Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  Rachel looked over at her husband once to find him watching Nathan with a dark frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m considering murdering my brother.”

  She glanced again at Nathan and Magdalena. “Hannah said angels were not allowed to love angels.”

  “That’s why I’m thinking about killing him. Or her.”

  She toyed with her soup. “What a crime,” she said softly.

  Now she had his attention. “I agree. And although I have discussed this with him often—”

  She shook her head. “No. What a crime that people who love each other should be forced apart. For any reason. By any law.”

  “I suppose Hannah told you why the unions are forbidden?”

  “Because they bear monster children.”

  “Yes. Children who live briefly, die painfully and disturb everyone who looks upon them.”

  Rachel shrugged. “There are ways for a man and woman to love each other and not conceive a child.”

  He stared at her. “Angels don’t believe in contraceptives.”

  Now she was the one astonished. “Don’t believe in— So you engage in the act of love only to produce children?”

  He looked quickly around, but no one was listening to them. Nathan and Magdalena were absorbed in each other, the lively Ariel was talking to a Bethel man, and for the moment everyone else was devoted to eating.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he replied stiffly. “Passion can be dissociated from the desire to bear children. But angel children are born so rarely. Any chance to produce more angels cannot be overlooked—it is a sin, a crime, to prevent conception, if there is a chance an angel might be sired.”

  “That’s only if you believe there aren’t already too many angels in the world,” Rachel said sardonically.

  His irritation showed, though he tried to hide it. “I suppose the Edori believe differently, as they seem to about everything.”

  “What the Edori believe,” she said, “is that a bond to a child is the one tie that cannot be broken. So that to have a child is a decision to be taken only after a great deal of thought. And since an unwanted child is the greatest burden a woman can bear, women have ways to prevent such a thing from occurring.”

  He gazed down at her with such mixed emotions on his face that she struggled to guess at them all. Did she know how to take these shocking precautions? If she was never to be his wife in fact, did it matter what she knew? If Jovah had brought them together for a purpose, might it include childbearing? and if so, how were they to reconcile their many differences and produce angelic offspring?

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, with a touch of malice. “I also know ways to enhance fertility. Every Edori who has ever wanted a child has eventually had one.”

  Although briefly heartened by that little conversation, Rachel found herself increasingly exhausted as the interminable evening wore on. And, as Gabriel had warned her, there were more activities to face. Pleading a headache from the tight gold clasp on her head, she escaped to her room to loosen her hair and change clothes. She lingered there as long as she dared, but eventually made her way back down to the arena. Now clad in a sober dark gown, with a black shawl thrown over her head for warmth, she was much less visible than she had been in the gold wedding dress, and she slipped almost unnoticed through the celebrating throng.

  What she had returned to, apparently, was an exhibition of angels. Six angels stood in a circle—Saul and Raphael, Ariel and Magdalena, and Nathan and a young angel named Eva. First one angel would improvise an impossibly complex line of music; then the one standing beside him would repeat it, note for note, and add his own difficult measures. The next angel would sing everything that had been sung before, add his or her variations, and turn laughingly to the next contestant. The impromptu song was nearly five minutes long before Ariel missed a note and was cut from the competition. The whole thing started again from the beginning. Eventually, Raphael was the victor. Everyone in the crowd cheered.

  Another Eyrie angel—Obadiah, she thought his name was— stepped forward to sing a pretty melody; someone began harmonizing softly behind him. This, no doubt, could go on all night. Rachel glanced around to see what other entertainment was offered. The whole enclosure was lit by flame: Decorative wrought-iron candelabra held blazing tapers a foot or so above the crowd; braziers spaced around the edge of the plateau added a dim orange glow. The combined effect was one of cheeriness and warmth. The main activities seemed to be listening and—despite the huge meal that had just been served—eating. Servants were circulating with jellies and candies and chopped fruits, and nearly everyone carried a glass of some bubbling beverage. Those who were not entranced with the singing had fallen back toward the edges of the arena and were engaged in quiet conversation.

  As Obadiah was succeeded by another singer, Rachel began to drift through the crowd, looking for the lady Mary. Without her gold dress on, no one seemed to recognize her, and no one spoke to her. She felt like a wraith, a shadow, a visitor at her own wedding; she entertained the idea that this could all have happened without her—which, in a sense, was true. What they celebrated was not the marriage of Raheli sia a Manderra to Archangel-designate Gabriel, but the fulfillment of the decree of the god, and the formalized ritual of change. She was a prop, necessary but not a differentiated individual. Yovah’s wavering finger had come to rest when it was pointing at her; and so here she was in the Eyrie, hearing the angels sing.

  Mary did not appear to be anywhere in the press of people. Easier for the visiting pregnant woman to beg off this affair than for Rachel, the nominal centerpiece, to do so. Although perhaps if no one realized who she was, no one would notice when she had gone… .

  What kept her there was yet another change in singers. She was too close to the perimeter to see who was taking center stage, but she knew this singer just by the material he had chosen. Matthew, lifting a lilting tenor voice heavenward, crooned one of the tender Edori love songs Rachel had not heard in five years. The sound stopped her where she stood. She felt much as she had when Gabriel had scooped her into his arms and soared up to the Eyrie—dizzy, disoriented, despairing. Simon had sung this song to her… .

  “Here. Chairs have been set up by the wall here. Your hands are cold, and no wonder. It’s freezing. Let’s take seats next to this nice fire. There. Would you like some wine?”

  She had been ushered to a chair and pushed into it before she entirely realized that someone was speaking to her. He had handed her a goblet of wine before she took the trouble to identify him.

  “Josiah,” she said slowly. “Isn’t that right?”

  He nodded. “Drink up. Come now. Drink it all. There now. Yes, I’m Josiah. I wish we had been properly introduced before this afternoon, but I did not arrive until very late, I’m afraid. You’re Rachel, of course.”

  He was so very small and unalarming, so different from the angels and the rich gentry she had been surrounded with lately, that she found herself liking him almost on the instant.

  “You’re the priest,” she said.

  “Well, I’m one of the oracles, actually.”

  “Is that better?”

  He laughed lightly. “More select. There are several hundred priests. There are only three oracles.”

  “There are?”

  “Three oracles for the three provinces. The god finds power in the triumvirate. Oracle, angel and man. Gaza, Bethel, Jordana. If it comes to that, the three dooms that will be visited upon Samaria if the Gloria is not performed—the Plain of Sharon destroyed, the River Galilee destroyed, and the world itself destroyed.”

  “I don’t know much about theology,” Rachel said apologetically. “Forgive me if I seem stupid.”

  He considered her with great interest. “It is truly amazing to me,” he said, “in a culture like ours which is so completely self-contained, that there could be anyone who does not know all the doctrine, all the trappings, inside and out.”

>   “I wasn’t taught—”

  “Oh, I know. The Edori have their own mysticism. It is just that I so rarely come in contact with the Edori. Nearly everyone I deal with subscribes to identical philosophies and ideals, and knows his place in the order, and certainly knows mine. So to come across a spiritual innocent is a somewhat wondrous occurrence.”

  Half of what he said made no sense to her, but he was intriguing; she was willing to talk religion to please him.

  “The Edori are believers,” she said.

  He smiled. “And what do the Edori believe?”

  “That men should live in harmony with men and animals and the earth itself. That Yovah will punish those who do not live in harmony and reward those who do.” The soft Edori syllables crept back into her accent as she parroted the beliefs she had learned as a child.

  “And how does Jovah know whom to punish and whom to reward?”

  “Yovah sees everything and knows everything. He hears every prayer. He exalts the virtuous and wreaks vengeance on the wicked, although sometimes he does not act as quickly as men and women would wish.”

  “And who controls Jovah?”

  “The nameless one,” she answered readily.

  He smiled again. “Yes, you see, that is where the Edori slide into blasphemy, I’m afraid. I’m willing to concede that the chain of mediators may be dispensed with—that is, the oracles and the angels. Perhaps they are not necessary, perhaps even ordinary men may speak directly to the god. But Jovah himself controls himself. His is the final arbitration. There is no other hand guiding Jovah.”

  She knew that her face registered astonishment. “But Yovah is the tool, and the nameless one created him just to watch over us. And for every star that we see in the sky at night, the nameless one has created another god specifically to watch over its people. And each god is just, but each god is the tool of the one who watches over all.”

  “This is very interesting to me,” Josiah said. He did not seem at all offended by what he must consider her heresy. “The people of Samaria are, by and large, a very homogenous group. Barring some social distinctions of money and class, they have a remarkably similar world-view and theological base. All of them—Manadavvi, Jansai, angeli, Luminauzi—all of them believe in the same god and that god’s principles. All except the Edori. Why do the Edori differ? Who taught them their precepts? When did the schism occur?”

  She was totally baffled and showed it. He laughed.

  “I am—all the oracles are—students of Samarian history,” he said. “We have access to documents about the founding of the civilization that do not entirely make sense to others. That is— Well, what do the Edori believe about how men came to live on Samaria?”

  This part she knew. “Yovah brought us here, hundreds of years ago, from a place of violence and dissonance. He brought us here to live in harmony with each other, and he stayed to guard us.”

  “Yes, that is true—although scholars still debate how Jovah managed this feat and where this other place might be. But men have only lived on Samaria for five hundred years. It seems we lived some other place centuries ago, and it is the miracle of our god that he brought us here to begin our lives completely anew. Those he brought here—can you conceive of the glory?—actually conversed with the god, actually experienced his warm hand on their bodies as he carried them here from—someplace else. They were all face to face with the god, you understand. And so they all settled down, and chose lives as farmers or merchants or miners, but they had all seen the god, and so they all shared the same beliefs. And they passed on their beliefs to their children, and so on through the generations.

  “But the Edori … Who first whispered a different version of the story into their ears? The main tenets of worship are the same, that is plain enough. But somewhere, sometime, someone revised the philosophy. I cannot stop wondering who—and why—and what, made this someone believe as he did.”

  She was beginning to get a headache. “All Edori believe as I do,” she said in a helpful voice.

  He smiled at her again. “Yes, and you have no idea what I am blathering about, do you? I do apologize. It is just that I so rarely talk to one of the Edori, and I thought I would take the chance to ask—”

  He paused, and glanced thoughtfully at her long-sleeved black dress. “Although you were not born Edori, of course,” he said.

  “I was born in the Caitana foothills,” she said. “I have been with the Edori almost since I can remember.”

  “Yes, the highland farmers are very devout. You must have been dedicated days after you were born. Otherwise I would never have been able to find you.”

  “You found me?”

  “Jovah chose you, and he told me your name, and I told Gabriel where you could be found. Or so I thought—”

  She glanced around. Matthew had long since stopped singing. Ariel was center stage now, her pure soprano ringing with an unearthly silver clarity. “So I have you to thank for this,” she said.

  He laughed. “Only secondarily. I interpreted the god’s will. I take it this is not the life you would have chosen?”

  She was silent a moment. “The life I would have chosen,” she said slowly, “was taken away from me when I was twenty. I loved an Edori boy, and I wanted to spend my life with him. I never dreamt of anything like this. And Gabriel is no happier than I am. I think Yovah’s wisdom failed him this time.”

  “Jovah is never wrong, though we sometimes misinterpret,” Josiah said softly. “Gabriel tells me that his Kiss flared to life the first time you walked a few feet into his room. And the Kiss is never mistaken.”

  She laughed shortly. “I think it must be. If it only comes to life when you have found your true love—”

  Josiah smiled. “Well, now. I think Jovah’s motives don’t always match human desires. I have always thought he brought a man and woman together for underlying purposes having more to do with generations and bloodlines and genetic mixes—”

  “What?”

  “Children,” he explained. “If you chart the history of the great leaders of Samaria, you will often find that their parents were those who were united by Jovah—that is, those who were drawn together by the Kiss.”

  He laughed. “There is a story. You might know it, in fact, for it is an Edori tale. It has been cited to me as the reason most Edori choose not to be dedicated. The story goes that hundreds of years ago the Archangel-elect—also called Gabriel at that time—was looking for his bride. He sought her in every city and small village from Gaza to Luminaux, but she was nowhere to be found. One evening, he broke his flight to stay the night with a band of Edori.

  “There at the camp, his Kiss came to life and guided him to the side of a young woman who had recently become consort to the chieftain of the clan, though she had not yet borne him any children. She loved her chieftain and had no interest in becoming angelica, and so she told the angel. However, this Gabriel believed the dictates of Jovah superseded human will, and he took her by force back to Windy Point. Where she lived the rest of her life, bearing him many children, all of them angels. Now from this story,” Josiah concluded, “I deduce that Jovah cares less about the human heart than about the gene pool. But I can also understand why the Edori prefer not to be Kissed by the god.”

  Rachel smiled. “I have heard the tale of the angel who swept away Susannah,” she said. “But it was told to me as a reason to be wary of angels.”

  Josiah laughed again. “It is Jovah who tracks you, not the angels.”

  She considered. “Can he track anyone who has been dedicated? Anyone at all? He knows where they are—if they are alive or dead—as long as they bear a Kiss?”

  “He knows everything about everyone, even if they have not been dedicated,” Josiah said. “But he can only communicate to the oracles about those who have.”

  “But if someone was dedicated—and was still alive—you would know?”

  “Who are you looking for?” he asked.

  “A man—a boy—
an Edori I knew years ago,” she said, stammering. “He was the only other person in my tribe who bore a Kiss. His mother had taken him to the priests the summer he was born, because his father had been a Luminauzi merchant and made her swear she would dedicate their child. We were curiosities even in our own tribe, which may have been what made us friends—” She stopped abruptly. Friends. Lovers. Alive or dead, Simon was beyond her reach now. Still, if there was some way to know…

  “If you can tell me his name, his parents’ names, the year he was dedicated and the place—yes, I can tell you if he is still alive. Do you think he is not?”

  “I think all of the Manderras are dead except those who are slaves,” she said baldly. “And I would rather he was dead.”

  He nodded gravely. “I will ask the god, once I get back. I cannot ask him from here.”

  “His mother was called Mariah. His father’s name was also Simon. He was dedicated in Luminaux thirty years ago,” Rachel said, staring straight ahead. Then she hesitated, and risked a look at the oracle directly. “Don’t tell Gabriel.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  Almost on the words, she heard someone call out her new husband’s name. Soon other voices took up the cry, and there was a general laughing insistence until the angel finally came forward.

  “It’s my wedding day,” he said, his words carrying back to the edge of the plateau where Rachel sat. “I have provided enough entertainment for you already.” The crowd vociferously disagreed with this. Rachel heard Gabriel laugh.

  The oracle smiled over at the new bride. “I believe your husband is going to sing,” he said. “This should be a treat. Let’s go closer.”