Archangel (17 page)

“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.”

She shook her head. “I’m so tired. I’ll stay here. You go.”

He rose to his feet, then paused to take her hand. “I enjoyed talking with you,” he said. “You must come to me sometime so we can continue our theological debates.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “If I ever get off this mountain.”

He bowed and left her. There was more good-natured raillery in the center of the plateau as Gabriel or his friends suggested and rejected works for the groom to sing. No one appeared to be paying any attention to Rachel at all. She slipped from her seat and made her way silently through the crowd, eyes down, shawl wrapped around her bright hair, utterly invisible.

Judith’s throaty contralto sounded before Rachel had made it to the tunnel entrance, and she paused in surprise as she identified the song. The Lochevsky
Magnificat
. It was one of the Gloria masses—Rachel’s favorite, in fact—which she had played over and over again for the sheer delight of hearing Hagar’s voice master the full three and a half octaves required for the female solo. Rachel did not think Judith’s voice had the requisite range, and indeed, as the music made its first spectacular leap upward, Ariel took over for the notes in the higher register. Her lovely soprano voice cascaded downward on a succession of massed arpeggios, and Magdalena smoothly broke in to carry the middle mezzo line. Rachel smiled to herself. It took three contemporary musicians to sing the mass that Hagar had performed with such virtuosity.

Once again she turned to go—and at that moment, Gabriel’s voice lifted in close harmonic duet with Magdalena’s. The female voice fell away, and Gabriel sang on in a luxurious, exultant tenor. He reached the top of his vocal range as the song exploded in a joyous trill. His voice was liquid fire, and each note burned against Rachel as it fell. She shut her eyes; her body tightened in a brief moment of transport as if the music physically yanked on the thin cord running up her spine. Then he eased downward on the scale in a series of fluid thirds alternating between major and minor intervals.

Divine Yovah, his voice, his voice
. She had never heard anything so beautiful in her life.

She could not leave the arena while he was singing, but she was too stunned to stand upright. She sidled through the crowd, making once more for the perimeter, and backed herself against a supporting wall. The women were singing again, tossing the melodic line from throat to throat as if they had practiced this before, but she knew the tenor line would soon reappear. Impatiently, she waited through the second duet (shared by Ariel and Magdalena) for the second male solo, this one longer and more complex than the first. When his voice broke free of the high soprano line, she wanted to sink into the rock itself. She felt her palms flatten on the wall behind her and press so tightly that the smooth stone seemed grainy and rough against her skin. His voice divorced her from her body; it replaced her soul. While he sang, he owned her.

She had forgotten that every mass contained a choral response. When the mixed crowd of angels and humans came in on cue, at the end of Gabriel’s solo, she was so startled that she jumped away from the wall. They sang the simple refrain softly, but in this semienclosed space the sound seemed immense, oceanic, a massive coming together of harmony and motion. The tidal pull of the music drew Rachel forward; she mouthed the words along with the singers. Not until the chorus fell silent in deference to the next soprano solo did she lean against the wall again.

But this was ridiculous. If she was overwhelmed by the informal recitations of a few hundred singers at a wedding banquet, how would she endure a Gloria mass of a thousand voices when she herself was to sing the lead?

She stayed at the wall till the mass was over, letting the music wash over her, soak into her, fill her up. When the final chorus ended, the audience broke into spontaneous applause; everyone congratulated the women on the smoothness of their transitions and Gabriel on the magnificence of his range. Rachel shook herself and ran lightly for the exit before anyone else could begin singing.

F
or the most part, Gabriel had not been displeased with his wedding day. He was never a happy man at a fete, but this one had gone smoothly enough. Although he was not comfortable in the role of host, it was something he would have to get used to, and these were some of the people he would have to regularly entertain. So he forced himself to talk to Lord Jethro and Lady Clara, their son and daughter-in-law, and others of the Semorran contingent. Also present were Jansai from Breven, Manadavvi from Gaza, artisans from Luminaux, and of course the requisite angelic representatives. It was a microcosm of Samarian society, a smaller version of the group that would be assembled in a few months for the Gloria.

Of the group, the only one he really enjoyed talking to was Ariel, who had cornered him after dinner, while the impromptu singing contest was going on.