The Warlock of Rhada (9 page)

“I cannot believe that the Order is condoning treachery, Glamiss. But if Ulm is outlawing you, it is possible the
Gloria
might be put at his disposal. Ulm is your lord. Just or unjust, he has the right.”

“No longer, Emeric. I say this to you and you must take it as a man, not as a priest. We will settle the right and wrong of this business when I hold Trama.” The young warleader’s eyes were narrowed against the dawn. He looked calculating, Emeric thought, more ruthless than one would have imagined possible in one so youthful.

Glamiss said, “Last night we spoke of Nyor. Those were dreams. Here’s Trama. It is only a valley and a tribe of weyrherders and perhaps”--he smiled grimly --”some useful witchery. It is a fall, my friend priest, from the feathered cape of the Star King to shaggy weyr skins--but we’d best take what the time and place offer. I want to be in full command here before Ulm and your bishop can reach us.” He shouted for the troop to mount, and turned again to Emeric. His tone was ironic, for he had controlled his anger now. “Who knows? It may be that future history will say something important happened here today.”

Vulk Asa said softly, “Those who survive to write the history will decide that, Warleader.”

The starship
Gloria in Coelis,
grounded on the sandy plain to the west of Lord Ulm of Vara’s keep, was ancient. Though the men who presently flew her were the wisest of their time, they had no really clear notion of how the vessel operated, when it was built or how fast it traveled. From time out of mind, the Order of Navigators had trained its priests in the techniques of automated starflight by
rote.
Even now, as the
Gloria’s
two million metric tons depressed the soil of the Varan plain, the duty Navigators on the starship’s bridge, were chanting the Te Deum Stella, the Litany for Preflight, this ritual being one of the first taught to young novice Navigators on the cloister-planets of Algol.

Though the three junior priests on the bridge were chanting the voice commands that activated the immense ship’s systems, in fact only the propulsion units (sealed after manufacture in the time of the Empire) responded. The priests did not know that the vessel’s life-support systems and its many amenities had ceased to function more than a thousand years earlier. The interior of the starship was lit by torches burning in wall-sconces, water and food were stored aboard in wooden casks, and the ship’s atmosphere was replenished not by the scrubber units, as originally intended, but by the air that was taken aboard through the open ports and hatchways. The starships were capable of almost infinite range, for the engines operated on solar-phoenix units. But the length of any star voyage was limited by the food and water supply and by the fouling of the air by the hundreds of men and horses of the warbands the starships most often carried.

The bridge had been depolarized, and from within this consecrated area where only a Navigator might pass, the duty crew could see the squat towers and thick walls of Lord Ulm’s keep. The warband, almost a thousand armed men, was mustering on the plain below the north tower, preparing to file into the vaulted caverns within the kilometer-long ship.

Brother Anselm, a novice who spoke with the heavy Slavic accents of the Pleiades Region, had the Conn. This honor was a small one, for the ship was not under way, but the engine cores were still humming from the recent voyage from Aurora, and Anselm, a fervent young man, imagined that the voice of the Holy Star was in them--and speaking directly to him.

He half-closed his eyes and chanted, “Planetary Mass two-third nullified and cores engaged for atmospheric flight at minus thirty and counting.”

Brother Gwill, a thinly made and sour young Altairi, made the response, pressing the glowing computer controls in the prescribed sequence. “Cores One and Three at Energy Point Three, for the Glory of Heaven. Cores Two, Four, and Five coming into phase as the Lord of the Great Sky Commands.”

“Hallelujah, Core Energy rising on scan curve,” Anselm declared with fervid devotion.

Gwill glanced across the power console at Brother Collis, a slender and delicately made aristocrat from the Inner Planets. His look conveyed a great weariness with Anselm’s holier-than-we attitude. At the moment, Collis (who would be ordained a full Navigator within the year) was standing by the Support Console, ready to play his part in the ritual, though the Support Console never came to life as the Power Console did. Nevertheless, pushing the inert and lightless studs on the support systems’ racks was included in the Te Deum Stella and so the act was invariably performed, “For the Glory of the Star and the Holy Spirit.”

“Null-grav power to main buss at Energy Point Five in the Name of the Holy Name.”

“Null-gee to main buss at my hack, if it is pleasing to the Spirit,” Gwill responded. In spite of himself he could not suppress a shiver of anticipation. At Energy Point Five, the power of the cores was fed into the lifting system and the vast starship would begin to lose mass. The tonnage that interacted with planetary gravity to give the ship its great weight when at rest would begin to dissipate into a spatio-temporal anomaly, changing the molecular structure by reversing the atomic polarities of all matter within the Core field. The men who designed and built the starships understood this effect only imperfectly, and the Navigators who now flew them across the Great Sky understood it not at all. But the visual and physical effects of the change in matter within the Core fields was spectacular and awesome. As the Null-grav buss was activated, the skin of the ship would begin to shimmer and glow, surplus energy accumulated by kinesis and radiation from the Vyka Sun expending itself as light and molecular motion until the starship actually began to move. It was a sight that created consternation among the common folk of all the Great Sky, and even Navigators, who were accustomed to the phenomena, gave thought to the miraculous and holy nature of the great ships that were their domain.

Anselm murmured to Brother Collis, “Gloria in Excelsis, let the ship’s pressure rise to ambient.”

“Ambient it is and blessed be the Holy Star,” Collins said rapidly. He pressed the prescribed buttons on the Support Console and waited the required thirty heartbeats. Nothing happened, nor did the young novice expect anything to happen. The display screen remained dark. “We are hold, hold, hold, may it be pleasing to God,” he reported in the familiar rising chant. “Hold on pressure, hold on flow, hold on storage.”

At this point in the Litany came the bitter indictment of Sin and Cyb, who were the Adversaries of all that was good, as well as of man in space. Collis often considered the possibility that this part of the ritual had not come from the Holy Books of Starflight enshrined in Algol, but had been added to the Litany in the dim past to explain why the Support Console always remained inert.

The three priests made the sign of the Star and Anselm indicated that Brother Gwill should make the Query.

The novice punched in the coded sequence that was one of the first things memorized by all Navigators and meant, in effect, “Are we where we should be?” Ordinarily, for a short atmospheric flight, the Query was omitted from the Litany, but nothing was
ever
left out when Brother Anselm was in charge of the countdown.

The ship’s computer flashed its reply on the display-screen:
“Position coordinates D788990658-RA008239657. Province of Vega, Area 10, Aldrin. Planetary coordinates 23° 17
’
north latitude, 31° 12’ west longitude. Inertial navigation system engaged.”

In spite of their familiarity with the ways of the holy starships, the three novices felt a tingling thrill at the appearance of the strangely shaped sigils in the ancient Anglic runes of the Empire. They had only the vaguest notion of what the ship meant by addressing them in these mystical words, in these phrases of the ancient world. But the background color on the display screen was the Color of Go--emerald green--and that told them that the
Gloria in Coelis
was, once again, ready for flight.

In the Great Hall of the
Gloria,
Bishop-Navigator Kaifa, a rock-faced, dour man in the customary homespun habit and mailed shirt of the Order, sat at a table with Lord Ulm and his lieutenants--three middle-aged warriors in animal-skins and plate-and-leather armor.

Ulm was a gross man, heavy in the jowls, his black beard shot with gray. He wore his armor and weapons with difficulty on his corpulent body and his breathing wheezed. Kaifa, eyeing him critically, guessed that he suffered from dropsy--his naked legs and ankles were puffy and swollen and one could see the laboring heartbeat in his throat. Ulm would probably be dead before the next season-change, Kaifa thought coldly, and small loss it would be for the people of his holding. But when Ulm was dead, who would take his place, the Bishop wondered. Which of the hungry-eyed captains here would swing the heavier sword and win the overlordship of Vara? Whatever Ulm’s shortcomings as a man and ruler, he was--if not devout--at least properly afraid of the clergy. Whoever came to rule in this part of Aldrin (the Bishop used, in his mind, the ancient name for the planet because to him
Vyka
encompassed the entire star system with its three habitable worlds) must submit to the guidance of the Order of Navigators because the planet was a political nexus. The computers in Algol had made it clear for many years that the valley of Trama on Aldrin was psychopolitically vital to the next stage of development for man in space.

Many of the elders of the Order disputed the truths obtained from the Algol computers--declaring them to be the work of Sin and Cyb. Kaifa smiled contemptuously. The Order, like the works of man everywhere, was slipping into barbarism-losing touch with the scientific realities. It was the mission of men like himself, he thought with fanatic fervor, to stop and reverse this trend. If innocents had to go to the burning stakes of the Inquisition, it was a pity. But the old knowledge was best held by those who could use it for the eventual benefit of all men--and the end justified any means, however brutal.

“It is understood, my lord Ulm,” Kaifa said, “that the valley of Trama
and all it may contain
becomes a holding of the Order. Under your suzerainty, of course, but holy ground.”

Ulm bridled slightly, his ruddy face showing displeasure at the thought of surrendering any of his lands to the Navigators. But it was the warman Linne who repeated the locals’ objections. “The people belong to the lord, Nav Kaifa. It has always been so and I don’t see what there is so special about the place that requires a change in our ancient customs, if there’s Sin and Cyb there, we’ll burn whoever you say. But giving up the valley--” He scowled his disagreement and looked impatiently at his lord.

Ulm said heavily, “What Linne says is true, Bishop. I think the Order’s price is too high.”

Kaifa’s eyes glittered coldly. “Lord Ulm, you had better consider carefully. I am placing my ship at your disposal. You have sent one of your own people into the valley, knowing there is no escape except over the mountains. You say Glamiss is disloyal--very well. I have seen no evidence of this, you understand, but if it is your wish to accuse him and kill him in that place, it is no concern of mine. But there is a Navigator with him--a noble Rhad. Your need to eliminate a popular captain may cost the Order the life of one of its best young priests. You must recompense us for this.”

Linne spoke. (Will it be Linne? Kaifa wondered. Is he the one?) The warman’s voice was harshly scornful. “How many soldiers are
you
contributing, Lord Bishop?”

Kaifa fixed the captain with an iron stare. “None. Not one.” He spoke quietly, with a deadly calm. “But look about you, Linne.” He indicated the great, dark-vaulted chamber in which they met. The upper reaches of the curving, groined overhead were lost in shadow. The flambeaux fixed to the walls could not illuminate the cavernous interior of the great ship’s salon. “Think where you are, warleader. This is a holy place--” all made the sign of the Star. “Yes, I see you understand that. Without the starships, what will become of Vara?

In a season you will be without weapons and armor. In two you will be hungry. In three, you will be living in caves like naked savages. It is the holy starships that sustain men, Linne Warleader, and the Order of Navigators controls the starships.”

A heavy silence fell over the men at the table. Kaifa waited, his hands calmly folded under the homespun of his habit.

Linne chewed his lower lip sullenly. “What you say is true, holy father. But your price is high.”

“The Order has no price, Linne,” the Bishop said. “The Order
is.
What we do is not for
your
understanding.”