War in Heaven by David Zindell

of course, as all such history truly is. But here, briefly, is what Bardo told the lords: that he had originally founded the religion known as the Way of Ringess to honour the life and discoveries of his best friend, Mallory Ringess. Mallory Ringess had shown the Order — and all humankind — that any man or woman could become a god through remembrance of the Elder Eddas. Bardo had brought this teaching to Neverness, and more, in his joyances and ceremonies where the sacred remembrancers' drug, kalla, was drunk, he had made the experience of the One Memory available to the Order's academicians and the swarms of seekers who peopled the city. But Bardo, as Bardo said, was better at beginning great works than completing them: he was no prophet, but only a man with a few uncommon talents, a former pilot of the Order who simply wanted to help his friends and followers towards the infinite possibilities that awaited them. From almost the very beginning of the founding of Ringism, he had become involved with the cetic, Hanuman li Tosh.
    "Ah, you all know of Hanuman," Bardo said. He paused to exchange a quick look with Danlo. Once, before they had become enemies, Danlo and Hanuman had been the deepest of friends. "But how many of you really know Hanuman?"
    He went on to admit that Hanuman li Tosh was a brilliant and charismatic young man — and also a religious genius who had shaped the explosive expansion of Ringism in the city of Neverness and throughout the Civilized Worlds. But Hanuman was secretly cruel and vain, Bardo said, and monstrously ambitious. Hanuman, Bardo said, had been like a cancer in the belly of his church: making secret alliances with other luminaries within the Way; devising and leading new ceremonies to control directly their followers' minds; and worst of all, spreading lies about Bardo and undermining Bardo's leadership in any way that he could. As Ringism spread its tentacles (this was Bardo's word) into the halls of the Order and the cities of the Civilized Worlds, the new religion was sick at its centre, with Hanuman robbing it of true life in his terrible hunger for power. Finally, on a day that Bardo would never forget, Hanuman had challenged his authority directly and ousted him as Lord of the Way of Ringess.
    "He stole my goddamned church!" Bardo thundered at the astonished lords. His face was purple with rage, and he stamped his black, nall-skin boot against the black diamond circle. "My lovely, blessed, beautiful church!"
    For a moment no one spoke. Then Lord Nikolos fixed his icy eyes on Bardo and asked, "Do you refer to the cathedral which your cult purchased from one of the Kristian sects, or the organization of believers whom you gulled into following you?"
    Bardo, who knew very well what Lord Nikolos thought about religions, decided to take no offence at this. He simply said, "Both. At first, it was the cathedral, and then Hanuman poisoned the Ringists' minds against me. Ah, too bad! Too bad."
    "And how does one steal a cathedral?" Lord Nikolos asked.
    Bardo looked straight at Lord Nikolos and sighed. "Do you remember how the cathedral was financed?"
    "I'm not sure I ever cared to know."
    "Well, it was an expensive building," Bardo said. "Hideously expensive — but the grandest building in all the city. I had to have it. That is we had to have it, we Ringists who followed the Way. So we decided to buy it in condominium. The money for it came from the pockets of each Ringist. There was a problem, of course, with some of the Ringists owning a share in such a building."
    "Because these Ringists were also Ordermen?"
    "Exactly. Since the Order's canons forbade ownership of property, they had to turn their shares over to others outside the Order who held it in trust for them. Hanuman, in secret, began to win these trustees to his confidence — and many other Ringists as well. And then one day, on the fourteenth of deep winter, he — "
    "He called for a vote setting rules as to who was permitted