Wylsynn sat very still, eyes fixed on the archbishop’s face, and somewhere deep inside he felt a taut, singing tension. That tension rose, twisting higher and tighter, and his right hand wrapped its fingers around his pectoral scepter.
“The reason for this meeting tonight is that the Brethren decided it would be best to share that same knowledge with you. Not the safest thing to do, perhaps, and not necessarily the wisest, but the best. The Brethren feel-as I do-that you deserve that knowledge, yet it’s also a two-edged sword. There are dangers in what we’re about to tell you, my son, and not just spiritual ones. There are dangers for us, for you, and for all the untold millions of God’s children living on this world or who may ever live upon it, and I fear it may bring you great pain. Yet I also believe it will ultimately bring you even greater joy, and in either case, I would never inflict it upon you if not for my deep belief that one of the reasons God sent you to Charis in the first place was to receive exactly this knowledge.”
He paused, and Wylsynn drew a shaky breath. He looked around the other faces, saw the same solemnity in all of them, and a part of him wanted to stop the archbishop before he could utter another word. There was something terrifying about the stillness, about those expressions, and he realized he believed every word Staynair had already said. Yet behind his terror, beyond the fear, lay something else. Trust.
“If your purpose was to impress me with the seriousness of whatever you’re about to tell me, Your Eminence, you’ve succeeded,” he said after a moment, and felt almost surprised his voice didn’t quiver around the edges.
“Good,” Cayleb said, reclaiming the thread of the conversation, and Wylsynn’s eyes went to the emperor. “But before we get any further into this, there’s one other person who needs to be party to the discussion.”
Wylsynn’s eyebrows rose, but before he could frame the question, even to himself, the door between Staynair’s spacious office and Ushyr’s much more humble adjoining cubicle opened and a tall, blue-eyed man in the cuirass and chain mail of the Imperial Guard stepped through it.
The intendant’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief. Everyone in Tellesberg knew Merlin Athrawes had been sent to Zebediah and Corisande to protect Empress Sharleyan and Crown Princess Alahnah. At that moment, he was almost seven thousand miles from Tellesberg Palace as a wyvern might have flown. He couldn’t possibly be here!
Yet he was.
“Good afternoon, Father Paityr,” Merlin said in his deep voice, one hand stroking his fierce mustachios. “As I told you once in King Haarahld’s presence, I believe in God, I believe God has a plan for all men, everywhere, and I believe it’s the duty of every man and woman to stand and contend for Light against the Darkness. That was the truth, as you confirmed for yourself, but I’m afraid I wasn’t able to tell you all the truth then. Today I can.”
Paityr Wylsynn’s face was ashen, despite his deeply tanned complexion.
Twilight had settled beyond the windows while Merlin, Cayleb, and Staynair took turns describing the Journal of Saint Zherneau. The blows to Wylsynn’s certainty had come hard and fast, and he knew now why Merlin was present. It was hard enough to believe the truth-even to accept that it might be the truth-with the seijin sitting there watching his face in the archbishop’s office when Wylsynn had known he was thousands of miles away.
Of course, the fact he’s here doesn’t necessarily prove everything they’ve just told you is the truth, Paityr, does it? his Schuelerite training demanded. The Writ tells us there are such things as demons, and who but a demon could have made the journey Merlin claims to have made in this “recon skimmer” of his?
Yet even as he asked himself that, he knew he didn’t believe for a moment that Merlin was a demon. In many ways, he wished he did. Things would have been so much simpler, and he would never have known his deep and abiding faith had been built entirely upon the most monstrous lie in human history, if only he’d been able to believe that. The priest in him, and the young seminarian he’d been even before he took his vows, cried out to turn away. To reject the lies of Shan-wei’s demon henchman before they completed the corruption of his soul-a corruption which must have begun well before this moment if he could accept even for an instant that Merlin wasn’t a demon.
And he couldn’t reject them as lies. That was the problem. He couldn’t.
A nd not just because of all those examples of “technology” Merlin’s just demonstrated, either, he thought starkly. All those doubts of yours, all those questions about how God could have permitted someone like Clyntahn to assume such power. They’re part of the reason you believe every single thing these people have just told you. But all the things they’ve said still don’t answer the questions! Unless the answer is simply so obvious you’re afraid to reach out and touch it. If it’s all truly a lie, if there truly are no Archangels and never were, then what if God Himself was never anything but a lie? That would explain His permitting Clyntahn to murder and kill and maim in His name, wouldn’t it? Because He wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort… since He never existed in the first place.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Merlin said softly. “I’m sorry we’ve had to inflict this on you. It’s different for me. One thing my experience here on Safehold has taught me is that I’ll never truly be able to understand the shock involved in having all that absolute, documented certainty snatched out from under you.”
“That’s… a very good way to describe it, actually, Seijin Merlin. Or should I call you Nimue Alban?”
“The Archbishop and I have an ongoing argument about that,” Merlin said with an odd, almost whimsical smile. “To be honest, Father, I still haven’t decided exactly what I really am. On the other hand, I’ve also decided there’s no option but to continue on the assumption that I am Nimue Alban-or that she’s a part of me, at any rate-because the life or death of the human species depends on the completion of the mission she agreed to undertake.”
“Because of these… Gbaba?” Wylsynn pronounced the unfamiliar word carefully.
“That’s certainly the greatest, most pressing part of it,” Merlin agreed. “Sooner or later, humanity is going to encounter them again. If we do that without knowing what’s coming, it’s highly unlikely we’ll be fortunate enough to survive a second time. But there’s more to it than that, too. The society created here on Safehold is a straitjacket, at best. At worst, it’s the greatest intellectual and spiritual tyranny in history. We- all of us, Father Paityr, including this PICA sitting in front of you-have a responsibility, a duty, to break that tyranny. Even if there is no God, the moral responsibility remains. And if there is a God, as I believe there is, we have a responsibility to Him, as well.”
Wylsynn stared at the PICA-the machine-and he felt a sudden almost irresistible need to laugh insanely. Merlin wasn’t even alive, and yet he was telling Wylsynn he believed in God? And what was Wylsynn supposed to believe in now?
“I know what you’re thinking at this moment, Paityr,” Staynair said quietly.
Wylsynn’s gray eyes snapped to him, wide with disbelief that anyone could truly know that, yet that incredulity faded as he gazed into the archbishop’s face.
“Not the exact words you’re using to flagellate yourself, of course,” Staynair continued. “All of us find our own ways to do that. But I know the doubts, the sense of betrayal-of violation. All these years, you’ve deeply and sincerely believed in the Holy Writ, in The Testimonies, in Mother Church, in the Archangels, and in God. You’ve believed, my son, and you’ve given your life to that belief. And now you’ve discovered it’s all a lie, all built on deliberate fabrications for the express purpose of preventing you from ever reaching out to the truth. It’s worse than being physically violated, because you’ve just discovered your very soul was raped by merely mortal men and women, pretending to be gods, who died centuries before your own birth.”