CHAPTER 47
Everywhere
The song of the legions was not a sound.
Not everyone heard it. But up in the mountains, above the salt ruins of Lancang, Kalden heard, in the same way he heard the spirit under the monastery.
In Rome, Cai Li heard it. In Salt Lake City, gathered in front of the white edifice of the Temple, holding candles and singing hymns, the crowd saw the bronze angel on the roof move, and sound the trumpet—and heard the ecstasy roar of the choirs.
At the Masjid al-Haram, the million souls who had flooded into the mosque complex and then overflowed into the city and the foothills of Arafat and the Mountain of Light cried out, because the ground was shaking under the power of those celestial voices, and the horn calling to advance.
As the angels poured into the world, free and looping and laughing, they sang.
Down on the ground, in the oldest language there was, the one that was already holy the last time the host had come, all the people said:
“Rejoice, for we have returned.”