by David Weber
Sharleyan’s hand rose to cover her mouth, and Cayleb swore viciously in a savage undertone. Nahrmahn’s expression didn’t actually change at all, and yet there was a peculiar hardening—an icy thing, more sensed than seen—in his eyes, and Seahamper’s expression was a fitting mirror for Cayleb’s fury. But Staynair’s was, in many ways, the most frightening of all.
Maikel Staynair was a gentle, compassionate, and loving man. Anyone who’d ever met him realized that. But there was another side to that gentleness and compassion—a fiercely protective side. The side which had made him truly a shepherd. And at that moment, when Merlin looked at the Archbishop of Charis, what he saw was a shepherd standing between his flock and one of Safehold’s six- legged ‘catamounts’ with a hunting spear in his hands and murder in his heart.
“Will he really do it, do you think, Merlin?” Nahrmahn’s tone of clinical detachment fooled none of them. All of them looked at him, and the Emeraldian shrugged. “What I mean is, do you think Trynair, Maigwair, and Duchairn will let him do something so stupid?”
“I don’t know,” Merlin replied frankly. “Ahnzhelyk has a far better feel for what’s been happening inside the vicarate and the Group of Four than we did. From what she’s said, I think Duchairn would stop Clyntahn, if he could, but Maigwair’s basically a nonentity. Worse, in Ahnzhelyk’s opinion, he probably agrees with Clyntahn about the need to crush any possible opposition. And I doubt he has either the moral courage or sufficient stature within the Group of Four to stop it, even if he wanted to. Trynair’s smart enough to recognize the damage this sort of excess could do, but I’m afraid he’s desperate enough in the short term to go along. The question in my mind is whether or not Duchairn is going to try to stop Clyntahn... or recognize that he can’t. That all he could accomplish would be to add another victim—this one from the Group of Four itself—to the list.”
“And I hate to say it, Nahrmahn,” Cayleb said harshly, “but from their perspective, it may not seem stupid at all. Their fleets are getting close enough to completion that they’ll be ready to at least begin their counterattack soon. At the same time, the Group of Four’s prestige and authority have been badly damaged by all the reverses they’ve suffered to date. Not to mention the fact that the rest of the vicarate knows the entire war started solely because the Group of Four fucked up. I don’t know about Duchairn, but Clyntahn, for sure, and Trynair and Maigwair, almost as certainly, see this as an opportunity to reestablish an iron grip on the vicarate. They’re going to crush any possible internal voice of opposition—especially any voice that might have counseled moderation in victory—before they turn that new navy of theirs loose on us. And if they win, they’re going to do exactly the same sorts of things to all our people. They think they’re going to create so much terror, so much fear, no one will ever again dare to argue with their interpretation of God’s will and their own power.”
The emperor’s brown eyes were dark with the vision of the thing of horror the Church of God Awaiting would become if the Group of Four won.
“In the long run, it will destroy them, and possibly even the Church,” he went on, his voice still bitter and cold. “The kind of atrocity they’re talking about, visited on so many men and women—and children, damn their black hearts to hell—who’re all known to the rest of the vicarate? Who are cousins and aunts and uncles of the rest of the vicarate?” He shook his head with the grim assurance of a prophet. “In the end, even those who are most terrified of them at this moment are going to remember. There may not be one of them with the guts and the moral courage to stand up to them now, but in the end, they’ll remember even carrion lizards can pull down a great dragon . . . if there are enough of them and it’s distracted.
“So you’re right, Nahrmahn. It would be a stupid thing for them to do, ultimately. In the long term. In the fullness of time. But they aren’t thinking about the long term. They’re thinking about the present, right now, and possibly next month, or next year. That’s as far as their vision extends, and so I’m telling you, as surely as I’m standing here in this council chamber at this moment, they are going to do this. God help us all,” his voice fell to a whisper, “they are going to do this!”
.VI.
Rhobair Duchairn’s Private Chapel,
The Temple,
City of Zion,
The Temple Lands
Rhobair Duchairn knelt before the tiny altar, hands locked around a simple wooden scepter, his eyes fixed upon the icon of Langhorne with its golden, upraised echo of the scepter he held in his own merely mortal hands, and felt the tears running down his face.
Help me,he prayed. Holy Langhorne—God—help me! I can’t let this happen. I can’t, not on top of everything else! This can’t be what You want done in Your name. Tell me how to stop it! Show me a way!
But the icon was silent. It returned no answer, and strain the ears of his soul though he might, he heard no whisper of God’s voice in his heart.
He closed his eyes, face twisted with anguish, squeezing the scepter he held so hard he was amazed the carved wood didn’t shatter in his grip. He’d thought he’d known what Clyntahn was going to do, and dreaded it, tried frantically to think of some way to stop it—even warned the intended victims. Yet his worst nightmares had fallen short of what was actually happening.
Duchairn was the only member of the Group of Four Samyl Wylsynn had ever dared approach directly. So when Clyntahn started dropping his mysterious, smirking little hints last fall, Duchairn had been sinkingly certain who his targets were. But neither Trynair nor Maigwair had picked up on those hints. They’d known something was in the air, just as everyone else had, yet they’d been as surprised as any other members of the vicarate when Clyntahn and his Inquisitors actually struck. At first, they’d been inclined to be incredulous, to think Clyntahn must have overreacted. He wasn’t known for his moderation, after all. But Clyntahn had been prepared for that, and Duchairn’s grip on the scepter tightened still farther as he recalled the scene...
“What’s the meaning of this, Zhaspahr?” Zahmsyn Trynair demanded. The normally urbane and controlled Chancellor’s voice was harsh, his expression tight with mingled anger and an undeniable edge of fear, as he confronted the Grand Inquisitor across the council table.
“I think that’s plain enough,” Clyntahn replied in a cold, dangerously level tone. “I’ve been telling all of you for some time that we had traitors right here in the vicarate. I realize the three of you have been discounting my warnings. That you’ve gone your way comfortably assuming it’s just a case of me once again seeing enemies in every shadow. Well, I won’t say that hasn’t happened in the past. I won’t apologize for it, either; it’s better to be overly suspicious rather than blindly oblivious in the ser vice of God and Schueler.
“But not this time. Oh, no, not this time! These bastards have been conspiring against Mother Church, against the Grand Vicar’s authority, against our struggle with the heretics in Charis, and against God Himself. They can dress it up any way they want, try to justify it any way they choose, but the truth will come out. Trust me. The truth... will . . . come out.”
Rhobair Duchairn could not recall ever having seen Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s expression so armored in assurance and so ribbed with iron determination. He radiated a terrifying power as he glowered at his three colleagues, crouched forward like a jowly, hot- eyed, furious great dragon about to open its vast maw and charge with a bellow of killing rage.
The Treasurer started to open his mouth, although he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say. While he hesitated, searching for words, Trynair sat back in his chair, his eyes intent, and spoke first.
“What truth, Zhaspahr?” he asked. “I know Wylsynn and his brother were always critics, always pains in the arse. And I know they were dangerous—to us, at least. But there’s a world of difference between that and what you’re accusing them of now. And all of these arrests, midnight seizures of women and children... Langhorne, man! Can’t you see
what this is going to do? D’you think all those people aren’t related to other families throughout the Temple Lands? Some of them are related to me, for God’s sake! How do you think the rest of the vicarate’s going to react if they think their families are going to be threatened with something like this just because we think they’re opposing our policies?”
“Is that what you think this is?” Clyntahn stared at Trynair in disbelief. “Oh, it would have given me im mense plea sure to take that sanctimonious bastard and his brother down, don’t think for a moment that it wouldn’t have. But this isn’t something I’ve manufactured just to quash an enemy, Zahmsyn. This is something that came to me. It’s a conspiracy that extends far beyond Wylsynn and his brother, and it’s only God’s own mercy I found out about it at all.”
“What kind of conspiracy? And just how did you ‘find out about it’?” Try-nair demanded, his skepticism eroding slightly before Clyntahn’s tone of steely certitude.
“They’ve been conspiring to overthrow the Inquisition and its God- given authority as the first step in their plan to recognize the legitimacy of the ‘Church of Charis,’ ” Clyntahn said flatly. “They’ve been gathering material they believed they could use to blackmail other vicars, extort their support against us and the Grand Vicar, as a means to do just that. They’ve been working steadily to undermine fundamental Church doctrines, including the doctrine of the Grand Vicar’s infallibility when he speaks in Langhorne’s name, and planning to undermine Mother Church’s central authority by actually supporting the demands of people like Staynair and his so- called ‘Reformists’ for the local election of bishops. I think all of that constitutes a fairly significant threat to Mother Church and God’s plan for Safehold, Zahmsyn. And it doesn’t even begin to get into some of the things we’ve discovered about their personal degeneracy.”
Duchairn felt a sudden surge of nausea at hearing someone like Clyntahn, of all people, accuse someone else of “degeneracy.” Yet even he was a bit taken aback by the cata log of the Grand Inquisitor’s other accusations. He never doubted that Clyntahn had twisted and misconstrued everything Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn had been trying to accomplish—the Treasurer had that terrifying note Hauwerd had slipped him as evidence—but he was frighteningly confident that Clyntahn could sell his interpretation of their intentions to a lot, possibly even a majority, of the other vicars. Those other vicars were already terrified of the consequences of the war with Charis, and the reports of more and more Reformist- inclined clergy going over to the Church of Charis in places like Emerald and Corisande would only make them even more suspicious of, more frightened by, the specter of betrayal from within.
“Those are serious accusations,” Trynair said, and this time the Chancellor sounded shaken, even a little frightened. “And you still haven’t told us how you came to ‘discover’ all of this? And why you didn’t tell all of us about it at the time?”
“I didn’t tell the rest of you about it, first, because it was the Inquisition’s business, not yours,” Clyntahn said bluntly. “Langhorne and Schueler established the Inquisition expressly to deal with this sort of internal rot. I didn’t need to consult with anyone else to recognize what my office and my own vows required of me. Second, I didn’t tell the rest of you—or anyone, outside of Wyllym Rayno and a handful of senior Inquisitors whose ability to keep their mouths shut I unreservedly trusted—because it was essential the conspirators not know I’d become aware of their actions until winter trapped them here in Zion and I’d had time to complete my preliminary investigations and arrange to seize all the guilty parties simultaneously. I’m not saying any of you would have deliberately warned someone capable of this sort of damnable treason,” his eyes flipped briefly to Rhobair Duchairn’s face, and those eyes had gone cold, instead of hot, “but even a single incautious word in the wrong spot could have warned them before I was ready. You have no idea how far their nets extended, how deeply into the staffs of other vicars and other archbishops their corruption had spread.
“As for how I discovered it, I wish I could take credit for that, but I can’t.” Duchairn’s eyes weren’t the only ones that widened in astonishment as Zhaspahr Clyntahn disavowed the credit for discovering a conspiracy on the scale of the one he’d just described. “As it happens,” he continued, “someone who’d been recruited by the conspirators and recognized where they were actually headed brought it to my attention.”
“Who?” Duchairn heard his own voice demand.
Clyntahn gazed at him silently, almost thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. He pushed back his chair with a little grunt of effort, stalked to the chamber’s door, and opened it.
“Yes, Your Grace?” the purple- cassocked Inquisitor outside the door said. “Fetch him,” Clyntahn said flatly. “At once, Your Grace.”
The Inquisitor bowed, then turned and walked swiftly down the corridor while Clyntahn returned to his place at the table. He sat back down, folded his arms across his chest, and sat silent, waiting.
The wait wasn’t as long as it felt—Duchairn was certain of that—yet it seemed forever before the door opened once more and the Inquisitor returned. He was accompanied by another man, this one in the orange- trimmed white cassock of an archbishop.
“I believe all of you know the Archbishop of Hankey,” Clyntahn said. Duchairn’s eyes narrowed. He did, indeed, know Nyklas Stantyn, the Archbishop of Hankey, although not well. Their paths had crossed on several occasions, especially where the details of Hankey’s finances were concerned, but he’d never actually gotten to know Stantyn. Now he considered the obviously frightened man in front of him, wondering what lay behind that exquisitely tailored façade. There was something dark in Stantyn’s brown eyes, and his hands trembled visibly before he concealed them in the sleeves of his cassock.
“Nyklas came to me last May,” Clyntahn continued. “He sought me out because he had become aware of a truly horrendous plot by so- called men of God right here in the vicarate. They’d approached him, and for some time, as he will freely confess, he allowed himself to be deceived and taken in by their lies. They convinced him their goal was simply to ‘reform’ certain ‘abuses’ within Mother Church.” The Grand Inquisitor smiled thinly. “Does that sound like what we’re hearing from other lands about ‘Reformists’ trampling all over one another in their eagerness to betray Mother Church to Staynair and his heretics?”
Duchairn felt his heart sink as he realized how that question was going to resonate with other frightened vicars. Indeed, he saw a flicker in Trynair’s eyes, and it was obvious from Maigwair’s expression that he was prepared to embrace what ever expedient was required to crush any “Reformist plot” coming from inside the Temple.
“At first, Nyklas was so impressed by their apparent sincerity and devoutness that he allowed himself to be taken in,” Clyntahn went on after letting his question sink fully home. “In time, however, he came to realize their actual objectives were rather more sinister. Then this business with Charis erupted. In their eagerness to seize the opportunity they believed it presented, they made the mistake of coming a bit too far out into the open, and he began to see things he hadn’t seen before, including the evidence of deeply hidden personal corruption. He was, I think, understandably frightened—both by what he was discovering, and by how Mother Church and the Office of Inquisition might respond to his own involvement. It took him some time, and a great deal of prayer, to realize it was his duty to bring all this to my attention. To lay it before me, so Mother Church might defend herself against this attack out of the night. He recognized the personal risk he ran in informing me of it, yet he was resolved to do so, and he did.”
He was so terrified of what you’d do to all of them if you found out on your own that he came to you to sell the others out and buy the best personal terms he could, you mean,Duchairn thought coldly.
“May we hear this from Archbishop Nyklas himself?” Trynair asked in a painfully neutral tone.
“Of course you may.” C
lyntahn sounded almost exasperated, as if he couldn’t believe there’d ever been any question in Trynair’s mind, and glanced at the waiting, silent archbishop. “Tell them, Nyklas.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Stantyn replied.
He looked at the other three vicars, cleared his throat, and swallowed hard. Then he drew a deep breath.
“It’s as the Grand Inquisitor has already described, Your Graces.” His voice quivered slightly, yet he met their eyes squarely. “At first, I genuinely believed Vicar Samyl and Vicar Hauwerd had only Mother Church’s best interests at heart. In fact, I believed that for several years. It was only gradually that certain parts of what they said began to sound as if they were contradicting other parts, and even then, I was able to convince myself I’d simply misunderstood. But they had me . . . doing things which made me uncomfortable. Spying on my fellow bishops and archbishops. Gathering information about members of the vicarate—even the Grand Vicar himself. Looking, especially, for evidence which might have been used to blackmail or pressure members of the Inquisition. And, in addition, for anything which might have been used as a weapon against the Chancellor, the Grand Inquisitor, and the Treasurer.”
He paused, as if gathering his thoughts, then continued. “I began to realize that what they were gathering was information which might be used against personal enemies in the vicarate. That concerned me deeply, especially when I began to discover certain . . . unpleasant aspects of their own lives.” His mouth twisted briefly in what might have been a grimace of distaste . . . or, perhaps, fear. “I’ve found that behind the virtuous façade they strove to present, they were actually dedicated to a personal licentiousness that shocked me. Your Graces, I’m no prude, and no stranger to reality. I know bishops, archbishops, even vicars are still men, that all of us are still prone to the temptations of the flesh, and that, too often, we succumb to them. I’m not prepared to condemn any of my brothers in God for being weak, because all mortals are weak and fallible. But there are perversions at which I must draw a line. Unnatural lusts, and the abuse of children, are more than I could endure.”