by Sharon Shinn
“Which is why the motorized boat has met with such enthusiasm among the Edori,” Noah murmured. “It is much faster than a vessel which relies on wind or manpower, and it is never becalmed.”
“It is still dashed to the ocean floor in a storm.”
“Possibly, but a power source independent of wind and waves will make it easier to control in a gale.”
“What do you know of it? You’ve never gone to sea in your life.”
“No, but so the sailors have told me. Why are you so skeptical? I thought you’d be excited. A whole new problem—a whole new puzzle.”
“Well, and, certainly, if the project was to design a motorboat to allow fishermen to go a few extra miles off the Jordana coast, I’d say yes, great idea, let me help. But this is—This is like my designing a pair of wings and telling a boy he can fly to Mount Sinai with them. I know he can’t.”
“He could, if you could just perfect your design,” Noah said with a smile. “It is the invention that is at fault, not the destination.”
“Possibly—but you cannot even be sure of your destination!”
“It has been told to us by descendants of those who have been to Ysral and returned,” Thomas said. “They have described the beautiful land and its sumptuous fruits, the water sweet as honey—”
“I know, I know,” Caleb interrupted, “and nothing but harmony there as the Edori live in peace among their brothers. The Edori have talked of a homeland in Ysral since before the days of slavery under Raphael. But those are myths—legends—those tales are from so long ago that you cannot remember which father first told it to his son. How can you be sure those journeys were actually made—to and from Ysral? There is no proof. There are no mementoes ferried back across the ocean. There are only stories.”
“How do we know that Yovah exists and that he carried us to Samaria in his own cupped hands more than six centuries ago?” Thomas asked gently. “We have no proof that he guards us, that he listens to our prayers—”
“Especially lately,” muttered someone in shadow on the other side of the fire.
“Don’t start a theological discussion with me,” Caleb warned. “I am not a man with much religious faith. That is the wrong parallel to draw.”
“No faith?” Thomas asked, clearly incredulous.
“Don’t start,” Noah murmured. “Truly—”
“But where exactly is your faith uncertain?” Thomas asked, unheeding. “Surely you believe that Yovah dwells in the heavens above us, ready always to hear our petitions and respond to our needs?”
Caleb took a deep breath and expelled it. “Where is the proof of that?” he asked finally. “How do we know he is there?”
Thomas gestured. “The rains, the winds—”
“They come as they will. We have studied this, a little. When water evaporates into a cooler air mass, it condenses. In a laboratory, you get mist on your glass. Over a continent, you get rain.”
“But the control of the rain! The dispersion of the storms! When the angels fly aloft and sing their prayers, causing the clouds to part—”
“The clouds will eventually part no matter what. Sun and storm make a pattern we can forecast even when we cannot alter it. And,” Caleb added, nodding toward the shadowy form who had spoken earlier, “if the angels ever had any ability to influence weather, they appear to have lost it now.”
“Not the Archangel,” said a woman sitting to his left. Both Caleb and Noah looked sharply her way; Caleb was the first to realize that she referred to the woman who had replaced Delilah at the Eyrie.
“They do say Yovah listens to her when he hears no one else,” another Edori agreed. “But still there are storms.”
Thomas continued addressing Caleb. “And still you do not believe?”
“I am not that impressed by weather.”
“What of the other manifestations? The thunder and the lightning bolts that the god throws down when men have misbehaved or failed to honor him?”
Caleb spread his hands. “What thunder? What lightning? Have you personally witnessed this?”
“In the time of Rachel and Gabriel—”
“Rachel and Gabriel! A hundred and fifty years ago!”
“Yovah sent lightning twice in the space of a few days. Once to bring down the Galo Mountain when the Gloria was not sung on the appointed day. And once to destroy Windy Point, when Gabriel asked him to level that evil place.”
“Were you there?” Caleb asked quietly. “Did you see this? Did anyone you know see this?”
“The tale has been told by the fathers of our fathers’ fathers, who were there and saw it. And they told their sons, who told theirs, who told theirs.”
“A story,” Caleb said simply. “A legend.”
“Then why is the Galo mountain burned black with marks that will not wash out after more than a century of rain? Why is the ground below Windy Point covered with smashed boulders that appear to have been flung from a great height? What destroyed these places, if not the god?”
“Anything,” Caleb replied. “A stone that fell from the sky. Such a stone fell twenty years ago, causing the whole plain north of the Heldoras to light up like fire.”
“But that stone left a crater half the size of the Plain of Sharon,” Noah pointed out. “Not jagged rocks as sharp as cut glass.”
“Well, then, there are other explanations. If in fact lightning smote the mountains, why not just plain old lightning? There’s plenty of that. Who said every bolt had to be generated by the god?”
“Well, no, not every bolt, but these were documented—”
“Not well enough for me,” Caleb said.
Thomas continued to regard him steadily, more with amazement than ire. “So,” he said. “you are truly an atheist. Then how do you account for us being here at all—living on Samaria—brought here by what device if not by Yovah himself?”
Caleb grinned. “Now, that’s a mystery that puzzles me every time I open my mind to it,” he admitted. “The Librera says Jovah carried us here in his cupped palms, over a great distance, from a far place filled with violence and hatred. But how did he do that? How did he pick us? Why did he pick us? Although the why is not nearly as compelling as the how. In his cupped hands? What does that mean? If I chose to carry something over a great distance, I would find a box or a bucket or a container of some sort. Say I were going to move a colony of ants from Gaza to Breven. I wouldn’t want to carry them in my hands. They’d never make the trip safely. Hands must be a metaphor in this context, but a metaphor for what? And what exactly is meant by a great distance? The distance from Samaria to the stars that we see above us—how far is that? We can’t even guess how to measure that sort of space. Perhaps it was no more than the width of the ocean. Perhaps Jovah carried us away from Ysral, a place of violence and hatred—”
That, of course, was going too far; half-a-dozen Edori voices rose in protest. Caleb laughed and flung his hands up for peace.
“Anyway, you see, these are the questions that vex me when my thoughts turn to Jovah and the origin of the race,” he said. “I am a man of science. I question everything. And so far, religion has not provided me with any answers I like.”
Thomas turned to Noah and patted him on the shoulder, while gesturing back toward Caleb. “Be sure and guard this one very closely,” he said in a kind voice. “His way is hard, and he is likely to stumble.”
Noah was grinning. “I do what I can for him. He’s fairly hopeless. A good mind, you know, but somewhat disordered.”
“I am not the only one who thinks this way,” Caleb pointed out. “The more we know of science, the more we question about god.”
“Questions are good,” Thomas said. “I hope you find your answer. There is only one, but it may take you your lifetime to discover.”
“Well,” Noah interjected, “there’s one answer he hasn’t given us yet, and that’s whether he’ll help build the boat. Yes? No? Let me think about it a day or two?”
“I thin
k it’s crazy,” Caleb said. “But I understand your desire. I’ll help, if the offer’s still open.”
“Yes!” Noah exclaimed, knocking his fists together in a gesture of victory. “I knew you couldn’t resist the challenge.”
“You need me,” Caleb said. “You’re not smart enough to design such a project on your own.”
With a yelp of protest, Noah lunged for his friend and wrestled him to the ground. They rolled clumsily from side to side, bumping into bodies and kicking apart the fire. Around them was the sound of Edori laughter and the smell of disturbed ashes. Caleb was laughing too hard to put up much of a struggle, but he eventually managed to fight himself to a sitting position, with Noah’s hands still clamped around his neck. It was a raucous end to a pleasurable day, and he found himself preferring it to another night at Seraph. When Noah released him, one of the Edori brought them each another mug of ale, and they continued drinking companionably well into the night.
Thus, Caleb was not at his best the next day, more tired than he should have been and dragging from the effects of the alcohol. He put in a good day’s work (not at Seraph this week; one of the music schools wanted him to design a machine that would automatically strike hammers against their collection of bells), and figured he would make an early evening of it at his own place for a change.
It was a regime he followed for three days running, and he was surprised at how pleased his body was at the early nights and extra hours of sleep. He was not surprised, the evening of that third day, when one of the baker’s daughters told him he had company awaiting him on the balcony outside his door.
“It’s an angel lady,” she said, her voice lowered, as if those bright wings endowed the beings with enhanced hearing as well as flight and beauty.
“No doubt,” Caleb said a little wryly. “Why don’t you—I’ll take some of those sweet rolls as well, while I’m here. Since it looks like I’ll be entertaining.”
The girl put four sticky buns into a bag. “She’s very beautiful,” she offered. “I didn’t know you knew any angels.”
“Well, I know one.”
“She didn’t give me her name, and when I asked what I should tell you, she said, ‘Tell him it’s the Archangel.”’
Caleb laughed, although it struck him as odd that Delilah would so name herself before this young girl—before anyone, actually. It was a title she seldom laid claim to.
“Thanks for the advance warning,” he said, and left the shop to take the iron steps two at a time. But when he arrived at the top of the landing, he received a profound shock: The slim blond angel standing motionless before him was not Delilah. It was no one he had ever seen before in his life.
Alleluia had left the Eyrie with a sense of relief. So many of her days seemed hedged about with difficult decisions, deep uncertainties, tasks to be performed that she had somehow overlooked. Now at least, however unsuccessful her mission might prove to be, she was taking action, and this made her feel somehow stronger. She was a woman with purpose, on a mission, with a goal.
Even better—she was escaping. She had always loved the Eyrie, ever since she first went there to live—loved its glowing rosy walls, its endless labyrinth of rooms, the color and motion and sound that made it such a vivid place. Especially the sound, for the Eyrie was alive with music. Night and day, singers gathered in two- and three-person shifts to sing from the open room built at the highest point of the hold—so, night and day, the air was flavored with the sweetest of music, the heart was soothed by the most harmonious of sounds. Every singer in the hold took his or her turn in the duets and small chorales; it was one of the details for which the Eyrie was famous.
But sometimes—and it was almost sacrilege in a land devoted to the principle of harmony—sometimes Alleya found herself longing for a moment or two of silence. An hour, perhaps; indeed, she would not complain at a day’s worth of stopped music. It was one of the reasons she so often took refuge in the soundproofed music rooms; there she could have complete quiet for as long as she desired.
Now, of course, that angelic harmony was the least of the noises to assault her. More likely, it was a merchant’s angry voice or the sound of someone calling her name on a note of panic. Doors slamming. Arguments. She longed for a cool, still place where no one spoke for hours at a time.
In fact, that was one of the reasons she had decided to make Mount Sinai her first stop, although she had perfectly legitimate reasons for going there, too. Knowledge of past history had served her so well in her dealings with the Manadavvi that she thought general research might give her more ammunition in future debates.
It was Samuel who had suggested that Mount Sinai might offer other treasures as well, for it was the first site to be opened by the oracles when the colonists arrived on Samaria. It was generally held to have the most complete library of texts brought by those early settlers. But those manuscripts, as Alleya pointed out, were in a language long since discarded by the Samarians.
“But isn’t that the language the oracles still use?” Samuel asked. “When they’re speaking with the god?”
She had stared at him, for of course he was right. “And they must learn it somehow,” she added for him. “So there must be—what? Grammar books? Manuals? Dictionaries?”
“Something,” he agreed. “If you look, you’ll find something. Or you can always ask Job or Mary how they learned and if they’ll teach you.”
They had looked at each other a long time, weighing that. Then—“Nooo,” they said in unison, and they both laughed. Alleya had so far managed to steer pretty much clear of the oracles; she didn’t need one more set of people telling her what to do.
So on a cold, brilliant day she left for Mount Sinai, the first stop on a trip to Luminaux to look for an electrician who could bring her music machines back to life. It sounded very productive and necessary—not at all like she was fleeing to a place of silence and peace.
It took only a few hours of easy flying to cover the 150 miles to the mountainous slopes that housed the oracle’s retreat. As she stepped inside the cool, gray tunnel that led to the interior of Mount Sinai, Alleya was filled with a sense of absolute calm. Her heartbeat slowed; she felt the blood flow more contentedly in her veins. Her mind cleared, washing away debris and static she had not even been aware of. Even her wings felt lighter.
As she stepped—tiptoed—through the wide tunnels, the only sounds were the whisper of her wings across the stone and the tiny tap of her careful footfalls. Like the Eyrie, Mount Sinai was perpetually lit with muted gaslight, but here the effect was of silver coolness, witchlight against a lifting mist. Alleya liked the dreamy effect, remote and soothing, in keeping with everything else about this place.
She passed quickly through the first rooms she came to, the public foyers and the smaller conference rooms. She had spent a few days here when she was quite young, and she’d never come back, but she remembered the layout fairly well. Down that hallway, the sleeping rooms and the kitchens; down that one, the oracle’s private chambers. But here, at the center of the maze, were the rooms where the mystic’s true work was done: the archives, where all knowledge was kept, and the central chamber where the glowing blue plate provided an interface with the god.
Alleya had meant to go directly to the archives, but the eerie blue light on that glass screen drew her across the room almost against her will. Not touching anything, she spread her fingers and suspended her open hands over the knobs and buttons that the oracles pressed when they wished to communicate with Jovah. Job, she remembered, had called it a keyboard. He had touched his fingers to three of its symbols, and the lights and letters on the screen had instantly rippled and rearranged themselves. It was the most awesome thing Alleya had ever seen.
The pictures on the screen now were unmoving, unreadable, navy-colored hieroglyphics against the celestial background. If she could memorize them, Alleya thought, and if she could indeed find some grammar book to teach her the old tongue, she might be able to deciph
er whatever message the god was sending now to an empty room. She smiled at the thought. Jovah knew better than to communicate with someone who wasn’t there.
And better than to try to communicate with someone who could not reply. Resolutely she turned her back on the mesmerizing display and slipped into the huge room that opened off the central one. This one was darker than all the others, and bigger, so that it took her eyes a moment to adjust. It was just as she remembered: piles of leatherbound books lining every wall, additional volumes more coherently arranged on wood shelves that reached almost to the high, sloped ceiling, maps attached by hooks to the stone walls, and locked metal cases holding who knew what treasures or secrets.
She remembered the last time she had been here, nearly twenty years ago, holding her mother’s hand and too fascinated to be frightened (as she should have been). “What’s that place? What’s that map? Is it Samaria? Can I go look at it?” she had asked, and her mother told her to be quiet just as the oracle Rebekah told her No. (No what? No, it was not Samaria? No, she could not look at it? In any case, she did not go any closer. Rebekah found what she was rummaging for in that back room, and they had all returned to the god’s chamber.)
Now she could go as close as she liked and examine the pictures on the wall. For there were three maps, she saw as she went deeper into the room—one she could see from the doorway and two that came into view only after she stepped inside. She went to the far wall to examine the one that had first caught her eye.
It was not Samaria, that was certain—it did not look like any place at all. It was merely a series of dots, and clusters of dots, with white lines hand-drawn at various locations connecting dots so that they formed fanciful faces and shapes. Alleya traced the designs with her finger. This one looked like a horse; this one like a flower in full bloom. A broken red line made an erratic path from one corner of the map diagonally to the other, almost as if someone were laying a course between the dots and faces. She could not even begin to guess what such a map might be recording; perhaps it was something else entirely. In any case, it was so old that the paper was brown and the red of the pathway had faded to a muddy color.
