War in Heaven by David Zindell Page B

Bardo told him. "If I had known that a little worm of a cetic named Hanuman li Tosh would steal my church and pervert my golden teachings into sleekit dung, I never would have held my first remembrancing ceremony."
    "But like any prophet," Lord Nikolos said, "you thought you had seen the secret of the universe and had to share it with everyone."
    This snide remark wounded and angered Bardo, who said, "I've seen what I've seen, by God! I've remembranced what I've remembranced. The Elder Eddas are real. I'm not the only one here today who has apprehended this knowledge. Morena has drunk kalla with me in my house, and Sul Estarei, and Alark of Urradeth. The Lord Remembrancer himself has had his own experience of the Eddas, and Danlo wi Soli Ringess is famous for his remembrance of the One Memory. The truth is the truth! You can't fault the religious impulse that drives us towards it. It's only what we make of our religions that is so wrong. Somehow, whenever men organize the pursuit of the divine, all that's most blessed and numinous is ruined like picked apples rotting in the sun. As I, Bardo, of all men should know."
    And I, too , Danlo thought as he sat staring at Bardo and remembering his own involvement with the Way of Ringess.
    "I won't argue with you," Lord Nikolos said, and his voice was cold steel.
    "Ah, well, I didn't fall across the stars to argue."
    "Whatever the impulse that initially drove you, the Way of Ringess is what it is. And you've made what you've made."
    "By God, do you think I don't know that!" Bardo roared. "Why do you think I've risked my goddamned life to tell you what's happened on Neverness?"
    "Why, indeed? We'd all like to know that, wouldn't we?"
    "I must undo what I have done."
    "I see."
    "I've helped create a wildly growing cancer. Now I would ask for help in cutting it out before it's too late."
    With a bow towards Lord Nikolos then, Bardo finished his story. After losing his beautiful cathedral and abandoning his attempt to run an opposing church from his house, Bardo had fallen into a terrible melancholy. For five days he shut himself in his room, amazingly (for Bardo) refusing the food and drink that his many loyal friends tried to bring him. He sat alone in an immense bejewelled chair as he contemplated killing himself. But Bardo was no suicide. Even as the days of deep winter darkened and the weather grew as cold as death, his rage turned outwards. It was Hanuman li Tosh whom he should kill he thought, or Lord Pall, or even his cousin, Surya Surata Lai, an ugly little woman who had once been his most faithful confidante before Hanuman had charmed her into betraying Bardo. He should kill somebody , and in the dark and wild days of deep winter the year before, such murderous intentions were not impossible to fulfil, for the entire city of Neverness had fallen into evil times. At least ten of the Order's lords and masters died mysteriously, some said of poison or unknown and undetectable viruses. The Order issued oppressive new laws and regulations. For the first time since the Dark Year when the Great Plague had ravaged Neverness, there was a nightly curfew in the city. The sacred drug, kalla, was forbidden to everyone except the remembrancers — and even these silver-robed masters of the mind had to apply to Lord Pall for permission to hold their time-honoured ceremonies in the confinement of the remembrancers' tower. Various sects such as the autists found themselves suddenly persecuted. Lord Pall himself announced his intention to break the harijan sect, which had challenged the Order's authority for at least three centuries. During the almost lightless days of midwinter spring, the Order had begun a programme of great works, building new churches across the city and even planning a great new cathedral within the walls of the academy itself. Lord Pall planned to compel all Ordermen to make daily attendance at these churches' remembrancing ceremonies. There they would place the sacred