Jovah's Angel (42 page)

“Why? Why shouldn't I make the journey? I too would like to see Ysral. I will make this pilgrimage with my friends.”

“You,” she said scornfully. “You have too much to live for. Too many unrealized dreams. There is no reason for you to court death like that. You won't go.”

“I will.”

“You won't,” she repeated, but now her voice was edged with panic.

Noah must have shrugged. “I don't see how you can stop me.”

She took a deep breath, seeming to draw up any reserves of honesty she had. It was as if she played the only winning card in her hand, as if she stopped, for a moment, toying with his heart. “I can tell you—that the only thing of beauty I leave behind in this world is you. I can tell you that you are all that has kept me alive this long. I can tell you that it's the only thing that matters to me at all, knowing that you are still alive, and well, and happy. And surely, for my sake, you will not risk yourself on this terrible journey.”

“If you die, I will die,” he said simply. “If you board that ship, I will stand beside you.”

“If you board that ship,” she said, “I will not go.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and his voice was relaxed, almost amiable. “I will go in your stead, if that means you will stay behind and live.”

“No!” she cried. “I will not accept that!”

“Your choice,” he said. “I sail with you, or without you if it keeps you safe. You will not leave for Ysral without me.”

“And I will not leave for Ysral with you,” she said grimly. “If you sail without me, know that I will find some other way to destroy myself. I can do it, you know—I can travel out to the Heldoras or the Corinnis and fling myself off some mountain peak. But I needn't go that far! There are medicines, you can find them in Luminaux, that turn a long sleep into the longest sleep, that ease you painlessly across the threshold of death—”

There was a sudden sharp report; Caleb realized with a shock
that Noah had slapped the angel. “Not another word,” he said ominously. “Don't say that again, do you hear me? Don't think it. Don't say it. Death is your enemy, you ridiculous child. Don't try to make him your friend.”

“He is my best friend,” she whispered, her voice muffled. Caleb imagined that she held her hand to her mouth while her wide eyes stared at the Edori. “And you cannot change that by wishing.”

After that, there was total silence, but Caleb was fairly sure that no one in the cave slept that night. Certainly he was unable to fall back asleep, and his companions stirred restlessly for the hours of darkness that remained. In the morning, they rose to a renewed onslaught of rain and skies colored an unrelenting gray. No one spoke as they broke camp and wearily clambered back into the Beast. There was nothing left to say.

So that had been the trip; and in the following week, Caleb had seen very little of either Noah or Delilah. Whether they saw each other at all, he did not ask. He did not know how to counsel either one, so he did not lay himself open to requests for advice.

The few times he went to Seraph, Noah was not present. Delilah's repertoire had changed radically; the songs she performed now were upbeat, optimistic, adventurous, ballads about great deeds accomplished and victories won. She seemed, for the first time since he had known her, to be genuinely happy. It was hard to believe that this was the woman who had so forthrightly embraced the promise of death. But perhaps she was happy because she felt finally free—free of pain, of self-loathing, of despair. He could not quarrel with her means of achieving that freedom.

To find Noah, Caleb had to stroll out to the Edori camp and induce Thomas or Sheba or one of his other friends to invite him to dinner. Noah was usually there, invariably glad to see him, always interested in hearing about his engineering projects; but it was not the outgoing, cheerful Noah he had always known. This man was reserved, thoughtful, determined.

“You're really going to go, aren't you?” Caleb finally asked him one night when the two of them were the only ones left around the dying campfire. “You're going to make the journey to sea.”

“To Ysral. Yes. I'm finishing up my jobs here and taking on no new commissions. I'll be ready within three weeks.”

Caleb shrugged. “You know all my arguments.”

Noah looked at him and smiled. “And you know my reasons.”

“And if she won't let you go—?”

“Nothing will keep her from boarding that ship. You know that. So I'm going, too. Who knows? Perhaps we'll find the promised land.”

“If I could only know for sure—if you were alive or dead…”

“Who knows anything for sure? Sooner or later, Yovah brings all of us home. You, me, all of us. I'll watch for you from the circle of Yovah's arms.”

It was an Edori farewell; Caleb knew the proper response. “And till I arrive, whisper kindly of me in his ear.”

So he had had nothing to brighten his days until he came back to his apartment one evening to find a brief note from the Archangel. His heart made a clumsy pirouette under his ribs, knocking awkwardly into his bones; he truly forgot the simple requirements for breathing. Surely she must have come for some reason other than to see him. Not that it mattered. She was here.

And, as he learned later that night, she needed him. She could hardly have framed a request he would have refused, but this one intrigued him, and he was glad to agree to help her. However, the intervening six days were interminable, two in Luminaux and four on the road; he had not thought the hours could creak by at such an excruciating pace.

Of course, he had one brilliant memory to sustain him, and he relived it on a pretty much continuous basis for each of those six days. In fact, sometimes he thought he might have dreamed the kiss, hallucinated about it, invented it in his disordered brain.

But when he saw her next, would she allow a second kiss?

He and his borrowed horse arrived at the rendezvous a few hours before Alleluia. Caleb unloaded his mount and prepared a meal. The horse was an Edori mare and should not stray far from this point if Caleb wasn't gone more than two days. So he had been told, anyway. He didn't trust animals; they had minds of their own. A machine would be much more likely to stay where he left it.

Then again, a malfunctioning machine was what had brought him to this meeting place, so perhaps he should be a little less blithe.

He had just finished his meal when he caught a glimpse of
movement on the western horizon. His traitorous heart started up again, performing its breathless gyrations. Yes, it was an angel; it was Alleya. She seemed to carry the sun on her back. Her blond head was haloed with light, and her wings seemed to brush color and glitter into the sky with every one of their downward strokes. It hurt to look at her, but there was nowhere else he could possibly turn his eyes. He practiced smiling, he reviewed all the dialogue he had laboriously constructed over the past few days. In the end, he just stood there stupidly as she touched her feet gracefully to the ground and walked toward him.

“You must have traveled fast,” she said, an ordinary greeting, smiling at him but not as if it was causing her any great effort. “I thought I would certainly be here before you.”

He smiled back, and most of his dizziness left him. “Edori horse,” he said, and his voice sounded calm, quite reasonable. “Bred for travel.”

“Can we just leave it here while we go up in the mountains?”

“That's the theory. I've been told she'll be here when I get back. Are you hungry? I've got food left over.”

“Oh—not now. But once we've made the climb, I might be.”

It was easier and easier to talk to her; then again, it was what he had been born to do. “How high do we have to go, anyway?”

“Up the mountain. I think it takes several hours.”

“We'd better get started then. Can I carry anything for you?”

“Oh, no. I can manage. But thanks.”

So they turned their attention to the rocky slopes that formed the base of the mountain and, after a little study, determined where the trail must lie. Alleya led the way at a brisk but reasonable pace, and the exercise helped counteract the winter chill. The higher they climbed, the more defined the trail became, and within a few miles, it narrowed to a track no more than a couple of yards wide. Both sides were lined with rusting iron stakes, higher than a man's head and ground to a point at the top.

“What are these?” Caleb finally asked, pointing.

She glanced behind her with a grin. “Didn't I tell you about those? When Hagar had this place built, she made it as inaccessible to angels as possible. You can see that no angels could land anywhere along the path, because their wingspan is too great—their feathers would be pierced. Look,” she added, and came to a halt. She shook out her wings, which she had folded behind her for the hike, and let them lie on the path behind her. Sure enough,
the trailing edge of each landed a few inches behind the perimeter of the slim rods.

“As I understand it, all the grounds around the house are studded with stakes just like these. It would be folly for an angel to try to land there. Which was the point. Hagar didn't want her husband or anyone else dropping in on her without an invitation. She liked the idea that Uriel had to come climbing up the mountain like any lowly petitioner if he wanted to see her here.”

“And did he ever make the effort?”

Alleya laughed and resumed walking. “According to the stories, he did. They were always arguing, and she was always leaving him, so he continually had to come here to fetch her.”

“I'm surprised he went to the trouble,” Caleb observed. “She sounds like a difficult woman.”

“Oh, by all accounts she was, but from everything I've read, my sympathies are with Hagar. Uriel comes across as hotheaded and selfish and domineering. Not an easy man to live with.”

“Why was he made Archangel, then, if he was so hateful?”

“Uncommon leadership skills. The ability to inspire men. You have to remember, they were the first people on Samaria. Trying to establish—everything. Do everything. Build cities. Build angel holds. Learn how to farm the land. It must have been very rough. You'd need someone a little autocratic to hold everything together.”

They didn't talk much after that exchange; they needed their breath and their strength for the climb. The pathway narrowed still more as they ascended, causing Alleya to fold her wings back so tightly they trailed on the ground behind her. Walking a few paces behind, Caleb watched the gleaming white edgefeathers as they played through the dirt, skipped over exposed roots and dislodged tiny rocks. No mud and no debris clung to them; nothing dimmed their radiance.

They halted twice for short breaks, to take sips of water and catch their breath. The sun was quite low in the sky when they trudged up the final rise and broke through to a sort of clearing. Well, there was a house still standing and what looked like the ruins of two or three gardens, but the general undergrowth of the surrounding hillside had certainly encroached on what once was civilized ground. Scattered around the edges of the clearing, and dotting the gardens and the pathways, were more of the metal spikes. Angels not welcome here, indeed.

“Hagar's Tooth,” Alleya said, stepping forward again after a long pause. “Let's take a look.”

In the immediate grounds, there was not much to see, except cultivated flowers run wild, a cheerful little stream that wound its way tightly around the house and then bubbled away down the mountain, and one or two small outbuildings that may have served for storage. The door to the house was unlocked, and they entered cautiously.

“Spiders inside, I would guess,” Alleya said.

“Mice. Maybe rats. Snakes.”

“Mountain cats. Bears.”

“Too well-built. But I'll bet there's little creatures.”

There were no immediate signs of animals or rodents, though there were plenty of cobwebs clinging to the walls in the first room they entered. They moved from room to room to find each one covered with dust but seeming somehow pristine and uncluttered. Each room was sparsely furnished with a few tables or chairs, or a bed and an armoire; but everything looked lovingly chosen and precisely placed.

Alleya stood in the middle of one of the bedrooms and did a slow turn to take in the plain mirror, the single decorative hanging on the wall. “It's strange,” she said softly, as if thinking aloud. “Obviously, this place has been neglected for years but it still seems—clean, and serene, and cared for. There's something soothing about it. It's almost like Mount Sinai—a place of calm and quiet, away from the rest of the world.”

“I wouldn't have put it that way,” Caleb answered, “but I know exactly what you mean. I like it here.”

“So do I.”

Exploring farther, they stumbled across a cedar closet which seemed to have been effectively closed against insects and small marauders. Inside were blankets and pillows and women's clothes, all apparently unmolested.

“Someone was a good housekeeper,” Alleya observed.

“Something to sleep on tonight,” Caleb said.

They squandered their daylight hours investigating; it was full dark before they had finished looking over the house. “Which was stupid of us, since now we can't start looking around for the thing we came here to find,” Alleya remarked.

“There's always tomorrow morning,” Caleb said. “Anyway, it might take us days to find. We don't even know what we're looking for.”

“No,” she sighed. “Or what to do with it if we find it.”

The long day and the physical exercise had made both of them hungry, so they went to the kitchen and took stock of their rations. Each of them had brought enough food to last a couple of days, and they instantly agreed to share items so that there was more variety for both.

They worked together to clean enough of the kitchen to make it usable, building a fire in the large fireplace to heat their food. Alleya found candles in a range of sizes and, lighting them, placed them all around the small room. Their flickering opal light gave the room a festive air.