Jovah's Angel (47 page)

Alleya carefully laid down her fork. “So I understand,” she said.

“Ah, you'd heard of this mad plan? Romantic and desperate, wouldn't you agree?”

“They seem set on carrying it out,” she said neutrally.

“What plan? What are the Edori doing now?” Various voices chimed in with questions. Emmanuel glanced quickly around the table.

“They're building ships to take them to Ysral,” he said. “And all of them are going.”

“No! That's crazy!”

“Ysral! But there's absolutely no proof—”

“All of them?” Aaron's voice cut in decisively.

“Well, hundreds,” Emmanuel amended. “I don't know the exact head count.”

“That's good news, isn't it?” someone else asked. “I mean, if all the Edori leave Samaria—”

Alleya stiffened. Aaron and Emmanuel shot quick glances in her direction. So it had been more than idle chatter after all. “If all the Edori leave,” Emmanuel said slowly, “we might not have much need for the Edori sanctuaries after all.”

“No need for them,” Aaron agreed instantly. “No one living there.”

“Of course, we'd have to put it up to a vote by the council—”

“That's all fairly premature,” Alleya said in as level a voice as she could manage. “In the first place, the Edori haven't sailed yet—anything could occur to change their plans. In the second place, as Emmanuel said, we have no idea how many Edori are actually planning to leave. In the third place, who's to say that they won't come back? The sea is tricky, and these are not born sailors. I don't think you can assume there will be no need of the sanctuaries any time soon.”

“But maybe not all of them,” someone said in an urgent voice. “We'll keep a few, of course, for those who don't sail, but some of the bigger ones—”

Alleya lifted her index finger in an abrupt motion to demand
silence. She kept a pleasant smile on her face, but she was seething; and she wanted them to know it. “Not another word,” she said, enunciating clearly. “I came here to ask the god for sunshine, not to debate political ethics. And I will not taint a heartfelt prayer with a selfish, opportunistic discussion on how the Manadavvi can increase their holdings at the expense of a few hapless Edori. If they sail, if their numbers drop, if everything changes, we can talk about it later. But for now”—she picked up her fork again—“let's just enjoy the meal.”

And she took another bite of food. There was a moment of complete silence and then Aaron's wife pointedly asked the man beside her how his son was faring, and a low murmur of conversation slowly rose around the table. Alleya saw Emmanuel give Aaron a long, steady look; the younger man shrugged and sipped from his wine. But she sensed they were not entirely disappointed. The topic had been broached, and even though it had not gone over well, they had lodged the thought in her mind. They could not have expected a much better reception.

The evening was interminable. The meal itself was a dozen courses (or so it seemed), and it was followed by a musical program. For a moment, as they were all shepherded into the recital hall, Alleya had a fear that she would be asked to perform; but the Manadavvi were too well-bred for that. Instead, the guests were entertained with flute players and a harpsichordist as well as a procession of exquisitely trained singers. Alleya enjoyed music, as a rule, but it had been a long day and she was tired of socializing. When the final notes had been played and the guests were invited into an adjoining room to play card games, she excused herself and went to bed.

The next morning, she woke to sunshine, and could not help a small surge of triumph from quirking her mouth into a grin. Nonetheless, she and Jerusha made good on their promise and returned to the skies above the lush Manadavvi land. They repeated their prayers, adding a few songs of thanksgiving to show their appreciation for Jovah's quick response.

“Good enough, I think!” Jerusha called to Alleya over the fluttering sound of their mingled wingbeats.

“Send a messenger if you need me to return,” Alleya called back.

“You'll be at the Eyrie? No more jaunting around?”

Alleya could not help laughing. “I may make one quick detour before I go back but—yes, I should be at the Eyrie.”

Jerusha nodded and waved. “Jovah guard you,” she said.

“And you,” Alleya replied. She dropped downward to catch a southeasterly breeze while Jerusha drove her wings against the thin air to achieve greater altitude. In a few minutes, they were far apart; and soon enough, Alleya had left the Manadavvi lands behind.

Back toward Bethel; on to Sinai.

As before, Alleya felt a certain peace descend upon her the instant she landed on the gray rock of Sinai. She moved with a sort of calm delight through the empty, echoing hallways, sparing a moment to wonder if she would like the place quite so well once it was tenanted again with petitioners and priests and acolytes. But she thought she would; the serenity of Sinai was imprinted on the very rocks and corridors. Voices were lost in that determined stillness; the soul's turbulence was soothed away.

But when would there be an oracle and his or her attendants here again? Alleya sighed. One more problem to worry over, once she had the time.

She made her way finally to the main chamber, where the interface was situated, pausing at the threshold of the room to kneel and empty her backpack. There, in with the silver gown, was an item that might have raised Jerusha's eyebrows: the book of translated phrases that the novice was to learn when he first began to use the interface to communicate with Jovah.

Well, she was a novice, and she was here to communicate. It still made her a little nervous to usurp the oracles' function, but she felt as if she had no choice. She needed, as Deborah had suggested, to touch the face of the god.

Still, it was with a certain awe tinged with apprehension that she approached the glowing blue screen at the far end of the chamber. The last time she had been here, the messages on the interface might as well have been printed in gibberish for all she could make of them. Now, having studied the ancient tongue for so many weeks, would she actually be able to understand what the god was trying to say?

As before, there were hieroglyphics crowding together, dark blue against the sky-colored background. Alleya pulled up the chair and seated herself before the screen, reading even before she sat down. Yes, these were words and phrases she recognized, though the syntax was difficult and there were technical references
that did not make sense to her. She throttled her leaping excitement and forced herself to remain cool. So much depended on this; she must think calmly.

“Welcome, user. Station One of the J/S ship/land Internet stands open and ready for commands. Press the Enter key to initiate program. If you are asked for your password, type it in; if you have no password, type in ‘new user' followed by the password you wish to use. If in the future you need to change your password, you may do so, but you must activate the ‘change directory' program to do so.”

She opened her book to the first few pages and skimmed them; yes, this was a standard screen, something the novice must read and respond to before going on. According to the instruction book, she must first press the square green key on the left side of the keyboard and then, when the screen emptied, type in her name. Not until then could she communicate with the god.

Cautiously, fearfully, she put her fingers against the square button, and gasped aloud when everything disappeared from the screen except a single blinking line.
That's what's supposed to happen
, she assured herself, but nonetheless, a momentary feeling of sickness threatened to overwhelm her. What if she did something awful? What if she unthinkingly destroyed this frail link to Jovah's heart?

She would not. She would be careful. She had no choice.

She was now supposed to identify herself to the god. Painstakingly, because not all the symbols on the keyboard corresponded to the ones she knew, she picked out her message (“new user”) and then the letters of her name: A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A. Then she sat back in the chair and waited.

Nothing happened.

She glanced back at her textbook, worried again, but the mystery was soon solved. “Every time you wish to clear the screen or transmit a question, you must touch the Enter key,” the instructions said. Ah—the square button must be pressed again. Alleya complied.

Instantly, the screen dissolved into blackness and just as rapidly re-formed with a new message across the top of the glass. Alleya leaned forward and puzzled out the words.

“Welcome, Archangel Alleluia, daughter of the woman Hope and the angel Jude,” the god said. Alleya bounced in her chair, clapping her hands together like a child. He recognized her name! He knew her! She was right to have sought him out like this!

There was more, as the primer had told her there would be. “What do you wish to ask me?” was the brief question following the formal greeting.

She had more to ask than she could begin to formulate, and she wasn't sure how many questions the god's patience would endure. But she started with one of personal importance—it did, after all, have some bearing on the fate of the world.

“I must find my angelico,” she typed in slowly, hunting for each individual letter on the keyboard. “Can you name him?”

The answer was the one she expected. “Seek the son of Jeremiah.”

“Is the Archangel Gabriel the son of Jeremiah?” she asked.

“Yes,” the god replied.

“So I must seek one of his descendants?”

“No,” the answer appeared on the screen.

She had never been so taken aback. She stared for a moment at the single uncompromising syllable, then cleared the screen and restated her question.

“I am not to seek one of Gabriel's descendants to be my angelico?”

“No,” the god said again.

“Then who am I to seek?”

“The son of Jeremiah.”

It came to her slowly, stupidly, the solution filtering into her brain like water sieving through sand: Jeremiah had had more than one son. To herself, Alleya said,
Gabriel had a brother… and that would be
… She knew this; every scholar knew this, but just for a moment her brain would not yield the information. “Nathaniel,” she whispered at last. “Gabriel's half-brother. Who founded the angel hold at Cedar Hills, and, by divine dispensation, married the angel Magdalena…”

Her fingers curled into fists on either side of the keyboard, her eyes squeezed shut in an effort to slow the whirling thoughts in her head. “And they had six daughters, all but one of them angelic, and that mortal daughter was named Tamar…”

Her eyes flew open. And Tamar had a great-great-grandson named Caleb Augustus. Could it possibly be—?

Alleya unfurled her fingers above the keyboard, ready to ask this most momentous of questions, but before she could begin typing, the colors on the screen swirled and went blank. She sat motionless, her hands frozen in position, afraid of what she might see next. And indeed, the image that formed on the glowing glass
sent a chill from her shoulders to her heels. Two words, each three or four inches high, stacked on top of each other. She remembered the last time she had been here, watching in apprehension as the screen changed to flash her just this message, before she knew how to read it. Even then, the words had filled her with an indefinable dread; now she was washed with a helpless sense of terror.

“SEND HELP,” the god was saying.

Three days of hard travel had brought Caleb to Velora, exhausted but determined. He arrived in the bustling little city in the morning and considered tying his mount up at the bottom of the grand staircase and immediately charging up the steps to look for Alleya. But he was famished, and dirty from three days of riding, and his long-suffering mare deserved a little better treatment than that. So he found an inn, stabled the horse, had a late breakfast and cleaned himself thoroughly. Then he was ready to seek a conference with the Archangel.

It was not such an easy thing as it had been the first time, for there were throngs of people gathered in the open plateau of the Eyrie, having come for exactly the same purpose. Caleb overheard a group of farmers grumbling, and edged closer to listen.

“Wasn't this way when Delilah was Archangel,” one of them said. “You could count on her to be here on public days. Not flying off to the river cities and Breven and such. She serves in Bethel, she should stay in Bethel.”

“Well, I heard they've got rain in northern Gaza,” one of his companions was saying. “She's got to take care of things everywhere. That's why she's Archangel.”

“Well, all I can say is, she should be
here
when she's needed.”

Caleb drifted away, now frowning deeply. Was Alleya gone, then? Had he traveled all this way for nothing? When would she return? He was suffused with a violent impatience, totally foreign to his nature. He did not think he could wait another week or more to speak with her.