by Sharon Shinn
Nathan shook his head to clear it, and came to his feet. “Gladly. Where is she? How will I know her?”
“Look for anyone racing from the house.”
“Seriously.”
Gabriel actually had to stop and consider. He had been so intent on the person behind the face that he had not consciously studied Rachel’s physical appearance. “Shorter than me, but not by much,” he said slowly. “Thin. Pale. Beautiful hair. Long and blond and very curly. Her eyes are brown. Her hands are chained together.”
“She sounds most striking,” Nathan said. “I will hardly be able to mistake her.”
“I left her in my room, but I doubt she’s still there. I have no idea where she would have hidden by now. I’m off to inform Jethro of the dishonor he’s done me these past five years.”
Nathan tried to force back another yawn. “And to think,” he said, “you didn’t want to come to the wedding.”
Gabriel was tricked into a laugh as he strode out the door.
It was nearly an hour before he confronted his bride-to-be again, and in that time she had undergone a remarkable transformation. She had been thoroughly cleaned up, her hair ruthlessly combed, her ragged dress changed for a silken traveling gown of deep green. The chains that had bound her wrists were gone. But the expression on her face had not altered, and she looked at Gabriel with a mixture of defiance and dislike as he entered the salon where she and Nathan waited.
“She did not run” was Nathan’s greeting.
“I’m glad of it,” Gabriel said. He studied her. Now that he thought about it, she hadn’t looked much like a slave girl this morning. Her attire, perhaps, had been wretched, but her demeanor had not for a moment been subservient. She certainly did not look like a slave girl now. Nor, with that hair, did she look like an Edori. Neither did she bear a resemblance to any of the weather-beaten, work-weary farm women he had ever seen. “And are you any more resigned to coming with me?”
“Well, I can’t stay here,” she said. “They would not have me now, even if I wanted to stay.”
“Graciously spoken,” Gabriel murmured. She gave him a killing look. He turned to his brother. “It will not be so easy to leave as I at first imagined,” he said. “Jethro insists on dowering the girl with all sorts of treasures—clothing, jewels, gold, I don’t know what. There’s a wagonload being assembled in the courtyard even as we speak. I am trying to decide if courtesy demands that one of us travel alongside the wagon—”
“I will, if you want,” Nathan said with a grin.
“I’ll travel with the wagon,” the girl said.
Gabriel turned back to her. “You will travel with me,” he said. “I want to get you to the Eyrie as soon as possible.”
She eyed him uncertainly. “What do you mean, travel with you?”
Nathan divided a glance between them and said, “Well, I’ll just go check on some things,” then left the room. Gabriel and Rachel remained facing each other warily.
“I will fly you back to the Eyrie,” he said as pleasantly as possible. “The trip will take about six hours. By cart it would take maybe three or four days.”
For the first time, she showed a certain apprehension. “I can’t fly,” she said.
“No, of course not. I will carry you—”
“No, I mean I’m afraid. Heights make me sick. I will faint or become ill, I really will—”
He frowned at her. Her distress seemed genuine. “Have you ever been in an angel’s arms, above the earth?”
She shook her head. “No, but I have been on the bridge between Semorrah and Jordana, and I was sick halfway across. They had to blindfold me and carry me into the city.”
“When you entered as a slave?” She nodded. “But you may have been ill from other causes.”
“And in tall buildings—from the roof of this house!—when I look down, I become so dizzy, I have to sit. I have to crawl down the stairways on my hands and knees.”
“But, Rachel—”
“Let me ride in the wagon,” she pleaded. “I know you think—you told your brother I would run away, but if you let me ride in the wagon, I swear I will arrive with it at the Eyrie. Please.”
How could he refuse? She had been so rebellious before that this begging had the ring of truth to it. “Of course,” he said. “I will send Nathan on ahead to prepare things, and I will accompany you and the cart. We are so far behind already that a few more days can hardly hurt us.”
She gave him a quick smile of relief, and for a moment he thought, Perhaps we will become friends after all. “Behind?” she said.
“The Gloria is only five months away. There is a great deal you need to learn about—about everything. The music, the ceremony, the Eyrie, the way angels live. We do not have much time—and it took me so long to find you.”
“Perhaps you should have started looking sooner, then,” she said. “Five years ago, maybe?”
Her voice was pleasant, but she definitely intended the words maliciously. Wrong again, he thought, and made no answer. He merely bowed, and motioned her toward the door. The sooner they were quit of this house—the sooner they were at the Eyrie— the better off they would be.
As it happened, Jethro had prepared two vehicles to send with them on their journey. One was indeed a wagon, piled high with boxes and bundles. The other was a sturdy traveling carriage which would accommodate a mortal better than an angel. Each came with a driver and a team of horses.
“We are beginning to resemble a cavalcade,” Gabriel observed. Rather than flying across the river from Semorrah to the Bethel shore, he had elected to stand beside Rachel on the crowded ferry. He had already informed her that he would make the overland journey by air, joining her whenever the vehicles halted for meals or overnight stays. She had not been disappointed to hear that he would not be in the carriage with her.
When the ferry docked, the two of them jostled off with the other passengers and watched as the long line of carts, carriages and coaches began the tedious process of disembarkation. Gabriel’s stature—and hauteur—earned them some breathing space in the crowd; no one came too close. They stood side by side a moment, gazing across the water. In the lush late-morning sunlight, Semorrah looked like a fairy-tale city, all spiraling white stone and airy arches.
“I don’t know when you’ll see it again,” Gabriel said to his companion, who had been silent for the whole thirty-minute boat ride. Hunched against the wind at the rear of the ferry, hands gripped around the railing, she watched the receding skyline with an unnerving intentness. “Say goodbye.”
What she in fact said astonished him.
“O Yovah,” she murmured, very soft and very fast, “call down thy curses on this place. Strike it with fire and thunderbolts—cover it with storm and flood. Bring down pestilence and plague—”
He grabbed her arm and shook her till the words stopped. “What are you doing? What are you saying?” he cried.
She wrenched her arm free. “It is the call to Yovah to beg for retribution,” she said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were fierce. “It is written in the Librera.”
“I know what it is! You—no one has license to speak such a prayer!”
“It is in the Librera,” she said again.
“And only angels have the authority to call down curses— and they never do! Not on Semorrah! Not anywhere on Samaria! Jovah most holy, do you know what you’re asking for?”
“Yes. The destruction of this wretched city of the allali.”
He stared at her. She was dead serious. “Do you hate it that much?” he asked, his voice quieter.
“It is a place where the wicked thrive and evil dances,” she said. “And people I loved died so that those who live there could have servants and slaves—yes, and silk and jewels and spices and everything else that wealth buys. I hate it, and as long as I live I will ask Yovah to drive it into the sea. And if you were godly, as angels are supposed to be, you would stand beside me and make the same prayer.”
She turned away from Gabriel and did not speak to him again. When the traveling coach was finally free of the ferry, she climbed inside and shut the door, not bothering to look in his direction. Gabriel took wing and spent the next few hours in lazy flight, sometimes over the carriages, sometimes ahead, sometimes ranging from side to side on the off chance that the scenery might offer him some entertainment. And although Rachel never peered through the windows, looking for him, his eyes were often turned earthward, following the progress of her coach, and he was more troubled by her words than he cared to admit.
They arrived at the Eyrie a little before sunset on the fourth day—or rather, they arrived at the base of the Velo Mountains, where the small city of Velora had sprung up in the past hundred years. Rachel’s coach had stopped just outside the straggling city limits, and by the time Gabriel had circled in for a landing, she had climbed from the carriage and was gone. Gabriel directed the two drivers to the west edge of town, where there were systems in place for hauling heavy goods to the top of the mountain, and set off on foot through the city to find his bride.
If Semorrah was, as Rachel believed, a concentration of iniquity, Velora was a place of sun and symphony. Most of the houses, hotels and shops, bakeries, stables and schools had been built of the same rosy-beige stone that made the Eyrie a place of such warmth. Like the Semorrans, the Velorans were principally merchants, but since their whole aim was to enrich life for the angels and smooth the way for the petitioners who came looking for the angels, they dealt in items of ease and comfort. Because the angels were so near—and angels always wanted music—the city had become a place where music was revered. Large concert halls and tiny backroom taverns echoed continuously with the sounds of harps, flutes, reeds, viols, timpani and voices. Composers and performers renowned throughout Samaria made their homes in Velora, or journeyed there several times a year to meet their fellows. On every corner, street bands played lively melodies and young boys sang in heartbreaking soprano choirs. Blind old men plucked astonishing sounds from strings tied across broken wood boxes, and passersby whistled idly as they walked along.
Rachel had disappeared within the city in something less than five minutes, but Gabriel was not alarmed: Everyone who visited Velora went first to the central shopping district. He headed for the open-air bazaar and found her munching on a sweet pastry filled with cream and cherries.
“This is the Eyrie?” she asked him by way of greeting. “Why didn’t you tell me it was so beautiful?”
“The Eyrie is beautiful, but this is not it,” he replied. “This is the city that serves the Eyrie. The angels live above, in the mountains.”
She glanced up with a flicker of apprehension, then continued eating her pastry. “This is like—it’s a delightful place,” she said. It was the first time he had seen her show enthusiasm. “It reminds me of Luminaux.”
He was amused to hear her name the artisans’ city. Situated on the southernmost edge of Bethel, Luminaux was considered the great intellectual and artistic mecca of Samaria; Velora could not even remotely compare with it. “And when were you in the Blue City?” he wanted to know.
“With the Edori. We passed through there almost every year to buy and sell—and look. Men of my clan used to love the silver flutes made by the Luminaux craftsmen. I have never heard any sound so sweet since I left the Edori.”
“I have always wanted to learn the flute,” Gabriel said.
“Can you play any instrument?” she asked.
He smiled. “I can sing,” he said. He started strolling down the wide boulevard, and she fell in step beside him, dusting sugar from her hands.
“The Edori sing,” she said. “I missed that sound when I came to Semorrah. There is no harmony at all in that city.”
“Don’t start on Semorrah again,” he warned.
She smiled. “All right.”
“And if you love singing—well, you will love the Eyrie, then. That is what angels do, you know.”
She considered him. She seemed—at this moment, anyway— to be in a halfway friendly mood. He would have to remember to bring her to Velora often. “I have never had much traffic with angels,” she said. “Every once in a while one would visit the Edori, but those times were rare. I lived in Semorrah before I realized that most people only pray to Yovah through the angels—or what angels were really here on Samaria for.”
He could only stare at her blankly. To most citizens of Samaria, the angels were the highest court in the land, beings to be propitiated and approached with reverence. An angel’s intervention could cause rain to fall on dry land, bring fire from the sky to wipe out a wicked man’s house or a whole city, cause the heavens to drop down strange, wondrous seeds which took root quickly and could be harvested for the distillation of potent medicines. An angel could prepare Jovah for the advent of a dying soul, so that the god would have a place prepared for the one who crossed from this world to the next. An angel’s word could cause the priests to cut a man’s right arm off and so separate him from the Kiss of the God, so that Jovah would never, from that time forward, know that his child was still alive, and would not look for him, and would not welcome him when he crossed the broad river of death.
And she did not seem to have the faintest idea of why Jovah had brought angels to the earth.
“Have you heard angels singing?” he asked, more or less at random.
“Yes—once or twice—and the other day, at the wedding—” She stopped abruptly.
“Then you know how beautiful their music can be,” he said smoothly. “I think you will like the Eyrie.”
She glanced upward again, toward the tip of the mountain. “How do I get there?” she asked.
“I will carry you.”
She put out her hands as if to ward him off. “No—I explained to you—”
“There is really no alternative,” he said impatiently. “It is a flight of perhaps a minute. Close your eyes if you don’t like it.”
“I’ll go up with the wagons,” she said. “Surely you must have some way to take them up the mountain—”
“On an open platform, with a crane and a winch,” he said brusquely. “I assure you, you would find that ride much more unpleasant.”
“Then I’ll climb up. There must be a path—”
“There is no path,” he said. “Come. It will not be so bad.”
They had reached the end of the avenue, virtually the edge of the city, and they were practically alone. Rachel glanced around quickly as if seeking shelter; her hands were still flung out before her.
“Gabriel—” she said.
He swung her into his arms and leapt into the air almost in the same motion. She shrieked, and for a moment twisted so violently that he had to tighten his hold considerably to keep her safe. But once they were well and truly off the ground, her resistance ceased; in fact, she grew so limp that he wondered if she had fainted. He glanced at her face and found it utterly colorless, her eyes shut tight, her lips moving in a soundless prayer. They were almost to the landing point of the Eyrie before he realized she was trembling uncontrollably.
He went to some trouble to come down smoothly, taking the shock of the landing on his flexed feet. She was motionless. He knelt, setting her carefully on the sun-warmed stone, supporting her head in his cupped hands.
“Rachel, we’ve arrived. Rachel, open your eyes—look at me. I’m sorry, but it’s over, and you’re here—you’re fine.”
She took a single ragged breath, then eased to her side, away from him. For a moment he thought she was going to vomit. Her shoulders shook and she covered her mouth with one hand. His sympathy was quickly turning to irritation; this seemed a little excessive even for someone with an irrational fear of heights. He stood.
“Let me know when you’re feeling well enough to go inside and meet the rest of the angels,” he said.
She rolled to her feet and launched herself at him. He was totally unprepared for her assault, and before he knew it, she was pummeling hi
s chest and scratching savagely at his arms. “I hate you! You lied to me! I told you—oh, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—”
The rest of her tirade was incoherent. Appalled, Gabriel snatched both her arms and forced her away from him. This only enraged her further; she kicked and screamed at him, writhing in his hold like a demon seeking to break an enchantment. He had never seen anyone in the grip of hysteria before, but instinct and anger supplied him with the antidote. Transferring both her wrists to one of his hands, he slapped her full across the face. Her screaming ceased; she turned to stone. Across the thicket of their interlaced arms, she stared at him, her eyes still wild.
“You hurt me,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though he knew his voice did not sound sorry. “You must calm down.”
Her breath shuddered into her body. He thought she would speak again, renew her accusations. But words would not come to her. Staring at him, she shook her head helplessly and slowly began to cry, then collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
He dropped her hands and gazed down at her with dismay. He could not think of what to do or say. He had forgotten that help might be available from other quarters, so it was with great surprise that he heard a woman’s voice address him from behind.
“Gabriel.” Turning, he saw a tall, slim woman separate herself from the scarlet shadows thrown by the sunset against the Eyrie walls. Hannah, by Jovah’s great mercy. “I thought you would arrive today,” she said. “Is that Rachel?”
“As you see,” he answered bleakly.
She stepped unhurriedly across the smooth stone and crouched beside the weeping girl, putting her arms around the shaking shoulders. “Rachel,” she murmured in that voice which had soothed hundreds of distraught women and crying children. “Rachel, it’s all right.”
“Good. You deal with her,” Gabriel said, turning on his heel and stalking toward the entryway. “Because I can’t.”
