David Weber - How firm a foundation

But there was no mystery about their availability in the Empire of Charis. They were regularly reprinted and distributed in the bookstores and in the Empire’s newspapers, posted in broadside sheets in villages and town squares. Not because the Church or the Crown required it, but because those bookstores and newspapers’ readers, the citizens of those villages and towns, demanded it.

Yet for all that, there was a special tension in the air. There were rumors, whispers, that the archbishop had something especially weighty to discuss today. The air would have been supercharged on God’s Day under any circumstances, given the religious aspects of the war being waged against Charis, but there was more to it this time, and as the Cathedral Choir’s voices faded, they were replaced by a silence so intense a muffled cough would have sounded like a cannon shot.

Archbishop Maikel rose from his throne and crossed to the carved and gilded pulpit. Anyone who’d ever seen the archbishop knew that purposeful stride of his, that sense of powerful forward movement and focused determination. Yet it was more pronounced, more deliberate, even than usual today, and the congregation’s tension ratcheted higher.

He reached the pulpit and stood for a moment with his hand on the Holy Writ and his eyes closed, his head bent in silent prayer. Then he raised his head once more, looking out over the wide expanse of packed, silent pews.

“Today’s Scripture is written in the fifth chapter of The Book of Chihiro, verses ten through fourteen,” he said clearly, and opened the Writ. Pages whispered as he turned them, the tiny sound distinctly audible in the stillness, but when he’d found the passage he sought, he didn’t even look at it. He didn’t need to, and he stood with his hand resting on the huge volume, eyes sweeping the congregation, while he recited from memory.

“‘Then the Archangel Langhorne stood upon Mount Heilbronn, looking down upon the Field of Sabana, where so many had fallen opposing evil, and his eyes were wet with tears, and he said, “The time must come when only the sword of justice can oppose the many swords of evil-of pestilent ambition, of greed, of selfishness and cruelty, of hatred and terror. Might may be used to destroy might, and strength may be used to oppose strength, but justice is the true armor of the godly. That which cannot be done with justice must not be done at all, for only the Dark cannot stand in the brilliance of God’s Light. So you will abide by justice, by keeping faith with that which you know is right. You will do justice not in the heat of battle or the white fury of your anger, be that anger ever so justified. You will do justice soberly, with reverent respect for that love of one another God has placed within you. You will not condemn out of hatred, and he who uses justice for his own ends, he who perverts justice into that which he wishes it to be rather than what it truly is, that one shall be accursed in the eyes of God. Every man’s hand shall be against him. As he sows, so shall he reap, and the mercy he denies to others shall be denied to him in his turn. I will not shield him from his enemies. I will not hear him when he calls to me in his extremity. And in the final judgment, when he comes before the throne of God, I will not see him. I will not speak for him, and God Himself will turn His back upon him as he is cast forever into that bottomless abyss reserved for him throughout all eternity.”’”

The stillness couldn’t possibly have gotten more absolute… yet somehow, as Staynair spoke, it did. God’s Day was a day for celebration, for joyous acknowledgment and thanks, not for the grim, harsh passages of The Book of Chihiro and the clashing iron of condemnation. That was true for any cathedral, any sermon preached upon this day, and to hear such words out of the gentle Archbishop of Charis only made them even more shocking.

Staynair let the stillness linger, then turned his head slowly, surveying the congregation.

“My sermon today will be brief, my children,” he said then. “It is not one I relish. This is supposed to be a day of joy, of the rediscovery of God’s love for His children and the expression of their love for Him, and I wish with all my heart that I could preach that message to you today. But I can’t. Instead I must speak of news which has reached us here, and which will reach homes and families everywhere within the Empire of Charis all too soon.”

He paused, the stillness wrapping itself around him in the smoke chains of incense and the spangled light shafts of the cathedral’s stained glass. His archbishop’s crown glittered in that light, his vestments gleamed with jewels and precious embroidery, and his eyes were dark, dark.

“Word has come to Tellesberg from Gorath,” he said finally, and somewhere in the cathedral a woman’s voice cried out indistinctly. Staynair’s eyes turned in its direction, but his voice never faltered.

“King Rahnyld has chosen to yield Sir Gwylym Manthyr and all of the men under his command who were honorably surrendered to the Dohlaran Navy to the Inquisition. They were consigned to the Inquisition at the end of May. By this time, my children, they have already reached Zion. No doubt they are enduring the Question even as I stand before you.”

More voices joined that first, single protest, crying out. Not in denial of Staynair’s words, but in grief-and anger-as the thing they had all feared would come to pass was finally announced to them. Rage guttered in the depths of those voices, and hatred, and growing under both of them-newborn, yet already with bones of iron and fangs of steel-was vengeance.

The priests and deacons relaying Staynair’s sermon to the crowds outside had repeated his words, and the same instant upwelling of anger rolled across Cathedral Square and down the avenues. That vast crowd’s fury could be heard even inside the cathedral, even over the voices being raised within its walls, and Staynair raised one hand, commanding silence.

He got it, and it was a testimony to his stature, his congregation’s love and respect for him, that he did. That he could.

It didn’t come instantly, that silence. Even for him, it came slowly, limpingly, like a catamount unwillingly surrendering its prey, and it spread even more slowly to the throngs beyond the cathedral’s walls. Yet it came at last, and he looked out across the pews once more.

“Our brothers and fathers and sons and husbands have been given over into the hands of torturers and murderers serving that vile corruption which sits in the Grand Inquisitor’s chair,” the normally gentle and loving archbishop said harshly. “They have been given over not because of anything they’ve done that deserves such hideous punishment, whatever Zhaspahr Clyntahn and his coterie of sycophants and butchers may claim. They’ve been surrendered to suffer all of those agonies and the final and culminating agony of the Punishment of Schueler because they dared- dared, my children!-to defend their families and their loved ones and their fellow children of God against exactly that which they themselves are even now suffering. They dared to defy the evil and corruption and the arrogance of the Group of Four, and Zhaspahr Clyntahn has perverted his office, just as he has perverted his immortal soul, to punish that defiance not of God, but of him.

“This is not the act of the Temple Loyalists, although many among them may be so deceived by the Group of Four’s lies that they applaud it. This is not the act of the neighbor across the street from you who continues to oppose the schism, the ‘heresy,’ of the Church of Charis. This is not the act of someone who truly seeks to know and to understand God’s will. It is not the act of someone who respects law, or justice, or truth, or anything in God’s wide world which is more important than himself.”