old and ruddy like a sunset. “You are a soldier of Heaven. To act without consultation suggests you do not trust the love that the Highest and the ministers of the Highest have for you.”
“That troubles me, also, Doloriel,” said Terentia. “Se raises a question I would have asked myself.” (Heavenly speech has a way of talking about the angels that are neither male or female without reducing them to “it”.) “I would hear you answer herm.”
This was perhaps my most dangerous moment in front of the Ephorate, because they were absolutely right, of course. I don’t trust Heaven-or at least not everyone in Heaven-to have my best interests in mind. I had developed this habit over years of petty disappointments and irritations, but sometimes it seemed to run deeper even than that, as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle or the claws on a badger.
“I…I was confused, Masters,” I said. “That’s the only defense I can offer. Caught up in time and earthly things, I judged that there would be a better moment to share everything with Heaven-as we’re doing now.” It was lame but it was all I could come up with, and at least there was a little truth to it. “If I’ve disappointed or sinned against the Highest, I beg pardon.”
“It is presumptuous to think that you might disappoint He who made you,” said Karael. “Did the whore of Hell say anything else to you-this Countess of Cold Hands?” He spoke her name with such withering distaste I had no doubt that if she stood helpless before him, then he would have blasted her to cinders without an instant’s hesitation. “Are you certain you have told us everything?”
Karael scared me. Just by standing there so bold and beautiful he made me feel like a miserable, dirty little sinner, and at that moment I couldn’t imagine telling him anything but the truth. “I have, Master. Did I do wrong?”
A pause fell over the gathering. I could dimly sense currents of thought running between the five of them but it was communication far too lofty and swift for me to understand.
Chamuel broke the silence. “Archangel Temuel, what have you to say? After all, Doloriel is your charge.” Chamuel hadn’t spoken much more than Raziel. His inner fires were banked low, at least to my senses, but he gave the impression of depth and solemnity: to gaze on his Heavenly form was to sense something vast and awesome lurking just out of sight.
The Mule took a moment to compose his thoughts, or at least that’s what I hoped he was doing, since it was also possible my personal archangel was getting ready to throw me under the bus. “I am honored the Holy Ephorate desires my opinion,” he said at last. “Doloriel’s tradecraft is good. It is true that he can be one of the more headstrong spirits, but as you know, that is often the case with Heaven’s servants who exist in time on the plane of Earthly existence. And as we all know, there are occasions when such traits are useful. A more composed spirit might have succumbed to the hunting demon.”
“A more composed spirit might not have been pursued in the first place,” pointed out Terentia-a touch unfairly, I thought, but of course I didn’t say so.
“Then perhaps it is time we gathered Doloriel back into the heart of the fold,” said Anaita. “Perhaps it would be a kindness to let him return to the Celestial City and exult in the closeness of the Highest as we all do.”
For a moment, listening to her sweet Bo Peep voice, I really wanted that, despite everything that makes me who I am.
I said, “You’re too kind, Mistress,” but suddenly it all seemed different again, and I wanted nothing else in all of Creation except to get out of that ineffably beautiful, blissful place and back to stinking, dangerous, unpredictable Earth. Because that was where my work was, not up here in the shining streets and tranquil gardens of Paradise.
Perhaps the Ephorate sensed my thought in some way. All five went quiet, and the fire of their beings grew lower, or seemed to, which I guess meant they had turned away from me to speak among themselves once more. I looked over to Temuel, but he too had retreated into himself, his essential light turned down as if it had a rheostat. It seemed like I waited a very long time in that timeless place before anyone spoke again.
“Go back, Doloriel, and do what the Highest has given you to do,” said the crystalline blaze of hope and solace that was Terentia. Relief washed through me-something a little less vivid than joy but still very real. “Know, however, that your fitness for that task has been questioned and that our judgement is not yet complete. Walk with caution. God loves you.”
I bowed my head as the five angels reached out and touched me, one after another, little bursts of joyful fire, and then they were gone, as was the Anaktoron itself. Temuel and I abruptly found ourselves in the middle of the great thoroughfare known as the Singing Way with the sweetly murmuring crowds of Heaven eddying around us like phantoms of light and fog.
“You’ve had a close brush, Doloriel,” Temuel said. “I don’t think a second gathering of ephors will be so lenient, so try to fly a little closer to the ground from now on, will you?”
I didn’t really have anything to say to that, but I mumbled some promise. Now that the danger of my personal dissolution was over, at least for the present, I was even more unnerved to realize how close to it I had been.
“One thing,” Temuel said. “I didn’t hear everything that passed between you and the Ephorate. Did they ask you about the Magians? Or about the name Kephas?”
Both of these were completely new to me, and I wondered if Temuel was taking the good cop role in some complicated process, working on me after the council had softened me up. “Never heard of either of them,” I told him truthfully.
“Ah,” he said. “No matter. Just some speculation of my own. You may disregard it.”
This was all making me extremely nervous. “What’s this all about? And why are they picking on me? I didn’t do anything to cause any of this.”
Temuel’s light warmed to soothing sunrise pinks and yellows, the archangelic version of someone putting a comradely hand on your shoulder. “No, Doloriel, but sometimes when things go very wrong and even the highest are frightened, innocence is not enough for salvation.”
I let this cryptic phrase echo for a moment. I was feeling a chill again, and now I really did want to get away as quickly as possible-to escape the place that every living soul on earth wanted to reach. “Are they
For a moment the Mule’s pearly light guttered like a flame in a high wind. It took me a moment to realize he was surprised. “Of course,” he said. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Don’t know what?”
He spoke slowly, like a grownup breaking bad news to a child. “The soul known on Earth as Edward Walker was only the first to vanish, Doloriel. Others have gone missing since then. More than a few.” His voice sank to a conspiratorial whisper. “So, yes-they really are that frightened up here.”
eleven
“Karael? Karael, General of the Glittering Host-
“Yeah, even I’ve heard of him,” said Clarence. The two of them were helping me clean up the wreckage of my apartment and pack it up for storage-not that I had a lot worth keeping, especially after the place had been ransacked. I’d lived there for a couple of years and a lot of people knew it. It had been the first place the
“Everybody knows Karael, kid.” Sam took a swig of his ginger ale. “I’m not surprised they brought in someone like him, though. If that Walker guy was only the first, if other souls are going AWOL-well, shit, no wonder they’re panicking up at the House.”
