His lips twitched at the thought, yet he wasn’t really worried about it. He’d be able to spot any lookout before the lookout could spot him, and a PICA could easily spend an hour or two submerged in the ship’s wake, clinging to a rope and waiting patiently until the coast was clear. Not only that, but he’d be back aboard several hours before local dawn, with plenty of darkness to help cover his return. In fact, that was the real reason for the timing of the conference with Father Paityr. They’d had to make sufficient allowance for Merlin’s transit, and he’d had to plan on both departing and returning under cover of night if he wanted to be certain he wasn’t observed.
And that’s exactly what you’re going to be doing, he told himself. So why don’t you stop worrying about that and start worrying about what Father Paityr just told you, instead?
His brief almost-smile disappeared, and he shook his head.
I guess fair’s fair. You’ve cheerfully torn lots of other people’s worlds apart by telling the truth about Langhorne and Bedard. It’s about time somebody returned the compliment.
He closed his eyes and his perfect PICA’s memory replayed the conversation in Maikel Staynair’s office.
“What do you mean ‘Not everything about the Archangels and Mother Church was set forth in the Writ or The Testimonies,’ my son?” Staynair asked, his eyes narrowing with concern as Paityr Wylsynn’s tone registered.
“I mean there’s more than one reason my family’s always been so deeply involved in the affairs of Mother Church, Your Eminence.”
Wylsynn’s face was tight, his voice harrowed with mingled bitterness, anger, and lingering shock at what he’d already been told. He looked around the others’ faces and drew a deep breath.
“The tradition of my family’s always been that we were directly descended from the Archangel Schueler,” he said harshly. “All my life, that’s been a source of great joy to me-and of a pride I’ve struggled against as something unbecoming in any son of Mother Church. And, of course, it was also something Mother Church and the Inquisition would flatly have denied could have been possible. That’s one of the reasons my family was always so careful to keep the tradition secret. But we were also specifically charged to keep it so-according to the tradition-when certain knowledge was left in our possession.”
Merlin’s molycirc nerves tingled with sudden apprehension, but he kept his face expressionless as he cocked his head.
“May I assume your possession of the Stone of Schueler was part of that tradition and knowledge, Father?”
“Indeed you may.” The bitterness in Wylsynn’s tone was joined by corrosive anger. “All my life I’ve believed this”-he lifted his pectoral scepter, the disguised reliquary which concealed the relic his family had treasured for so long-“had been left as a sign of God’s approval of our faithfulness.” He snorted harshly. “Except, of course, that it’s nothing of the sort!”
“I don’t know why it was left with you, Father,” Merlin said gently. “I’m pretty sure whoever handed it to your ancestors-and it may actually have been Schueler, for all we know-didn’t have any particular faith in God. From what I’ve heard about your history, though, that hasn’t kept your family from believing in Him. As for what the ‘Stone of Schueler’ actually is, it’s what was called a ‘verifier.’ Once upon a time, it might’ve been called a ‘lie detector,’ instead. And however it came into your possession, Father, it truly does do what your ancestors were told it did. It tells you whether or not someone is telling you the truth. In fact,” he smiled wryly, “it’s a full-spectrum verifier, which means it can also tell when a PICA is telling you the truth. Which required a certain… circumspection when I answered the questions you once put to me in King Haarahld’s throne room.”
“Given what you’ve just told me about Safehold’s true history, I’d say that was probably an understatement,” Wylsynn replied with the first thing like a true smile he’d produced in the last hour or two.
“Oh, it was!” Merlin nodded. “At the same time, what I told you then was the truth, exactly as it insisted.”
“I believe that,” Wylsynn said quietly. “What I’m struggling with is whether or not I should believe anything else I once thought was true.”
There was silence for a moment, then the young man in the Schuelerite cassock shook himself.
“I’m going to have to deal with that. I know that. But I also understand why you have to be leaving shortly, Merlin, so I suppose I’d better get on with it.”
He drew a deep breath, visibly bracing himself, then sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap.
“When I was a boy, my father and Uncle Hauwerd told me all the tales about our family’s history and the role we’d played in the vicarate and in Mother Church’s history. Or I thought they told me all the tales, at any rate. It was enough to make me realize we had a special, joyous duty, and it helped me understand why my family had stood for reform, held tight to the truth, for so many centuries. Why we’d made so many enemies as corruption set deeper and deeper into the vicarate. The voice of conscience seldom makes comfortable hearing, and never less comfortable than to those who know deep in their hearts how far short of their duties and their responsibilities they’ve fallen. All of the orders teach that, and it was enough-I thought then-to explain everything.
“Yet it wasn’t until I’d graduated from seminary and been ordained that Father told me the complete truth about our family and our traditions. That was when he showed me the Stone of Schueler and the Key.”
He paused, and Merlin’s eyebrows quirked. He looked quickly at the others and saw the same expression looking back at him. Then all of them returned their attention to the young priest.
“The ‘Key,’ Father?” Merlin prompted.
“According to the secret history Father showed me, the Key and the Stone were both left in our possession by the Archangel Schueler himself. The Stone you know about. The Key must be another piece of your ‘technology,’ Seijin Merlin, although it’s less spectacular at first glance than the Stone. It’s a small sphere, flattened on one side and about this far across”-he held up thumb and forefinger, perhaps two inches apart-“which looks like plain, polished steel.” His lips flickered in a small smile. “In fact, it’s so plain generations of Wylsynns have hidden it in plain sight by using it as a paperweight.”
There was a ghost of genuine humor in his voice, and Merlin felt himself smiling back, but then Wylsynn continued.
“By itself, the Key really is nothing but a paperweight,” he said soberly, “but in conjunction with the Stone, it becomes something else. The best way I can describe it is as a… repository of visions.”
Merlin straightened in his chair, his expression suddenly intent.
“Father, I never had the opportunity to actually examine the Stone. I just assumed that it filled only a small section of your scepter’s staff. But it doesn’t, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Wylsynn confirmed. “It fills almost the full length of the staff, and it can be removed. When it is, it mates to the Key. Its lower end clings unbreakably to the flat face of the Key, as if they’ve become one, and they can be released from one another only by someone who knows the proper command.” His eyes watched Merlin carefully. “Should I assume you know how it works and why?”
“I’d have to examine both of them to be certain,” Merlin replied, “but I’m reasonably sure that among the instructions your family was left was a ritual which regularly exposed the Stone to direct sunlight?” Wylsynn nodded, and Merlin shrugged. “What that was doing, Father, was to charge-to empower-the Stone. In time, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about. For the moment, simply accept that there’s nothing demonic or divine in the process; it’s a simple matter of physics.
“At any rate, what you’re calling the Key is a memory module, a solid chunk of molecular circuitry. You could fire it out of a cannon without hurting it, and that single sphere you’ve described could easily contain all the knowledge in all the libraries of the entire Charisian Empire with space left over. The problem is getting it out, and for that you need a power source. So I’m reasonably sure that when you remove the Stone entirely from the scepter, the length of it that ‘mates to the Key’ doesn’t glow the way the rest of it does, right?”