The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [100]
Red Shoes hummed with power. In her angel sight, he was a chord of plucked strings. But he wasn't like she had been, or as Vasilisa had been. He was like the woman in the Siberian forest, a thing unto himself but unraveling into many strands. Like Nicolas, who split pieces of himself to make new angels. Had he hidden this from her before, or had she been too weary to notice?
She was still weary. She had lost Hercule and her son. Father Castillion, who had once been a reminder of a time when her life had seemed at least genuine, now showed himself to be a liar and, worse, revealed that her entire existence was a lie.
What did she care if the petty race of humanity vanished from the world? All of the good examples of mankind she had ever known were dead.
“Leave me alone,” she murmured.
“I would if I could,” Red Shoes said, “but we cannot do this without you.”
“Do what?”
“Crack the roof of the world. Return it to the way it was in the beginning.”
“You do know.” Vasilisa gasped.
“Explain it, then,” Adrienne said, “for it makes no sense to me.”
“Remember the Korai legend?” Vasilisa said excitedly. “That God, unable to enter the world, sent his servants into it. But after creation was done, most of them went renegade, and God changed the law from without, subtly, to deprive them of power.”
“Ah. I see. You are all mad. You think we can undo what God did.”
“Yes!” Castillion interjected with uncharacteristic fierceness. “It will free them—they have been trapped here for millennia. Once free, rejoined with God, they will bother us no more.”
Adrienne folded the bedclothes back, smoothing them flat with her palms. “Let us follow this insane little discourse a bit further, shall we? Supposing what you say is true, and it is in our power to defy God Almighty and give the malakim back the power they had at creation. Why do most—indeed, now it would seem all—of them resist us in this? Why hasn't this been their unified aim from the beginning? Come—any of you.”
All three were silent.
“As I thought. You are mouths for their lies, as unaware as a pen of what it writes on the page. Leave, all of you, and trouble me no more with this.”
“Adrienne,” Vasilisa said, “I beg you to reconsider. You are the key.”
“Find another.”
“There is another,” Red Shoes said. “He will serve less well, but he will serve.”
“You mean my son?”
“I mean me. Your son is the lock, and I was not meant to turn him. But I might be able to. Against his will—he might not survive it.”
“I have seen his power, and I have seen yours. I have little question as to who will succeed,” Adrienne said.
“I would have beaten him but for you.”
“You took him by stealth, from within. That won't happen again.”
“You really don't care?” Vasilisa said. “You really don't care if we all live or die?”
“No,” Adrienne said, “I don't think I do. And even if I did, as I told you, I am powerless now. Would that I had always been.”
“You don't mean that.”
“I mean it precisely, Vasilisa Karevna. You may have bred my family like racehorses for a thousand years, for all I care, and Father Castillion may have put the juice of the philoso-pher's stone in my table wine every day for ten years—the power that came from that is all spent, wasted. I am done with it, and it is done with me. Now, leave me before I call my guard to throw you out.”
“Yes,” Red Shoes remarked, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Quite powerless, you are.”
But they left, no doubt to plot another try later.
She settled back into the bed and closed her eyes—in search, finally, of rest.
The next day brought no news, and Franklin spent it instructing the craftsmen who were building the niveum repellers. Vasilisa, on the other hand, spoke for a considerable time with Red Shoes and the students of the Montchevreuil woman, going over pages of equations. Indeed, a small Russian contingent seemed to have formed, for both the tsar and his