Off Armageddon Reef (35 page)

After all, the king was right.

The small presence chamber's door opened.

A woman in formal court attire stepped through it, accompanied by two small boys. She was in her mid-thirties, possibly a little older, but her figure was firm and trim. The light, flowing drape of the cotton gowns enforced by Tellesberg's climate made that abundantly clear, but her face was tight-clenched, her eyes suspiciously swollen under the cosmetics which helped to mask their redness.

She walked down the runner of carpet across the cool, stone floor, holding the hands of her two sons as they walked beside her. The younger of them—perhaps five years old, standard—looked more confused than anything else. He kept glancing up at his mother, worried and concerned by the emotions he sensed from her.

The older boy, twice his younger brother's age, was different. He appeared shocked, almost like someone trapped in a terrible nightmare from which he could not awake. Like his mother and his brother, he was perfectly attired, complete to the dress dagger hanging at his right hip, but his eyes were as swollen as his mother's, and Merlin could almost physically feel the concentration it took to keep his lower lip from quivering.

King Haarahld VII watched the small, pathetic procession coming towards him for perhaps three heartbeats. Then he pushed himself up out of his throne and, in a total violation of every rule of court protocol, stepped down from the dais and went to meet them. He moved so quickly his habitual limp was far more evident than usual—so quickly neither of the bodyguards standing behind his throne could keep up with him. Then he reached the widowed mother and the grieving son, and went awkwardly, awkwardly, to his good knee, his right leg stretched painfully behind him.

“Rayjhis,” he said to the older boy, and reached out one hand to cup the back of the boy's head.

“Y-Your Majes—” the boy began, but then he stopped, eyes gleaming with tears, as his voice cracked and he had to fight for control.

“No titles, Rayjhis,” the king told his first cousin once removed gently. “Not yet.”

The boy nodded mutely, his face crumbling with the grief the king's tone told him it was all right to display, and Haarahld looked up at his mother.

“Zhenyfyr,” he said softly.

“Your Majesty,” she half-whispered. Her voice was more controlled then her son's, Merlin thought, but it was still husky, shadowed by sorrow and tears. Haarahld looked up at her for a moment, then began to push himself up off of his knee.

“Sire.”

Sergeant Charlz Gahrdaner's voice was quiet, but he'd caught up with his king, and he held out a mailed arm. Haarahld grimaced, but he also took it and used it to pull himself back erect. He towered above the two boys, looking down at them for a moment, then scooped the younger up into his own arms. The boy clung to his neck, pressing his face into the king's tunic, and Haarahld held him with one arm while he extended the other hand to Rayjhis.

The older boy looked at that hand for a moment. Then he took it, and Haarahld limped more slowly back to his throne. The king's mouth, Merlin noticed from his place at Cayleb's left shoulder, behind the crown prince's flanking throne, tightened each time his weight came down on his right leg.

Haarahld reached the dais, followed by Lady Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk, who had just become the Dowager Duchess of Tirian. He paused, setting the younger boy gently back on his feet, then lowered himself back into his chair and used both hands to lift his right leg until his foot rested once more on the stool before it.

“Zhenyfyr, Rayjhis, Kahlvyn,” he said then, softly. “You know why you're here, but before we face the Council and all the official details we have to deal with, I need to speak to all three of you as members of my family, not as a king to his subjects.”

Duchess Tirian flinched slightly at the word “family,” and Haarahld held out his hand to her. She took it a bit hesitantly, and he drew her closer to his throne.

“Don't feel guilty for grieving,” he told her very gently. “Don't think I blame you for that, or that
anyone
ought to. And don't think Cayleb and I aren't grieving, as well.”

She looked into his eyes, her mouth quivering, and his grip on her fingers tightened comfortingly as tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.

“It's going to take us a long time to understand exactly what happened, where the Kahlvyn we knew and loved turned into the man who could have done the things we know now that he did,” the king continued. He looked back into Zhenyfyr's eyes for a moment longer, then looked down at her older son.

“Rayjhis,” he said, “this is going to be hard for you, the hardest thing you've ever done. Some people are going to say horrible things about your father. Others are going to insist those things couldn't have been true. And there are going to be a great many men who believe that because of the things your father may have done,
you
may somehow become a threat or a danger to the Crown someday.”

Rayjhis' effort to control his expression wavered, and the king's free hand reached out to cup the back of his head gently once more.

“What's going to make it hurt worst of all,” he told the boy, “is that so many of those horrible things are going to be true. If I could protect you from hearing them, I would. But I can't. You're young to be faced with all of this, but no one else can face it for you.”

Rayjhis looked back at him mutely for several seconds, then nodded in tight-mouthed understanding.

“In just a few minutes,” the king continued, “we're all going to appear before the Council, and before Bishop Maikel and Bishop Executor Zherald, as the Church's representatives. They're going to ask you—and your mother—” He looked up at Zhenyfyr briefly. “—a lot of questions. Some of them are going to make you angry. A lot of them are going to hurt and make you sad. All you can do is answer them as honestly as you can. And I want you to remember—I want all three of you to remember—that you are my cousins. Nothing anyone—not your father, not the Council—could do will ever change that. Do you understand that, Rayjhis?”

The boy nodded again, tightly, and Haarahld drew a deep breath.

“There's one more thing, Rayjhis,” he said. “One thing that's going to hurt worse than anything else, I'm afraid.”

Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk made a soft, inarticulate sound, and her hand twitched, as if she wanted to reach out, stop the king. But she didn't, and Haarahld continued, speaking slowly and carefully, his eyes on both her sons.

“People are going to tell you,” he said, “that your grandfather killed your father.”

Kahlvyn, the younger of the two, jerked, his eyes suddenly huge. Rayjhis only looked back at the king, but
his
eyes were suddenly darker and filled with even more pain, and Merlin's heart twisted in silent sympathy for the heartbroken boy who'd just become a duke.

“The reason they're going to say that,” Haarahld went on, “is because it's true. He didn't want to, because he loved your father, just as I did, just as Cayleb did. But he had no choice. Sometimes even people we love do bad things, Rayjhis, Kahlvyn. Sometimes it's because there's a part of them we never knew was there—a secret part, that wants things they shouldn't have and tries to take them.

“Your father and I were raised as if we were brothers, not cousins. I loved him the same way Kahlvyn loves you, Rayjhis. I thought he loved me the same way. Some people will say I was wrong to believe that, because in the end, he wanted to steal the Crown from me, and he tried to murder Cayleb to do it. That was a terrible, terrible thing for him to do. But despite all of that, I wasn't wrong to love him, and I wasn't wrong to believe he loved me.

“People change, sometimes, boys. There are sicknesses that don't affect our bodies, but our hearts and our minds. I believe that's what happened to your father. He wanted the Crown so badly it became a sickness, one that twisted things deep down inside him. When he and I were your ages, when we were growing up together here in the Palace, before that…hunger for the Crown poisoned him inside, he did love me. And he did love Cayleb, I believe, just as your grandfather loved
him
.

“But when he did what he did, and when he refused to step back from the plans he'd set in motion, your grandfather had to make a choice. He had to decide whether he was going to do the things his oaths to the Crown and his own honor required, or whether he was going to join your father in doing the terrible things your father's ambition had driven him to do. And when your grandfather decided he couldn't support treason, no matter how much he loved the person committing it, your father ordered his personal guardsmen to seize him and hold him prisoner until after Cayleb and I, and quite a lot of other people, had all been killed.”

Kahlvyn was shaking his head again and again, slowly, with a five-year-old's expression of pain and loss and confusion. Rayjhis was old enough to understand, however imperfectly, what the king was saying, and his chin quivered as the words sank home.

“Your grandfather couldn't let that happen,” Haarahld said, his voice soft but unflinching. “Your grandfather is my First Councillor. He's one of my vassals. He was an officer in my Navy. And your grandfather understands what honor means. What oaths mean. And so, as much as he loved your father—and he
did
love him, Rayjhis, I swear that to you—when it came to open fighting, and your father's guards tried to seize or kill him, he honored those oaths and killed the man he loved for the crimes that man had committed.”

Both boys were weeping now, and so was their mother. Haarahld pushed himself back up out of his throne and drew Zhenyfyr into his embrace. A moment later, two five-year-old arms locked around his left thigh, and he felt Kahlvyn pressing his face into his hip. Rayjhis stared up at him, his face working with desolation and loss, and the king reached one hand to him.

The boy who had just become a duke, and in the process learned how hideously expensive a title could be, looked at his monarch through a veil of tears. And then he took the offered hand in both of his, clutching at it as a drowning man might cling to a spar.

“There's a reason your grandfather wasn't here to tell you this himself,” Haarahld said, looking down and speaking to Zhenyfyr as much as to her sons. “He wanted to be. As painful as he knew it would be, he wanted to tell you himself, Rayjhis. But I wouldn't let him. I'm your King, and you're one of my dukes now. There are obligations between kings and their nobles, and the fact that you're also part of my family makes those obligations stronger than ever. It was
my
duty to tell you. And I wanted you to hear it from me because I wanted you to know—to know in your heart, as well as your mind—that nothing that's happened, nothing your father could have done, will ever change the way I feel about you and your mother. God judges all men in the end. Kings are sometimes required to judge men, too, but a wise king judges any man or woman only on the basis of their own actions, not those of anyone else. I'm not always wise, however hard I try, however much I pray for guidance. But this much I promise you. When I look at you through the eyes of your cousin and remember your father, it will be the boy I loved, the good man I treasured, that I see in you. And when I look at you through the eyes of your King, it will be the boy you are and the man you become that I see, not the father who betrayed his trust.”

Merlin watched Zhenyfyr's face, saw the pain and the loss mingled with acceptance of Haarahld's words. And as he saw those things, Merlin knew he'd been right; kings like Haarahld VII
were
what had made Charis a kingdom worth saving.

“Whatever your father may have done at the end of his life,” Haarahld finished gently, “he and your mother—and your grandfather—taught you and Kahlvyn well, first. Remember those lessons, Rayjhis. Always remember them, and honor the man he was when he taught them to you, and you'll grow into a man worthy of anyone's love.”

The boy stared up at him, weeping freely, now, and the king gave Zhenyfyr one more squeeze, then released her so he could bend over and gather the youthful, brokenhearted Duke of Tirian into a crushing hug of comfort.

He embraced Rayjhis for several seconds, then released him and straightened.

“And now, Your Grace,” he said quietly to his cousin, “let us go and meet the Council.”

The mighty organ's rich, powerful voice filled Tellesberg Cathedral with music. The organist's assistants pumped strongly, steadily, fueling its voice, and Merlin Athrawes—Lieutenant Athrawes, now, of the Royal Guard—stood at one corner of the Royal Box as it flowed over him.

The circular cathedral was awash in a polychromatic sea of light as the morning sunlight streamed in through the stained-glass clerestory which completely encircled it, and the magnificent mosaic of the Archangel Langhorne and Archangel Bédard looked out over the congregation with stern eyes. Merlin gazed back at it, meeting those majestic eyes, outwardly calm and composed despite his internal rage.

One day
, he promised Pei Shan-wei's ghost…and theirs.
One day
.

He looked away from the mosaic, more to distract himself from the anger he dared not display than for any other reason. Even here, and even today—or perhaps
especially
today—Cayleb and Haarahld could not be left unguarded, and Merlin was scarcely the only armed and armored Guardsmen present. Lieutenant Falkhan and four of his Marines stood between the box and the central aisle, as well, and their eyes were just as hard, just as alert as Merlin's as they surveyed the huge crowd filling the cathedral's pews.

As always, the aristocracy and upperclass were heavily represented, glittering with jewels and bullion embroidery. At a guess there had to be at least two thousand people in the cathedral, enough to strain even its enormous capacity, and there was something odd about their mood.

Well, of course there is
, he thought.
Given Tirian's death, and the wave of arrests Wave Thunder's launched, everybody in the entire Kingdom is probably feeling a little…anxious. And none of the nobility could possibly risk missing this service without absolutely ironclad proof that it was literally impossible for them to be here. But still…

Word of the king's cousin's treason—and death—had spread like wildfire. Things like that simply didn't happen in Charis, and no one doubted for a moment that they wouldn't have happened now if someone from outside the kingdom hadn't made them. King Haarahld and his council might not be prepared to name names, but Charisians in general were far more aware of political realities than the subjects of most Safeholdian realms. That was probably inevitable, given the way international politics routinely affected the trade relationships upon which Charis' prosperity depended. Haarahld might have chosen not to point any fingers, but there was no question in his subjects' minds about who'd been responsible, and Merlin could almost physically taste their rage, like acid on his tongue.

Yet there was more to it than anger. There was…fear.

No,
he thought.
“Fear” isn't the right word for it, either. That's part of it, but there's more to it. These people know there's more going on here than just the routine power games between rival princes, and they're turning to their Church for reassurance
.

A sudden shift in the organ music drew his mind away from its thoughts, and he turned his head as the cathedral's doors swung wide. An acolyte stepped through them, bearing the golden scepter of Langhorne upright before him on a gleaming, night-black staff of ironwood bound in rings of engraved silver. Two candle bearers flanked him, and two under-priests followed them, swinging censers that trailed fragrant strands of incense, like white, drifting ribbons in the light of the stained-glass windows.

Behind the under-priests came the massed choir in its green cassocks and white surplices. As the first rank passed through the open doors, the entire choir burst into song, and despite Merlin's hatred for all the Church of God Awaiting represented, the beauty of those superbly trained voices washed through him like the sea.

It took a long time for the choir to pass through the doors and wend its way to the choir lofts on either side of the archangels' mosaic. Behind them, following them through the storm of music, came Bishop Maikel, another dozen acolytes, and half that many priests and under-priests, followed by yet another scepter bearer and two more thurifers.

The bishop paced slowly down the central aisle, his vestments glittering with gems, his usual priest's cap replaced by the simple golden coronet of his ecclesiastic rank. Heads bent in reverent courtesy as he passed, and his expression was serene as he reached out, touching shoulders, heads, the hair of children, in quiet benediction as he walked past them.

That, Merlin knew, was scarcely standard practice on the part of “Mother Church”'s bishops, and one eyebrow arched slightly as he saw people daring to touch the bishop in return. He'd known Maikel Staynair was deeply respected here in Tellesberg; until this morning, he hadn't realized how deeply the bishop was loved.

The bishop entered the sanctuary and genuflected before the altar and its mosaic. Then he stood, turning to face the congregation while his assistants made their way to their own places. It was all as precisely choreographed as any formal ball, and the last acolyte found his position at the same instant the final note of the processional hymn died.

There was utter silence for a moment, and then Bishop Maikel's superbly trained voice rang out in the stillness.

“May Langhorne be with you, My Children.”

“And with you, My Father,” rumbled back at him.

“Let us pray for the intercession of Langhorne and the guidance of God upon our worship this day,” Maikel said, and turned once more to face the altar and dropped to his knees.

“Our Father, who is in heaven,” he began, “blessed be Your name. May the Day Awaited come. May the law proclaimed in Your name by the Blessed Langhorne be done on Safehold, as it is in Heaven. Give us—”

Merlin tuned it out. He had to.

Nimue Alban had been raised in the church. She had not, perhaps, been as observant as her parents and religious instructors might have desired, but she'd discovered here on Safehold that it had stuck. Now, as he listened to the utter sincerity in Maikel Staynair's voice, Merlin reminded himself the bishop had been taught from childhood to believe in the teachings of the Church of God Awaiting. It was hard to remember as the words which had meant so much to Nimue were perverted to Langhorne's purposes, and yet it was true. And how could Merlin condemn a manifestly good and caring man for honoring the belief system in which he had been raised?

None of which made it any easier to stand by and watch. Merlin was just as glad Langhorne had decided to build the Safeholdian year around a five-day “week” which no longer included Saturday or Sunday and established the middle day of those five as his church's “holy day,” instead. Simply attending at all was hard enough without doing so on Sunday.

It had to be the greatest irony in the history of mankind, he thought. The last Christian in the entire universe was a machine. Legally, that was all even an autonomous PICA had ever been, although Merlin had long since ceased to apply that legal definition to himself. Still, it was a question he wished he could have discussed with someone else. Was he, in fact, the human being whose memories he possessed? Or was he simply an echo, a recording—an AI with delusions of grandeur? And did
he
have the immortal soul in which Nimue Alban had always believed? Or had Nimue taken that soul with her at the moment of her biological body's death?

He had no answer to any of those questions. For a time, he'd even wondered if a being of molycircs and alloy had any right to so much as ask God about them. Then he'd decided God must be able to understand what impelled his questions, just as he'd decided that the fact that the Church of God Awaiting was an enormous, obscene lie could never shut God's ears to the sincerity of the prayers rising about him even now.

But he did know he had another responsibility, over and beyond any duty to prepare the surviving human race to meet the Gbaba again one day. He was the last surviving Christian. In a sense, he was also the last surviving Muslim. The last Jew. The last Buddhist, Hindu, Shintoist. The library computer in Nimue's cave was the final repository for millennia of human religious thought, of human striving for divine inspiration, and Merlin Athrawes was the only being who knew it was there.

Someday, that repository would be opened, for that, too, was Merlin's responsibility. He was the protector and guardian of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, all of them, and whether he was merely a machine or not, it was one of his tasks to restore that rich, varied heritage to the humanity from whom it had been stolen.

He only hoped that when that day came, the human race's ability to believe would not have been destroyed by the realization of the lie which had enslaved it for almost a thousand years.

It was a mass of thanksgiving, not a funeral mass.

Under the doctrine of the Church of God Awaiting, traitors were forbidden burial in holy ground. Or, at least, Merlin corrected himself,
proven
traitors were forbidden, which was probably just as well. From his own observations to date, at least a quarter of Safehold's aristocracy—and probably as much as half its vicars—would otherwise have been buried outside the cemetery wall. But the definition of traitor, unfortunately, by his own admission, applied to Kahlvyn Ahrmahk, once Duke of Tirian.

That had been hard on Haarahld and Cayleb. Despite everything, as Haarahld had told Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk and her sons, they'd loved their cousin. To be denied the right to bury him in the Church, to be forced to have his body interred in unconsecrated ground, had caused them both enormous pain. Yet they'd had no choice. Not even Bishop Maikel could change that for them, however much he might have longed to. But what he could do, he had. The mass thanked God for preserving the lives of the King, the Crown Prince, and the Kingdom's First Councillor, but the sermon which accompanied it focused on the fallibility of humans and the cost of sin to others.

“—and so, Shan-wei did not lead men into evil by appealing to their evil nature.” Merlin gritted his teeth, his expression calm, as Maikel's voice reached out to every corner of the vast cathedral with a projection any trained actor would have envied. “The
Writ
tells us that not even Shan-wei herself was evil to begin with. Indeed, she was one of the brightest of all the archangels. And when she herself had fallen into evil, it was not man's evilness to which she appealed, but his goodness. She tempted him not with power over his fellows, not with dominion, but with the promise that all men everywhere would partake of the power of the archangels themselves. That their children, their wives, their fathers and mothers, their friends and neighbors, would all become as God's own angels if they simply reached out their hands to what she promised them.

“And so it is that even good men can unwittingly open the door to evil. I do not tell you, My Children, that there are no evil men. I do not tell you that those who turn to betrayal, to theft, to murder and treason, do so only because they are good men who have been led astray. I tell you only that all men
begin
as good men. What they are taught as children, what is expected of them as young men, is either the armor about that goodness or the flaw that allows evil in.”

Merlin rested one hand on the scabbard of his katana and gazed straight ahead. The bishop's voice was compassionate, caring, and yet everything he'd said was straight out of the Church of God Awaiting's doctrine and theology. But then—

“Yet we must not forget our responsibility to teach them correctly. To discipline when discipline is required, yes, but also to use gentleness and love whenever we may. To be sure that that which we discipline is, indeed, a wrongful act. And to teach our children to know wrong from right themselves. To teach them to judge with clear eyes and unclouded hearts, fearlessly. To teach them it does not matter who
tells
them something is right or wrong, but whether or not it
is
right or wrong. To teach them the world is a vast and wondrous place, one which holds challenges, promises, and tasks fit to test the mettle of any mortal. To teach them that to truly know God, they must find Him in themselves and in the daily lives they live.”

A stir went through the cathedral, more sensed than seen, and Merlin twitched at the unanticipated direction of Maikel's text. It was a small thing, in many ways, but not here, not in a sermon from the third-ranking prelate in all of Charis.

The Church of God Awaiting acknowledged a personal relationship between God and each of His children, but it did not encourage those children to
seek
that relationship. It was the function of the Church to teach and inform, to decree to the faithful what God's will for them was and define their “personal” relationship with Him for them. The
Writ
did not specifically proclaim the infallibility of the Church as it had that of the “archangels,” but the Church's
doctrine
did extend that same infallibility to the vicars who were heirs to the archangels' authority.