That other part shamed him by existing. Prayer hadn't driven it from him, as he'd hoped prayer might. All he could do, it seemed, was try to pretend it wasn't there. What he thought, what he wanted—that was one thing. What he did—that was something else. Skotos might tempt a man. If the man didn't yield to temptation, he stayed in Phos' good graces . . . didn't he?
How could it be otherwise? By their very natures, men were imperfect. That left them vulnerable to temptation. But if they rose above it, the lord with the great and good mind would surely have to acknowledge their steadfastness.
Such things were easy to believe in the summertime, when Phos' light filled the sky almost the whole day long. After snow started falling, it was a different story. Light dwindled day by day. That happened in Videssos the city and all over the Empire, of course. Here in the north, though, the dwindling was dramatically magnified.
Midwinter's Day, the day of the winter solstice, was a great holiday throughout the Empire. People and priests proffered prayers to bring the sun back toward the north once more, to keep it from sliding ever southward and leaving the world cloaked in Skotos' eternal darkness.
In a place like Skopentzana, where the sun barely climbed over the horizon at the solstice, Midwinter's Day took on a special urgency, for Skotos seemed closer to triumph here than he did farther south. Towns and villages throughout the Empire reveled on Midwinter's Day after the prayers were done. The celebrations showed their confidence the sun would turn north once more—or so folk said.
In Skopentzana, though, the revels took on a special urgency. No one in this city had ever claimed people celebrated more heartily here because they had a greater fear that the sun might disappear for good. No one had ever claimed such a thing, no, but that was how it looked to Rhavas.
The prelate woke before dawn on Midwinter's Day. Considering how long the night before had lasted and how early he'd gone to sleep, that was hardly surprising. A lamp with a fat oil reservoir still burned on a table by his bed. Without that lamp, he might have thought Skotos had indeed conquered the world.
Lamplight let him see his breath smoke, even here indoors. A brazier did something to fight the cold—something, yes, but not much. Rhavas had heavy woolen drawers and a thick wool robe for winter wear. He also put on socks and heavy felt boots, not the sandals he would have worn in Videssos the city or any other place with even a semicivilized climate.
His robe had a hood, too. All priestly robes intended for winter use in Skopentzana did. A tonsured scalp bled heat into the air. Even the short walk to the temple was a torment.
No matter how cold it was, though, Rhavas lingered. No pink or even gray showed in the southeast; the sun would not rise for some little while yet. But the night was clear. Stars blazed in the sky. And the northern lights danced, across the sky from where the sun would eventually show itself. Shimmering curtains of gold and green streamed from the northern horizon more than halfway to the zenith.
Rhavas sketched the sun-circle above his heart as he stared at the marvelous, rippling lights. He'd heard of them when he lived in Videssos the city. He'd heard of them, yes, but he hadn't been sure he believed in them. They rarely showed themselves there, so rarely that he'd never seen them before coming to Skopentzana. He had now, more times than he could count. Their beauty and their strangeness took his breath away even so.
When he started to shiver and his teeth began chattering, he came out of his reverie and went on to the temple. Inside, it blazed with light. Lamps and candelabra all blazed away, hurling defiance at the darkness outside. So many flames burned, they helped heat the temple.
So did the swarm of people who packed the temple for Midwinter's Day services. They sang hymns with far more fervor than any congregation would have shown down in Videssos the city. They believed in eternal darkness in the capital; here, they really feared it. Because Skotos seemed so likely to get the better of the sun, their rejection of him seemed to mean more than it would have farther south.
As Rhavas preached his usual sermon on the turning of the seasons and the growing light that would come, he changed things so he could make an addition: "Some of you, coming to the temple, will surely have seen the northern lights." He waited for men here and there to nod, then went on, "Do they not show how Phos' light may appear at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected way? Should this not be a lesson to us all?"
The Skopentzanans looked at one another. More of them nodded now. Some of them smiled, too, liking the figure of speech. Rhavas nearly smiled himself. He had always impressed them with his piety and his intellect. He knew that. He also knew they hadn't warmed to him. Few people did; his character was not of the sort that drew warmth. But he had here now.
People had a saying—anything can happen on Midwinter's Day. Maybe those smiles were proof of that.
For once, he didn't linger in the narthex after the service was done. Neither did anyone else. Everybody went out to the city square between the temple and the eparch's residence. By then, the southeast was going from pink to gold: the sun would make its brief appearance soon. The northern lights had faded almost to invisibility. Rhavas' sigh spewed fog out in front of his face.
As if to make up for the loss of the magic in the sky, half a dozen bonfires blazed in the square. Men and women of all stations and walks of life lined up at them, nobles next to barmaids, proprietors waiting peaceably behind pimps. Each in turn would run and leap over the flames, shouting, "Burn, ill luck!" in midair. One jump was suppose to be able to take care of a year's bad luck—not a bad bargain, or a small miracle, if true.
When jumpers came down on the far side of the fires, those who had already leaped would catch and steady them. Sometimes they would take a kiss as payment for their service. Sometimes they would go off and take more. Not all babies born nine months from now would look like their mothers' husbands. Anything could happen on Midwinter's Day.
Priests and monks got in the lines to jump the fires, too. They shouted along with everybody else. When wineskins and mugs of beer went through the crowd, they swigged from them along with everybody else. Some of them would break their vows of chastity before the day was done. That happened every Midwinter's Day. Some prelates and some abbots were inclined to look the other way. Rhavas wasn't one of them. To him, a sin was a sin, no matter when it was committed.
That didn't stop him from taking his place in a line and snaking up toward the nearest bonfire. Just before his turn to run and jump came, a cheer rose all over the frozen square: "The sun lives! Phos' sun lives!"
Rhavas looked back over his shoulder. Yes, there was the sun, sneaking up over the horizon at last. He murmured the creed—and then murmured again, in a different tone of voice, when he saw Ingegerd three or four people in back of him.
The woman ahead of him ran, jumped, and shouted out in midair. Someone beyond the fire steadied her. The heat haze rising from the flames made their shapes shimmer.
"Go on, very holy sir!" people near Rhavas called. "Go on!" Somebody pushed him, an indignity he would have suffered—in either sense of the word—on no other day of the year but this.
He ran. The chilly breeze blew into his face and pulled the hood off his head. He jumped, as strongly as he could. "Burn, ill luck!" he cried in a voice that rang across the square. His boots thudded down on the paving stones. He started to stagger, but someone caught his elbow. "My thanks," he said, panting a little.