The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [32]
“I so fear for you, Mademoiselle,” she said.
“No need to fear for me, émilie. I'm very hard to kill.”
“God protects you.”
“He may or may not, but I do not count on it,” Adrienne re sponded, with a glance at the priest. “Have you continued your research with Linné?”
Émilie flushed a bit at that. “A little. He has been— distracted.”
“Ah. Elizavet.”
“What can be done? She is very beautiful, and a tsarevna.”
Adrienne smiled. “I love Elizavet like a daughter, but she does things by whimsy. Her interest in Linné will wane as soon as she is certain she has him.”
“I know that,” émilie said. “And yet if he rejects me for her, I shall not take him back. How can I? I may be no beauty, but I am no fool. I have my pride.”
“But you love him.”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“Then do not let her take him. Tell him what you just told me, and make him believe it. If that fails, you were better off without him.”
Émilie nodded. “Thank you, Mademoiselle.”
“And, émilie, you are far from ugly.”
She nodded again.
“Well. Now tell me of your research.”
“Oh. Yes. The classification of the malakim proceeds—”
“What's this?” Father Castillion asked.
“Explain to the good father, Émilie.”
“By the malakim you mean the angels?” Castillion asked.
“We mean the aetheric beings science deals with,” émilie said cautiously. “Some may call them angels.”
Castillion frowned but nodded.
“Carl—Monsieur Linné—and I have been trying to classify them into kinds, as we might animals. A bird is a sort of animal, a raptor a sort of bird, a hawk a sort of raptor—”
“I'm familiar with the idea,” Castillion said.
“The trouble is that animals and plants may be classified by outward structure—wings, feathers, beaks, and so forth. The malakim, not being composed of matter— or of very much matter, anyway—have no outward structure to observe.”
Castillion scratched his chin. “And yet I have seen some of them, as wisps of fire, and, by our Lord, the keres—that was indeed a thing of matter, was it not?”
“In part,” Adrienne said. “There is, among the malakim, a hierarchy.”
“As the Bible states, and rabbinical sources, and even the Chinese scripts. The seraphim, the cherubim, the ophanim, and so forth,” said Father Castillion.
“They are masters who have servants, and their servants are in turn masters over yet weaker servants,” Adrienne said. “But it is the weakest among them, those of lowest rank, which have the most material substance. Some of my servants, for instance, are able to manipulate the substance of phlegm, others lux. Some can mediate between any two substances that I point out to them. But the great ones— call them the seraphim, if you wish—are creatures entirely of spirit. They cannot touch us or we them, save in spirit.”
“Those nearest God are more of spirit; those nearest men are more of matter. But these seraphim can touch us, yes, by sending their more earthly servants,” Father Castillion said.
“Yes. That is the old order of things. But it is changing, due to science. The keres, for instance, is a new thing. Generally, though, the malakim ignore mankind, until we achieve the sciences that let us affect the aether where they live. When that happens, they act, either killing the philosopher who made the discovery—as they did the man the Egyptians called Thoth and we call Hermes—or by offering their services to him.”
“Why that last?” asked the priest.
“With magical djinni to serve your every whim, why continue the difficult and often disappointing business of the philosophical experiment? And after a generation, all science is forgotten, magic prevails, and then the malakim vanish back into the aether, leaving only mumbling fools behind them.”
Father Castillion shook his head excitedly. “It would explain much,” he said. “It would explain much of the ritual of China, for instance, or the worship of pagan gods. It is a short step from having a djinn who serves you to having