Archangel (55 page)

But that afternoon while she was outside drawing water for dinner, she noticed an overgrown ditch running from the stream toward the house. And when she cleaned out the leaves, branches and other debris, she found the ditch lined with the same green tile. And then she realized: Hagar had wanted a water room like the one she had gotten used to at the Eyrie. She’d had part of the stream diverted to run through her house, and added on the stove to heat up the water when she wanted to bathe. The water must go in one door and out the other … and surely there must be meshes of wire or cloth to keep out fish and small animals and floating insects… .

It took her most of the next day to clean out the exterior ditch and rig up sluices and screens, but by nightfall, Rachel had water running through Hagar’s house again. She celebrated by taking a long hot bath. Oh, this was sublime, this was pure ecstasy. The water bubbled over her, warm and soothing, constantly renewed, and flavored with the fresh scents of moss and forest. Wild and safe at the same time. She was never leaving this place.

During the next two weeks, she worked in the gardens. It was impossible, of course, to obliterate a century of neglect in a few days, but she made a tremendous improvement. She even made another pleasant discovery: There was a fourth garden, a vegetable plot, and even now it was growing heavy with tangled tomatoes, corn, squash and beans. With the vegetables, the fruit she had found, the fish in the river, and the dried meat she had brought from the Edori camp, she could live a long time.

Maybe forever.

Rachel was so happy here that she sang all the time. Sometimes she was not even aware of the fact that she was singing until she caught sight of herself in one of the long, narrow mirrors in almost every room (Hagar, or someone, had certainly liked to look at herself). Then she would see herself—hair in mad disarray, old gown covered with dirt and grass, arms laden with flowers or dust rags or tools—mouth wide open and singing so vigorously she could almost see the notes glittering in the air. She would
laugh, and stop, and keep it down to a hum for an hour or two. But then she would notice the music again, and realize it was coming from her.

She paid no attention to what she was singing. It could be anything—Edori ballads, the childhood lullabies she had learned so long ago, snatches of Luminaux street songs, even some of the masses she had studied back at the Eyrie. Now and then she heard herself wordlessly caroling the melody to one of the prayers she had heard Gabriel or Obadiah sing, prayers for rain or sun or wind or protection, she was not sure. She did not know the lyrics to these songs, and perhaps it was just as well. She did not know what she would pray for if she were to lift her voice right now to the god.

And then she began to wonder. Gabriel had told her once that there were places in Samaria where Yovah’s ear seemed most attuned, and Hagar’s retreat was one of those places. If she were to stand here now, at the front door of this little cottage, and fling her arms out and raise her voice in song, what would she ask for? The god had listened to her once, down on the Plain of Sharon. Rachel no longer doubted that her voice had the power to move him. But what would she pray for? What did she want?

Bring Gabriel to me
, she heard a voice in her head say; and it was her voice; and it was the only thing she wanted. But she did not know how to ask that of the god. There must be something else she could request. She would like, a second time, to feel as if she could call on her god and have him listen.

It was three more weeks before she found the key to the silver box in the bedroom that must have been Hagar’s.

She had unearthed the box before she had been in the house four days. It had been in the back of a closet, covered with rotting silk and a handful of loose dirt and a nest that might have belonged to mice ten years ago. Black with tarnish, it was still beautiful—a wide, flat, shallow case of chased silver. The top was studded with sapphires set in a fleur-de-lis pattern, and by that Rachel had known it as Hagar’s. The lock, which was also made of silver, was too stubborn to yield to prying, and Rachel had been reluctant to break into anything so cool and beautiful.

But then she found the key, on a ring of keys hanging just inside the doorway of the small stone shed situated about two hundred yards upstream. She had not yet determined the purpose
of the shed—a smokehouse? a dairy? a storage room?—nor had she found any of the locks that the other keys fit. But she knew as soon as she saw it that the tiny silver key would turn in the ornamental silver lock, and she hurried back to the house to retrieve the crusted box.

When she pried off the lid and stared inside, she could not have been more surprised or more excited had she found a cache of unset jewels. Carefully, reverently, she lifted out the brittle, browned sheets of paper, afraid they might shiver into dust at her touch. The notes and staffs could have been drawn by anyone, but the verses and the sparse comments in the margins could only have been written by one hand. Hagar’s personality fairly leapt from the page; each word seemed to have jumped from her pen to the paper in quick, impatient downstrokes. She had scrawled titles across the tops of a few pages, but more often than not, the music began with a treble clef, a key signature and the opening words of the song.

Slowly, Rachel glanced through sheet after sheet of music, skimming the lyrics and reading the author’s remarks in the margins. “Too boring. Change to minor key?” Hagar had written once. On another page: “Needs an additional stanza.” On another: “Uriel will like this.” On another: “For Daniel, not that he’ll ever get to hear it.” On another: “My favorite.”

But the composition that Rachel paused over was the one she had looked for since she first realized what was in the box. Like the others, it had no title, and it carried a brief comment from the musician: “The music of desire.” Rachel hummed the opening measures softly, just to get a sense of the melody. Even inside the house, even without whispering the words, she felt the power of this music. She heard the rustling trees fall silent to listen, she caught the startled inquiry of the passing birds. She felt the god hold his breath and wait to hear more.

This, then, could be her letter to Gabriel, her invitation, her apology. He would understand this message. When she decided she was ready to see him again, she would step outside her cottage and lure him to her side with this song. He would come then; she would wait until she was certain.

She rose to her feet, brushed the dirt from her knees and walked straight out the front door. Holding the music before her, learning it as she went along, she sang the ballad with her whole heart. Only the god could hear, and the wild creatures that made
their homes on this mountaintop, and the trees and the river and the mountain itself; but it seemed as if the whole world listened. Rachel closed her eyes, pressed the music to her chest and sang the song over a second time.

Only the god could hear her, but Gabriel would come.

I
n the first chaotic days that followed the Gloria, it was easy for Gabriel to gloss over the answer every time someone asked him where Rachel was. It was hard to keep track of anyone in all that confusion. He left Ariel and the Monteverde angels to oversee the emptying of the Plain, while he and Nathan and Obadiah flew to Semorrah to do what they could for that beleaguered city. The water was indeed very high, lapping over the wharf streets and sending warehouse mice and cats seeking higher ground. Yet the bulk of the city was safe—filled with terrified people who greeted the angels with heartfelt cries, but still above water.

They worked there for two days, mostly calming the residents by their sheer presence, but also helping put to rights fallen buildings and crumbling power alliances. They were really there to prove that the god would not strike the city, that the music on the Plain had been effective, that they had averted disaster with their prayers. When the danger passed—three days after Jovah had struck down the mountain—they were free to go.

They returned to the Eyrie, but only briefly. There were still so many trips to make, so many oaths to receive, and this was the psychological moment to exact fealty from the Jansai and the Manadavvi. Gabriel thought of the miles he had to cross, the pleas he would have to make, and he felt exhausted. What he wanted was to sleep a hundred years, and then fly off to find Rachel.

Speaking of Rachel. “I thought she was with you the last few days,” Hannah said to him the morning after his return. He had risen late, but Obadiah and Nathan were still lingering over their breakfasts, and he had joined them. Hannah had found them within minutes.

“Who, Rachel?” Nathan had answered his mother. “No, she came on back to the Eyrie.”

Gabriel watched his fork make patterns in the food on his plate. “Gabriel,” Obadiah said. “Where’s Rachel?”

“You mean you didn’t send her back here?” Nathan asked in surprise.

“She hasn’t been here at all,” Hannah said quietly.

Gabriel looked up. “She’s with the Edori,” he said.

“She just spent
months
with the Edori!” Obadiah exclaimed.

“Well, now she’s spending some more months with them.”

“Did you quarrel?” Nathan wanted to know.

“When did we not?”

“How long will she be gone?” Hannah asked.

“I don’t know. As long as she wants. She says she’ll be back in time for the next Gloria.”

“The next—but that’s a year away!”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to find her?” Obadiah asked quietly.

Gabriel gave him one quick, fierce look. “No.” The younger angel raised his eyebrows and sat back in his chair as far as his wings would allow.

“Do you know where she is?” Hannah asked.

“No. She’s safe. I would know if she wasn’t. Let it go. This is between the angelica and me.”

No one said anything for a few moments. Gabriel concentrated on his food until a servant brought fresh biscuits, and they all had another helping.

“So,” Obadiah said finally. “What next?”

“I have to go to Breven,” Gabriel said, “to Semorrah again, to Castelana, to the Manadavvi holdings—make the whole circuit. See what kind of cooperation I can get now that everyone knows I’m not bluffing. And now that most of the malcontents”— he paused—”are dead.”

“Do you want us to come With you?”

Gabriel rubbed his hand over his face. “I need someone to stay behind and see to whatever crises arise in Bethel while I’m
gone. That should be you, Obadiah. Nathan—I want you to come with me as far as Jordana.”

Three pairs of eyes were instantly fixed on his face. “Jordana,” Nathan repeated. “You mean Windy Point.”

The Archangel nodded. “Not all his angels joined Raphael on the mountain. Some of them must still be there, or perhaps they’re in hiding elsewhere. And Leah. I didn’t see her at the Plain, although she could have been there. We must find out what the situation is.”

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

The flight to Windy Point was uneventful, though Gabriel found himself continually watching the ground below him when they were near enough to make out shapes and figures. From the air, it would be easy enough to spot a small caravan of Edori, though it would be difficult to tell which clan they were and who rode with them… . But he did not see any Edori at all.

They arrived at Windy Point early in the day under a beaming sun. The fortress, always uninviting, seemed particularly dour this day, and they circled it once from the air. Gabriel was trying not to remember the last time he had arrived at this castle, seeking a way in, and the sight that had greeted him on a promontory a few hundred yards above the towers… .

“I don’t see any signs of life at all,” Nathan called to him. “Perhaps it’s been abandoned.”

“We’ve got to go in,” Gabriel called back. They banked and dropped slowly, aiming for the public landing ledge on the lower level of the fortress.

The wide portcullis was standing open, and no one stopped them as they entered. Neither did anyone answer their shouts of greeting or their hammering on the metal gong in the entry hall.

“I don’t think anyone is here,” Nathan murmured.

“You may be right.”

“But it feels—creepy in here.”

“I know.”

They chose a corridor at random and began exploring. They did not even encounter servants in any of the halls or kitchens or anterooms they first checked. The passageways echoed emptily with their two sets of footfalls and their infrequent, low-voiced words.

“No one in here.”

“Nothing in this room.”

“I don’t like this.”

They went through the entire lower level of the fortress without coming across a soul. As they climbed up to the second level, both of them paused a moment, washed with a faint sense of dread, but they said nothing and continued up the stairs.

The first room they came to was the great dining hall, haphazardly lit by sun through the filthy leaded windows. Here they found nearly everyone who had not accompanied Raphael to the Gloria.

They lay together at tables and on wide chaises, and now and then, embraced upon the floor—lovers and good friends with their arms around each other, more solitary fellows with their heads pillowed upon their hands. Angels lay intertwined with mortals, spreading their great soft feathers over their supine companions. Platters of meat and plates of bread and pitchers of wine still sat upon the tables. The only sounds were the small patter of fleeing mice and the droning buzz of hungry insects.

“It does not smell like death,” Nathan said, his voice very faint, wondering. “Could they all be merely drugged? Sleeping?”

“A powerful potion, to keep men sleeping for a week,” Gabriel replied. He stepped forward, carefully descending the stone steps into the room. “Let us see.”

But they were dead. Between them, the brothers checked for breath at every mouth, felt for every absent heartbeat. There were perhaps fifty bodies in the room, half of them angel, half mortal. Not one was living.