The Alleluia Files (62 page)

Another night, another morning, traveling so many hours that the minutes jumbled together, uncountable and indistinguishable. Now that their thirst had been appeased, all the Jacobites could think of was their hunger. It was better than contemplating their deaths. Another day of this and they would grow too weak even to care.

The land had changed slowly around them, from the lush emerald farmlands of southern Bethel to the mountainous terrain
that bisected the province, to the flatter, browner land farther north. They had followed a northeasterly route until they neared the Galilee River, and then they headed due north. Past Semorrah, on and on till they breached the ring of mountains that guarded the Plain of Sharon.

As the trucks grumbled and clawed their way up those rocky slopes, all the Jacobites began to stir. This was the end, of course, their final destination. Anxiety and adrenaline gave them back what two days of starvation had drained away: a restless, unhappy energy that put them back on their feet and had them clinging to the bars, looking once more for escape.

What they saw before them on the Plain of Sharon was not promising. None of the Jacobites, Tamar surmised, had ever been at this site when a Gloria was being staged, so none of them was prepared for the commotion of a grand event. Tents, pavilions, booths, and pens were spread over the level plain with as much precision and variety as a small city, and the makeshift aisles were crowded with more pedestrians than Semorrah on a market day. The arrival of three additional trucks caused no shopper to do more than turn an incurious gaze their way before returning to his bargaining. They could have roared right through the fair, silent or shouting, and caused no furor at all. No one would have known, or cared, that the Jacobites had been brought here to die.

But Omar was crafty. Tamar would grant him that. He halted the trucks in what looked like the very center of the fairgrounds, and then he hopped out and took a leisurely look around. Some of the browsers knew him, that was evident from the murmur of surprise that went up from many of the bystanders. Others turned their attention to the trucks themselves, in particular the traveling prison crammed to the edges with silent, defiant captives. As if unable to help themselves—drawn by the mystery or the misery—the fairgoers drew closer, slowly at first, and then in droves, until there were fifty of them, a hundred, two hundred, gathered around the Jansai caravan and wondering aloud what was afoot.

“Is my father here?” Omar asked finally in a carrying voice. “Is the Archangel present?”

“He’s at the inn where he usually stays for the Gloria,” someone volunteered.

“Will someone fetch him?”

“I’ll go!” came from a dozen voices, and suddenly the footrace was on. Ten fled toward the hotels, half a mile away; others ran for their friends, still obliviously shopping the fair. No one knew what was going on, but clearly a drama was about to unfold; this would be something too rare to miss.

The Jacobites waited in tense silence. Bael, it seemed, was in no hurry to come to them, and the minutes edged by at an excruciating pace. Now the crowd around the trucks was five hundred strong, maybe more, men and women and bright-eyed children, staring in at them and wondering what crime they could have committed to land them here in such ignominy on such a beautiful day. They munched their candied apples, these watchers, and guzzled back their pints of ale, as if prepared to settle in for the exhibition of their lives, and Tamar hated every single one of them.

Finally, slowly, rolling back like a multicolored wave, those who had raced off to find the Archangel returned. With them came a couple dozen others, roused from their afternoon naps or called from their noisy recreation in the taproom. In their midst, walking with a slow, stately dignity, strode a silver-haired old angel dressed in flowing purple robes and looking, even from a distance, as if the fate of the world was his primary concern.

“That’s Bael,” Jared said, as if aware that few of the Jacobites would know the Archangel by sight. “With the silver hair and the long beard.”

“He looks sure of himself, that one,” Conran said. Jared gave a short laugh.

“That he is. Has always been.”

The crowd made way for the Archangel, wordlessly opening up a passage all the way to the prison truck. All murmuring had ceased; even the noises of crunching and slurping had died away. The Archangel’s measured footfalls were the only sounds to be heard.

And they came to a halt three feet from the bars of the Jansai truck, and Bael stared straight at the captured rebels.

“So,” he said, and his booming voice was mellow and beautiful. “So, these are the Jacobites who have for so long troubled the realm.”

Now the crowd briefly woke to astonishment (“Jacobites!” “
That’s
who they are!” “I knew it! Didn’t I say it as soon as
the truck stopped? Jacobites!”) but quickly fell silent again to hear the rest of Bael’s words. He had extended his right hand so that the embroidered purple sleeve fell back to reveal a white silk cuff, and he pointed at the occupants of the truck.

“You! Conran Atwell, who have spread dissent and trouble throughout Samaria for the last thirty years.”

“Truth and knowledge,” Conran replied cockily. “That’s me.

“And you. And you. Duncan, Horace, Wyman, Jani. We know your faces and we know your names. We know the heresies you have spouted across the three provinces.”

Duncan spit at him through the bars, but none of the others made a movement. Bael did not step back or even react. His accusing finger had swung toward Tamar.

“And you. The daughter of an angel. How you could have fallen so low, been so easily seduced by evil companions, I will never understand. Your blood, your heritage, should have shown you the shining light of truth.”

“Perhaps if you hadn’t sent me out to die with my mother on the coldest night of the year, you might have seen to it that I was properly raised,” Tamar said loudly. A gasp went up from the crowd; the Jacobites around her burst into low laughter. “So I blame you for my being here. Actually I blame you for everything—”

“Silence!”
the Archangel roared, and such was the power of his voice that, against her will, Tamar shut her mouth. “You will not speak lies and treachery to my very face!”

“And why should she not?” Jared said coolly. “You have spoken nothing else for the whole of your life.”

“Silence!”
Bael cried again, and this time he addressed not only the Jacobites, but the murmuring crowd as well. For what accusations were these? From despicable, heathen Jacobites, such words could be discounted, but from an angel? Accusing the Archangel of treachery? The mob could not be entirely quieted.

Bael now stabbed his finger in Jared’s direction. “And you— you whom I have loved almost as a son, welcomed into my home and my life. You, to have joined this band of heretical liars, the very people that threaten to tear Samaria in two—”

“You are the one destroying Samaria,” Jared said. “
You
are the one who has known for five years that the Alleluia Files
actually exist.
You
are the one who has hidden the truth, who has lied, who has murdered, all because you did not want to give up the power you love so dearly—”

“Silence him!”
the Archangel screamed, and the Jansai leaped forward, beating the metal bars of the prison with pots and sticks and shovels. Inside the cage, the din was so loud that they all shrieked and covered their ears to drown it; outside, the surging assembly shouted and questioned in their own riot of noise. In the commotion, it was impossible to hear what commands Bael gave to the Jansai warrior he motioned over. Two minutes later the truck rumbled to life and slowly inched its way free of the encircling mob.

“Where is he taking us?” Tamar called to Jared.

“To the middle of the plain! Clear of the fairgrounds!”

“Why?”

But the angel did not answer.

They traveled perhaps half a mile from the booths and tents to a level, empty section of land toward the middle of the plain. There they stopped. They had moved so slowly that the entire crowd was able to follow on foot, still shouting out inquiries and insults and seeming to grow more frenzied by the moment. Yet for all its agitation, the whole mob grew still as once again Bael approached the prisoners and spread his arms for attention.

“Jacobites, pray, if you have any remnants of faith left in your god,” the Archangel intoned. “For you are about to die at that god’s hands.”

Conran leaped forward, almost flinging himself against the bars. “We may die at your hands, but it is a machine you call to, and not a god! Whatever kind of destructive power you can cause it to unleash, it is still a machine, a
thing
to whom you send a prayer, and not a god! Never a god!”

“Wait,” Jared spoke, and for the first time his voice was strained, uncertain. His eyes desperately scanned the skies to the south, but he did not see what he was looking for. His friends, Tamar guessed, arriving too late or not at all. “You cannot so summarily convict and execute us. Give us a day—give us till sundown. Let our arguments be heard.”

“Your arguments are worthless,” Bael said contemptuously. “I will not listen to them.”

“Wait till sundown. Wait even another hour.”

“Why should I?” Bael demanded.

“You owe me that much for the life I have spent in service to you and the god you say you love.”

“You forfeited your life when you turned your back on your god. I will not give you even a minute more. Move back!” he cried, raising his voice so suddenly that even the Jacobites jumped away, tumbling over each other in the narrow confines of the truck. They scrambled to their feet in time to see the roiling crowd also stumble backward, forced away from the truck by the power in that voice. “Move back! For the god will strike down any who stand too close to the unbelievers.”

Now the fairgoers were tripping over each other in their haste to put room between themselves and the Jansai truck. Even so, their faces looked mutinous, appalled, disbelieving, and more than one man shouted out, “Wait! We should listen to what the angel says!” But the Jansai had moved quickly, forming a menacing, impenetrable ring all around the transport, shoving the crowd back, widening the circle more and more.

Only Bael now stood anywhere near the truck, oblivious alike to the shouts of the throng behind him and the Jacobites before. Again, he swept his arms out, and this time he threw his head back, and he seemed as rapt and ensorcelled as a madman in a seizure. The sun shimmered along his silver hair, his silver beard, his silver wings; he seemed haloed with its munificent light.

And then he shook his fists twice at the listening sky, spread his fingers as wide as they would go, and began to serenade the god.

For the past day and a half Lucinda had flown as far as her wings would carry them both, and still they had not reached Sinai as quickly as she had hoped. They had left the Gaza ship half an hour before dawn and continued on to Samaria, finally making their way to land a few hours after noon. And still she had flown on, another fifty miles and then another, before Reuben finally insisted they stop. She was so worn out with exertion and worry that she could barely stand once they came to rest outside a modest hotel in a town neither of them had heard of. Reuben negotiated with the innkeeper, led Lucinda to their room, went downstairs to fetch a dinner tray, and returned to find the angel sprawled facedown on the bed. He forced her to eat before allowing her to sleep.

And even when she slept, her dreams were haunted by terrors. The pressure of Tamar’s fear weighted her own heart and made it hard to breathe. But there was something there besides the dread, a fugitive sweetness, a joy so remote but so bright that Lucinda turned from side to side in her bed, trying to glimpse it more fully. Wherever Tamar was, whatever was happening to her, she was not alone and she was not completely without hope. Only that realization allowed Lucinda to sleep at all.

In the morning when she woke, she felt heavy and unrefreshed. Reuben looked exhausted, as though her tossing and turning had kept him from sleep as well. He had already risen and washed himself before she opened her eyes, and he had brought up another tray for breakfast.

“Any better?” he asked, coming to sit beside her on the bed. Briefly she leaned against him, drawing some strength from the heat and structure of his body, then she pulled away.

“I can’t tell what’s wrong. I don’t know what to do,” she said, anxiety creeping back into her voice.

“Shall we return to Ysral? Shall we fly down to Chahiela to look for her? We do not have to journey on to Mount Sinai now.”

“She is not in Chahiela,” Lucinda said tersely.

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. She is—moving. Traveling. But I cannot sense a direction. She could be back on the ship. She could be heading for Breven. I don’t know.”

“We can look for her.”

Lucinda shook her head. “We must go to Mount Sinai. To ask Jovah. Perhaps he will be able to track her Kiss and tell us where she is.”

“Can he do that?”

“We’ll find out.” She abruptly pushed him away and leaped to her feet. “There is no time to waste.”

“Enough time to eat breakfast, mikala,” he said firmly, and so she sighed and made herself swallow a few bites. All she wanted to do was fling herself into the air and fly as hard and as fast as her wings would take her. To Sinai, to wherever Tamar was being tortured, to the god’s back door, if necessary. The need for action was a fever in her veins.

“All right,” she said, cramming a last piece of bread in her mouth. “Are you ready? Time to go.”

They took off again, flying straight west. They were less than two hundred miles from Sinai, for they had flown farther than she thought yesterday; they were almost at the Galilee River. Good. Another three hours and they would be there, bursting in on Jecoliah and her acolytes with an impossibly lunatic demand…. Well, she would worry about that when they arrived. Now there was nothing to occupy her but the disciplined sweep of her wings, the weight of Reuben’s body in her arms, the play of sunlight along her cheeks, the machinations of the trickster wind beneath her feathers. Flying toward a mountain range was always challenging, for the currents could shift so rapidly; if nothing else, she must pay attention to them. She must shut her mind to her fear for Tamar. There was nothing she could do now for her sister.