Bridge of the Separator

VII

Rhavas rode away from the farmhouse by himself. It was still snowing, but not so hard. That didn't matter; he would have ridden away had the blizzard got worse instead of easing. He hoped riding away would let him leave his sins and his mistakes behind.

He didn't need long to find what a forlorn hope that was. Ingegerd's body lay in the farmhouse—yes. Rhavas hadn't had the heart to touch it again, even to drag it out and cover it over with snow. But the memory of what he'd done to her—both the rape and the curse—still burned inside his mind. However much he wished he could, he couldn't escape his sins so simply. He took them with him wherever he went.

She had it coming, he told himself. If she'd only yielded to me, the way she should have, none of this would have happened.

He knew he was trying to salve his conscience. Knowing it didn't stop him from getting angry at Ingegerd as well as himself. Before long, it didn't stop him from getting angry at her instead of himself.

When he realized as much, he sketched the sun-sign over his heart. "Phos!" he exclaimed. "Don't let me behave this way!"

But the prayer seemed feeble and useless and empty, the way all his prayers sent up to the lord with the great and good mind had seemed lately. What had Phos done to answer his increasingly desperate petitions? Anything? Anything at all? Not so far as he could see.

And what did that mean? He'd asked himself the question again and again, and shied away from the answers that sprang to mind. Now, jouncing south aboard a steppe pony across a snow-covered plain, he began to grapple with them, really for the first time.

This world was the battleground for the struggle between Phos and Skotos, between light and dark, between good and evil. So he had been trained to believe since childhood, and so he did believe now. Not a Videssian from the borders of Makuran to those of Halogaland would have failed to agree with him.

Videssians reverenced Phos. They prayed to the good god. They all believed Phos would triumph in the end, that he would confine Skotos to the eternal ice, and that good would reign in the world. Rhavas, again taught from childhood, had always believed the same thing. He'd believed it without thought, as anyone would believe a childhood lesson.

Now, rather than simply believing it, he thought about it. What was the evidence? "Phos' holy scriptures, of course," he said out loud, as if someone—perhaps his horse—had denied it.

That was all very well . . . until you measured the holy scriptures against what you saw in the world. Sin was as rampant as it had ever been—probably more so. Civil war consumed the Empire of Videssos. The Khamorth were loose inside the Empire. They wandered where they pleased and did what they would. Magic and prayer had proved powerless to stop them.

"And Phos turns a deaf ear to my petitions. Not one of them does he hear," Rhavas told the steppe pony. "Or it could be that he hears, but has not the power to respond. Yet I can curse, and when I do, the curse strikes home."

He remembered Toxaras' body lying in the snow. He remembered the ground shaking under his feet and the walls of Skopentzana falling to the ground. He remembered plainsmen tumbling from their horses, plainsmen falling dead in the forest. And he remembered Ingegerd crumpling to the farmhouse floor, Ingegerd whom he'd . . . loved? Ingegerd whom he'd given most excellent good reason to hate him. Ingegerd who'd done her best to kill him.

No, ride where he would, he couldn't get away from what he'd done. He took it with him, everywhere and always. The memories would never go away. What they meant, to him, to the Empire, and to the wider world . . . he was still working on that. He suspected he would be for a long time, if, in a world gone mad, he had a long time left to work on it.

Meanwhile, he rode south and west. As long as he was out in the open, he feared little. For better or for worse—for better and for worse—his curses would protect him from the barbarians as long as he saw them before they came into bowshot. Only when the track went through forest did he worry. There assailants could strike from ambush before he knew they were near.

But he came through safe whenever he passed through such places. Little by little, he decided the Khamorth did not haunt them. The nomads were plainsmen; forests had to seem strange and crowded and dangerous to them. Rhavas started to relax when he went through woods. A second, slower, realization made him wary again. The Khamorth might not prowl forests, but there were bound to be Videssian brigands on the loose as well, and tall trees and deep shadows would not bother them at all.

He camped for the night in the lee of a stone fence, the best shelter he could find. If he did not make a fire, he might draw wolves; if he did, he might draw men. Deciding men were more dangerous, he let darkness cloak him. Only after nightfall did he think of himself as under the dominion of Skotos' realm.

He ate smoked meat and coarsely ground flour moistened with snow that melted in his mouth. Ingegerd was the one who'd thought to plunder the Khamorth ponies' saddlebags. She'd taught him any number of things—a good many of which, perhaps, he would have been better off not learning.

"It's done," he said. The sound of his own voice startled him. But for arguments with himself, he'd spoken little since setting from the farmhouse where Ingegerd still lay. But he repeated, "It's done," and then added, "It can't be changed now. Nothing can be changed now. I go on from here."

Wrapping himself in all the clothes and blankets he had, he lay down in the snow. But for the horses close by, it might have been Skotos' hell: a dark and frozen wasteland. If he froze to death here, would the world to come seem much different? Or would something like this be all there was, now and forever?

His shiver had nothing to do with the weather. He was almost afraid to fall asleep, for fear he might not wake.

But wake he did. He started to praise Phos for letting him come through the long, cold night. However familiar the words were, they stuck in his throat. They might have been frozen there. What had the good god done for him, for Skopentzana, for Videssos? Nothing he could see. No, the disarray around him had to be Skotos' work.

Should I praise the dark god, then? he wondered. He shied away from the thought, as one of the steppe ponies might have shied from a scorpion. But once the notion lodged in his mind, it refused to leave.

After a breakfast like his supper, he rode away. Again, he would sooner have left behind the idea of praising Skotos. Again, he carried it with him whether he wanted to or not. If I do come down to Videssos the city, how much will I be fleeing by then?

But what choice did he have? If he didn't try to go on to the capital, what was he to do? The only other thing that occurred to him was to throw himself off a cliff. Then he would be free of the world, and the world would be free of him.

He shook his head. He had too much pride for that—too much pride, and too much fear of what would happen if he faced the Bridge of the Separator with all his recent sins still freshly seared on his soul. No, the only thing for him to do was to go on.

And by the time he got to Videssos the city, he might have a thing or two—or maybe more than a thing or two—to say to the proud and clever theologians who never thought to stick their noses outside the walls of the imperial capital. They had seen the world from one perspective—had seen it that way, in fact, for hundreds of years. He had a different viewpoint, one he thought held more truth.

They would not want to hear him. He was sure of that. Those arrogant little manikins were so sure they had all the answers. But if he showed them the truth, if he rubbed their noses in the truth, how could they deny it? They'd known he was a master theologian when they shipped him off to Skopentzana. He'd needed no seasoning in that, only in his knowledge of how to administer a temple. Well, he had that knowledge now, and more besides.

"Yes, and more besides," he told the steppe pony he rode. The pony paid no attention to him. But the priests and prelates in Videssos the city would. They would have to. Even the ecumenical patriarch would have to. Oh, yes. Even he.

Two days later, Rhavas rode into the town of Kybistra. He'd cursed one band of Khamorth raiders who tried to attack him. He'd done it man by man. When the first nomad tumbled from the saddle, the rest must have thought he'd had a seizure, or something of the sort. They'd kept coming. Losing a second man hadn't halted them, either. But when the third died as soon as Rhavas aimed a forefinger at him, the rest wheeled their horses and galloped away faster than they'd come after him. He'd felled a fourth man as they fled, more for the sport of it than for any other reason, and let the others make good their escape.

Kybistra was larger than Tzamandos. Here in the provinces, it counted for a city, though it was hardly more than an anthill when set beside the capital. Guards on the brown stone walls called a challenge to Rhavas as he rode up: anyone on a steppe pony made them nervous. But he was only one man, and he answered them in Videssian distinguished from their own only by the accents of Videssos the city—he didn't sound as if he'd been raised in the back of beyond. The gate crew swung the valves wide, then closed them again after he rode into the town.

One of the men from that crew gave him directions to an inn; after his unpleasant time in Tzamandos, he didn't want to lodge with another priest in a temple. The place wasn't far. In Videssos the city, it would have had some branches from a grape vine hung above the door. Here, a sign painter had daubed a bunch of purple grapes on a board. No vines grew anywhere close to Kybistra; winters here were far too savage, summers far too short.

A boy, perhaps the owner's son, took the pony he rode and the other one he'd led. He gave the lad a copper, and got back a bow and a polite, plainly memorized speech of thanks.

When he opened the door, warmth from a great fire blazing on the hearth greeted him. He hurried inside and closed the door behind him so none of the lovely heat could escape. Before even speaking to the innkeeper, he went over to stand in front of those crackling flames.

"Very holy sir!" called someone sitting at a table not far away.

Rhavas turned; he didn't want to draw away from the fire. "Koubatzes!" he said, and nodded to the mage. "Good to see you. Good to see anyone from Skopentzana. I had not known you got away."

"By the good god, very holy sir, I hadn't known you did, either," Koubatzes replied. The opening phrase was in a Videssian's mouth a dozen times a day. Hearing it, though, felt strange to Rhavas now. It was as if the wizard were telling him a clever lie. Koubatzes went on, "I almost didn't get away. A house fell in on me when that cursed earthquake hit us. If I hadn't jumped under a table, the roof would have smashed me flat."

That cursed earthquake. Koubatzes was righter than he knew. "I am glad you are safe," Rhavas said.

Koubatzes looked bleak. "I don't believe anyone is safe, not these days," he said. "I'm still breathing, though, and that puts me ahead of a lot of people." He tapped a stool by the one on which he perched. "Sit down with me and have a cup of wine. You look like you've earned it."

"Let me get a little warmer first," Rhavas said. Koubatzes grinned and nodded. The prelate turned to warm his back, then his front again, and then his back once more. He kept turning till he stopped feeling like a cold man and started feeling like a joint of meat on a spit. Then he did go over and sit down by the mage.

A barmaid walked up to him and asked, "What can I bring you, holy sir?"

Rhavas didn't bother correcting her about his rank. "Red wine," he answered. She went back to get it, swinging her hips. Rhavas' eyes followed her.

Koubatzes noticed him noticing her. "Must be hard to look all the time and never touch," he remarked.

That made Rhavas remember Ingegerd, Ingegerd whom he'd taken against her will, Ingegerd who lay dead north of Kybistra because of him. "Temptation is bad," he said seriously. "Yielding to temptation can be worse."

"I suppose so. Sometimes, though, it's fun," Koubatzes said.

Before Rhavas could reply, the barmaid brought him his wine in a cheap earthenware cup. "Here you are, holy sir." Did the smile she gave him say she wouldn't care about his vows if he didn't? That was how it looked to him. When he didn't respond, she swayed away.

Automatically, Rhavas went through the ritual every Videssian used before drinking. He spat on the ground in rejection of Skotos, then raised his eyes and his hands to the heavens. Most of the time, he hardly noticed what he did when he followed the ritual. Now . . . Is the lord with the great and good mind really heeding me? he wondered uneasily.

Shrugging, he drank. The wine ran strong and sweet down his throat. Koubatzes said, "You must have had some narrow escapes yourself, eh, very holy sir?"

"Anyone from Skopentzana who still lives has had narrow escapes," the prelate answered.

"Phos! That's the truth!" Koubatzes emptied his winecup and waved to the barmaid for a refill. She waved back to show she saw. Koubatzes continued, "Me, I almost died half a dozen times the first couple of days. Things seem a little better down here anyway, don't they?"

"Maybe a little." Rhavas didn't want to talk about it.

Koubatzes plainly did. He told Rhavas a couple of stories that showed how clever he was, and one that also showed what a good wizard he was. "Hadn't been for the confusion spell, they would have had me," he finished.

"A good thing you got away," Rhavas said.

"Well, I think so." Did Koubatzes sound complacent? To Rhavas' possibly jaundiced ear, he did. He went on, "How about you, very holy sir? You had no magic to ward you. How did you manage to stay free?"

"I managed," Rhavas answered, thinking Koubatzes wasn't so smart as he thought he was. Rhavas drank from his cup of wine. The less he had to say about what had happened to him since the Khamorth got into Skopentzana, the better he would like it.

But Koubatzes didn't want to leave it alone. "What happened to that blond woman, the officer's wife?" he asked. "You were sort of her guardian after he went off to fight in the civil war, weren't you?"

Rhavas silently cursed the Videssian penchant for gossiping about everything under the sun. How much of Skopentzana had known Himerios asked him to watch over Ingegerd? Too much of it, that was plain. He had to answer. He did, as briefly as he could: "She's dead."

"Pity," Koubatzes said. "She was a striking woman—and a good one, too, by all I ever heard. The two don't always go together, but they did with her. The barbarians got to her before you could, did they?"

"There was nothing I could do," Rhavas said, which, while not quite the lie direct, was not the truth, either. He wished Himerios hadn't half entrusted Ingegerd to him. Then he wouldn't have had to become more closely acquainted with women and their temptations than he was before.

If not for the civil war, it wouldn't have happened. Stylianos was the rebel, but Maleinos was the one who'd pulled garrisons out of the cities to go against him. Then Stylianos stripped the frontier forts, and then the Khamorth came in. Which claimant was the greater villain? Rhavas only shrugged, there on his stool. They both had so much to answer for.

"Pity," Koubatzes said again. "That must have made you sad. I know you're a man who takes his duty seriously."

The prelate nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Oh, yes, hadn't he just taken his duty with Ingegerd seriously! Seriously enough that he'd taken her, seriously enough that he'd left her dead on the farmhouse floor! Well, she would have left him dead there if she could.

He finished his wine at a gulp and waved to the barmaid as Koubatzes had done. She fluttered her fingers when she waved back. Slut, he thought. Do you think I'll throw my vows over the side so easily? But then, what vows hadn't he thrown away when he came down from Skopentzana? What difference did how he behaved now make? Hadn't the good god already turned away from him in disgust?

The girl brought him a fresh cup. "Happy to serve you, holy sir," she purred. How did she mean that? Was she so glad to fetch him wine? Or did she want to serve him some other way?

In his mind's eye, he saw Phos sternly staring down at him. The good god had the face he did in the mosaic in the dome of the High Temple in Videssos the city: a long, somber face made for judgment and always ready to condemn the transgressor. That Phos held a book in which all a man's deeds, good and ill, were recorded. Rhavas shuddered to think what the book said of him right now.

That shudder must have been more visible than he thought, for Koubatzes asked, "Are you all right, very holy sir? Are you well?"

How can I answer, Rhavas wondered, when the good god has turned his back on me, when I am surely damned to the eternal ice? But then he stiffened. His own back straightened. Wasn't everything he'd been through—wasn't everything Videssos had been through—lately a demonstration that the Empire's theologians had been getting things wrong, getting them backward, for hundreds of years? Wasn't it a demonstration that Skotos truly was stronger in the world and more likely to prevail at the end of time than Phos?

There. That was the thought he'd been shying away from for all this time. That was the thought he'd been afraid to face. And now he'd faced it—and nothing had happened to him. Phos hadn't slain him in a fit of fury. Did Phos really have the power to do any such thing? That wasn't how it looked to Rhavas.

And if Phos didn't . . .

"Are you all right, very holy sir?" Koubatzes asked again.

How to answer that? Rhavas wondered once more. To his own amazement, a laugh escaped his lips. "I'm very well," he said. "I'm much better than I thought I would be, in fact."

Koubatzes eyed him curiously. "I'm glad to hear it. You looked . . . rocky there for a while, if you don't mind my saying so. You do seem better now."

"Good. I feel better now. No doubt the wine helped," Rhavas said. The wine hadn't had anything to do with it. Seeing the way things worked in a new light mattered much more. Like most Videssians, Rhavas was a proselytizer at heart. Once he'd seen something, he wanted all his countrymen—indeed, the whole world—to see it the same way. He imagined the ecumenical patriarch's face when he propounded the new doctrine. That was enough to set him laughing again.

"No doubt the wine has," Koubatzes agreed—as polite a way of calling him a drunk as any he could imagine.

"I've been through too much lately," Rhavas said, more to throw the sorcerer off the scent than for any other reason. "I've almost died. I've seen my city die. I've seen the barbarians outdo us at war, and I've seen them outdo us at wizardry. Is it any wonder I'm less than I wish I were?"

The wizard winced at being reminded how the Khamorth had thrown the Videssian spell of repulsion back in his face. Rhavas had counted on that; he smiled to himself to see that he'd got it. "I'm sorry, very holy sir," Koubatzes murmured. "Indeed, you have every excuse to feel even more battered than I do—and that, believe me, is saying a great deal."

Rhavas finished the second cup of wine, then got a second-story room from the landlord. It was about what he expected: a cubicle with a bed, a stool, a lamp on the stool, a battered pine chest for whatever belongings a guest would put into it, and a pitcher and basin on top of the chest. For a night or two, it would be all right. Anyone who had to stay there longer would want to throw the shutters wide and jump out the window headfirst.

After a while, the prelate went down to the taproom. To his relief, Koubatzes wasn't there anymore. Rhavas ordered bread, half a capon, and another cup of wine from the barmaid who'd served him before. She winked at him when she brought him the food. How shameless was she? How shameless did she think he was?

At first, anger threatened to overwhelm him. That she should think him such a creature . . . But what if he was? What difference did it make? The world seemed a different place from the way it had a few hours before. Rhavas shook his head. No, that wasn't so. The world itself hadn't changed. Its overlord, or his understanding of who its overlord was, had. So why was he behaving as if he still believed what he'd believed for so long? Was it anything more than force of habit?

Though he'd found another place close by the fire, he shivered. If Skotos was the stronger, what were Phos' commandments worth? Anything? It didn't seem likely. And what commandments would the dark god have? No one had ever thought to write them down, not so far as Rhavas knew. That didn't mean he had no ideas. If Phos opposed something . . .

Darkness fell, out on the streets of Kybistra. Skotos' time, Rhavas thought, and shivered once more. The bonfire blazing on the hearth and torches set in bronze sconces on the wall held night at bay in the taproom. Smears of soot above the sconces spoke of how many torches had burned in them.

Even the brightest flames couldn't come close to matching daylight. People started yawning and going off to their rooms. Rhavas had worried all the meat off the capon's bones. He licked his fingers clean and got to his feet. "Can I give you anything else, holy sir?" the barmaid asked.

"No." But instead of leaving it at that, he added, "Not here." The barmaid got a fit of the giggles. How many priests had said something like that to her? None who knew what I know, Rhavas thought.

He carried a burning twig up to his room and used it to light the lamp. One small flame did not drive out the darkness; indeed, it barely pushed back the gloom. Rhavas' shadow, huge and black, swooped across the walls and ceiling. Is that an image of Skotos, come to watch what happens here? Rhavas shivered yet again.

He jumped when someone tapped softly at the door. For a heartbeat, he hoped it was Koubatzes or the innkeeper or anyone but . . . He worked the latch. The door swung open. The barmaid stepped into the room and quickly closed the door behind her. "You won't want people seeing," she said, a world of experience in her voice.

Later, he realized he could have sent her away even then. She might have laughed at him; she probably would have. But he could have done it. Scornful laughter would not have been too high a price to pay for virtue—had he still held his old notions of virtue uppermost in his mind.

Maybe the barmaid had wondered if he would think twice. Some panicky priests probably did. When Rhavas didn't, she laughed a little. "Well, then," she said, a meaningless phrase that felt like a complete sentence.

She pulled her shift off over her head.

Rhavas undressed as fast as he could. "It's cold," he said foolishly when he stood there naked. This time, the barmaid did laugh out loud. She pointed to the bed.

When Rhavas ravished Ingegerd, he'd been so inflamed he hardly knew what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing here, and why: to show himself such things were no sins regardless of what he'd been taught. If he was going to do them, he should not do them filled with shame, but with all his heart and will behind them. Better to savor them than to shun them.

He tried his best. The barmaid, with experience of other clumsy clerics, no doubt helped more than he knew. "Ahh!" he said at the end: both delight and understanding. "That's what it's supposed to be!"

"That's what it's supposed to be." The barmaid sounded altogether pragmatic; maybe it hadn't been everything it was supposed to be for her. "Can you slide over a little, holy sir? You're squashing me."

He did. Then he said, "You'll want something for this, won't you?"

"I didn't do it for nothing, by the good god!" she exclaimed.

By the good god. Did that mean anything? Had it ever meant anything? Generations uncounted thought it had, still thought it did. But I know better. Yes, Rhavas had the missionary urge. I know better, and so will they, he thought.

That would have to wait, though. The barmaid hadn't come to his room to be converted. She'd had a much simpler transaction in mind. He gave her a silverpiece. She seemed contented enough when she left the room.

As for Rhavas, he realized how far he was from ousting all the old belief when a spasm of guilt wracked him. Not only had he sinned, he had sinned deliberately. If he was wrong about what his recent experience meant, he'd gone a long way toward damning himself.

"I am not wrong," he said, there alone in the chamber. He had always been the most brilliant of theologians; Neboulos had said as much when sending him to Skopentzana all those years ago. He understood Phos' doctrine better than any other priest now living—he was sure of it. Why should he not understand Skotos better than anyone else as well?

He rose from the bed. As he'd expected, a chamber pot sat under it. He used the pot, then walked over to the lamp and blew it out. Darkness filled the room. As it should, Rhavas thought. Yes, exactly as it should. Two steps took him back to the bed. He lay down and went to sleep.

Sunlight sliding between the slats on the shutters woke Rhavas. By where the beams struck the floor, the prelate had slept soundly—more soundly, perhaps, than he'd intended. Rhavas started to sketch the sun-circle over his heart, as he had on waking every morning for as long as he could remember. But wasn't that one more habit to throw on the rubbish heap? So it seemed to him, and so he checked his hand's all but automatic motion.

Yawning, he got up and used the pot again. Then he opened the shutters. "Coming out!" he called, and chucked what was in the pot into the street. Anyone down below had to watch out for himself. No angry shouts rose, so Rhavas didn't suppose he'd given some luckless passerby a rude surprise.

He went down to breakfast. The barmaid on duty wasn't the one with whom he'd lain the night before. Koubatzes was already spooning up porridge, and talking with a man whose back was to Rhavas. After a bit, the mage's companion turned his head. Rhavas had thought he looked familiar: he was one of the men with whom the prelate and Ingegerd had traveled south from Tzamandos. For the moment, seeing him just made Rhavas glad that some of the party had managed to get away from the Khamorth in the stand of pines.

Rhavas called for a bowl of porridge and a cup of wine to wash it down. The barmaid brought him what he ordered. The bowl, chipped along the edge, was of the same cheap earthenware as the cup. The spoon was of horn. As for the porridge . . . It was hot, and it would fill him up. Having said that, he exhausted its virtues.

Nothing was wrong with the wine, though. He drained it and waved for a refill.

The barmaid had just brought him the fresh cup when Koubatzes came over to his table. "May I join you, very holy sir?" the mage inquired.

"Why not?" Rhavas said, a trifle grandly.

Koubatzes settled himself on a stool. It creaked under his weight. He drummed his fingers on the stained, battered pine of the tabletop. "I was talking with Arsenios there for a while," he said.

"Yes, I saw you. What about it?" Rhavas inquired.

"Well, I don't quite know," Koubatzes said. "He tells me he was traveling with you. As a matter of fact, he tells me he was traveling with you and the Haloga woman up until a couple of days ago."

"Oh." Rhavas sent Arsenios a look that should have melted most of the snow in Kybistra. The merchant, oblivious, stayed on his stool. He seemed to be chewing his cud like a cow. Rhavas thought hard about cursing him—he was angry enough—but reluctantly held back. If Arsenios fell over dead, Koubatzes would wonder why, and the wizard was wondering about too many things already. Rhavas just looked at him. "What about it?"

"You said she was dead, very holy sir," Koubatzes reminded him.

"She is." Rhavas knew perfectly well that was true. He knew the details, too, and no one else ever would.

But Koubatzes knew too much already, and knew it straight from Rhavas' own lips. "You led me to believe she died in Skopentzana, when the barbarians sacked the city. How could she have traveled with you if that happened?"

"Simple." The word came out of Rhavas' mouth before he had the least idea of what would follow it. Whatever it was, it would have to be a lie. He did his best to make it a good one: "You must have heard me wrong. I said she died after Skopentzana, not in it. In fact, a Khamorth arrow hit her in the back as we were riding out of the woods after the plainsmen attacked us there."

Koubatzes frowned fearsomely. "By the lord with the great and good mind, that isn't what you told me before."

"By the lord with the great and good mind, sorcerous sir, it is." Rhavas swore the false oath without hesitation. It was all of a piece with everything else that had happened since Videssos' troubles started. So he told himself, anyhow.

The mage's frown only got deeper. "That is not what I remember you saying." But he sounded more puzzled than outraged or suspicious. Rhavas' rank and his manifest holiness argued powerfully that he should be believed. Koubatzes doubted himself at least as much as he doubted the prelate.

Rhavas tried to make his smile seem sympathetic. In fact, it was mocking. He sipped from his cup of wine, laughing, as it were, behind his hand. He said, "We were both very tired last night, and we'd both drunk wine. Who knows what you thought you heard?" He did not mention what he'd said then, but left the impression he was very sure of that.

That impression of certainty struck home, too. "Maybe." Koubatzes sounded doubtful, but of himself rather than Rhavas. "I would have taken oath—I did take oath, to Arsenios—you told me something different, though."

"You know how these things are. You've dealt with people," Rhavas said easily. "Let five men watch an accident in the square. Ask them what happened an hour later and you'll hear six different stories."

"Maybe." Now Koubatzes might have been arguing with himself. Part of him wanted to believe Rhavas: that was plain. Part of him still knew something was wrong, but didn't quite believe what it knew. He slowly got to his feet. "All right, very holy sir. I won't trouble you anymore."

"No trouble at all," Rhavas said to the sorcerer's retreating back. When he was trapped in the worship of Phos, he would have had trouble sounding so genial; most people would have called him stern and harsh. He thought he still might be stern, but in the service of a new master.

Koubatzes sat down with Arsenios once more. The merchant said something. Rhavas couldn't make out what it was, because the man's back was to him. Koubatzes came back sharply, so sharply that Arsenios flinched. Koubatzes got up again and stalked out of the taproom.

He still wonders, Rhavas thought. Well, let him. What can he do about it? Not a thing, and he has to know it.

Even if Rhavas came right out and told the wizard what he'd done with and to Ingegerd, what could Koubatzes do about it? Not much, not now. Before the Khamorth invaded, before Videssian administration here in the north—and through how much of the rest of the Empire?—fell apart, Koubatzes could have had him arrested and interrogated. These days? Each town remaining in Videssian hands might as well have been a separate tiny kingdom. Leave the walls behind and you left its jurisdiction behind as well.

Rhavas went out to the stables. The little horse he'd ridden and the other he'd led as a pack animal had been brushed and seemed happy enough. The stable boy expectantly looked his way. He gave the youth a couple of coppers.

"Phos' blessings upon you, holy sir," the stable boy said.

"And on you," Rhavas replied, trying not to notice his own hypocrisy. The stable boy seemed to have trouble deciding whether to feel pleased at getting a priest's blessing or disappointed at not getting another copper. Rhavas shrugged. That was the boy's worry, not his. He put the steppe pony's trappings on it, clambered up into the saddle, and rode away from Kybistra.

It was still cold. The snow would stay on the ground a while longer. But the sun rose earlier than it had in deepest winter, and set later. It climbed higher into the sky at noon and shone brighter day by day. Not spring yet—oh, no. But a place from which, if you looked ahead, you could see spring.

When Rhavas looked ahead, he saw the usual white-swathed landscape. No plainsmen roamed across the snow-covered fields. He would not have worried even if they did. He had their measure—he could point a finger and fell them well before their arrows could reach him.

Not wanting any nasty surprises, he also looked back over his shoulder. No nomads behind him, either. No nomads, no, but someone riding out from Kybistra along the same track. Whoever the horseman was, he was pushing his mount hard, gaining on Rhavas with every stride it took.

The man waved. "Very holy sir!" he called, his voice thin in the distance. Rhavas watched the smoke of his breath stream out around his head. "Wait, very holy sir!"

Koubatzes. Rhavas muttered to himself. He wondered whether he should rein in. The mage would catch him whether he did or not, so he did. He tried not to seem too surly as he raised a hand and said, "Hail."

"Hail." Koubatzes rode a Videssian horse, a beast two or three hands taller than a steppe pony. That let him look down on Rhavas. By his expression, he was looking down on the prelate metaphorically as well as literally. Pointing an accusing forefinger at Rhavas, he said, "You lied to me, very holy sir."

"In Phos' holy name, I did not." Even more easily than he had back at the inn, Rhavas brought out the lie with the force of truth.

Koubatzes sadly shook his head. "You lied, and you swore—and still swear—falsely in the good god's name. I thought long and hard on what you said last night, and on what you said this morning, and on what Arsenios told me. You lied, and I fear something truly evil has befallen the Haloga woman."

"Do you?" Rhavas' voice was silky with danger.

If Koubatzes heard that danger, he gave no sign. He persisted, "Yes, by Phos, I do. Will you make a clean breast of it and tell me the truth? It may win you mercy in the next world, if not in this one."

Rhavas laughed in his face. "You know nothing of this world or the next, wizard—nothing at all."

"I know what any Videssian may know. My belief is orthodox." Koubatzes sketched the sun-sign. His eyebrows leaped when Rhavas failed to imitate the gesture. Voice heavy with sarcasm, the sorcerer said, "You will tell me you know better?"

You will tell me you have fallen into heresy? was what he meant. Rhavas had fallen further—lower—than heresy. He not only knew it, he took pride in it. "Yes, I will tell you I know better," he said, and proceeded to explain exactly what he knew. Koubatzes was an intelligent man; Rhavas expected him to see the truth once it was set forth for him.

When the prelate finished, Koubatzes stared at him in what could only be horror. The wizard drew the sun-sign again, this time with great care. "Either you seek to lure me into misbelief, very holy sir, or you have gone mad," Koubatzes said. "Only you can say for certain what you've done with the woman. But I can say for certain that doctrine like this will send you to the flames. Nothing less could cleanse you of it."

"I give you the truth, and this is how you reward me?" Rhavas had realized there was a chance Koubatzes would not be persuaded. But that the mage would dare call him a madman, dare suggest he ought to go to the stake . . . Well, Koubatzes would pay the price for his folly. Rhavas pointed a finger at him. "I will show you who is right and who is wrong."

"You will not, nor can you, for you have already condemned yourself out of your own mouth," Koubatzes said.

Outrage tingled through Rhavas. He did not need it to do what he did, not anymore, but feeling it remained reassuring. "Curse you, Koubatzes," he said, and waited for the wizard to fall off his horse.

Koubatzes' eyes opened very wide. He breathed out a foggy plume of vapor. His face twisted in pain. But, to Rhavas' horrified dismay, he remained very much alive. "Phos!" the mage whispered. "That was as rude a stroke as the Khamorth shamans gave me."

Something close to panic struck Rhavas. He'd had a curse fail once before, but never like this. This curse had struck, and done what it could do—but what it could do turned out not to be enough.

"What did you do to the Haloga woman?" Koubatzes demanded, and then shook his head. "No don't waste my time with more lies. Whatever it was, it must have been very bad, or maybe worse than that. What you've done to me, or tried to do to me, will be plenty to see you dead."

Rhavas' heart raced in fear. Phos help me, he thought. But no—Phos would not help him, not now. That the idea had flashed through his mind was only a measure of how he'd thought for so long, how he'd thought before he knew better. If Phos would not help him, though, who would? No sooner had the question occurred to him than the answer formed in his mind. Skotos help me, he thought, for the first time deliberately calling on the dark god.

Did new strength come to him? How could he know till he tried to find out? "Curse you, Koubatzes," he said again. "Death be your portion."

Koubatzes' eyes widened again. Maybe he thought he'd withstood everything Rhavas could throw at him. If he did, now he discovered he was wrong. A groan escaped him. "You . . . can't . . . do . . . this," he ground out.

"I can. I am. I will," Rhavas retorted. "Curse you—curse you to death."

The sorcerer tried to make the sun-sign once more, tried and failed. He started some sort of counterspell aimed at Rhavas. He started it, but he never finished. Instead, his eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp and slid off his horse into the snow. The horse snorted, sidestepping nervously.

"I can, you see," Rhavas said. "Oh, yes, indeed." He dismounted and knelt by Koubatzes. His fingers found the wizard's wrist. He felt no pulse. The mage's chest did not rise and fall. Rhavas nodded to himself. He had cursed Koubatzes to death, and dead Koubatzes was.

Before getting back on his steppe pony, Rhavas went through the saddlebags Koubatzes' horse carried. He took food and a carefully copied grimoire and a large leather wallet full of sorcerous paraphernalia. Koubatzes would not need any of that again, and Rhavas' packhorse would have no trouble carrying it.

When Rhavas rode south, he felt oddly liberated. He had finally succeeded in leaving behind everything in and from Skopentzana: Ingegerd, Koubatzes, his temple . . . and his god.

"I am free!" Rhavas said. "Free of everything that held me back! Free to tell the truth I've found!"

He rode on. He still had a long way to go before he came to Videssos the city. When he got there, though, he would have a lot to say. And people there would listen to him. They wouldn't be officious, sanctimonious fools like Koubatzes.

"Or if they are, they'll be sorry." The horse's ears twitched as Rhavas spoke. Rhavas booted it forward. The capital might still be distant, but he was on his way.

He stopped for the night at a farmer's house that was anything but deserted. The man, a plump, middle-aged fellow named Illos, said, "Yes, we've heard there's trouble around. Uncommon lot of folks on the road, that's certain sure. But we've seen not a one of these barbarians, and we don't aim to worry about it till we do."

"That's a fact," agreed Marozia, his wife. But for lacking a bushy gray beard, she looked a lot like him. "Come on in, holy sir, and I'll feed you." She nodded briskly. "I'll feed you, all right. I'll feed you till you can't hardly walk."

"I can pay," Rhavas said. "I'd be glad to pay."

"Don't you worry about that," Marozia said. "Maybe you'll pray over the livestock before you ride on, something like that."

Rhavas nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Of course peasants still believed Phos hearkened to their worthless, futile prayers. Such stubborn, stupid folk would never listen if he tried to give them what he saw as the truth. All he could do was go through the motions they expected, no matter what he thought of them.

Illos and Marozia had a swarm of children, ranging down from a couple of boys with beards of their own beginning to sprout to a girl just starting to toddle around. Large families were often hungry. Not here, though. Marozia gave Rhavas a stack of barley cakes, a bowl of chicken stew thick with meat and peas and beans and chunks of turnip, and a mug of fruit-sweet blackberry wine. "Eat up," she commanded. "Plenty more where that came from." She might have been defying him to eat more than she could provide.

Eat he did, till he was groaningly full. "May I read by your fire for a little while before I sleep?" he asked.

"Go right ahead. We've got plenty of wood," Illos told him. "Nobody here has his letters, but if you want to study the holy scriptures, you go right ahead. I know that's what priests do."

Again, Rhavas did not enlighten him. He got Koubatzes' grimoire out of the saddlebag and began to study it. He had never tried to work magic before, but he could see it might be useful. His first look at the book of spells was not reassuring. It was written in a cramped, allusive style: Koubatzes writing to himself, for himself. To an outsider like Rhavas, one word in three, one idea in three, seemed to be missing. He wondered if he could cast a spell with a guide like this, or if disaster would eat him up because he didn't know enough about what he was doing.

"Look at him," Marozia whispered to one of her strapping sons. "See how holy he is?"

"He's something, all right," the young man agreed, also in a low voice.

Yes, I am something, Rhavas thought, but what? He didn't know. Whatever he was, the thing was newly hatched. What will I be when I finish turning into whatever I'm turning into? That was a better question. The only trouble was, he didn't know the answer.

I have the truth, he told himself. If I didn't have the truth, would Koubatzes lie dead in the snow? He remembered Ingegerd lying dead, too, but quickly shied away from that. If she hadn't tempted me, if Himerios hadn't thrown her at me, it never would have happened.

"Pray for us, holy sir," Illos said.

"I will pray that you and your whole family get exactly what you deserve," Rhavas said. Illos and Marozia and their children beamed. They thought he meant a prayer like that in a kindly way. He knew better. With the Khamorth on the prowl, what was likelier than that this farm would be overwhelmed before long? If Illos and Marozia couldn't see that, they were fools, and they would get what fools deserved.

He had his robes and his hooded cloak and his blankets. Marozia handed him another one, plainly the best in the house, of thick, soft wool. "I wove it myself," she said shyly, pointing to the disassembled frame of a loom leaning against a wall.

"I'm sure it will keep me warm," Rhavas said. Marozia bobbed her head and drew back. One of her sons set a mattress on the floor by the hearth. Rhavas lay down and spent as warm and comfortable a night there as he had anywhere since Skopentzana fell.

When he went out to the barn after a filling breakfast the next morning, he found his horses had been well brushed. The youth who had done it said, "They snapped once or twice, but I learned 'em who was boss pretty quick, I did."

"Good for you, and my thanks," Rhavas said. He blessed the animals in the barn, not because he thought it would help them but because the farm family had made it plain they expected it of him.

They still believe in good, he thought as he rode away. They still believe in it, yes, and how much help will it give them? Not much, he judged, not when they saw the barbarians riding toward them—or when they didn't see the plainsmen, but woke in the middle of the night to find the farmhouse, loom frame and all, burning around them.

Rhavas shrugged. It wasn't his worry. Illos and Marozia had made their choices. They'd made them, yes, and now they would pay for them.

He looked back over his shoulder a couple of hours later, and saw a column of smoke rising into the air about where that farm would have been. Illos and Marozia were liable to be paying for their choices even sooner than he'd expected. He shrugged again and rode on.

Lykandos was, or had been, a town not to be despised: a long step down from Skopentzana, two even longer steps down from Videssos the city, but still a place that thought of itself as a local center. It had thought of itself so. Now it was dead.

The north gate stood invitingly open. Only when Rhavas drew close did he see how fire had scarred the valves. He rode into the town. The reek of burning still hung in the air, though most of the smells of death still waited on the thaw that now was not far away.

A dog trotted out of a side street and started at Rhavas, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. The animal looked happy and well fed. Rhavas' stomach did a slow lurch when he thought about what it had probably been eating.

Another dog came up beside the first one, and another, and another, and then several more. More slowly than he should have, he realized a pack of dogs could be as dangerous to him as a pack of wolves. To them, what were he and the horses but more meat?

"Go away," he called to them. They paid no attention. He might have known—he had known—they wouldn't.

He wished he had a rock or something else he could throw at them. Wishing failed to produce one. And he didn't think he had long to figure out what to do, because the dogs were starting to edge forward. Rhavas no longer liked the way their tongues hung from their mouths. It didn't look friendly. It looked hungry.

He pointed at the first dog that had come out. "Curse you!" he said, and the dog fell over and died.

That did him less good than it might have. He could have intimidated a crowd of men by knocking down one of their number. The dogs had no idea he'd done it. A couple of them sniffed the dead one, but how could they understand Rhavas had slain it? They couldn't, and he couldn't tell them.

He pointed at another dog, one that looked as if it was at least half wolf. It fell over, too. Then he knocked over a big brown dog with floppy ears. They lay there in the snow. The others kept growling, working themselves up to attack.

"Curse you all!" Rhavas gasped. He had no idea whether that would help him. If it didn't, though, he feared nothing would.

A couple of the dogs yelped. A little one, at the very back of the pack, stayed on its feet. Most of them just quietly died. Rhavas eyed them in amazement and relief. He looked at the tip of his finger, as if it were a bow or a ballista through which he shot his curses. He knew better: it was only the way he aimed whatever was inside of him. The illusion remained powerful, though.

The little dog stopped growling and smiled a doggy smile at Rhavas. It wasn't about to attack on its own. As part of the pack, it would have been dangerous. By itself, it turned back into a lapdog. Rhavas threw back his head and laughed. Dogs didn't seem much different from people. A mob could destroy everything and everyone in its path. As individuals, the members might be ordinary men and women who wouldn't hurt a fly. Only the swarm of their fellows gave them strength and let them unleash their savagery without fear or even thought.

Rhavas urged his mount and the packhorse forward. They seemed glad to get away from the dogs even if those dogs were dead. Most of Lykandos had been burned. The deeper into the town Rhavas got, the worse it looked. Bodies lay in the street. Sure enough, dogs and carrion birds had worried at them ever since the town fell, however long ago that was.

A few of the corpses wore furs and leather, not cloth. The locals had put up a fight, then. Much good it had done them.

Even in a dead town, a destroyed town, a sacked town, there was bound to be food and bound to be money. Rhavas rode through Lykandos without looking. The Khamorth would have taken everything that was easy to find and that the flames hadn't swallowed. He didn't care to linger here. He didn't care to linger anywhere. The urge to get down to civilization burned in him. If anyone would hear him, his fellow ecclesiastics would.

Koubatzes should have. That the wizard hadn't still enraged him. Well, Koubatzes had paid for his folly. Anyone else who refused to hearken to the truth he brought would also have to pay. No Videssian of any theological stripe would have thought differently. But the others, all the others, were wrong. Rhavas was sure of it. He was sure enough to bet his life. He was sure enough to bet more than his life: he was sure enough to bet his soul.

Lykandos' south gate also sagged open. Rhavas rode out through it. He wondered what would be left of Videssos here in the northlands when all this fighting was done. Anything? Lykandos was an empty ruin. Skopentzana had been sacked and then destroyed in the earthquake. How many other towns had been burned, how many peasants either run off their lands or killed? Could the Empire restore itself here?

Rhavas shrugged yet again. What difference did it make, really? Videssos had lived a lie for hundreds of years. If the Empire was dead in these parts, maybe the barbarians would do a better job of things here. Why shouldn't they? However rude they were, they had some feel for where power truly lay.

The prelate laughed. "Maybe I ought to preach to them, not to the blind fools in blue robes," he said. But then he shook his head. He was a Videssian himself, after all. His own people deserved the first look at everything he'd found. If they turned away from it . . . But they wouldn't. They mustn't. "Curse them if they do," Rhavas muttered. "I'll fight them forever." He kept riding.

Smoke rose from Podandos, but it was a cheerful kind of smoke: smoke from hearths and cookfires and forges and torches and lamps. Lykandos was dead—had been murdered. Podandos still lived. Podandos, by all appearances, still thrived.

A militiaman on top of the wall shouted, "Who comes?" to Rhavas as he neared the north gate.

He gave his name and that of slaughtered Skopentzana and flipped back his hood so the guard could see his head had been shaved. He hadn't been able to tend to that lately. It didn't worry him much, either, though by all the rules it should have.

"Come on in, holy sir. You're welcome, by the lord with the great and good mind," the guard said. He called down to the gate crew: "Open up there, you lazy buggers! This fellow's safe as houses." The men who tended the gate shouted back. The wall muffled their reply, but Rhavas doubted it was a compliment. The man up on top of the wall just laughed.

As Rhavas rode in through the gate, he asked, "Have the Khamorth troubled you here?"

"They tried to break in, holy sir," one of the gate crew answered. "They tried, but we ran 'em off. This for 'em." He spat on the ground, as if rejecting Skotos.

"Good for you." Rhavas had to struggle to get the words out. The gate guard's casual, unthinking gesture reminded him how hard persuading his fellow Videssians might be.

That, though, was a worry for another day. For now, he needed a place to spend the night. He wanted an inn, a tavern, not a temple. He needed to talk to educated, thoughtful clerics, not to some backwoods bumpkin of a priest.

He found an inn without much trouble. After a stable boy led away his horses, he went into the taproom to buy supper and drink some wine and get a room for the night. He wasn't even thinking of luring a barmaid into his bed. No matter which god ruled the world, no matter how that god wanted and expected people to behave, a man could just get tired.

But as Rhavas asked the man behind the bar for a cup of red wine and some bread and cheese, a cheery voice called out, "The blessings of the good god upon you, my friend. You're a colleague, unless I miss my guess."

Rhavas turned his head. He hadn't even noticed the plump priest till the man spoke up. If that didn't prove how tired he was . . . He made himself nod. "That's right," he said.

"Pleased to meet you," the other priest said. "My name's Tryphon. Who are you, holy sir, and where are you from?"

Before Rhavas could answer, the tapman gave him what he asked for. That let him go through ritual—the ritual he no longer believed in—before saying, "I'm called Rhavas. I was lucky enough to get out of Skopentzana."

"Were you?" Tryphon's eyebrows rose. "In Phos' holy name"—he actually said, In Phaos' holy name, proving himself a backwoods bumpkin—"you're a lucky man. Not many got out, by what I've heard."

"Yes, I'm afraid that's so," Rhavas agreed. He paused to eat some of the bread and cheese. When he paused, Tryphon was still waiting expectantly. Rhavas felt he had to add, "Between the Khamorth and the earthquake, I fear Skopentzana will never be the same again."

"Too bad. That's too bad." Tryphon swigged from his own cup of wine. By his red cheeks and redder nose, he knew wine well—maybe a little too well. "We felt the earthquake here, too. Things fell off shelves. Some walls cracked. It was worse farther north?"

"You might say so," Rhavas replied. "Yes, you just might say so." He sipped instead of swigging. With the wine the taverner had given him, it didn't much matter. Nothing could make the stuff tasty.

"A terrible business. Everything that's happened lately is a terrible business." Tryphon drank again, then said, "My mug's gone dry. That's a terrible business, too, by Phaos." He set the cup on the counter. The tapman reached into a wine jar with a dipper and filled the cup again. After spitting in ritual rejection of Skotos and raising his hands to the heavens, Tryphon took another swig. "It makes you wonder what everything means, it really does."

"Well, I won't tell you you're wrong," Rhavas murmured, wishing the other priest would shut up and go away.

Tryphon did nothing of the kind, of course. Obnoxious people never had the faintest idea they were obnoxious. The local man said, "I think I know what's behind it all."

Rhavas realized he had to pay attention. "Tell me," he urged, wondering whether the bumpkin had by some accident hit upon the same truth as he'd found himself.

"Don't mind if I do," Tryphon said. "I always like to talk shop when I get the chance. Don't you?"

"When I get the chance," Rhavas answered, doubting this would be one of those times.

Tryphon leaned forward confidentially. "I think the lord with the great and good mind is testing us," he said.

"Testing us? In what way?" Rhavas inquired. Several people in the taproom came closer so they could hear better. Others craned their necks to listen in. Layfolk in Videssos enjoyed hearing their priests argue theology. They often weren't shy about jumping in themselves, either.

"Why, to see whether we stay loyal to him in adversity," Tryphon said. "Here in Podandos, we have." He sketched the sun-sign above his heart. So did most of the audience, including the tapman and a nearby barmaid.

Rhavas drew the sun-circle, too. People would have . . . wondered about him if he, a priest, had not. But all the same, he said, "I'm not so sure, holy sir, meaning no offense to you or your town."

"No? How not?" Tryphon sounded belligerent. Rhavas wondered how long it had been since anyone told him, even politely, that he was wrong.

"Think of Phos' creed," Rhavas replied, warming to the disputation. "Does it not say the good god is 'watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor?'"

"It does. It does indeed. Of course it does." Tryphon made the sun-circle again. "Which proves my point, I would say. Is this not the great test of our lives? Is our faith in the good god not being tested?" He smiled out at the men and women in the taproom—men and women who had surely heard his arguments before.

"You tell him, holy sir!" one of them called, which only made the local priest's smile broader and more confident.

"Very ingenious." By the way Rhavas said it, he plainly meant very obvious. Realizing as much, Tryphon bristled. Ostensibly ignoring that but in fact enjoying it, Rhavas went on, "I am afraid you have not taken all the creed into account. Consider the phrase 'that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.'" He stressed the last three words.

"Well? What about it?" Yes, Tryphon was all but snorting and pawing at the ground, ready to charge with head lowered and horns aimed straight ahead.

"What about it? Look around you." Rhavas waved. "Is the great test of life being decided in our favor? It doesn't seem so to me. Civil war is tearing Videssos to pieces. Can you deny that? Because of the civil war, the barbarians have come over the border and are settling where and as they please. Can you deny that?"

"Not here, by Phaos!" a man from the crowd said in a wine-blurred voice. Tryphon nodded emphatic agreement.

"No, not here." Rhavas' exquisite bow was also exquisite in its irony. "Podandos of course being the one great and true center of life in the Empire of Videssos, and all the campaigns of the Khamorth having been completed."

Several people smiled and preened, thinking him serious. They were fools, of no account. Rhavas paid attention to the ones who growled and muttered, the ones who knew sarcasm when they heard it. Again, Tryphon was one of their number. "What are you driving at?" he barked, his voice tense.

"Videssos is riven by civil strife," Rhavas repeated. "Skopentzana is fallen—Skopentzana is destroyed. Lykandos, not far north of here at all, is likewise but a corpse. Who can say how many other cities and towns have been ravaged? You will know for yourselves that the nomads are busy laying the countryside waste. What will the harvest be come fall? Will there be a harvest come fall? What will you eat, with no grain in the storerooms? Your dogs and cats? Each other? Is the great test of life being decided in your favor?"

Silence answered him. He'd touched the deepest secret fears of the folk in the taproom. Even the man behind the bar, a bruiser with a scarred, surly face, signed himself with Phos' holy sun, and he was far from the only person who did. Slowly, very slowly, Tryphon again asked, "What are you saying?"

"I am not saying anything in particular," Rhavas answered. "But I am asking a question I think needs asking."

"You are asking whether Phaos or Skotos is the stronger god." Tryphon spat on the rammed-earth floor.

Rhavas did, too. No, this would not be easy. He said, "Don't you think the question needs asking these days?"

Tryphon glowered at him, smiling and cheerful no more. "I think asking that question is heresy. By the good god, I think even thinking that question is heresy."

Heads bobbed up and down all over the taproom. Rhavas said, "Don't you think the most important thing about doctrine is that it should be true?"

"I think our holy and orthodox faith is true, just as the synods have defined it over the years," Tryphon said. "Will you deny that? If you do, you will show you are no true priest, but a heretic indeed, and deserving what any heretic deserves." He got more nods for that.

"How many Videssians have slaughtered one another? How many more have the plainsmen maimed and raped and murdered?" Rhavas asked. He'd done his own raping and murdering, but he did not speak of that. "Could this have happened if our holy doctrine were correct? Is Phos watchful beforehand that the great test of life will be answered in our favor? I ask you that, holy sir. I ask all of you the same thing. If he is, how do you know? All the evidence seems to point against it."

"Not all the evidence." Tryphon struck a proud pose. "If Skotos is the greatest power in this world"—he spat again—"may he strike me dead this instant."

Rhavas did not need to point when he knew exactly who his target was. He did not need to speak aloud, either, not when the curse all but formed itself in his mind. He just looked at Tryphon, and that only for an instant.

The other priest groaned. His eyes slid shut; his mouth dropped open. He crumpled to the ground. The barmaid and another woman screamed. A man standing by him knelt and grabbed his wrist. After a little while, the fellow let it fall. It did, limply. "He's dead," the man said, fearful wonder in his voice.

More screams and cries of dismay filled the taproom. Someone pointed at Rhavas. "It's your fault. You did this!"

"Me?" Rhavas shook his head. "I just stood here. You all saw me. I did nothing. I didn't touch him, I worked no spell. . . . He called a challenge, and perhaps it was answered."

"I think maybe you'd better get out of here, stranger," the tapman said slowly. "I don't want you dropping dead on the floor yourself, or anybody else, either. Tryphon was a good man. We'll all miss him. I don't suppose anyone would miss you, though, not even a little bit. You ought to go while the going's still good."

"All I did was ask some questions and try to find the truth," Rhavas said. "Where is the harm in that?"

"I don't know, and I don't care." The tapman reached under the counter and took out a stout bludgeon. "All I know is, we liked Tryphon, and now he's dead. We don't like you. The more we see you, the less we like you, too."

"Think on what you saw. Think on what it means." Rhavas set silver on the bar. "Here. This for my supper."

"No, thanks." The tapman shoved the coin back at him. He didn't touch it; he used a rag to keep from touching it. "On the house."

"You don't want my money?" Rhavas was amazed. He'd never known anyone in an inn who didn't want everything he—or she—could get.

Stolidly, the tapman shook his head. "Might bring bad luck. Never can tell." He turned away from Rhavas and toward the silently staring customers. "Come on, friends. We've got to get poor Tryphon out of here. What happens if a stranger walks in and sees him?"

"A stranger did walk in." One of the men pointed to Rhavas. "Look what came of that, curse him."

His curse was useless, harmless, as most men's were. Rhavas knew his was not. He also knew the crowd might nerve itself to mob him. If it did, he would show everyone what his curse could do. But all he said now was, "I wanted no trouble when I came in here. I still want none."

They let him leave. They let him reclaim his horse and the packhorse. Some of them followed him, though, till he rode out of Podandos. "Don't come back, either," one of them called from the gateway.

He almost cursed the whole town. That would teach them a lesson. But they would not be in a position to appreciate what they'd learned. He refrained. With luck, some of them would draw the proper conclusions from Tryphon's untimely demise. They might not only draw them but pass them on to other people. Rhavas wanted them to. He did indeed have the missionary instinct.

What he didn't have was anywhere to spend the night. It would be cold—but he wasn't so afraid of cold as he had been before breaking out of falling Skopentzana. One way or another, he expected to get by.

And he did. He found a place where a storm had toppled two or three trees onto one another, creating not only a windbreak but something almost like a lean-to. He tried to start a fire by ordinary means, but had no luck. Then he tried a word of command stolen from Koubatzes' grimoire. In no way was it a proper sort of spell. That didn't mean it didn't work, for the flames crackled to life.

Shelter. Warmth. He hadn't been orthodox in getting them, but so what? He had them. And he hadn't been orthodox coming at the way the world worked—but, again, so what? I know what I know, he thought, there alone in the woods.