Bridge of the Separator

VIII

After Podandos, Rhavas did no more preaching for a while. He did not care for the reception he'd got there. Yes, backwoods bumpkins, sure enough, and a priest who'd thought he knew it all. Better to save the truth he'd found for those who could best appreciate it. Rhavas went on toward Videssos the city.

He kept hoping he would outdistance the Khamorth and their irruption into the Empire. He kept hoping, and he kept being disappointed. Wherever he went, he found the barbarians there ahead of him. They'd sacked and plundered farms and villages and small towns and a few more cities. They hadn't gone back to the Pardrayan steppe afterward, either. They'd come into Videssos to stay. Their flocks and herds wandered across land that should have had wheat and barley springing up from it after the spring thaw came.

And the thaw was almost here. Rhavas could feel it. One day soon there would be a snap! in the air, and all the winter's snow would start to melt. After that, the going would be slow till the land dried out again, but then, for a few weeks, glory would shine out over the world. Spring in the northlands was much more dramatic than it was down by the capital.

Rhavas noticed he was traveling with his head cocked to one side, listening for that snap! Trouble found him before he found it. A troop of nomads rode toward him across a broad, snow-covered expanse that would probably be a meadow once the thaw began. He wasn't unduly afraid of the Khamorth, but they could be a nuisance, maybe a dangerous nuisance.

To them, he was just a Videssian they'd caught out in the open. He could tell when they got close enough to realize he was riding a steppe pony and leading another. They booted their mounts up from a trot to a gallop. They assumed—rightly—that he must have killed other Khamorth to get their horses, and it looked as if they intended to pay him back.

He pointed at the closest nomad, who was still well out of archery range. The Khamorth tumbled off his horse and sprawled in the snow. The rest of the barbarians kept coming. Rhavas pointed at another one. He fell, too. So did another, and then another. If the plainsmen came any farther, he realized he would have to kill them all. Otherwise, they would be able to shoot at him with their fearsome, horn-strengthened bows, a prospect he relished not at all.

But they reined in then. They had to see he was a wizard of sorts, and that he could go on killing them if he chose. He waited as they put their heads together. At last, after some argument, one of them ostentatiously threw his bow down in the snow. For good measure, he also threw down the leather case in which the nomads carried their bow and arrows. Then he slowly rode toward Rhavas, plainly doing his best not to seem threatening.

Rhavas pointed at him nonetheless, but did not form the killing thought in his mind—not yet. "That's close enough!" he shouted. If the barbarian turned out not to understand Videssian or just ignored him, the fellow was a dead man.

But the nomad stopped. And he not only understood Videssian, he also spoke it after a fashion. "How you do?" he shouted back.

"How did I do what?" Rhavas said.

"Kill." The Khamorth came straight to the point.

"By the power of my god," Rhavas answered.

"You lie." The plainsman's voice was full of scorn. "Phaos do nothing. Phaos sit there like horse turd on ground. Videssos—wizards all bad. But not you. How you do?"

"My god is not Phos." There. Rhavas had said it. He waited for the world to fall to pieces around him. All he'd believed since he was a boy . . . That had already fallen in ruin. Despite his words, nothing special happened now. The breeze tugged at his beard—that was all. He licked his lips and said the rest of what needed saying: "Skotos is my god."

Even after saying it, he had to fight the urge to spit, for he'd spat for so many years every time he named the dark god. "Skotos?" the Khamorth echoed. He nodded, a plain token of respect. "This is strong god. We leave you be." He wheeled his horse and rode back to his comrades. They listened to him. Then, after rounding up the horses of the fallen men and heaving the corpses up onto them, they trotted off. Rhavas watched them, fearing some trick, but there was none. They were gone.

He rode on, too, tasting fear and exultation and a kind of helpless contempt for his own folk. Videssians could not see what was right in front of their faces. The Khamorth had no trouble grasping it. Didn't the world make plain that Skotos was mightier than Phos? So it seemed to Rhavas, and so it seemed to the barbarians as well.

And Rhavas had named Skotos as his god, and the sky had not fallen. Phos had not smitten him with a lightning bolt from the heavens. Things went on as they always had. Was Phos too busy elsewhere to pay attention to his blasphemy? Priests never tired of proclaiming that Phos saw everything everywhere. Rhavas couldn't guess how many times he'd hammered that point home himself, down in Videssos the city and then in Skopentzana.

If the lord with the great and good mind wasn't busy elsewhere, why didn't he punish Rhavas? Was he too weak? If he was, didn't that mean Skotos was the more powerful of the two? Everything else Rhavas had seen lately led him to believe it did. Wasn't this one more fagot on the funeral pyre of good?

"And my own folk, purblind fools that they are, will not see it," Rhavas muttered, his breath making puffs of fog around him. "The barbarians know the truth. Who would have imagined that?" He shrugged. "Well, those who do not care to see will just have to be shown." He rode on, leaving the meeting with the Khamorth behind him. He did not think that troop would trouble him again, and he proved right. He usually did.

When spring came up around Skopentzana, road traffic stopped dead for several weeks. All the snowdrifts seemed to melt at once, turning the landscape into bogs and swamps. The mud time, people called it. Hard on its heels came the mosquito time; bugs of all sorts bred in the countless puddles and ponds the yearly thaw spawned.

By the time the spring thaw came this year, Rhavas was a long way south of Skopentzana. Snow still covered the ground, but not to the depth it would have had up there. Though roads turned muddy, they remained roads. His travel slowed, but it did not stop.

That was all to the good. He would not have wanted to get stuck in some provincial town for most of a month. The priests there would have wanted to discuss matters theological with him, as Tryphon had in Podandos. They would have ended up regretting it—again, as Tryphon had. Rhavas had been able to leave Podandos. If the thaw kept him in some other town . . . That could be difficult.

He might have solved the problem by wearing ordinary clothes, letting his hair grow out, and trimming his long, shaggy beard. Later, he was amazed at how long that took to occur to him. He kept his blue robe. He paused in one town so a barber could shave his head. He'd been on the road for a couple of days afterward before he paused and wondered why he'd done it.

The answer didn't take long to find. "I am a priest," he said, as if someone had denied it. Plenty of people would deny it before long. He knew that. Once he started preaching, he probably would not persuade everyone of what he saw as the new truth.

But if I persuade the ecumenical patriarch, if I persuade the leading prelates in Videssos the city . . . They were the ones who made doctrine for the whole Empire. If they saw things as he did, before long everyone in Videssos would see them that way, too. That was what he aimed for. And that is what I will have.

As he rode toward the capital, the land turned green around him. Trees cloaked themselves in leaves. New grass sprang up from fields and meadows. Woods were suddenly silent no more. Insects buzzed—there were mosquitoes in these parts, too. And birds, newly arrived from the strange lands beyond the Sailors' Sea, sang to seek mates as they hunted the mosquitoes and other flying things. They caught them by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. But the bugs bred by the millions.

Mountains rose on Rhavas' right as he got farther south. They weren't tall, jagged peaks, but low and round and smoothly curved. They might almost have been women's breasts. The snow that clung near their summits after it had melted farther down their slopes only added to the impression. Rhavas wondered if that would have occurred to him before . . . Before things changed, he thought, and nodded to himself. Yes, that sounded right.

If he remembered straight, more mountains would lie in his path as he went on toward Videssos the city. The Paristrians were a more formidable range than these overgrown hillocks, too. They might even serve as a barrier to keep the Khamorth out of what lay beyond them. Or, of course, they might not. Rhavas could only guess now. He wouldn't know till he crossed them.

A few days later, a troop of horsemen came north up the road toward him. Khamorth, he thought, and resolved to curse them one at a time, as he had with the last band, till the survivors got the idea that he and the power protecting him were too dangerous to toy with.

He needed longer than he should have to notice that these men wore chain mail, not leather boiled in wax. They had iron helmets on their heads, not fur caps. They rode full-sized horses, not steppe ponies. And their standard-bearer carried a blue banner with a golden sunburst. They weren't plainsmen but Videssians—Videssian soldiers, in fact.

Rhavas had thought that breed all but extinct. They didn't seem to know what to make of him, either. They pointed ahead when they spotted him. Some of them kicked their horses up from walk to trot. They seemed bemused when he didn't try to get away.

Only afterward did he realize they might have robbed him even though they wore the Empire's livery. The line between soldiers and brigands was a fine one, especially in times of civil strife. They wouldn't have got much if they had taken everything he owned, but they might have tried to kill him as part of the sport. They might have succeeded, too, because they would have taken him by surprise.

One of them called, "Halt, in the name of the Avtokrator!"

He reined in. Which Avtokrator? he wondered. He almost asked them, but checked himself at the last moment. If they favored Stylianos, they might want to seize him—or worse—because he was Maleinos' cousin. Instead, he raised his right hand in a gesture of benediction and said, "Blessings upon you." If he had to, he would name Phos—hypocrisy could be useful. If he didn't, he wouldn't.

Some of the troopers sketched the sun-circle. The man who'd ordered him to halt asked, "Where are you from, holy sir?"

"Skopentzana," he answered truthfully.

"Skopentzana!" the soldier exclaimed. "You're a cursed long way from home, then, aren't you?"

"A cursed long way indeed," Rhavas said. Even naming the northern city could have been dangerous if they were after its prelate. But Skopentzana was big enough to have—to have had—many priests. He could easily have lied about his own name and station.

"Is it true what they say? Has Skopentzana fallen to the barbarians?" the soldier asked.

"That is true. The barbarians sacked it and an earthquake laid it low," Rhavas replied. "I do not know when it will rise again, or if it ever will. Many other cities and towns and villages have also fallen."

The soldiers muttered among themselves. The man who did the talking for them said, "That's hard news, holy sir. I feared it would be so, with all the garrisons gone from that part of the Empire. To the ice with Stylianos for starting his cursed rebellion."

Rhavas almost acclaimed Maleinos then. At the last moment, he held back. Civil wars were hard times, and times full of trickery. These men might revile Stylianos to see if he would agree with them—and then seize him or kill him if he did. He didn't think that was likely, but he didn't think it was impossible, either. Instead of declaring himself, he just asked, "You favor Maleinos, then?"

"By the lord with the great and good mind, we do," the soldiers' spokesman said. "Stylianos stinks of Skotos—doesn't he, boys?" As he spat in the dirt, his comrades shouted obscene agreement. He glowered at Rhavas. "And what about you, holy sir? Whose side are you on?"

Had he come out for Stylianos after that, Rhavas would have been a fool—and, in short order, a dead fool. But he didn't intend to. "I told you before I knew which side you leaned to that I come from Skopentzana. I am Rhavas, who was prelate there, and cousin to his Majesty, the Avtokrator Maleinos."

"Very holy sir!" The horseman bowed in the saddle. "Will you bless us before we go on?"

"Gladly," Rhavas lied, and did what the soldier asked. He laughed at himself as he spoke the words and made the gestures. If he'd said what he wanted to say, it would have had more effect. But if he'd said what he wanted to say, the men would have done their best to kill him.

"We thank you, very holy sir," the soldiers' spokesman said when Rhavas had got through his ordeal. "Where are you bound, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Videssos the city," Rhavas answered. "How far have the plainsmen penetrated? And where is the fighting between the Avtokrator and the rebel?"

"You're liable to run into Khamorth almost until you get down to the Long Walls, maybe even beyond 'em," the cavalryman answered, and Rhavas grimaced. The Long Walls lay only a couple of days' journey outside the capital, and protected the farmlands close to it. The soldier went on, "And who knows where our men and Stylianos' are at? They want to get at each other, yes, but they've got all the cursed barbarians in the way. You'd better be careful—that's all I've got to tell you."

"I've come this far," Rhavas said. "If my prayers are answered, I'll make it the rest of the way."

"Phos will heed you. I'm sure of it," the soldier told him. Rhavas had said nothing about to whom he might pray. He said nothing now, either, and nothing on his face showed what he thought. The soldier looked back at the rest of the troop. "Come on, boys! We've got our own job to do. We don't need to bother the very holy sir anymore."

Away they rode. Their horses' hooves thudded. Their chain mail jingled. The sunburst banner snapped in the breeze. Rhavas watched them over his shoulder for some little while before kicking his own horse into motion once more. They were the past, the dead past. The future?

He laughed and set a hand above his heart. "I make the future. I make it right here!" he said softly. And what would he make it into? Why, whatever he wanted, of course.

Laughing still, he went on toward Videssos the city.

Rhavas had never seen the Paristrian Mountains till they heaved themselves up over the southwestern horizon: he'd traveled up to Skopentzana by sea, and sailed around the peninsula whose northern rampart they were. They proved less impressive than he'd expected. They were taller and sharper than the ranges farther north, but not the grand, jagged things he thought of when the word mountains came to mind.

Khamorth roamed near the Paristrians. Videssian soldiers—some loyal to each claimant to the throne—also patrolled that part of the countryside. Here, at least, the land was debatable. Farther north, Rhavas doubted whether the Empire's sovereignty would ever return. The barbarians had simply swamped that part of Videssos.

When Rhavas went into a town, he mostly just said he was a priest coming down from the north. Sometimes he would talk about the adventures he'd had getting to wherever he chanced to be. He steered clear of arguments with local priests. The tale of what had happened to Tryphon hadn't come south with him or ahead of him. He suspected it was on its way, though. He didn't want to add anything to it.

Part of him felt more at home as he traveled through lands that hadn't been so badly ravaged. This was what the Empire of Videssos was supposed to be like. So his old way of thinking said, anyhow. But was that so? Wasn't all of this doomed to fire and destruction, whether at the hands of the barbarians or of those who battled in the mad and endless civil war?

Now that Rhavas was in the midst of green, growing springtime, believing in ice for all eternity came harder. It came harder, but he managed—especially after he rode up to a battlefield where the armies of Maleinos and Stylianos had clashed the year before.

Even after so much time, the stench of death still floated above that field. Rhavas could tell where most of the soldiers had fallen, for that was where the grass grew tallest and most luxuriantly—the rotting bodies had manured it well. Through the rich green, white bones leered out.

Rhavas looked up and down the dirt road along which he was riding. No one but him was on it now. One army must have come up the road, the other down it, till they met here. Eyeing the boneyard the field had become, he could not tell which force had supported which rival Avtokrator. That went a long way toward explaining the monumental unimportance of the civil war—but not to the men who fought it.

"Fools," Rhavas muttered. He dismounted and tethered his steppe pony and the packhorse to a bush not far from the side of the road. Maybe that was the point. As he walked through the grass and looked at the bones from close at hand, he grew ever more convinced of it. Here lay a skull that had been split, there a rib cage with an arrow through the breastbone. What were men but wicked fools who slaughtered one another for the fun of it and for no better reason?

Were they anything more than that? Not so far as Rhavas could see.

He bent and picked up a rusting saber. The hand bones of the corpse that held it came apart as he took it from the dead grip. The useful pattern they had once made fell back into randomness. As do all useful patterns, the proof of which I see before me, he thought.

He hefted the sword, then let it fall once more. It clanged off a stone hidden in the grass. The blade snapped in two. Rhavas nodded to himself, as if that also proved his point.

Both the horse he was riding and his packhorse were grazing when he went back to them. Except perhaps for the smell surrounding it, the field meant nothing to them. Being only beasts, they did not know when they were well off.

Remounting, Rhavas rode on toward the mountains. How many mournful fields like that one were scattered across the Empire of Videssos? How many more of them would fatten vultures and ravens and crows before the civil war finally ended, if it ever did? On both sides, warriors had gone and would go into battle shouting Phos' name, sure that it was holy.

But how could the good god's power coexist with savagery such as this? It seemed impossible. Slowly, Rhavas nodded. What else could it be but impossible? Good, if it existed at all, had to be nothing more than a lucky accident, one sure to shatter when struck by evil. For evil surely endured forever.

As far back as written records in the Empire of Videssos went, Phos' priests had inveighed against evil, against Skotos. Was the world any better now than it had been when they started their denunciations? Rhavas laughed all the more harshly because the smell of death still lingered in his nostrils. If he didn't laugh over that question, he would have to burst into tears on account of it.

Somewhere not too far away, a band of Khamorth off the steppe was probably encamped, grazing their horses and cattle and sheep on the rich green grass in these meadows. Some of that grass was all the richer for being fertilized by Videssian corpses. And what did the barbarians think of Phos and what Videssos called good? Rhavas laughed again. He'd seen what the Khamorth did when they got in among his folk.

And had the so-called lord with the great and good mind punished them for it? Not likely! They were raping away province after province from Videssos. Phos could not favor that. If the good god couldn't, who did? Could the question have more than one answer?

Toward evening, Rhavas camped inside the edge of a stand of trees. While the light still held, he took Koubatzes' grimoire from a saddlebag and paged through it to a spell of summoning. It involved a lodestone—also plundered from the mage—and, here, some fresh clover. Rhavas was not sure if the passes he made with the chanted spell were the ones the sorcerous tome described; it didn't go into detail. As with much of the magic inside, he had to do his best to figure out how the spell should be shaped.

It worked, though. Two rabbits hopped toward the clover, which seemed to draw them irresistibly. Had Rhavas had to knock them over with stones, the spell of summoning might not have been enough to assure him of a tasty supper. But he had other ways to tend to such things. He pointed a finger at the rabbits, and they quietly died.

The supper was tasty indeed. After roasting the rabbits, Rhavas drowned and buried his fire. He wrapped himself in a blanket and slept on the ground. He didn't need to fear freezing, not here. Before Skopentzana fell, the idea of sleeping in the open would have dismayed him. Since then, he'd done it often enough to take it for granted.

No one and nothing troubled him in the nighttime. So he thought, anyway, till he woke to discover a fresh mosquito bite on the back of his left hand. That only made him shrug; the mosquitoes here were not nearly so bad as the ones farther north. One bite? One bite might as well have been nothing.

He had some bread in his saddlebags from the last town where he'd stopped. It was getting stale, but he ate it anyway, and with good appetite. Water from a nearby stream washed it down. Then he went back to the road and on toward the imperial capital.

Once the road got into the mountains, it writhed and twisted like a worm on a hot paving stone. Sometimes it ran through valleys or over hilltops. Climbing some of those slopes was hard work for the horses, but they managed. Rhavas had come to have enormous respect for the steppe ponies he'd taken from the Khamorth. The rough-coated beasts would never win any beauty contests, but they never flagged, either, which counted for more.

Sometimes, though, the slopes in the Paristrian Mountains were too steep for roads to climb conveniently. In those places, the way forward had been hacked out of the mountainside. Rhavas rode along narrow tracks with gray stone to his right and nothing but air to his left. A misstep would have sent his mount tumbling off the road, and him with it. The beast made no missteps. He was positive the steppe ponies had never faced mountains like these before, but they took them—literally—in stride.

When he met travelers going north in a narrow stretch, which happened a couple of times, one of them had to retreat to a place where two animals could get by each other without having one of them go over a cliff. It was a complicated dance, and often a bad-tempered one, but altogether necessary.

Rhavas wondered how the Khamorth had got through the mountains into the lands on the other side. There were so many places along this road where a handful of men could hold off an army.

He was picking his way through a series of switchbacks so narrow and rugged that even the steppe ponies had trouble when he suddenly realized he was a fool. As always, the realization was unpleasant. But this couldn't be the only way to the far side of the mountains, and it was probably far from the easiest. If he'd asked anyone he'd met on the road, he might well have heard where the better routes lay. He sighed, wishing he'd thought of that before getting deep into the mountains on this road. Turning around and going back now would cost him more time than just going ahead would.

Once, when all the mountains and passes ahead aligned for a moment, he got a glimpse of the lower country to the south. Then the road bent again, and everything more than a furlong or so ahead disappeared. And once, looking down into a valley, he saw a hawk soaring below him. He kept that memory for a long time.

He was back on a less precipitous stretch of road—though one passing through a forest of tall pines—when he found the way ahead blocked by a barricade of tree trunks. From behind it, someone called out the age-old Videssian bandits' warning: "Stand and deliver!"

A bowstring twanged. An arrow buried its head and a good part of its shaft in the dirt a few feet in front of Rhavas' mount. The pony snorted and sidestepped nervously. Rhavas brought it back under control.

"Don't get gay with us, priest, or the next one's through your liver!" warned another bandit, this one with a higher voice.

Rhavas said, "Take what you will. I don't have much." Inside, he fumed. Here was a dangerous spot. He couldn't curse the brigands because he didn't know how many they were or where they hid. If he missed two or three, they could shoot him with ease.

And raucous laughter greeted his reply. "Likely tell!" said the bandit with the shrill voice. "Last priest we got had a pound of gold in a money belt. If it wasn't for the heft of the thing, he would have got away with it. But he didn't, oh, no." He laughed again, nastily.

"Go ahead and search me and my animals," Rhavas said, knowing they would with or without his leave. And if they all came out into the open . . . well, that gave him a chance, anyhow.

He waited. They delayed so long, he began to doubt they would come forth. But at last they did: half a dozen scrawny men, Videssians all, armed with bows and knives and one boar spear. "Get down off that horrible screw you're riding," one of them said. "We may let you keep it—not worth taking."

They did not know the worth of a steppe pony. Rhavas dismounted without a word, having no intention of enlightening them. But when one of them said, "Come on—let's scrag him now," he knew they weren't going to let him keep anything, not even his life.

"Curse you all!" he exclaimed. They twisted and crumpled and died. An arrow hissed past his head—they'd left someone back among the trees in case anything went wrong. They hadn't dreamt anything could go as wrong as it did, though. The arrow came from about the direction Rhavas had expected. "And curse you, too!" he added, and heard another man fall.

He waited tensely. If the bandits had stashed another man anywhere around there, he was still in danger. No more arrows flew at him, though. No shouts of alarm rang through the woods. This seemed to be the lot of them. He breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. Ambush remained his greatest peril.

He took a couple of steps toward the brigands' rough barricade, then stopped, feeling silly. Those logs would need more than one man to shift them. He went back to his horses instead. They stood there quietly. What had happened to the bandits meant nothing to them. They followed without protest when he led them around the barrier.

"Too bad," he murmured as he found the road on the far side. The last bandit lay a few feet to the left of it, his bow by his outstretched hand. An arrow lay there, too; he'd been nocking that shaft when Rhavas' curse struck him down. The noise Rhavas made this time was more like a gasp of relief. He'd cut it even closer than he'd thought.

But it was too bad, even so. The bandits were no theologians—nor would they ever be, now. They hadn't thought through what they were doing. Whether they knew it or not, though, they'd found many of the same answers as Rhavas had himself. No one who took the lord with the great and good mind seriously could have lived as they lived, done what they did, could he?

Rhavas shook his head. He didn't see how. He wished he could have had the chance to talk with them about it. They were the closest thing to converts he'd found, even if they never knew it.

His shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "Too bad," he said again, this time in a different tone of voice. If they'd given him any kind of chance, he would have talked with them. They hadn't, and so he'd done what he had to do.

Now they were dead and he was still alive. He vastly preferred that to the alternative. He swung back up onto the steppe pony he'd been riding. He would make converts of his own. Once he finally got through the mountains, Videssos the city wouldn't be all that far away.

Relatively few barbarians had got past the Paristrian Mountains, no matter what the Videssian soldiers on the other side had told Rhavas. He did not need long to see that for himself once he got down into the lower country. But that didn't mean the lower country was a land at peace. Oh, no—far from it. Rhavas didn't need long to discover that, either.

This was the land where Videssos' long civil war made its home. Stylianos aimed his forces at the imperial capital like a spearhead. And Maleinos, holding Videssos the city, did everything he could to hold back his rival. No, the Videssians did not battle barbarians here. They fought one another instead.

When Rhavas rode into a town called Develtos, about halfway across the peninsula toward Videssos the city, he found himself for the first time in a place that was strongly for Stylianos even though he'd lost a battle nearby the year before. It was so strongly for him that, for some little while after Rhavas got there, he wondered if the rebel was living in the town. That turned out not to be so; Stylianos was off with his army. But he had spent much of the previous winter in Develtos, and the locals remembered him fondly.

They remembered him so fondly, in fact, that Rhavas gave a false name and did not mention the city he'd come from when he took a room at an inn. If anyone here connected him to Maleinos, it would be disastrous. He just said he'd come from the north. Even that got him a curious look from the innkeeper. "I've heard some northern folk talk," the man remarked. "They say things like Phaos for Phos. You don't sound like that, holy sir."

"I should hope not," Rhavas said with what he hoped sounded like indignation and now alarm. "I spent years getting a decent education. Do you want me to seem like someone from the back of beyond every time I open my mouth?"

"Don't take it like that," the innkeeper said quickly. "I didn't mean to offend, by the good god."

"We'll say no more about it, then." Rhavas certainly hoped the man would say no more about it.

Some of the silver he got in change in the taproom at supper was shiny and new. That was part of what drew his eye to it, but only part. He knew all of his cousin's coins, and had got used to seeing images of a man with a long face not too different from his own on Videssian money.

Not on these coins. The Avtokrator they showed was round-faced, even plump. Tiny letters around the rim said "STYLIANOS AVTOKRATOR." The rebel had his own silver. Rhavas wondered if he had his own gold as well. When Rhavas turned the coin over, he saw a sword, a spear, and a bow in place of the usual Videssian sunburst. "BY THESE," said the lettering on the reverse.

A good many rebels had put out coins. It was a way to pretend (or to proclaim, depending on the point of view) that you were a legitimate sovereign. But Stylianos' money, unlike some older rebels' coins Rhavas had seen, was obviously minted to the same standard as ordinary currency.

Develtos had a large monastery. Several monks came into the taproom together. They started drinking heavily and then started singing songs. Several of the ones they chose were, to say the least, unmonastic. The ones that weren't about Stylianos and the slaughter he would work on Maleinos were about women, and showed they had more experience with them than monks had any business owning.

In spite of everything that had happened to him, Rhavas found himself scandalized. That these monks should behave so—! Then, after a little thought, he smiled. If the monks were doing Skotos' work . . . well, so much the better. He went back to his own supper.

"Hey, you!" one of the monks called after a while. "Yes, you, priest!"

Rhavas looked up. "Do you want something of me?" he asked in tones that would have produced chills in Skopentzana colder than winter.

Those tones had no effect here. "'D'you want something of me?'" the monk echoed mockingly. His comrades laughed. He went on, "Yes, I want something of you. I want to know what you think of us."

"I've been trying not to," Rhavas answered, which was nothing but the truth.

The drunken monk needed a bit to realize he might have been insulted. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked angrily once the idea had sunk in. "Are you trying to put us in disgrace?"

"I could not," Rhavas said, hoping the monk would take that for an apology and go back to his swilling.

For a moment, the fellow seemed on the point of doing just that. But then Rhavas' odd turn of phrase sank in. "Eh? You couldn't do that, you say? And why couldn't you?" the monk demanded.

"Because you already disgrace yourselves," Rhavas replied—yes, he still had all his old stern discipline, even if now turned to a new cause.

The monks shouted furiously. Three or four of them surged to their feet. "Now you're for it, holy sir," said a man at a table next to Rhavas'. "They like to brawl as much as they like to drink, and they like to drink a lot."

Rhavas also rose. "Any man who troubles me will pay dearly," he said in tones that permitted no contradiction. "Does your holy abbot know that you come into this low place looking for tavern brawls?"

One of the monks, the biggest one, took a single step toward Rhavas. Then he noticed his friends weren't following him. He looked at them. He took another look at Rhavas. The monk was almost as tall as Rhavas, and much wider through the shoulders and thicker through the chest. He took another half step forward, then stopped again. "What's the matter with you?" he shouted at his comrades. "What are you afraid of?"

"That fellow's trouble, Garidas," one of the others said.

"Trouble?" Garidas laughed a theatrical laugh. "I could break him in half without any help from the lot of you."

He took another half step forward. None of the other monks followed him. Rhavas stood waiting. He did not know what the monks saw in him, but he did know he'd meant what he said. If they attacked him, it would be the last thing they ever did. Whatever explaining he had to do afterward, he would.

Garidas started to take another step toward him, but then awkwardly swung around so it turned out to be a step back toward the rest of the monks. "Cowards!" he bawled at them. None of them said anything. "Cowards!" he shouted again. "You're all nothing but a bunch of spineless cowards! He's got a priest's robes. So what?" He shook his fist at them.

They neither moved nor spoke. Cursing more like a stevedore than a monk, Garidas stormed out of the taproom. More quietly, the other monks followed in his wake.

Rhavas sat down. The man at the table next to his stared in disbelief. "Phos!" he said. "How did you do that, holy sir?"

"If they know you'll cause trouble, sometimes you don't have to," Rhavas answered.

"No offense, but how much trouble could you cause? There they all were, and they were drunk and mean. That Garidas is one nasty customer. He likes brawling in here—you were dead right about that. And I looked to see you dead, or halfway dead, anyways. But they walked out instead. How come?"

"Don't you think you would do better asking them?" Rhavas said.

The man at the next table looked at him. Again, Rhavas didn't know what the fellow saw, but whatever it was, it was plenty to make him grab for his cup and drain it in a hurry. "Maybe I've got some kind of notion after all," he said. Leaving a coin on the table, he too made a hasty exit.

He hadn't even got to the door before Rhavas ran a hand over his face. No blood stained his palm. He bore no brand of which he hadn't been aware. But something must have shown to both the bad-tempered Garidas and to the inoffensive man at the next table, something that said, If you trouble this man, you'll be the one who's sorry.

What was it? Had Rhavas' new knowledge done something to him? He felt his face again, and again found nothing out of the ordinary. Mirrors were few and far between, but he resolved to stop when he passed by a calm pond and to look down into it. He'd often thought himself a fairly formidable fellow, but more intellectually than physically. Maybe he'd been wrong.

"I don't know whether to thank you or to tell you to go to the ice, holy sir," the tapman said from behind the bar.

"How's that?" Rhavas asked.

"Well, we didn't have a fight, and that's good, on account of it would have torn up the place," the man answered. "But you couldn't have cleared the room any better if you'd tossed a polecat into the middle of it. Can't make any money if there's no people here, now can I?"

"I suppose not," Rhavas admitted. "I can't say I'm too sorry, though, all things considered.

"Didn't figure you could," the tapman said, "seeing as how you were going to be on the bottom end of it."

Monks who battered anyone presuming to disagree with them had featured prominently in several synods. Establishing doctrine by knocking people over the head worked at least as well as doing so through reasoned argument. Rhavas didn't necessarily approve of that, but recognized its reality. He wouldn't have cared for rowdy monks pounding on him, though.

He started to tell the local what a peaceable fellow he was. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a brawl. But how many men had he killed since the Khamorth swarmed into Videssos? He couldn't have put a number on it. And one woman, he added to himself. I've killed one woman.

A man who looked like a farmer come to town to sell asparagus stuck his head into the tavern and blinked a couple of times when he saw Rhavas was the only customer in the place. After blinking, he came in himself. "Looks like I won't have to wait for a cup of wine," he remarked.

"That's the truth, friend. You won't," the tapman told him.

"There. You see? Nothing permanent," Rhavas said.

"A good thing, too," said the man behind the bar.

"It could have been worse," Rhavas said, and the tapman had no idea how right he was.

Rhavas rode out of Develtos with nothing but relief. Neither Garidas nor any of the bruiser's fellow monks troubled him anymore; if they got drunk and quarreled while he was in the town, they did it in some other tavern. But the combination of such aggressive devotion to Phos and such aggressive devotion to Stylianos oppressed him.

He did his best to spend all the coins with Stylianos' face on them. Having them wouldn't be illegal when he came to country that favored Maleinos; their quality was as good as that of the money the legitimate Avtokrator issued. But they might prove embarrassing. He didn't want to give the impression that he favored the rebel.

The road west from Develtos was a real highway. By comparison, all the roads north of the Paristrian Mountains were nothing but rutted tracks. Rhavas understood why, too. The road west from Develtos ran straight to Videssos the city. Those north of the mountains went nowhere in particular. So it looked to a man born and raised in the capital, anyhow.

Before long, he sniffed and wrinkled his nose. He recognized that smell of old corruption; he'd run into it on the other side of the mountains. Here, though, the reek was stronger, which meant the battlefield was bigger. This had to be where Maleinos beat Stylianos. When word of that fight came up to Skopentzana, Rhavas had thought everything would be fine.

He laughed hoarsely. That only showed how foolish he'd been.

Some of the corpses on the field had been tumbled into hasty graves—mounds that grass and shrubs and flowers still covered incompletely. Others lay where they had fallen. Those would be rebels, of course; the victors would have buried their own. No one had bothered with either side's dead horses. Their larger skeletons were more readily visible through the burgeoning new growth than those of men.

Rhavas frowned a little. On the field north of the Paristrians, neither side had buried its dead. What did that mean? Probably that neither side had won anything even close to a victory. They'd killed till they got sick of killing, and then they'd gone away.

"And both sides must have thanked the lord with the great and good mind afterward," Rhavas said. He laughed again, the mirth bitter as wormwood in his mouth. How could anyone with an ounce of sense believe Phos had anything to do with such slaughter? Whatever happened on these fields, it didn't involve goodness.

No, what happened in places like these was surely Skotos' affair, not Phos'. It seemed so obvious to Rhavas now. He marveled that he'd been blind to it for as long as he had. He marveled even more that so many Videssians were blind to it still.

If they came out and examined this field, they wouldn't be, not anymore . . . could they? No one who had seen what was left on a battlefield after the battle was done could possibly believe the lord with the great and good mind controlled everything that went on in the world . . . could he? The mere idea insulted the intelligence . . . didn't it?

Shaking his head at the follies, the foibles, and the self-deluding ignorance of mankind, Rhavas rode on. The battlefield stench lingered in his nostrils for quite some time. A man with a good nose could tell the difference between roasting pork and beef. Could that same man use his good nose to tell rotting soldier from rotting horse? Rhavas wouldn't have been surprised, but had to admit he wasn't connoisseur enough to make the distinction.

The highway didn't carry much traffic. Normally, he thought, any road that led to Videssos the city should have been crowded. But these were not normal times. Fear of rival armies—and probably fear of bandits as well—kept people indoors, or at least off the road.

Most of a day's travel west of Develtos, Rhavas rode up to a checkpoint on the road. It didn't look like much: half a dozen soldiers on horseback off by the side of the highway, with a like number of dismounted archers standing around by the other side. Casually, but not in a way that brooked any argument, one of the horsemen said, "Stop right there, holy sir."

Rhavas realized all the soldiers were more alert than they seemed. He wasn't sure he could curse them fast enough to kill them all before at least one of them shot him. Doing his best to make his voice mild, he asked, "By what right do you stop me?"

"In the name of the Avtokrator," the cavalryman replied. "Answer some questions and you can go on your way."

In the name of which Avtokrator? Rhavas wondered. The soldier had made a point of not telling him. He forced himself to nod. "Say on, then."

"Who are you, where are you bound, and where have you been?"

"My name is Koubatzes; as you see, I am a priest." If these were Stylianos' men, as seemed likely, Rhavas didn't want to give his own name. He went on, "I'm from Podandos, in the northeast. I managed to get away from bandits when I came through the mountains, and I am on my way to Videssos the city." He didn't want to say that, but thought the soldier would reckon him a liar if he tried to claim anything else; anyone heading west from Develtos was likely to be bound for the capital.

The horseman frowned. "Any of you boys know much about this Podandos place?" he asked his comrades. To Rhavas' relief, no one spoke up. That could have been awkward. The soldiers' attention swung back to him. "Who is the rightful Avtokrator of the Videssians?"

Now there was an interesting question. It was likely these were Stylianos' men, yes, but it wasn't certain. That a wrong answer would be fatal was certain, as certain as anything in this world could be. In a peevish voice, Rhavas said, "I don't care." That astonished not just the man questioning him but all the horsemen and foot soldiers. He proceeded to embroider on the theme: "I'll tell you what I do care about, I will. I'll tell you what Podandos cares about. First man who drives off the stinking Khamorth, he's the rightful Avtokrator, far as Podandos is concerned. The other fellow? A plague take him."

He waited, hoping that performance was good enough. If it wasn't, he didn't think he could give a better one. "You've got your nerve, don't you?" said the soldier who was doing the talking. "What's your business in Videssos the city?"

"My business? Why, the synod, of course." Rhavas sounded like a man who knew exactly what he was talking about. One synod or another was almost always going on at the capital. If this cavalryman didn't know which one, that just made him an ignorant lout.

The man eyed his companions again. Some of them were smiling. A couple seemed to have trouble not laughing out loud. The horseman waved. "Pass on, priest. And Stylianos will rout out those nomads, just as soon as he finishes winning this war. You can count on it."

"May it be so." Rhavas urged his horse into motion with his knees. He didn't even let his shoulders slump to show how relieved he was. He had the feeling any sign of weakness would bring the soldiers down on him. His back itched, and kept on itching long after he got out of arrow range.

And how many more checkpoints would he have to talk his way past before he got to the capital? Stylianos had won near Imbros, west of here, and presumably still controlled that stretch of territory—Rhavas hadn't heard that Maleinos' men had driven him back from it. But Maleinos ruled in Videssos the city. He would also hold some land beyond the city. His soldiers would be snoopy, too.

I can give them my own name and rank, Rhavas thought. That's something, anyhow. But he would have to make certain they were his cousin's men. He didn't want Stylianos' soldiers to seize him and hold him hostage.

He laughed a sour laugh. They wouldn't get much use out of him if they did. Maleinos would tell them to do whatever they pleased, and would go on about his business without losing a moment's sleep. Rhavas hadn't seen his cousin since going off to Skopentzana, of course, and they hadn't been close before that. Maleinos was a careful, conscientious administrator, but no one had ever accused him of scholarship, and nothing else mattered to Rhavas.

Besides, Rhavas knew it was hard for an Avtokrator to get close to anyone, even—or maybe especially—a family member. So many people were ambitious, the ruler had to assume everybody was. If he didn't, he'd be sorry. Maleinos had trusted Stylianos as far as an Avtokrator could trust a general—and look what that had got him. If he survived the civil war, he would never make that mistake again.

He relied too much on Phos, and on the power of goodness. Slowly, Rhavas nodded to himself. The more he looked at the world, the more the new pattern he'd found seemed true. He nodded again, this time toward the west, toward the capital. Yes, he would have a lot of preaching to do when he got there . . . and plenty of examples to draw on when he did preach.

Up in the northeast, cities were few and far between. Skopentzana was—or had been—the exception, not the rule. Things were different south of the Paristrian Mountains. Crops were far richer and more abundant here than on the Empire's periphery. And Videssos had ruled these lands for close to a thousand years. Compared to them, the north country was an afterthought.

And Maleinos treated it like one, Rhavas thought grimly. The way he'd pulled garrisons from the towns showed he didn't care if the worst happened—and made it more likely the worst would. And Stylianos was just as bad. Taking men out of the frontier fortifications . . . Videssos would be paying for that for years, if not for centuries.

The long journey Rhavas had made showed how true that was. The short remaining journey he was making showed him how unlikely the Avtokrator was to care. Here, relatively close to Videssos the city, things looked almost normal. This was what Maleinos saw. If Stylianos triumphed, it would be what he saw, too. How likely was either man, comfortably ensconced in the capital, to venture forth and try to set things right? Not very, or so it seemed to Rhavas.

Even if the Avtokrator did venture forth, what could he accomplish? How many soldiers had the civil war eaten up? How many had the Khamorth already slain? How many could Videssos put in the field? Enough? Rhavas didn't know. He didn't think his imperial cousin—or, for that matter, the rebel general—did, either.

A peasant weeding in a field waved to Rhavas. He waved back. A blackbird swooped down on a clod of earth the peasant's hoe had thrown aside. The bird flew off with a worm in its beak. The peasant called, "Bless me, holy sir."

Rhavas sighed. He was getting sick of that request. But the peasant was bound to come after him with a hoe if he gave the kind of blessing he really thought fitting. And so, mindful of his own hypocrisy, Rhavas sketched the sun-circle and intoned, "May the lord with the great and good mind watch over you, my son."

The peasant presented arms with the hoe as if it were a foot soldier's pike. "I thank you for your kindness, holy sir," he said, and went back to grubbing out weeds.

Kindness? Rhavas shook his head as he rode away. That wasn't what he would have called it. And yet . . . Didn't a lot of priests feel like hypocrites when they delivered a blessing? They had to know people took sick and died or committed horrible crimes in spite of their well-meant words. They seldom paused to wonder what that might mean. I have the courage to go where logic leads me, Rhavas thought.

Going there was one thing. Now he had to persuade others to follow him. He looked toward the capital again. That was why he was on his way.

Quite a few peasants worked in the fields. If they didn't plant and plow and weed and harvest, neither they nor the townsfolk would eat. Because Rhavas saw them, he needed a while to realize he didn't see many cattle or sheep in the meadows. He wondered why not, but he didn't wonder for long. Armies had been marching and countermarching along this highway since the civil war began. Either they'd already eaten or driven off the local livestock or the peasants were hiding it so they wouldn't.

As they would have anywhere, the farmhouses had vegetable plots nearby. Most of the time, the peasants' wives and daughters would have tended them. Rhavas also needed a while to notice he saw next to no women. What he did not see, armies going by would not see, either.

He sadly shook his head. How long would it take for life in the Empire of Videssos to come back to normal once this miserable war finally ended? Over how much of the Empire would it never come back to normal? How could the victorious Avtokrator, whoever he was, hope to expel the Khamorth with the straitened resources he would have at his disposal?

"And they say this is the good god's will," Rhavas murmured scornfully. "They say this is the great test of life." His laugh was all vinegar. "They cannot see what lies in front of them. This is a god at work, yes. But which god is stronger? I am not afraid to face the truth."

He rode through the next town without stopping for the night. Dolikhe was a sorry place, barely big enough to boast a wall, full of people who would have been failures anywhere bigger. By the rundown state of the shops and taverns, a lot of them were failures here.

Stylianos' small garrison seemed to care only about the gates—where the highway came into town and went out again. The soldiers questioned Rhavas, who gave them the same answers as he'd used before at the checkpoint. None of these men seemed to have any trouble understanding why he didn't want to linger here.

"Go on, then, holy sir," one of them said. "By the good god, I wish I was going with you, too."

Rhavas camped for the night in oak woods off the highway. He had bread and cheese. A small stream chuckled through the forest. Its water was sweet and cold. He had no doubt it was healthy.

He made no fire. Flames might draw bandits. Besides, nothing that he ate needed cooking, and the night was mild. Next to some of the nights he'd been through after Skopentzana fell, almost any night south of the Paristrian Mountains was mild. He would have thought this one pleasant even when he lived in Videssos the city, though. Oh, a few mosquitoes whined through the air, but mosquitoes always whined when the weather was warm. He wrapped himself in a blanket and went to sleep.

As he twisted to try to find a position where no pebbles dug into his torso and legs, he remembered how uncomfortable he'd been sleeping in a bedroll when he and the mages from Skopentzana so spectacularly failed to drive the Khamorth away from the city. Now he took it in stride. He took all sorts of things in stride now that he hadn't been able to imagine last Midwinter's Day. One last twist, a grunt of satisfaction, and his eyes closed. In mere minutes, he was snoring.

When he began to dream, it was one of those dreams where he did not know he was dreaming. Everything seemed perfectly real, perfectly distinct. The landscape was golden, the most beautiful he'd ever seen. A few clouds floated by. He noted without much surprise that they floated by below him, not above. That he was drifting through the air felt as natural as anything else.

Other people—men, women, children—drifted along with him. He took that in stride, too. They were going somewhere. He knew where—knew well enough so he didn't need to call out to anyone else and ask. Even the idea of calling out seemed strange. He wasn't sure he could. But it didn't matter. He wasn't supposed to.

Ahead, something appeared in the goldenness: a thin line leading upward. Even as Rhavas drew closer to it, it grew no wider. He accepted that as readily as anything else. It was part of the way things should be.

He and the others drifting along with him formed themselves into a queue. No one bumped or shoved or elbowed. They all had their places, and they all accepted them. That was as least as remarkable as anything else here, but Rhavas also took it in stride.

Shapes that were not men or women flashed around that never-widening line ahead. Instead of drifting, they truly flew. Some were so bright, they left glowing afterimages on his sight. The others were blacker than midnight, blacker than charcoal, blacker than soot.

A chill ran up Rhavas' spine. Now he knew where he was, and why that line always stayed so narrow. It was the Bridge of the Separator. Those who crossed it attained to paradise, and Phos' shining messengers would escort them thither. But those who fell off . . . For them, Skotos' demons awaited, and so did the eternal ice.

One after another, the assembled souls essayed the Bridge. A few, it seemed to Rhavas, succeeded in the crossing. The demons seized far more, though.

Inexorably, his own time of trial grew ever closer. As it did, panic seized him, panic not only over what would happen to him but also over why he was here at all. This is where souls are judged, he yammered frantically, there in the fortress of his mind. I am no soul! I live! I breathe!

But he still could not call out. If some cosmic mistake had been made, only he knew about it. No one else, not the souls drifting forward with him, not the bright messengers, and not the demons out of the darkness, seemed the least bit interested. He might as well have been a merchant trying to persuade tax assessors to lower his required payment without documents to support his claim.

The soul ahead of his stepped onto the Bridge of the Separator. Onward and upward it went, but not for long. Its despairing wail as it tumbled off chilled Rhavas to the marrow. So did the demons' laughter as they bore it away.

And then Rhavas set foot on the Bridge. It seemed infinitely long, infinitely narrow. He swayed. If he stayed where he was, he was lost. He could sense that. To have any hope of crossing it, he had to go ahead.

Go ahead he did. He heard, or thought he heard, encouraging whispers from Phos' messengers. They wanted him to pass into paradise. The demons did not whisper. They shouted. They screamed. They cursed. Every sin Rhavas had ever committed dinned in his ears now. And every time a demon named one, Rhavas wobbled on the Bridge. Those encouraging whispers helped steady him, but less and less after each demonic shriek.

Still, he went forward. He tried to go faster, to cross as quickly as he could, so he might get to the other side before all his sins were named. Paradise awaited if he did. He was getting close. . . .

"Ingegerd!" a great black demon roared in a voice like thunder.

Rhavas swayed. His arms flailed. He felt himself tilting. He felt himself . . . falling. How the demons laughed!

He woke . . . in darkness. But before he started screaming, before he started the screams that would last for all eternity, he saw it was not the darkness that accompanied Skotos' ice. It was only the nighttime darkness of the woods, with moonlight and starlight filtering down through the leafy branches overhead.

"Oh," he said: one soft word full of wonder. "A dream. Nothing but a dream."

A mosquito buzzed by his ear. He welcomed the sound, as belonging to this world. He was also glad to be able to hear it above the frightened thudding of his heart. The longer he lay awake, the more the fear subsided. If he was right, if Skotos was stronger than Phos and would triumph at the end of days, wasn't the good god's heaven an illusion anyhow? Sooner or later, by that logic, everyone and everything was going to the ice. And if that was so, what difference did sooner or later really make?

He twisted again, almost the way he'd twisted on the Bridge in his dream. At last, he managed to get away from the little rock that was digging into his hip. He settled toward sleep again.

Even as drowsiness overcame him, though, he remembered how terrified he'd been when he began that endless fall into darkness.

Seeing the sun once more was a relief. Getting back on the road was a relief. He kept going over his dream again and again as he rode west. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he'd interpreted it the right way. Skotos' power was coming. Nothing anybody could do would change that. The dream was both a foretaste and a reminder of it.

The terror? He shrugged and did his best to make light of it. The terror was part of the death throes of his old way of thinking. The sooner he got rid of it, the sooner everyone got rid of it, the better.

That almost made him forget how frightened he'd been. Almost.

A farm boy in a colorless homespun tunic ran across a meadow toward him, calling, "Holy sir! Please stop, holy sir!"

Rhavas reined in. "What is it? What do you want?"

The boy pointed back toward his house. A thin plume of smoke rose from the hearth through the hole in the middle of the thatched roof. "My mother's awful sick, holy sir. Will you pray over her? We don't have a lot of money, but we can give you food for the road."

Before his revelation, Rhavas knew he would have done it. He still had to pretend to be what he had been then. Hoping he didn't sound too reluctant, he nodded. "Lead me to her."

"Just follow me!" The boy dashed back the way he'd come. Rhavas tugged on the reins and led the steppe pony he was riding and the packhorse after him.

A man stood in front of the farmhouse: a bigger, bearded, anxious-looking version of the boy. "The lord with the great and good mind bless you, holy sir!" he said. "Anything you can do for my Rhipsine, I'll get down on my knees and thank you for it."

"No need for that," Rhavas said. "Take me to her."

"Come on, then." The peasant held the door open for him. He ducked inside. The house reminded him of some of the ones in which he'd sheltered on the way down from Skopentzana. No need to fear freezing to death here, though. The man pointed to the woman twisting feebly on the bed. "There she is. She's still breathing, anyway, Phos be praised." He drew the sun-circle over his heart.

"Yes." Rhavas was no healer-priest. Nor was he a physician. He needed to be neither to see at a glance that the woman was desperately ill. When he set his palm on her forehead, he had to fight to keep from jerking it away—she burned with fever. Her pulse was fast and weak and thready. She moaned, but it was only gibberish. She had no idea where she was or who was with her.

"What can you do, holy sir?" the peasant said. "She means everything to me and my lad."

"I do not think a healer can help her now," Rhavas said, and the man groaned as if stabbed. Behind him, the boy started to cry.

Gathering himself, the man asked, "What is there to do, then?"

"I see two choices," Rhavas answered. "You can let her go on as she is, let her go on suffering, or you can ease her pain."

"Knock her over the head like she was a horse with a busted leg?" The peasant made a horrible face. "I couldn't do that. I'd want to drown myself as soon as I did."

"I can," Rhavas said. "It would be very quick, very simple, and then she would be at peace."

"No." The farmer shook his head. "I wanted you to cure her, by Phos, not kill her. What kind of priest are you, anyways?"

That was a better question than the weathered man knew. Rhavas had to hope his face did not betray him. "Have it your way, then," he said, and stalked out of the hut. The peasant's question still burned in his ears. "Curse you all," he muttered under his breath.

The woman had been moaning, the man praying beside her, and the boy still snuffling. Sudden silence slammed down inside the house. Rhavas had been about to remount his Khamorth pony. Instead, he looked in once more. Now the woman lay quiet. Her husband sprawled beside her, equally still. The boy had fallen nearer the door.

Rhavas shrugged. Now they were all at peace. The farmer had asked what kind of priest he was. He couldn't tell the man, so he'd shown him instead. And none of the family would ever need another lesson.

This time, Rhavas did climb onto the steppe pony. He rode away without a backward glance. What were three more bodies behind him? Skopentzana lay on his conscience. On my head be it, he'd said, and on his head it was. Ingegerd lay on his conscience, unless she counted as part of Skopentzana. The same applied to Koubatzes. And that priest in Podandos lay on his conscience, too. Tryphon had also wanted to know what kind of priest Rhavas was. Like the peasant and his family, he'd found out. Also like the peasant and his family, he hadn't had and wouldn't have the chance to do anything with what he'd learned.

Wearing the blue robe of a priest of Phos when he no longer believed in the good god's primacy had irked Rhavas. Now, all at once, he laughed. There were spiders that looked like the flowers on and among which they sat. Insects never suspected them till too late. Was it not the same with him?

He came up to yet another checkpoint of Stylianos'. The soldiers there did not seem to want to let him go on. That bothered him not only because it was a nuisance but also because it upset his sense of logic and order. "Why hold me back when so many of your men have let me go forward?" he exclaimed.

"You say you've been through other checkpoints," one of the men said.

Rhavas resented being reckoned a liar over such a small thing, especially when he was actually telling the truth. "Look at me!" he said angrily. "Haven't I been traveling for some little while? Smell me, if looking at me won't give you clue enough. How could I have come along this highway and not gone through a swarm of your miserable checkpoints?"

Stylianos' soldiers muttered among themselves. Finally, with some obvious reluctance, they let him go. "You're not a spy," said the man who'd spoken before. "You wouldn't make such a mouthy nuisance of yourself if you was a spy."

"Were." Rhavas automatically corrected him.

"See what I mean?" The soldier rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb to the west. "Go on. Get out of here."

Thus encouraged, Rhavas did. He found more trees in which to encamp that evening. Not long after he went off the road, a troop of eastbound horsemen trotted along it. He counted himself lucky that they hadn't seen him.

He didn't know whether he found himself lucky to be falling asleep in the woods again. If he kept dreaming about falling off the Bridge of the Separator . . . No, he didn't want to do that more than once. He hadn't wanted to do it once, in fact.

Because he was so nervous about it, he lay some time awake. But when he did fall asleep, he slept soundly. No dreams troubled him. The next thing he knew, sunbeams sneaking through the branches overhead woke him.

He ate the last of the bread in his saddlebags, then started riding again. Before long, he came upon . . . a checkpoint. He felt like cursing the soldiers there just because they were an annoyance. Then one of their officers asked, "What do you want, priest, coming out of the rebel's territory?"

"You favor Maleinos?" Rhavas said in glad surprise.

"Yes, we do. But what about you?" the horseman growled.

Another officer stirred and stared. "Very holy sir! Don't you know me, very holy sir?"

A lump of ice like Skopentzana winter formed in Rhavas' belly. He nodded jerkily. "Yes, I know you, Himerios."