The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “That shouldn’t be necessary,” Zaidas said. “I think I have with me all I shall require.” He drew from a saddlebag a short, thin stick and a small silver cup. From his canteen, he poured wine into the cup until it was nearly full, then passed it to Krispos. “Hold this a moment, Your Majesty, if you would be so kind.” As soon as he had both hands free, he teased a fuzzy length of wool loose from Phostis’ blanket, then wrapped it around the stick.

  He held out a hand for the silver cup, which Krispos returned to him. When he had it back, he dropped in the stick so it floated on the wine. “This spell may also be accomplished with water, Your Majesty, but I am of the opinion that the spirituous component of the wine improves its efficacy.”

  “However you think best,” Krispos said. Listening to Zaidas cheerfully explain how he did what he did helped the Emperor not think about all the things that could have happened to Phostis.

  The wizard said, “Once I have chanted, the little stick here, by virtue of its connection to the wool that was once connected to your son, will turn in the cup to reveal the direction in which he lies.”

  This spell, as Zaidas had said, was more intricate than the first one he’d used. He needed both hands for the passes, and he guided his horse by the pressure of his knees. At the climax of the incantation, he stabbed down at the floating stick with a rigid forefinger, crying out at the same time in a loud, commanding voice.

  Krispos waited for the stick to quiver and point like a well-trained hunting dog. Instead, it spun wildly in the cup, splashing wine up over the edge and then sinking out of sight in the rich ruby liquid. Krispos stared. “What does that mean?”

  “Your Majesty, if I knew, I would tell you.” Zaidas sounded even more surprised than the Avtokrator had. He paused for a moment to think, then went on, “It might mean this blanket was in fact never in direct contact with Phostis. But no—” He shook his head. “That cannot be, either. Had the blanket no affinity for your son, it would not have responded to the spell that showed us he is alive.”

  “Yes, I follow your reasoning,” Krispos said. “What other choices have we?”

  “Next most likely, or so it seems to me, is that my sorcerous efforts are somehow being blocked, to keep me from learning where the young Majesty is,” Zaidas said.

  “But you are a master mage, one of the leaders of the Sorcerers’ Collegium,” Krispos protested. “How can anyone keep you from working what you wish?”

  “Several ways, Your Majesty. I am not the only sorcerer of my grade within the Empire of Videssos. Another master, or perhaps even a team of lesser wizards, may be working to keep the truth from me. Notice the spell did not send us off in a direction that later proved false, but merely prevented us from learning the true one. That is an easier magic.”

  “I see,” Krispos said slowly. “You named one way, or possibly even two, in which you could be deceived. Are there others?”

  “Yes,” Zaidas answered. “I am a master in wizardry based on our faith in Phos and rejection of his dark foe Skotos.” The mage paused to spit. “This is, you might say, a two-poled system of magic. The Halogai with their many gods, or the Khamorth of the steppe with their belief in supernatural powers animating each rock or stream or sheep or blade of grass, view the world from such a different perspective that their sorcery is more difficult for a mage of my school to detect or counter. The same applies in lesser degree to the Makuraners, who filter the power of what they term the God through the intermediary of the Prophets Four.”

  “Assuming this blocking magic is from some school other than ours, can you fight through it?” Krispos asked.

  “Your Majesty, there I am imperfectly certain. In theory, since ours is the only true faith, magic developed from it will in the end prove mightier than that based on any other system. In practice, man’s creations being the makeshifts they are, a great deal depends on the strength and skill of the mages involved, regardless of the school to which they belong. I can try my utmost, but I cannot guarantee success.”

  “Do your utmost,” Krispos said. “I suppose you will need to halt for your more complicated spells. I’ll leave you a courier; send word the moment you have results of any sort.”

  “I shall, Your Majesty,” Zaidas promised. He looked as if he wanted to say something more. Krispos waved for him to go on. He did: “I pray you forgive me, Your Majesty, but you might also be wise to send out riders to beat the countryside.”

  “I’ll do that,” Krispos said with a sinking feeling. Zaidas was warning him not to expect success in a hurry, if at all.

  The squads of horsemen clattered forth, some ahead of the army, some back toward Nakoleia, others out to either side of the track. No encouraging word came from them by sundown. Krispos and the main body of his force rode on, leaving Zaidas behind to set up his search magic. A company stayed with him to protect him from Thanasioi or simple robbers. Krispos waited and waited for the courier to return. At last, just as weariness was about to drive him to his cot, the fellow rode into the encampment. Seeing the question in the Emperor’s eyes, he just shook his head.

  “No luck?” Krispos said, for the sake of being sure.

  “No luck,” the courier answered. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. The wizard’s magic failed again: more than once, from what he told me.”

  Grimacing, Krispos thanked the man and sent him to his own rest. He hadn’t really believed Zaidas would stay baffled. He lay down on the cot as he’d intended, but found sleep a long time coming.

  STUPID. THE WORD SLID SLUGGISHLY THROUGH PHOSTIS’ MIND. Because he saw only darkness, he thought for a confused moment that he was still back at the latrines. Then he realized a bandage covered his eyes. He reached up to pull it off, only to discover his hands had been efficiently tied behind his back, his legs at knees and ankles.

  He groaned. The sound came out muffled—he was also gagged. He groaned again anyhow. His head felt like an anvil on which a smith about as tall as the top of the High Temple’s dome was hammering out a complicated piece of ironwork. He was lying on something hard—boards, he found out when a splinter dug into the thin strip of flesh between blindfold and gag.

  Adding to the pounding agony behind his eyes were squeaks and jolts. I’m in a wagon, or maybe a cart, he thought, amazed and impressed that his poor benighted brain functioned at all. He groaned one more time.

  “He’s coming around,” said somebody—a man—above and in front of him. The fellow laughed, loudly and raucously. “It’s took him long enough, it has, it has.”

  “Shall we let him see where he’s going?” another voice, a woman’s, asked. After a moment, Phostis recognized it: Olyvria’s. He ground his teeth in helpless fury; he felt he’d already used up all the groans in him.

  The man—the driver?—said, “Nah, our orders was to bring him the first stage of the way to Livanios without him knowin’ nothin’ about it. That’s what your pa done said, and that’s what we does. So don’t go untyin’ him, either, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Syagrios,” Olyvria answered. “It’s too bad. We’d all be happier if we could get him cleaned up a bit.”

  “I’ve smelled worse, out in the fields at manuring time,” Syagrios said. “The stink won’t kill him, and it won’t kill you, neither.”

  Phostis had been aware of a foul smell since his wits returned. He hadn’t realized he was the cause of it. He must have gone on fouling himself after Olyvria’s potion—the one that was supposed to end his internal turmoil—forced him down into oblivion. I’ll have revenge for that, by the good god, he thought. I’ll—He gave up. No vengeance seemed savage enough to suit him.

  Olyvria said, “I wish he would have come and talked with me when he saw me by the baggage train. He recognized me, I know he did. I think I could have persuaded him to come with us of his own will. I know he follows Thanasios’ gleaming path, at least in large measure.”

  Syagrios gave a loud, skeptical grunt. “How d’you know that?”

  “He
wouldn’t bed me when he had the chance,” Olyvria answered.

  Her companion grunted again, in a slightly different tone. “Well, maybe. It don’t matter, though. Our orders was to snatch him fast as we could, and we done did it. Livanios will be happy with us.”

  “So he will,” Olyvria said.

  She and Syagrios went on talking, but Phostis stopped heeding them. He hadn’t figured out for himself—though he supposed he should have—that his kidnappers were Thanasioi. As it did Olyvria, the irony of that struck him, though in his case the impact was far more forcible. Given any sort of choice in the matter, he would have picked a different way of coming into their number. But they had not given him any choice.

  He closed his lips on the gag and tried to draw a tiny bit of the cloth into his mouth. He needed several tries before he nipped it between upper and lower front teeth. After working awhile on chewing through it, he decided that was easier said than done. He labored instead to get it down so his mouth would be free. Just when he thought he’d succeed about the time he got to wherever Livanios was, the top edge of the gag slid down over his upper lip. Not only could he talk now if he had to, he could also breathe much more easily.

  Even though he could talk, he resolved not to, lest his captors gag him more securely. But his body tested his resolve in ways he hadn’t anticipated. At last he said, “Could you people please stop long enough to let me make water?”

  Syagrios’ startled jerk shook the whole wagon. “By the ice, how’d he get his mouth loose?” He turned around, then growled, “Well, why should we bother? You already stink.”

  “We aren’t just stealing him, Syagrios, we’re bringing him to us,” Olyvria said. “There’s no one on the road; why shouldn’t we just stand him up and let him do what needs doing? It won’t take long.”

  “Why should we? You didn’t lift him in there, and you won’t have to lift him out.” The man grumbled a little longer, then said, “All right, have it your way.” He must have pulled on the reins; the jingle of harness ceased as the wagon stopped. Phostis felt himself lifted by arms as thick and powerful as any Haloga’s. He leaned against the side of the wagon on legs that did not want to hold him up. Syagrios said, “Go ahead and piss. Be quick about it.”

  “It’s not that simple for him, you know,” Olyvria said. “Here, wait—I’ll help.” The wagon shifted behind Phostis as she got down. He listened to her come around and stand by him. She hiked up his robe so he wouldn’t wet it. As if that weren’t mortification enough, she took him in hand and said, “Go on; now you won’t splash on your boots.”

  Syagrios laughed coarsely. “You hold him like that for very long and he’ll be too stiff to piss at all.”

  Phostis hadn’t even thought about that aspect of things; what rang through his mind was his father’s voice back at Nakoleia, asking him if he wanted praise for piddling without getting his feet wet. At the moment, such praise would have been welcome. He relieved himself as fast as he could; never before had the phrase possessed such real and immediate meaning for him. His sigh when he was through was involuntary but heartfelt.

  The robe fluttered down around his tied ankles. Syagrios picked him up and, grunting, lifted him back into the wagon. The fellow talked like a villain and, without Phostis’ excuse for filth, was none too clean, but he had brute strength to spare. He set Phostis down flat in the wagon bed, then returned to his place and got his team moving once more.

  “You want to gag him again?” he asked Olyvria.

  “No,” Phostis said—quietly, so they would see he did not have to be gagged. Then he used a word most often perfunctory for an Avtokrator’s son: “Please.” It was not perfunctory now.

  “I think I’d better,” Olyvria said after a brief pause. She must have swung round on the seat; her feet came down in the wagon close by Phostis’ head. “I’m sorry,” she told him as she slipped the gag over his mouth and tied it behind his neck, “but we just can’t trust you yet.”

  Her fingers were smooth and warm and briskly capable; had she given him the chance, he would have bitten them to the bone. He didn’t get the chance. He was already discovering she knew how to do much more than lie temptingly naked on a bed.

  That discovery would have surprised his brothers even more than it did him. Evripos and Katakolon were convinced lying naked on a bed was all women were good for. Since he was less concerned about finding them there, he found it easier to envision them doing other things. But not even he had imagined finding one who made such an effective kidnapper.

  Olyvria got back up beside Syagrios. She remarked, apparently to no one in particular, “If he gets that one off, he’ll regret it.”

  “I’ll make him regret it.” Syagrios sounded as if he looked forward to doing just that. Phostis, who had already started working on the new gag, decided not to go on. He chose to believe Olyvria had given him a hint.

  The day was the longest, driest, hungriest, and generally most miserable he’d ever endured. After some endless while, he began to see real black rather than gray through the blindfold. The air grew cooler, almost chilly. Night, he thought. He wondered if Syagrios would drive straight on till dawn. If Syagrios did, Phostis wondered if he would still be alive by the time his eyes saw gray once more.

  But not long after dark, Syagrios stopped. He picked Phostis up, leaned him against the side of the wagon, then descended, picked him up again, and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of chickpeas. Behind him, Olyvria got the horses moving at a slow walk.

  From ahead came a metallic squawk of rusty hinges, then the scrape of something moving against resistance from dirt and gravel: a gate opening, Phostis thought. “Hurry up,” an unfamiliar male voice said.

  “Here we go,” Syagrios answered. He picked up his pace. By their hoofbeats, so did the horses behind him. As soon as they stopped, the gate went scrape-squeak. Closing, Phostis thought. The slam of a bar falling into place confirmed that. “Ah, good,” Syagrios said. “Think we can untie him for now and take the rag off his eyes?”

  “I don’t see why not,” the other man said. “If he gets away from this place, by the good god, he’s earned it. And didn’t I hear he’s halfway set foot on the gleaming path himself?”

  “Aye, I’ve heard that, too.” Syagrios laughed. “Thing is, I didn’t get to be as old as I am believing everything I hear.”

  “Set him down so I can cut the ropes easier,” Olyvria said. Syagrios put Phostis onto the ground more carefully than if he’d been chickpeas, but not much. Somebody—presumably Olyvria—slit his bonds, then slid the blindfold from his face.

  He blinked; his eyes filled with tears. After a day in enforced darkness, even torchlight seemed shockingly bright. When he tried to lever himself up, neither arms nor legs would obey him. He set his teeth against the pain of returning blood. Pins and needles was too mild a phrase for it; it felt more like nails and spikes. They got worse with every passing moment, until he wondered if the maltreated members would fall off.

  “It will ease soon,” Olyvria assured him.

  He wondered how she could know—had she ever been trussed up like a suckling pig on its way to market? But she was right. After a little while, he tried again to stand. This time he made it, though he swayed like a tree in a windstorm.

  “He don’t look too good,” said the fellow who went with this…farmhouse, Phostis supposed it was, though the man, lean, pale, and furtive, looked more like a sneak thief than a farmer.

  “He’ll be hungry,” Syagrios said, “and tired.” Syagrios seemed very much the stalwart bruiser Phostis had expected. He wasn’t even of average height for a Videssian, but had shoulders as wide as any Haloga’s and arms thick with corded muscle. At some time in the unknown past, his nose had intercepted a chair or other instrument of strong opinion.

  A big gold hoop dangled piratically from his left ear. Phostis pointed at it. “I thought folk who followed the gleaming path didn’t wear ornaments like that.”

  Syagrios’
startled stare quickly slid into a scowl. “None of your cursed business what I wear or don’t—” he began, folding one big hand into a fist.

  “Wait,” Olyvria said. “This is something he needs to know.” She turned to Phostis. “You’re right and yet you’re wrong. When we go among men not of our kind, sometimes lack of ostentation can betray us. We have the right to disguise our appearance, just as we may deny our creed to save ourselves.”

  Phostis bit down hard on that one. A Videssian’s faith was his proudest possession; many had been martyred for refusing to compromise the creed. Letting a man—or a woman—dissemble in time of danger went square against everything he’d ever been taught…but also made good sense from a practical standpoint.

  Slowly he said, “My father will have a hard time sifting those who follow Thanasios’ ways from the generality, then.” Krispos wouldn’t have looked for that. Most heresies, believing themselves orthodox, trumpeted their tenets and made themselves easy targets. But suppressing the Thanasioi would be like striking smoke, which gave way before blows yet was not destroyed.

  “That’s right,” Olyvria said. “We’ll give the imperial army more trouble than it can handle. Before long, we’ll give the whole Empire more trouble than it can handle.” Her eyes sparkled at the prospect.

  Syagrios turned to the fellow who’d let them into the courtyard. “Where’s the food?” he boomed, slapping his bulging belly with the palm of one hand. No matter what Olyvria said, Phostis had trouble picturing him as an ascetic.

  “I’ll get it,” the skinny man said, and went into the house.

  “Phostis needs it more than you,” Olyvria said to Syagrios.

  “So?” he answered. “I was the one with the wit to ask for it. Of course, our friend here wasn’t likely to listen to the likes of him.” Phostis thought he deliberately avoided naming the other man. That showed more wit than he’d credited Syagrios with having. If he ever escaped…but did he want to escape? He shook his head, bewildered. He didn’t know what he wanted.