A Mighty Fortress (86 page)

“Took you long enough,” Cayleb observed, reaching out to clasp forearms with Merlin as Sharleyan moved aside to give him room.

“It
did
take longer than I anticipated,” Merlin confessed. “On the other hand, Ahnzhelyk turned out to be a lot more impressive than I’d anticipated, too.”

“We want to hear all about it,” Sharleyan said. Merlin’s need to maintain the lowest profile possible, electronically speaking, had precluded the sort of daily conversations to which they’d become accustomed. He’d passed along enough information to keep them generally informed, but they knew little of the details.

“We want to hear all about it,” Sharleyan continued, “but we don’t have time for a full report right this minute. Mahrak and Mother will be here anytime now. So anything that they’re not cleared for is going to have to wait until later. Except for what you can squeeze in before they arrive, of course.”

“Understood, Your Majesty,” Merlin said, and bowed slightly.

Baron Green Mountain and Queen Mother Alahnah had been as surprised as almost everyone else when it had been announced Captain Athrawes would be withdrawing from court for an overdue period of meditation. They’d been less happy than some, too, given how handy Merlin had proved when it came to stopping assassination attempts. Still, they’d also recognized that Cayleb and Sharleyan’s confinement to the palace—which the weather would have enforced, even if there’d been no other factors to consider—provided an opportune window for him to do just that without jeopardizing their security. They also knew, better than most, how close he was to Sharleyan and Cayleb, however. Now that he was back, they would probably give the emperor and empress at least a little time to welcome him home. On the other hand, this was supposed to be a working meeting, and there were a great many details to settle before Cayleb and Sharleyan departed for their scheduled return to Tellesberg at the end of the month.

Under the circumstances, Merlin felt sure they’d be along shortly. Fortunately, Lieutenant Franz Ahstyn, Merlin’s second- in- command from Cayleb’s personal detail, had the duty section outside the council chamber. Ahstyn knew about Merlin’s “visions,” and also knew Green Mountain and Alahnah hadn’t been cleared for that knowledge. He could be relied upon to knock on the door and announce the first councilor and queen mother’s arrival instead of simply opening it and ushering them through.

In the meantime— “The short version is that unless something goes incredibly wrong, Ahnzhelyk is going to get herself and all her people—and, trust me, there are more of them than we ever suspected—safely out of the Temple Lands to Siddar City. I’ve managed to figure out her arrangements for getting from there to Tellesberg, as well, and I think they should work fine. It’s going to be a bit ticklish, in some ways, but she has an excellent relationship with the House of Qwentyn, and she’s already booked passage on one of those ‘Siddarmarkian’ ships with Charisian crews which the Qwentyns appear to have acquired.”

He smiled broadly in remembered admiration, but then he sobered. “The other good news is that she managed something quite extraordinary. She has Samyl Wylsynn’s family and the families of four other vicars who were members of Wylsynn’s ‘Circle’ with her. That’s astonishing enough to be going on with, but she’s managed to pull out
thirteen
other vicars’ families, as well, from all over the Temple Lands. And she’s managed to get Archbishop Zhasyn out of Glacierheart and sixteen more of the ‘Circle’s’ bishops and bishops executor...
and their families
.” He shook his head. “That’s over
two hundred
men, women, and children Clyntahn and the Inquisition are searching every-where for. When word gets out that they came up short on that kind of scale, it’s not going to do a thing for Clyntahn’s aura of omnipotence.”

“My God.” Cayleb sounded almost reverent. “How in the name of all that’s truly holy did she
manage
it?”

“Obviously I haven’t been able to ask her for the details, since I didn’t even realize everything she was up to until I was already on my way back here. For that matter, I doubt I’ve actually found
everything
, even now. But from what I’ve seen of the way she operates, it probably didn’t take anywhere near the manpower Clyntahn’s going to assume it did. I’d guess she was probably the only person outside the ‘Circle’ itself to whom Wylsynn had trusted the names of every member of his group, and if I had to pick the single most dangerous thing about her, from Clyntahn’s perspective, it’s that she plans ahead—with a vengeance.

“I’d been keeping tabs on Cahnyr myself, so I’ve got a pretty good feel for what she did in his case, and I’d guess she used the same technique with most of the others. With variations, of course. But, put most simply, she identified the people most at risk because of their association with the ‘Circle,’ and she arranged—years ago in Cahnyr’s case, at least—a network to get them out quickly and quietly in an emergency. Her idea of how to maintain operational security makes anyone else we’ve seen yet—even you, Your Highness,” he smiled at Nahrmahn, “look positively garrulous, too. I’ll guarantee you that not one of the people she was arranging to rescue knew any more about her plans than Cahnyr himself did. That way if one of them was taken, he couldn’t expose the existence of the network to anyone else. And I’m just about as certain that the people she’d contacted to do the rescuing had no idea who
she
was or how to initiate contact with her. It was a cellular system—‘sleeper cells,’ they used to call them back on Old Earth—that was already in place and waiting long before Clyntahn discovered the ‘Circle’s’ existence. All she had to do was get the prearranged execution orders to her... extraction teams.”

“It sounds like we need to hire her to work for
you,
Nahrmahn,” Cayleb said, looking over at the rotund little Emeraldian with a flickering smile.

“It sounds to
me,
Your Grace, as if we need to create her own special bureau and put her in charge of clandestine operations,” Nahrmahn replied very seriously indeed. “I’ve never attempted anything on the scale Merlin’s describing, and certainly not right under the Inquisition’s nose, but I think I have a feel for the difficulties. And for the degree of forethought and planning involved. I realize she had years—decades—to put all this in place, but I’m still deeply impressed.”

“Well,” Merlin’s expression had been sober; now it went positively grim, “I agree with you that I’m impressed, Your Highness, but don’t expect
her
to be.” He inhaled deeply. “She may have gotten two hundred people out; from what Owl’s picked up, though, Clyntahn’s arrested almost two thousand.”

“Two
thousand
?” Sharleyan repeated very softly and carefully, her tone stricken, and Merlin nodded slowly.

“Wylsynn’s ‘Circle’ was larger than we suspected,” he said heavily. “In addition to him and his brother, there were at least twenty other vicars—there may well have been more; at this point, according to the remotes Owl left in Zion, he’s arrested over thirty. In addition, he’s arrested the families of all of the accused vicars—aside from the ones Ahnzhelyk got out—as well as every member of the vicars’ personal staffs and
their
families. And they’ve arrested fifty bishops and archbishops, and all of their immediate families, as well.”

“
Thirty
vicars?” Staynair shook his head, his expression as shocked as Merlin had ever seen it. “That’s a tenth part of the entire vicarate!”

“I’m aware of that, Your Eminence. And I don’t think he’s done yet. It’s obvious he’s taking this opportunity to purge the vicarate of everyone he thinks might have the courage to oppose him. And”— Merlin’s PICA’s face was carved granite—“the Inquisition has already announced it intends to apply the full rigor of
The Book of Schueler
to any ‘vile, forsworn, and damnable traitor who has betrayed his vows to God, the Archangels, and Mother Church, no matter who he may be or what office he may have attained’ and to their families, as well.”

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!”

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...