Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  He left Naomi and crossed to where Rachel stood, drying dishes with the girls. “Walk with me a few steps,” he said. “I must go back.”

  She was startled to be asked; she had no easy refusal ready. Handing her drying cloth to the youngest girl, she followed Gabriel onto the unlit Plain until he came to a halt.

  “The Eyrie pavilion is that way, under the blue awning,” he said, pointing. “I wish you would come stay with us. You have your own place already set up. You could bring Naomi if you like.”

  “I’m happy where I am,” she said instantly.

  “You know I had no choice but to come here,” he said somberly, studying what little of her face he could see by the scattered starlight. “I did not abandon you in the Eyrie. But I had no choice. I had to come.”

  She took a step backward but he caught her wrist, holding her there. “It shall be as you choose,” he said. “You stay with me, or you stay with them—now, and once the Gloria is sung. But don’t think you can hide from me, wherever you go. There is not a place in Samaria—not in the mountains or the valleys, not in the rivers or the plains—not in Ysral, should you be able to sail to it—where you could go and leave me behind. And if I leave you, for any reason,” he added, tightening his grip as she struggled to free her hand, “I will return to you. That is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning and the thunderbolt falling tomorrow night. That is as sure as the god’s existence. I will come back to you, or I will find you—over and over again, as often as we are parted, until the end of the world itself.”

  If she had an answer to that, she was not allowed to speak it. He drew her so swiftly into his arms that she did not have time to pull free. His wings wrapped around them both; they stood in a shell of white feathers, warm, protected. He bent his head and kissed her, feeling a savage excitement kick through him, feeling the sharp heat flare in his arm, feeling his whole body dissolve. The starlight changed over them while he laid his kiss upon her mouth; the constellations moved before he lifted his head.

  When he finally dropped his arms, she stumbled back a little, to be caught by the net of his wings, still folded around them. She stared up at him with an expression so intense he could not read it, but still she did not speak.

  “Remember,” he said, and gradually folded his wings back. “You were chosen for me, and you are mine.”

  He was not surprised when she turned and ran back for the Edori camp without uttering a word. He watched till she was safely within the perimeter of firelight and Naomi had come over with her hands outstretched. Then he took two running steps and flung himself into the air.

  He would fly the icy currents until he was too weary to think. And he wanted to be as close to his god as possible while he reordered his troubled, giddy mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was a truly awful day.

  Since she had scarcely slept for the entire night, Rachel could not indulge in her usual game of holding back conscious thought during the first moments she was awake. She had been thinking all night, haunted by an endless cycle of worry and speculation. What if the thunderbolt falls? Will it bring the whole mountain crashing down? What if it doesn’t fall? Raphael becomes lord over all Samaria for as long as he lives. It has to fall. But what if it doesn’t fall? Every scene of her life in which Raphael had figured replayed itself repeatedly in her head. The destruction of her parents’ village, the sharp conversation on her wedding day, the terrible dinner at Windy Point—always, gold and laughing, he stood before her, catching her in his filmy wings and then flinging her off some unimaginable height… .

  At moments like these it was almost a relief to have thoughts of Gabriel intrude, though these memories were almost as unsettling. She squirmed on the hard bed and tried not to make too much noise as she attempted to get more comfortable. But there was no getting comfortable.

  Well, he had kissed her. Had wrapped those ivory wings around her and held her so closely that she was smothered in white. At any rate, something had made it impossible to breathe. And he had kissed her …

  She turned again, wholly tangled up now in her thin blanket. She thought perhaps she had just bumped someone’s head but no one uttered a sleepy accusation. She tried to lie still, tried to empty her mind. Perhaps sleep would yet come.

  But it was the words before the kiss that had really undone her. You were chosen for me, and you are mine. As if he no longer regretted Jovah’s selection, as if he had never really hated her, as if he had come to love her.

  Sweet god singing, if she ever allowed herself to love Gabriel, she would die of it. She would expire in a sapphire and alabaster haze. He would make her over, or she would give herself over to him; she would be a flute that responded to a single voice, a harp shaped to a possessive hand.

  She would have liked to get up in the middle of the night and steal from the campground, running to some far finger of land where even Gabriel (should he choose to look) could not find her—but tomorrow would very possibly be the end of the world, and she was pledged to stay and watch it.

  So she fought with her blanket a little more, then gave up and watched dawn filter through the dark roof of the tent, and remembered.

  The day itself was the longest, slowest, most nerve-racking stretch of time she had ever endured. Her only comfort was that it was just as bad for everyone else.

  She was the first one up, and had the little Chieven campsite to herself for a while, but every other Edori who emerged in the next couple of hours followed her actions exactly. They stepped from their tents, looked up at the mountain for a long time, glanced away, and then, as if they could not help themselves, looked back. There was nothing to be seen on that high, hazy peak, but it drew all eyes. There, the renegade angels and mortals waited; there, the god would strike—or would not. There, the fate of the world rested.

  “I’ll go mad before sunset,” Naomi said only a few minutes after they had breakfasted.

  “Before noon,” Rachel said. “We must find distractions.”

  Luke elected to stay behind and see to the camp, but Rachel, Naomi and the girls walked two miles across the Plain to the place where most of Velora was bivouacked. Peter and all of the students were there, having arrived an hour or two behind Rachel the day before. Spotting her from a distance, Katie and Nate and ten of the others came running up, forming a milling, vociferous circle around her.

  “Angela, angela! You was took by the bad angels! Angela, will the fire rain down today? Will the god blow them all off the mountaintop—?”

  It had been weeks since she had seen any of them; they looked half-wild and very young. Laughing, she hugged as many as she could get her arms around.

  “I don’t know what will happen today— Yes, they took me to Windy Point, but I escaped. It was very exciting. Have you all been studying? Have you been practicing your songs?”

  Peter approached and eyed her ruefully over the tops of the bobbing heads. “This will be a hard day for them to get through,” he remarked.

  “Hard for all of us,” Rachel said. “But I thought it might be easier here than just standing and watching the mountain.”

  She introduced Naomi and the girls, who were instant favorites; the street children were fascinated by all things Edori. Matthew had also come to spend the day with the schoolchildren, so he and Naomi and Rachel spent several hours teaching them Edori games and songs. The lunch hour arrived, and it took a while to cook and distribute the meal, and so that passed some time; and then Rachel and Peter insisted on holding a few regular classes, which the children protested but eventually agreed to. And then they played games again and the children practiced their new Edori songs, and then it was dinnertime, and most of the day had been gotten through.

  There had been, meanwhile, a fair amount of activity on the Galo mountain. Rachel knew this—everybody knew this—because no one had been able to keep from watching the gray peak more or less constantly. Mostly the activity was of the mortal variety, as bodies could be seen toil
ing up the slope in ones and twos. Defectors, opportunists, atheists, power-seekers, angel-seekers—a motley, villainous assortment Raphael was drawing to his cause, Rachel thought. Still, it was frightening to think there were that many people who believed him when he said there was no god—who were willing to chance death to make a fortune.

  Now and then one of the rogue angels made an appearance, lifting gracefully off the mountain and gliding over the Plain in slow, lazy circles. Although she knew Raphael could no longer have any interest in taking her—he was playing an entirely different game now—Rachel could not help feeling a little thrill of terror every time those sinister, soundless wings made a shadow across her face. She would never feel safe while Raphael was alive.

  However long that might be.

  It occurred to her to wonder if, bad as it was this day on the Plain, it was not even worse on the mountaintop. Surely it was no easy thing to sit on the site of proposed destruction and while away the hours. She remembered the nightmarish scene of revelry she had witnessed that one night at Windy Point. Perhaps they had all passed the day drinking wine and merrymaking, sure that the sunset would bring them limitless power—and not caring if it brought them death.

  As the interminable day at last began lengthening into a sultry, golden twilight, the angels camped on the Plain also began circulating, visiting each individual campsite. Obadiah and Nathan swirled down before Peter’s camp, to the delight of the cheering schoolchildren.

  “Gabriel wants everyone to move as far north as possible,” Nathan said without preamble. “He’s afraid the mountain will crumble after the thunderbolt falls, and anyone near it will be crushed.”

  “Do you need help packing and moving your things?” Obadiah asked.

  Peter glanced around. The children had already raced away to begin rolling up their clothes and sleeping bags. “No … Actually, the move will be a welcome diversion. It has been a long day.”

  “It has indeed,” Nathan said solemnly. Obadiah caught Rachel’s eye and winked. Somehow, she felt heartened.

  “Us, too,” Naomi said, calling her daughters over. “It looks like we should move our things.”

  Rachel trudged back with her, helped pack up the bags, strike the tent, scatter the fire and load the ponies. But over and over again her eyes turned upward—not to the mountain, where the renegades gathered, but to the cobalt sky where a single angel flew in measured, sweeping turns over and over again around the perimeter of the Plain.

  He had been aloft since shortly after lunchtime, and since he had taken flight, none of Raphael’s angels had swept mockingly across the bowl of the meadow. Which was why, no doubt, he had taken wing, establishing his possession over the Plain, declaring himself the leader, the symbol of the faithful followers of Jovah camped out below. Although she could not hear him, Rachel knew he had spent these last few hours in quiet, uninterrupted prayer. The Kiss in her arm burned with a faint, steady fire. She always knew when Gabriel was singing.

  What did he pray for now? she wondered. For the god to strike, or for the god to withhold his might? She could not imagine Gabriel invoking Jovah’s wrath, begging for death and destruction, even to confound his enemies. No, that was more in her line, she who had so much anger in her heart. Gabriel might ask the god, even now, even a short hour before sunset, to light Raphael’s way, to pour balm and grace and beauty into his heart, to open his eyes, to make him believe. Either that, or he was praying for the safety of all those others in his charge, asking that the mountain not fall on them, that they be rewarded for their piety.

  Whatever he sang, whatever he prayed for, he was a magnificent sight, and Rachel could not keep her eyes off him.

  It was a huge, disorganized, muddled group that eventually rearranged itself on the north side of the Plain of Sharon only thirty minutes or so before the sun would go down. It was not so strange that Rachel, finding herself between Manadavvi and overmen, should turn away from them, take a few steps in another direction, and discover herself somehow with the group she had avoided since her arrival on the Plain: the angels of Monteverde and the Eyrie.

  It was as if they didn’t notice her return, or as if she had never left, for those who saw her or accidentally brushed against her nodded casually or made some offhand comment. “At least the weather was fine all day,” one of Ariel’s angels said to her in an idle way. Eva asked her if she wanted something to eat. Someone else told her she should put on heavier shoes because “it gets cold when the sun goes down.”

  Obadiah stopped, and frowned down at her, but not as if he were mulling over any of her recent sins. “Have you seen Judith today?” he asked abruptly.

  Rachel hadn’t even thought of Judith in weeks. “No. Was she here?”

  He nodded. “She came in with Magdalena, I’m sure of it. And she was here yesterday. But no one remembers seeing her today.”

  Rachel gave one quick, perfunctory glance around the angel pavilion. “Well, I suppose she could be taking a nap or something—”

  Obadiah gave her an ironic look. “Twenty minutes before the world ends? I don’t think so.”

  Rachel patted her mouth, simulating a yawn. “I’m a little tired myself.”

  But he was genuinely worried. “I don’t know where she could be,” he said.

  “Do you care so much?” she asked curiously.

  He was defensive. “I know she’s difficult and spiteful. But she— You are not so happy with your own life, and hers has not been much easier. There are reasons she is as she is.”

  “No doubt,” Rachel said dryly, then added, “I haven’t seen her, but she must be here somewhere. Judith is never far from the angels.”

  He stared down at her a moment, a strange, stricken expression on his face. As one, they turned their eyes to the high gray mountain.

  “Surely not,” Rachel said softly.

  “She always liked Raphael,” Obadiah murmured. “He always flirted with her, which Gabriel never did. She’s not really an angel-seeker, you know, but she does like to be around the angels—”

  Rachel laid a hand on his arm. “If she’s there now, you can’t do anything for her,” she said. “If she went there, she chose to go.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe she was merely walking alone across the Plain, and Saul or Raphael swept down—”

  “Gabriel has been patrolling the Plain all afternoon,” Rachel told him gently. “And Raphael has gathered enough nonbelievers to his cause. He has no need to take prisoners.”

  “But she’ll die,” Obadiah whispered.

  “All of us may die, when the mountain comes down,” Rachel said. “We have all made our choices.”

  He still looked so miserable that she put her arms around him, carefully sliding her hands under the silken wings. She pressed him to her, patting him on the back. He dropped his blond head to rest it on top of hers, and hugged her in return. She had rarely tried to give anyone comfort before. It amazed her that it was such an easy thing to do.

  But when, still wrapped in that friendly embrace, she lifted her eyes a fraction, she saw that Gabriel had landed and was standing not five feet away from her, watching her with close attention. Slowly she turned her gaze away from him and pulled herself from Obadiah’s arms.

  “How much time now?” she asked, looking up into his sad face.

  “Fifteen minutes, maybe,” he said.

  She ran her hands for warmth swiftly up and down her bare arms. “It seems to be getting cooler. And—it’s harder to breathe. It feels the way it feels before a storm.”

  He nodded. “The clouds are gathering high above the Plain. See? Black clouds. Storm clouds.”

  “So high,” Rachel murmured. “Even if they held lightning, it couldn’t strike the earth from there.”

  “Maybe. Maybe—”

  Rachel glanced once more around the camp. Gabriel had moved away; now he was deep in conversation with Ariel. Nathan and Magdalena stood on the edge of the angel encampment, totally enfolded together. S
he stood with her back against his chest, and they were wrapped in an inner layer of her wings and an outer layer of his. Through the translucent feathers a double glow of light played faintly—his Kiss alight, and hers. As Rachel watched, he bent his head and pressed his mouth to her hair. The lights flamed briefly higher.

  The edge of sunset made a faint scarlet streak across the sky.

  “Rachel—has anyone seen Rachel?” The frantic voice was Naomi’s, coming from somewhere behind her. Before Rachel could turn and call out, she saw Gabriel spin around and point. Angel and Edori both joined her where she stood with Obadiah.

  Naomi hugged her tightly. The Edori looked shaken and fretful, she who was usually so serene. “I looked around and you were gone and I didn’t know where you were—and with Raphael so close—”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just wandered over here—”

  “People like to keep track of you,” Gabriel murmured. Those were the first words he had spoken to her all day. “You shouldn’t make it so difficult.”

  Naomi took her hand. “Let me wait with you.”

  “Where are Luke and the girls?”

  “In camp. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  Gabriel took Rachel’s other hand, and smiled down at both startled women. “Between us, we’ll keep her safe,” he said. Rachel could not pull away from one of them without pulling away from both. She felt her color rising, and said nothing.

  “Look,” Obadiah said suddenly, sharply.

  Everyone on the Plain was staring upward.

  Setting at last, the sun spilled a rich carnelian color across the darkening sky. Wisps of peach, violet and saffron deepened as they watched, changed to tangerine, indigo and gold. The silent black clouds that had roiled in lower and lower now began to smooth out, to melt into the blackness of oncoming night. The air was thick and sluggish, stirred by occasional heavy currents; it was as if the mountains themselves breathed in and out, slowly, laboriously.

  Nothing and no one else moved. The rich colors of the sunset thinned and grayed. A faint white light showed around the ringed perimeter of the dark mountain, separating it by the slimmest margin from the blackness of the sky. As if it were being sucked downward into the soil of the earth, that light too began to fade.