossible. It was as if Jovah would not hear her in this fortress, even were she to offer his favorite masses. It was as if her voice evaporated into a vacuum, a room with no resonance, as if she did not sing at all.

  And yet the wind provided a sinister and unceasing accompaniment, and its eerie melody lingered in the room even when she fell silent.

  She was brought one more meal, another load of fuel, and received, again, no answers to her impatient questions. So the day passed, and it was nighttime again before she was quite ready for it.

  She was not so tired this evening. She sat for a long time before the fire, wrapped in a blanket and moodily studying the flames. Earlier in the day it had astonished her to realize she did not feel as terrified as she knew she should; her predominant emotion, in fact, was anger. That he would take her, that he should dare, after all this time and once again … it was foolish, she knew, but if ever she was allowed to confront him, all her fury would blaze forth. She would tell him exactly how much she hated him. And the
n he would kill her, or do with her whatever he planned, and so anger was of no use to her whatsoever—but it had been her cloak, her weapon and her shield for so many years now that she could not lay it by.

  Her meditations were abruptly interrupted by a furtive fumbling at the door handle. Her head whipped around. She narrowly studied the thick dark rectangle of wood while, on the other side, hands tried to force the wrong key into the lock. Her heart squeezed down. She glanced around wildly for a weapon, seeing none. The slight, secretive clinking continued for some minutes while her late-night visitor tried a series of keys, doggedly, one after the other. Rachel sat motionless on the hearth but her head felt close to bursting with the terrific pressure of her pounding blood.

  For what purpose would a jailor visit a prisoner’s cell by midnight, when all the rest of the world was sleeping?

  The scraping of metal against metal ceased. Rachel strained every nerve to hear a whispered curse or the sound of a renewed assault upon the door. There was a moment of silence so long that she almost believed her visitor had crept away, and yet … she could still sense a presence outside, ghostly and frustrated, speculatively eyeing the door. After a long, long moment of tension, she heard soft footsteps circle once, then retreat down the corridor. Surely she imagined it, but she also thought she heard the whispering, shushing sound of wing feathers brushing against the tattered bricks of the hall.

  Three more days passed, identical to that first one. Three more nights, also identical, down to the midnight visitor. Each night, Rachel waited, breathless, soundless, before the door, hands curled into fists, heart pounding at a maddening pace, listening to the scratching and scraping at the lock. She never spoke, nor did the angel on the other side, but she was sure he knew she heard him, that he smiled to himself as he pictured her panicked face blanching on the other side of the door.