by David Weber
He turned his back on the window and the Writ and stalked across to the narrow bed with the plain cotton sheets. He sat on it, irritated with himself when he realized that even now, even knowing Schueler and God waited to greet him as their own, there was the tiniest tremor in his fingers. Well, God’s champion or not, he was only mortal. The weakness of the flesh must overpower the strength of even the most brightly burning soul at times. And he’d shown his steel during that farce of a trial. For over a month they’d paraded their “witnesses,” adduced their “evidence,” whined to the judges about the death and the destruction—as if that could matter to a man defending God Himself!
He’d ignored them. Hadn’t deigned to cross-examine any witness, to challenge any evidence. It had been obvious the entire “trial” was only for show. The verdict had been passed before he’d ever been dragged off of that accursed Charisian ship in Siddar City. Everything else had been window dressing. But perhaps not. Perhaps they were such moral cowards that they’d really needed the entire circus, the entire pretense of justice, to steel their spines for what they’d intended to do all along.
It didn’t matter. Nothing they did could matter. All that mattered was that the Archangels would be waiting to reward him as his services deserved and—
A quiet sound interrupted his thoughts. The chamber door opened, and his stomach tightened as he looked up. He hated that reaction, but even God’s own champion could be excused for feeling an edge of physical fear when he found himself face-to-face with Shan-wei’s foul servants.
The tall, broad-shouldered Guardsman stepped through the door, and Clyntahn’s jaw clenched as a woman, a head shorter than he but clad in the same blackened chain mail and breastplate, followed him. Her red hair showed coppery highlights in the lamplight, and her eyes were the same dark sapphire as her companion’s.
Clyntahn glared at them, refusing to give them the satisfaction of speaking. They didn’t glare at him, however; they only looked at him with cold, disdainful contempt, and he discovered that contempt cut far deeper than any rage.
“Well?” he snapped finally. “Come to gloat, I suppose!”
“‘Gloat’ isn’t the word I’d choose, Your Grace,” Athrawes told him in a cold, thoughtful tone. “I prefer to think of it as … enlightening you.”
“Enlightening!” Clyntahn spat on the chamber floor. “There’s a special place laid up for you in hell, Athrawes! A pit of fire will consume your flesh for all eternity, and I’ll be standing on its brink pissing on you!”
“He still doesn’t get it, does he?” the false seijin said, glancing at his companion.
“No, he doesn’t.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t even realize that we requested the duty tonight so we’d have this opportunity to … explain to him.”
“You have nothing to explain to me, woman!” Clyntahn snarled.
“Oh, now, there you’re wrong,” she said, and the last Grand Inquisitor of Mother Church felt his eyes narrow as her voice began to change somehow. “We have quite a lot to explain to you, Your Grace. And we’ve waited a very long time for the opportunity.”
Clyntahn paled, and he felt himself shrinking back as her voice shifted, deepened, until it was no longer a woman’s voice at all. It had become a deep bass, identical to Athrawes’, and Athrawes smiled coldly as his eyes darted back and forth between them.
“The thing you need to understand, Your Grace, is that you’re won’t be sitting at Schueler’s right hand, passing judgment on anyone. If there truly is a hell, you’ll see it better than most, and I suppose it’s possible you will get to spend time with Schueler, Langhorne, and Chihiro … because that’s where every one of them will be.”
“Blasphemy!” Clyntahn snapped. He grasped his pectoral scepter and shook himself. “Blasphemy! And nothing but what I should expect from heretics!”
“You have no idea what you’re really facing at this moment, Your Grace,” Athrawes said softly. He reached one hand to the solid wooden table at the center of the chamber. He didn’t even look at it, only reached down and grasped it by one corner. And then, one-handed, he lifted its legs six inches off the floor … and held it there. His arm didn’t even quiver, and Clyntahn swallowed hard.
“You talk about ‘demons’ and ‘archangels,’” Athrawes told him. “But Langhorne and Schueler weren’t archangels. They were men—mortal men who lied to an entire world. Mass murderers. Pei Shan-wei was no archangel, either—only a woman who spent her entire life helping others. Only a woman who made it possible for humans to live and prosper on this world. Only a woman who was murdered by Langhorne and Chihiro and Schueler because she was so much better than they were.”
Clyntahn’s eyes were huge, darting back and forth between his face and that motionless table, suspended in midair. But then that same voice came from the woman, and his eyes whipped to her face.
“Only a woman,” she said, “who was my friend.”
“Demons!” Clyntahn whispered hoarsely, raising his scepter between them. “Demons! Creatures of hell!”
“Hell, Your Grace?” She laughed, and the silvery sound was cold and cruel. “You don’t know the meaning of the word … yet. But I think tomorrow, after the trap springs, you’ll find out.”
“Stay back!” he snapped.
“We have no intention of harming you in any way, Your Grace,” she told him. “None. As Merlin said, we’ve come to enlighten you. You’ve talked a lot about your special relationship with Schueler and the archangels, so we thought you might like to meet them—before your hanging, I mean.”
“What do you mean?” the question was betrayed out of him, and he closed his mouth with a snap as soon as he realized what she’d said.
“She means your Holy Writ is a lie,” Athrawes said. “She means every word about the Creation of Safehold is alive. That every page of the Commentaries was written by someone who’d been lied to by Langhorne, and Bédard, and Chihiro. She means she and I are older than your Writ. She means we died before the first human being ever set foot on this world. And she means that tomorrow morning when they hang you, there won’t be any archangels waiting for you.”
“Lies!” he shouted desperately. “Lies!”
“Oh, there’ve been lots of lies on this planet,” the woman told him, “but not from us.”
Clyntahn leapt off the bed, pressing his back against the wall, trying to sink into the solid stone as both false seijins’ eyes began to glow a hellish blue.
“Stay away from me!” he screamed.
“Of course, Your Grace,” Athrawes said.
He set the table down as if it were a feather and the woman withdrew a shiny object from her belt pouch. She set it on a corner of the table and smiled at Clyntahn while those demonic eyes glowed past her lashes.
“Allow us to introduce you to your ‘archangels,’ Your Grace,” she said. “This is what we call ‘file footage.’ We put together an hour or so of it. I think you’ll find it interesting. Especially the bit where Langhorne is explaining himself to Pei Shan-wei.”
She pressed the shiny object, and breath caught in Clyntahn’s throat as the image of a breezy room appeared before him, no more than two feet tall, but perfectly detailed. He’d seen images like it in the Temple, in the Inquisition’s secret records, and he heard someone whimpering with his voice as he recognized many of the faces in that room. He recognized the Archangel Langhorne, the Archangel Bédard, the Archangel Chihiro … the fallen Archangel Kau-yung … and Shan-wei the Accursed herself.
“—and we implore you, once again,” the slender, silver-haired mother of hell said, and he shuddered as that dreadful voice fell upon his ears for the first time, “to consider how vital it is that as the human culture on this planet grows and matures, it remembers the Gbaba. That it understands why we came here, why we renounced advanced technology.”
“Stop it,” Clyntahn whispered. “Stop it!”
“We’ve heard all these arguments before, Dr. Pei,” the Archangel Langhorne
said, and it was the Archangel’s voice. He knew it was, because unlike Shan-wei’s, he’d heard it before. “We understand the point you’re raising. But I’m afraid that nothing you’ve said is likely to change our established policy.”
“Administrator,” Shan-wei said, “your ‘established policy’ overlooks the fact that mankind has always been a toolmaker and a problem solver. Eventually those qualities are going to surface here on Safehold. When they do, without an institutional memory of what happened to the Federation, our descendants aren’t going to know about the dangers waiting for them out there.”
“That particular concern is based on a faulty understanding of the societal matrix we’re creating here, Dr. Pei,” the Archangel Bédard said. “I assure you, with the safeguards we’ve put in place, the inhabitants of Safehold will be safely insulated against the sort of technological advancement which might attract the Gbaba’s intention. Unless, of course, there’s some outside stimulus to violate the parameters of our matrix.”
“I don’t doubt that you can—that you have already—created an anti-technology mindset on an individual and a societal level,” Shan-wei replied levelly. “I simply believe that whatever you can accomplish right now, whatever curbs and safeguards you can impose at this moment, five hundred years from now, or a thousand, there’s going to come a moment when those safeguards fail.”
“They won’t,” the Archangel Bédard said flatly. “I realize psychology isn’t your field, Doctor. And I also realize one of your doctorates is in history. Because it is, you’re quite rightly aware of the frenetic pace at which technology has advanced in the modern era. Certainly, on the basis of humanity’s history on Old Earth, especially during the last five or six centuries, it would appear the ‘innovation bug’ is hardwired into the human psyche. It isn’t, however. There are examples from our own history of lengthy, very static periods. In particular, I draw your attention to the thousands of years of the Egyptian empire, during which significant innovation basically didn’t happen. What we’ve done here, on Safehold, is to re-create that same basic mindset, and we’ve also installed certain … institutional and physical checks to maintain that mindset.”
“No, nooooooo,” Clyntahn moaned. Five or six centuries, thousands of years?! It was lies, it was all lies! It had to be!
But the voices went right on speaking, and he couldn’t look away.
“The degree to which the Egyptians—and the rest of the Mediterranean cultures—were anti-innovation has been considerably overstated,” Shan-wei told the Archangel Bédard. “Moreover, Egypt was only a tiny segment of the world population of its day, and other parts—”
* * *
His torment lasted more than the hour the hellish woman had promised. It lasted a century—an age! They made him watch it all, made him absorb the blasphemy, the lies, the deception. And, far worse than that, they made him realize something more dreadful, more hideous than any torment the Punishment had ever inflicted upon the most hardened heretic.
They made him realize it was the truth.
“Lies,” he whispered, staring up at them from where he’d slid down the wall to hunker on the floor. “Lies.” Yet even as he said it, he knew.
“Go on telling yourself that, Your Grace,” Athrawes said as the woman slid the object back into her belt pouch. “Be our guest. Tell yourself that again and again, every step of the way between this cell and the gallows. Tell yourself that when the rope goes around your neck. Tell yourself that while you stand there, waiting. Because when that trap door opens, when you fall through it, you won’t be able to tell yourself that any longer. And how do you think the real God, the true God, the God men and women like Maikel Staynair worship, will greet you when you hit the end of that rope?”
Clyntahn stared at him, his mouth working wordlessly, and the seijin—the seijin, he knew now, who was a young woman a thousand years dead—smiled at him while his companion—the same dead woman!—unlocked the chamber door once more.
“Tell yourself that, Your Grace,” Merlin Athrawes said as he turned to follow Nimue Chwaeriau through that door. “Take it with you straight to hell, because Schueler and Langhorne are waiting for you there.”
* * *
Greyghor Stohnar sat on the reviewing stand beside Cayleb of Charis. Empress Sharleyan sat on the Emperor’s right, with Aivah Pahrsahn to her right, and young Prince Nahrmahn Garyet and King Gorjah of Tarot sat with them. The Duke of Darcos and his wife sat on the rows below theirs, and so did Earl Thirsk, Archbishop Staiphan, Archbishop Zhasyn Cahnyr, Archbishop Klairmant Gairlyng, Archbishop Ulys Lynkyn.…
It was a very long list, scores of names. And for every name on it, there was another name that wasn’t there. Gwylym Manthyr, Mahrtyn Taisyn, Dabnyr Dynnys, Clyftyn Sumyrs, Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn, even Erayk Dynnys. As he sat there in the crisp, cold morning sunlight, bundled in his warm coat, wearing his gloves, his breath rising in a golden, sun-touched mist, he thought about all those missing names. The men—and the women—who couldn’t be here to see this morning, to know that justice had finally been done in their names.
Justice. Such a cold, useless word. It’s important—I know it’s important—but … what does it really achieve? Does it bring them back? Does it undo anything the bastard did?
He remembered the cold contempt in Clyntahn’s eyes as the verdict was finally read. Remembered the arrogance, the way he’d stared at all of them secure in the knowledge—even now, after everything—that the final victory would be his. That he truly had served God. He’d wanted to vomit that day, but today would be an end. And as he thought that, he realized what justice achieved.
It’s not about him, really. Oh, there’s vengeance in it, and I won’t pretend there isn’t. But what it’s about—what it means—is that we’re better than he is. That there are some acts, some atrocities, we won’t tolerate. That we will punish them to make our rejection of evil clear but we won’t resort to the butchery, the flaying knives, the castration, the white hot irons, or the stake that he used on so many people. We will remove him from the face of this world, but with a decent respect for justice and without—without—becoming him when we do. That’s what this morning is about.
A trumpet sounded. The background murmur of conversation died, and the only sound was the snapping of the banners atop Protector’s Palace and the faint, distant cry of a wyvern. Then the door opened, and the escort, an enlisted soldier chosen from every army that had fought against the Group of Four—and from the Royal Dohlaran Army, the Army of God, and the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels, as well—came through it, surrounding the prisoner in the plain black cassock.
Stohnar watched them come, and his eyes widened slowly as Zhaspahr Clyntahn drew closer. The arrogance was gone, the shoulders slumped, the hair was wild and uncombed, and he walked like an old, old man, eyes darting in every direction. They fastened on the tall, blue-eyed seijin standing behind Cayleb and Sharleyan, and the smaller seijin standing behind the Duke of Darcos and his wife, and even from his seat, Stohnar could see the terror in their depths.
They reached the foot of the gallows stairs, and Clyntahn stopped. The escort paused, and he raised one foot, as if to set it on the lowest stair tread. But he didn’t. He only stood there, staring now up at the noose swaying in the breeze, and not at the seijins standing post in the stands.
Seconds trickled away, and—finally—the sergeant in Charisian uniform touched him on the shoulder. The Charisian pushed gently, giving the prisoner the option of dignity, but Clyntahn whirled. He stared up at the stands again, his face white, his hands trembling.
“Please!” he cried hoarsely. “Oh, please! It was—I thought—I can’t—!”
He went to his knees, holding out his hands imploringly.
“I thought I was right! I thought … I thought the Writ was true!”
Stohnar stiffened. The man was mad. Here at the very end, finally face-to-face with death, with retribution for his millions of victims, he was mad.
The sergeant who’d tried to leave him the gift of dignity drew back. Then he glanced at his companions, and four of them reached down, pulled the prisoner to his feet, and bore him towards the gallows. He fought madly, twisting and kicking, but it was useless. They dragged him across the platform, held him while the executioner put the noose about his neck. He tried to cry out again, but one of the guards clamped a gloved hand across his mouth while a young brigadier in the uniform of the Glacierheart militia unfolded a sheet of paper.
“‘Zhaspahr Clyntahn,’” he read, “‘you have been tried and adjudged guilty of murder, of torture, and of crimes too barbaric and too numerous to enumerate. You are cast out by the Church, stripped of your offices, deprived of your place among God’s children by your own actions. And so you are condemned to be hanged by the neck until dead, and for your body to be burned into ashes and the ashes scattered upon the wind so that they do not pollute sacred ground. This sentence to be carried out on this day at this hour.’”
He paused and folded the paper, then nodded to the sergeant whose hand was clamped across Clyntahn’s mouth.
“Do you have anything you wish to say?” Byrk Raimahn asked as that hand was removed, remembering the Starving Winter in Glacierheart, remembering all the Glacierhearters who would never come home.
“I … I—” The voice wavered around the edges. It cracked and died, and the mouth worked wordlessly.
* * *
“I wish the Commodore and Shan-wei were here to see this,” Nimue Chwaeriau’s voice said quietly in Merlin Athrawes’ ear, and he knew every other member of the inner circle heard her in that same moment, even if none of the others could reply.