Then he tried to move forward toward the steps, but his legs could no longer hold against gravity’s crushing weight. He collapsed to the portico’s hard surface and lay fighting for breath. His last thought before falling into unconsciousness was that he had learned only the tiniest part of all there was to know of death.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Preparations
All are rushing into your terrible jaws; I see some of them crushed by your teeth. As rivers flow into the ocean, all the warriors of this world are passing into your fiery jaws; all creatures rush to their destruction like moths into a flame. You lap the worlds into your burning mouths and swallow them. Filled with your terrible radiance, 0 Vishnu, the whole of creation bursts into flame.
— from the Bhagavad Gita, eleventh chapter
It took Danlo two tendays to recuperate fully from his ordeal in the House of the Dead. The keepers of the Holy Palace, at Harrah’s bidding, ordered a special choche for Danlo, and they bore him back to his rooms where Harrah’s personal physician attended him. Although Danlo came awake later that night, it was another day before he could eat any food or indulge in conversation. Fierce pains crackled through his head, coming and going with the unpredictability of ball lightning. He tried to sleep as much as he could; he tried to play his flute and remember all that had happened to him in the alam al-mithral.
During this waiting time between tests, he wished that Harrah would call for him or perhaps even visit him in his richly furnished rooms. But she never did. From Thomas Ivieehl, the sharp-eared palace keeper whom he had befriended, he learned that the Holy Ivi was kept busy with important matters. In truth, Danlo’s entrance into the House of Eternity had precipitated earth-shaking events. Half a world away, in the city of Bavoll, the news of Danlo’s success had set off riots, and at least three Elder Architects loyal to Harrah had been murdered. And in Iviendenhall, on an island just off the coast on the other side of the continent, it was said that a cabal of Iviomils had seized control of the local temple and had cut communications with the rest of the planet. Even in Ornice Olorun, where the Iviomils held much less sway than in the western arcologies, there were plots against Harrah Ivi en li Ede as well as random terror. One man, a keeper whom Thomas Ivieehl had known since boyhood, was caught trying to smuggle plastic explosive into the palace itself, but before Harrah’s readers could question him, he had set off a heat charge implanted in his ear, thus destroying his own brain as surely as the eye-tlolt had caused Janegg Iviorvan to die the real death. On the fourth and seventeenth levels of the city, plasma bombs destroyed five apartment cubes and killed at least thirty thousand people. And so it went. Every hour, it seemed, new reports of disaster and outright religious disobedience arrived from every corner of Tannahill. It was the greatest crisis of Harrah’s architetcy – perhaps even the greatest since the time of the two High Holy Architects five centuries earlier.
Bertram Jaspari, of course, tried to seize the advantage that all this chaos provided. Not only did he involve the Koivuniemin with his usual intrigues and coercion, but he attacked Harrah’s planetary proclamation of Danlo’s triumph. Danlo wi Soli Ringess, he said, the naman pilot, had not truly walked with the dead. He had only tried to face the terrible beauty of the alam al-mithral, and he had failed. At the first sight of the dead Architect souls, he had fallen mad and had fallen into a coma as might any other mortal man. For a time, many Architects across Tannahill believed this lie. Many men and women began to turn to Bertram Jaspari and to listen ever more closely as he spoke of the Church’s corruption and the need to return to the purity of the past. And then, seven days after Danlo’s fateful Walk, as it came to be called, Danlo dealt a fierce blow to Bertram’s growing authority by making a simple announcement. He told of a piece of information that he had gathered in the alam al-mithral: a secret that the ghost of Morasha Ede, Nikolos Daru Ede’s second daughter, had shared with him. In Ede’s Tomb, it seemed, in the clary sarcophagus that housed his frozen body, the first Architects had built a secret compartment. For three thousand years, Ede had lain dead over a little cube of space containing a treasure. What this treasure was, Danlo didn’t say for he truly didn’t know. But he told of how this compartment might be found and the secret words whose utterance would open it.
Bertram Jaspari and his Iviomils would have liked to have scoffed at such a wild prediction. But they dared not. On the day after a not on Ornice Olorun’s twelfth level nearly destroyed two minor food factories, Harrah Ivi en li Ede sent her keepers into Ede’s Tomb to test the truth of Danlo’s ‘prophecy’. They spoke the secret words encoded by Ede long ago: ‘I am the door; knock and be opened’. And to the astonishment of all present, on the side of the glittering clary crypt, a hidden panel slid open. There Harrah’s keepers found a single diamond disc very much like the ones in the House of the Dead. Only it held not the pallatons of deceased Architects, but the sacred words of Nikolos Daru Ede, the man who had become God. If the theologians who evaluated the disc’s information were correct, they had discovered Ede’s love poems to his third wife, Arista Miri. These were the beloved Passionaries, one of the five lost books of the Algorithm. That this priceless treasure had been recovered due to the valour of a naman from Neverness embarrassed and infuriated Bertram Jaspari. If he had possessed the smallest grain of shame, he might have apologized to Danlo and begged Harrah’s forgiveness. But he only redoubled his efforts to program people’s minds against Harrah and to destroy, her architetcy.
‘If Bertram were to incite the people against Harrah, they might riot and try to storm the palace.’
These words of warning issued from the Ede devotionary set upon the altar of Danlo’s room. As it often did, the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede illumined the silver heaume and sent a glowing light out over the sacred art and cybernetica as well as the ananda blossoms hanging halfway down the wall. If Danlo had counted right, it was the one thousand, seven hundred and nineteenth time Ede had warned him of imminent danger since they had come to Tannahill.
‘I can only hope,’ the Ede imago said, ‘that these barbarians don’t storm my tomb searching for other treasures. If they broke the sarcophagus by accident, my body would prove impossible to redeem.’
The following day, an unexpected visitor came to the palace to ask for a meeting with Danlo. This was Malaclypse Redring, and Danlo could not guess why he would seek so urgently to see him. He wondered if Bertram might have sent him to the palace as a secret emissary. But, in truth, it was hard to imagine anyone sending a warrior-poet anywhere, for any reason. Although Danlo was still weak from computer interface and his head throbbed like the beating of a drum, he received Malaclypse in his altar room. There, beneath the ananda blossoms, they sat on soft white cushions on the floor. Danlo wore only a worn, black kamelaika from Neverness and held his bamboo flute gently against his lap. Malaclypse, however, sported a glittering rainbow kimono woven on Qallar. His two red rings glittered on the fingers of either hand. The warrior-poets, he remembered, most often dressed to blind the eye, the better to distract their victims while they plied their needles and knives and struck with all the quickness of poisonous snakes.
‘It’s good to see you again, Pilot,’ Malaclypse said. ‘We’ve come very far since Mer Tadeo’s garden, haven’t we?’
Danlo realized then that the two of them hadn’t spoken face to face since the night of the supernova on Farfara.
‘Oh, truly very far,’ Danlo said. ‘I had thought … that I would never see you again.’
‘You don’t seem entirely pleased.’
‘No,’ Danlo said. ‘I … am not.’
‘But we have a mutual mission to Tannahill, don’t we?’
‘No – everywhere you go, you bring violence and murder.’
‘Is it I who have walked with the dead? Is it I whom half of these Architects would assassinate while the other half proclaim as the Lightbringer?’
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Danlo smiled. ‘You know who I am,’ he
said.
‘Do I, Pilot?’
Malaclypse regarded him strangely with his blazing violet eyes, almost as if in their journey across the stars, Danlo had grown from a young man into some terrible angel of light. Almost as if he feared him.
‘I am only who I am – Danlo wi Soli Ringess.’
‘But the essential question remains unanswered,’ Malaclypse said. ‘Are you the son of the father? Are you of the same substance as Mallory wi Soli Ringess?’
Danlo smiled, then touched his lips to his flute. He asked, ‘Why have you come here?’
‘Do you wish to know why I’ve come to Tannahill?’
‘No,’ Danlo said. ‘I think I already know that. Even if you have not found my father, you have found what you seek in Bertram Jaspari and the Iviomils. In the weakness of the Church itself.’
‘I only serve my order as you do yours.’
‘Yes, truly you do. And so I would ask why you have come here, to my rooms tonight?’
Malaclypse fixed his marvellous eyes on Danlo, but he said nothing.
‘Do you serve your order?’ Danlo asked. ‘Or do you serve only yourself?’
‘You’re very clever, Pilot.’
‘There is something that you would ask of me, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Something … that you would like to know.’
‘Something that no one knows except you,’ Malaclypse said.
‘Please ask, then.’
Malaclypse paused a moment and turned to look at the door. It seemed as if he were trying to drink in the little sounds around him and discover whether any of Harrah’s keepers might be spying upon him. But except for his and Danlo’s soft breaths and the occasional squawk of the parrotock bird in its steel cage across the room, the palace was almost silent.
‘What is it like?’ Malaclypse suddenly whispered. ‘What is it like to be dead?’
Danlo never let his eyes fall away from the intensity of Malaclypse’s dark gaze. Although his question had not surprised him, it disturbed him deeply. ‘You warrior-poets worship death,’ he finally said.
‘Not so, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. We worship life.’
‘“How do I learn to live?”’ Danlo asked, quoting a saying of the warrior-poets. And he supplied the answer: ‘“Prepare to die.”’
At this, Malaclypse smiled and whispered, ‘“How do I prepare for death? Learn how to live.”’
‘Life,’ Danlo said mysteriously, ‘is all there is. Live your life, Warrior. Write your poems, Poet. You will know soon enough … what it is like to be dead.’
‘Do you threaten me, Pilot, or are you making another prophecy?’
‘Neither,’ Danlo said. ‘It is only that all people die … so soon. A heartbeat and we are gone. In a breath, our spirits are lost to the wind. Life is so infinitely precious. Why seek to cast it away before it is time?’
‘Do you try to persuade me of this wisdom or yourself?’
‘I … have no wish to die,’ Danlo said.
‘Is that true?’ Malaclypse asked. ‘I’ve followed you across the galaxy. Into the Entity. You live your life like a warrior-poet: flawlessly and fearlessly. I think you, too, seek death. This is what haunts you about your walk with the dead, isn’t it?’
For a while Danlo stared out the window at the evening lights playing over the ocean far below the city. Because he didn’t wish to answer Malaclypse’s question, he picked up his flute and began to compose a slow, deeply melodic song. Finally, he wiped his lips and looked over at Malaclypse. He said, ‘Whatever I seek for myself, I would bring only peace for others.’
‘Peace and light,’ Malaclypse said. ‘If you are the Lightbringer.’
‘Yes, truly, light,’ Danlo said smiling. ‘It is the opposite of darkness.’
‘Do I bring only darkness, then?’
‘You bring war. You ally yourself, and your whole order, with the Iviomils … and why? You would set one Architect killing another.’
‘But I am a warrior, am I not? And war is the way of the world. Of the universe itself. Someday you may come to appreciate this.’
‘No, there is always peace,’ Danlo said. ‘There … must be.’
‘Pilot, Pilot.’
‘Somewhere, at the centre, even in the heart of man, there must be peace. The harmony of life … this blessed halla.’
Again Danlo looked out the window at the shimmering ocean. He sat very still, and his eyes fell faraway into the cold deeps at the edge of the world. He drank in the waters’ dazzling darkness and then gazed up at the sky. There, only the fire of the brightest stars could penetrate the layers of pollution enveloping the planet. This was the killing radiation of supernovas somewhere in the Vild, and it called him out of himself, scrying, on and on, out into the vast light-distances of the universe.
‘Is it peace you’re seeing now?’ Malaclypse asked.
Danlo shook his head. ‘No – it is just the opposite.’
‘Please tell me, if you will.’
The Entity, Danlo remembered, had told him that the Silicon God sought the death of the entire galaxy. Was it possible that this shaida being might somehow be using the warrior-poets to this end?
‘I see people,’ Danlo finally said. ‘Who would ever have dreamed the universe would bring forth so many of our kind? So many people. So terrible and beautiful we are. I see all these people dying for a dream. And dying for delusion. And for one man’s desire for power. But always … dying. Only dying. Bertram Jaspari. He is ready to send his millions of faithful to their deaths. All the Iviomils. All the Architects. I see all the robots, all the factories, all the deepships, the lasers and viruses and eye-tlolts and bombs. And something else. A terrible weapon … these great engines the Architects make to unravel the threads of spacetime. The star killers, the streams of graviphotons flowing into the sun. The light that blinds. I see the whole planet, the whole galaxy – all the people preparing for war and death.’
Danlo fell once more into silence, and he pressed his flute against the scar cutting his forehead. Malaclypse looked at him almost fearfully, which was strange because warrior-poets must fear nothing in all the universe, least of all other men. ‘You can’t stop it, you know,’ he said.
Danlo put the flute’s ivory mouthpiece to his lips, and he said nothing.
‘You can’t change the world, Pilot.’
Danlo blew a single, low, soft note which moved out into the room like the sound of the wind.
‘You can’t change the nature of the universe itself.’
‘No,’ Danlo finally said, putting down his flute. ‘But I can change my self. This is the nature of my next test, yes? We shall see if I can truly change myself.’
Danlo bade farewell to Malaclypse Redring of Qallar, and then sat playing his flute and reflecting upon this most disturbing visit. If he had been more mindful, he would have asked the palace keepers not to admit anyone else wishing to see him, but now that it seemed that he might indeed be the Lightbringer, many sought words with him. And so, during the following days, Danlo sat to tea in his rooms, speaking with the greatest princes of the Church. They discussed the Order’s founding a new Academy on Thiells and the possibility of sending the Church’s brightest youths there to learn the pilots’ art. There was talk of great change, which would begin in the temples of the Church and spread like a wildfire across the stars. Many of Danlo’s visitors prided themselves on being theologians, and these argumentative men and women loved to discuss Fravashi philosophy or the Program of the Second Creation or Three Pillars of Ringism, that explosive new religion founded on Neverness only a few years before. Danlo grew so used to these daily (and nightly) visits that he would answer his door at the first knock without bothering to ask who might wish to see him. And so, some twenty days after his almost fabled Walk with the Dead, on the night before his last test, he heard the sound of human knuckles rattling against wood, and he opened his door expecting yet again another round of pointless theological debates. Or perhap
s he hoped that Harrah herself had come at last to advise him and to wish him well. He was very surprised, therefore, to see the most prominent of all the Church Elders standing in the doorway scowling, as if he hated having to wait for Danlo to ask him inside. At the best of times Bertram Jaspari was an impatient man, and that night he was sweating in an unusual hurry.
‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess – may we come in?’ Bertram formally asked.
Danlo looked down the hallway to see if some other Elder such as Jedrek Iviongeon accompanied Bertram. And then, remembering that Bertram often spoke in the ‘we’ tense as if he were already the Holy Ivi, Danlo smiled in amusement.
‘If you’d like … yes, please come in,’ he replied, holding the door open for him. ‘May I make you some tea?’
‘No thank you,’ Bertram said, casting Danlo a quick, cold look as if he thought he might try to poison him. ‘We don’t have time for that.’
Danlo invited Bertram to sit with him in the altar room, as he had with Malaclypse Redring and the other Church illuminati. Bertram carefully let himself down onto the white cushions set on the floor; with his sharp face and sticklike limbs, Danlo thought he looked like a ratri bird settling down over a nest full of eggs. As he always did, Bertram wore his gold embroidered dobra to cover his pointed head. He was sweating as if he’d eaten tainted meat, and his face was ash-blue with the mehalis fungus that infected him. Danlo stood in awe of this man’s incredible ugliness, but he never let these surface blights obscure the even deeper deformities of Bertram’s soul.
‘You’re surprised to see us here, aren’t you, Pilot?’
In truth, on any other world ruled by one of such extensive power as the Holy Ivi, Bertram would have been either banished or imprisoned for his rebelliousness – or worse. But Bertram, with all the skill of a jewfish slipping out of a net, had managed to avoid attaching himself to any of the plots against Harrah or the riots of the Iviomils. Then, too, Harrah was the most forgiving of Holy Ivis.
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