Authors: Sharon Shinn
Rachel laid a hand on his arm. “If she’s there now, you can’t do anything for her,” she said. “If she went there, she chose to go.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe she was merely walking alone across the Plain, and Saul or Raphael swept down—”
“Gabriel has been patrolling the Plain all afternoon,” Rachel told him gently. “And Raphael has gathered enough nonbelievers to his cause. He has no need to take prisoners.”
“But she’ll die,” Obadiah whispered.
“All of us may die, when the mountain comes down,” Rachel said. “We have all made our choices.”
He still looked so miserable that she put her arms around him, carefully sliding her hands under the silken wings. She pressed him to her, patting him on the back. He dropped his blond head to rest it on top of hers, and hugged her in return. She had rarely tried to give anyone comfort before. It amazed her that it was such an easy thing to do.
But when, still wrapped in that friendly embrace, she lifted
her eyes a fraction, she saw that Gabriel had landed and was standing not five feet away from her, watching her with close attention. Slowly she turned her gaze away from him and pulled herself from Obadiah’s arms.
“How much time now?” she asked, looking up into his sad face.
“Fifteen minutes, maybe,” he said.
She ran her hands for warmth swiftly up and down her bare arms. “It seems to be getting cooler. And—it’s harder to breathe. It feels the way it feels before a storm.”
He nodded. “The clouds are gathering high above the Plain. See? Black clouds. Storm clouds.”
“So high,” Rachel murmured. “Even if they held lightning, it couldn’t strike the earth from there.”
“Maybe. Maybe—”
Rachel glanced once more around the camp. Gabriel had moved away; now he was deep in conversation with Ariel. Nathan and Magdalena stood on the edge of the angel encampment, totally enfolded together. She stood with her back against his chest, and they were wrapped in an inner layer of her wings and an outer layer of his. Through the translucent feathers a double glow of light played faintly—his Kiss alight, and hers. As Rachel watched, he bent his head and pressed his mouth to her hair. The lights flamed briefly higher.
The edge of sunset made a faint scarlet streak across the sky.
“Rachel—has anyone seen Rachel?” The frantic voice was Naomi’s, coming from somewhere behind her. Before Rachel could turn and call out, she saw Gabriel spin around and point. Angel and Edori both joined her where she stood with Obadiah.
Naomi hugged her tightly. The Edori looked shaken and fretful, she who was usually so serene. “I looked around and you were gone and I didn’t know where you were—and with Raphael so close—”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just wandered over here—”
“People like to keep track of you,” Gabriel murmured. Those were the first words he had spoken to her all day. “You shouldn’t make it so difficult.”
Naomi took her hand. “Let me wait with you.”
“Where are Luke and the girls?”
“In camp. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Gabriel took Rachel’s other hand, and smiled down at both
startled women. “Between us, we’ll keep her safe,” he said. Rachel could not pull away from one of them without pulling away from both. She felt her color rising, and said nothing.
“Look,” Obadiah said suddenly, sharply.
Everyone on the Plain was staring upward.
Setting at last, the sun spilled a rich carnelian color across the darkening sky. Wisps of peach, violet and saffron deepened as they watched, changed to tangerine, indigo and gold. The silent black clouds that had roiled in lower and lower now began to smooth out, to melt into the blackness of oncoming night. The air was thick and sluggish, stirred by occasional heavy currents; it was as if the mountains themselves breathed in and out, slowly, laboriously.
Nothing and no one else moved. The rich colors of the sunset thinned and grayed. A faint white light showed around the ringed perimeter of the dark mountain, separating it by the slimmest margin from the blackness of the sky. As if it were being sucked downward into the soil of the earth, that light too began to fade.
“Look,” Obadiah whispered again.
As the sky turned black, the mountaintop turned golden. Raphael’s followers had taken their fire tubes and set the peak ablaze. In the brilliant orange light, one great shadowy shape leapt upward, a black silhouette of huge wings beating and long arms extended before him.
The perfect acoustics of the Plain carried his words to all the shocked listeners in the field below.
“I am Jovah and I am Lucifer,” he cried. “I am your leader and your king. Look at me and know that Raphael is your god.”
And he flung back the shadow of his head and stretched his hands to heaven and dared anyone to contradict him.
And the seam of the heavens ripped open, and a white light sizzled across the sky. The mountaintop exploded in a jagged blaze of fire. Thunder ricocheted from one stone peak to another in waves of crashing sound. Light flashed a second time, a great white sheet of it, suspended like a writhing wall between heaven and earth. Everything was visible in that single frozen frame of merciless light—screaming faces, tumbling rock, falling bodies. The third bolt fell before the thunder could sound again, and all that could be seen by that brilliant blaze was a gaping cavity of black.
Then a deep-throated boom rolled across the Plain, gaining
volume and momentum as it traveled. The earth heaved underfoot, buckled by the weight of that sound; the mountains themselves rocked forward and back. The tumultuous roar went on and on, so loud it absorbed all other noise and created a sort of silence.
Then abruptly, there was no air. There was no light. There was no sound.
Rachel staggered sideways as the earth stopped shivering. All that held her up was Gabriel’s hard hold on her wrist—Naomi’s hand had been ripped from hers, but Gabriel’s fingers had never relaxed their grip. Disoriented and terrified, she cried out, and he swung her into his arms, cradling her head against his chest, covering her blinded eyes.
The winds came then, rushing across the dark Plain. Rachel felt Gabriel brace himself against one fierce gust, and then another. His wings wrapped themselves around her, and his back took most of the force, but still she felt the shudder and whine of the gale whipping around his head, razoring through his feathers, shaking the very foundations of the world.
And the rain followed, sudden and soaking, a rain that would last forever. It lashed down with the force and fury of a river in full spate, driving them backward, turning the ground beneath them to swampland. Hail fell briefly but brutally, beating upon their heads and upraised arms. It hit the soggy earth with a sound like a hand slapping across a face.
Then it slackened, and died away, and only the rain was left washing through the cool air like the tears of Jovah falling.
Still cocooned within Gabriel’s embrace, Rachel heard sounds and voices begin to form again in the soggy dark. “Take shelter! Everyone, to your tents and your awnings!” “Build a fire if you can.” “Where’s Eva? Where’s Ariel? Has anyone seen Josiah?” The words, the very sounds themselves, seemed remote and tinny to Rachel, as if they were shouted from a great distance, or as if her ears had been permanently damaged, scarred by the impact of the god’s wrath.
For he had struck the mountain and Raphael was dead. Yet they had lived, and Gabriel himself had kept her safe. Rachel did not even try, but she knew she could not break free of his hold. She did not want to.
And then she heard her name again in that high, frantic voice. “Rachel? Rachel? Has anyone seen Rachel?”
Gabriel’s arms loosened with a seeming reluctance, and his wings folded back. “She’s here. She’s safe,” he said, and Naomi ran over to take her in a tearful embrace. At the sound of his voice, all attention turned Gabriel’s way. Angels and mortals cohered around him, restless and stunned and hopeful.
“Gabriel, what now? What next?”
“The thunderbolt came, Gabriel. The mountain is down, it’s on fire. What do we do? When will the rain stop?”
“Gabriel, do you think—”
“Gabriel, do you know—”
“Gabriel—”
From the shelter of Naomi’s arms, Rachel turned her attention to him, too. They were all there, instantly materialized, Ariel and Nathan and the oracles. There was almost no light to see by, for the rain had extinguished even the stars, but someone had brought over a feeble torch and by that, and the white glow of Gabriel’s wings, they could see his face. It was the only thing to believe in.
“The thunderbolt fell, as the god prophesied,” Jezebel was saying gravely. “Raphael and all his followers are dead.”
“What next?” Nathan interrupted.
“We sing in the morning,” Ariel said.
Gabriel dragged a hand across his face. He looked unutterably weary. “The day after tomorrow, perhaps,” he said, and his beautiful voice was strained. “I heard the mountain come crashing down. Who knows what else it brought down with it? We must investigate the damage tomorrow. We can sing the next day.”
“But Gabriel! The god is already roused to wrath—”
“He will allow us three days,” the angel reminded them. “He gave us those three days for a reason. I think we will need one or two of them.”
“And then? In three days? If we do not sing—”
“The thunderbolt falls again,” Josiah said quietly. “So says the Librera.”
“Falls where?” someone asked.
“Does it matter? We will sing.”
“But where?” the insistent voice repeated. “Where would the next bolt fall?”
And suddenly Rachel remembered. She drew away from Naomi’s shoulder, where she had rested her head, and felt energy and power flow back into her muscles. The fitful torchlight gave
off an uneven, half-lunatic illumination. Angel shapes and even mortal figures were weirdly distorted and surreal. Yet she saw distinctly now; her head was remarkably clear.
Josiah was speaking. “The Librera says that Jovah will first smite the mountain, and then the rocks of the Galilee River, and then the whole world.”
“The rocks of the Galilee River?” Ariel repeated. “What does that mean? Where is that?”
But Rachel knew. And Gabriel knew, for he was staring across at her with eyes so blue they tinted the air between them. “Rachel,” he said, or maybe he just shaped the word with his lips, for no one heard him speak.
“Semorrah,” she said in a voice that carried to the whole circle. “He will strike first the mountain, and then Semorrah.” And clenching her hands at her sides, she shocked everyone by laughing.
I
mpossible as it seemed, the next day was worse.
The night had been bad enough, for the angel pavilion had been swamped with terrified visitors begging for help or reassurance. Rocks from the falling mountain had shot into the far encampment, wounding twenty or more people, some seriously; the relentless rain was turning the whole place into a dangerous mud slick; and panic and desperation had done the rest. Gabriel had spent most of the night moving from campsite to campsite, offering comfort, bandaging up cuts that anyone else could have dressed with more efficiency, promising that the god’s wrath would be averted before the lightning fell again. He had seriously considered flying aloft and praying that the rain dissipate before they all drowned, but was stopped by the thought that it might be sacrilege.
Rachel, of course, had disappeared.
He went by the Chieven camp once during his rounds, thinking to talk to her, if only briefly, but neither she nor Naomi was there. Naomi’s two daughters were wide-eyed and silent, but, like most of the Edori children he had seen this night, relatively composed. Luke told him that the women were out on errands of mercy.
“They both know a little of the healing art,” he said. “They’ve gone to the other camps to do what they can.”
Which reassured Gabriel a little, but not entirely. For he
knew, if no one else did, what Rachel’s strange, hysterical laugh had meant. It was not just a nervous reaction, as everyone else supposed, oh no. It was delight. It was exultation. It was the dizzy expression of the triumph one felt when the god answered one’s most heartfelt prayers.
Gabriel worked until he was too exhausted to take another step or stretch his wings one more time; and still he worked, moving among his people, until there were no more pleading hands outstretched to him. It was far past midnight by this time—closer to dawn. He returned to his tent and slept dreamlessly for perhaps five hours. He might have slept forever if Nathan had not awakened him.
“What?” he said, rolling instantly to his feet, knowing there was fresh trouble. “What’s happened?”
“The mountain’s down.”
“Yes, we knew that—”
“And the river has flooded, pouring out of the hole in the mountain, like—like nothing I’ve ever seen. And the rain won’t stop—”
“Yes?”
“And they’re evacuating Castelana and the other river cities, but—”
“Semorrah,” Gabriel whispered.
Nathan nodded. His own face was pale with fatigue. No telling how long he’d been awake or when he’d gone to bed. “The bridge washed out last night—or collapsed when the mountain fell,” he said. Gabriel momentarily envisioned that thin, spidery bridge. Yes, the dancing earth would have quickly sent that structure splintering down. “And the river is so rough they can hardly get a boat to the docks to take on passengers. Well, a few ships have loaded and made it safely to shore, but another one—went down… .”
“Dearest Jovah. Sweet god of mercy,” Gabriel whispered. He closed his eyes. A vision of Rachel laughing rose before him. He opened his eyes again. “The angels,” he said. “We can carry them all to safety—”
“Gabriel, there are thousands of people in Semorrah! There are perhaps a hundred angels left. We could not clear that city in less than a week, and even then—”
“Maybe I can stop the flooding,” Gabriel said, his voice
suddenly brisk. “I will ask the god. But there must be a way to get them all safely out of the city—”
Nathan was staring at him. “Why? If the water goes down, they are safe enough there.”