Bridge of the Separator

XII

Stylianos—now the unchallenged Avtokrator Stylianos—came into the capital six days later. A few officers had thought about resisting him. They couldn't do it in Maleinos' name anymore; one of them would have had to declare himself Avtokrator in turn, and start a new round of civil strife. That proved the sticking point. None of the ambitious men seemed willing to let one of his fellows get ahead of him. They all preferred to accept Stylianos rather than one of their friends and rivals.

So rumor said, at any rate. None of the officers summoned Rhavas, either to curse a rival or to curse Stylianos himself. Maybe they didn't believe what had happened to Arkadios. Or maybe they feared losing with or without Rhavas, and didn't want associating with him to count against them.

Sozomenos suspended the synod again till things grew more stable. None of the assembled ecclesiastics complained. Facing the ideas Rhavas presented—and facing Rhavas himself—was more daunting than the usual sort of theological disputation. Facing Rhavas and his ideas meant facing issues of life and death.

Lardys stayed cheerfully cynical. "None of it really matters, holy sir," he said. "None of it matters for beans. To the likes of me, what difference does it make who wears a crown?"

"It makes a difference to me," Rhavas said.

"Well, yes, I suppose it would," the innkeeper allowed. "You going to light out for the tall timber? Figure Stylianos'll do the same for you as he did for your cousin?" Lardys remained cheerful as he drew a finger across his throat. Why not? His wasn't the throat that would really be slit.

Rhavas only shrugged. "No way to know ahead of time."

"I guess you're right," Lardys said. "Well, you'll find out pretty soon, won't you?"

Like any new Avtokrator, Stylianos staged a triumphal entry into Videssos the city. His soldiers came in the day before he did, and secured Middle Street from the Silver Gate all the way to the palace quarter. The capital's garrison did not presume to quarrel with the newcomers. They knew which end of the loaf they would dip into oil.

Heralds announced Stylianos' arrival, just in case anyone in the capital had somehow missed the news. Rhavas had watched Maleinos ride out to battle. Now he saw Stylianos come in after winning that battle.

Rhavas was, in fact, in about the same spot on Middle Street as he had been when his cousin went off to war. Stylianos' parade was almost identical to that of the fallen Avtokrator, the main difference being that he went from the Silver Gate to the palaces, not the other way round.

The acclamations were different, too. People shouted Stylianos' name and "Stylianos Avtokrator!" and "Many years to the Avtokrator Stylianos!" Those same cries had greeted every Avtokrator who preceded him—Maleinos included—and would no doubt greet all his successors as well.

A man standing beside Rhavas nudged him with an elbow. "How come you're not yelling, holy sir?" he asked.

"I've got a frog in my throat," Rhavas answered in a husky whisper. "I can hardly even talk." Satisfied, the nosy man nodded. Maybe he was keeping lists of people who weren't celebrating enough. Plenty of new Avtokrators made lists like that. Rhavas wasn't worried about them, or not very much. He assumed he was already on whatever lists Stylianos had.

Here came the new Avtokrator, behind his standard-bearers. Stylianos rode a fine white horse, as Maleinos had before him. Along with his gilded armor, that set him apart from his officers. Though he was round-faced, he looked harder and more weathered than Rhavas had expected: certainly harder than Maleinos. Rhavas' cousin had spent most of this time in the imperial city, while Stylianos lived in the field.

I could point my finger . . . Rhavas thought. But what good would that do? It wouldn't bring Maleinos back to life. It would probably just set off another round of civil war, or maybe more than one. Rhavas looked down at his own hands. Even the power to kill had limits. Who would have imagined that?

Stylianos was gone, bound for the palaces. The servants would tend to him as they'd tended to Maleinos. Nothing ever happened to them, no matter who ruled Videssos. They were indispensable, and they knew it.

Stylianos' soldiers looked like . . . soldiers. Rhavas couldn't see that they were any different from the men Maleinos had led. For all he knew, some of them were men Maleinos had led. Stylianos commanded all the soldiers in the Empire now, and would until and unless some new rebel rose against him.

A few city folk trailed after the soldiers, singing their praises and their master's. Most just went on about their business once the parade passed them by. Avtokrators came and went. The people of the capital praised them when they took the throne and generally jeered them afterward. Every once in a while, an Avtokrator would respond to scorn with massacre. That seldom stopped more scorn from raining down on him, and commonly gave him a black name in history.

Rhavas made his way back to the inn. He half expected to find soldiers there, men waiting to haul him up before Stylianos. But there were none. He pointed to the taverner. "You didn't want to see our new sovereign?"

"Not me." Lardys went on pouring olives from a jug into a bowl. "I'm no highborn mucky-muck. Why should I care whose face goes on the goldpieces, as long as I can spend 'em?" He set down the jug, reached under the bar, and pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment. "Fellow brought this here for you."

"Thanks." Rhavas took it. The image stamped on the seal was a good copy of the portrait of Phos in the High Temple. Sozomenos, Rhavas thought. He broke the seal—he took a peculiar pleasure in breaking the seal, in fact—and unrolled the parchment.

The ecumenical patriarch's handwriting was thin and spidery, but clear enough to be easy to read. You would do well to think of disappearing, Sozomenos wrote. The synod will surely condemn you, and you will as surely face the most severe punishment. Is it not better to be refuted while absent than to subject yourself to the rigors of the new regime?

Walking over to the hearth, Rhavas tossed the note into the fire. The parchment charred and crumpled and burst into flame. In no more than a handful of heartbeats, it was gone. Its memory, though . . . That lingered. Sozomenos opposed Rhavas with all his heart—with all his soul, in fact. Even so, the patriarch did not seem to want to see him dead.

That sort of magnanimity . . . made no sense to Rhavas. Were he ecumenical patriarch and Sozomenos his theological rival, he would have done everything he could to destroy the other man. Did Stylianos' soldiers have orders to arrest any priest caught trying to sneak out of the city? Rhavas wouldn't have been surprised.

"What was it, holy sir?" Lardys asked. "What was that all about?"

"Nothing," Rhavas answered. "Nothing at all."

In due course, the synod reconvened. The soldiers outside the High Temple eyed Rhavas with mixed scorn and caution. The caution won: none of them had the nerve to mock. The story of what had happened to Arkadios plainly had lost nothing in the telling. Who would want to take a chance that the same thing might happen to him?

Priests and prelates drew aside from Rhavas when he walked into the High Temple. Yes, he might have been carrying some loathsome disease. And so I am, he thought. The truth. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. And, now, he also carried the wrong blood in his veins, which only made things worse.

Sozomenos stood there talking with a couple of ecclesiastics. He broke away from them as soon as he saw Rhavas. "Very holy sir!" the patriarch called, hurrying toward him. "Did you not get my letter?" His face was a mask of distress.

"I got it," Rhavas said coolly.

"Then why did you not heed it?"

Rhavas looked at him—looked through him. "I think that should be plain enough, most holy sir."

"No." Sozomenos shook his head. "No, it is not plain at all. Unless—" He broke off, bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again, tears glinted in his eyes. "I did not—I truly did not—believe the dark god had taken up residence in your heart, to make you mistrust those who would be your friend even if they think you mistaken." When he spat in rejection of Skotos, it was with obvious sorrow.

Of all the things in the world Rhavas could not stand, being pitied stood perhaps highest on the list. "Curse you, Sozomenos," he snarled, his voice clotted with hate. "Curse you to death."

And nothing happened.

Astonished, Rhavas stared at the ecumenical patriarch. He'd felt no resistance to the curse, as he had with Koubatzes and the mages who rode with Himerios. It simply . . . had not touched Sozomenos—and for the life of him, Rhavas could not understand why not.

"I will pray for you, very holy sir," the patriarch said quietly. "Those who are lost are not always lost forever." He gathered himself. "Since you are here, we shall have to proceed with this whole unfortunate business. If you will excuse me . . ."

"Wait," Rhavas said, and Sozomenos did. "Curse you, why don't you fall?" There. He'd said it again, and meant it with all his being.

Sozomenos gave him a sad little shrug. "You, it seems, have your god, in whose powers you trust. Can you not see I have mine as well?"

He walked off toward the pulpit. Had Rhavas been less steeped in the certainty of his own rightness . . . But he was what he was. He was sure he understood why the world worked as it did. And anything that happened to contradict that? He did not—he would not—see it.

As courteously as if Rhavas had not tried to kill him, Sozomenos gave him the floor and let him do his best to persuade the assembled ecclesiastics of his new doctrine. He did his best, piling more—and more graphic—examples and more quotations from Phos' holy scriptures atop the introduction he had given in the synod's earlier session. He alarmed them. He horrified them. He persuaded them . . . not at all.

Some of their counterarguments also came from the scriptures. Others were more pragmatic. "What will the Avtokrator Stylianos give us if we fall into this black heresy?" a plump abbot asked rhetorically. "He'll give us the sword, that's what, and put all our heads on the Milestone. If the very holy sir wants his head there, that's his business. If he wants ours up there with his, that's a different story."

"Even if Phos did rule the world, as you mistakenly believe, your cowardice would be plenty to send you to the ice," Rhavas sneered. "And it's a pity the ice is not fire, for you would burn very well."

"That will be enough, both of you." Sozomenos might have been reproving a couple of small boys, not two of the most powerful clerics in the Empire of Videssos.

The abbot, his face brick red, gobbled and sputtered but—no doubt luckily for him—did not manage to put his protest into words. Rhavas merely gave the ecumenical patriarch a stiff bow and returned to the theological attack.

Some time during the morning, a newcomer entered the High Temple. He seemed to have been there a while before Rhavas noticed him. He was neither ecclesiastic nor wizard. He leaned against a column sheathed in moss agate with the air of a man who'd drawn a soft duty but intended to fulfill it as if it weren't.

One of Stylianos' henchmen, Rhavas thought, here to keep an eye on the synod for him. Rhavas had a pretty good notion of what that meant. If the assembled ecclesiastics didn't condemn him on their own, the Avtokrator would take care of things for them.

Bitterness rose up in him like a cloud. Maleinos had shared his view. So had Arotras, a priest himself. So did Lardys. They all believed as he did—yes. Would any of them publicly admit it? Not a chance, not in all the world.

"Hypocrites!" he cried furiously. "You're all nothing but hypocrites, and you will get what hypocrites deserve!"

They would not believe him—or, perhaps more likely, they would not admit they believed him. That only made him angrier. He pictured priests and prelates nodding to themselves while they shook their heads for the world. He wanted to break those empty heads to let truth into them. That was the only way he could see to get the truth in there.

If he shouted, Curse you all! . . . what would happen? They would go down in windrows, like barley before the scythe. But even if they did, what then? Who would replace them? Men who thought as he did? Men, for that matter, who thought at all? Or would the new ecclesiastics just be more muttonheads indistinguishable from the ones he'd slain? That seemed altogether too likely.

A priest not far away pulled a loaf of brown bread and a chunk of pale yellow cheese out of a large belt pouch. Ignoring the debate and the occasional catcalls that filled the High Temple, he began to eat his lunch. That probably meant his mind was made up. It certainly meant he had a practical bent.

Not too much later, Sozomenos adjourned the synod to let the rest of the ecclesiastics eat. As they filtered out of the High Temple and down to the nearby plaza of Palamas to see what they could find, the ecumenical patriarch beckoned Rhavas to him. Warily, Rhavas approached.

"You are still here." Sadness filled Sozomenos' voice.

"Yes, of course I am," Rhavas said.

"But you are making a foolish mistake," the patriarch said, "a mistake even more foolish than I thought before I wrote you a few days ago. I met the Avtokrator yesterday. His Majesty would not be pleased with you even if you were not related to, ah, his predecessor. He seems to be a man of hasty temper, and one not easily swayed from anger."

"The synod will do as it will do. The Avtokrator will do as he will do. And I—I will do as I will do," Rhavas declared. "Does no one understand that I am as sure of my rightness as anyone else is of his?"

"I believe you are, very holy sir," Sozomenos replied. "I believe you—but I also believe your sincerity to be mistaken."

"And I feel the same about yours," Rhavas snapped. He did not care to think about how and why Sozomenos still stood. Since he didn't care to, he didn't.

"No doubt you do." Something in the ecumenical patriarch's stance and gaze put Rhavas in mind of a gentle grasshopper. Sozomenos went on, "The difference is, the synod will not condemn me when the time comes for it to define the faith. Nor will I be bound over for punishment. You wage a war you cannot win."

"Come the end of days, the war will be won," Rhavas said. Sozomenos frowned and shook his head. Rhavas ignored him. "The war may be won well before the end of days, too. Skotos is loose in the world, most holy sir. That you do not see it only shows you do not leave Videssos the city."

"Skotos is loose here, too," Sozomenos answered calmly, spitting in rejection of the dark god—as Rhavas had not done. "Skotos is loose everywhere—which does not mean we should embrace him."

"Why not? If he is the stronger, should we lie and say he is not?" Rhavas asked. "The Khamorth graze their ponies by the Long Walls—maybe inside them now, for all I know. Skopentzana is dead, along with so much else."

"I would believe as I believe if the barbarians rode their horses up the aisle of the Temple to the altar here," Sozomenos said. "I do not know when the end of days will come. I do not believe it will come soon. The struggle has a long way to go."

Rhavas scowled at him. "My prayers died unheard. My curses are fulfilled ten times over. Phos is deaf and blind and weak. Skotos hears me. More—Skotos speaks through me."

"Are you really so enamored of spectacle, very holy sir?" the patriarch asked. "I believed you a man of thought."

"And so I am," Rhavas answered, stung. "But thought that does not look at the world and what goes on in it is pointless. You will not see that, for you refuse to open your eyes."

"We talk past each other," Sozomenos said mournfully. "I wish it were otherwise. You were once the faith's strongest friend. I think you strike at it more from disappointment than from reason."

"I tell you, you are mistaken," Rhavas growled. Sozomenos only shrugged. Rhavas said, "The synod will do as it will do, as I said before. But its acts will be preserved. Those who come after us will see which side was in the right. I do not fear that."

"It will be a long time before anyone surely sees. Until that day of days comes, you must have faith. This is what you do not see," Sozomenos said.

"The day of days is coming sooner than you think. And I do have faith, most holy sir. This is whatyou will not see," Rhavas replied. Sorrowfully, the ecumenical patriarch turned his back on him.

Imperial guards seldom came to the inn where Rhavas stayed. They had their own dives, fancier and closer to the palace quarter. When they did come, they were even less likely to be accompanied by a pair of mages. Without much surprise, Rhavas recognized the men who had kept watch on him in the High Temple. But the wizards stayed in the background. It was one of the soldiers who pointed a gnarled finger at Rhavas in the taproom and declared, "Priest, you are summoned before his Majesty, the Avtokrator Stylianos."

"Am I?" Rhavas said mildly. "And if I don't care to come?"

"We are ordered to do whatever we need to do in that case," the soldier answered.

How much did he know? That he and his men had mages with them suggested they knew more than a little. How much could the sorcerers do to stop Rhavas if he chose to curse them—or Stylianos? He wasn't sure. He would have bet they weren't, either.

He shrugged and rose from his stool. "Never mind," he said. "Take me to the palaces."

Did the soldiers look relieved or disappointed that they didn't have to do whatever they needed to do? Rhavas couldn't tell, which was a tribute to their stone faces. Stylianos had chosen his men well.

A priest, a few soldiers, a couple of wizards—not such an unlikely group to walk west along Middle Street toward the palaces. "Bless me, holy sir," called a man with a cataract clouding one eye.

"You have my blessing, for whatever it may be worth to you," Rhavas said. The man bowed in thanks. He hadn't noticed that Rhavas didn't use the sun-sign or even name the good god.

"Why did you do that?" one of the mages asked. "By all the signs, you don't believe in blessings."

Rhavas shrugged. "It was simpler. If I'd said no, he would have raised a fuss."

The mage's right eyebrow quirked. "You don't worry, of course, about the fusses you raise yourself." Rhavas inclined his head, acknowledging that the other man had scored a hit.

The usual frantic hubbub of Videssos the city faded behind them when they entered the palace quarter. Gardeners trimmed shrubbery with long-handled shears. A washerwoman carried a basket of clothes on her shoulder. Two secretaries with ink-stained fingers argued about some piece of bureaucratic inconsequence as they strolled down the flagstones of a path between splendid buildings.

Rhavas had expected Stylianos to meet him in the throne room. That way, the new Avtokrator could have tried to awe him with the overwhelming majesty of the imperial office. Stylianos might well have assumed no Videssian, no matter how heretical, was altogether immune to that. He might well have been right, too.

But he decided otherwise. As Maleinos had when Rhavas came to Videssos the city, Stylianos chose to meet him in the imperial residence: as close to informality as ceremony-hedged Avtokrators could find. The furry-bearded Vaspurakaner steward who had served Maleinos now served his successor. No, who ruled the Empire made little difference to those who served the ruler.

"Come with me, please, very holy sir," the steward said when Rhavas had climbed the low, broad stairs. Remembering Rhavas' ceremonial title was the only sign he gave of ever having seen him before.

Along the winding corridors of the imperial residence they went. Rhavas nodded to himself as they walked past the high gilded helm of a Makuraner King of Kings, the one Stavrakios had brought back. People said the conquering Avtokrator had put the dent in it himself, with a mace. Rhavas didn't know if that was true. From everything he'd heard about Stavrakios, though, he wouldn't have been surprised.

Stylianos met him in the chamber where Maleinos had received him not so long before. Did the new Avtokrator know? Had he asked the stewards? Had they been happy to tell him? Rhavas didn't know that, either, which was probably just as well.

"Your Majesty." Rhavas prostrated himself, as he had before his own cousin.

"Get up, get up." Stylianos sounded as harsh and impatient as he looked. He waved Rhavas to a stool, then went on, "We can kill each other at a word. If that doesn't make us equals, what would?"

"A point." Rhavas knew he could slay Stylianos at a word. Could the Avtokrator really return the . . . favor? He might well need to summon a swarm of mages and soldiers, but odds were he could manage.

A servant came in with a silver pitcher of wine, two goblets, and a plate of pistachio-topped honey cakes on a tray of rare dark wood. After the man had bowed his way out, the Avtokrator poured wine for both of them. Stylianos went through the usual ritual. Rhavas ignored it. Stylianos eyed him. "You really want to make things easy for me, don't you?"

"What difference does it make?" Rhavas returned. "I'm Maleinos' cousin. How likely am I to get to Sozomenos' age?"

"Nobody's likely to get that old." Stylianos' chuckle held a grim edge. "Some people are less likely than others, of course. You're dead right about that." He laughed again. "Dead right's about it. But if you go on spouting heresy every time you open your mouth, I don't even have to find an excuse to get rid of you."

Rhavas shrugged. In its own way, Stylianos' blunt candor was refreshing. "Try to tell people a plain truth and see the thanks you get," Rhavas said, doing his best to match it.

"Telling people the plain truth is one of the best reasons I know for roasting somebody over a slow fire," Stylianos observed. "Without some honey smeared over it"—he picked up a cake—"life wouldn't be worth living most of the time."

"No!" Rhavas shook his head. "Enough hypocrisy!" He almost said, To the ice with hypocrisy! Old habits of thought died hard. He went on, "Too many will not admit what is only too plain: which god is really the stronger."

"How would life be any different if they did?" Stylianos asked, and took a big bite out of the cake.

"How? We would be honest, that's how!" Rhavas exclaimed. "We could herd all the Vaspurakaners into pens and slaughter them for the sport of it, and the men who did it would cry out that it was Phos' will. A wizard could melt a city into a puddle of glass and sing a hymn to Phos in his glory, as long as the city was filled with people who didn't believe as he did. Another mage could poison the very air his foes breathed, watch them choke and die, and say the lord with the great and good mind delighted in their agonies. Enough of lies! We do evil. We enjoy doing evil. We take pride in doing evil. We always have. We always will. Time to tear away the veil!"

Calmly, Stylianos finished the honey cake. He pointed to the plate. "Have one. They're good." He waited. When Rhavas only sat there, he shrugged. "Or don't, then—whatever suits you. We do evil, yes. We enjoy it, yes. But do we take pride in it? Should we take pride in it, eh?"

Rhavas remembered how he'd felt after ravishing Ingegerd and then cursing her to keep her from killing him. Had he been proud of himself? Hardly. He'd been heartsick instead. But, he told himself, he'd still been struggling against the truth then. Now he understood it and accepted it. He said, "Why shouldn't we, your Majesty? It is part of what we are, just as much as—more than—good is. We have to be taught good, from the time that we are tiny. If we aren't, we grow up knowing it not. Evil, though, evil comes forth of itself."

Stylianos studied him again, this time for some little while. The Avtokrator's eyes were hooded, opaque; they seemed more likely to have been carved from jet than to belong to a living man. "Well, very holy sir, you are more dangerous than I gave you credit for," Stylianos said at last. "The synod will see to it, though. You were brave, to try to persuade Phos' priesthood to bow down to Skotos." He spat—reflectively, Rhavas judged, rather than from reflex, before continuing, "Foolish, mind you, but brave."

"The truth is there," Rhavas insisted. "People will see it."

"It's always been there," Stylianos said with a shrug. "The sun has always been there, too." He didn't sketch Phos' sun-sign; Rhavas found the omission interesting. Stylianos went on, "If we look at the sun too long, it blinds us. Then we don't see anything at all. If we look too closely at what people are really like, we throw up our hands—or maybe just throw up—and run away. How can we help it? That's why we have faith, I think: it lets us console ourselves by thinking we might be better than we are. We might be, yes, but we're bloody well not."

"You are a better defender of Phos than most of those in the High Temple," Rhavas said slowly. "Did you study for the priesthood before you started soldiering?"

"Not me. Not a bit of it." Stylianos made his denial sound absurdly cheerful. "But I've been around a long time"—he plucked at his beard, which was grayer than Rhavas'—"and I've seen a lot of shit. And a lot of what you see in my trade, very holy sir, is shit, believe you me it is. I've seen it, and I've thought about it, and this is what I've come up with."

"You will make a formidable Avtokrator," Rhavas said. "You may make a better one than my cousin did." He'd never dreamt he would think such a thing, let alone say it. But he'd barely met Videssos' new sovereign before today.

Stylianos only shrugged. "We'll see. I hope so. That's why I rose up against him, anyway."

Rhavas wondered what the Avtokrator would do if he were to renounce the doctrine he'd preached at the synod and in this little dining hall. He didn't wonder for long. Stylianos would find some other reason to condemn him. Or maybe Stylianos wouldn't find any reason he publicly announced. That didn't mean Rhavas would stay alive even a heartbeat longer. He couldn't go without sleep. He couldn't watch his back all the time.

He could—he thought he could—kill Stylianos now. But if he did . . . so what? The synod would still condemn him. The Empire would fall into chaos—worse chaos, he corrected himself. Rhavas had already seen as much. It seemed even more painfully clear now.

By Stylianos' small smile, he'd seen it, too. "This is how things work, very holy sir," he said, something approaching sympathy in his voice.

"They shouldn't," Rhavas said. "In the acts of the synod, the truth will be set forth for all time. Those who come after will see it for themselves. They will be persuaded. It will triumph."

"Dreams are nothing but dreams, no matter who dreams them," Stylianos said. "Yours will crumble, too."

"We shall see, your Majesty. Unlike you, I do have faith, even if it is not the sort of faith you might prefer," Rhavas said. The Avtokrator laughed and laughed. That might have been the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

Back at the High Temple, Rhavas listened to one ecclesiastic after another denounce him. The priests and prelates probably would have done the same even with Maleinos still on the imperial throne. With Stylianos' fundament warming that seat, they thought they had a license to assail Rhavas—and, no doubt, they were right.

The ecumenical patriarch remained courteous, and kept giving him chances to respond. Though Rhavas began to see they would do him no good, he used them anyhow. "Any man who can look at the state of the world and then declare that good will surely triumph is either a liar or a fool—most likely both," he declared.

Boos and hisses and catcalls filled the air around him. Someone flung a rotten squash at him, as if he belonged to a bad Midwinter's Day mime troupe. The flying vegetable missed him and smacked another priest instead. It came from behind Rhavas. Whoever hurled it hadn't wanted his face seen, lest he be cursed.

Rhavas bowed in that direction, sarcasm steaming from his good manners. "And in which chapter of Phos' holy scriptures do you find that response?" he inquired. Only more jeers answered him, these from all around the High Temple.

"Shall we proceed, holy sirs?" Sozomenos could make the assembled ecclesiastics pay attention to him. "Shall we proceed in something at least approaching order?" If he had to resort to sarcasm, things had come to a pretty pass indeed. When he got enough calm to satisfy him, he pointed to a scrawny, clever-looking young priest. "I recognize Seides. You may proceed, holy sir."

"Thank you, most holy sir. I wish I did not have to," Seides said. "But we have seen murder done here on the floor of the high Temple—yes, even here. And I am sorry to have to report to you—to report to you all, my fellow ecclesiastics—that this is not the first murder worked by Rhavas, who no longer deserves to be deemed a very holy sir. I speak with regret, but also with conviction. And conviction is what this man who has abandoned his soul to darkness deserves."

Sozomenos, as usual, turned to Rhavas. "Will you deny, very holy sir? Will you extenuate?" He sounded as if he hoped Rhavas would. He probably did. Rhavas saw as much, even if it baffled him.

"He has said nothing yet," Rhavas said. "By the time he has finished, he will have said the same. As for Arkadios, I deny that was murder. A duel, perhaps, but not murder. He called on the power he respected. I called on mine. I still stand here. He does not."

After another of his sad sighs, Sozomenos nodded to Seides. "You may proceed, holy sir."

"I thank you, most holy sir. As I say, this appears not to be the first murder the prelate of Skopentzana has perpetrated. He rode off in company with a certain Himerios, an imperial officer, and two mages. The bodies of these men were discovered behind bushes. They had been there some time, and scavengers had been at them. No one is certain what became of them, mind you, but they are dead, while the very holy Rhavas lives on. This Himerios, be it noted, lived for long and long in Skopentzana, where he commanded the imperial garrison. He and Rhavas could not have been unknown to each other."

"He commanded the imperial garrison, yes," Rhavas said. "He commanded it for Maleinos, and fought for Maleinos against Stylianos, as did these mages. This being so, how can anyone here care about their deaths under any circumstances?"

That produced a sudden and thoughtful silence in the High Temple. Priests and prelates and monks and abbots had to bear in mind who their new sovereign was. Those who couldn't shift with the changing tides would be left behind—or something worse than that would happen to them. Rhavas almost laughed out loud. This Seides knew a lot, but he wasn't as smart as he thought he was.

Then the priest said, "You may make whatever denials you like in this case, very holy sir, but it is also a fact that you were in the company of this Himerios' wife, a fact we know from a merchant, a certain Arsenios, who traveled with you and the woman for a time. And it is a fact that the woman was found dead, with no obvious reason that she should be dead, in an otherwise deserted farmhouse north of the northern town of Kybistra."

Arsenios! Rhavas had forgotten all about him. But the merchant evidently hadn't forgotten about Rhavas. Who would have thought he could reach Videssos the city?

"And a Skopentzanan mage, a certain Koubatzes, was found dead, with no obvious reason that he should be dead, in the snow south of Kybistra," Seides went on. "Arsenios has stated that the said Koubatzes was not satisfied with your explanation of this woman's fate, and that he rode after you on the morning you departed Kybistra."

Curse you, Arsenios, Rhavas thought furiously. He had no idea where in Videssos the city Arsenios was. But he hoped—and he thought—the curse would find the miserable wretch.

Nor had Seides finished. "There is also the question of the priest Tryphon, who expired for no obvious reason while debating theological questions with you in the town of Podandos. And there is the question of the most holy Kameniates, the recently deceased ecumenical patriarch, who expired for no obvious reason not long after rejecting the wicked and heretical doctrines you have propounded at this synod. What have you to say for yourself in regard to these matters, very holy sir?"

Rhavas was tempted to curse Seides, too. The man was more clever than Rhavas had thought he was, clever enough to be dangerous. But if Rhavas did curse him, his demise would only prove his point. Had Seides figured that out? Did he count on it? If so, he was very clever indeed—and very dangerous, too.

"What do I say?" Rhavas needed a moment to decide just what he would say. "I say these are lies. I say this is nothing but scandalmongering, an effort to blacken my name so impressionable fools"—which means most of you—"will look away from the truth in my words."

"I have the written reports from Kybistra," Seides said calmly. "The men who wrote them knew nothing of your doctrines, such as those are. I have the written report from Podandos as well. And Arsenios' deposition was taken before he learned why it was of interest. Further, your innkeeper, a certain Lardys, states that you cursed the late Kameniates at about the time of his unexpected and otherwise inexplicable demise."

He cursed him, too. Did he say that? But Rhavas couldn't ask the question, not without betraying himself. "You are too blind and too afraid to acknowledge the strength and power of the doctrine I have presented to you," he declared. "If you make me out to be a villain, you don't have to."

"You have made yourself out to be a villain. I merely report your deeds." Seides spread his arms to the assembled ecclesiastics. "Holy sirs, I speak with regret, but I also speak with certainty. This Rhavas has shown himself to be not only an infamous heretic worthy of our condemnation but also a common, vicious murderer deserving the full penalties of the law. Shall the synod now call the question on his misguided and pernicious doctrines?"

"Yes! Let us call the question!" That shout came echoing back from the dome, as if straight from Phos' lips.

"The question shall be called." Sozomenos did not sound exultant at the prospect of seeing Rhavas defeated. Instead, he seemed sad things had come so far. But he pressed ahead nonetheless: "Let those who agree with the doctrines propounded by the very holy Rhavas so signify by a show of hands."

Defiantly, Rhavas raised his own right hand. He wondered whether any other ecclesiastics would have the nerve to do likewise. To his surprise and pleasure, a few more hands did go up, all around the High Temple. A few, yes, but not nearly enough.

"Will the patriarchal secretary please inform me when he has completed his count?" Sozomenos said. A priest came up and whispered in his ear. "Thank you," the patriarch told him, and then raised his voice once more: "Let those who oppose the doctrines propounded by the very holy Rhavas so signify by a show of hands."

A forest might have suddenly sprung up, there inside the High Temple. Arms in blue sleeves, arms in cloth-of-gold sleeves, arms in sleeves that had fallen down . . . Arms by the hundreds rose. Sozomenos' was one of them.

"Will the patriarchal secretary please inform me when he has completed his count?" the old man repeated. The priest needed longer this time; he had many more arms to count. At last, he approached Sozomenos once more. The ecumenical patriarch bent to hear his whisper, then nodded. "The very holy Rhavas' doctrinal innovations having failed to win a majority, the true and orthodox faith remains defined as it was before this synod was convened."

A storm of cheers rose from the assembled ecclesiastics' throats. With the cheers were jeers: "Anathema to Rhavas!" "Rhavas the heretic!" "Dig up Rhavas' bones!" "To the ice with Rhavas!" Rhavas stood there calmly, listening to his foes exult. Let them yap, he thought. They have no power to do anything else, while I . . .

Sozomenos raised both hands in the air. Little by little, silence returned to the High Temple. "Calm yourselves, holy sirs," the patriarch said. "Those who have been found to be in error shall still have the chance to restore themselves to the fold. You priests and prelates, you monks and abbots who voted for the doctrines found not to be acceptable, will you not recant your errors and do penance for them?"

"I recant!" someone called.

"And I!" someone else added. One by one, other ecclesiastics abjured what they'd favored only minutes before. Rhavas knew what drove them: fear. If they persisted in what had been ruled heresy, they would suffer for it. If he persisted, the assembled ecclesiastics would do their best to make him suffer, too.

At last, it seemed that every cleric but Rhavas himself had renounced the view that Skotos was or could be more powerful than Phos. Sozomenos looked out to him from the pulpit. "Very holy sir, I appeal to you: return to the true and orthodox faith," the ecumenical patriarch said, stretching out his hands in supplication. "Return to the light, which is your true home. I beg of you, bend your proud neck and agree with the ecclesiastics assembled here."

Bending his proud neck was the last thing Rhavas cared to do. If anything, he was prouder in defeat than he had been while still hoping for triumph. "The light has failed," he said. "Darkness covers the face of the world. You who will not see it, you are the eyeless ones."

"Anathema!" "Heresy!" "Excommunicate him!" The cries rose up again, like the baying of a pack of wolves.

Again, Sozomenos raised both hands. Again, he needed some little while to win quiet. Once he had it, he spoke in somber, even sorrowful, tones: "Those who will not recant must be condemned. You do understand that, very holy sir?"

Rhavas laughed a laugh with knives in it. "This synod has not the power to condemn me," he said. "You are yourselves condemned as madmen, blind men, and fools. Those who will not see the truth in this life will surely learn of it in the next, and I wish you joy of it."

The rising roar of rage was music to his ears. He pointed at the thickest crowd of clerics, intending to send as many of them as he could to the next life right away. If Arkadios hadn't driven home the lesson, this would.

But it didn't. He never got the chance to use his curse. During the long, dangerous ride down to Videssos the city, he'd thought several times about monks who decided synods with bludgeons. He'd paid no particular attention to the monk standing behind him: just one more blind man among a great swarm of them. But the man was not blind; he could see more than well enough to swing.

Stars exploded against the side of Rhavas' head. He groaned, or thought he did. Then the stars went out and everything spiraled down into blackness.

This wasn't the Bridge of the Separator. At first, that was all Rhavas knew for sure. He thought he was dead, but he wasn't so sure about that. Wherever this place was, it was dark, and it was freezing cold.

"Ah, my friend, my disciple. Welcome. I did not expect to see you so soon." The voice was deep and slow. If a voice could be dark and freezing cold, then this voice was.

"Where . . . where am I?" Thinking about the ice in the abstract was one thing. Living it, experiencing it, knowing it—that was something else again. But why, if he was in Skotos' hell, couldn't he remember falling off the Bridge? Surely he would have had to go through that before meeting . . . this.

"Where do you think you are?" Had the voice known how, it would have sounded coy.

"This . . . has to be the ice," Rhavas said with such courage as he could muster. Being brave was cold comfort indeed.

"Well, if it does, are you ready to make the most of it?" the voice asked.

"Make the most of it?" Rhavas wondered if he'd heard right. How could he or anyone else make the most of an eternity of torment, of punishment?

"You are still of the world, if not precisely in it," the voice said. "Go back, if you care to, to work for me. You can serve me well, and win time for yourself beyond any mortal's dreams. Or you need not leave this domain at all, ever again. The choice is yours, and yours alone."

Already, the dark and the cold were shriveling Rhavas' soul. He wondered if there was another choice: to leave them behind for light and warmth. No sooner had that thought begun to form than laughter rolled around him, rolled through him. There was something the voice found truly funny—and Rhavas' soul shriveled even more. The answer to his question seemed only too clear.

"I'll go back!" he gasped.

"Why am I not surprised?" Oh, yes, that struck the voice funny, too, not that Rhavas was in any position to appreciate the mirth. Its laughter made the most terrible peals that had ever burst from his or any other merely human throat seem cries of delight absolute and unrestrained. "Very well, then. You may . . . wake up!"

"Wake up!" Someone threw a bucket of water in Rhavas' face. The water was stale, almost stagnant. He coughed and spluttered, half-drowned. "Wake up!" the voice shouted again.

Rhavas did, and wished he hadn't. His head felt as if a boulder had fallen on it and driven him into the ground up to his neck. But the shout came from a merely human throat, not from . . . anything else. He frowned, trying to remember. Had that been only a dream? He wasn't sure. He wondered if he ever would be.

He also wondered if it would matter one way or the other. His head pounded so much, he wished he were dead. A moment later, he shook his head. He regretted it immediately afterward, for the motion brought fresh shooting pains and made him want to be sick. But he did not wish he were dead. However miserable he was, he wanted to live.

Another bucket of musty water soaked him. "On your feet, you cursed heretic! By the lord with the great and good mind, you're going to get every bit of what's coming to you."

On my feet? Rhavas thought. He had to remember how to make them work. He couldn't just rise, the way he would have if he hadn't just been clouted over the head. Each individual motion took intense concentration. Putting the motions together took even more. After some little while, he stood, swaying like a tall tree in a bad storm.

He realized he was in a cell. Stout iron bars separated him from his tormentor. The man who'd drenched him stood there laughing in the corridor—he had no trouble staying upright. He would have been safe from any ordinary victim. Whatever else Rhavas was, ordinary he was not. "Curse you," he growled, and waited for a measure of revenge.

But the man did not fall. Rhavas swore under his breath. Were his wits still too scrambled to let him curse? He wouldn't have been surprised.

Then the man sketched the sun-circle over his heart. "Phos!" he exclaimed. "You're as strong as they said you were, and more besides. They put every kind of ward under the sun on me, and you still almost knocked me over."

That made Rhavas feel better—the first thing that had. He started to curse the—guard? sorcerer?—again, but checked himself before he did. There would be others. If they came in and found this one dead, it would go worse for him . . . assuming it could go any worse. And killing this wretch wouldn't get him out of the cell. He wondered if anything would, save the last walk to face a headsman's sword, or perhaps the stake.

"Every time you try to curse somebody from now on, we'll clobber you again," the man said cheerfully. "Before long, you won't have enough brains left to keep from pissing your drawers—and you wouldn't be able to do any more than you did just now anyway, so you'd better save your strength for praying."

Rhavas wasn't so sure of that. With all his wits about him, he could curse more powerfully than he had. Could the Videssian wizards' wards also grow stronger? He didn't know, but he was inclined to doubt it.

Even so, he nodded as if he understood and accepted the other man's words. That made daggers of pain stab him again, but he set his teeth and endured them. Whether his foes knew it or not, he had something in reserve.

"We'll be well rid of you," the fellow said. "Even the patriarch thinks so, and he's soft as a pile of goose down."

Sozomenos had needed no wards to withstand Rhavas' curses. They hadn't almost knocked him over, either; as best Rhavas could tell, they hadn't affected him at all. Rhavas still didn't understand—didn't want to understand—that, but he did understand one thing: the ecumenical patriarch, whatever else he was, was far from soft.

If Rhavas' foes did not understand one another, that was something else he held in reserve. He kept quiet, one of the hardest things any Videssian could do.

The guard, by contrast, went right on gloating. When he had something to say, he talked. When he didn't have anything to say—he talked anyway. "They'll anathematize you," he said, anticipation bubbling in his voice. "They'll excommunicate you. And then they'll execute you. With your cousin on the throne, you might have got away with the sword. Now that Stylianos is Avtokrator, though, I figure they'll burn you. How do you like that?"

"Not very well," Rhavas answered. The guard only laughed at him. Why not? He'd said something funny. As if how he liked things would matter a bit! "Where am I?" he asked, a reasonable question for somebody who'd been knocked over the head.

That only drew more laughter from the man in the corridor. "Don't even know, eh? And you were the fellow with all the answers in the synod. Except they didn't much like your answers, did they?"

"Fools don't know wisdom when they hear it," Rhavas said.

"No, you don't, do you?" the man retorted—a better comeback than Rhavas had looked for from him. The fellow went on, "As for where you're at, you're in the prison under the patriarchal residence. Where else would they stow an arch-heretic till they're ready to get rid of him for good?"

Rhavas hadn't known there was a prison under the patriarchal residence. He would have bet Sozomenos hadn't known about it, either. But someone had: probably Sozomenos' sakellarios. The patriarchal secretary always knew where the bodies were buried. He was also the man who kept an eye on the patriarch for the Avtokrator. Did Sozomenos have a new sakellarios these days? Or was the old one just . . . flexible?

That was, quite literally, the least of Rhavas' worries right now. He asked, "May I have some water to drink along with what you gave me to swim in?"

"Oh, you are a funny fellow," the guard said with another laugh. "We'll see how funny you are when they light the woodpile under you. You'll laugh out of the other side of your mouth then, by Phos." But, to Rhavas' vast relief, he went away after that, perhaps even to get the water.

Rhavas took the chance to look at his cell. Three walls were of stout masonry, the fourth of iron bars. The lock was beyond his reach. The cell held only a canvas mattress cover stuffed with straw and a brass-bound wooden bucket whose purpose was depressingly obvious.

What light there was came from a couple of torches in sconces on the far wall. Rhavas was glad there wasn't more; even looking at the flames made his headache worse. That monk had almost caved in his skull for good.

Here came the guard. Two archers accompanied him. "Get back against the far wall," he snapped. Rhavas obeyed, dimly flattered the man thought him so dangerous. While the archers aimed at Rhavas, the guard reached into the cell and set a cup on the stone floor. "Here you are." He drew back and waved Rhavas forward.

The water wasn't cold and wasn't especially fresh. It might have been the same stuff that had drenched Rhavas. He didn't care. He drank eagerly. "Thank you," he said when the cup was empty.

"It's all right," the guard said. "Drink as much as you please. It won't be enough to put out the fire when the time comes. So long." Away he went, the archers at his heel. Rhavas wanted to throw the mug at his head. He didn't, and afterward wondered why. What could he do now that would get him in worse trouble than he was already?

Like so much else in Videssian life, anathematizing and excommunication had a ceremony all their own. Guards heavily reinforced by mages came to get Rhavas out of his cell. He thought about striking at them, but again held back. He didn't think he could slay them all, and anything less than that would do him no good. If they wanted to hold a ceremony with him in the starring role, they could do that. He still thought he might be able to take his revenge on them later on.

For now, they were too alert—as alert as if he were a lion coming out of a cage. "No false moves, priest, or you won't live long enough to be sorry!" barked one of the guards who warily unlocked the iron door confining him.

"Here I am," was all Rhavas said. "The priests and prelates and patriarch make a mistake condemning me."

"One of you says yes. All of them say no," the guard answered. "I expect that pretty much settles it."

Rhavas shook his head. "How many are mistaken makes no difference. How many have the truth is another story. I have the truth. You would do well to remember that, and learn from me."

"No, thanks," the guard said. "I'll take my chances with the whole rest of the world, I will." He laughed.

He thought he was a wit. Rhavas thought he overestimated by a factor of two. "The more fool you," Rhavas said.

"I'm not the one getting anathematized. I'm not the one getting excommunicated," the guard replied. "You cursed well are, and cursed you will be. Now get moving, not very holy sir, or we'll bloody well drag you."

He had nerve, if not much in the way of brains. Rhavas didn't fear curses from the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What the priests and the wizards would do to him after the formal condemnation was liable to be a different story. Admiring the guard's cheek, he accompanied the man without any more argument.

When he came up, it was evening. That surprised him; he'd been looking to see sunlight one more time. But night was falling, with the nearly full moon in the east casting a pale glow across Videssos the city. A few birds sang the last sleepy songs of day. As more and more stars came out, the birds fell silent.

The vast bulk of the High Temple blotted out a good many stars. It covered more of the sky than the Paristrian Mountains had till Rhavas drew quite close to them. Men with torches moved ahead of him and behind him, so that he never got out of the light.

"Keep moving, you!" the guard told him, again as if he were a dangerous beast that might turn and bite if it got the chance. And so I might, too, he thought, not without pride.

Torches and fat, perfumed candles and innumerable olive-oil lamps made the High Temple's narthex almost as bright as day. Almost. During the day, the light came from one source: the sun. Here, with all these lamps and candles and torches blazing, a million shadows danced and jiggled and swooped and competed. The light was bright, but daylight it was not.

"Keep moving!" The command came again. Rhavas obeyed it. Walking from the narthex into the High Temple itself was passing from light into near-darkness. Half a dozen great beeswax candles burned near the altar; here and there, they raised ghostly golden twinkles from the tesserae in the dome mosaic. But half a dozen candles, no matter how large, could not begin to illuminate the vast space under that dome.

Here and there, the candlelight also raised golden echoes from the ecumenical patriarch's rich robes. Sozomenos still sounded sad when he called the session to order: He did not want to condemn Rhavas. But where what he wanted and what he judged his duty conflicted, he would do his duty.

"We are met this evening in the matter of the very holy Rhavas, formerly a priest of Videssos the city, formerly prelate of Skopentzana, who has refused to put aside beliefs declared heretical by the synod recently convened," Sozomenos said. "Very holy sir, will you not renounce your misbelief and return to the bosom of the true and orthodox faith?"

"I do not believe it to be misbelief, and I will not renounce it," Rhavas said firmly. He also did not think renouncing it would do him any good. If he did, the assembled ecclesiastics would rejoice for his soul—and turn him over to Stylianos, so the secular authorities could dispose of him for his crimes against imperial law.

A sigh rose from the priests and prelates and monks and abbots in the High Temple. The ecumenical patriarch gestured to someone Rhavas could not see. That worthy stepped forward and used a bronze snuffer to put out one of the tall candles. Sozomenos gestured again. A chorus invisible in the gloom sang out: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"

The beautiful rendition contrasted chillingly with the dreadful words. Hardened as Rhavas thought himself to be, he couldn't help shivering. The condemnation sent him . . . Where I already am, he thought, and made his back stiffen.

"Will you not renounce your mischievous belief that the power of Phos has receded in this world, while that of Skotos has advanced?" Sozomenos inquired.

"I do not believe it to be misbelief, and I will not renounce it," Rhavas replied. He knew how this ceremony would go. He knew how it would end—or rather, how it was supposed to end. He had in mind a dénouement somewhat different from the one the patriarch envisioned.

Another sigh rose from the almost invisible ecclesiastics in the High Temple. Was it a sad sigh or a hungry one, an anticipatory one? Rhavas knew what his opinion was. Sozomenos' gesture, though, was beyond question sorrowful. The priest with the snuffer extinguished another candle. The chorus sang out again: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"

Three more times Sozomenos asked Rhavas to return to orthodoxy and renounce his newfound faith in Skotos. Three more times Rhavas refused. The snuffer put out three more candles. The chorus sang of Rhavas' condemnation three more times.

Only one candle remained alight in the High Temple. Sozomenos asked one more ritual question. Rhavas did not answer right away. When he didn't, the patriarch said, "Very holy sir?" with fresh hope in his voice. Maybe even at this last instant Rhavas' soul might be saved.

Rhavas still did not think his soul needed saving, not from the likes of the ecclesiastics assembled in the High Temple. He had been otherwise occupied, watchful beforehand (he smiled at the conceit) that they would not have the chance to lay their hands on it, so to speak. Sozomenos' final ritual question interrupted him.

When he reached a place where he could speak again, he said, "My apologies, most holy sir. I do not believe my doctrine to be misbelief, and, for the last time, I will not renounce it."

"For the last time, indeed," Sozomenos said sadly. Sadly, he gestured for the last time to the priest with the candle snuffer. For the last time, the priest used it, and the High Temple plunged into darkness. For the last time, the chorus sang out: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"

There in the darkness, Rhavas was not idle. He had begun a spell while one candle still burned, and was in the middle of it when Sozomenos asked him that last question. He'd had to wait till he finished a softly murmured stanza before he could speak again. Once he'd refused to admit he was in error, he raced through the rest of the spell. Only a heartbeat after the last candle died, he muttered, "Let it be accomplished!"

As it had at the inn in the town east of Videssos the city, darkness flowed from his fingers. This was true darkness, darkness as the enemy of light rather than just its absence. It was the darkness you got when you called on Skotos in place of Phos. It swallowed sight, swallowed the very idea of sight. Back at that inn, Rhavas had cast that spell by way of experiment, to discover what it would do. Now he knew, and had practiced with as many variations as he could dream up. He sent it forth with all his strength—and, maybe, with the dark god's strength flowing through him as well.

After the ceremony of excommunication was complete, priests and acolytes should have raced through the High Temple lighting lamps and torches and candles, bathing the interior of the great building with light to show the condemned man what he would have to do without forevermore. Perhaps they started, but how could they go on when blackness drowned even the tapers they carried? Their cries of alarm were the first ones to ring out inside the Temple.

Theirs were the first, but far from the last. "Light! Where is the light?" someone called urgently.

The light has failed! Rhavas exulted. He almost shouted it aloud, but swallowed the words at the last instant. Why give his foes a clue about where he was and what he was doing?

"Sorcery?" someone with a shrill voice shouted. Someone else cried, "Skotos is loose in the High Temple!"—and that, in the Videssian phrase, spilled the perfume into the soup.

Somebody reached for Rhavas. He thought it was one of the wizards who'd come up with him from the prison under the patriarchal residence—or it might have been one of the guards. Whoever it was, the fellow missed Rhavas, blundering past him in the darkness impenetrable and seizing someone else. "Ha! Got you!" the mage or guardsman exclaimed. A scuffle broke out.

Not far away, another sorcerer began a low-voiced counterspell. That was the last thing Rhavas wanted; it might strip his protection from him. He pointed toward the sound of the quick, quiet chant. "Curse you, mage!" he whispered fiercely. "Curse you to death!" The chanting stopped. The mage groaned. Rhavas heard the sound of a body falling. Whatever wards the man had had, they weren't enough, not now.

Yes, the light has failed! Again, he wanted to shout it. Again, he made himself hold back. And, even if he no longer believed in the power of the light, he still needed it, or a little of it, to make good his escape. He murmured another charm, a new one, to lift the absolute blackness from his own eyes but no one else's. He was still not an accomplished mage. He couldn't be sure how a spell would go till he tried it.

This one accomplished everything he wanted from it. Even to him, it remained dim inside the High Temple. The lamplighters had got to only a couple of fixtures before realizing something was dreadfully wrong. But he could see again. And it was very clear that all the other assembled ecclesiastics—and all the soldiers and wizards as well—remained blind.

"Where is he? Catch him!" somebody yelled.

They tried. He watched them try. If he hadn't been so busy getting away, he would have giggled as he watched them. They staggered this way and that. Whenever two of them bumped together, they both shouted, "Here he is!" and tried to tackle each other. It reminded him of the best Midwinter's Day mime skit of all time.

Someone bumped into him, shouted, "Here he is!" and tried to tackle him.

"No, you idiot!" Rhavas said, wrestling free. "He's over there, closer by the altar."

"Oh. Sorry, holy sir," his would-be captor said, and let him go. The man blundered away and wrapped his arms around someone else a few heartbeats later. "Here he is!"

When Rhavas neared the narthex, he paused. He wasn't sure the darkness he'd sent forth reached so far. He worked his spell again, this time aiming it in that direction. Startled shouts from the antechamber said the light there had suddenly died. Rhavas worked the other spell again, too, the one that let him see in spite of the sorcerous darkness.

The narthex, to his relief, wasn't nearly so crowded as the floor of the High Temple. Before Rhavas went out the door, he again sent darkness out ahead of him. Some of the soldiers posted outside the High Temple might recognize him. They would surely wonder how and why he was walking out of his own condemnation. They wouldn't worry about that, though, if instead they were wondering why they'd suddenly been struck blind.

They were rubbing at their eyes and shouting—sometimes screaming—as he strode past them. "Wizardry!" one of them cried. "Wicked wizardry!" Rhavas laughed under his breath. It wasn't as if the man was wrong.

When he saw people running toward the High Temple, he realized he'd passed out of the region where his sorcery was effective. "Is there a fire inside, holy sir?" one of them asked.

For a moment, he was puzzled. Then he understood they had to be seeing his darkness as thick black smoke. "Yes," he answered, doing his best to let out a convincing gasp. "It's—it's terrible in there!" He lurched and hacked and coughed, as if he'd breathed in too much smoke.

Crying out in horror, they hurried past him. They cried out again when they ran into the darkness. One of them said it smelled like smoke. That was the man's imagination working overtime, nothing more, but in an instant all the rest were yelling the same thing.

Quite forgotten, Rhavas walked out into the plaza of Palamas. He wondered how long the darkness he'd created would last. Sooner or later, it would have to dissipate as the energy that powered the spell wore off, even if the mages in the High Temple didn't manage to disperse it sooner.

Meanwhile, though, he was free. His darkness had done all he'd hoped it would, and more besides. The market square was quiet in the natural darkness of night. A few food stands stayed open under torches. A few trulls slipped from shadow to shadow, calling invitations to the men they saw. One of them called an invitation to Rhavas. He ignored her. She swore, more from force of habit than from real anger, and walked on.

Rhavas own anger was real, and growing by the moment. He turned back toward the High Temple, and toward the ecclesiastics assembled within. Refuse to hear him, would they? Condemn him, would they? Cling to their defeated god, would they? They deserved to stay blind forever, not just until his darkness broke up.

They deserved worse than that. Videssos the city deserved worse than that. Rhavas gathered himself. "I curse this city!" he cried in a great voice. "I curse it in the name of Skotos, the dark god triumphant!"

And the earth moved beneath him, roared beneath him.

Unlike Skopentzana, Videssos the city was prone to earthquakes. At Skopentzana, Rhavas had still been fighting to believe in Phos, and hadn't wanted to think his curse touched off a temblor. Here in the capital, he wanted nothing more. He cried out again, this time in wordless delight, altogether certain what he'd done.

That dreadful roar went on and on. It seemed to go on forever, though in fact it couldn't have lasted even a minute. Rhavas was knocked off his feet—was, in fact, knocked out of one sandal. He kept on shouting joyfully, though not even he could hear himself through the deep bass rumble of the very earth in torment.

What he did hear through that rumble were the lesser roars and crashes of buildings crumbling and falling. Much, even most, of Videssos the city was built of brick and stone, and bricks and stones shook themselves apart from one another when the ground shook beneath them.

Rhavas, who had had the sense to stand in the open before cursing the capital, hoped with all his heart he would bring the High Temple down on the heads of the ecclesiastics assembled within. That struck him as justice sweeter and stronger than the merely poetic. But when the trembling finally eased, the Temple remained intact, though the patriarchal residence next to it had fallen into ruin. Swearing under his breath, he wondered if he could lay another curse specifically on the Temple. When he reached inside himself, though, he found nothing left. What power he had, he had used, and for the moment used up.

Time to get away, then. If the men who condemned him had a chance to think, they would decide the earthquake on the heels of his sorcerously aided escape from the High Temple was no coincidence. The hunt would be on as soon as they did. And, depleted as he was, he would have a hard time resisting them. That being so, best not to linger till they gathered their wits.

An aftershock staggered him as he trotted toward Middle Street. He heard fresh screams after that, and fresh crashes as well. Moans and groans and cries of pain seemed more or less constant. How many people suffered, buried in rubble? How many more were beyond suffering?

Someone not far enough away shouted, "Fire!" That was one of the great perils in an earthquake. Fortunately for the shattered imperial city, there was no more than the barest hint of breeze to fan the flames.

Rubble clogged even Middle Street, the broadest thoroughfare in the city. Some of the roofed colonnades had collapsed. So had some of the buildings along the avenue. Rhavas spared a moment, but no more than a moment, to hope Lardys and his inn still survived.

Men and women ran here and there. Many of them shouted other people's names, trying to find relatives and friends. Others, like Rhavas, made for the Silver Gate—and, no doubt, other gates as well. Each new aftershock that rattled the city sent more folk fleeing. Spending a night in the open would have been a hardship during the winter. On a warm summer night, it seemed far better than spending that same night under a roof that might come down.

Like the High Temple, the walls still stood. Again, Rhavas had to swallow his disappointment. He couldn't do anything about it now. The Silver Gate was open. He joined the throng of men, women, and children streaming out through it. "We're safe!" someone said once outside the city.

Rhavas knew he wasn't safe yet. But neither was Videssos safe from him.