“That’s Bael,” she said suddenly. “Can’t miss that voice. And he’s—sounds like he’s threatening somebody.”
For over the ship’s invisible speakers came the proclamation: Jacobites, pray, if you have any remnants of faith left in your god. For you are about to die at that god’s hands.
“Wait—what is he saying?” Lucinda demanded, aghast and disbelieving. “Reuben, did he say—”
“Hush,” said the Edori, listening intently. Both of them heard Conran’s defiant reply. We may die at your hands, but it is a machine you call to, and not a god!
Lucinda stared at Reuben, stark terror in her eyes. “What’s happening? Why are they all on the Plain of Sharon? What is Bael going to do?”
“He’s caught them,” Reuben said, speaking more soberly than she had ever heard him. “I’d guess he’s planning to kill them all now. Right there on the Plain of Sharon.”
A sob caught in Lucinda’s throat. She felt as if her body was being scorched, her brain seared. “Tamar,” she gulped. “Sweet Jovah singing, Tamar is with them—”
Another voice filled the chamber around them, rising over the muttering of whatever crowd had gathered to witness the Jacobites’ destruction. You cannot so summarily convict and execute us. Give us a day—give us till sundown. Let our arguments be heard.
“It’s Jared,” Reuben said suddenly. “He’s with them.”
Lucinda felt a spasm of hope, so brutal it left her lungs bruised. “Can he help them? Can he save them?”
“I don’t know, mikala,” Reuben said very gently. “It doesn’t sound like Jared is arguing from a position of power.”
“But then—but—he can’t kill them! Reuben, he—dear god, dear god, and Tamar is with them—”
Reuben stepped forward to put his arms around her, but she tore herself away. No comfort, not now, not ever again. She had to hear every last word, every plea, every pardon. Surely there would be a pardon.
“Jovah,” she whispered, for how could there not be a god, now when she needed one most? “Spare them, save them, Jovah teach me how to protect them….”
But of course there was no god. She stood at the very heart of the spaceship Jehovah, solid proof that the god she had always loved had never existed. If there was no god to intervene, Bael would kill them all. Beat them, burn them, run them through with bayonets, and she could not say a word that would save them.
And then, eerie and magnificent in this sleek echoing chamber, the Archangel’s voice came pouring in, raised in song, raised in prayer. Lucinda felt her heart stutter to a halt.
“What is that?” Reuben demanded. “What is he singing?”
“The prayer for destruction. Thunderbolts—lightning. The end of the world …”
“Can’t he be stopped? Jehovah, can he be stopped?” Reuben called out. “Can we countermand him? Jehovah, tell us!”
But the ship did not reply. And its fussy, murmurous silence went on and on.
Jared had believed till this very moment that something would save them. That Christian and Mercy would swoop down, snatch Bael away; that the heavens would erupt with angels, vengeful and furious. He had believed he could reason with Bael, stall him, charm him. He had chosen death, but he had not believed he would die.
Until Bael began singing the prayer for annihilation. Then his body flooded with adrenaline, then his brain rioted with fear. “Get down!” he shouted at the Jacobites, and they all fell to the floor, hands covering their ears, cowering before the awful might of that song, that simple prayer. Bael’s rich, magnificent voice filled their cage, liquefied their brains, ran through their arteries like silver flame. Jared flung his body across Tamar’s, covered her from head to toe with the frail shield of his wings. Not that it would save her, not that anything could save her, Bael would murder her and every last one of them. Yet he clung to her for all that. If the god miscalculated, if the thunderbolt fell an inch too short, perhaps Jared’s bones would deflect just enough of Jovah’s rage so that Tamar would survive, scarred and witless, perhaps, but alive, alive….
And he had never, at any point in his life, been so astonished as when she shoved him away with all her strength and pushed herself to a sitting position.
“Sing,” she said fiercely, and began to do so herself.
Jared stared at her.
It was the wordless, repetitive little tune she had taught him that day in the Marquet hotel, the music she had said she could hear in her head. Even here, even now, the pure, untrained sweetness of her voice caught at his heart and made him silly with wonder. He felt the erratic flicker in his Kiss and knew without looking that it trembled with fire.
She had closed her eyes, as if she was listening, as if she matched her voice, her tempo, to the unseen metronome of someone else’s performance. For a moment Jared could only watch her helplessly, marveling at the clean, devout contours of that upraised face, thinking she looked like a priestess, a holy woman, an angel, on her knees in supplication to her god.
And then, because he could not bear to do otherwise, he lifted his voice and laid it alongside hers. Instantly, she skipped upward an interval, twining her harmony around his melody, decorating his voice with her own. They wove the notes back and forth, warp and weft, embroidering the air with jeweled threads and fringes of gold. He drew strength from their braided voices and poured that power back into the song. Almost without his volition, he rose to his feet, pulling Tamar with him, and the song ascended with them. He felt his lungs filling over and over with each separate, momentous note; he felt each one rush through his throat, burst from his mouth, explode in the air with a shower of sparks. Choirs filled his head. The heavens chorused back. They would die singing this paean to a careless god, but they would be gloriously extinguished.
But the thunderbolt did not fall.
Jared could not hear Bael’s voice anymore, though he could see the Archangel furiously delivering his prayer. The god could hear Bael’s song, no doubt, and was even now shaping the lightning he would hurl to the earth below. Jared sucked in another great gust of air and plunged into his melody again.
And still the thunderbolt did not fall.
The air was so still it seemed to have evaporated, drained pantingly into the vacuum of the sky. Jared’s skin crackled as if he stood before a fire; the hair on his arms was polarized with electricity. The world seemed breathless with portent as if the skies overhead prepared to convulse into destruction.
But the thunderbolt did not fall. As if Jared’s song had made the god reconsider, as if Tamar’s lilting harmony had pleased Jovah more than the Archangel’s malevolent request. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, the world did not even spin as the angels sang and the god weighed their motley prayers.
Then suddenly the heavens were split with a great light, an opalescent fireball swirling with amber and saffron. Through this maelstrom an angel burst forth as if born of that crystal blaze. Her white wings were tipped with crimson; a vivid scarlet nimbus flared around her head. Her outstretched hands dripped coins of flame, and her feet were shod in fire.
Shock made Jared mute, and the Archangel fell to his knees with a single heartbroken cry. The fairgoers and the Jacobites all gaped upward, struck dumb. Into that eerie silence two voices continued to rise and fall, twinned, inseparable, singing the beseeching, haunting melody that Jared and Tamar had offered to the god. It was Tamar’s voice, even now, joined with the voice of that avenging angel who hovered above the plain in a slowly dimming sphere of light. Two voices, so similar they could have been one, descant against melody, a harmony so perfect the brain could not divide it, and the god could not help but prefer it.
Tamar … and Lucinda.
Lucinda, whom they had left behind in Ysral, had appeared from nowhere out of a golden cloud. Singing a strange, unarticulated prayer that had forced the Archangel to the ground and persuaded the god not to strike. Jared himself dropped slowly to his knees, speechless with wonder, while the women repeated the song anot
her time, and another. Perhaps they would sing till the world ended. He would not mind listening for just that long.
But now fresh trouble was boiling up on the plain, for he could hear the growl of high-powered motors and the shouts of new arrivals. Above them, the air was suddenly alive with angels, maybe a hundred of them, crowding together in a kaleidoscope of overlapping wings and gesticulating arms. Lucinda and Tamar fell silent, but these fresh spectators created enough noise to drown out any prayer Bael might make, should he dare to raise his voice again. Jared stared at them, trying to make out familiar figures. Was that Mercy? Were those the angels of Monteverde?
Before he had identified more than three faces, there was a sudden tumult much closer to hand. Raised voices, angry shouting, an invasion of bodies pushing through the crowd of farmers and Jansai ringing the Jacobite truck. There was the smash of wood against metal, fist against flesh, as fierce fighting broke out between the watchers, the guards, and the rescuers. More furious voices joined in the general chaos. Jared had thrown himself against the walls of his prison and was clinging to the bars of the cage, straining to see who had arrived. Bael had jumped up and whipped around to face this new onslaught, calling out to his son and his Jansai raiders to form a circle of safety around him.
But it was useless. Five minutes later a band of rivermen wearing Christian Avalone’s livery broke through the mob of farmers and Jansai, wielding clubs and knives. Three of them descended on the Archangel and forced him back to the ground, hands behind his back, face almost in the dirt. Two of them had captured Omar and dragged him, swearing and screaming, around the side of the truck. It was a coup so rapid, ruthless, and effective that Jared had a moment’s grave misgiving. If the prestige of the Archangel could be so swiftly overcome, could Samaria ever return to faith in Jovah and his angels?
But so much of the world was overturned already. How would it be possible to put any of it to rights?
In a very few moments Christian himself came striding through the milling throng, intense, focused, in control. And if we have just changed governments, here is the man we have no doubt elected, Jared found himself thinking as his friend shouldered his way past the cornered Jansai and came directly over to the truck.
“I see you were serious when you told Mercy she must contact me instantly,” were Christian’s first words.
Jared could not help smiling. “A few minutes sooner would have been fine with me.”
“You have news? You have found the Alleluia Files?”
“We have. Although we have not yet found a way to travel to the ship, we believe those instructions are elsewhere.”
“But you have proof? Where did you find it?”
“Proof. In Chahiela. Where, I believe, Bael also found the same proof five years ago.”
“Bael … Ah,” Christian said on a soft, evil sigh. “Then all his fanatic behavior in the past few years …”
“Exactly. We must ask him, of course,” Jared added dryly. “For he has been scrupulous with the truth so far.”
“There are many things we must ask the Archangel,” Christian began, but before he could enumerate, a voice rang out that silenced every buzz of conversation on the plain.
“People of Samaria,” the voice cried, and every eye turned upward to stare at Lucinda. Even the angels who clustered in the air a few meters below her twisted their heads and batted their wings to achieve a better view. “I have come to you directly from Jovah. I have been flung here by the god’s hands. And I tell you—your god is not who you think. People of Samaria, open your minds and prepare to hear the truth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They held the first of what Con-ran referred to as the “postapocalyptic conferences” right there on the Plain of Sharon in one of the hotels that the wealthy used during the Gloria. Tamar thought Conran’s mocking title was very apt, for indeed, the Samarians she encountered at the hotel looked shell-shocked, dumbfounded, heads knocked askew with wonder. No surprise; she and the Jacobites might have looked just as stupefied and foundering if all their questing had resulted in just the opposite revelation, that the god existed after all. She blamed no one for being bewildered.
There was not much decided at this first conference, anyway, except that a second, more comprehensive gathering must be set up to discuss the implications of their discoveries and to determine how to proceed. In point of fact, people had only a handful of questions, but these they desperately wanted answered. Among them were: How did the angel Lucinda manage to appear so dramatically overhead, materializing out of nowhere at the most crucial moment? and what was the song that froze Bael’s prayer in his throat, that caused the spaceship to reconsider its thunderbolt and saved the Jacobites from destruction?
Tamar could have answered the second one but she did not bother, because the person whom everyone wanted to ask was Lucinda. She watched with an odd, completely unenvious pride as her sister patiently and lucidly explained the same events over and over again. Lucinda did not grow flustered or sullen, as Tamar would have; she did not become angry at the constant expressions of incredulity and denial. She was poised, serene, gracious, and absolutely sure of herself, and everyone who heard her walked away a believer.
Jared, who had listened politely to Lucinda’s tale, later pressed Reuben for more details. “So you were aboard the spaceship, exploring, and you just happened to ask Jehovah to let you overhear whatever was occurring down on the Plain of Sharon—”
“Strange but true,” the Edori replied with a smile. He, Jared, and Tamar had found a quiet spot on an outdoor patio in the rear of the hotel, and they were drinking some wine Jared had fetched. Tamar sipped hers. It was very potent.
“And you heard Bael threatening us, and he started singing—and then what? Lucinda burst into song herself? Did you think she’d gone mad?”
Reuben laughed comfortably. “Well, the thought did take a moment to meander across my mind, for she was distraught enough to be making little sense. But I was the one who had taught her how the same melody, sung in reverse, can undo the effects of the original song. I quickly decided that she was singing the Archangel’s song backward, negating his prayer. As it happened, I was right.”
“And Jehovah could hear her? Her voice was that much stronger because she was right there on the ship?”
Reuben shook his head. “I don’t believe so. As I understand the technology, his cues must come from Samaria. She could have sung her heart out, and he would not have heeded her.”
Jared glanced at Tamar, but she had already decided she was not taking part in this conversation. She was going to drink her wine, and she was going to keep on drinking it until she got pleasantly intoxicated. It had been longer than she remembered since she had felt safe enough to entrust herself to liquor.
“So until Tamar and I began singing …”
“Exactly.”
“And because harmony is more powerful than a solo voice …”
“As I understand it.”
Jared returned his gaze to Tamar. “Did you know when you started singing what you were trying to accomplish?”
She shook her head, then nodded, then sighed. She must explain after all. “No. Well, in a way. Lucinda had explained the concept to me before we left Ysral, but it didn’t really make sense. But when I heard her singing—”
“Heard her singing?” Reuben interrupted.
Jared nodded. “She hears Lucinda’s voice in her head. So she says.”
Tamar gave him a minatory glance before addressing the Edori again. “When I heard her, I guessed what she was doing. So I started singing, too.” She shrugged. Simple, really. Though she had not thought it would work. They had been so close to death right then; she had been able to smell the acrid, sulfurous buildup in the air. She had sung more from defiance than from hope, as she had done most things in her life. And won, this time. She took another sip of wine.
“So our song stopped the thunderbolt,” Jared said slowly. “That part I almost un
derstand. But then—from nowhere—Lucinda came exploding through the heavens in this sort of golden mist—”
Reuben nodded wisely. “She teleported,” he said.
“She what?”
“Teleported. It’s the word Jehovah uses to describe the way he instantly transports someone from one location to another. It’s how we were brought aboard the spaceship from Mount Sinai. It occurred to me to ask him, while Lucinda was singing, if he could transport her to someplace other than Sinai. He said he could. And so we attempted it.”
Jared was shaking his head. “But—sweet Jovah singing!— the risk! She could have plummeted to her death, you know. To suddenly find herself in midair, with no momentum or wingbeat to sustain her—she could have dropped like a stone.”
“Yes, I did think of that, and I tried to explain it all to her while she continued to sing and continued to listen to all the clamor on the plain. Believe me, I was far from certain she would survive the transfer. But here we all are, safe and happy, so the story has a bright ending after all.”
Jared waggled his head from side to side, as if he was not sure about that. “I think the turmoil is just beginning. We are about to tell millions of people that the god they have believed in all their lives does not exist. We have just shoved angels from the seat of power they have occupied for seven centuries. What do we do with Bael? What about Omar? What about the Jansai? How will we deal with them?
“We are about to create a new government and a new religion all at once—and you have a more blithe picture of human nature than I do if you think all that will be accomplished without heartache,” Jared summed up. “We have survived the crisis, yes, but that is all we have done. There is far more trouble ahead.”
“Well, you are alive to confront it,” Reuben said cheerfully. “Which you wouldn’t have gambled on a day ago. Pass the wine, that’s what I say. Pass the wine and your troubles will miraculously melt away.”