Hell's Foundations Quiver (8 page)

“No,
really?
I never would have thought anything of the sort!”

“Of course you wouldn't have,” he agreed gravely. “On the other hand, I felt confident that someone of your … accomplishments would understand my thinking without taking it personally.”

“I
think
that's a compliment.”

“A very deep one, as a matter of fact. In many ways, you remind me a great deal of Prince Nahrmahn.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “I never met Prince Nahrmahn. For that matter, I never crossed swords with him professionally, either. Still, everything I've ever learned about him suggests he was one of the best at the Great Game. I deeply regretted his death. Is it true he died protecting his wife from one of Clyntahn's Rakurai with his own body?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Then I regret his death even more deeply.” Aivah sighed and turned to look back out through her canopy. “I've seen enough of cynicism, narcissism, and self-centeredness to last me two or three lifetimes. That's what happens when you grow up too close to the vicarate. Sometimes it's hard to remember there really are people willing to risk everything they have for the ones they love.”

“Odd,” Merlin said. She turned back to up at him from the display once more, and this time his smile was almost gentle. “As far as I can tell, you've spent your entire life risking everything for people you love even if you've never met them.”

She opened her mouth, as if she meant to protest, then paused. Their eyes locked once again, and then, slowly, she nodded.

“You might have a point,” she told him. “I won't say it's the way I've always thought of myself, and I won't pretend my motivation, especially in the beginning, didn't have a lot more to do with anger and revenge than with love. But at least I already knew there truly were people in the world who loved me—loved
me
, whatever my miserable excuse for a father was like—because I had Adorai and her parents. And I had Sister Klairah at the convent, and Sandaria, and the rest of the Sisters since then.”

“Yes, you did. I don't doubt for a minute that the need for revenge—vengeance—was a huge part of what started you on this road. But I've worked with you pretty closely for the last year or so, and I've talked to Adorai. I think it was that love you're talking about that turned what you wanted into justice rather than personal vengeance.”

“Somehow I don't think of myself as the new holy lawgiver,” she said dryly.

“I remember something Nahrmahn said once,” he countered. “We were talking about saints, and he said he suspected most of them had been pains in the ass.” Aivah chuckled, and he grinned. Then he sobered. “For a lot of reasons—reasons I think will become clear to you shortly—the last thing
I'd
want to be is a ‘holy' anything. That's not who or what I am, and I've seen where that kind of belief in your own infallibility can lead.”

“So have I, Merlin. So have I. And I think you and Cayleb and Maikel Staynair are right. Even if we manage to destroy the Group of Four we've got, the only way to prevent something just like it from reemerging is to break the Church's monopoly on God's own authority.” She shook her head, eyes sad once more. “I don't like admitting that, because there's so much
good
in what the Church could accomplish—so many good things the Church
has
accomplished—and even as a Sister of Saint Kohdy, it's hard to reject the vicarate's authority. To decide the Grand Vicar doesn't speak with God's own voice. But if God's children are going to live together the way He wants them to, the thing His Church has become needs to be broken. I don't think Samyl Wylsynn could ever have accepted that in his heart of hearts, but I also think that deep inside he knew it was true, anyway. And I'm sure Hauwerd did.”

Merlin nodded, his own eyes dark as he wondered how she was going to react to the full truth. Despite everything she'd said about Kohdy's journal, even her belief that the original Adams and Eves had been “somewhere else” while the archangels created Safehold, the depth of her faith—of her belief in what the Church “was supposed to be”—upheld her like a pillar of iron. How would she respond when she learned what the foundation of that iron pillar truly was? And how would
he
deal with what he'd have to do if she responded … poorly? The decision to take her and Sandaria to the cave would give him options he hadn't had far too many other times, yet even so.…

“Well, it won't be so very much longer before you and Sandaria are in a position to see exactly why
we
think that way,” he told her.

*   *   *

The recon skimmers grounded side-by-side in the vast main cavern of the complex Merlin had christened “Nimue's Cave” so many years before. The canopies retracted, and Aivah and Sandaria sat very still, gazing up at the towering, glass-smooth vault above them. In a way, Merlin suspected, they found the sheer size and sweep of that obviously artificial chamber even more impressive than the skimmers which had brought them here.

He climbed up out of his flight couch and dropped lightly to the cavern floor without recourse to the boarding ladder. As his boots hit the stone, he heard another pair of heels as Nimue Chwaeriau vaulted down from the second skimmer, and he grinned, despite his anxiety. Nimue was the next best thing to a foot shorter than he was, with dark red hair. That hair went well with the blue eyes they shared, but how would Aivah react when she discovered that eyes weren't the
only
things they shared?

“Welcome to Nimue's Cave, ladies,” he said, looking up at their passengers as the skimmers' ladders extruded themselves from the fuselage sides. “If you'll come down and join us, we'll give you a short guided tour. That seems like the best place to start.”

*   *   *

For all her redoubtable personal toughness and resilience, Aivah's eyes were shadowed with wonder as she and Sandaria followed Merlin and Nimue up a long, wide flight of steps from the main cavern's floor. Merlin hadn't tried to explain everything they'd seen on their brief “guided tour,” but what he had explained had been more than enough to stagger any Safeholdian. Even one who'd read Saint Kohdy's journal. What they were seeing at this moment was the actual reality of the
Holy Writ
's descriptions of the archangels'
kyousei hi
and all the other “servitors” sprinkled about
The Testimonies
and the
Book of Chihiro
. Kohdy's journal had prepared them for the fact that the servitors had not, in fact, been alive themselves, but there was a vast gulf between knowing that—
believing
that—and actually seeing and touching the truth.

At least the tour had given her and Sandaria the chance to adjust a bit. Tension still drifted off of them like smoke, especially in Sandaria's case, but the worst, sharpest edge had been taken off it. Which meant it was time for them to be shown Nimue's sanctum sanctorum and told the
rest
of the truth, and Merlin's hands—faithfully mimicking a flesh-and-blood human's reaction to his emotions—were cold at the thought of taking their guests across that Rubicon.

At least this time it doesn't have to turn into the Styx if they can't accept the truth
, he reminded himself.
At least I've got that much.

They entered the largish—but still much smaller than the main cavern—chamber in which Nimue Alban had first awakened on Safehold twice. In preparation for their visit, Owl had manufactured an oval conference table of polished marble—or out of an advanced synthetic that looked and felt exactly like polished marble, anyway—large enough to comfortably accommodate a dozen people. The chairs around it were made of gleaming native hardwoods, with deep, comfortable cushions, and several wine bottles and a steaming carafe of hot chocolate had been set ready to hand.

“Please, sit,” Merlin invited, and the Safeholdians obeyed. He waited until they were seated, then nodded for Nimue to sit, as well. “Wine? Or would you prefer chocolate?”

“Chocolate for me,” Aivah told him, and smiled wryly. “I don't think I need alcohol complicating things just now.”

“Of course.” He picked up the carafe and poured into a cup. “Sandaria?”

“Chocolate will be fine for me, as well, Major.”

He nodded, handed the first cup to Aivah, and poured a second for the “maid,” then glanced at Nimue, who shook her head with a faint smile of her own.

He set the carafe back on the table, adjusting the cap rather more carefully than usual, then snorted quietly as he realized he was deliberately delaying the moment. He drew one of those deep breaths a PICA no longer required and settled into his own chair at the head of the table.

“As I'm sure both of you have realized by now,” he said, “‘Nimue's Cave' isn't the
seijin
training camp you thought we were taking you to, Aivah.” His eyes met hers. “And, as I told you on the flight here, Captain Chwaeriau's first name does, in fact, have quite a lot to do with the reason we call all this”—he waved one hand in a gesture that took in the entire complex—“
Nimue's
Cave. But it's not because she was named for it. Actually, it was named for
her
. In fact, it was
created
for her over a thousand of your years ago.”

Aivah's eyes widened, and he heard Sandaria inhale sharply.

“This chamber, these caverns, were here before the Day of Creation,” he continued steadily. “They predate the Church, predate Armageddon Reef and the War Against the Fallen, predate even the first time the ‘Archangel Langhorne' set foot on Safehold. You asked me once if I came from the same place all of the Adams and Eves had come from at the Creation, and the answer is that I did. So did Captain Chwaeriau. And so did the Archangels themselves, because they
weren't
Archangels. They were mortal men and women
pretending
to be Archangels.”

Aivah and Sandaria were both staring at him now, their faces very pale.

“I know that's not what you expected, despite everything in Saint Kohdy's journal, but it's the truth. In fact, it's almost certainly what Kohdy had come to suspect—or to wonder about, at any rate—when he shifted to Español. And I'm positive it's the reason he died when he took his suspicions to Schueler.”

“That's … that's not true!” Sandaria whispered. “It
can't
be true!”

“Yes, it can.” Merlin smiled compassionately, even regretfully as he saw the shock in her eyes. “The Archangels were as mortal as you or Aivah, Sandaria. As mortal as Nimue and I used to be.”

“What?” It was Aivah this time, her eyes just as huge, just as shadowed with shock and what looked too much like fear. “What do you mean ‘
used to be
'?”

“I know it's hard to believe,” Merlin said gently. “But it's the truth. No, we're not demons, but Nimue and I used to be the same person, you see. And that person died over a thousand years ago.”

*   *   *

“I'm still not sure I can wrap my mind around it,” Aivah Pahrsahn said several hours later.

The wine and chocolate had been supplemented by bowls of hot soup, accompanied by salads and thick slabs of hot, freshly buttered bread. By the time Owl's remotes had delivered the food, Aivah and Sandaria had been past the first stunning shock, and they'd watched in fascination as the soup tureen and bowls floated to the table on a counter-grav serving unit. There'd been more than a little fear in that fascination, perhaps, but the thick, tasty soup had become a solid, thankfully familiar, and thoroughly mundane anchor to the reality they'd thought they knew.

“It does take some wrapping,” Nahrmahn Baytz told her. “You should try it from my side, though!”

The portly little prince's hologram “sat” in a chair at the foot of the table, looking up its length at Merlin. In deference to their guests' sensibilities, he'd walked in the door rather than simply appearing, and a hologram of Owl's black-haired, blue-eyed avatar sat to his left. Nahrmahn had been supplied with his own equally holographic bottle of wine in order to keep them company, and now he raised his glass in ironic salute.

“Sandaria?” Nimue said quietly from her seat across the table from Aivah's maid. “I hope you're feeling a little more … comfortable now?”

“That's not the word I'd choose,” Sandaria replied. Her voice was harsh, her expression deeply troubled. “It's too much for me to even begin understanding at this point. We knew from Saint Kohdy's journal that there was a lot more than had ever appeared in the
Writ
, and we knew
The Testimonies
had been edited. But that
all
of it was a lie? That there's no truth in the
Writ
at all?” She shook her head, eyes dark, glistening with anguished, unshed tears. “I don't know if I can truly believe that. I don't even know if I
want
to believe it!”

“Sandaria—” Aivah began, her tone edged with alarm, but Merlin raised one hand, palm foremost, and shook his head.

“It wasn't
all
a lie, Sandaria. Nor was all of it evil. A lot of its consequences have been ‘evil,' however you want to define the term, even judged solely by the
Holy Writ
's own internal commands and obligations. But there's an enormous amount of
good
in the
Writ
, as well.

“I've read all of it, from end to end, and to be honest, one of the things I most hated about it, knowing what happened to Pei Shan-wei and all of my friends in the Alexandria Enclave, was that there was so much in it with which I completely and totally agreed. When someone like Sharleyan refers to the commands of the
Writ
today, when she says that God must weep to see us killing one another in His name, she's not being dishonest and she's not dissembling.