By Schism Rent Asunder
Safehold 02
(2008)*
David Weber
Contents
Prologue
Year of God 892
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
June, Year of God 892
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
July, Year of God 892
August, Year of God 892
XIV
XV
September, Year of God 892
October, Year of God 892
November, Year of God 892
Characters
Glossary
It was very quiet in the inverted recon skimmer.
It tended to be that way in orbit, aside from the quiet chirping of an occasional audio signal from the skimmer's flight computers, and those only seemed to perfect the silence, rather than interrupt it. The man who had once been Nimue Alban leaned back in the pilot's couch, looking down through the clear armorplast of his canopy at the planet beneath him, and treasured that quiet, serene calm.
I really shouldn't be here, he thought, watching the gorgeous blue-and-white-swirled marble of the planet called Safehold while his skimmer swept steadily towards the dark line of the terminator. I've got way too many things to be doing back in Tellesberg. And I've got no business at all hanging around up here, stealth systems or no.
All of that was true, and it didn't matter. Or, rather, it didn't matter enough to keep him from being here, anyway.
In one sense, there was absolutely no need for him to be up here physically. The Self-Navigating Autonomous Reconnaissance and Communication platforms he'd deployed were capable of transmitting exactly the same imagery to him, without any need for him to see it with his own eyes ... if, indeed, that could be said to be what he was doing. And the SNARCs were far smaller, and even stealthier, than his recon skimmer. If the kinetic bombardment system that lunatic Langhorne had hung in orbit around Safehold really did have first-line passive sensors, it was far less likely to detect a SNARC than the skimmer, and he knew it.
Yet there were times when he needed this silent, still moment, this vacuum-clear eyrie from which he could look down upon the last planet mankind could claim. He needed the reminder of who—what—he truly was, and of what he must somehow restore to the human beings thronging that planet so far below him. And he needed to see its beauty, to ... cleanse his thoughts, recoup his determination. He spent so much time poring over the take from his network of SNARCs, studying the spy reports, listening in on the plans and conspiracies of the enemies of the kingdom he had made his home that it sometimes seemed that that was all there was to the universe. That the sheer -weight of opposition towering up all about him was too vast, too deep, for any single creature to oppose.
The people around him, the people he'd come to care for, were the true antidote to the despair which sometimes threatened him as he contemplated the enormous scope of the task to which he had been summoned. They were the ones who reminded him why humanity was worth fighting for, reminded him of the heights to which mankind could aspire, of the courage and the sacrifice—the trust—of which Homo sapiens was capable. Despite the way their history and their religion had been cynically manipulated, they were as strong and vital, as courageous, as any humans in the history of the race which had once been his own.
Yet, even so, there were times when that wasn't quite enough. When his awareness of the odds against their survival, his sense of desperate responsibility, and the sheer loneliness of living among them but never truly being one of them pressed down upon him. When the burden of his potential immortality against the ephemeral span of the lives to which they were condemned filled him with an aching grief for losses yet to come. When his responsibility for the wave of religious strife even now beginning to sweep around that blue and white sphere crushed down upon him. And when the question of who—and what—he truly was filled him with a loneliness that sucked at his soul like the vacuum outside his skimmer.
It was against those times that he needed this moment, gazing down upon the world which had become his charge, his responsibility. Needed to once more look upon the reality, the fledgling future, which made all the present's harsh demands worthwhile.
It really is a pretty world, he thought almost dreamily. And looking at it from up here puts it all into perspective, doesn't it? Beautiful as it is, important as the human race may be to me, it's only one world among billions, only one species among hundreds of millions, at the least. If God can put that much effort into His universe, then I can damned well do whatever He demands of me, can't I? And—his lips quirked in a wry smile— at least I can be pretty sure He understands. If He can put all of this together, put me right smack in the middle of it, then I've just got to assume He knows what He's doing. Which means all I really have to do is figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.
He snorted in amusement, the sound loud in the cockpit's silence, then shook himself and let the flight couch come upright once again.
Enough planet-gazing, Merlin, he told himself firmly. It's going to be dawn in Tellesberg in three more hours, and Franz is going to be wondering where his relief is. Time to get your molycirc butt home, where it belongs.
"Owl," he said aloud.
"Yes, Lieutenant Commander?" the distant AI in the cavern under Safe-hold's tallest mountain replied almost instantly over the secure communications link.
"I'm headed home. Run a hundred-klick sweep around the alpha base and make sure there's no one hanging around to notice the skimmer on its way to the garage. And take a look at my balcony, too. Make sure no one's in a position to see me when you drop me off."
"Yes, Lieutenant Commander," the AI acknowledged, and Merlin reached for the skimmer's controls.
YEAR OF GOD 892
Eraystor Bay,
Princedom of Emerald
Bright morning sunlight glittered on the crossed golden scepters of the green banner of the Church of God Awaiting. The twin-masted courier ship flying that wind-starched banner as she scudded along on the brisk breeze was little more than seventy feet long, built for speed rather than endurance ... or even seakeeping and stability. Her crew of sixty was small for any galley, even one as diminutive as she was, but her slender, lightly constructed hull was well suited for rowing, and her lateen sails drove her in a rapid flurry of foam as she went slicing across the brilliant sun-splintered water and foaming white horses of the thirty-mile-wide passage between Callie's Island and the northeastern shore of Eraystor Bay.
Father Rahss Sawal, the small fleet vessel's commander, stood on his tiny quarterdeck, hands clasped behind him, and concentrated on looking confident while he gazed up at the seabirds and wyverns hovering against the painfully blue sky. It was harder than it ought to have been to maintain the outward assurance (it would never have done to call it arrogance) proper to the master of one of Mother Church's couriers, and Sawal didn't much care for the reason he found it so.
The Temple's messengers, whether landbound or afloat, enjoyed absolute priority and freedom of passage. They carried God's own messages and commands, with all the authority of the archangels themselves, and no mortal had the temerity to challenge their passage wherever God or His Church might send them. That had been true literally since the Creation, and no one had ever dared to dispute it. Unfortunately, Sawal was no longer certain the centuries-old inviolability of Mother Church's messengers continued to hold true.
The thought was ... disturbing, in more ways than one. Most immediately, because of the potential consequences for his own current mission. In the long run, because the failure of that inviolability was unthinkable. Defiance of the authority of God's Church could have only one consequence for the souls of the defiers, and if their example led others into the same sin ...
Sawal pushed that thought aside once more, telling himself—insisting to himself—that whatever madness had infected the Kingdom of Charis, God would never permit it to spread beyond Charis' borders. The universal authority of Mother Church was the linchpin not simply of the world in which he lived, but of God's very plan for Man's salvation. If that authority were challenged, if it failed, the consequences would be unthinkable. Shan-wei, lost and damned mother of evil, must be licking her fangs at the very possibility in the dark, dank corner of Hell to which the Archangel Lang-horne had consigned her for her sins. Even now she must be testing the bars, trying the strength of her chains, as she tasted the overweening, sinful pride of those who sought to set their own fallible judgment in place of God's. Langhorne himself had locked that gate behind her, with all the authority of eternity, but Man had free will. Even now, he could turn the key in that lock if he so chose, and if he did ...
Damn those Charisians, he thought grimly. Don't they even realize what door they're opening? Don't they care? Don't—
His jaw tightened and he forced himself to relax his shoulders and draw a deep, cleansing breath. It didn't help very much.
His instructions from Bishop Executor Thomys had been abundantly clear. Sawal was to deliver the bishop executor's dispatches to Bishop Executor Wyllys in Eraystor at all costs. That phrase—"at all costs"—had never before been part of Sawal's orders. There'd never been any need for it, but there was now, and—
"Deck there!" The shout came down from the crow's nest. "Deck there! Three sail on the port bow!"
"Well, well," Commander Paitryk Hywyt, Royal Charisian Navy, murmured to himself as he peered through the spyglass. "This should be interesting."
He lowered the glass and frowned thoughtfully. His orders were perfectly clear on this point. They'd made him more than a little nervous when he first received them, but they were definitely clear, and now he discovered that he was actually looking forward to obeying them. Odd. He wouldn't have thought that was likely to happen.
"It's a Church courier, all right," he said a bit louder, and Zhak Urvyn, HMS Wave's ...
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