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Zethan fired one of his own, and it too missed, but he saw why it was so. Zethan's arrow had flown true, but in the instant before it struck the taller of the two strangers it was knocked aside as though by an in- visible hand.

The less taller one, a nephil, said in halting Hebrew, "Hold! We are come in the name of the God of your fathers!" The archers ceased firing and the people gathered more closely around the two strangers. Both were swart like the Adanites, yet one was a nephil, a rarity in east due to certain proscriptions in the Law of Elyon. Che stood a head taller than the Laelites and had no beard. To the humans che looked to be a boy, but they noted the hips of the nephil were a bit too wide for a young man, with small breasts under hez raiment. On afterthought che looked to them to be a young woman, but with cropped hair. It was said the nephilim never needed to cut their hair, but that it fell out of its own accord strand by strand.

The other stranger was a beardless angel who appeared to be older than his nephil companion, though he might in truth have been a decade younger. "I am Remiel," said he in the same halting Hebrew, as though he recited from the promptings of an inner voice. "I am come with my kinsjen Gabriel to bear aid to the refugees gathered by Lael of Adjara."

"Lael my father is dead," answered Rosh, "yet we have read what he has written in the White Scroll, how a servant of God named Gabriel made the will of God known to him in Jerusalem to gather a remnant out of Judah and travel to this place."

"I am che who met Lael,' said Gabriel after an awkward pause, as though his inner voice had to provide a translation of Rosh's words. The people of the Remnant thought it would be impossible to say if the voice of Gabriel was that of a man or a woman.

"I am the eldest son of Lael," said Elam, lest the newcomers think Rosh spoke for them. "Wheresoever the Ark of God would have us go, we go, yet in all other matters I lead the Remnant."

"The death of your father Lael is hateful to our God and your God," said Remiel. "We have been charged to thwart elyomnim led by the incarnation of Chemah himself, the seraph Belphegor, who would seize the Tablet of Abraham's Covenant after his lackeys have already tried and failed."

"n the ninth hour of this day you will be assailed," said Gabriel "If you look to us as chieftains for a short time, we swear the lives people of the Remnant will be preserved."