“Angel Advocate Doloriel. God loves you.” It was a low, sweet voice, a female voice, one I had never heard. Just hearing it pushed back the worst of my fear, but it also woke me to how far from life I’d drifted. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been. “Can you hear me, Doloriel?”
I had to think carefully about how to turn all the emptiness inside me into words. “I think so,” I finally said.
The presence settled closer, warm and comforting, like the mother I must have had once but couldn’t remember. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn’t alone. I didn’t ever want to be that alone again.
“I am Pathiel-Sa, Angel of Conciliation. Do you know why you are here?”
It came back to me then, at least some of it—Temuel, Counterstrike angels, a needle. “No. Where am I?”
“In Heaven. Do you remember nothing?”
My thoughts were as slow and clumsy as blind grubs. “I remember Earth.”
“Yes, but you are not on Earth anymore. You have been brought here. To me. Are you afraid?” The voice was sweetly patient.
I told the truth without exactly meaning to. “Yes.”
“Try to let go of that fear. The Highest wants only what is best for you. That is a fact the entire universe cannot refute. Why are you frightened?”
“Because . . . because I’m so small. Powerless. And there are bad things happening.”
“Powerless, you say. Are there things you cannot do? Things that are important to you?”
“Left alone. Be left alone forever. In the white.” I could barely frame my thoughts. I felt like a head-wound victim waking up after only partially successful surgery. “But they won’t let me—” I fished for words, but deep in the cold white, even with Pathiel-Sa hovering comfortably close, they were hard to catch. “Try to be good,” was all I could come up with.
“And are you good, Doloriel?”
I wanted her to stay. I wanted to tell the truth. My returning thoughts were like shivers, convulsing me without really warming me. I felt crippled by my long bath in emptiness. “Try. But it’s hard. Maybe I . . . maybe I really am bad.”
“What do you think, Doloriel? Are you bad? Have you done bad things?”
Why was I afraid? Pathiel-Sa wanted to help. I could feel that. I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything so clearly. “I don’t know.”
“Is that true?”
Something deep inside shrilled at me to keep silent, but that voice was easy to ignore. All I really wanted was for this floating cloud of sympathy to stay with me. “Guess. I guess I have. I’m a good person, really. I try to be.”
“But you say you’ve done bad things, Doloriel.”
“I didn’t want to.” But I had wanted to, at least some of them. I’d wanted to do some of those things very much. “Can you do bad things and still be good?”
“Yes, good people can do things which are not good. But they feel sorry about it. They know they did wrong. Are you sorry, Doloriel? Did you do wrong?”
Again a smothered part of me tried to pull back, but the rest of me reveled in the feeling of safety, of being known and accepted, and I was tired to my nonexistent bones of half-truths and outright lies. After the clean cold of the long white, I felt as though I had been living in a swamp of falsehood.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I tried. I tried to do the right things.”
“Oh, Doloriel, it makes me glad to hear that,” said Pathiel-Sa. Her voice might have been her wings enfolding me, protecting me. “And it pleases the Highest, too. It pains Him when His children are in pain or error. But most of all, it pains Him when the good do not repent of their mistakes. He wants to love you, Doloriel, but He wants to love you for who you truly are.”
The thought of God’s love swept through me like a tropical current, so warm that for a moment it pushed away the deep chill of the white. Something like happiness spread over me. I had forgotten how good that felt.
“But you cannot hide anything from the Highest,” Pathiel-Sa added, and the warm current dissipated. The cold washed back in, dulling me, diminishing me. “That is the one thing that He cannot abide. Do you understand that, Doloriel?”
“I . . . I do.”
“And it is wearying to harbor secrets. It is wearying to lie. It is wearying to wear one face for some and then change it for others. Do you see that?”
I did. Just then, it seemed the clearest I’d ever seen anything. How could I ever hope to do God’s work when I could not even live in Truth? “Does the Highest despise me?”
“Never, Doloriel. The Highest misses you. The Highest wishes you to return to His love and the happiness it gives. Like a father who watches his little child do wrong and is unhappy only because the infant does not know better, He wants to show you the way to live in His Love. Do you want that?”
“Of course. More than anything.” I climbed into that certainty, huddled in it, anything to bring back the warmth. “But how can I be forgiven? After all I’ve done wrong?”
The Angel of Conciliation did not speak again for long moments, or so it seemed. In my slow way I was terrified, thinking I had driven her away in disgust.
“Are you truly good, Doloriel?” she asked at last. “Truly?”
“Yes. I think so. Oh, God, I want to be!”
“But things have happened—things you did not plan but which forced you into difficult choices. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes.” And I could plainly see it now, see the course of my angelic life laid out like the map of a journey, but the ways I had traveled were complicated, dangerous, many of them completely unnecessary, as was now clear. “Yes, I made choices. Some of them were bad choices.”
“How did that come to be? You meant well, did you not?”
“I did, but sometimes things are complicated. Sometimes things that seem simple get complicated.”
“The Highest is not complicated. He is simple. He is love.”
A deep sense of failure gripped me. Pathiel-Sa was right, of course. Every step of the line there had been a proper path—I could see it now so easily—and yet so many times I had chosen the wrong direction. How could the Highest forgive so many mistakes? I thought that I had chosen love with Caz, but how could it have been love when it was against the Highest’s own word? Even if she had loved me too, she was a tool of the Adversary. I had put all Heaven in danger because I thought I knew more than the Highest and his most trusted angels.
“You are thoughtful, Doloriel.”
“I don’t understand why I did some of the things that I did.”
Pathiel-Sa seemed to come closer then, or at least the whiteness warmed once more, her presence wrapping me like a blanket around a shivering body. “Of course not, Doloriel. Because you did not mean to do what was wrong, and it was not clear to you at the time. Or did you put your own judgement above God’s?”
“I don’t know. Probably.” I had the strangest feeling of wanting to cry, but instead of tears from my eyes, something larger but even less solid wanted to burst out of my soul, wanted to free itself even if the escape killed me. “I wish everything had been different!”
“It can be. Heaven is forever, which means there is always enough time. But you must see your errors before you can do better. You must admit your mistakes before you can forgive yourself. The Highest has already forgiven you, but you still hold yourself in a prison of regret.”
That was exactly right. A prison of regret. This cold, white nothing was a prison of my own mistakes. And there were so many of them!
“You must think about it,” said Pathiel-Sa. The quiet sincerity of her tone as reassuring as sunny skies after a storm. “You must consider your mistakes. You must see them before you can escape them. Where did you step from the path of the Highest, Doloriel? Where did you stray from His love?”
So I told her. I brought out every
thing I could remember, from my first moments of doubt back at Camp Zion to the very last secret I had hidden from Heaven before Temuel gave me up. I told her about Caz, and about Sam and the Third Way, and about the lopsided war I had fought with Eligor the Horseman. I even described my journey to Hell itself. The only thing I didn’t tell her was that Anaita was behind so many of those things, even though I hadn’t always known it at the time. In fact, I didn’t mention Anaita or even think of her.
Only later did I realize how strange that was, since Anaita had been front and center in my troubles for a long time, and one way or another had been responsible for many of my worst crimes against Heaven. But as I poured out the contents of my soul to Pathiel-Sa, Anaita might never have existed.
As the Angel of Conciliation listened I described every single ugly thought I had entertained against Heaven, every petty act of defiance against my superiors. At times I wept with the horror of what I’d done. At other times I felt a fire of joy kindling deep inside me as I shed myself of these old, sick fears, of my countless petty crimes and insubordinations, the lies I had been forced to live, the fellow angels I had betrayed with my falseness. Pathiel-Sa barely spoke, but I could feel her quiet approval. When she asked me a question, I could feel that it came from love, which made me answer all the more fully. She loved me—the Highest loved me—and more than that, she understood me. She saw the good underneath the mistakes, the benevolent impulses that had turned bad, not through evil intent, but through clumsiness or bad luck. Pathiel-Sa loved me. I never wanted her to leave.
It seemed to take days, but at last I finished. The Angel of Conciliation thanked me and assured me for what might have been the thousandth time that God did indeed love me. Then she was gone and I was alone in the white—floating, calm, relieved. I had cleansed myself. I was empty, ready to be filled once more with God’s light and truth.
I am good, I told myself. Despite everything. She knows I am. And the Highest knows I am.
It was only later, after many more centuries surrounded by endless blankness, that I realized I had met Heaven’s torturer after all, and that I’d surrendered to her every last detail of my own certain damnation.
thirty-five
gag order
THE NEXT time I surfaced, I felt more like my regular self. Which means that I was angry, because it was clear that I’d been dunked in angelic glamour, then skinned and scraped clean by the Angel of Conciliation. I’d given up my every secret, so whatever happened between now and my sentencing would be nothing but a formality. I’d thought I could stand up to the big boys and girls, but I’d been embarrassingly, painfully wrong. Any way you look at it, I was in a bad mood.
“Do You Know Where You Are, Advocate Doloriel?” a voice asked me. This one was male, but although familiar, I didn’t immediately recognize it. I might still have been a little groggy from too much white.
“It depends on where ‘here’ is,” I said. “If this is Carmel, I’m probably here for 17-Mile Drive and the expensive souvenirs, because I’ve never been much of a golfer.”
I had the satisfaction of a clear moment’s silence before he answered. “You’re In Heaven, Doloriel.”
“Okay, then I’m guessing it’s because of that ‘Kill everyone’ thing I put in the suggestion box.”
Whoever he was, I was confusing him. “Are You Disoriented?”
“No, I’m making jokes. You haven’t left me much else to do, seeing as I have no body, no way of leaving, and no option to discontinue this interview. Unless I do. Do I?”
“I Am Chamuel, Doloriel, Principality Of The Third Sphere And One Of Your Ephors. Do You Remember Now? You Are Here Because You Are To Be Judged. Are You Aware Of The Sins That Have Been Ascribed To Your Record?”
“Well, ‘pain in the ass’ is probably one of them, as you’ve noticed.” It wasn’t Chamuel I was mad at, particularly, not compared to Anaita or even the deceitful creature Pathiel-Sa, but I was furious that they had bled me dry of information so easily, that Heaven’s Ephorate had made me jump to their tune like rich folk teasing a lame beggar.
“These Are Serious Matters, Doloriel.” Chamuel’s mellow voice took on a subtle but distinctly disapproving tone. “You Have Been Charged With Grave Sins.”
Yeah, and already found guilty, I silently added. I knew this was all just for show. “Let me guess—Attempting to Overthrow the Order of the Universe? Questioning That Which Cannot be Questioned? Blowing my nose on my sleeve?” If I was going to get burned at the stake, I was at least determined to go out with, if not class—I know, way, way too late for that—at least some spunk. And I was determined to take a bunch of other angels down with me, Anaita first and foremost. Oh, I was going to make plenty of noise, believe me.
However, the next thing Chamuel said pretty much knocked all the grit out of me.
“You Must Answer These Accusations.” He sounded like Newscaster Delivers Sad News, which is even half a notch grimmer than Newscaster Contemplates Disturbing Trend. “You Are To Be Judged For Your Part In Creating The Place Called Kainos Or Third Way, Which Is A Terrible Crime Against The Highest, And For Numerous Interferences In The Work Of The Highest, Including Seducing Souls From Their Proper Path To Heaven And Hiding Them From The Heavenly Host In That Illegitimate Place. Do You Understand?”
Did I understand? Suddenly I didn’t understand anything. I’d confessed enough secrets to the Angel of Conciliation to condemn an army of saints, so why was I being bum-rushed for the Third Way, something I didn’t actually have much to do with, except after the fact? My only crime in that case was neglecting to arrest my friend Sam, who had been involved. And what about the things I’d really done? Falling in love with a high-ranking demon? Traveling to Hell, for goodness’ sake? Making deals with Grand Duke Eligor, one of the Bad Place’s major Ring-a-Ding Boys? My list of crimes would go on for a long time before it ever got to the stuff like Falsely Phoning in Sick and Failure to File Proper Reports, but I was still more guilty of those than I was of the Third Way bullshit. So what was going on?
“What rights do I have in this judgement?” I asked. I couldn’t see Chamuel—or anything, for that matter, except white and more white. I was getting a little bored with the view.
“Rights?” His voice was still calm and kind, but I thought I noticed a little edge in it. “That Is Not A Word That Applies Here, Doloriel. You Are A Piece Of The Highest. Does A Drop Of Water Ask What Rights It Has Against The Greater Ocean? Does The Cell Of A Mortal Body Ask What Rights It Has To Dispute The Needs Of The Entire Organism?”
I wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “Call it whatever you want. What kind of trial am I going to get?”
“You Will Be Judged By Those Of Us In The Ephorate Already Assembled To Examine This Affair.”
Great. So now Anaita and the rest of the Fab Five were finally going to turn thumbs up or thumbs down on me for good. I was pretty sure which way the thumbs were going to point, if only because Anaita was going to be working behind the scenes like a busy little bee to make sure I got stung. But she must know I wasn’t planning to go quietly.
“What if one of the ephors is actually . . . ?” I began to say, but didn’t finish. It was strange, because I wanted to finish, but the words went crooked and slipped away from me.
“What If One Of The Ephors Is What?” Chamuel’s patience seemed a tiny bit strained, but I was desperately trying to find a way to talk about the real subject at hand—how I was being set up for something I hadn’t done.
“What if . . . ?” I began, but again it didn’t come out right. In fact, it didn’t come out at all. I decided to take another approach. “What if the angel being accused is actually being . . . being . . .” I really wanted to say “framed,” but that didn’t seem to be the right word either. Don’t get me wrong, it was the right word, I just couldn’t say it. Something was extremely wrong. Fear grabbed me, then—very big, very cold, and very, ver
y strong. I tried just to blurt out, “Anaita is the one who made the Third Way,” but as soon as I thought it, the words (or the part of my thoughts where the words were forming) just fell apart. If I’d had a heart, if I’d had a heartbeat, it would have been rattling like a two-stroke engine with the throttle cranked. Something was wrong with me. I couldn’t even mention Anaita’s name.
“Doloriel?” the ephor asked.
“What if . . . ?” I struggled to find a work-around. “What if I wanted to say something about my guilt? Something that would . . . surprise the ephors?”
“What Might That Be?”
“That I’m . . . I’m . . .” I wanted to say being manipulated, and sidestep Anaita’s name entirely, but it still came out as “I’m . . . not sure.”
“I Don’t Understand You, Angel Doloriel.”
“I don’t understand me, either.” It was hard to keep the bitterness out of my voice. I was fairly certain I sounded crazy or worse. “I’ve been . . . I’m being . . . I can’t. . . .” I took a breath, tried to go blank. “Anaita is . . .” There! I’d finally managed to say the bitch’s name. I did my best to stay calm, to not think too carefully about words. “Anaita is . . .”
“Yes?”
“Anaita is . . . one of the ephors.”
“Yes, That Is Correct. You Have Met Them All Before.”
If I had been wearing flesh I would have been sweating like a pig and gasping for air. It had been that hard even to use Anaita’s name; trying to say anything meaningful about her was impossible. It was like pushing the wrong ends of two strong magnets together: something invisible just wouldn’t let it happen.
“Is There Anything Else You Wish To Tell Me, Doloriel?”
Yes, I wanted to shout, this whole thing is a joke, and I’m being set up by a monster who makes the Whore of Babylon seem like Marge Simpson, but even thinking of Anaita choked off my words.
Now I knew what she had done to me in the library. She hadn’t bothered to destroy me because she had a much better use for me: I was going to take the rap for her entire crime-spree. I could feel curses boiling inside me until it seemed they would blow me apart, but not a murmur came out, because Anaita’s face was at the center of it all.