War in Heaven (35 page)

The way was now open for the Fellowship's fleet to retreat. If Bardo had now advised the Sonderval of his great victory, it would have taken at least five hundred seconds for the message to reach him. Radio waves are slow, creeping at light speed through space like worms across black sands. Five hundred seconds, in a battle such as they now fought, were almost for ever; in such a segment of time an entire fleet of ships might be destroyed. And so Bardo had taken a great gamble. Envisioning the struggle for the thickspaces as it would unfold, he had picked the latest possible moment when the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth battle groups would have driven off the Ringists. And then, in his first message to the Sonderval (the one delivered by Odinan Rodas), he had promised that the thickspaces would be open by this time. That Bardo beat this guess by fifty-four seconds would always fill him with pride.

And so the Sonderval's call for retreat rang out to the Fellowship's fleet. He ordered every pilot from every battle group to find a mapping to a point-exit within the three thickspaces that Bardo's ships held open. He said that they should map through to Kesava, there to fall out and regroup around that little blue star. His hard-pressed pilots in the centre needed no further encouragement to flee the deadly spaces of Mara's Star. Especially for the trapped women and men of the Second Battle Group under Helena Charbo, they welcomed their Lord Pilot's command as if God himself had promised them a new life. Within seconds, the three thickspaces filled with ships falling out of the manifold — and falling almost instantly back in on their quick journey across the stars to Kesava. Gold ships and deep-ships and black ships fell out as the stellar windows opened in thousands of quick flashes. At first this great swarming of ships was like ten thousand fireflies gathering into a shimmering cloud. And then space itself came open in vivid reds and pale running blues, brilliant fireworks of silver and gold and violet and all the other colours of light. Mostly, the lightships were the last to arrive and fall through. And the last of the last were the lightships of the Sonderval's First Battle Group.

However, the Sonderval himself never arrived. In order that as few as possible of his group's lesser ships would be lost, he had ordered his thirteen remaining lightships to guard the retreat of the First Battle Group. Although surrounded by three cadres of Ringist lightships and perhaps sixty cadres of lesser ships, the Sonderval's lightship pilots streaked in and out of the manifold in a dazzling pattern meant to beguile and vex the Ringists. With elan and a rare display of their art, they kept them at bay — but only for a few moments. This was enough time for the last of the black ships to escape into the thickspaces, and for the First Battle Group's lightships to flee as well. But one of the lightships, the
Rose of Armageddon
piloted by the young Arrio Ajani, became trapped in a folding thinspace. No point-exits to realspace could he find that weren't guarded by at least one of the Ringist lightships. The moment that he fell out into the black crush of the night, one of the Ringist pilots would quickly send him to his death. The Sonderval might have abandoned him to his fate; some said that it was his duty to do so. Certainly, his arrogance aside, he couldn't have thought that Arrio possessed an equal importance to himself, not as pilot, not as an inspiration to the Fellowship. Perhaps something in Arrio — his youth, his eagerness to prove himself as a pilot, his bright brown eyes — called to the Sonderval.

There are mysteries to the human soul, marvels that unfold endlessly down to its deepest depths. For no reason that the Sonderval ever told anyone, he decided to help Arrio Ajani. And so rather than make a mapping to the thickspaces and the freedom that lay beyond, he took the
Cardinal Virtue
against the ten lightships attacking Arrio. He must have known that he was giving up his life. The battle
is
God's, and although the Sonderval piloted his ship with all the grace and knowledge of a god,
this
battle he could not win. Like light itself, the
Cardinal Virtue
fell in a glorious shimmering fury against Jin Takenya and Konane Jael in the
Silver Snake.
In a moment of time, he destroyed them. But then in the next moment, Salome wi Maya Hastari, in the
Golden Butterfly
, and Yevatha li Tosh, caught him mapless and helpless as a naked man trapped on the ice of the sea. It was Salome Hastari who claimed to have sent the
Cardinal Virtue
into Mara's Star. In the last moment of his existence as a man, there was a grim smile on the Sonderval's lips and a strange, wild look in his eyes. And then the atoms of his blood and his brilliant, beautiful brain fused into light. Thus died Thomas Sonderval, Lord Pilot of the Fellowship of Free Worlds, master of the Great Theorem, discover of the Hell's Gate, rival and friend of Mallory Ringess.

He did not die in vain. Arrio Ajani made use of his sacrifice, taking the
Rose of Armageddon
into the first thickspace and thence escaping to Kesava. Other than a few hundreds of stragglers from the other groups arriving by the moment, the whole of the Fellowship's fleet other than the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth battle groups had now fallen through to the imagined safety of this star. Then Bardo commanded Alesar Estarei and Cristobel the Bold to take their groups through as well, and this they did. His set commanders, Lara Jesusa and Duncan li Gur and all the others, began leading their ships through in good style. Of all the fleet, the
Sword of Shiva
was the last ship to abandon the violent spaces of Mara's Star. Bardo himself held this point of honour out of bravura and concern for his other ships, yes; but also because he wanted one last look at the order of the Ringist cadres should they decide to follow the other ships.

But the Ringists had suffered enough of battle for one day. Salmalin the Prudent, having survived two lightship duels and a near miss by an exploding hydrogen bomb, was in no mood to pursue the Fellowship's fleet. Prudently, he ordered his cadres to fall back to the spaces of the more easily defended Morriah Double, there to reassemble and console themselves over the death of friends and battlemates. For their losses had been staggering. Sixty-three Ringist lightship pilots (eight accounted for personally by Bardo) had fallen to their deaths inside Mara's Star. And at least six thousand of the lesser ships would never be seen again. The Fellowship's losses were even more fearsome: seventy lightships and eight thousand lesser ships, more than a fifth of the entire fleet. And, as everyone would soon learn, if not for Bardo's brilliant leadership, the day would have gone much worse.

And all this — and much more besides — Danlo saw as he lay wounded in little stone cell many trillions of miles away. He saw each of the thousands of ships as they came apart within the fires of Mara's Star. He heard the final screams of many of the pilots, and felt the terrible quick heat of hydrogen plasma burning them alive. He said prayers for the dead pilots of both fleets whom he had known: "Nicabar Blackstone,
mi alasharia la shantih
, Ona Tetsu,
mi alasharia
, Charl Rappaporth,
mi alasharia
, Thomas Sonderval ... " In truth, he prayed for everyone. The names of all the fifteen thousand pilots who had died in the battle came to him like voices whispering in the wind, and he spent the rest of the night saying their names in remembrance.

And when he had finished, there was blood on his lips and a fierce pain stabbing through his head. His burns tormented him as if he himself had fallen naked into the fires of Mara's Star. "
Shantih, shantih,
" he whispered in formal ending to his prayer. "Peace, peace." But then, as he looked off into the endless shimmering stars of the universe, his eyes deepened with a wild pain, and he knew that there would be no peace. For the greater battle was still to come, and only those few who had died had seen an end to this terrible war.

Know, my godlings, the power and the glory of the infinite Ninth: it is as vast and deep as all the universe; it is as bright as a new star, as perfect and indestructible as pure, eternal light.

— from the
Devotionaries
of Lord Hanuman li Tosh

The first official news of the battle came to Neverness on the 21st of winter in the year 2959. On that bright, sunny day a pilot of the Order, Nitara Tal in the
Olber's Paradox
, fell out of space to tell of the Ringists' great victory. Of course, since the Ringists hadn't managed to destroy the Fellowship's fleet and their losses had been terrible, their victory wasn't quite as crushing as Nitara made it seem. And this wasn't really the
first
news that the people of Neverness had of the killing frenzy near Mara's Star. Two days earlier, on the 19th of winter when Danlo arose to eat his morning meal of toast and coffee, he told the godling who served him of what he had seen in the star-fields of his mind. The young godling — Kiyoshi Telek — then told a friend of Danlo's marvellous vision, and this friend in turn told at least five other godlings. By midday, every Ringist coming in and out of the cathedral wanted to discuss this miracle. Danlo was already famous for his great remembrance years ago, his experience of the One Memory. Some said that the scryers, in their visions of times yet to be, were really remembering the future; they believed that Danlo's vision, if true, must be nothing more, than an act of scrying. But others pointed out that no scryer had ever described future events in such terribly beautiful detail. (Perhaps, the cynics said, out of the scryers' fear of being exposed as false prophets.) By day's end, the rumour of Danlo's feat had spread throughout the city. It seemed that even the lowliest harijan or wormrunner wanted to debate whether it was possible for a man to apprehend the lightning flashes of events occurring far away in space. And then, two days later, Nitara Tal stood before Hanuman li Tosh and Lord Pall and Lord Mor — and all the others in the College of the Lords. And her description of the battle almost exactly matched Danlo's vision. This unexplained phenomenon delighted some of the assembled lords and amazed them all. And it frightened Hanuman li Tosh. Hanuman had always known that Danlo could look into his heart, and now he feared that Danlo could look into his secret doings as well. Out of fear, then, he laid secret plans to destroy the source of his fear.

But others had other plans. While Danlo met each day of pain and solitude with courage — playing his shakuhachi and willing himself to heal — Demothi Bede campaigned for his freedom. As did Jonathan Hur, who sent various members of the Kalla Fellowship into Hanuman's cathedral on missions to undermine Hanuman's authority. Through the icy streets of the Old City the winter wind whistled — along with whispers of Hanuman's iniquity. By the 24th of winter, even some of Hanuman's closest godlings began to wonder why the Lord of the Way had decided to keep Danlo as a prisoner.

Of course, Hanuman had devised a fiction to justify this crime. He maintained that Danlo was only a 'guest' seeking sanctuary in the cathedral's chapter house; he had come there to pray for an end to the war. As for Danlo's burns and wounded fingers, he explained these in the simplest of ways: out of despair and compassion for all those who had burned to death inside Mara's Star, Danlo had mutilated himself. This was the Alaloi way, the way that Danlo had been taught as a child; once, as a young novice, Danlo had slashed his own forehead with a sharp rock in atonement for the death of all eighty-eight members of the Devaki tribe. And now the faces of fifteen thousand men and women screaming like wraiths in the starfire haunted Danlo. In truth, Hanuman said, this terrible vision had broken Danlo's mind. It had made Danlo imagine that the very cetics sent to heal him — and Lord Hanuman himself — had tortured him. Hanuman admitted that he feared not only for Danlo's sanity but for his very life. It was possible, Hanuman said, that having failed in his mission to stop the war, Danlo would find a way to join the fallen pilots in death.

No one called Hanuman a liar, to his face. Ivar Zayit, the godling who had witnessed part of Danlo's torture, would not talk to anyone about what he had seen, nor would the two warrior-poets, Jaroslav Bulba and Arrio Kell. And as for Radomil Morven, he seemed to have disappeared from the city. His friends who came to the cathedral to make inquiries were given to understand that if they didn't wish to disappear as well, they should concern themselves with professing their faith in the Three Pillars of Ringism and following the Nine Stages towards godhood.

As Danlo gained strength and his fame spread to even the darkest districts of the Farsider's Quarter, one man schemed to force Danlo's release. This was Benjamin Hur, he of the fierce spirit and fiery face. It was Benjamin who first suggested that Danlo should be the leader of the Kalla Fellowship; if they could secure Danlo's freedom, he said, even the most devoted Ringists might leave Hanuman like glittlings drawn by the sun. Surely Danlo must see that he had no hope of stopping the war otherwise. If only they could convince Danlo to take his rightful place as his father's chief disciple, then they might begin the long work of restoring Ringism to its purity and purpose.

And so Benjamin Hur set loose a time of terror not seen in Neverness since the Dark Year when the Great Plague had come to the city. He gave his fanatical followers rings filled with matrikax poison should they ever be captured and called them his ringkeepers to honour them. It was a ringkeeper who slew Deror Chu in revenge for Danlo's torture, and three more who died beneath Jaroslav Bulba's flashing knife in a partially failed attempt to assassinate these two warrior-poets. One woman — Pualani Keth — smuggled a body bomb into the cathedral and was only stopped from blowing up herself and Hanuman at the last moment. A keen-eyed godling, trained by Hanuman himself, read the tells of terror on Pualani's face and ordered her taken away to an empty cell for a scanning. (He also ordered the poison ring ripped from her finger before she could break it open and drink its deadly contents.) There, in the screaming darkness below the chapter house, Jaroslav used his knife yet again to cut the bomb from Pualani's swollen belly. When he had finished, he held up a sphere of bloody white plastic explosive the size of a newborn child. He declared that the bomb would have been quite sufficient to vaporize Hanuman as he stood on the red-carpeted altar conducting the evening remembrancing ceremony; it might even have destroyed the cathedral itself. Before dying of what the warrior-poet did to her then, Pualani confessed her mission to bring down the cathedral — and all those false Ringists who had betrayed Mallory Ringess too.