Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  But better than nine out of every ten members of the Church's clergy here in Charis were Charisian-born, just like Staynair. The numbers were higher in the lower ranks of the priesthood, and among the various monastic orders, of course. But that was the very thing which made admitting a Charisian to the third-highest church office in the entire kingdom so . . . worrisome. Those lower-ranking priests and under-priests were undoubtedly listening to anything "their" bishop said.

  "I'll accept your assurance that you didn't intentionally assail Mother Church's authority and right to declare error," he said finally, turning back to face Staynair after several silent moments. "That doesn't abate my displeasure, however. Nor, I feel sure, would the Council of Vicars or the Inquisition be pleased by the potential for error contained in your . . . unfortunately chosen words. You aren't some simple parish priest. You're a bishop, one of Mother Church's bishops, and as such you will be rightly held to a higher standard. Is that understood, Bishop Maikel?"

  "It is, of course, Your Eminence," Staynair said, bowing his head very slightly.

  "These are perilous times," Ahdymsyn continued levelly. "Danger threatens Charis on many levels, as, indeed, the treason of the King's own cousin clearly illustrates. Do not increase that peril."

  "I'll take your warning to heart, Your Eminence," Staynair said with another slight bow.

  "See that you do," Ahdymsyn said. "Be very careful to see that you do. Neither my patience, nor the Archbishop's, nor the Office of Inquisition's, is without limit. If your failure in your duties leads to consequences for others, then the weight of those consequences will be upon your own immortal soul, and Mother Church will demand an accounting of you."

  Staynair said nothing, but neither did he flinch, and there was no give in his steady eyes. Well, he'd been warned. And whatever else the man might be, he wasn't a fool. That would have to be enough . . . for now, at least.

  "You may go," Ahdymsyn said coldly, and extended his ring for Staynair to kiss.

  "Thank you, Your Eminence," the Bishop of Tellesberg murmured as he brushed his lips lightly across the golden scepter inlaid into the blood-red ruby of the ring. "I assure you that I'll remember everything you've said to me today."

  SEPTEMBER, YEAR OF GOD 890

  I

  Madame Ahnzhelyk's,

  City of Zion

  Archbishop Erayk Dynnys smiled happily as he bade Madame Ahnzhelyk Phonda a heartfelt good night.

  "As always, it's been a delightful evening, Ahnzhelyk," he said, patting her delicate, perfumed fingers between both of his own well manicured hands.

  "You're always too kind, Your Eminence," Madame Ahnzhelyk said with the gracious smile which had been so much a part of her success during her own working days. "I'm afraid you flatter us more than we really deserve."

  "Nonsense. Nonsense!" Dynnys said firmly. "We've known one another far too long for me to stand on ceremony or worry about polite nothings with you and your charming ladies."

  "In that case, thank you, Your Eminence." Madame Ahnzhelyk bent her head in a small bow. "We're always delighted to see you. Especially now. We weren't certain we'd have the chance to entertain you again before your departure for Charis."

  "Not something I'm looking forward to, to be honest," Dynnys sighed with a small grimace. "Of course, I can't delay much longer. In fact, I should already have left. The first snows have fallen in the mountains, according to the semaphore's reports. It won't be much longer before Hsing-wu's Passage starts to freeze, and I'm afraid the voyage itself won't be very much fun at this time of year, even after we clear the Passage."

  "I know, Your Eminence. Still, they say summer in Tellesberg is much more pleasant than winter here in Zion, so at least you have something nice to look forward to at journey's end."

  "Well, that's certainly accurate enough," Dynnys agreed with a chuckle. "In fact, I sometimes wish the archangels hadn't been quite so immune to the effects of waist-deep snow when they chose the Temple's site. I love Zion's climate in the summer, you understand, but winter is something else again entirely. Even, alas, despite your own charming company."

  It was Madame Ahnzhelyk's turn to chuckle.

  "In that case, Your Eminence, and in case I don't see you again before you leave, allow me to wish you a comfortable voyage and a safe return to us."

  "From your lips to the archangels' ears." Dynnys touched his heart and then his lips, smiling into her eyes, and she rose on tiptoe to kiss him chastely on the cheek.

  It was, he reflected through a pleasant glow of memory, the only chaste thing which had happened to him since entering her door, several hours before.

  Madame Ahnzhelyk's door was one of the more discreet portals in all of Zion. While the Holy Writ recognized that human beings were fallible, and that not all of them would seek the approval of Mother Church's clergy upon their . . . relationships, it was quite strict on the subjects of fornication and infidelity. Which complicated Erayk Dynnys' life somewhat, since both the Writ and the Church's own regulations also required that any churchman who aspired to the ranks of the episcopate must have married. How else could he understand the physical and emotional needs of the wedded believers for whose spiritual well-being he was responsible?

  Dynnys himself had, of course, met that requirement, although he very seldom saw his wife. Adorai Dynnys was neither surprised nor particularly unhappy about that. She'd been only twelve when the Dynnys and Laynohr families arranged the marriage, and she'd been raised to understand as well as Dynnys did how such matters were handled among the Church's dynasties. Besides, she hated Zion's world of social activity almost as much as she disliked the complex maneuvering of the Temple's internal factions. She lived quite happily on one of Dynnys' estates, raising horses, chickens, draft dragons, and the two sons she had dutifully borne for him in the early years of their marriage.

  That left Dynnys, like many of his peers, at loose ends for feminine companionship. Fortunately for him, Madame Ahnzhelyk and her unfailingly lovely and exquisitely trained young ladies were available to fill the void. Always, of course, with the utmost discretion.

  "Ah, well, Ahnzhelyk!" he sighed now, as she escorted him the last few feet to the door and the dignified porter opened it at their approach. "I'm afraid I truly do have to go. Not," he added with a shudder which wasn't entirely feigned as he gazed out the open door at a fall night's cold, drizzling rain, "without more regrets than you can possibly imagine."

  "Flatterer!" Madame Ahnzhelyk patted him on the shoulder with a peal of laughter. "Of course, if the weather is too bad, you could always stay the evening, Your Eminence."

  "- 'Get you behind me, Shan-wei!'-" Dynnys quoted with an answering chuckle, then shook his head. "Seriously," he continued, watching the steamy plumes of his coachmen's and horses' breath rise into the rainy night under his coach's lamps as they awaited him at the curb, "I'd be most tempted to take up your gracious offer. Unfortunately, there are a great many matters which require attention before I can depart for Charis, and I have several meetings scheduled early in the morning. But for that, I feel sure, you could easily convince me."

  "In that case, Your Eminence, I accept my defeat." Madame Ahnzhelyk gave his hand another squeeze, then released it and watched him step out the front door.

  No one, least of all Dynnys, was entirely certain later exactly what happened next. The porter bowed the archbishop through the door, accepting the heavy golden weight of a coin with a murmur of thanks. From his perch high on the carriage's box, Dynnys' senior coachman watched his employer's approach with undisguised gratitude. However pleasant the archbishop's visit might have been for him, the long wait had been cold, wet misery for the driver, his assistant, and the blanketed horses. The assistant coachman holding the horses' heads felt much the same thing, plus a twinge of envy for the way his seated senior partner's voluminous cloak formed a well-draped tent about him. Madame Ahnzhelyk's footman and lantern boy went scurrying ahead of the archbishop, lighting his way and ready to
open the coach door for him. And Dynnys himself settled his thick, fur-lined cloak and started down the broad, smooth steps with his eyes half-squinted against the blowing rain.

  That was when his feet went out from under him.

  Literally.

  Dynnys had never experienced anything quite like the sudden tugging, almost snatching sensation. It was as if a hand had reached out, grasped his right ankle, and pulled on it powerfully. It staggered him, and he was not, unfortunately, a particularly athletic man.

  The archbishop flailed his arms with a most un-archbishop-like squawk of astonishment as he fought for balance. But that tugging sensation didn't let go, and he squawked again—louder—as his feet went out from under him and he tobogganed down the steps.

  Had he considered it, he might have found it odd that he went down feet-first, instead of headfirst. Which, in turn, might have caused him to think rather harder about that peculiar pulling sensation. At the moment, however, he was too busy falling to ponder such matters as they, perhaps, deserved, and he cried out as he hit the cobbled walkway at the bottom of the tall steps. He slammed across it until the avenue's raised, granite-slab curb abruptly stopped him and sent a bolt of anguish ripping through his right leg and shoulder.

  Madame Ahnzhelyk's horrified servants raced after him, and the assistant coachman abandoned his place at the horses' heads to dash towards him. The archbishop shook his head groggily, scraped and bleeding and more than half-stunned by the ugly, slithering tumble. Then he tried to stand up, and cried out again, more loudly, as the injudicious attempt sent waves of pain washing through him.

  "Don't move, Your Eminence!" the assistant coachman said urgently, going to his knees beside the prelate. "You've broken at least one leg, sir!"

  The young man had already ripped off his own cloak. Now he spread it over his fallen patron and looked at Madame Ahnzhelyk's footman.

  "Fetch a healer!" he snapped. "His Eminence is going to need a bonesetter, at least!"

  The white-faced servant gave a single, jerky nod and went dashing off into the night even as Madame Ahnzhelyk came scurrying down the steps. Her face was twisted with genuine concern and dismay as she held a filmy evening cloak over her elaborately coiffured hair and knelt beside the coachman in her flowingly draped silk gown.

  "Don't move, Erayk!" she said, not realizing his servant had already given him the same command. She let one hand rest lightly on his chest. "I can't believe this happened! I'll never forgive myself for it! Never!"

  "Not . . . not your fault," Dynnys told her through gritted teeth, touched by her manifestly sincere worry despite his own pain. "Slipped. Must have been the rain."

  "Oh, your poor leg!" she said, staring at the obviously badly broken limb.

  "I sent for a bonesetter, My Lady," the assistant coachman told her, and she nodded jerkily.

  "Good. That's good." She looked up over her shoulder at her porter, who had followed her down the steps and now stood at her shoulder, wringing his hands. "Styvyn," she said sharply, "don't stand there like a ninny! Get back in the house. I want blankets out here at once! And a pillow for the Archbishop's head. Now, go!"

  "Yes, ma'am!" the porter said, and turned to flee back into her establishment in obedience to her commands.

  * * *

  Merlin Athrawes stood atop the roof of an elegant townhouse across the street from Madame Ahnzhelyk's. He'd been waiting there for the better part of three hours, and he'd come to the firm opinion that he spent entirely too much time loitering on rooftops in the rain. Since he seemed to have acquired the habit, however, he was just as glad that at least a PICA didn't have to feel the cold and wet if it didn't want to.

  He was also glad no one—and nothing—appeared to have noticed him so far. He'd hoped it would work that way, yet he'd had significant reservations about this entire operation. Unfortunately, he'd also come to the conclusion it was necessary.

  His recon skimmer hovered discreetly out of sight, well to the north of the City of Zion, hiding under every stealth system it possessed while its passive sensors watched over the emission signatures Nimue Alban and Owl had detected in their first sweep of the Temple and its environs. The fact that those emission signatures existed still made Merlin extremely uneasy, but he'd come to the conclusion that Nimue's initial hypothesis—that most of the signatures his skimmer was reading were those of the Temple's still-functioning environmental systems—had been correct. Certainly the Temple was "mystically" warm and inviting, despite the increasingly unpleasant weather outside it. Given the local winter climate, that particular "miracle" had to be one of the archangels' more welcome dispensations, he reflected.

  There were still a few other, more powerful signatures Merlin couldn't account for, though, and a part of him wanted to get even closer, take a better look. But prudence suggested otherwise. Whatever they were, they were buried beneath the Temple itself, and while he devoutly hoped they were merely more of the Temple's heating and cooling systems, there was simply no way to tell that. And until he had at least some clue about exactly what those emissions represented—or until he had absolutely no other choice—he wasn't prepared to push for additional information. There were always those orbiting kinetic bombardment platforms to think about. Poking his nose, even by electronic proxy, where any computer controlling the platforms might decide it didn't belong could have unfortunate consequences.

  It was frustrating, to say the very least. If there was one organization he needed to keep close tabs on, it was the Council of Vicars. But unless he'd been prepared to deploy SNARCs—or, at least, their parasites—dangerously close to those unidentified emissions signatures, there was no way to snoop upon the Council's meetings.

  What made that especially worrisome was that even from his less risky coverage of the more junior archbishops and bishops living in Zion, it was clear the Council was growing increasingly restive about Charis. So far, it seemed, that restiveness had yet to attain critical dimensions, but Merlin was coming to the conclusion that he'd rather badly underestimated its underlying strength in the first place. He'd gradually become aware that discussion of Charis cropped up much too often in his SNARCs' coverage for his peace of mind. In private conversation between the Church's senior prelates, as well as in more official settings, and there was a hard edge to many of the discussions he'd overheard.

  In point of fact, the Church hierarchy's apparent level of concern was out of all proportion to the size and population of the kingdom. He was beginning to suspect the Church was better aware than he'd originally believed of the potentialities he himself had sensed in Charis, and Charis' many enemies, led by Prince Hektor and Prince Nahrmahn, were fanning the fire as energetically as they dared.

  The fact that the Church's suspicions of Charis seemed to be at least as much emotional as reasoned played into Hektor's and Nahrmahn's hands. They had to exercise some caution—their own distance from the Temple left their own orthodoxy open to a certain degree of automatic suspicion of its own, especially in the eyes of the Office of the Inquisition—but neither Hektor's Corisande nor Nahrmahn's Emerald had produced anything like Charis' innovativeness. Their agents in the Temple were carefully emphasizing that fact as they spread exaggerated tales of King Haarahld's willingness to "skirt the fringes of the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng," coupled with observations about Haarahld's willingness to "overturn the existing social order," all backed by sizable cash donations.

  Somewhat more sophisticated (or at least discreet) techniques might be required to sway the Vicars themselves, but the more junior ranks of the episcopate and, perhaps even more importantly, the priests and under-priests who provided the Council's staff functions—and who were thus ideally positioned to shape the way those tales were presented to their superiors—responded quite well to simple bribery. So did more than one of the Council's own members, apparently, and Hektor and Tohmas' efforts were slowly but steadily gaining ground.

  Archbishop Erayk was as aware of that as anyone. It had been a
pparent from his discussions with his fellows and the instructions he'd been issuing to Father Mahtaio that he'd recognized he would be expected to look very closely at the situation in Tellesberg during his annual pastoral visit. The Council of Vicars obviously wanted to hear his personal assurance either that the rumors it was hearing were wildly overblown, or that the Archbishop of Charis had taken the necessary steps to correct any problems.

  That, unfortunately, couldn't be permitted, because just this once, Haarahld's enemies were underestimating exactly what one Merlin Athrawes had in mind for the Kingdom of Charis. He had no intention of actually violating the Proscriptions—not yet—but that distinction might well be lost upon an archbishop intent on satisfying the demands of his ecclesiastical superiors.

  Which was why Merlin came to be standing on this miserable, rainswept roof on a bone-chilling autumn night.