He willed himself, then, to see himself just as he really was. There came a moment of stunning clarity as of stepping from a smoky cave outside into the bright winter air.

He was falling mad, truly, but his very power to reflect upon this falling meant that he hadn't yet plunged into total madness. He realized an important thing. His halluci- nations of his family, as terrible (and beautiful) as they were, might be the key to unlock the door to this insane inner prison that Cheslav Iviongeon had programmed for him. If these ghosts from his memory could drive out the images of the dead Architects, then he himself held the power to create an interior world far more vivid and 'real' than any computer-generated surreality even one so profound as the alam al-mithral. If, in his falling madness, he had unconsciously called up phasms of his dead family, why not then concentrate the whole of his awareness on a vision of his own choosing?

The whole art of journeying into the unknown, he remembered, is in knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.

Once, Leopold Soli pilot, hunter, warrior and the blood-father of his true father had taught him that when a man goes out into the wild (or inside to that dark and strange land of the soul), he must do three things. First he must learn to see the snowstorms and chaos of the world as signs of the unknown rather than as a call to panic. A true warrior, Soli had often told him, never fell into panic. And then, like a thallow winging his way skywards, he must shift to a higher state of awareness, both of himself and of the infinitely various seascapes below. Lastly, and most importantly, no matter how lost in darkness he might feel, he must trust that he held inside himself the brilliant constellations of light that would always point his way home. I do know what to do. Truly, I do.

For a while, he let his adoptive mother and father speak to him and touch him as they would. He accepted the uncertainty and anguish of his feelings; he accepted the uncertainty of reality itself. He let all his senses fall free like a handful of feathers tossed into the wind. Choclo was telling him something now, reminding him of the first time they had ever hunted seals together. Something inside called out to Danlo then, and he knew that he should pay close attention to what Choclo was saying. No, that wasn't quite right; rather he must see in his memory every nuance of snow and cloud of their journey out onto the sea's ice. Somewhere in his marvellous memory, he knew, shone the one star that would lead him from this place of madness.

That day with Choclo, out beyond the Twin Sister Islands that was the day in which I first saw Ahira.

As Danlo had waited on the cold sea ice, just before twilight with the wind rising and first stars showing silver over the mountains, he had caught sight of a wild white bird streaking into the sky. It was Ahira, Choclo had told him, the graceful snowy owl who could fly higher than even the blue thallows of the Ten Thousand Islands. For a long time Danlo had stood frozen to the ice, utterly ravished by the beauty of this bird. It was a moment in his life he could never forget.

Ahira, Ahira.

This glorious image of winged whiteness, along with the faces of his family, blazed in Danlo's mind. He could see Choclo as he was now, leaking blood from his ears and tormented in death, but he could also see the other Choclo of years past when he had first pointed to Ahira soaring above the sea. He let all his senses fall upon this younger, happier Choclo. He let his eyes drink in the sight of the snowy owl climbing ever higher into the sky. This magic animal drew all his awareness. All other images faded away and vanished from his vision. The whole of his world, and of all worlds, became this single bird and the twilight sky beyond. The whiteness of Ahira was as pure as snow and as lovely as starlight. Only two colours lit his awareness now, this dazzling white and the deep blue of the sky. Ahira flew ever higher pulling Danlo into blueness, into that marvellous blue beyond blue, so cool and perfect that it was like falling slowly into the clearest of ocean waters. There, in this endless sky, where all was silence and light, he could see only one colour. There shimmered only one substance, true and flawless and blue-black like a liquid jewel or cobalt gla.s.s melting into the sky's infinite deeps. And now Danlo himself melted. Higher and higher he flew, and he felt his whole being vibrating at the frequency of blue light and dying into a blue inside blue inside...

Danlo wi Soli Ringess.

He would never be able to measure how much time he spent in this whisperless place. But he knew exactly how long he dwelled there: forever. A little while beyond forever, with the afterglow of perfect blueness still warming his tightly closed eyes, he fell back into time. He fell back into s.p.a.ce and felt himself come into a more familiar consciousness. He was aware of himself breathing too slowly, lying back against his cold blankets inside the House of the Dead. His eyes and temples felt free of the weight of the crushing heaume. Someone, he thought, must have removed it.

He could not imagine why Cheslav Iviongeon would have allowed him this escape from his mind-killing prison. And then, far off it seemed at first, from twenty feet away, he heard voices. He knew that he should pay close attention to these voices.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess,' someone murmured. 'The naman pilot is dead. Or as good as dead his mind is totally gone. Did you see the computer model, where his brainwaves fell flat?'

Slowly, with infinite care, Danlo opened his eyes. Slowly he turned his head. There were other colours now: the black of nall plastic, sweat-stained white kimonos and dead grey light hanging heavy among the stacks of computers. There was scarlet, too.

Sometime during his journey into the alam al-mithral, he must have bitten his tongue, for his throat burned and his lips were caked with blood. Neither Cheslav Iviongeon nor the other keepers, it seemed, had bothered to clean his face. He saw them standing across the room with their bald heads bowed, gazing at a display of lights, perhaps a model of his brain that some computer had made.

'The pilot,' Cheslav Iviongeon said, holding up the diamond disc inscribed with Danlo's pallaton, 'was faced into the alam al-mithral for two hours after the accelerations began. Two hours! He should have fallen mad after the first two minutes.'

One of the other keepers whispered something, then. Danlo, with his keen sense of hearing, gathered that Cheslav Iviongeon had let the murderous program run for a good hour more after Danlo's mind had melted flat, as an insurance of his madness.

Only after it had become impossible that Danlo would ever walk clear-eyed in the world again had Cheslav allowed one of his keepers to remove the heaume.

'When a naman walks with the dead,' Cheslav told the other keepers, 'he should expect to die. It seems that he was not, after all, the bringer of light whom our Holy Ivi hoped for.'

Slowly, with much struggle and pain, Danlo kicked his blankets away. Slowly but quietly he sat up. He sat crosslegged, as his found-father had once taught him.

Cheslav and the others had their backs to him, so they did not see him. During all the time of his journey into the alam al-mithral, he had held his shakuhachi close against his belly. He was holding it still, gently but firmly, as a snowy owl might clutch a nesting stick in his talons. This blessed flute was warm from his body's heat and ready to play. After wiping the blood from his mouth, he touched the flute's ivory mouthpiece to his lips and drew in a deep breath.

'It's time we told the Holy Ivi what has happened,' Cheslav said. 'She must decide what to do with his body, whether it should be kept alive for others of his Order who might search for him or cremated in the ovens.'

Suddenly, with all the power of his belly, Danlo blew a single, high, shrill note upon his flute. The effect of this otherworldly sound on the keepers was cruel. As if the House of Eternity had been struck with a hydrogen bomb, one of them clasped his hands to his ears and dived to the floor. Another the Worthy Nikolaos threw up his hands as if he himself had faced the ghosts of the alam al mithral and screamed in sudden terror. Even Cheslav Iviongeon was unnerved. He whirled about to sense the source of the terrible music rushing through the air. In so doing, when he saw Danlo sitting up fiercely playing his flute, the diamond disc slipped from his sweaty fingers and spun crashing against the base of one of the computers. The hard nall plastic harder than diamond caused the disc to shatter. All that remained of Danlo's pallaton were bits of diamond glittering on the cold, black floor.

'You you're alive!' Cheslav cried out. 'That's impossible!'

'Yes, I live,' Danlo said, lowering his flute. 'I am sorry.'

As quickly as he could, Danlo struggled to his feet. He held his flute straight out in his fist as if to warn Cheslav and the keepers away. He didn't think that they would try to overpower him and force the dreaded heaume back over his head, but he had cheated death once that day, and once was enough.

'Pilot, you're shaking. After such an interface, you're not yourself, so if you would only stay here with us for-'

'No.'

Danlo spoke this single word softly, but with all the force of the wind. For a long time he stared at Cheslav as he might a boy who liked to pull the wings off flies. And then he turned his back on him and walked out of the House of the Dead.

When he opened the doors of the building, he found that it was late afternoon.

Sunlight streamed down through the dome high above the zero level of Ornice Olorun. He stood for a moment in this golden light and felt all the goodness of life spreading through his body like fire. There was sound, too, a thunderous roar like the ocean in storm. He became aware, then, of many people crying out his name. 'He lives!' these voices shouted. 'The pilot lives!' Below the nall steps of the House of Eternity, spread out across the street and the nearby lawns, there still waited thousands of people, though not quite so many thousands as earlier that morning.

Behind the light fence guarding the steps. Bertram Jaspari stood scowling as if one of his Iviomils had served him vinegar in place of wine. He exchanged a venomous look with Jedrek Iviongeon, who was Cheslav's second brother. Next to these two princes of the Church waited Malaclypse Redring, calmly, with infinite patience, as if he would have waited a million years for Danlo's return. He looked up at Danlo standing on the steps, and his violet eyes shone with a strange longing.

'Indeed, Danlo wi Soli Ringess lives,' Harrah Ivi en li Ede announced. She still sat behind her reading desk on the portico where Danlo stood. 'We must ask if he has indeed walked with the dead.'

Now, behind Danlo, from out of the dark building, Cheslav Iviongeon appeared followed by the other keepers. Their once-white kimonos were grey with sweat. They stood near to Danlo but not too near. Although the Worthy Nikolaos hung his head in shame as if he'd been made to partic.i.p.ate in some evil program, Cheslav held his head high and glared at Danlo. He waited for him to speak.

'Yes,' Danlo said at last. His voice sounded distant and strange. 'I have walked with the dead.'

'You must please tell us what this was like,' Harrah said. Her pleasant old face beamed triumph at Danlo, and she waited to hear what he might say. Bertram Jaspari and Malaclypse Redring and the brothers Iviongeon and tens of thousands of Architects all waited to hear what Danlo might say.

It was like walking into a room full of drill worms, he thought. It was like walking into a lake of fire.

For the count of twenty heartbeats, Danlo stood silent not knowing what he could tell these people. And then he chanced to remember the words of an ancient poem. He smiled sadly, and his eyes burned with tears. 'The dead know only one thing,' he said. 'It is better to be alive.'

Then he tried to move forward toward the steps, but his legs could no longer hold against gravity's crushing weight. He collapsed to the portico's hard surface and lay fighting for breath. His last thought before falling into unconsciousness was that he had learned only the tiniest part of all there was to know of death.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Preparations

All are rushing into your terrible jaws; I see some of them crushed by your teeth. As rivers flow into the ocean, all the warriors of this world are pa.s.sing into your fiery jaws; all creatures rush to their destruction like moths into a flame. You lap the worlds into your burning mouths and swallow them. Filled with your terrible radiance, O Vishnu, the whole of creation bursts into flame.

- from the Bhagavad Gita, eleventh chapter.

It took Danlo two tendays to recuperate fully from his ordeal in the House of the Dead. The keepers of the Palace, at Harrah's bidding, ordered a special choche for Danlo, and they bore him back to his rooms where Harrah's personal physician attended him. Although Danlo came awake later that night, it was another day before he could eat any food or indulge in conversation. Fierce pains crackled through his head, coming and going with the unpredictability of ball lightning. He tried to sleep as much as he could; he tried to play his flute and remember all that had happened to him in the alam al-mithral.

During this waiting time between tests, he wished that Harrah would call for him or perhaps even visit him in his richly furnished rooms. But she never did. From Thomas Ivieehl, the sharp-eared palace keeper whom he had befriended, he learned that the Holy Ivi was kept busy with important matters. In truth, Danlo's entrance into the House of Eternity had precipitated earth-shaking events. Half a world away, in the city of Bavoll, the news of Danlo's success had set off riots, and at least three Elder Architects loyal to Harrah had been murdered. And in Iviendenhall, on an island just off the coast on the other side of the continent, it was said that a cabal of Iviomils had seized control of the local temple and had cut communications with the rest of the planet. Even in Ornice Olorun, where the Iviomils held much less sway than in the western arcologies, there were plots against Harrah Ivi en li Ede as well as random terror. One man, a keeper whom Thomas Ivieehl had known since boyhood, was caught trying to smuggle plastic explosive into the palace itself, but before Harrah's readers could question him, he had set off a heat charge implanted in his ear, thus destroying his own brain as surely as the eye-tlolt had caused Janegg Iviorvan to die the real death. On the fourth and seventeenth levels of the city, plasma bombs destroyed five apartment cubes and killed at least thirty thousand people. And so it went. Every hour, it seemed, new reports of disaster and outright religious disobedience arrived from every corner of Tannahill. It was the greatest crisis of Harrah's architetcy perhaps even the greatest since the time of the two High Holy Architects five centuries earlier.

Bertram Jaspari, of course, tried to seize the advantage that all this chaos provided.

Not only did he involve the Koivuniemin with his usual intrigues and coercion, but he attacked Harrah's planetary proclamation of Danlo's triumph. Danlo wi Soli Ringess, he said, the naman pilot, had not truly walked with the dead. He had only tried to face the terrible beauty of the alam al-mithral, and he had failed. At the first sight of the dead Architect souls, he had fallen mad and had fallen into a coma as might any other mortal man. For a time, many Architects across Tannahill believed this lie. Many men and women began to turn to Bertram Jaspari and to listen ever more closely as he spoke of the Church's corruption and the need to return to the purity of the past. And then, seven days after Danlo's fateful Walk, as it came to be called, Danlo dealt a fierce blow to Bertram's growing authority by making a simple announcement. He told of a piece of information that he had gathered in the alam al-mithral: a secret that the ghost of Morasha Ede, Nikolos Daru Ede's second daughter, had shared with him.

In Ede's Tomb, it seemed, in the clary sarcophagus that housed his frozen body, the first Architects had built a secret compartment. For three thousand years, Ede had lain dead over a little cube of s.p.a.ce containing a treasure. What this treasure was, Danlo didn't say for he truly didn't know. But he told of how this compartment might be found and the secret words whose utterance would open it.

Bertram Jaspari and his Iviomils would have liked to have scoffed at such a wild prediction. But they dared not. On the day after a riot on Ornice Olorun's twelfth level nearly destroyed two minor food factories, Harrah Ivi en li Ede sent her keepers into Ede's Tomb to test the truth of Danlo's 'prophecy'. They spoke the secret words encoded by Ede long ago: 'I am the door; knock and be opened'. And to the astonishment of all present, on the side of the glittering clary crypt, a hidden panel slid open. There Harrah's keepers found a single diamond disc very much like the ones in the House of the Dead. Only it held not the pallatons of deceased Architects, but the sacred words of Nikolos Daru Ede, the man who had become G.o.d. If the theologians who evaluated the disc's information were correct, they had discovered Ede's love poems to his third wife, Arista Miri. These were the beloved Pa.s.sionaries, one of the five lost books of the Algorithm. That this priceless treasure had been recovered due to the valour of a naman from Neverness embarra.s.sed and infuriated Bertram Jaspari. If he had possessed the smallest grain of shame, he might have apologized to Danlo and begged Harrah's forgiveness. But he only redoubled his efforts to program people's minds against Harrah and to destroy her architetcy.

'If Bertram were to incite the people against Harrah, they might riot and try to storm the palace.'

These words of warning issued from the Ede devotionary set upon the altar of Danlo's room. As it often did, the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede illumined the silver heaume and sent a glowing light out over the sacred art and cybernetica as well as the ananda blossoms hanging halfway down the wall. If Danlo had counted right, it was the one thousand, seven hundred and nineteenth time Ede had warned him of imminent danger since they had come to Tannahill.

'I can only hope,' the Ede imago said, 'that these barbarians don't storm my tomb searching for other treasures. If they broke the sarcophagus by accident, my body would prove impossible to redeem.'

The following day, an unexpected visitor came to the palace to ask for a meeting with Danlo. This was Malaclypse Redring, and Danlo could not guess why he would seek so urgently to see him. He wondered if Bertram might have sent him to the palace as a secret emissary. But, in truth, it was hard to imagine anyone sending a warrior-poet anywhere, for any reason. Although Danlo was still weak from computer interface and his head throbbed like the beating of a drum, he received Malaclypse in his altar room. There, beneath the ananda blossoms, they sat on soft white cushions on the floor. Danlo wore only a worn, black kamelaika from Neverness and held his bamboo flute gently against his lap. Malaclypse, however, sported a glittering rainbow kimono woven on Qallar. His two red rings glittered on the fingers of either hand. The warrior-poets, he remembered, most often dressed to blind the eye, the better to distract their victims while they plied their needles and knives and struck with all the quickness of poisonous snakes.

'It's good to see you again, Pilot,' Malaclypse said. 'We've come very far since Mer Tadeo's garden, haven't we?'

Danlo realized then that the two of them hadn't spoken face to face since the night of the supernova on Farfara.

'Oh, truly very far,' Danlo said. 'I had thought ,.. that I would never see you again.'

'You don't seem entirely pleased.'

'No,' Danlo said. 'I ... am not.'

'But we have a mutual mission to Tannahill, don't we?'

'No everywhere you go, you bring violence and murder.'

'Is it I who have walked with the dead? Is it I whom half of these Architects would a.s.sa.s.sinate while the other half proclaim as the Lightbringer?'

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Danlo smiled. 'You know who I am,' he said.

'Do I, Pilot?'

Malaclypse regarded him strangely with his blazing violet eyes, almost as if in their journey across the stars, Danlo had grown from a young man into some terrible angel of light. Almost as if he feared him.

'I am only who I am Danlo wi Soli Ringess.'

'But the essential question remains unanswered,' Malaclypse said. 'Are you the son of the father? Are you of the same substance as Mallory wi Soli Ringess?'

Danlo smiled, then touched his lips to his flute. He asked, 'Why have you come here?'

'Do you wish to know why I've come to Tannahill?'

'No,' Danlo said. 'I think I already know that. Even if you have not found my father, you have found what you seek in Bertram Jaspari and the Iviomils. In the weakness of the Church itself.'

'I only serve my order as you do yours.'

'Yes, truly you do. And so I would ask why you have come here, to my rooms tonight?'

Malaclypse fixed his marvellous eyes on Danlo, but he said nothing.

'Do you serve your order?' Danlo asked. 'Or do you serve only yourself ?'

'You're very clever, Pilot.'

'There is something that you would ask of me, yes?'

'Yes.'

'Something ... that you would like to know.'

'Something that no one knows except you,' Malaclypse said.

'Please ask, then.'

Malaclypse paused a moment and turned to look at the door. It seemed as if he were trying to drink in the little sounds around him and discover whether any of Harrah's keepers might be spying upon him. But except for his and Danlo's soft breaths and the occasional squawk of the parrotock bird in its steel cage across the room, the palace was almost silent.

'What is it like?' Malaclypse suddenly whispered. 'What is it like to be dead?'

Danlo never let his eyes fall away from the intensity of Malaclypse's dark gaze.

Although his question had not surprised him, it disturbed him deeply. 'You warrior- poets worship death,' he finally said.

'Not so, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. We worship life.'

'"How do I learn to live?"' Danlo asked, quoting a saying of the warrior-poets. And he supplied the answer: ' "Prepare to die."'

At this, Malaclypse smiled and whispered, ' "How do I prepare for death? Learn how to live."'

'Life,' Danlo said mysteriously, 'is all there is. Live your life, Warrior. Write your poems, Poet. You will know soon enough ... what it is like to be dead.'

'Do you threaten me, Pilot, or are you making another prophecy?''Neither,' Danlo said. 'It is only that all people die ... so soon. A heartbeat and we are gone. In a breath, our spirits are lost to the wind. Life is so infinitely precious.

Why seek to cast it away before it is time?'

'Do you try to persuade me of this wisdom or yourself?'

'I ... have no wish to die,' Danlo said.

'Is that true?' Malaclypse asked. 'I've followed you across the galaxy. Into the Ent.i.ty. You live your life like a warrior-poet: flawlessly and fearlessly. I think you, too, seek death. This is what haunts you about your walk with the dead, isn't it?'

For a while Danlo stared out the window at the evening lights playing over the ocean far below the city. Because he didn't wish to answer Malaclypse's question, he picked up his flute and began to compose a slow, deeply melodic song. Finally, he wiped his lips and looked over at Malaclypse. He said, 'Whatever I seek for myself, I would bring only peace for others.'

'Peace and light,' Malaclypse said. 'If you are the Lightbringer.'

'Yes, truly, light,' Danlo said smiling. 'It is the opposite of darkness.'

'Do I bring only darkness, then?'

'You bring war. You ally yourself, and your whole order, with the Iviomils ... and why? You would set one Architect killing another.'