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  For Dot Barnette, adopted grandmother extraordinaire.

  The kids love you … and so do we.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue

  July: Year of God 896

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  August: Year of God 896

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  September: Year of God 896

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  October: Year of God 896

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  November: Year of God 896

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  February: Year of God 897

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  March: Year of God 897

  Chapter I

  Epilogue

  Characters

  Glossary

  Table of Archangels

  Church of God Hierarchy

  Tor Books by David Weber

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  “So that’s about it,” Nahrmahn Baytz murmured, sitting back in his favorite chair and gazing at the neatly printed pages in his hand.

  He no longer required the cumbersome interface of the written word—as a virtual personality residing in his own pocket universe he was quite capable of interfacing directly with the artificial intelligence known as Owl—but he’d found he preferred the comforting homeyness of the way he’d processed information when he was alive.

  “Yes,” the slender, black-haired, sapphire-eyed individual sitting across the stone table from him agreed. He—or perhaps she; the jury was still out on that issue—was Nahrmahn’s only regular visitor here on the terrace looking out over the sparkling waters of Eraystor Bay. “I believe I could access the locked files, but my analysis suggests a probability on the order of eighty-three percent that the effort would activate internal security protocols. In that eventuality, the probability that I might extract at least some usable information before complete data dump would approach sixty percent, although the amount of data which might be recovered is impossible to estimate. The probability that the files themselves would be destroyed exceeds ninety-seven percent, however. The probability that security protocols would reconfigure the ‘Key’s’ molecular circuitry, rendering any future examination useless, exceeds ninety-nine percent. Assuming that a civilian Type One AI was used to create the locked files and protective safeguards, the probability that I would myself be overwritten and effectively destroyed would be fifty-nine percent, plus or minus five percent. The probability that my central cortex would survive, albeit with sufficient degradation to preclude self-awareness, would be seventy-two percent, plus or minus the same margin. In that case, the probability of personality reintegration would not exceed thirty-seven percent, although the large number of unknowns precludes refinement of that figure. Assuming that a military Type One AI was used to create the locked files, the probability of my destruction would exceed ninety-nine percent.”

  Nahrmahn considered the calm face and equally calm tone and shook his head. Owl’s self-awareness had achieved full realization and integration only a few months ago, by the standards of the rest of the universe. By Owl’s standards—and his own—far longer than that had passed, and the portly little prince had come to regard the AI as a friend and colleague. Yet there were moments, like this one, when Nahrmahn was forcefully reminded that whatever else he might be, Owl was not a flesh-and-blood being. Nahrmahn never doubted that the AI was just as calm as he sounded discussing the virtual certainty of his own destruction should the decision be to continue the investigation into the “Key of Schueler.”

  He glanced at the polished steel paperweight on the table between them, gleaming with reflected sunlight as it rested on the flattened face which marred the perfection of its spherical shape. It wasn’t actually there any more than the table itself was, of course, but if he picked it up, weighed it in his hands, or hit himself on the head with it, it would certainly feel real. And there was a part of him which would very much have preferred to throw the actual Key into the deep waters of the real Eraystor Bay as a permanent gift to its fishy inhabitants.

  Which, unfortunately, would be as futile as it is impossible, he reflected.

  “While the erasure of the Key and its contents would be unfortunate,” he said out loud, “I imagine we could survive the loss. I feel fairly confident the rest of the inner circle would agree with me that losing you would be … rather more inconvenient, Owl. On a personal, as well as a professional, basis.”

  “I confess that I do not find that particular probability projection pleasant,” Owl acknowledged.

  “I’m relieved to hear it.” Nahrmahn’s tone was dry, and he laid the report on the table, using the Key to hold the fluttering sheets against the brisk breeze blowing in off the bay. “On the other hand, I would dearly love to know what’s in those files.”

  “Aside from the fact that the majority of them are executables and that one of the data files is quite large, I can determine no more without accessing them.”

  Well, I suppose calling a twelve petabyte data file “quite large” is reasonably accurate. Nahrmahn’s thought was as dry as his tone had been as he contemplated how staggeringly huge that number was compared to anything he’d ever imagined might exist when he’d been alive. And it’s the sheer size of the thing that makes me wish we could get into it! But not enough to risk losing Owl. Never enough to risk that!

  “I think we can assume the executables have something to do with whatever’s under the Temple,” he mused, tipping back in his chair aga
in and listening to the rhythmic sound of the surf. “And at least we’ve managed to confirm that whatever it is requires human activation.”

  “Assuming that it is activated in response to the Key, that is correct,” Owl pointed out. “We have not, however, been able to determine that the detection of proscribed technology by the bombardment system’s sensors would not trigger an automatic activation protocol. Nor, for that matter, have we been able to determine whether or not there are additional Keys or even alternative command stations or completely different activation protocols.”

  “Granted.” Nahrmahn nodded. “And there’s nothing in ‘Archangel Schueler’s’ recording to suggest any sort of human agency is going to be required for the ‘Archangels’ ’ millennial visit, either. Unfortunately.”

  “Correct,” the AI’s avatar agreed, and Nahrmahn’s lips quirked. It had taken Owl quite a long time (as AIs measured such things) to grasp the human habit of acknowledging the obvious as a way of indicating one was following someone else’s thoughts. Or, for that matter, to grasp the fact that humans could conceivably think he wasn’t following their thoughts … despite the fact that his old, pre-self awareness persona frequently hadn’t been following them with anything like true understanding.

  The temptation to smile faded as his memory replayed the recordings he’d now viewed over and over. He understood entirely why Paityr Wylsynn and his ancestors had believed they’d been directly touched by God. He would have believed exactly the same thing, had the very image of one of the archangels appeared before him to tell him he and his family had been chosen for a sacred mission. And he also understood why the Wylsynn family had been so fiercely dedicated to its effort to safeguard the soul of the Church of God Awaiting for so long.

  So many generations—so many lives!—dedicated to preserving the purity and sanctity of a lie. The familiar, dull anger stirred deep inside once more. All those Wylsynns, at the very heart of the Church, never knowing or guessing any more than anyone else that she and all her doctrine and all her theology were no more than fabrications deliberately designed to enslave humanity and trap it here on Safehold forever.

  There were times when it was even harder than usual to remind himself that Langhorne, Bédard, and the rest of the Safehold command crew had probably genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. Since his own physical demise, he’d had time to read the copy of Langhorne’s original orders which Pei Kau-yung and Pei Shan-wei had stored here in what had become known as Nimue’s Cave. He knew now how utterly Eric Langhorne had departed from those orders when he reprogrammed the colonists’ memories and created the Church of God Awaiting and its eternal anathematization of advanced technology. And because he knew what those orders had been, even when he truly tried to understand the terror-spawned determination which must’ve driven Langhorne’s decisions, he found it impossible to forgive those decisions.

  But the Schueler Paityr and the rest of his family met through the Key is nothing like the psychopath who could’ve written The Book of Schueler, and that raises yet another maddening question, doesn’t it? Who was the real Schueler? The author of “his” book? Or the “archangel” charging the Wylsynn family to always remember Mother Church’s duty to protect and nurture God’s children?

  Unless they somehow, some way, someday physically conquered the Temple and accessed whatever records might be hidden under it without inadvertently awakening their own destruction (or somehow broke into the data so tantalizingly locked inside the “Key”), it was unlikely they’d ever be able to answer that question. And that was a pity, because Nahrmahn Baytz would rather like to have met the man behind that message if that was the real Schueler.

  He thought about the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the burr of passionate sincerity in the deep, strangely accented voice.

  “We leave you a fallen world,” that voice had said, speaking softly and sadly. He’d had to concentrate hard the first two or three times he’d viewed it, because a thousand years of shifting language had changed so many of its sounds so drastically, yet that had detracted nothing from that sincerity or the power of those level eyes. “It’s not the world we intended, the one we were charged to create, but even Archangels can be touched by evil and twisted, bent and broken. The war which raged here on Safehold after Shan-wei’s Fall is proof enough of that. Yet God has His true plan for all of His work, and especially for all of His children. You who see this message, know that you are God’s children. I charge you in His name never to forget that. Always to remember that however we Archangels may have failed of our charge, however we may have permitted His world to be marred, it’s your task to remember His love and to show a reflection of it in yourselves. It won’t be an easy task. It will bring all too many of you to grief and to loss, and there will be far too many times when it seems a thankless, bitter duty. But it is the most important task any human being could ever assume. I leave you this message because I leave you as my watchmen, my wardens, the guardsmen upon the wall. The purpose of God’s Church is to guide, to cherish, to love, and to serve His children. Do not let her stray from that high and holy charge. Do not let her slip into the errors of pride and arrogance, of the pursuit of earthly power or wealth, of forgetting the destiny for which she was created. Be faithful, be vigilant, be valiant, and know that the purpose and the task you serve is worth the sacrifice I call upon you to make.”

  How could the Wylsynns not’ve been seduced into belief by that message from that man? Nahrmahn wondered now. I know the truth about the “archangels” and the Church, and even knowing I feel the compulsion, the hunger—the need—to believe every word he said. And no wonder Samyl Wylsynn and his brother rejected Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s version of the Inquisition with such loathing! And yet.…

  He sighed heavily, for that was the rub. Whatever the recorded Schueler might’ve said could never change the hideous barbarity of the punishments detailed in the book he’d written. And it was that book, not his secret recording, which had been read and believed and followed by every living Safeholdian for almost a thousand years. Indeed, it was The Book of Schueler’s harsh, uncompromising directions for the fashion in which Mother Church’s “purpose” was to be protected and kept pure which accounted for every drop of blood which had been shed, every atrocity which had been committed in God’s name.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose we’ve pretty much reached the end of what we can extract from the Key, then. And you’re right that we need to remain open to the possibility that some other ‘archangel’—or even Schueler himself—could’ve set up alternate keys or completely separate command stations. In the meantime, though, have you given any more thought to that proposition of mine?”

  “Of course I have, Your Highness.” Owl smiled faintly, clearly amused by the suggestion that he might not have thought about it.

  “And would it be practical?”

  “Within the specified parameters and limitations, yes. I fail to perceive the purpose for it, however,” Owl said. Nahrmahn raised an eyebrow, and Owl tilted his head in a gesture he’d acquired from Nahrmahn himself. “I have, as I am sure you will recall, Your Highness, a less well developed sense of intuition and imagination than a human. I did not say there was no purpose, simply that I failed to perceive one.” He shrugged slightly. “Given the contents of my database, it will be decades before it could conceivably be necessary for me to conduct ‘experiments’ in order to assist humans like Baron Seamount and Ehdwyrd Howsmyn in reacquiring and perfecting lost knowledge and capabilities.”

  “Granted. On the other hand, there are gaps in your own knowledge base, aren’t there? Your records are enormous but finite, and it’s entirely possible the two of us might be able to come up with new and useful capabilities which could be produced within the limitations of your industrial module. And from both of those perspectives, your ability to perform virtual experiments could be quite useful, could it not?”

  “The possibility exists, yet I trust you will forgive me
if I say that I find that the probability that your proposal will serve to divert and entertain you is statistically far greater than that it will lead to an unexpected and decisive new capability, Your Highness. And I trust you will also forgive me if I observe that you are a somewhat unscrupulous—I believe the term ‘devious’ might actually be more accurate—individual.”

  “I am accustomed to getting my own way,” Nahrmahn acknowledged in dignified tones. “At the same time, however, I would point out that getting my way is usually advantageous to those whose purposes I share.”