Seraphs Read online

  “Objection,” Audric said.

  “Sustained,” Waldroup said. “What do you know? Not guess, or suppose, deduce, or assume. Not what you mighta heard. What do you know? And be careful, Amos. I’m the senior judge here, no matter what some others might believe. If I think you’re making something up, I’ll toss you in the pokey so fast your head’ll spin off and take flight.”

  Amos blanched, looked for help at the table, and when none was forthcoming searched the crowd. “Mabel?”

  “Your wife can speak on her own if she’s got something to say. What do you know about the accused?”

  Amos gulped again, looked at the Bible now sitting on the edge of the long table, and dropped his head. Since the seraphs came, people who lied on the witness stand had been known to drop dead. Not often, but once was too many times. “Nothing.”

  “Would the witness please speak up?” Audric asked.

  Amos shrunk lower in his chair. “Nothing.”

  “Fine.” Shamus banged his gavel. “The witness is dismissed. Mabel, you got anything to say? If so, get on up here, swear the words, and say it.”

  “Just that she’s a whore. All mages are whores. We all know that.” Every head swiveled to locate Mabel. The TV cameraman maneuvered and focused tight on her face.

  “Yeah!” another voice yelled. “Hang the mage!”

  “Let me have her first for a while,” a third voice shouted. “I’ll show her how we treat mage whores in Mineral City.”

  “They have sex in the streets,” Mabel called out, “tempting man and seraph both, leading immoral, licentious lives. Orgies and—”

  Shamus banged his gavel so hard I feared it would come apart, but Mabel just raised her voice.

  “—wild parties, and drunken revels. Dancing with her clothes off.” Someone whistled a cat-call. General laughter filled the hall. “Sinning and carousing and—”

  “Guards, escort both the Ramps out, and take Mabel down to the jail. Gag her if necessary,” Shamus shouted over the sound of Mabel’s rhetoric, the clamor of the crowd, and his own rapping gavel. The two robed guards wearing Tasers and billy clubs waded into the crowd. One with a gun at his waist lifted Amos beneath one arm and assisted him off the stand and toward the cold. The number of opposing weapons in the room was cut in half.

  “And if anyone else thinks they can flaut this court by speaking outta turn, or speaking opinion or gossip, think again. I’ll have you in the jail in two seconds flat. You can spend the night in a cell next to Mabel there.” The crowd roared with laughter as Mabel’s tirade was cut off in mid-accusation, a gag stuck between her lips and a length of duct tape slapped on. She windmilled her arms, landing a solid thunk on Tobitt’s head before she was cuffed.

  Watching the men on the bench with him rather than the action on the floor, Shamus said, “I take my responsibility to the edicts of the High Council of the Seraphim very serious and everyone gathered here better take it serious too.

  “Guards, when you get back from locking Mabel up, I want one of you at the front of the meeting hall and one at the back doors. If anyone opens his or her mouth out of turn, arrest ’em.” The gavel banged again. “Anyone got anything specific to say about the accused?” When a hand was raised in the back of the hall, Shamus said, “The court recognizes Ken Schmidt. Come on up and get sweared in, Ken.”

  Schmidt was a miner who occasionally sold some fine quartz crystal to Thorn’s Gems, specimens he had strip-mined from his claim near the old feldspar mine. A big man, he was bearded, with cold-reddened hands and a lumbering gait. We had dated once not long after my divorce. The blind date had been arranged by Rupert and Jacey, and had been a dismal failure. I had no idea if he would speak for me or against me, and from the look on Culpepper’s face, half wild hope, half angry despair, neither did he.

  Wearing rough clothes that looked as if he’d come straight from his claim, Ken sat, making the chair squeak, and was sworn in by the remaining guard. Waldroup said, “Say your name and address, and speak your piece.”

  “Kenneth Schmidt. I’m a miner. Got no mailing address, but I got a claim, duly registered with the claims office. I pay my taxes. I go to kirk every single meeting when I’m in town or when the weather allows me to trek in. I dated Thorn St. Croix once.” A buzz started in the room. Ken looked at me from under bushy brows. “I been looking for a wife, long time now. I got a good claim, I make good money, and I can provide for a woman and kids.” His heart was in his eyes, his whole soul there for me and the crowd to see. Ken Schmidt was in love with me, or thought he was. And he intended to save me.

  “We went to dinner at the Blue Snail. She had a salad and I had the spaghetti. And then I took her home.”

  “Did the accused at any time try to seduce you? Or indulge in inappropriate behavior, actions not suitable to a chaste and virtuous woman?” Shamus asked.

  “No, sir. She was perfectly, well, perfect. Just the kind of woman a man would want to take as wife. Honest. Kind, too. When I asked to see her again, she said it wouldn’t work out between us. She let me down all gentle like. And that’s all I got to say.”

  The next witness wasn’t so kind. I recognized him as a fiddler, one of the town’s musicians who played at early thaw feast days and holidays. One of the musicians who had played for the dancing Audric and I had won. And he had lost.

  When he had been through all the preliminaries, Eugene looked at me, met my eyes, and lied. “She and me been having an affair. She won’t let me alone. Calls me, comes to my door and window at night, climbs in bed with me and has her way. I’m ashamed and need to confess, need to clear the air and find a way to get free of her immoral hold on me. I want her locked up. That’s all I got to say,” he echoed Ken’s closing words.

  “When did the accused last come to you?” Audric asked.

  “This morning just after dawn.”

  Audric looked at the bench. “May I address the senior judge as a witness?” Shamus’ brows rose toward his bald pate, but he gestured permission. “As a baker, you must rise every day at dawn. Do you look outside?”

  Shamus nodded. “Check the weather, just like every businessman who depends on people being out and about. Bad weather, we get less customers, so we make less bread. Why you asking?”

  “Your bakery is across the street from Thorn’s Gems. This morning when you looked out, were lights on above the shop?”

  Shamus scratched his bony chin. “Reckon they were.”

  “And could you see in the windows?”

  “No, can’t see in from the street, what with the porch over the walkway. But come to think of it, there might coulda been some shadows moving. Why?”

  “The witness lies. Thorn St. Croix and I were practicing savage-chi and savage-blade from before dawn until eight o’clock. You saw the evidence of that movement in her windows yourself proving she was at home, not in the witness’ bed.”

  Shamus stared from Audric to me to the man on the witness seat. When he spoke, his voice was too low to carry off the dais. “Eugene. You want to reconsider your accusation?”

  Red-faced and uncertain, Eugene pulled on his collar as if it was too tight. “Well, maybe it wasn’t this morning.”

  “Some sweet young thing crawls in your bed and you don’t remember when? I don’t think so. Recant, or I’ll think you need some time to reflect. Maybe a long time to reflect.”

  Eugene’s breathing had sped up and a slight sheen of sweat beaded his face. When he looked at me, something malevolent swam in the depths of his eyes. “She’s a mage. Mages are all whores.” Voice filled with revulsion, he said, “She’s evil. She’s a temptress.”

  “But she didn’t come to your bed?” Shamus, the chairman and chief judge, clarified.

  “No. I guess she didn’t. But she tempts a man. Just having her in this town is a cause for immoral thoughts for every man and boy. She’s a wh—”

  The gavel banged as Shamus cut him off, his face darkening, his dark-skinned knuckles pale on the woo
den hammer. “That’s enough. Guards, escort him to the jail.” Two bailiffs lifted the witness by his arms and shuffled him off the stage. “Maybe a few days in a cell will convince you of the error of bearing false witness to this court, Eugene. And you’re lucky the seraphs didn’t strike you dead for lying.”

  “Well, I got something to say,” a voice called from the back of the room.

  “The court recognizes Derek Culpepper,” Shamus said. “Come on up, son. And to prevent any conflict of interest or unethical proceedings, I’m sure the elder Culpepper will agree to remain impartial, and not vote his opinion on any evidence brought before this bench by his son. Elder?”

  The elder didn’t look as if he thought that was a good idea at all, but a quick glance at the camera convinced him of the futility of argument. Culpepper jerked his head with ill grace as his son bounded up the stairs to the witness stand. Derek was a flamboyant businessman, partial to vivid-colored clothing, a man with more money than taste. Today he was dressed in a gray wool suit with a tiny yellow pin-stripe, a cranberry-toned overcoat, and a purple shirt. His tie was a bright spring green. And his shoes were orange leather. It nearly hurt to look at him.

  Holding to both chair arms, I opened a skim and my sight together. The world reeled and tottered like a top around me. Gorge rose in the back of my throat. The otherness of the blended scan stole my breath, but I saw what I needed to see. I released both senses.

  As Derek took the witness seat and was sworn in, I lifted a finger, attracting Audric’s attention. When the big man bent almost in two, I said into his ear, “Get him to say if he hates mages. And if he does, make him empty his pockets.”

  Audric turned a curious eye to me, but I offered no explanation.

  Derek accused me of inviting him to my loft, drugging, and then seducing him. I didn’t bother to hide my grin at his words. Even if I’d been in heat, a condition that had been known to cause mages to mate with a reckless lack of inhibition, even across species, I’d have had better taste than to choose Derek. A couple of women in the crowd must have agreed, because a titter rippled through them at my smile.

  I didn’t bother to listen to the dates and times Derek offered, occasions when I had my lascivious way with him. I just stared at his left overcoat pocket, waiting. When he finally fell silent, Audric said, “Are mages and their conjures a danger to the human population?”

  “Yes. They should be wiped from the face of the earth. The Mage War was proof of that. The US military tried to destroy them, over eighty years ago, and would have if they hadn’t been attacked by magic and annihilated.” The crowd murmured uneasily and I could feel the weight of human eyes. “The nuclear weapon that was aimed at the mages would have left the Earth a clean and chaste place, worthy of the Most High. Now, because they’re still here, still polluting the face of the world that the Lord hath made, God the Victorious won’t come and finish the cleansing that was the apocalypse.”

  That was a new one. I’d heard all sorts of reasons for killing mages, but never a claim that mages were keeping the Most High from coming to earth.

  It was an accusation I couldn’t answer, an allegation that was pure prejudice. The end of the world hadn’t been exactly what the ancient prophets had been expecting. There had been seraphs, winged beings with swords who appeared in every major city in the world. There had been plagues and wars and rumors of wars. Most of the population had died.

  But to the consternation of Christians and Jews, there hadn’t yet been a rapture or a messianic appearance. The Muslims had been devastated to discover that other religious believers had survived too. Only nine hundred people in Utah had lived through the plagues. The Hindu messiah, the Kalki Avatar, hadn’t come. Most telling, the Most High had not yet appeared, though smart people never said so aloud. People with big mouths had been known to drop dead when making that observation. Derek Culpepper, gloating and satisfied, left the dais.

  An accused had the right to speak, and because Derek hadn’t asked a question, I didn’t have to answer one. I could, however, speak to the prejudice, and to the fatal altercation between a handful of mages and an entire army. The Mage War was taught to every mage child from the cradle up. It wasn’t taught quite the same way in human schools. Truth, the tourmaline ring whispered. Use only truth.

  Chapter 7

  Truth? How much truth? I stood, smoothing my skirt, drawing attention to the strange clothing, so different from the severe dress of the orthodox; to my skin and scars, both radiant; to my jewelry, which was ostentatious, and not a style humans would wear. It wouldn’t hurt to remind them I was a mage, with weapons hanging around my neck. And that I had never used them against the town. I allowed myself to be sworn in.

  In the singsong voice used by mage storytellers, I started speaking. “In the Beginning of the End of the World, came seraphs bearing the judgment of the Almighty, and the plagues they brought that punished the humans. War followed the plagues. Few survived.

  “Darkness came, the Darkness that was of the spirit and the flesh. The handful of living descended into anarchy and violence or chose sides, joining the seraphs fighting the Dark, or joined the Darkness and the lures they offered. Evil walked the earth, stalking humans, killing, eating them. Darkness that raped and pillaged and kidnapped and bred with human captives to create new demons to cavort with the old. In all, nearly six billion died.”

  I heard the crowd muttering, and I knew what they were saying—that mages were the result of Darkness raping human women and getting them with child, false accusation based on prejudice. I drew on the tourmaline to amplify my voice, and slowly walked toward the edge of the dais so all of them could see me. With each firm step I let my boots ring like a drum on the wood floor of the platform, and made my skirt bells chime, the speaker becoming part of the storytelling art. In Enclave, mages lived for the story, and I wanted the humans to hear the neomage version of the end of the world. Wanted them to hear the truth. “And during the End of the World, neomages were born.” I told them of the human babies born during the time of the plagues, infected or dead at birth. Malformed, genetically damaged.

  “Nine months after the first plague, at the end of the final plague, a few hundred thousand human women survivors, those who had been in the first trimester of pregnancy at the Beginning of the End, gave birth all around the world. These children were viable offspring, beautiful children. Children of human fathers and mothers. But they were not human themselves. Conceived just before the first plague, carried successfully through all three plagues, the pestilence and disease had twisted their DNA into something different. Something new. Something never prophesied in all the years of human existence.” I reached the edge of the dais. The TV camera was positioned at an angle to catch the crosshatch of scars on my cheek and the solid glow of scars on my left hand. I put it from my mind.

  “The Last War was decades long and hard. The ice age began. When the first neomages came into puberty, in the fourteenth and fifteenth years of the war, their talents and gifts erupted. These children of man had no power of their own, but could use the power in the world around them, the leftover energies of creation. They could see these energies in the rain and storms, in the heavens, in the wind and the sea, in growing things and in the earth, in rocks and minerals. And they began to experiment with the power that was theirs to use.

  “It wasn’t illusion or trickery, it wasn’t magic, not in the way of fairy tales or dark fantasy. It wasn’t religion or sorcery. It was the unused energy of the Most High, the residue of creation. But the mages had no training. No one to guide them. By accident, some released wild energies—what, for lack of a better word, they called wild-magic. Mages died. Humans died. Humans they loved. Pain and anguish rang through the world.”

  I arched my neck and looked high at a round, stained-glass window. I raised my arms as I had seen the priestess do in telling the story of the Beginning of the End. “And humans feared.” My voice rang off the walls of the old church. “They kille
d us by the tens, by the hundreds. Perhaps by the thousands. Small bands of neomages gathered in every part of the globe, despairing, frightened, untrained. In Louisiana, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a small group of teenage mages gathered, sharing their newfound power. Attacked, hunted, trapped, they stood before an army of humans.”

  I looked down, dropping one arm in a sweeping wave, not saying “humans like you,” but the gesture implying it. My glowing neomage eyes picked out the faces in the crowd. European, Cherokee, African, and Asian genetic backgrounds were all visible, all human, all facing a boogeyman, a nightmare, just as in the Mage War. The crowd had fallen silent, staring at the apparition who stood above them, a pagan wild child, a wisp of a woman, so much smaller than they, so much weaker. Wielding power they had never known.

  And I spoke the story that humans denied, repudiated, claiming a revisionist history that protected them from the truth of what their forebears did, or tried to do. “Some of the humans were parents, fighting their own progeny. They bombarded the small band of teens with rockets and mortars. The children of man devised shields and weapons,” I chanted. “But the neomages knew not how to manipulate the energies they could see and taste and feel in the world around them. With a single gesture, the human general ordered the ultimate weapon dropped, the nuclear bomb intended to destroy the neomages. And the mages called on the seraphs.”

  The crowd gave a collective gasp. From the back of the church, a voice thundered, “Seraphs and God the Victorious don’t hear soulless mages. They’re not human! They’re animals!” I found him at the doors. It was Tobitt, the young acolyte guard who had sworn in the witnesses. He was holding a gun in both hands, out from his body, pointed at me.

  Without thinking, I called on the white onyx fish that held my sphere of shielding. I didn’t snap it into place, as it would be like building a wall between the assembly and me. But I got it ready. And I watched Tobitt’s eyes as I spoke.