Midst Toil and Tribulation Read online

  The Inquisitor smiled benignly as Maigwair’s eyes lit, and Duchairn closed his own eyes in despair. Maigwair had been in an understandable state of near panic ever since the Charisians had unveiled the existence of their exploding round shot. The possibility that he’d finally be able to put the same weapons into the hands of his own far more numerous troops had to come like a reprieve from a death sentence. He’d gladly overlook the deaths of a few hundred thousand—or even a few million—innocent Siddarmarkians if the outcome offered him an opportunity to equalize the difference between Mother Church’s combat capabilities and those of her enemies.

  Especially when the possibility of a military success in the field will probably keep him out of the Inquisition’s sights, as well, Duchairn thought bitterly.

  He drew a deep, deep breath, then straightened and opened his eyes once more. It was his turn to look across the table at Clyntahn, and he saw something cold and pleased glittering in the other man’s eyes.

  “I can’t argue with you or Allayn about where we are now, however we got there, Zhaspahr,” he made himself say. “I agree it’s profoundly regrettable the situation should’ve erupted so suddenly and uncontrollably. I’m deeply concerned, however, about reports of starvation—starvation among Mother Church’s loyal children, as well as the heretics. I think it will be essential for us to give priority to moving food supplies into the areas controlled by her faithful sons. I realize there will probably be some conflict between purely military and humanitarian transport needs, but we’ll have until the snow melts to make plans. I fear”—he met Clyntahn’s gaze levelly—“that we’ll lose far too many lives to starvation, cold, disease, and privation before spring, but it’s essential Mother Church show her concern for those faithful to her. That’s no more than her children deserve … and the very least they will expect out of us as her vicars.”

  Their gazes locked, and Duchairn knew it was there between them. Knew Clyntahn recognized that this was a point from which he would not retreat. He saw the familiar contempt for his own weakness, his own softness, in the Grand Inquisitor’s eyes, saw the disdain in the twist of Clyntahn’s lips at how cheaply he could buy Duchairn’s compliance—his assumption of complicity, for that was what it would amount to. Yet it was the best bargain the treasurer could hope for at this table, in this conference room, and both of them knew that, too.

  Silence hovered for a moment, and then Clyntahn nodded.

  “Of course they’ll expect it from us, Rhobair.” He smiled thinly. “And you’re the perfect choice to organize it for us.”

  “Thank you, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said as Trynair and Maigwair murmured their agreement. “I’ll try to cause the least dislocation possible in purely military movements.”

  He returned Clyntahn’s smile with one of his own while black murder boiled in his heart. But more than simple hatred simmered at his core. He sat back in his chair, listening to Clyntahn and Maigwair discussing the new weapons in greater detail, and his eyes were cold as he contemplated the future. It was astounding, really. Zhaspahr Clyntahn understood plots, cabals, treachery, and treason. He understood lies and threats, recognized the power of terror and the sweet taste of destroying his enemies. He knew all about the iron rod, how to break the bones of his foes. Yet for all his power and his ambition and ruthless drive, he was utterly blind to the deadly power of gentleness.

  Not yet, Zhaspahr, he thought softly. Not yet. But one of these days, you may just discover that the hard way. And if God is good, He’ll let me live at least long enough to see you do it.

  .IV.

  Gorath Cathedral, City of Gorath, Kingdom of Dohlar

  “Therefore, with angels and the Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we glorify your glorious Name, evermore praising You and saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, creator of all the world, heaven and earth are full of Your glory. Glory be to You, O Lord, our maker. Amen.”

  Lywys Gardynyr, Earl of Thirsk, signed himself with Langhorne’s scepter, rose from the kneeler, and seated himself in the richly upholstered pew with a suppressed grimace for the soft depth of that upholstery.

  He’d been raised on his family’s estates, far from the Kingdom of Dohlar’s capital city and its cathedral, and he really preferred the plain, wooden pews of his youth to the glittering luxury of Gorath Cathedral. Of course, he preferred a rather plainer and less ostentatious lifestyle in general than that to which the wealthy and powerful of Gorath treated themselves. He’d found that distaste for ostentation becoming steadily more pronounced where religion was concerned, and he felt it now, even though he had no choice but to acknowledge the magnificence of the cathedral’s architecture, statuary, and stained glass. There was no denying the glitter of its altar service, the smoothly gleaming perfection of its floor, paved in the golden stone for which Dohlar was famed and set with the Archangels’ personal sigils, the majesty of its twin scepter-crowned steeples. He’d made his obligatory visit to the Temple in far-off Zion, and he knew Gorath Cathedral was but a smudged copy of the very home of God on earth, yet despite its smudges, it towered high into the heavens to the glory of God and the archangels. And despite his cross-grained preferences, its beauty was almost enough to help him forget, at least momentarily, the war being waged for the heart and soul of Mother Church.

  Almost.

  Now he watched Bishop Executor Wylsynn Lainyr lower his hands from the upraised position of supplication and turn from the altar to face the sparsely occupied cathedral. He crossed to the pulpit and stood behind it and its gold and gem-encrusted copy of the Holy Writ. But instead of opening the splendidly illuminated volume, he simply folded his hands upon it.

  Thirsk looked back at the bishop executor stonily, face carefully expressionless. He didn’t like Lainyr. He hadn’t especially liked Ahrain Mahrlow, Lainyr’s predecessor, either, but he’d found himself deeply regretting Mahrlow’s heart attack, especially when he’d found himself increasingly at odds with Lainyr’s policies and the way the bishop executor had insisted upon treating the Charisian prisoners who’d surrendered to him. He’d heard the details of what had happened to those same prisoners after he’d been ordered to surrender them to the Inquisition, as well, and those details had filled him with a cold and bitter self-loathing. He’d had no choice. It had been his duty, and triply so: as a noble of the Kingdom of Dohlar, charged to obey his king’s commands; as the commander of the Royal Dohlaran Navy, charged to obey his lawfully appointed superiors; and as a son of Mother Church, bound to obey her commands in all things. And then there’d been his duty as father and grandfather to do nothing that might give Ahbsahlahn Kharmych, the Archbishopric of Gorath’s Schuelerite intendant, an excuse to cast his family to the same Inquisition which had butchered those prisoners of war.

  He knew all of that, and none of it made him feel any less unclean. Nor did he expect what was about to happen here in this glittering cathedral to change that.

  He glanced to his right, where Bishop Staiphan Maik, the navy’s special intendant, sat between the Duke of Fern, King Rahnyld IV’s first councilor, and the Duke of Thorast, Thirsk’s immediate superior. Maik’s face wore as little expression as his own, and he remembered the auxiliary bishop’s advice to him the day the peremptory order to surrender his prisoners had arrived. It hadn’t been the advice he would have anticipated out of a Schuelerite, but it had been good.

  Better than I realized at the time, the earl thought grimly. Especially since I hadn’t realized—then—just how closely the girls and their families are being watched. Purely for their own protection against crazed Charisian assassins, given my role in handing the Charisian Navy the only defeat—modest though it may’ve been—it’s ever suffered. Of course.

  He felt his jaw muscles ache and forced himself to relax them. And the truth was, he didn’t know which infuriated him more—the discovery that the Inquisition and the Royal Guard had decided to “protect” his family to make sure they remained hostages for his own obedience or
the fact that he couldn’t truly decide even now whether or not he would have continued to obey if his family hadn’t been held hostage to ensure he did.

  It’s supposed to be clear-cut. Black and white—right and wrong, obedience or disobedience, honor or dishonor, godly action or service to Shan-wei. I’m supposed to know where my duty lies, and I’m supposed to do it without fear of any consequences I may suffer for doing what I know is right. And in any other war, it would be almost that clear-cut, almost that simple. When one side tortures prisoners to death and the other treats its prisoners decently, without abuse or starvation or the denial of healers, it should be easy to know where honor and justice—yes, and God and the archangels!—stand. But this is Mother Church, the keeper of men’s souls. She speaks with Langhorne’s own authority in our mortal world. How dare I—how dare anyone—set his merely mortal, fallible judgment in opposition to hers?

  That was a question too many people had been forced to confront in the last five years, and the sheer courage—or arrogance—it had taken for so many of them to decide against Mother Church filled Lywys Gardynyr with mingled horror and awe. A horror and awe made only deeper by the growing hunger he felt to make the same decision.

  No, he told himself harshly. Not against Mother Church. Against that sick, murderous son-of-a-bitch Clyntahn and the rest of the “Group of Four.” Yet how much of that anger of mine, that hatred, is Shan-wei’s own snare, set before me and all those many others to seduce us into her service by perverting our own sense of justice? The Writ doesn’t call her “the seducer of innocence” and “the corrupter of goodness” for nothing. And—

  “Brothers in God.” The bishop executor’s voice interrupted the earl’s thoughts. All eyes focused upon him, and he shook his head, his expression grim. “I have received directions from Archbishop Trumahn, sent from Zion over the semaphore, to speak to you about fearful tidings. It’s for that reason I requested all of you to join me here in the cathedral this afternoon. Partly because this is by far the best place for me to give you this news, and partly so that we might join in prayer and supplication for the archangels’ intervention to protect and comfort two innocent victims of Shan-wei’s spite and the machinations of sinful men who have given themselves to her service.”

  Thirsk felt his jaw tighten once more. So he’d been right about the reasons for this unexpected gathering of the kingdom’s—or, at least, the capital’s—highest nobility … and the senior officers of the Dohlaran army and navy.

  “I’m sure that by now all of you, given your duties and your sources of information, have heard the wild tales coming out of Delferahk,” Lainyr continued harshly. “Unfortunately, while there may have been little truth in much of what we’ve heard, there has, indeed, been a basis for it. Princess Irys and Prince Daivyn have been kidnapped by Charisian agents.”

  A rustling stir ran through the cathedral, and Thirsk snorted as he heard a handful of muttered comments. What is it actually possible some of these men hadn’t heard the “rumors” Lainyr was talking about? If they were as poorly informed as that, the kingdom was in even more trouble than he’d thought it was!

  “That is not the story you’re going to hear from Shan-wei’s slaves and servants.” Lainyr told them. “Already Shan-wei’s claim that the prince and princess were rescued rather than kidnapped has set its poisonous roots in the credulous soil of parts of Delferahk. In due time, no doubt, it will become the official lie spread by the so-called Charisian Empire and its eternally damned and accursed emperor and empress. Yet the truth is far different. The Earl of Coris, charged to protect the Prince and to guard his sister, instead sold them to the same Charisians who murdered their father in Corisande. Indeed, some evidence has emerged to suggest it was Coris who provided the blasphemer excommunicate Cayleb’s assassins with the means to enter Manchyr without detection to commit that murder. The Inquisition and King Zhames’ investigators have yet to determine how he communicated with Cayleb and Sharleyan Delferahk, yet the proof that he did is self-evident, for the ‘guardsmen’ King Zhames allowed him to recruit to protect the legitimate ruler of conquered, bleeding Corisande instead aided in his kidnapping.

  “And lest anyone believe for even one instant that it was not a kidnapping, let him reflect upon this. The Charisian agent who led in this crime was Merlin Athrawes himself—the supposed seijin who serves as Cayleb Ahrmahk’s personal armsman. The Charisian agent who, through the use of Shan-wei’s foul arts, massacred an entire company of the Delferahkan Royal Guard who sought only to protect Daivyn and Irys. Guardsmen who were sent to protect those defenseless, orphaned children on the direct instructions of Bishop Mytchail, Delferahk’s intendant, after he was forewarned of the threat by no less than the Grand Inquisitor himself. Father Gaisbyrt, one of Bishop Mytchail’s most trusted aides, and another member of his order, sent to be certain of the Prince’s safety, were murdered at the same time.

  “At least two survivors of the Guardsmen heard Princess Irys herself crying out for rescue, begging them to save her brother from the same murderers who butchered her father, but Shan-wei has stepped more fully into our own world than ever since the Fall itself. We don’t know what deviltry she armed her servant Athrawes with, but we know mortal men found it impossible to stand before it. Before he was done, Athrawes had burned half Talkyra Castle to the ground and blown up the other half. He stole the finest horses from King Zhames’ royal stable, he and the traitor Coris bound Princess Irys—bound a helpless, desperately struggling young maiden—to the saddle, and he himself—Athrawes, ‘Emperor Cayleb’s’ personal servant—took Prince Daivyn up before him despite the boy’s cries for help, and they rode from the burning fortress where Prince Hektor’s children had been protected into the night.”

  Lainyr turned his head slowly, sweeping the pews with bleak, cold eyes, and Thirsk wondered how much—if any—of the bishop executor’s tale was true. And whether or not Lainyr himself believed a word of it. If he didn’t, he’d missed a stellar career upon the stage.

  “They rode east,” the prelate continued in a cold, flat voice. “They rode east into the Duchy of Yarth until they reached the Sar River. And at that point, they met a party of several hundred Charisian Marines who had ascended the Sar in a flotilla of small craft while the Earl of Charlz’ forces were distracted by the wanton rape and pillage—the total, vicious destruction—of the defenseless town of Sarmouth. A single platoon of Delferahkan dragoons intercepted the kidnappers, but they were in turn ambushed by the hundreds of Charisians hidden in the woods and massacred almost to the man. A handful of them escaped … and bore witness to the casual, callous murder of yet another consecrated priest of God who’d sought nothing but to rescue a captive girl and her helpless brother from their father’s murderers.

  “And then they escaped back down the Sar to Sarmouth, where they were taken aboard a Charisian warship which will undoubtedly deliver them to Cayleb and Sharleyan themselves in Tellesberg.”

  The bishop executor shook his head, his eyes like stone, and touched his pectoral scepter.

  “It chills the heart to think—to imagine, even for a moment—what may befall those innocent victims in Charisian hands,” he said quietly. “A boy of barely ten years? A girl not yet twenty? Alone, without protectors in the same bloody hands that butchered their father and older brother. The legitimate Prince of Corisande, in the grip of the godless empire which has conquered and pillaged that princedom and given Langhorne alone knows how many innocent children of God over into the grips of its own heretical, blasphemous ‘church.’ Who knows what pressure will be brought to bear upon them? What threats, what privations—what torture—would such as Cayleb and Sharleyan shrink from inflicting upon their victims to bend them to their will?” He shook his head again. “I tell you now, my sons—it’s only a matter of time before those helpless children are compelled to repeat whatever lies their captors put into their mouths.

  “And lest anyone believe this was anything other than the outcome
of a long, carefully laid strategy, consider the timing. Daivyn and Irys were stolen away from their protectors at the very instant Greyghor Stohnar was plotting to sell Siddarmark to Shan-wei! Can you conceive of the consequences if he’d succeeded? Of how the credulous, the weak, among Mother Church’s children might have reacted to the simultaneous rebellion and apostasy of one of Safehold’s true great kingdoms and the ‘spontaneous and voluntary’ acceptance of the Charisians’ savage conquest of Corisande by its rightful Prince? And what boy of such tender years would withhold that acceptance with not simply himself but his innocent sister—his only living relative—in the hands of heretics and torturers?

  “No, my sons, this was a meticulously thought out, organized, and executed strategy, as monstrous as it was ambitious, and while it may have failed in Siddarmark, it succeeded in Delferahk. The future ramifications of Coris’ treason and Charis’ ruthlessness are yet for us to discover, but I tell you now that we must be wary. We must be on our guard. The Charisians have Daivyn and Irys, and they will force them to tell whatever lies best suit Charisian purposes. We have only the truth—only eyewitnesses to murder and kidnapping and arson, to rape and pillage—and Shan-wei, the Mother of Lies, knows how to defile the truth. That’s a game she’s played before, one which led to the destruction of Armageddon Reef and mankind’s fall from grace into the captivity of a sinful nature, and we dare not permit it to succeed this time any more than Langhorne permitted it to succeed the first time. It’s essential that the truth be known, far and wide, and that no one be permitted to spread Shan-wei’s filth unchallenged. That’s the message Archbishop Trumahn sends us in the Grand Inquisitor’s name. As I stand here, the same message is being transmitted to every kingdom, every princedom, every cathedral, every intendant in all the world, and I call upon you as Mother Church’s faithful sons, to do your part in protecting the truth against the foul fabrications of priest killers, regicides, blasphemers, and heretics.”