Sean and Tamman waited outside the tent inside their portable stealth fields. The trip across the camp had been … interesting, since people don’t avoid things they can’t see. Sandy had almost been squashed by a freight wagon, and her expression as she nipped aside had been priceless.
Sean had planned to get this over with last night, but the totality of the Guard’s rout—and the treasure-trove of its abandoned camp—had changed his schedule. One thing Stomald hadn’t needed while he organized that windfall was the intrusion of still more miracles. Besides, the delay had given Sean time to watch the “heretics” work, and he’d been deeply impressed by Stomald’s military commander. That man was a professional to his toenails, and a soldier of his caliber was going to be invaluable.
But that was for the future, and right now he tried not to laugh at the priest’s expression when Sandy suddenly materialized in front of him.
Stomald’s jaw dropped, and then he fell to his knees before the angel. He signed God’s starburst while his own inadequacy suffused him, coupled with a soaring joy that, inadequate as he was, God had seen fit to touch him with His Finger, and held his breath as he awaited some sign of her will.
“Stand up, Stomald,” a soft voice said in the Holy Tongue. He stared at the floor of his tent, then rose tremblingly. “Look at me,” the angel said, and he raised his eyes to her face. “That’s better.”
The angel crossed his tent and sat in one of his camp chairs, and he watched her in silence. She moved with easy grace, and she was even smaller than he’d thought on that terrible night. Her head was little higher than his shoulder when she stood, but there was nothing fragile about her tiny form.
Brown hair gleamed under the lantern light, cut short as a man’s but in an indefinably feminine style. Her clean-cut mouth was firm, yet he felt oddly certain those lips were meant to smile. Her triangular face was built of huge eyes, high cheekbones, and a determined chin that lacked the beauty of the angel Tibold’s huntsmen had wounded yet radiated strength and purpose.
She returned his gaze calmly, and he cleared his throat and fiddled with his starburst, trying to think. But what did a man say to God’s messenger? Good evening? How are you? Do you think it will rain?
He had no idea, and the angel’s eyes twinkled. Yet it was a kindly twinkle, and she took pity on his tongue-tied silence.
“I said I would visit you.” Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but without the thunder of her wrath it was sweet and soft, and his pulse slowed.
“You honor us, Holiness,” he managed, and the angel shook her head.
” ‘Holiness’ is a priestly title, and I am but a visitor from a distant land.”
“Then … then by what title shall I address you?”
“None,” she said simply, “but my name is Sandy.”
Stomald’s heart leapt as she bestowed her name upon him, for it was a new name, unlike any he’d ever heard.
“As you command,” he murmured with a bow, and she frowned.
“I’m not here to command you, Stomald.” He flinched, afraid he’d angered her, and she shook her head as she saw his fear.
“Things have gone awry,” she told him. “It was no part of our purpose to embroil your people in holy war against the Church. It was ill-done of us to endanger your land and lives.”
Stomald bit down on a need to reject her self-accusation. She was God’s envoy; she could not do ill. Yet, he reminded himself, angels were but God’s servants, not gods themselves, and so, perhaps, they could err. The novel thought was disturbing, but her tone told him it was true.
“We did more ill than you,” he said humbly. “We wounded your fellow angel and laid impious, violent hands upon her. That God should send you to us once more to save us from His own Church when we have done such wrong is a greater mercy than any mortals can deserve, O Sandy.”
Sandy grimaced. She’d intended to leave angels entirely out of this if she could, but Pardalians, like Terrans, had more than one word for “angel.” Sha’hia, the most common, was derived from the Imperial Universal for “messenger,” just as the English word descended from the Greek for the same thing. Unfortunately, there was another, derived from the word for “visitor”—from, in fact, erathiu, the very word she’d just let herself use—and her slip hadn’t escaped Stomald. He had been using sha’hia; now he was using erathu, and if she corrected him, he would only assume he’d mispronounced it. Explaining what she meant by “visitor” would get into areas so far beyond his worldview that any attempt to discuss them was guaranteed to produce a crisis of conscience, and she bit her lip, then shrugged. Harry was right about the care they had to take, but Harry was just going to have to accept the best she could do.
“You did only what you thought was required,” she said carefully, “and neither I nor Harry herself hold it against you.”
“Then … then she lived?” Stomald’s face blossomed in relief, and Sandy reminded herself that Pardalian angels could be killed.
“She did. Yet what brings me here is the danger in which your people stand, Stomald. We have our own purpose to achieve, but in seeking to achieve it we put you in peril of your lives. If we could, we would undo what we’ve done, yet that lies beyond our power.”
Stomald nodded. Holy Writ said angels were powerful beings, but Man had free will. His actions could set even an angel’s purpose at naught, and he flushed in shame as he realized his flock had done just that. Yet the Angel Sandy wasn’t enraged; she’d saved them, and the genuine concern in her soft voice filled his heart with gratitude.
“Because we can’t undo it,” Sandy continued, “we must begin from what has happened. It may be we can combine our purpose with our responsibility to save your people from the consequences of our own errors, yet there are limits to what we may do. Last night, we had no choice but to intervene as we did, but we can’t do so again. Our purpose forbids it.”
Stomald swallowed. With Mother Church against them, how could they hope to survive without such aid? She saw his fear and smiled gently.
“I didn’t say we can’t intervene at all, Stomald—only that there are limits on how we may do so. We will aid you, but you must know that the Inner Circle will never rest until you’ve been destroyed. You threaten both their beliefs and their secular power over Malagor, and your threat is greater, not less, now, for word of what happened last night will spread on talmahk wings.
“Because of that, fresh armies will soon move against you, and I tell you that our purpose is not to see you die. We seek no martyrs. Death comes to all men, but we believe the purpose of Man is to help his fellows, not to kill them in God’s name. Do you understand that?”
“I do,” Stomald whispered. That was all he’d ever asked to do, and to be told by an angel that it was God’s will—!
“Good,” the angel murmured, then straightened in her chair, and her mouth turned firmer, her eyes darker. “Yet when others attack you, you have every right to fight back, and in this we will help you, if you wish. The choice is yours. We won’t force you to accept our aid or our advice.”
“Please.” Stomald’s hands half-rose, and he fought an urge to throw himself back to his knees. “Please, aid my people, I beg you.”
“There is no need to beg.” The angel regarded him sternly. “What we can do, we will do, but as friends and allies, not dictators.”
“I—” Stomald swallowed again. “Forgive me, O Sandy. I am only a simple under-priest, unused to any of the things happening to me.” His lips quirked despite his tension, for it was hard not to smile when her eyes were so understanding. “I doubt even High Priest Vroxhan would know what to say or do when confronted by an angel in his tent!” he heard himself say, and quailed, but the angel only smiled. She had dimples, he noted, and his spirits rose before her humor.