The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  Krispos’ eyebrows rose. “Worse came from the man who was prelate of an important city?”

  “It did, Your Majesty. Rhavas, I gather, was connected not too distantly to the imperial house of the time, but earned his position by ability, not through his blood. He might have been ecumenical patriarch had Skopentzana not fallen, and he might have been a great one. But when he made his way to Videssos the city, he was…changed. He had seen too much of evil when the Khamorth took Skopentzana; he concluded Skotos was mightier than Phos.”

  Even Iakovitzes, whose piety ran thin, drew the sun-sign when he heard that. Krispos said, “How did the priests of the time take to that?”

  “With poor grace, as you might expect.” Pyrrhos’ reply would have been fierce and full of horror. Gnatios let understatement do the same job. Krispos found he preferred Gnatios’ way. The scholarly monk went on, “Rhavas, though, was become as great a zealot for the dark god as he had been for Phos. He preached his new doctrine to all who would listen, first in the temples and then in the streets after the patriarch of the day banned him from the pulpit.”

  Now Krispos was interested in spite of himself. “They didn’t let that go on, did they?” The thought of Videssos the city filled with worshipers of evil filled him with dread.

  “No, they didn’t,” Gnatios said. “But because Rhavas was well connected, they had to try him publicly in an ecclesiastical court, which meant he had the privilege of defending himself against the charges they lodged. And because he was able—well, no, he was more than able; he was brilliant. I’ve read his defense, Your Majesty. It frightens me. It must have frightened the prelates of the day, too, for they sentenced him to death.”

  “I ask you again, holy sir—how does this apply to the trouble we’re in now? If this Rhavas is three centuries dead, then evil as he may have become—”

  “Your Majesty, I am not at all sure Rhavas is three centuries dead,” Gnatios said heavily. “I am not sure he is dead at all. He laughed when the court sentenced him, and told them they had not the power to be his death. He was left in his cell for the night, to brood on his misbelief and on the crimes he had committed in the belief they furthered his god’s ends. Guards came the next morning to take him to the headsman and found the cell empty. The lock had not been tampered with, there were no tunnels. But Rhavas was gone.”

  “Magic,” Krispos said. The small hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck prickled erect.

  “No doubt you are right, Your Majesty, but because of the nature of Rhavas’ offense the cell was warded by the finest sorcerers of the day. Afterward they all took oath their wards were undisturbed. Yet Rhavas was gone.”

  Iakovitzes bent over his tablet. He held it up to show what he had written. “You’re saying this Rhavas is Harvas, aren’t you?” He screwed up his face to show what he thought of that. But then he lowered the tablet so he could see it himself. When he raised it again, he pointed with his stylus to each name in turn.

  For a moment, Krispos had no idea what he was driving at. Harvas was an ordinary Haloga name, Rhavas an ordinary Videssian one. But was it coincidence that both of them were formed from the same letters? The renewed prickle of alarm he felt told him no.

  Gnatios stared at the two names as if he’d never seen them before. His eyes flicked from one to the other, then back again. “I didn’t notice—” he breathed.

  Iakovitzes set the tablet in his lap so he could write. He passed it to Krispos, who read it aloud: “‘No wonder he wouldn’t swear by Phos.’” Iakovitzes believed, too, then.

  “But if we’re battling a…a three-hundred-year-old wizard,” Krispos faltered, “how do we, how can we hope to beat him?”

  “Your Majesty, I do not know. I was hoping you could tell me,” Gnatios said. His voice held no irony. Krispos was the Avtokrator. Defeating foreign foes came with the job.

  Iakovitzes wrote again. “If we do face an undying wizard who worships Skotos and hates everything Phos stands for, why hasn’t he troubled Videssos long before now?”

  That made Krispos doubt again. But Gnatios answered, “How do we know he has not? By the lord with the great and good mind, your Highness, the Empire has suffered its full share of disasters over the years. How many of them might Rhavas have caused or made worse? Our ignorance of the force behind the misfortune fails to prove the force did not exist.”

  “Holy sir, I think—I fear—you are right,” Krispos said. Only a man—or whatever this Rhavas or Harvas was, after so long—who loved Skotos could have inflicted such brutal savagery on Imbros. And only a man who had studied sorcery for three centuries could have so baffled a clever, well-trained mage like Trokoundos. The pieces fit as neatly as those of a wooden puzzle, but Krispos cringed from the shape they made.

  Gnatios said, “Now do with me as you will, Your Majesty. I know you have no reason to love me, nor, truth to tell, have I any to love you. But this tale needed telling for the Empire’s sake, not for yours or mine.”

  “How peculiar,” Iakovitzes wrote. “I thought him a man completely without integrity. Shows you can’t rely on adverbs, I suppose.”

  “Er, yes.” Krispos handed the tablet back to Iakovitzes. When Gnatios saw he would not be invited to read Iakovitzes’ comment, one eyebrow arched. Krispos ignored it. He was thinking hard. At last he said, “Holy sir, this deserves a reward, as you well know.”

  “Being out of the monastery, even if but for a brief while, is reward in itself.” Gnatios raised that eyebrow again. “How ever did you arrange for the most holy ecumenical patriarch of the Videssians”—Gnatios put irony in his voice with a scalpel, not a shovel—“to acquiesce in my release?”

  “That’s right, we both had to agree to it, didn’t we?” Krispos grinned sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, holy sir, I forgot to ask him, and I gather an imperial summons for you was enough to overawe your abbot.”

  “Evidently so.” Gnatios paused before continuing. “The most holy patriarch will not be pleased with you for having enlarged me so.”

  “That’s all right. I haven’t been pleased with him for some time.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did Krispos wonder how impolitic it was for him to run down the incumbent patriarch to a former holder of the office.

  Not even Gnatios’ eyebrow stirred; Krispos admired that. Gnatios chose his words with evident care: “Exactly how great a reward did Your Majesty contemplate?”

  Iakovitzes gobbled. Gnatios turned his way in surprise; Krispos, by now, was used to the noble’s strange laugh. He felt like laughing himself. “So you want your old post back, do you, holy sir?”

  “I suppose I should feel chagrin at being so obvious, but yes, Your Majesty, I do. To be frank”—Krispos wondered if Gnatios was ever frank—“the idea of that narrow zealot’s possessing the patriarchal throne makes my blood boil.”

  “He loves you just as well,” Krispos remarked.

  “I’m aware of that. I respect his honesty and sincerity. Have you not found, though, Your Majesty, that an honest fanatic poses certain problems of his own?”

  Krispos wondered how much Gnatios knew of Pyrrhos’ summons to the Grand Courtroom, of the riots outside the High Temple. Quite a lot, he suspected. Gnatios might be confined to his monastic cell, but Krispos was willing to bet he heard every whisper in the city.

  “Holy sir, there is some truth in what you say,” he admitted. He leaned forward, as if he were in the marketplace of Imbros—back in the days when Imbros’ marketplace held life—haggling over the price of a shoat. “How can I hope to trust you, though, after you’ve betrayed me not once but twice?”

  “Always an interesting question.” Gnatios sighed, spreading his hands in front of him. “Your Majesty, I have no good answer for it. I will say that I would be a better patriarch than the one you have now.”

  “For as long as you take to decide someone else would make a better Emperor than the one you have now.”

  Gnatios bowed his head. “An argument I cannot cou
nter.”

  “Here is what I will do, holy sir: from now on, you may come and go as you will, subject to the wishes of your abbot. I daresay you’ll need something in writing.” Krispos called for pen and parchment, wrote rapidly, signed and sealed the document, and handed it to Gnatios. “I hope you’ll overlook faults of style and grammar.”

  “Your Majesty, for this document I would overlook a great deal,” Gnatios said. In one sentence, that summed up the difference between him and Pyrrhos. Pyrrhos never overlooked anything for any reason.

  “If you find anything more in your histories, be sure to let me know at once,” Krispos said.

  Gnatios understood the audience was over. He prostrated himself, rose, and started for the door. Barsymes met him there. The vestiarios asked, “Shall the Halogai accompany the holy sir back to his monastery?”

  “No, let him go back by himself,” Krispos said. He succeeded in surprising his chamberlain, no easy feat. With a bow of acquiescence and an expression that spoke volumes, Barsymes led Gnatios toward the door of the imperial residence.

  Krispos listened to the two sets of footsteps fading down the hall. He turned to Iakovitzes. “Well, what now?”

  “Do you mean, what now as in giving Gnatios the High Temple back, or what now as in Harvas?” Iakovitzes wrote.

  “I don’t know,” Krispos said, “and by the good god, I never expected the two questions to be wrapped up with each other.” He sighed. “Let’s talk about the patriarch first. Pyrrhos must go.” In the two weeks since Krispos went up into the imperial niche at the High Temple, two more fights had broken out there—both of them, fortunately, small.

  Iakovitzes scribbled. “Aye, my dear cousin’s not the most yielding sort, is he? If you do want Gnatios back, maybe you can keep him in line by threatening to feed him to the Halogai the first time the word treason so much as tiptoes across the back of his twisty little mind.”

  “Something to that.” Krispos remembered how Gnatios had cringed from a guardsman’s axe the night he seized the Empire. He looked down at the tablet in his lap, then admiringly over to Iakovitzes. “Do you know, I hear your voice whenever I read what you write. Your words on wax or parchment capture the very tone of your speech. Whenever I try to set thoughts down, they always seem so stiff and formal. How do you do it?”

  “Genius,” Iakovitzes wrote. Krispos made as if to break the tablet over his head. The noble reclaimed it, then wrote a good deal more. He handed it to Krispos. “If you must have a long answer, for one thing, I came to writing earlier in life than you and have used it a good deal longer. For another, this is my voice now. Shall I be silent merely because I can no longer utter the more or less articulate croaks that most men use for speech?”

  “I see the answer is no,” Krispos said, thinking that Iakovitzes was about as unyielding as his cousin Pyrrhos. Refusing to yield to adversity struck him as more admirable than refusing to yield to common sense. The thought of Iakovitzes’ adversity led to the one who had caused it. “Now, what of Harvas?”

  Bright fear widened Iakovitzes’ eyes, then left them as he visibly took a grip on himself. He bent over the tablet, used the blunt end of his stylus to smooth down the wax and give himself room to write. At last he passed Krispos his words. “Fight him as best we can. What else is there? Now that we have some notion of what he is, perhaps the wizards will better be able to arm themselves against him.”

  Krispos thumped himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “By the lord with the great and good mind, I haven’t any mind at all. Gnatios has to tell his tale to Trokoundos before the day is through.” He shouted for Barsymes again. The vestiarios transcribed his note and took it to a courier for delivery to Trokoundos.

  That accomplished, Krispos leaned back on the couch. He had the battered feeling of a man to whom too much had happened too fast. If Harvas or Rhavas or whatever his proper name was had been perfecting his dark sorcery over half a dozen men’s lives, no wonder he’d overcome a mere mortal like Trokoundos.

  “To the ice with Harvas or Rhavas or whatever his proper name is,” he muttered.

  “What about Pyrrhos?” Iakovitzes wrote.

  “You like to poke people with pointy sticks, just to see them jump,” Krispos said. Iakovitzes’ look of shocked indignation might have convinced someone who hadn’t met him more than half a minute before. Krispos went on, “I don’t wish the ice for Pyrrhos. I just wish he’d go back to his monastery and keep quiet. I’m not even likely to get that, worse luck. He won’t bend, the stiff-necked old—”

  Krispos stopped. His mouth hung open. His eyes went wide. “What are you gawping at?” Iakovitzes wrote. “It had better be Phos’ holy light, to account for that idiotic expression you’re wearing.”

  “It’s the next best thing,” Krispos assured him. He raised his voice: “Barsymes! Are you still there? Ah, good. I want you to draft me a note to the most holy patriarch Pyrrhos. Here’s what you need to say—”

  BARSYMES STUCK HIS HEAD INTO THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER. “THE most holy patriarch Pyrrhos is here to see you, Your Majesty.”

  “Good. He should be done to a turn by now.” Krispos had put off four days of increasingly urgent requests from the patriarch for an audience. He turned to Iakovitzes, Mammianos, and Rhisoulphos. “Excellent and eminent sirs, I ask you to bear careful witness to what takes place here today, so that you may take oath on it at need.”

  The three nobles nodded, formally and solemnly. Mammianos said, “This had better work.”

  “The beauty of it is, I’m no worse off if it doesn’t,” Krispos answered. “Now to business. I hear Pyrrhos coming.”

  The patriarch prostrated himself with his usual punctiliousness. He glanced at the three high-ranking men who sat to Krispos’ left, but only for a moment. His eyes sparked as he swung them back to Krispos. “Your Majesty, I must vehemently protest this recent decision of yours.” He drew out the note Krispos had sent him.

  “Oh? Why is that, most holy sir?”

  Pyrrhos’ jaw set. He knew when he was being toyed with. With luck, he did not know why. He ground out, “Because, Your Majesty, you have restored to the monk Gnatios—the treacherous, wicked monk Gnatios—as much liberty as is enjoyed by the other brethren of the monastery dedicated to the sacred memory of the holy Skirios. Moreover, you have done so without consulting me.” Plainer than words, his face said what he would have answered had Krispos consulted him.

  “The monk Gnatios did a great service for me and for the Empire,” Krispos said. “Because of that, I’ve decided to overlook his past failings.”

  “I haven’t,” Pyrrhos said. “This interference in the internal affairs of the temples is unwarranted and intolerable.”

  “In this special case, I judged not. And let me remind you that the Avtokrator is Avtokrator over all the Empire, cities and farms and temples alike. Most holy sir, I have the right if I choose to use it, and I choose to use it here.”

  “Intolerable,” Pyrrhos repeated. He drew himself up. “Your Majesty, if you persist in you pernicious course, I have no choice but to submit to you my resignation in protest thereof.”

  Off to Krispos’ left, someone sighed softly. He thought it was Rhisoulphos. It was all the applause he would ever get, but it was more than enough. “I’m sorry to hear that from you, most holy sir,” he said to Pyrrhos. Just by a hair’s breath, the patriarch began to relax. But Krispos was not finished. “I accept your resignation. These gentlemen will attest you offered it of your own free will, with no coercion whatsoever.”

  Iakovitzes, Mammianos, and Rhisoulphos nodded, formally and solemnly.

  “You—planned this,” Pyrrhos said in a ghastly voice. He saw everything, too late.

  “I did not urge you to resign,” Krispos pointed out. “You did it yourself. Now that you have done it, Barsymes will prepare a document for you to sign.”

  “And if I refuse to set my signature upon it?”

  “Then you have resigned even so. As I said, h
oly sir”—Pyrrhos scowled at the abrupt devaluation of his title—“you resigned of your own accord, in front of witnesses. That may be smoothest all around. I would have removed you if you insisted on staying on—you promised to practice theological economy and tolerate what you could, but none of your sermons has shown even one drop of tolerance.”

  Pyrrhos said, “I see everything now. You will replace me with that panderer to evil, Gnatios. Without your knowing it, the dark god has taken hold of your heart.”

  Krispos leaned forward and spat on the floor. “That to the dark god! Look at your cousin here, holy sir. Remember what Harvas Black-Robe did to him. Would he fall into any trap Skotos might lay?”

  “Were it baited with a pretty boy, he might,” Pyrrhos said.

  Iakovitzes used a two-fingered gesture common on the streets of Videssos the city. Pyrrhos gasped. Krispos wondered when that gesture had last been aimed at a patriarch—no, an ex-patriarch, he amended. Iakovitzes wrote furiously and passed his tablet to Rhisoulphos. Rhisoulphos read it: “‘Cousin, the only bait you need is the hope of tormenting everyone who disagrees with you. Are you sure you have not swallowed it?’”

  “I know I believe the truth; thus anyone who holds otherwise embraces falsehood,” Pyrrhos said, “I see now that that includes those here. Majesty, you may ban me from preaching in the High Temple, but I shall take my message to the streets of the city—”

  Now Krispos knew Pyrrhos was no intriguer. A man wiser in the ways of stirring up strife would never have warned what he planned to do. Krispos said, “If what you believe is the truth, holy sir, and if I have fallen into evil, how do you explain the vision that bade you help me like a son?”

  Pyrrhos opened his mouth, then closed it again. Rhisoulphos leaned over to whisper to Krispos, “If nothing else, Your Majesty, you’ve confused him.”

  Grateful even for so much, Krispos nodded. He told Pyrrhos, “Holy sir, I’m going to give you an honor guard of Halogai to escort you to the monastery of the holy Skirios. If you do decide to yell something foolish to the people in the street, they’ll do what they have to, to keep you quiet.” Pyrrhos could not terrify the heathen northerners with threats of Skotos’ ice.