A Mighty Fortress (52 page)

That was something he’d learned to factor into his analyses of Merlin’s “visions.” It was not, however, knowledge he had ever shared with his wife, and the fact that the emperor and empress had apparently decided it was time for Ohlyvya to discover at least part of what he himself already knew had to have come as a significant surprise for him, as well. If so, it wasn’t evident. He simply cocked his head with a mildly speculative expression which would probably have fooled just about anyone. Merlin had come to know the plump little prince at least as well as Nahrmahn had come to know him, however, and he could almost literally see the thoughts flickering through that agile brain.

“Of course, Your Grace,” he murmured out loud, and crossed to the table. Cayleb’s wave indicated a chair between himself and Maikel Staynair, and Merlin bowed in acknowledgment. He unbuckled his weapons harness, standing his sheathed katana and wakazashi against the wall, then pulled back the indicated chair and seated himself in it.

“Wine, Merlin?” Staynair inquired with a whimsical smile. “If you please, Your Eminence,” Merlin replied, and watched Princess Ohlyvya’s bemused expression from the corner of one eye as the primate of the Church of Charis poured wine for a mere bodyguard. The archbishop passed the glass across, and Merlin nodded in gratitude and took a sip.

“Nahrmahn, Ohlyvya,” Cayleb said then, gathering back up the prince’s and princess’ attention, “as I’m sure both of you have already deduced, Sharleyan and I invited Merlin to join us at table to make a point. And that point, as I’m sure both of you have also already realized, is that Merlin is quite a bit more than simply my bodyguard. In fact, Ohlyvya, Nahrmahn was already acquainted with that minor fact, although I’m aware he hasn’t shared that knowledge with you.”

“Indeed he hasn’t, Your Grace,” Ohlyvya said when he paused for a moment, and despite herself, there was an edge of anxiety in her voice.

“We know that,” Sharleyan said quickly, reaching out to touch the older woman’s arm reassuringly. Ohlyvya looked at her, and the empress smiled. “Trust me—when I say we
know
Nahrmahn has never betrayed a single one of our confidences, even to you, we truly do. You’ll understand what I mean after Merlin completes his explanation.”

“Explanation, Your Majesty?” Ohlyvya’s confusion showed much more clearly this time, and Sharleyan nodded. Then she glanced at Merlin.

“Why don’t you go ahead and begin?” she invited. “Of course, Your Majesty.” Merlin bent his head in acknowledgment, then looked across the table at Ohlyvya. “Prince Nahrmahn has already heard a part of this, Your Highness,” he said, “but most of it will be equally new to him. Or, perhaps I should say he’s about to discover that the information he’s already been given was . . . incomplete. I apologize for that, Your Highness,” he said, shifting his attention to Nahrmahn for a moment, “but it was one of those ‘need to know’ items, as I feel confident you’ll understand when I finish explaining.”

“Should I assume something has changed and given me the ‘need to know’ after all,
Seijin
Merlin? And, for some reason, Ohlyvya, as well?” Nahrmahn asked the question calmly, but he also reached out to take his wife’s hand reassuringly. There was something profoundly touching about the protectiveness in that small gesture, Merlin thought, and felt his heart warming to the pudgy Emeraldian.

“It’s not so much something that’s changed as a decision process which has worked its way through, Your Highness,” Merlin told him. “There were more people involved in making that decision than even you can have suspected, I think. And most of those other people lacked the . . . unfair advantages, you might say, which you were already aware I myself possess. That tended to make them more hesitant—well,
cautious
would actually be a better word—than they might have been otherwise.”

“But not
you
?” Nahrmahn murmured with a smile, and Merlin shrugged. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Cayleb, Sharleyan, and Arch- bishop Maikel weren’t already quite confident about how it will work out, Your Highness. None of us is infallible, so it’s possible we’re all wrong about that. I don’t think that’s very likely, though.”

“Well, I suppose
that’s
a relief,” Nahrmahn said. “On the other hand, perhaps you should go ahead and begin that explanation. Now.”

“Certainly, Your Highness.”

Despite the potential gravity of the moment, Merlin found it difficult not to chuckle at the mingled exasperation, impatience, and humor in Nahrmahn’s tone. Then the temptation faded, and he leaned forward in his chair, folding his hands around the base of his wineglass as he looked soberly at Nahrmahn and Ohlyvya.

“I realize, better than either of you probably even begin to suspect, just how disillusioned both of you are with the Group of Four,” he said very levelly. “I know—I don’t suspect, I don’t think, I don’t estimate, I
know
—that Princess Ohlyvya is just as disgusted and heartsick and angry as Cayleb or Sharleyan themselves over the way Clyntahn and Trynair are using and abusing the Church’s authority and the faith of every Safeholdian. By the same token, I know your own disgust over the Group of Four’s blatant corruption and taste for tyranny is far deeper than you’d really like anyone else to guess, given that cynical, pragmatic, ruthless politician’s image you’ve spent so long cultivating, Your Highness.” He smiled faintly at Narhmahn’s slightly affronted expression, yet no trace of his amusement touched his somber tone as he continued. “But what neither of you know is that the Group of Four are scarcely the first to abuse the faith of all Safeholdians for their own purposes. In fact, they’re following in a tradition that was established even before the Day of Creation.”

The husband and wife sitting across the table from him stiffened in unison, their eyes widening in confusion, and this time his smile was far, far grimmer.

“You see, just over a thousand years ago—”

The silence in the dining room was profound when Merlin finished his explanation two hours later. The faint, icy sigh of the winter wind, plucking at cornices, battlements, and gables, tapping invisible fingers on the closed windowpanes, was clearly audible, despite the solidity of the palace’s ancient stony bulk.

Nahrmahn and Ohlyvya Baytz sat side by side, holding hands as they had from the moment Merlin began, and Ohlyvya’s eyes were huge, dark pools in the lamplight, as they clung to the communicator, the compact holographic projector, and the bare wakazashi lying on the table before her. Merlin wondered, looking at her, which of his bits of story- proving technological evidence she’d found most convincing. In some ways, he suspected, it had probably been the wakazashi. The communicator and the projector both
looked
alien, strange, even magical. The wakazashi didn’t, yet she’d watched him use the impossibly sharp battle steel blade to whittle long slivers of iron off the poker he’d selected from the dining- room fireplace tools. The fact that the wakazashi
didn’t
look alien yet obviously was had probably made it even more . . . impressive.

And I’d better make damned sure that poker disappears for good
, he reminded himself.
Better for the servants to wonder where it went than find it chopped up like a Christmas goose
.

He felt a brief pang at his own choice of similes and wondered if it was his recitation of humanity’s true history which had recalled it to his thoughts.

Nahrmahn’s expression gave away much less than his wife’s did. Her wonder, and the ghost- haunted eyes that went with it, were plain. Nahrmahn’s eyes were merely hooded, thoughtful, his lips pursed as if he were pondering an everyday conundrum rather than a complete and fundamental shift in the universe he’d always thought existed.

“Well?” Cayleb said quietly, at last, into the silence.

Ohlyvya’s head snapped up, her eyes flitting to the emperor like startled rabbits. Nahrmahn simply looked at Cayleb, but his free hand reached across to join the one already holding his wife’s. He patted the back of her hand gently, reassuringly, then looked across the table at Merlin.

“It wasn’t Her Majesty’s bodyguards who saved her life, after all, was it,
Seijin
Merlin?” he asked calmly. “Not entirely.”

“Not entirely, no, Your Highness.” Merlin’s voice was low, his sapphire PICA eyes dark. “Without them, I would’ve been too late, though . . . and it’s my fault so many of them died. I dropped the ball badly that day.”

Sharleyan stirred in her chair, as if she wanted to dispute his verdict, but she didn’t, and Nahrmahn smiled faintly.

“I’ve just been replaying that entire morning in my mind.” His tone was almost whimsical. “Here I thought you’d explained so much, when it turns out there was so much
more
you didn’t even touch on!” He shook his head. “I have to admit that a few things make a lot more sense now than they did then, though. For one thing, I’ve been persistently perplexed by the extent to which Their Majesties seem to think so much alike. Mind you, I’ve had enough experience of how well a man and a wife can learn to read one another’s minds. And”— the skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled briefly but warmly at Ohlyvya—“of the way they can still surprise one another, even after years. But you two”— he transferred his gaze back to Cayleb and Sharleyan—“haven’t been together that long, which is why you’ve amazed me, more than once, by how smoothly your actions and decisions have coordinated despite the fact that you were months of travel time apart. The way Her Majesty decided on her own to come home to Chisholm after the assassination attempt, for example. That was exactly what I felt needed to be done. In fact, it was what I advised rather strongly that very morning, but it had never occurred to me that she might actually do it so promptly. Now I understand how the two of you have managed it.”

“In fairness to Cayleb and Sharleyan, Your Highness, they didn’t have the advantage of instant communication until
after
the assassination attempt,” Merlin pointed out, and Nahrmahn nodded thoughtfully.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “And they were operating almost that smoothly even before that, weren’t they?”

“Yes ‘they’ were,” Cayleb said rather dryly. “Which brings me back to my original question, Your Highness.”

“I won’t say it doesn’t come as a considerable surprise, Your Grace,” Nahrmahn acknowledged. “Of course, I suspect you’d be a bit disappointed if it hadn’t! The odd thing, though, is that I don’t think it’s really
shocked
me.”

“It hasn’t?”

There was a faint but distinct tremor in his wife’s voice. He looked at her quickly, and she gave a slightly shaky smile at the concern in his eyes.

“I can safely say it shocked
me,
” she continued. “And”— she turned her eyes to Cayleb and Sharleyan—“I have to admit it disturbs me, as well. Even with all of
Seijin
Merlin’s evidence, you’re asking us to believe a great deal. Or perhaps I should say to
disbelieve
a great deal. You’re not talking about just the Group of Four anymore. Not just about corruption in the Church, or about evil men twisting God’s message. You’re telling us the message
itself
is a lie. That the faith to which we’ve trusted our souls—the souls of our
children—
is nothing more than one enormous falsehood.”

There’s steel in that woman’s soul,
Merlin thought respectfully.
She’s telling the truth when she says she’s shocked, but she’s cutting straight to the core of the entire story, what really
matters
to her
.

“That’s exactly what Merlin is telling you, in part,” Staynair responded before anyone else could. She looked at the archbishop, and he smiled sadly at her. “The Church of God Awaiting
is
a lie, the ‘enormous falsehood’ you just called it,” he said. “But the men and women who created that lie built it out of fragments of genuine belief in God. They stole pieces of the truth to build a lie, and that’s what’s made it so damnably—and I choose my adverb with care, Your Highness—believable for so long. But as Merlin said when he began, there really isn’t that much difference between Eric Langhorne and the Group of Four. Aside from the fact that, whether we agree with him or not, Langhorne truly could argue that the very survival of the human race depended upon the success of
his
lie.”

Ohlyvya’s eyes narrowed, and Staynair shrugged.

“I won’t dispute a single thing Merlin’s had to say about Langhorne and Bédard and the rest of the ‘Archangels.’ They were mass murderers and, clearly, megalomaniacs, and what they created was a monster and an abomination before God. I’m a Bédardist myself, and discovering the truth about the patron of my order was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. But having said that, the Order of Bédard’s done an enormous amount of good over the centuries. I believe it’s grown into something quite different from what Adorée Bédard had in mind when she was busy ‘reprogramming’ the minds of helpless, sleeping people to make them believe the lie, but I’ve also been forced to admit I might be wrong about that. We know
what
she and Langhorne did; we will never know what they were truly
thinking
when they did it. I’m not proposing that the nobility of their motives, assuming they actually possessed any such thing, justifies their acts. I’m simply saying that we, as human beings, have a tendency to judge on the basis of what
we
understand, what
we
see, even when we know intellectually that there are almost certainly things we
don’t
understand and haven’t yet seen. We do that with other humans. We do it even with ourselves, when you come right down to it. I think we ought to recognize that, Your Highness. And, just perhaps, that we might try to avoid doing the same thing to God.”