Jovah's Angel Read online

  Praise for Sharon Shinn and

  ARCHANGEL

  “Taut, inventive, often mesmerizing, with a splendid pair of predestined lovers.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Displaying sure command of characterization and vividly imagined settings, Shinn absorbs us in the story… an entertaining SF-fantasy blend that should please fans of both genres.”

  —Booklist

  “Excellent world building, charming characterizations and a sweet plot… a garden of earthly delights.”

  —Locus

  “The spellbinding Ms. Shinn writes with elegant imagination and a steely grace, bringing a remarkable freshness that will command a wide audience.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Shinn has created an enchanting world… I recommend this [book] without reservation.”

  —The Charlotte Observer

  Now, Sharon Shinn returns to the compelling world of Samaria in an extraordinary novel of angels and mortals, music and mystery, science and faith…

  JOVAH’S

  ANGEL

  Ace Books by Sharon Shinn

  MYSTIC AND RIDER

  THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE

  DARK MOON DEFENDER

  READER AND RAELYNX

  FORTUNE AND FATE

  ARCHANGEL

  JOVAH’S ANGEL

  THE ALLELUIA FILES

  ANGELICA

  ANGEL-SEEKER

  WRAPT IN CRYSTAL

  THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE

  HEART OF GOLD

  SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN

  JENNA STARBORN

  QUATRAIN

  TROUBLED WATERS

  Viking / Firebird Books by Sharon Shinn

  THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET

  THE TRUTH-TELLER’S TALE

  THE DREAM-MAKER’S MAGIC

  GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

  GATEWAY

  Sharon Shinn

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  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

  Copyright © 1997 by Sharon Shinn.

  Cover art by John Jude Palencar.

  Book design by Casey Hampton.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  EISBN: 9781101554852

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  To Ray,

  who taught me the meaning of deus ex machina

  (and taught me how to pronounce it).

  SAMARIA

  CAST of CHARACTERS

  In Bethel

  ALLELUIA, the new Archangel

  DELILAH, the fallen Archangel

  LEVI, Delilah’s husband

  GIDEON FAIRWEN, 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

  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

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  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 upthrust 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 behind her like a sail spread for drying. Her eyes were closed but she was alive, for she cried out softly like a child praying for succor. She did not appear to be conscious or at least aware; and only the continuous whimper betrayed that she was still, momentarily at least, breathing.

  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 a 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 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.