Lady of Sin, by Madeline Hunter, page 1
Jovahs Angel by Sharon Shinn
JOVAH'S ANGEL
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace trade paperback edition / May 1997
Ace mass-market edition / April 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright 1997 by Sharon Shinn.
Cover art by John Jude Palencar.
Book design by Casey Hampton.
The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc." 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-441-00519-5
To Ray,
who taught me the meaning of deus ex machina (and taught me how to pronounce it).
SAM ARIA
CAST of CHARACTERS
In Bethel
ALLELUIA, the new Archangel
DELILAH, the fallen Archangel
LEVI, Delilah's husband
DINAH
SAMUEL
Asher [ angels of the Eyrie
TIMOTHY
GIDEON FAIR WEN a Semorran merchant
REBEKAH, the last oracle of Mount Sinai
DANIEL, an Edori engineer living in Velora
CALEB AUGUSTUS, an engineer living in Luminaux
Noah, an Edori engineer, Caleb's best friend
THOMAS
SHEBA members of the Edori tribe living near Luminaux
MARTHA
LABAN
JOSEPH, proprietor of a singing establishment in Luminaux
HOPE WELLIN, Alleluia's mother
DEBORAH, a young girl living in Chahiela
In Jordana
MICAH, the leader of the host of Cedar Hills
JOB, the oracle of Mount Egypt
MARCO, an Edori engineer living in Breven
In Gaza
JERUSHA, the leader of the host of Monteverde
MARY, the oracle of Mount Sudan
AARON LESH, Manadavvi leaders
EM MANUEL GAR ONE
Prologue
Everyone had said it was a bad idea to fly back that night. For one thing, they had all had too much wine, and the Archangel herself was no exception. For another, the storm, which had been brutal for the entire weekend, had only let up marginally; there was still enough power in one of those gusts of wind to slap a walking man off his feet. Jovah only knew what one blast of that wind could do to an angel flying high above the earth in the unprotected frozen streams of air.
But it was impossible to tell Delilah anything. "I am safer flying back to the Eyrie than you are walking across the room," she scoffed to Gideon Fairwen, whose guest she had been for the past two days. It was to celebrate his daughter's summer wedding to one of the Manadavvi landholders that Delilah and half the angels from her hold had been sojourning in Semorrah until all of them, quite frankly, were sick of the self-satisfied pomp. "I will be held in the hands of the god himself."
"But surely--tomorrow morning--when the storms have abated somewhat and the sun is out..." Gideon protested. Truth to tell, he did not want to be the one to send a drunken Archangel to her doom on a moonless night, though he was not averse to having fifteen fewer mouths to feed at his breakfast table the following morning. Weddings were an expensive business, not that he begrudged a penny, not if it meant securing trading rights with some of the wealthier Manadavvi. And entertaining angels was always such a strain, though it was said throughout Samaria that Delilah required nothing more than good companionship and free-flowing wine to be content. "Better for everyone if you stay the night," he said.
One or two of her angels had added their voices to his, decrying the lateness of the hour and the distance to be flown. But her husband, Levi, as reckless as she, said, "Oh, don't be such cowards, it's only a four-hour flight," and laughed at all of them. It was his laugh that decided Delilah, for she loved the way he laughed, with his head thrown back and his blue eyes glinting through half-closed lids. He was always challenging her to something, daring her to back down; but she had never backed down once from any proposition he made her in the three years they had been married.
"Settled, then," she said briskly and glanced around the room to get the silent acquiescence of her attendant angels. She turned back to her host. "Gideon, you will send our belongings by cart in the morning, will you not? Thank you. It has been a most enjoyable stay."
Within minutes, the whole cadre was outside, on the roof of Fairwen's magnificent palace overlooking the bridge that tied the city to the Jordana shore. Besides Levi, there were two other mortals among the visitors from the Eyrie, and it had to be decided which angels would transport them for the first leg of the long flight. Delilah would carry Levi, of course; no question about that. He was six inches taller than she and a good seventy pounds heavier, but angels possessed, in addition to their fabulous wings, an amazing physical strength. It was one of the few points on which Levi conceded Delilah's superiority--reveled in it, in fact--her ability to carry him in her arms as she flew above the world.
So they assembled on the rooftop in the lashing dark, feeling the wind half lift them from their feet and laughing at its dizzy power. "Race to the Eyrie!" someone called out, but Delilah unexpectedly showed a grain of caution.
"No--stick together," she said. "We want to be close in case someone comes to grief in this storm."
They laughed at her but casually agreed, and then they all launched themselves at once in a feathery explosion of speed and flight. Once in the air, it was impossible to stay too close together, for with wingspans topping twelve feet, they all required a great deal of room in which to maneuver. Still, they fell into an informal pattern, Delilah in the lead, and Dinah began singing one of the pretty folk songs popular in the southern farmlands. The rest of them took it up, adding harmony and descant, changing the lyrics to suit themselves, and laughing because they knew--they all knew--it was tantamount to sacrilege to be aloft and singing anything except a prayer to Jovah. They were angels; they were supposed to carry the petitions of mortals to the ears of their god, and he heard them better the higher they flew. They were not supposed to be singing of broken hearts and vengeful love as they swept across the heavens so high their wingtips almost brushed Jovah's face.
In the lead, Levi, lying cozily in Delilah's arms, was the next one to offer a song, breaking into a tavern ditty of dubious lyrics. He had a fine, strong baritone which carried well to the angels following, and the rest of them happily responded with the appropriate chorus after he finished the verse. In the third stanza, he began making up lyrics, each set more bawdy than the last, causing Delilah to laugh so hard she almost lost her hold on him. He flung his arms around her neck in mock alarm, wrapping his fingers in her dense black curls and pleading for salvation.
"If I did drop you, you would deserve it," she told him. "Don't think I didn't see you flirting with the bride's sister--what was her name?--the tall girl with the bad hair."
"Laura--Logan--Lowbrow--some L name," he said with a groan. "She was such a bore. I only talked with her because Fairwen seemed so fond of her and it seemed a politic move. Can never be too friendly with the river merchants, so you've always told me--"
"With the river merchants, I think I said, not their daughters--"
"Isn't it the same thing?" he said, and turned his face in to nuzzle at the slim white column of her throat. She giggled and tossed her head back, then threatened to drop him again.
And so the first two hours of their flight passed, and morning began to make its tentative streaks across the horizon behind them. Before them the sky was still black, blacker than it should be for what was almost dawn, but then, the fist of night was still clenched around the storm clouds of the past two days. As they flew higher, to clear the currents over the northern edge of the Sinai Mountains, that fist shook that handful of cloud like a child would shake a toy, and sent the whole sky tumbling down around them.
Or so it seemed. One of the younger angels shrieked. All of them felt the familiar air boil insanely about them, smash them together, throw them apart, bat them from side to side till they were spun in circles. Now there was a confusion of shouting, names called out, cries to "Glide! Glide on your wings!" from someone who thought he'd mastered the knack of flying in a gale. Another up-thrust of wind scattered them like litter across the alleyway of the sky; and then a sudden, deadly vacuum opened beneath them like a pit, and they all fell into it.
They landed in a tangle of feathers and feet, some on top of each other, some yards away. Instantly there was an outburst of sound--piteous wailing, sharp questions, a quick inventory of casualties. Samuel, the most senior of the angels in this troupe (and one who, by his own admission, should have known better than to embark on this midnight flight), was the first to find his feet and move from body to body, ascertaining injuries and their extent. Despite the weeping and the consternation, he was relieved to find most of the travelers relatively whole. Dinah appeared to have broken her leg, and Asher seemed dazed and stricken, but even the mortals had survived the crash landing fairly well, though both their escorts confessed to having dropped their burdens somewhere during the hazardous descent, try though they did to hang on.
Delilah, the one Samuel had looked for first, was the one he found last--and the first one whose condition caused his heartbeat to quicken with apprehension. She lay on her side in a hazard of boulders, her right wing bent crazily beneath her, her left stretched
Levi lay in her arms--she of all the angels had not let go her charge--but he lay even more quietly than she. Even from distance, Samuel could guess the worst: The angelico was dead.
"Jovah be merciful," Samuel whispered, and though he whispered, every other angel heard him, and ceased his own lamentations, and grew afraid. "He is dead and she disabled. What will become of us if the Archangel cannot fly again?"
It was more than a week before news of the disaster made its way around Samaria, and that because Delilah herself refused to allow anyone to speak of it. They had brought her, dizzy and in great pain, home to the Eyrie, risking the flight because they feared she would die if they attempted to carry her in by cart. It was through sheer indomitable will that she resisted the comforting descent into oblivion, where neither physical nor emotional anguish could follow. Instead, she fought to stay alive, conscious, in control. No one outside the Eyrie was to know anything, she decreed; not until she knew. Not until she was positive that her wing was irrevocably broken, that she could not be repaired, that all hope was gone.
She did not speak of Levi, and no one mentioned his name to her. It was fascinating and a little frightening to watch this playful, lighthearted girl--she was only twenty-five, after all; everyone remembered her as such a delightful, wayward child--summon up all her resources of strength to deal with every simultaneous disaster that could befall her. Grieving was not a luxury she had at the moment; survival was the issue. Could her wing be healed? If not, essentially her life was over.
For a week, the secret held; then somehow--no one ever knew who broke the silence or how the rumor spread--everyone in Samaria learned that storms had capsized the Archangel, and disaster was in the offing. Well-wishers and curiosity-seekers converged on the mountain hold, though they were barred from ascending the great stone stairs that led to the angel quarters. Angels from the other two holds were not so easily turned away, however, and they swooped in from above to demand answers and predictions. Could the Archangel be saved? Would she live? Would she fly again?
Could she possibly continue her reign as Archangel if she had been damaged for life?
These were not questions that could be answered in a week, although the prospects from the outset looked grim. Physicians were brought in from all over Samaria--from the wealthy Manadavvi enclaves, from the sophisticated river cities, from Luminaux, where the best of everything could be found--and none of them could offer the Archangel hope. The wing had been broken close to the great joint that connected it to musculature in her back; some essential artery or sinew or nerve path had been severed, and not all their limited science could deduce how to reknit the cut connection. She could not, of her own volition, unfurl that wing; she could not feel an anxious finger sliding down the mesh of feather and skin. Thus with men who had broken their spines--their legs, their feet, became useless; these limbs could not be animated by the will of the man who owned them. Thus it was with the Archangel's wing.
But if Delilah could not fly--if Delilah could not soar through the heavens, lifting her magnificent voice in prayer to Jovah--if she could not quickly be summoned to any troubled spot in the whole of Samaria--how could she serve the god or his diverse children? How could she intercede for them, guide them, ask the god to chastise them?
How could she be Archangel?
Of course, she could not. But who would be Archangel in her place?
Two months after Delilah's fall, the two living oracles of Samaria met in the abandoned holy place of Mount Sinai to ask the god that very question. They were even more solemn than they might ordinarily have been, being forced to approach the god with such a question. No oracle had ever had to go to Jovah to ask him to name an Archangel while the Archangel still lived, and this was a grave and grievous task. But the fear in their bones went deeper still, for they were not sure Jovah would answer their questions or listen to their petitions.
These two months had seen an unprecedented surge in violent weather from northwestern Gaza all the way to the lower coastline of Jordana. Along the coasts, hurricanes sprayed venomous water into the marine cities, leveling a few of them, rendering one or two unlivable. In the deserts near Breven, continuous rain had turned the sandy miles into virtually impassable swampland; and nowhere were farmers assured of receiving appropriate amounts of rain for their specific crops. The angels, who had always successfully petitioned Jovah for more snow, less rain, gentler winds, these days sang to him in vain. If he listened, he did not care. If he answered, it was with more storm. They had no certainty that he would view this new request with any more interest.
The oracles had chosen to meet at Mount Sinai not only because it was midway between their own retreats but because it was the oldest and most venerable seat of holy power on Samaria. Here the original settlers had first communicated with their god; here were the archives (in texts now mostly unreadable) that described those earliest encounters among divinity, angel and mortal. Here, they hoped, Jovah might still pay attention to the crises of his people.
They arrived almost simultaneously, young Mary from Gaza and ancient Job from Jordana, and together entered the cool, echoing stone hallways of Mount Sinai. Rebekah had died a year ago and no one had come forward to replace her, and the remaining oracles were at a loss. Their own callings had become clear to them in unmistakable visions, but if anyone in all of Samaria was dreaming of the honor of becoming oracle, no one had stepped up to claim the position. They had each asked Jovah for guidance, but he had failed to respond to either one.
Ghostly gaslight from eternally burning sources lit their way through the pale granite corridors, and they followed the familiar turnings to the central chamber, where they could summon the god. Here, a glowing blue plate was set into the stone wall with a rolling chair even now placed casually before it; this was where the oracle would sit to commune with the god. They could almost believe Rebekah had just this moment stepped away from her seat there to stretch her stocky legs; both of them wished she was here now to consult with them.
"Mary, would you care to lift our petition to the god?" was Job's formal invitation, but he was the elder and this was delicate work, and so she yielded the place to him. He sat with a certain reverence before the pulsing screen, running his hands experimentally over the strange hieroglyphics on the shelf before him. When he touched a symbol, it would appear on the face of the blue plate, forming words in a language so old only the oracles could learn it; and when the god responded, he did so in the same forgotten tongue. They called this bright screen the "interface," though it was a word that had little meaning to them. So did the oracles before them name the device, and the oracles before them, back to the founding of Samaria.
Job worked slowly, as he always did, because this alien language did not come easily to him and he did not want to err. He constructed his first message, a simple greeting, merely to confirm that Jovah was awake and ready to hear petitions. He was relieved beyond measure when the reply came quickly back in navy letters laid against the glowing screen.
The second part of the message was complex and had to be carefully worded, so he read it aloud to Mary before touching the key that would signal to Jovah that his thought was complete. "The Archangel Delilah has been irretrievably injured and can no longer fly in your exalted service," he quoted. "It grieves us to say we believe a new Archangel must be chosen, so that all your wishes may be promptly carried out. Are we correct? Must a new Archangel be selected?" Mary nodded, and Job sent the message to Jovah.
There was a long pause before the interface wavered and reformed, new letters marching across its screen. "If the Archangel cannot fly, she cannot be Archangel" was the uncompromising response. "She cannot serve."
They had expected it, but it was a blow nonetheless; and they were already mentally recasting the phrasing to soften its impact on Delilah. Jovah was not, though they did not like to spread this information, the most sympathetic of gods in his direct dealings with the oracles.
"Who then should be Archangel in her place?" Job typed laboriously onto the screen. "Jerusha is leader of the host at Monteverde, and very capable. Micah leads the host at Cedar Hills, and he has the trust of all the merchants and landowners. Both are young, able to serve the seventeen years that remain of Delilah's term."
