The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “Good for you!” Krispos lifted the latest wine jar from its bed of snow. It was distressingly light. “Barsymes!” he called. “I’d intended to make an end of things here, but I find we need more wine after all. Fetch us another, and a cup for Zaidas and one for yourself. Tonight the news is good.”

  “I shall attend to it directly, Your Majesty,” Barsymes said, and he did.

  OCCASIONAL SLEET RODE THE WIND OUTSIDE THE LITTLE STONE house with the thatched roof. Inside, a small fire burned on the hearth, but the chill remained. Phostis chafed his hands one against the other to keep feeling in them.

  The priest who had presided over the Midwinter’s Day liturgy at the main temple in Etchmiadzin bowed to the middle-aged couple who sat side by side at the table where they’d no doubt eaten together for many years. On the table rested a small loaf of black bread and two cups of wine.

  “We are met here today with Laonikos and Siderina to celebrate their last meal, their last partaking of the gross substance of the world and their commencement of a new journey on Phos’ gleaming path,” the priest proclaimed.

  Along with Phostis, Olyvria, and Syagrios, the little house was crowded with friends and relatives; the couple’s son and daughter and two of Laonikos’ brothers were easy to pick out by looks. Everyone, including Laonikos and Siderina, seemed happy and proud of what was about to happen. Phostis looked happy himself, but he’d learned in the palaces how to assume an expression at will. In fact, he didn’t know what to think. The man and woman at that table were obviously of sound mind and as obviously eager to begin with what they thought of as the last step of their earthly existence and their first steps toward heaven. How should I feel about that, Phostis wondered, when it’s not a choice I’d ever make for myself?

  “Let us pray,” the priest said. Phostis bent his head, sketched the sun-circle over his heart. Everyone recited Phos’ creed. As he had at Etchmiadzin’s temple, Phostis found the creed more moving, more sincere, here than he ever had in the High Temple. These people meant their prayers.

  They put fervor into a round of Thanasiot hymns, too. Phostis did not know those as well as the rest of the folk gathered here; he kept stumbling over the words and then coming in again a line and a half later. The hymns had different tunes—some borrowed from the orthodox liturgy—but the same message: that loving the good god was all-important, that the next world meant more than this one, and that every earthly pleasure was from Skotos and to be shunned.

  The priest turned to Laonikos and Siderina and asked, “Are you now prepared to abandon the wickedness in this world, the dark god’s vessel, and to seek the light in the realm beyond the sun?”

  They looked at each other, then touched hands. It was a loving gesture, but in no way a sensual one; with it they affirmed that what they did, they did together. Without hesitation, they said, “We are.” Phostis could not have told which of them spoke first.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Olyvria whispered, and Phostis had to nod. Dropping her voice still further, so only he heard, she added, “And so frightening.” He nodded again.

  “Take up the knife,” the priest said. “Divide the bread and eat it. Take the wine and drink. Never again shall the stuff of Skotos pass your lips. Soon the bodies that are themselves sinful shall be no more and pass away; soon your souls shall know the true joy of union with the lord with the great and good mind.”

  Laonikos was a sturdy man with a proud hooked nose and distinctive eyebrows, tufted and bushy. Siderina might have been pretty as a girl; her face was still sweet and strong. Soon, Phostis thought, they’ll both look like Strabon. The idea horrified him. It didn’t seem to bother Laonikos and Siderina at all.

  Laonikos cut the little loaf in half and gave one piece to his wife. The other he kept himself. He ate it in three or four bites, then tilted back the wine cup until the last drop was gone. His smile lit up the house. “It’s done,” he said proudly. “Phos be praised.”

  “Phos be praised,” everyone echoed. “May the gleaming path lead you to him!”

  Siderina finished her final meal a few seconds after Laonikos. She dabbed at her lips with a linen napkin. Her eyes sparkled. “Now I shan’t have to fret about what to cook for supper anymore,” she said. Her voice was gay and eager; she looked forward to the world to come. Her family laughed with her. Even Phostis found himself smiling, for her manifest happiness communicated itself to him no matter how much trouble he had sharing it.

  The couple’s son took the plate, knife, and wine cups. “The good god willing, these will inspire us to join you soon,” he said.

  “I hope they do,” Laonikos said. He got up from the table and hugged the young man. In a moment, the whole family was embracing.

  “We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind—” the priest began. Everyone joined him in prayer once more.

  Phostis thought the blue-robe had intruded himself on the family’s celebration. He thought his own presence an intrusion, too. Turning to Olyvria, he whispered, “We really ought to go.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she murmured back.

  “Phos bless you, friends, and may we see you along his gleaming path,” Laonikos called to them as they made their way out the door. Phostis put up his hood and pulled his cloak tight around him to shield against the storm.

  “Well,” Olyvria said when they’d gone a few yards down the street, “what did you think of that?”

  “Very much what you did,” Phostis answered. “Terrifying and beautiful at the same time.”

  “Huh!” Syagrios said. “Where’s the beauty in turning into a bag of bones?” It was the same thought Phostis had worried at before, if more pungently put.

  Olyvria let out an indignant sniff. Before she could speak, Phostis said, “Seeing faith so fully realized is beautiful, even for someone like me. My own faith, I fear, is not so deep. I cling to life on earth, which is why seeing someone choose to leave it frightens me.”

  “We’ll all leave it sooner or later, so why choose to hurry?” Syagrios said.

  “For a proper Thanasiot,” Olyvria said, emphasizing proper, “the world is corrupt from its creation, and to be shunned and abandoned as soon as possible.”

  Syagrios remained unmoved. “Somebody has to take care of all the bloody sods leavin’ the world, or else they’ll leave it faster’n they have in mind, thanks to his old man’s soldiers.” He jerked a thumb at Phostis. “So I’m not a sheep. I’m a sheepdog. You don’t have sheepdogs, my lady, wolves get fat.”

  The argument was ugly but potent. Olyvria bit her lip and looked to Phostis. He felt he was called to save her from some dreadful fate, even though she and Syagrios were in truth on the same side. He flung the best rhetorical brickbat he could find: “Saving others from sin doesn’t excuse sins of your own.”

  “Boy, you can talk about sin when you find out what it is,” Syagrios said scornfully. “You’re as milk-fed now as when you came out from between your mother’s legs. And how do you think you got in there to come out, eh, if there’d been no heavy breathing awhile before?”

  Phostis had thought about that, as uneasily as most people when making similar contemplations. He started to shoot back that his parents had been honestly married when he was conceived, but he wasn’t even sure of that. And rumor in the palace quarter said—whispered, when he was suspected of being in earshot—Krispos and Dara had been lovers while the previous Avtokrator—and Dara’s previous husband—Anthimos still held the throne. Glaring at Syagrios wasn’t the response Phostis would have liked to make, but seemed the best one available.

  As wet will not stick to a duck’s oiled feather, so glares slid off Syagrios. He threw back his head and laughed raucously at Phostis’ discomfiture. Then he spun on his heel and swaggered away through the slush, as if to say Phostis wouldn’t know what to do with a chance to sin if one fell into his lap.

  “Cursed ruffian,” Phostis growled—but softly, so Syagrios would not hear. “By the good god, he kn
ows enough of sin to spend eternity in the ice; the gleaming path should be ashamed to call him its own.”

  “He’s not a Thanasiot, not really, though he’ll quarrel over the workings of the faith like any Videssian.” Olyvria’s voice was troubled, as if she did not care for the admission she was about to make. “He’s much more a creature of my father’s.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” Phostis freighted the words with as much irony as they would bear. Only after they had passed his lips did he wish he’d held them in. Railing at Livanios would not help him with Olyvria.

  She sounded defensive as she answered, “Surely Krispos also has men to do his bidding, no matter what it may be.”

  “Oh, he does,” Phostis said. “But he doesn’t wrap himself in piety while he’s about it.” In some surprise, he listened to himself defending his father. This wasn’t the first time he’d had good things to say about Krispos since he’d ended up in Etchmiadzin. He hadn’t had many when he was back in the imperial capital under Krispos’ eye—and his thumb.

  Olyvria said, “My father seeks to liberate Videssos so the gleaming path may become a reality for everyone. Do you deny it’s a worthy goal?”

  He seeks power, like any other ambitious man, Phostis thought. Before he could say it aloud, he started to laugh. Olyvria’s eyes raked him. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” he assured her quickly. “It’s just that we sound like a couple of little squabbling children: ‘My father can do this.’ ‘Well, my father can do that.’”

  “Oh.” She smiled back, her good humor restored. “So we do. What would you rather talk about than what our fathers can do?”

  The challenging way she threw the question at him reminded him of the first time he’d seen her, in the tunnel under Videssos the city. If he was to become a proper Thanasiot, as Olyvria had put it in her argument with Syagrios, he ought to have forgotten that, or at most remembered it as a test he’d passed. But he’d discovered before he ever heard of Thanasios that he did not have a temper approaching the monastic. He did not remember just the test; he remembered her.

  And so he did not answer in words. Instead, he reached out and slipped an arm around her waist. If she’d pulled back, he was ready to apologize profusely. He was even ready to produce a convincing stammer. But she didn’t pull back. Instead, she let him draw her to him.

  In Videssos the city, they would have been nothing out of the ordinary: a young man and a young woman happy with each other and not paying much attention to anything else. Even in Etchmiadzin, a few people on the street smiled as they walked by. Others, though, glowered in pious indignation at such a public display of affection. Crabs, he thought.

  After a few steps, though, Olyvria pulled away. He thought she’d seen the disapproving faces, too. But she said, “Strolling with you like this is very pleasant, but I can’t feel happy about pleasure, if you know what I mean, just after we’ve come away from the celebration of the Last Meal.”

  “Oh. That.” As it has a way of doing, the wider world intruded itself on Phostis’ thoughts. He remembered the joy Laonikos and Siderina had shown when they swallowed the last wine and bread they would taste on earth. “It’s still hard to imagine that impinging on me. Like Syagrios, if in lesser measure, I fear I’m a creature of this world.”

  “In lesser measure,” Olyvria agreed. “Well, so am I, if the truth be told. Maybe when I’m older the world will repel me enough to make me want to leave it, but for now, even if everything Thanasios says about it is true, I can’t force my flesh to turn altogether away from it.”

  “Nor I,” Phostis said. The fleshly world intruded again, in a different way this time: He stepped up to Olyvria and kissed her. Her lips were for a moment still and startled under his; he was a little startled himself, because he hadn’t planned to do it But then her arms enfolded him as his did her. Her tongue touched his, just for a couple of heartbeats.

  At that, they broke apart from each other, so fast Phostis couldn’t tell which of them drew back first. “Why did you do that?” Olyvria asked in a voice that was all breath.

  “Why? Because—” Phostis stopped. He didn’t know why, not in the way he knew how mulberries tasted or where in Videssos the city the High Temple stood. He tried again: “Because—” Another stumble. Once more: “Because of all the folk in Etchmiadzin, you’re the only one who’s shown me any true kindness.” That was indeed part of the truth. The rest Phostis did not care to examine quite so closely; it was as filled with carnality as the upper part of his mind was with the notion that carnality and sinfulness were one and the same.

  Olyvria considered what he’d said. Slowly she nodded. “Kindness is a virtue that moves you forward on the gleaming path, a reaching out from one soul to another,” she said. But her eyes slipped away from his as she spoke. He watched her lips. They seemed slightly softer, slightly fuller than they had before his touched them. He wondered if she, too, was having trouble reconciling what she believed with what she felt.

  They walked on aimlessly for a while, not touching, both of them thoughtful. Then, over a low rooftop, Phostis saw the bulk of the fortress. “We’d better get back,” he said. Olyvria nodded, as if relieved to have a definite goal for her feet.

  As if he were a conjured demon, Syagrios popped out of a wineshop not far outside the fortress’ walls. He might have started shirking his watchdog duties, but he didn’t want Livanios finding out about that. The ruffian glanced mockingly at the two of them. “Well, have you settled all the doings of the lord with the great and good mind?”

  “That’s for Phos to do with us, not we with him,” Phostis said.

  Syagrios liked that; his laugh blew grapey fumes into Phostis’ face. He pointed toward the gates. “Back to your cage now, and you can see how Phos settles you there.”

  Phostis kept walking toward the fortress. He’d learned that giving any sign Syagrios’ jabs hurt guaranteed he’d keep getting them. As he went through the gates, he also noticed how much like home the fortress was becoming in his mind. Just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean they can make you belong here, he told himself.

  But were they making him? He still hadn’t settled that question in his own mind. If he followed Thanasios’ gleaming path, oughtn’t he be here of his own free will?

  In the inner yard, Livanios was watching some of his recruits throw javelins. The light spears thumped into bales of hay propped against the far wall. Some missed and bounced back.

  Ever alert, Livanios turned his head to see who the newcomers were. “Ah, the young Majesty,” he said. Phostis didn’t care for the way he used the title; it was devoid even of scornful courtesy. The heresiarch sounded as if he wondered whether Phostis, instead of proving useful, might be turning into a liability. That made Phostis nervous. If he wasn’t useful to Livanios, how long would he last?

  “Take him up to his chamber, Syagrios,” Livanios said; he might have been speaking of a dog, or of a sack of flour.

  As the door to his little cell closed behind him, Phostis realized that, if he didn’t care to abandon his fleshly form as the Thanasioi advocated for their most pious folk, he might have to take some most un-Thanasiot actions. As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he remembered Olyvria’s lips sweet against his. The Thanasioi would not have approved of that, not even a little.

  He also remembered whose daughter Olyvria was. If he tried to escape, would she betray him? Or might she help? He stamped on the cold floor. He just did not know.

  Chapter VIII

  KRISPOS WAS WADING THROUGH CHANGES IN A LAW THAT dealt with tariffs on tallow imported from the northeastern land of Thatagush when Barsymes tapped at the open door of his study with one knuckle. He looked up. The vestiarios said, “May it please Your Majesty, a messenger from the mage Zaidas at the government office building.”

  “Maybe it will please me, by the good god,” Krispos said. “Send him in.”

  The messenger quickly prostrated himself, then said, “Your Majesty, Zaidas bids
me tell you that he has at last succeeded in commencing a sorcerous interrogation of the rebel priest Digenis.”

  “Has he? Well, to the ice with tallow.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Never mind.” The less the messenger knew about the dickering with Thatagush, the happier he’d be. Krispos got up and accompanied him out of the study and out of the imperial residence. Haloga guards fell in with him as he went down the broad steps outside. He felt a childish delight in having caught his parasol-bearers napping, as if he’d put one over on Barsymes.

  He hadn’t gone to listen to Digenis since the day of Iakovitzes’ return. He’d seen no point to it: he’d already heard all the Thanasiot platitudes he could stomach, and Digenis refused to yield the truths he wanted to learn.

  He was shocked at how the priest had wasted away. In his peasant days, he’d seen men and women lean with hunger after a bad harvest, but Digenis was long past leanness: everything between his skeleton and his skin seemed to have disappeared. His eyes shifted when Krispos came into his cell, but did not catch fire as they had before.

  “He is very weak, Your Majesty; his will at last begins to fail,” Zaidas said quietly. “Otherwise I doubt even now I could have found a way to coax answers from him.”

  “What have you done?” Krispos asked. “I see no apparatus for the two-mirror test.”

  “No.” By his expression, Zaidas would have been glad never to try the two-mirror test again. “This is half magic, half healing art. I laced the water he drinks with a decoction of henbane, having first used sorcery to remove the taste so he would notice nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Well done.” After a moment, Krispos added, “I do hope the technique for that is not so simple as to be available to any poisoner who happens to take a dislike to his neighbor—or to me.”

  “No, Your Majesty,” Zaidas said, smiling. “In any case, the spell, because it goes against nature, is easy to detect by sorcery. Digenis, of course, was not in a position to do so.”