Archangel (40 page)

Raphael opened his tawny eyes very wide. “Rachel, my dear, my dear! Such ugly talk. Here you are in my house, for the very first time—can’t we make some pleasant dinner conversation?”

“If you consider this social entertaining, then where’s your wife? Shouldn’t Leah be here?”

“My wife prefers to take dinner in her rooms on occasions such as this,” Raphael said smoothly. “The excitement of my homecoming is sometimes too much for her.” He smiled at Rachel engagingly. “You understand.”

She watched him from narrowed eyes. “In her own rooms,” she said softly, “by choice or by chain? Do you compel the angelica as you compel me?”

“No, indeed, she has free run of the place, though she rarely chooses to exercise her rights,” he said. “She is a most indulgent wife, of course. She allows me whatever amusements I prefer, and in exchange I respect her wish for privacy. You see, we are much more well-suited than you and your so volatile spouse.”

“I would not have said the god chose well when he matched you with Leah,” she said, “but Yovah’s ways have always been passing strange.”

Raphael poured her a glass of wine and filled her plate with delicacies from the platters on the table. “Well, that’s the interesting thing,” he said softly. “Jovah did not exactly choose this wife for me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rachel snapped. “He chooses every angelica.”

Raphael nodded vigorously over his own glass of wine. “Oh yes, he chose mine! She was a Jansai girl, quite beautiful, with
a great deal of courage and physical strength. Her parents were wealthy merchants and she despised them, and she had gone to live with her aunt and uncle some years before we were betrothed. I don’t know how much you know about the Jansai,” he added, “but strong-willed teenage girls are pretty much a rarity. Well, they are scarcely tolerated. She had had a rough time of it, poor girl, between one household and the next, but nothing had dimmed her really indomitable spirit. She had—it is hard to know how to describe it—an inner flame that was simply unquenchable. Or seemed unquenchable. The Jansai men, of course, are very good at quenching.”

Rachel had begun to feel queasy. Without knowing the end of this story, she knew that she wouldn’t like it. “What happened to her?” she asked slowly. “What was her name?”

He was smiling that warm, golden smile. “Her name,” he said, “was Leah.”

Rachel gave a small start. “Then,” she said stiffly, “‘they—and you—did a superlative job of quenching, because the woman who is your wife—”

“Oh, it’s not the same woman,” Raphael said almost gaily. “The Leah I was to have married is dead. Died, sadly, a few days before our wedding. My Leah—that was not her name originally, but you know, I find I cannot always call it to mind—my Leah was an angel-seeker who had spent a good deal of time convincing me that she would do anything she could to oblige me. You know how it is with angel-seekers, my dear—they’re the worst kind of whores, but that often makes them the best kind of whores. So I switched them.”

“You—” Rachel could not breathe. She was sure she had not comprehended. “You—what do you mean?”

“I switched them. The Jansai brought their Leah to Windy Point, all embarrassed apology because she was such a contrary handful, and I said, ‘Jovah and I will tame her with love.’ Indeed, those were my exact words. I said, ‘Let her make a prenuptial visit with me for one month, and then we will have the wedding in Breven. She will be so docile you will not know her.’ Well, they were only too glad to leave her on my doorstep, because, as you can imagine, she’d been no end of trouble to them for the twenty-some years of her existence. And when we arrived in Breven four weeks later”—he spread his hands so smoothly that no wine spilled from the goblet he held—”I brought my Leah instead of
their Leah, and married her in front of Jovah and the angels and everybody.”

“But didn’t they—couldn’t they—How could you fool them?” Rachel stammered. “Her parents, her family—”

“Well, you know how the Jansai women are,” he said. “Very wrapped up in veils and cloths and so on. We had my Leah all wrapped up, and I never for a minute left her alone with her loving family. They were too delighted at the change in her to inquire too closely. Oh, perhaps they had their suspicions, but they didn’t like to voice them. After all, what harm had I done them? Whether I’d married her or whether I’d disposed of her, I’d taken the rebellious girl off their hands. And I was Archangel and I had the ear of the god. They smiled and said they’d always known marriage would calm her down.”

The distant roaring in Rachel’s ears must be the physical manifestation of shock, but she felt no other symptoms. She had passed through horror to find herself sick and dull, sated with an awful knowledge. “You killed her,” she said stupidly. “And you’re going to kill me.”

“Mmm, well, that was my original thought, I must admit,” he said consideringly. “For so long, you did seem the one stumbling block to my plans. Because I know my Gabriel! He’s not the man to try to fool the god with any plausible substitute. If Jovah told him, ‘Marry Rachel, daughter of Seth and Elizabeth,’ then no one but Rachel would do for him. And I thought, ‘Ah. If I wish to prevent this man from becoming Archangel, what easier way than to dispose of his angelica?’ But, as I say, you are a hard woman to kill. My compliments, of course, on your continued survival.”

“So why am I still living—this time?”

He leaned forward, his beautiful face vivid with intensity. “For that very reason! Because Gabriel will not play the god false! The Gloria is scheduled for six short days from now—yes, you start, it is much closer than you realized!—and you and Gabriel are to lead it. If you are not there to sing at Gabriel’s side, what will he do? Will he take Ariel or Judith or Hannah to the Plain and bid them to sing at his side? I think not. I think Gabriel is incapable of singing alongside any woman but the god’s chosen bride—which is why you must be kept alive. Once you are dead, of course, Gabriel is free. The god may choose a new wife for him, or Gabriel may choose his own—but the original restrictions
will be lifted. While you are alive, Gabriel is bound. Once you are dead, everything changes.”

Now Rachel leaned forward, as intense as the Archangel. “Rut the Gloria must be sung,” she said urgently. “Don’t you realize that? If all the peoples of Samaria do not come together on the Plain of Sharon, the god will smite first the mountain, then the river, then the world. We will all die—you, me, Gabriel, every one of us. If Gabriel does not sing, will you sing? That is the power you are so desperate for—will you take it, and see to it that the world is saved?”

He flung back his head and laughed. Angels and mortals sitting across the room, too far away to overhear their conversation, caught the melody of that laughter and joined in. He straightened, started to speak, glimpsed her face, and started laughing again. It took him a good five minutes to regain control.

“Oh, I do apologize, but that is so funny,” he said, shaking his head and pressing a hand theatrically to his heart. “Rachel, my dear, haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? For the past
twenty years
I have led all the peoples of the world in a mockery of the Gloria! A false angelica by my side, and no love of the god in my heart! For twenty years! And no thunderbolts have fallen—no cities were destroyed—the world spins on as it always has. And as it always will! Rachel, it is such a monumental but such a liberating thought—
there is no god at all
! He does not guard us, he does not punish us, he does not know if we live or breathe or die—
he is not there
! I have contravened every law laid down in the Librera, and he has not struck me dead.
There is no god.
If Gabriel fails to lead the Gloria, and there is no Gloria, we will all survive. If I fail to lead it, if it is never sung again—nothing will happen at all. We have been enslaved, all these years, to the idea of a god, without any proof of his existence. And now it is time that the people of Samaria realize that what they have loved and feared and obeyed is a divine and comic hoax.”

Rachel simply stared at him. She realized suddenly that he was mad—power-mad, certainly—but more than that. He was lunatic. If he had questioned the existence of the sunlight or the soil, she would have been less appalled. That anyone would doubt Yovah’s existence was, to Rachel, absolutely incredible.

“You may not have believed,” she said, her voice very low, “but the masses were sung. The harmonies were completed. The people of Samaria came together and satisfied
Yovah’s requirements. He did not strike you dead, though I can’t guess why you were spared, but he withheld his wrath from the rest of the world because the rest of the world believed. Not a year of these twenty has gone by that angels did not hold hands with humans and sing of the glories of the god. The voice of Gabriel alone was sweet enough to gladden Yovah’s heart—maybe it is Gabriel that the god listened for, and not for you. And Yovah heard that silver voice, and was pleased, and held back his wrath for another year.”

“Well, maybe,” Raphael said, unimpressed. “But he will not hear that silver voice this year if you are not at his side. And then we shall see what the god thinks of this whole world of gullible believers. And I can tell you what that is right now. He does not think of us at all.”

“You’re insane,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “I am Lucifer. I am the man who will rip the mask off the face of the god himself.”

Rachel rose to her feet. She had touched neither the food nor the wine, hut she felt as disoriented as if she had been drugged or intoxicated. Dizzy, she brushed the table with her fingers to catch her balance, when a hand came out to steady her from behind, she was almost grateful.

“Ah, Saul,” Raphael said, and she jerked away from the angel standing behind her. Saul grinned down at her. Fire seemed to flame around his head; his eyes were blacker than the ravine below the mountaintop. “Escort Rachel back to her room and make sure she is comfortable.”

“Glad to,” Saul said, reaching for her arm again. Rachel shoved him in the chest and stepped back, nearly tripping over her chair. Both the angels laughed.

“I don’t want him near me,” she said.

“I don’t have the key to her room,” Saul said. “I can’t lock her in.”

Raphael said, “Maxa will accompany you. He has a key.”

“He could just give me the key,” Saul suggested.

Raphael looked amused. “Maxa has the key,” he repeated. “If you need it in the future, you will know where to find it.” Saul laughed. Raphael came to his feet and made Rachel a lovely bow. “As always, I have greatly enjoyed your company, angela,” he said. “I trust you will find things very pleasant during the remainder of your stay in my house.”

And he allowed Saul and the gray-haired guard to lead her away.

For a long time, Rachel stood in the middle of her room and tried to make herself think. Raphael’s offhand series of admissions—to murder, deceit, and heresy—were so complex, so unnerving, that any one of them could have struck her speechless. To have heard all of them so swiftly, one after the other, was almost more than she could comprehend. Slowly, the pieces began to fit together in her head.

He had been the source of her misfortunes all along. That much he had admitted in so many words, but now, for the first time, his actions made sense, at least as seen in the context of his warped ambition. It was Raphael who had destroyed her parents’ village—Raphael who had ordered the destruction and enslavement of the Manderras—Raphael, no doubt, who had directed the Jansai to try to kidnap her on the very streets of Velora. How astonished Raphael must have been when Gabriel all unwittingly stumbled upon his bride in the slave cellars of Semorrah! How he must have schemed to get his hands on her even this late in the game, fretful that no opportunity presented itself until so close to the time of the Gloria itself. Or had he guessed, weeks before it crossed her mind, that she would be unable to resist the lure of the Gathering, and so bided his time until that great day dawned?

And now, after several attempts, he had secured her; and he would keep her at least until the Gloria was past; and then the god alone knew what would become of her.

And he was not the only one in this castle who wished her evil.

She shivered and shook herself free of her trance. If Maxa were persuaded to give Saul the key—and of this she had no doubt—the wanton angel presented her nearest and most immediate danger. The heavy armoire across the doorway had baffled the servants this morning, but would that stop Saul? She doubted it. But it was a starting point. She surveyed the room.

The bed was bolted to the wall, but there was the armoire, the chest of drawers, the cheval mirror, a table and a chair. She could employ them all. Working swiftly, she dragged every last scrap of furniture across the room, bracing each one against the last until, front to back, they formed a barricade that stretched from the doorway to within three feet of the opposite wall. She
tried wedging pieces of firewood between the wall and the chair she had ended with, but there were no logs long enough or sturdy enough to bridge the gap.

Well, she was long enough. She could protect herself.

Accordingly, she wrapped the bed quilt around her for warmth and positioned herself on the floor, her back to the rungs of the chair and her feet laid against the unyielding wall. It was not a very comfortable position, but she felt a certain savage triumph lighten her mood as she tested the fit of her body in her line of defense. The angel had great strength; he might very well force the lock and push in the door so brutally that the wood splintered and her own bones snapped in two. But she would not be the first link in the chain to break.

She built up the fire again, then settled back in her place on the floor, a weapon in her hands. A thin, springy length of firewood, it ended in a raw point where it had been ripped from some dead tree. She rubbed it against the rough floor, methodically and incessantly, to sharpen its edge to a razor fineness that could pierce a man’s chest if propelled with sufficient force… .