The Shadows of God

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “Come. You told me yourself that to make the world God had to withdraw from it. He created your kind to work where he could not, and you rebelled. But the universe is made of natural law, and even from outside it God was able to change that law, wasn't he? Just a little, just enough to rob you of your communication with matter. You, but not us.”

  “That is essentially true but unimportant,” Uriel replied. “What is important right now is that we stop your son from unleashing the engines again.”

  “Is it? I wonder.”

  “You've been hurt,” Uriel said.

  “Why, yes. You aren't the only one who has been in danger. Uriel, why didn't you tell me that all of you are only descended from two archangels?”

  Another hesitation. “Does that matter?”

  “It might. You cripple me when you do not tell me everything.”

  “I don't have time to tell you everything. I tell you the things I think you most need to know.”

  “And withhold those you most fear my knowing. Yes, I understand.”

  “That is well.”

  “Have you anything more to tell me? Anything about my son?”

  “No.”

  “Then leave me.”

  Uriel vanished, at least from her sight.

  Crecy entered about an hour later.

  “Good. Help me up, Veronique. I need to walk.”

  “You are not fit for that yet.”

  “My wound is healing quickly.”

  “That is true,” Crecy admitted. “You heal almost as quickly as I once did.”

  “Is that an accusation?”

  “An observation.”

  “I have had help,” Adrienne replied.

  Crecy nodded and didn't press any further.

  “Now come, I need to find Hercule.”

  “I will bring him here.”

  “No, you won't. He's avoided me since the attack. Since Irena's death, really—”

  “Not so. He comes when you sleep, when he is certain you will not awake. If you feign sleep—”

  “Enough. Let us find him. You lend me your shoulder.” Crecy sighed and offered her arm.

  Far from tiring her, the act of walking seemed to give Adrienne strength. The terrain below was still mostly open plains, but here and there, along rivers especially, trees huddled together as if for comfort against the vast space.

  “There he is,” Crecy said.

  “Stop,” Adrienne whispered. “Wait.”

  Hercule had a boy on his shoulders, a lad of about five, a little Hercule. The two of them were chasing a girl, younger— three? All were laughing.

  “Come here, little girl, or we'll eat you up!” the boy shouted. “I am the giant with two heads, sent by Koshchey the Deathless to capture you!”

  The girl squealed as Hercule's arms closed about her. “Save me!” she cried.

  Adrienne's throat tightened. “Another time,” she murmured. “I shall speak to him another time.”

  “Too late,” Crecy said.

  Hercule was staring at them and lifting his son down.

  “But, Papa!” the boy said. “You said we could play!”

  Hercule kissed the boy on the forehead. “We will, Stephen. But a little later, yes? I must speak to the Lady Adrienne right now.”

  The children turned to stare at her. Adrienne expected resentment, but instead their eyes grew round.

  “Saint Adrienne!” the boy said.

  “I'm not a saint, dear,” Adrienne replied. “I'm just a woman.”

  “They call you a saint,” the boy responded.

  “Do you know what happened to my mama?” the little girl asked. “You can talk to the angels. Can you tell her I miss her?”

  “I will t-try—” Adrienne stammered.

  “She will try, Ivana,” Crecy finished for her. “I will see she does.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Nikki.”

  “Run along, children. Stephen, you keep your sister's hand until you get back to your nurse, yes? Go, now,” Hercule said.

  When they were gone, he turned to her. “You shouldn't be up yet.”

  “How else was I to see you, Hercule?”

  “You might have summoned me,” he said stiffly. “I am your servant and cannot refuse your commands.”

  “You are my friend. I do not wish to command you. I want you to talk to me.”

  Crecy cleared her throat. “I'm past due to inspect the guard. Hercule, can you take my place here?”

  Hercule blinked for a moment, then nodded.

  “I will sit, for a space,” Adrienne said, and lowered herself onto a bench.

  Hercule dithered for a moment while she caught her suddenly rare breath.

  “I have reduced speed,” he offered. “If I hadn't, we would have caught them by now, and I feared with you unwell …”

  “That was a good thought, Hercule. You were right, and I shall need all of the strength I can find.” She looked at him significantly. “All of it.”

  He compressed his lips. “I'm sorry,” he murmured.

  “Why must you avoid me? Why can't we be friends the way we once were?”

  “Because nothing is as it was, Adrienne. Irena was a good wife to me, yet I never loved her. Now she is dead, and I am left with the pain of knowing that at the moment she died, I was probably thinking of you. And now my children—my children whom I adore—are without a mother. And still I love you, and still you will never love me, and I am ashamed, ashamed to think that even when Irena is dead—”

  “I do love you, Hercule,” Adrienne said quietly. “I do. I should have married you, all those years ago. I know that now.”

  His face twisted curiously into anguish. “That's not true. Don't torture me like this. I may deserve it, but please do not.”

  “You deserve no cruelty, Hercule, no blame. It was all me. I lost my first love to bullets. I lost my only child to the malakim. I could not—I could not let myself feel what I should have, when I needed you to live. Those I love die.”

  “You love Crecy.”

  “Crecy is different.”

  Hercule could hardly argue with that. But after a moment he said, “It is too late for all this, isn't it? It doesn't matter. It's too late.”

  He turned, but she grasped his hand and held it tightly. “Not too late,” she said. “Not too late, but too soon. But in some tomorrow to come, when all of this is behind us …”

  “Yes. Of course,” Hercule said, and he gave her hand a squeeze.

  This time the silence that lay between them was almost comfortable, an old friend.

  “Speaking of ‘all this,’ ” Hercule said after a moment, “we are now following the wake of the army itself. Our trackers believe that this Sun Boy has several thousand troops, most mounted, and a number of airships. We will be outgunned and outnumbered.”

  “And you wonder how we will fight them?”

  “Well—yes. Not that I am afraid, of course,” he went on, some of his old bluster coming back. “After all, I have led few against many on more than one occasion and snatched victory from the jaws of death. We will succeed. But—it will require, I think, a miracle such as only a saint can provide.”

  “You know better than anyone, old friend, that I am no saint,” she said, “but I do have power. And this battle, I think, will not be won with armies. That isn't the part you will play. Get me near, keep me alive—that is all I ask of you and our men, though I cannot promise victory.” Near. So I can convince my son of who I am, so he will remember me at last.

  Hercule shrugged and brushed his oversized nose with his thumb. “We will do what must be done. I am a simple man, and have been much distracted of late, but I think I understand that this is a battle we must not lose. Not if my children are to grow old. Not if that tomorrow you mention has any hope of arriving for anyone.” He sagged a little. “The weight of that has nearly broken my back, I think, as much as anything else. And yet you, how must you feel? For you bear more of this on your shoulders than any of us.�
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  “That is the problem, I think,” Adrienne said. “We used to share our burdens—you, Crecy, me. Lately we've each been trying to carry it all. I'll take some of yours if you'll take some of mine.”

  “I will carry anything you ask,” Hercule replied.

  She regarded him for a moment; and as she had done, long ago, just after they met, she stretched up and kissed him lightly on his crooked nose. In his smile she thought she saw the memory come to him as well.

  “Would you escort me to my students?” Adrienne asked. “I wish to speak with them, too.”

  “But of course, Mademoiselle, of course.”

  Oglethorpe, determined not to weep, watched the flames take his home.

  “Why, sir?” Parmenter asked quietly, the red light playing across the hard planes of his face. “Spiking the cannons, yes, and poisoning the wells, perhaps. But this?”

  “They'll get nothing from us,” Oglethorpe replied. “Nothing. If in the end we lose this war, and Azilia goes down to dust, then I will not have our enemy sitting in this house again, benefiting from my work.”

  “And the assembly?”

  “Yes, I should see them now. But this had to be done first.”

  “To set the example.”

  “Aye.”

  And to set me free, Oglethorpe finished silently. To sever him from the idea of defending Azilia, which couldn't— shouldn't—be done. He had built it up once, and he could do it again. But for now, he had a bigger war to win and precious little to win it with. His attachment to the margravate would only hinder him.

  The assembly hall of Fort Montgomery was less than three years old, for the old one had burned down and nearly taken the town with it. Oglethorpe would never forget that night, the soot-blackened faces, the men and women straining on the bucket line. And then the rebuilding and the celebration. They always took time to celebrate when they could in Azilia.

  The assembly was thin, for many who had sat in it had died, and there had been no time for elections. Oglethorpe stood up and cleared his throat. But before he could say anything, Robert Taft stood to be recognized.

  “Mr. Taft?”

  “I only wish to express, Margrave, how happy we are to see you. We had thought ourselves lost, but now you have returned to us. I speak for all of us here, I think, when I say we are at your service.”

  “You most certainly do not speak for all of us, Mr. Taft,” another man shouted, his long face a furious red beneath his bedraggled periwig. “For this war was not voted on by us! We should be with the Pretender, not against him. He is our king, by God, and all of our tragedies may be laid on that man.” He thrust his finger at Oglethorpe.

  Oglethorpe sighed. He set his shoulders back and clasped his hands; then, removing his hat and setting it on the table, gazed across at men who had once trusted him. “How many of you are with Mr. Prescotte and feel I have embroiled you in the wrong sort of war?”

  It came, he reckoned, from the confusion of yeas and nays, to be about half. He smiled grimly. “More of you will agree with him soon, for I am come here to give you some hard truths. The first is this: We are at war with the Pretender and his diabolic allies. If you think you can make peace with them and live as free men— or live at all—you are naïve and do not know what I know, and I will take no further steps to convince you. Stay here and wait for them if you please. But I am margrave, and, further, I command the army of the continent.”

  “That army you destroyed?” Prescotte roared.

  “If my strength is all gone, then come for me. Depose me. Try to pry my men from me, Mr. Prescotte.” He aimed a finger at Prescotte. “During all this, while good men have died, where have you been? You and all the other naysayers in the assembly, all those craving to crawl on their bellies to the Pretender and give them all we've fought for. You were on your plantation, eating corn and pork!”

  “I could not leave my family alone with my slaves, not in times like these! You know that well.”

  “Oh? Many planters fought with me. I myself abandoned my own plantation.”

  “But you have no slaves.”

  “True. But Williams did, God rest him. And Mr. Thomas Gerald.” He frowned at the memory of their deaths, then shook his head. “No matter. I am freeing the slaves. Slaves weaken free men. They've weakened the margravate, and you men are proof of it.”

  That brought an explosion all right.

  “You can't do that!” Josiah Marner shrilled. “They are our property!”

  “Stop me,” Oglethorpe said, and he said it so coldly and quietly that it actually brought the furor to an end. They sat or stood, mouths agape, as he continued. “We need the slaves free so they will fight for us, not against us. Freemen will fight in their own best interests, and that interest is in defeating the Pretender.”

  “Errant nonsense!”

  “Right now my men are collecting a levy of slaves to put under arms. They are being informed of their freedom and the freedom of their families.”

  “They'll run away!”

  “Some will, some won't. The smart ones won't, because there's no place to go, really. But they won't stay here. When the redcoats come to burn you out of your plantations, they won't find slaves here to conscript.”

  “But you just said we're going to fight.”

  “Not here, not at Fort Montgomery.” He paused significantly. “Not in Azilia. This very day, we start a retreat through Apalachee territory, where we will find lodging for the women and children. Soldiers under Governor Nairne will march on to New Paris. I have another mission.”

  “But what of Montgomery?”

  “I'm going to burn it. And each of you, in turn, should burn your plantations. I've already destroyed mine.”

  “Burn Montgomery?” Prescotte shrieked. “This exceeds your authority, Oglethorpe, all of it. All of it!”

  “Authority? These are martial times. My authority is in my scabbard. Will you test that, sir?”

  Prescotte withered beneath the stare. “But—burn our homes, free our slaves—I'll be ruined!”

  “You are already ruined, you babbling fool,” Oglethorpe snapped. “You were ruined the day that army of devils set foot on this shore. We're going to fight them until they are gone or until there is no breath left in us. And what I cannot save, I will burn, for they will not have it. Now, gentlemen—I do not ask you to love me, or even to believe that God does. But you must follow me. You must follow me or perish. Your childhood is past. Be men. Be men, or God damn you.”

  And with that he rose and left the shadowy hall.

  Parmenter found Oglethorpe on the bluff, looking down at the river.

  “They're with you, sir. You won.”

  “All of them?”

  “It don't matter about Prescotte and his like, does it? Some vowed to stay. But the whole commons was with you, sir. Few of them hold slaves, and the rest resent them that do. And the army is behind you, and ‘most all of the folk. They love you, sir.”

  Oglethorpe looked at him in genuine surprise. “They do?”

  “Of course they do. You hardly seem human to ‘em. How many times have you stood up for them—against Howe, the bloody Spanish, Carolina? Each time you come out with a victory for them. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be no margravate, and only a fat-assed fool wouldn't know that.”

  “After today, there won't be a margravate.”

  “Sir, wherever you go, there the margravate will be.”

  Oglethorpe nodded, then exclaimed in surprise.

  “Sir?”

  “The first good news we've had in a long while, Captain Parmenter. Look there.”

  Across the river, just becoming visible from the forest, stood an army.

  And they did not wear red coats.

  “I'll be damned,” Parmenter swore. “It's Martin, from North Carolina. And, if I make no mistake, those are Cherokee with him.”

  “No mistake, Mr. Parmenter. No mistake.”

  “How did they know to come here, w
ith the aether-schreiber messages taken and all?”

  “I do not know, but I am grateful for it.” He frowned. “And cautious. Find me a boat, so we can go talk to him.”

  “Sir, that's hardly cautious.”

  “A boat.”

  Martin, it seemed, had been a few days behind him for almost a month.

  “I pressed ahead faster than I thought possible, and hoped to meet you on the upper Oconee, where our Cherokee friends heard tell of a battle. We got there late and found a lot of red-coated corpses and fallen demon ships. The last we'd heard on the aetherschreibers was that we would fall back to Azilia if things got tough north, and that looked liked where you were going. We thought you could use the help.”

  “Damned if we couldn't.” Oglethorpe grinned. “And you nearly missed us again.”

  “Oh?”

  Oglethorpe outlined the plan.

  “Margrave, I've got nigh two thousand men behind me— stragglers from Virginia and both Carolinas, a good number of Cherokees, and even some Oconees who have broken with the Coweta empire. Are you sure you wouldn't just rather hold this fort?”

  “I'm sure. Mar was a fool. A real general, with all the alchemical weapons the Russians have on hand, could reduce Montgomery in seconds. We can't sit in one place—we have to move, strike, and retreat. We have to worry them like a pack of wolves worries a buffalo herd. The only reason Nairne held up here was because of his civilian charges, and he was preparing to march again when Mar caught him.” Oglethorpe wondered if he could have made that decision a few days ago. With his plantation drifting smoke, it was easy.

  Things were looking better, but they had to have the Swedish king, his ships, and his men. Which meant they needed to go, fast.

  “Come on across,” Oglethorpe told Martin. “We've plans to make.”

  Oglethorpe left the next morning, boarding a hundred men into his amphibian ship. The great exodus was already beginning, Nairne and Martin at the head of four thousand troops and five thousand invalids, women, and children. Of course, of that four thousand, nearly half were Negroes, many of whom had never held a gun before, most of whom still did not. Despite his confident talk, Oglethorpe did not think the freedmen could be trusted with arms. But they could dig trenches, build redoubts, and cook meals. A few could be armed.