As he finished the last of the veal and portobello mushroom, a woman slipped into the empty chair opposite him. She was small, slender, and almost wiry, and clad in a high-necked, floor-length gown of shimmering, copper-brown silk that flowed with every movement. The sleeves extended to her wrists, wrists at the end of arms that were just a trace too long for her frame. Her skin was more the color of dark amber than honey.
Corvyn smiled, but waited for the other to speak.
“You can call me Sunya, Corvyn.”
Despite the feminine huskiness of the voice, the essence across the table from him confirmed the identity of the power that, contrary to myth and legend, could be either male or female, or even something not quite human, not that being human had any great cachet in terms of virtue, or lack thereof. Corvyn knew that all too well.
“You’re rather far afield … Sunya.”
“So are you, dark one.”
“Not nearly so far as you. Might I ask what brings you here? Perhaps your health?”
“What else? The Auspicious One is less than pleased with my latest jest. The blue-faced one would like nothing better than my immediate and very humiliating comeuppance, and has voiced such thoughts to Kartikeya. Even Garuda believes the jest was excessive. I think you, of all powers, would understand.”
“It sounds as though the Auspicious One might be slightly on edge, not that he would wish it known, despite legends of his once being a doormat, so to speak.”
“Have you ever told him that?”
“Would you?” replied Corvyn.
Sunya grinned, but shook her head. “You’ve always been skeptical. How have you survived so long?”
“I always have reason for skeptical thoughts of the hegemons, if for differing reasons involving each.”
“Is there a one who isn’t skeptical of you?”
“I wouldn’t be who I am if at least some of them aren’t skeptical. You might be welcome in Keifeng or Tian, I’d think.”
“Neither the Jade Emperor nor the First Disciple is looking favorably on me at the moment. Don’t ask. Just be aware of that. I’d rather roam until things settle down with the Auspicious One and his eldest son.”
“Is Kartikeya…? I thought the problems were with Ganesha.”
“The god of battles has been traveling. It is rumored that he is trying to convert some of the villages of belief to his standard.”
“What else might be new?” Corvyn laughed softly.
“This is different.” Sunya’s voice lowered and darkened.
“How might that be?”
“Just different. Worse, I fear, than with Kali.”
“Dealing with multiple manifestations of power again?”
Sunya shrugged. “That’s nothing new. No … there’s something else. With Shiva. I can’t say what.” She shook her head.
Corvyn debated pressing her, but decided she had said all she would say. “So what mischief are you here to cause?”
“That’s your skeptical nature speaking again, dark one.”
“You aren’t thinking of stealing the golden plates again, are you? It didn’t change anything the last time. He just claimed that he returned them as requested.”
“I try not to repeat myself. That gets boring.”
“Then I won’t inquire further.”
“That’s kind of you. I don’t believe I asked you what you might be doing here.”
“Let us say that I’m conducting a survey of sorts.”
“You’re not known for relying on quantifications of opinions. Have you changed?”
“No more than you.”
“You do have evil thoughts, you know.”
“Speaking of that, if you see a pair of white doves, I’d appreciate it if you’d let them be.” Corvyn doubted Sunya would even have considered doing anything to the doves.
“Have you upset Gabriel again?”
“Most likely, but you’d have to ask him.”
“I just might … after I’m finished here.” Sunya smiled, then rose. “It’s nice to see you do leave the shadows occasionally, Corvyn.”
“And that you enter them,” he replied, watching as she turned and walked through one of the archways leading into another dining area. He couldn’t help visualizing a tail or a differing physique and wondered what might be powerful enough to encourage such a power to leave Varanasi, even temporarily. Although he suspected that Shiva was anything but pleased with the appearance of a trident that was not a manifestation of the true trishula, Corvyn wondered if it had that much bearing on the appearance of the power calling itself Sunya … or why Kartikeya tried to rally others to his standard.
Then again, Shiva might have sent Sunya to see if the trident might have come from the only city of Heaven that was not part of the Decalivre as a declaration of power, something Corvyn doubted, or, conversely, to see if the Prophet had received one even though Nauvoo was not a city of the Decalivre.
Sunya as an agent of Shiva was highly unlikely, but with the Auspicious One anything was possible. And Corvyn could not rule out the possible, no matter how unlikely, given the very unlikelihood of Heaven itself, or the fact that something as powerful as the entity behind the trident might well wish the destruction of Heaven and another Fall.
When he paid his server, he left an obscenely large gratuity, another form of disruption, but one that would be useful in that it would provide a distraction of sorts.
Once outside, in the warm but not unpleasant air of early evening, when the Pearls of Heaven began to glow faintly pink in the night sky, Corvyn covertly observed that two white doves perched on two of the gargoyles beneath the roof. He did not look back at them once he mounted the electrobike and rode not quite sedately back down the black-and-white drive.
When he arrived back at the Gentile Inn, he wheeled the bike into the stand inside the garage across from the main building. There, he inspected it closely, finding the tracer under the rear fender. He nodded and left it in place, then locked the bike into the stand, as well as adding his own precautions. As he straightened and moved away, he sensed a tall figure in the darkness outside the garage.
Once he stepped out into the pale light of early night, only that of the stars, abetted by the glow from the Pearls of Heaven, he addressed the one who clearly waited for him. “Greetings.”
Even in the dim light, Corvyn could make out the big-headed, red-haired, and red-faced giant who strode toward him, a lancia in one hand and a straight-sword in the other. While he had never encountered the other in person, he had called up that image in the aether, one of the avatars of the deity known as Ares, although if not any time remotely recently. “I wouldn’t expect to see you here, Rudianos.”
“Prepare to meet your doom, winged nemesis!”
“What exactly have I done to merit that?” asked Corvyn, shadow-slipping away from the thrust of the spear-like lancia, similar to, but distinct from, the bronze spear favored by the deity when he appeared in his true form.
The blade of the straight-sword glowed with black fire, outlined in the ash red of coals.
Corvyn withdrew slightly, evading the sword.
“You are merely a shadow, not the true Dark One. You are not fit for the challenge.”
“However we come to be, we’re all created in the same image,” replied Corvyn dryly. “Just with slightly varying capabilities.”
Rudianos did not reply with words, but with the blurring speed of the blade. The power of the black-fired blade was not as great as that of Michael’s great flaming sword, Corvyn could tell, but getting struck with it would be exceeding painful, if not worse, and Rudianos did not appear rusty with age, for all of his lengthy history. “Don’t you think you should leave that to the one who dispatched you, old man?” Corvyn barely escaped being bisected, and then spitted, then danced aside even more quickly as sword and lancia blurred and bore in on him.
Reluctantly, he sought the shadows and eased back, concealed and silent, as Rudianos swung his we
apons through the spaces where Corvyn had recently been.
“The shadows will not save you, dark one. This time, perhaps, but not the next.” Abruptly, the red giant was gone.
Corvyn frowned. Had Rudianos even been there? Certainly, the power of the weapon had been, but to move an entity through space-time took massive amounts of energy, enough that whoever or whatever was behind Rudianos’s appearance had to be either a hegemon or one with equivalent power. And given that Rudianos was an avatar of Ares, ruler of Ilium, a city of belief, and not a House of the Decalivre, the fact of his presence and attack was definitely worrisome.
Remaining within his shadows, Corvyn made his way to his temporary chamber, where he scanned for forces and intruders. Finding none, he emerged from his wreath of protection, and, eschewing all illumination, sat down in the barely comfortable and slightly overstuffed armchair to think, to rest from the exertions required to utilize the shadows … and to prepare for the day to come.
The raven’s wings expose the light
of false belief, the Fall of night.
9
The images switched seamlessly from input node to input node, moving from the view dispatched by the Napali scanner, then the one from Haleakala, and then the orbital view from the Pacific geocentric station … scanner after scanner. The controller just monitored them, analyzing the components and comparing them to projected patterns.
Suddenly, the command data traffic flowing through the network accelerated, even as the outsystem datalinks vanished.
Outsystem comm links inoperative this time. Declaring RepCon Three.
The controller adjusted the security settings and relayed the orders to the local defense nodes and to its overseer.
Corvyn took over for the monitoring system.
Ten standard minutes later came the next comn.
WestCom Prime neutralized this time.
Neutralized? From the datastreams Corvyn controlled, it appeared that the military orbit control station, as well as all the major comm nodes, had been totally obliterated, most likely from a horde of sharp stones with no energy or electronic signatures.
RepCon One! Repeat. RepCon status is one!
Corvyn knew what that meant. The war had already begun. The war that would bring on the second Fall.
All units. RepCon One! RepCon One!
If Corvyn could have winced, he would have. Megatons of nuclear weapons were airborne, all headed for the Middle East and toward various points on the moon.
Then the western sky turned brilliant white, so white that Corvyn would have been blinded, had he been on the ancient lava peak where the scanner that relayed the image was situated … in the nanosecond before it was incinerated by the energy wave front that followed the searing incandescence.
“Lucifer has fallen!” Those words flashed through the comm system long before the speakers in the command center announced them in words slow by comparison to the direct links that Corvyn monitored.
Even in the depths of the control room, Corvyn could feel the heat welling up around him.
Sweat poured from his forehead before redness flared around him and he struggled for breath …
Abruptly, he found himself struggling awake trying to sit up in the wide bed of the now too-warm room in the Gentile Inn.
Where did that come from? Even as he thought the question, he knew the answer. Rudianos had triggered visions of the one Fall he had not witnessed, the one Fall of which he had no memories, although he certainly knew the details that had led to rendering more than ninety-five percent of Earth-Eden uninhabitable for almost an eon … before the rebuilding that had led to, of course, the third Fall …
Corvyn used the edge of the sheet to blot his forehead, thinking of how history had not merely rhymed, as one ancient writer had put it, but also repeated itself. Each Fall had been greater than the last, beginning with the first mythical Fall from grace, followed by the second Fall, the one that had “merely” rendered ninety-five percent of Earth-Eden uninhabitable for tens of centuries, to the third Fall, the one that had destroyed Earth-Eden and Mars, to all the others, each one leaving a lifeless husk of a world, if that, all the way to the Cluster War that had made a half score of habitable worlds uninhabitable … with only one massive ship surviving—the not quite mythical Rapture.
You don’t know that whoever planted the trident will take things that far.
Except …
The ancient Newton’s first law also applied to leaders who put faith ahead of everything else.
Corvyn decided he wouldn’t sleep longer … or not well.
I knew a raven in my youth,
So let them have their truth.
10
Much, much later Corvyn breakfasted at the Gentile Inn, choosing the eggs Bernadine to complement the apple pancakes and crisp bacon, while savoring the fullness of the bergamot tea before he once again set forth, after first removing the tracer from the electrobike, heading northwest on the white-paved road that hugged the eastern bank of the River Sanctus.
In less than an hour, he saw ahead another white-paved road, narrower than the river road, branching off to the right. The signpost, the first he had seen since leaving Marcion, showed an arrow and a name—FAR WEST. The name still amused Corvyn, since Nauvoo was located closer to the Great Western Canyon than any other large concentration of population in Heaven, and Far West was the easternmost Saint town in the area holding a predominance of those believers.
An hour later, more or less, he saw a large town ahead, spreading to the east of the road and the river, and shortly thereafter, the electrobike carried him past a statue of a bearded man standing beside an ancient handcart. There were two white doves perched on the handles of the handcart, and the plaque on the gray stone pedestal below bore one word—BRIGHAM. The town, named after the second of the ancient Saint Prophets and the greatest of the ancient Saint Revelators, greatest in the misty memories of the saints, at least, and also as referenced in their Doctrine and Covenants, could have been a pleasant enough place to look upon, especially if passing through, reflected Corvyn.
Living there, on the other hand … even ravens would have blanched, not just at the arbitrary dietary covenants, some not even in keeping with Saint history, since in the time before the Fall, the true ancients had once endorsed sacramental wine, and even possessed a church vineyard, but the name Tocquerville had never appeared anywhere in the lands of Heaven.
But then, arbitrariness was the hallmark of all belief. That, Corvyn knew all too well, and was the reason why he had attempted to believe in no fixed doctrine except that of not believing in anything that was not verifiable, as least so far as he was able to do so.
Soon, he passed the neat houses and other buildings of Brigham, and its wide and tree-shaded streets, as well as scores of the smiling Saints, still disproportionately blue-eyed, if generally far darker in skin color than their ancient predecessors. He continued on the white river road until, even from ten milles away, he could make out the Temple at Nauvoo, standing upon a perfectly symmetrical hill at the far end of the long mall connecting it to the white stone missionary building on the east bank of the River Sanctus. Not that the Saints dared to call the structure that. Officially, it was the Educational Travel Center, and it dispatched hundreds of students on their educational “tours” every year, some of whom did not return.
The Temple itself was of perfect white alabaster, the stone enhanced to a smooth hardness that might well outlast Heaven itself, with three tall arched doors at the top of white alabaster steps that climbed the incline from the white stone walkways of the mall to the wider steps of the Temple itself. From the front of the Temple rose a hexagonal tower, the bottom section of which was one-third the height of the main part of the Temple. The next section of the tower, roughly the same length as the base, was also hexagonal and gave way to a low dome, from the center of which rose the shimmering golden image of the Angel Moroni, facing east, trumpet to his lips.
&nbs
p; Corvyn did not bother with the Temple. His primary interest was not in structures, but in visiting the First Counselor to the current Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and that was why he took the side road well short of the mall and headed east.
The hill on which the Temple stood was actually a long flat ridge with a square holding walkways and gardens directly east of the Temple. East of the square was a massive oblong tabernacle in which the Prophet appeared to periodically address the most blessed of the faithful Saints. A smaller gray stone building, nondescript, sat on the north side of the Temple Square. That was where Corvyn guided the electrobike, shading himself and the bike as he neared and then entered the underground parking, easing past the sensors that should have detected him. He parked the bike in one of the spaces reserved for messengers, since he was a messenger of sorts, carefully placed the black stedora in the top of the left cargo case, then made his way to one of the ancient lifts.
With certain manipulations, he bypassed the equally antique quantum security system and rode the lift to the fourth level, the highest level permitted by the Prophet, since the highest level could not exceed the second level of the Temple. He stepped out and found himself face-to-face with an Avenging Angel, from whose energy projection coruscated low-intensity stunner bolts that, after the first jolt, Corvyn bent around him as he made his way to the study of the First Counselor. First Counselor Joseph Smith Cannon would be there. He usually was, because Saints were the most well-organized and regimented belief in Heaven, even though Nauvoo was not recognized as a House of the Decalivre. The faith was also noted for a financial acuity that would have been termed greed had it been exhibited by any individual.
A young man wearing an incredibly antiquated, but clearly often-worn, black jacket and trousers, with an equally black cravat, and a brilliant white collared shirt sat at a table desk in the anteroom outside the study. Corvyn was about to appear from his shadows when the First Counselor opened the study door and said, “You can shed the shadows, Corvyn.”
Quantum Shadows Page 6