War in Heaven (90 page)

"Some day," Danlo said, returning to the presence of Malaclypse's curious gaze and the gleam of his killing knife, "you will return to Qallar. You will challenge your lord to a duel, whether with poems or knives, it will be your choice. But in the end, you will win."

"And then?"

"And then you will become lord of the warrior-poets. And you will make a new rule for your Order."

"And what will this rule be, then?"

"
Not
to kill all potential gods," Danlo said. "But rather to die protecting the lives of human beings. You see, across the Civilized Worlds, all the way out through the stars of the Vild to Tannahill and beyond, so many blessed human beings are about to be born."

Danlo's heart beat three times as he sensed that Malaclypse was as close to saying yes as the artery throbbing in his neck. Then the sounds of boot leather stamping against stone filled the stairwell leading up to the sanctuary — obviously, the guards that Malaclypse had killed at the bottom of the stairs had finally been discovered. Soon, even as Malaclypse began to move forwards, four young godlings hurried into the room. One of them was Ivar Zayit, whom Hanuman had trusted almost as much as Surya Surata Lai and Jaroslav Bulba. But he seemed not to know Danlo's true identity, for he stared at the dead bodies on the floor and cried out in horror, "Mallory Ringess! Mallory Ringess — what has happened here?"

Two of the godlings held lasers ready in their uncertain hands. The fourth godling, a slender boy who had once been a harijan, brandished only a shiny new knife. He stood near Hanuman's body, gazing at the red ring on Malaclypse's hand and the long killing knife that he held.

"I had to kill them," Danlo said. His voice flowed out sad and deep and sounded almost strange to him. "They had betrayed my church and brought war on innocent children, so I killed them."

This simple statement seemed to astonish Ivar Zayit into inaction, but one of the godlings holding a laser turned as if to ask him what they should do.

"I have returned, as I promised," Danlo said. "I have returned to stop this bloody war."

In the space between heartbeats, Malaclypse caught Danlo's gaze, and his violet eyes flashed in silent affirmation of all that Danlo had asked of him. Very slightly, he bowed his head. Then, with a rare and frightful quickness, he edged forwards yet another step and insinuated his body between Danlo and the four godlings. Upon seeing a warrior-poet of two red rings ready to protect Danlo, the godlings lowered their lasers. Apparently, they had heard the stories of how warrior-poets could fall into accelerated time and move at a speed thrice that of ordinary men. Apparently, they doubted their ability even to trigger the lasers' firing studs before Malaclypse could slash out with his killing knife. And they must have wondered how Danlo, whom they believed to be Mallory Ringess, had slain three warrior-poets. Then, too, they were godlings whose ultimate loyalty lay not with Hanuman li Tosh or even with the church that he had perverted, but with the god they worshipped as Mallory Ringess. And here, now, in a miracle of which they had only dreamed, their god stood before them fairly radiating his will to make peace.

"What should we do?" the godling with the knife whispered to Ivar Zayit.

And Ivar Zayit, who was an intelligent man — and a idealistic man who had once embraced the Three Pillars of Ringism before falling victim to Hanuman's promises of power — hesitated for a long and terrible moment. And then he bowed his head to Danlo and said, "He is Mallory Ringess, and we should do what he asks of us."

Needing no further prompting, the three other godlings put away their weapons and bowed deeply, too.

"We must hurry, then," Danlo said, returning their bows. He nodded to Malaclypse almost imperceptibly. From the streets outside came cries and shouts and the pip-pop of bullet-guns firing deadly bits of metal. "I want there to be no more killing."

With a last look at Hanuman, he led the way out into the hallway and down the stairs. Malaclypse placed himself closely behind him, followed by Ivar Zayit and the others. In turning his back on the godlings, Danlo decided to trust them with his life. And such was his faith in them that it seemed never to occur to them that they shouldn't be trusted. Even Ivar Zayit stared at Danlo as if he were caught up in the aura of purpose and possibilities that emanated from him like a flaming corona surrounding a star.

Infinite possibilities.

And so as Danlo reached the bottom of the stairs, he pushed open the doors that gave out into the nave of the cathedral. The two godlings whom Malaclypse had killed lay sprawled on the floorstones in a single pool of blood. There were dead and dying godlings everywhere: crumpled along the dark aisle abutting the nave's sweeping open spaces, and curled up near the altar, and moaning and crying on the prayer mats laid out neatly in their rows. One godling, a young woman, lay slumped against one of the great stone pillars that supported the cathedral's vault high above. She still clutched a bullet-gun in her dead hand, and her head drooped down almost touching her breasts. Apparently, she had been caught up in some kind of explosion, for her left eye had been blown out and her brains extruded from the socket, spilling out in a bloody mass and dripping down along her nose. The sight of other such personal tragedies burned into Danlo's eyes wherever he looked. Although dawn was just breaking over the city, the nave showed only the light of a few candles, so it was hard to see. But through the yellow glow and the shadows playing over the lacy stonework, he made out the forms of godlings stationed along the walls and windows. Bits of broken glass sparkled like jewels against the floorstones everywhere, especially along the south transept and the great eastern windows, whose lower panels had been knocked out. For a moment — but only a moment — Danlo watched as a couple of godlings bravely exposed themselves in an open window and traded laser fire with ringkeepers of Benjamin Hur's army that occupied the surrounding streets. He watched a beam of ruby light flash through a broken panel of glass, nearly scoring the top of a godling's shaved head. And then, through the smells of burning wax, broken entrails and blood, he approached the altar and took a deep breath. He spoke four simple words, and his voice rang out into the cathedral like a bell: "The war is over!"

And suddenly the two hundred godlings defending the cathedral turned from the broken windows towards the altar. There Danlo mounted the red-carpeted stairs and stood next to a stand of flaming candles so that the godlings could see who spoke to them.

"The war is over," Danlo said again. "Hanuman li Tosh fomented this war for his own glory and insane dreams, and so he betrayed the spirit of Ringism and all of you, as well. But it is all over, now."

Just then a bullet burned through one of the broken windows and ricocheted off the wall above Danlo in a spray of stone and dust. And one of the godlings crouching along the east window motioned frantically with his laser for Danlo to come down off the altar. He, like everyone else, had been told that they were fighting to protect the life of Mallory Ringess, and protect him he would.

"Lord Mallory," he cried out, "please come down and return to the tower with Lord Hanuman! You must keep yourself safe!"

And another godling near him looked at Malaclypse and Ivar Zayit standing on the bottom stair of the altar and asked, "Where is Lord Hanuman, then? Is he still in the tower? Is he well?"

"Hanuman li Tosh is dead," Danlo suddenly announced. For a moment the only sounds in the cathedral were the wind blowing through the broken windows and the moans of the wounded. "He sleeps with the stars, now. His time had come, and I had to send him on."

Danlo felt two hundred pairs of eyes burning into him like lasers, but no one dared to question him. No one dared to oppose him or move against him in any way because he was Mallory Ringess and he had said the war was over — and now they each trembled with the sudden hope that they might live, after all.

"Open the doors!" Danlo called out. "Someone find a white cloth to wave from the windows so that we can open the doors."

One of the godlings cut loose a bolt of white silk from the robes of a dead scryer and managed to fashion a crude white flag. She waved it from the eastern window and then moved along the windows of the south transept. Almost immediately, from the streets outside, came the stillness of fire and the silence of the city.

"Open the doors, now!" Danlo said again. And four godlings rushed through the nave to do as he asked. In little time, the cathedral's great western portals stood open to the moaning wind of a bitterly cold deep winter morning.

"They might think that it's a trap," Ivar Zayit said to Danlo as he looked off through the open door at the lights of the Old City. Dressed only in his thin golden robe, he shivered in the cold. "One of us will have to go out to them."

"Yes," Danlo said, moving down off the altar, "one of us will."

When he reached the bottom step, Malaclypse Redring held out his arm to stop him. "It's too dangerous. Someone might fire at you out of habit or fear, and then you'd be dead."

"Yes, that is true," Danlo said softly, looking at Malaclypse's blazing violet eyes.

"I'll speak to them," Malaclypse said. And then he smiled fiercely. "A new rule for warrior-poets, Pilot. To die protecting human beings."

And Danlo smiled at Malaclypse, too, even as he felt the steely muscles of his arm pressing against his chest. And he said, "You
would
die for me, wouldn't you?"

"Yes — why not?"

"And I would die for you," Danlo said. "For a warrior-poet who is also a human being."

With that he suddenly surged forward, and the power of his body and will was too great for Malaclypse to contain. As he reached the doorway, the frigid wind blasted his face. He blinked against the cold and looked out upon the street. There, in the day's first light, he saw a carpet of bodies leading from the street almost to the cathedral's doors. There, too, along the purple gliddery, he saw men and women in furs crouched down behind sleds as they aimed various weapons at the doorway. More of Benjamin Hur's ringkeepers occupied the rooftops of the buildings on the surrounding blocks; Danlo counted some three hundred of them before he gave up and moved out beyond the doorway, into the light of the rising sun.

"The war is over!" he called out to them. "The cathedral stands open to you, as it shall be from now on!"

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. The ringkeepers — half-frozen from spending a night out in the bitter cold — each stared at the triumphant form of Mallory Ringess. They had been fighting to rescue him from the cathedral, and here he stood before them, inviting them inside.

"Come with me!" he said. "Come inside now before you die from the cold."

From behind one of the overturned sleds lining the street, one of the ringkeepers stepped into view. He clutched a laser in his right hand; his left hand apparently had been blown off, for the end of his arm was swathed in a crude, bloody white bandage. Danlo looked through the hood almost covering his face to make out the great hooked nose and angry green eyes of Benjamin Hur. Benjamin calmly walked over the street's slippery ice straight up to Danlo. He presented himself, and then bowed to him and said, "Mallory Ringess — I always hoped you'd return, but I never really thought you would. I only wish you'd returned sooner, before all this had to happen."

So saying, Benjamin swept his bandaged arm out at the ringkeepers lying dead on the street.

"I am sorry," Danlo said. He closed his eyes for a moment as the faces of all those killed in the war flashed before him in their billions. And then, like the radiance of the stars, inside him shone the lights of billions of other faces: those of all the new children throughout the galaxy who would soon be born.

Terrible beauty
, he remembered.
Terrible beauty.

"If the war is really over, then I'd like to ask you a question," Benjamin said. His green eyes burned into Danlo's like heated copper. "Are you really a god or just a man?"

Danlo watched the breath steam from Benjamin's thin, fierce lips and looked through the ruff of his furs at his cheek where a laser beam had scorched the flesh. And he smiled mysteriously and said, "What is a god, then? What is a man? What does it matter what I am as long as I have returned to end the war?"

And with no further explanation, he motioned for Benjamin to follow him inside the cathedral. This Benjamin did, along with Poppy Panshin, who stepped out of a nearby building, and Karim of Clarity and other ringkeepers who had once been part of the Kalla Fellowship. The Masalina, his once-fleshy face now sagging from too many days of hunger, also appeared leading a company of ringkeepers from the gliddery fronting the cathedral's south side. All these women and men — and many others — followed Danlo through the western portal and into the cathedral. They cast doleful glances at the wounded lying on their mats throughout the nave, and they regarded their bloody work with an uncomfortable mixture of pride, horror and shame. As Danlo walked up to the altar and ascended it, Malaclypse moved to block its steps from anyone, godling or ringkeeper, who might wish to come too close to him. He waited with his long knife drawn as he carefully watched Ivar Zayit and the other princes of Hanuman's church. He stared at Benjamin Hur, with his laser, and the ringkeepers who gathered together two hundred strong before the altar. He stood ready to kill or be killed, almost as if it made no difference to him. There came a bad moment, then, when one of the godlings posted near the far side of the altar cursed Benjamin Hur and all his ringkeepers. He shouted out that they had murdered his brother and thus deserved to be murdered, too. And then Danlo, much to Malaclypse's chagrin, held his hands, palms outwards, as he positioned himself between this godling and Benjamin Hur. And his voice shook the cathedral as he angrily told them, "I have returned to end the war, but I cannot end it myself. I cannot stop you from killing each other, any more than I could stop Hanuman li Tosh from killing my son. But if you must kill, please kill me first."