Ingegerd nodded somber approval. "That is an excellent curse, very holy sir. I do not think any of my own people could have laid a stronger one on the plainsmen. May it bite deep. May it bite as deep as the one you set upon the man who commanded the militia."
Rhavas wished she hadn't spoken of Toxaras. And then, all at once, he wondered why. If he had cursed Toxaras, maybe he really could curse the Khamorth, too. And he wanted to curse the barbarians. "May it be so," he said, accepting the possibility. "And now, I think we had better find shelter for ourselves."
"Yes, that would be a very good thing to do," Ingegerd said. "Hard to tell where the road is with so much snow on the ground."
When the snow finally melted in spring, the road would disappear into a sea of mud for a few weeks. Mosquitoes and gnats would make Skopentzana and the countryside miserable. But that time lay in the distance. For now, winter still reigned supreme here. Rhavas pointed toward a grove of bare-branched apple trees ahead. "That is an orchard. Where there is an orchard, there will be a farmhouse. If people still live there, perhaps they will take us in. And if it should be empty, we can rest for a while, build a fire—"
"Better not," Ingegerd broke in. "The smoke would draw more eyes than we want to see."
He bowed. "You are right, of course, and I am wrong. But the day is cold, and the night will be colder."
"I have a thick blanket here." She patted the makeshift knapsack. "If we lie under it together, we can stay warm, or warm enough."
For a moment, the prelate was shocked. Then he realized she meant exactly what she'd said: that and no more. He sighed heavily. Lying down together with any woman would tempt a priest. Lying down with a woman he'd long admired . . . He sighed again. "Let's get to that farmhouse," he said, his voice perhaps rougher than he had intended.
On they went. Here and there ahead of them, Rhavas saw other people also trudging through the snow, singly and in small groups. When he looked back to Skopentzana, he saw a few more. Maybe others had escaped from different gates and gone in other directions. Even so, the city that had been the pride of the north, the city that had stood second or third in all the Empire of Videssos, stood no more.
Skopentzana had fallen.
"There." Ingegerd pointed with a mittened hand. "That will be the path to the farmhouse." The wind that had scoured away some snow and the lie of the land made it easier to recognize than Rhavas had thought it would be.
The farmhouse itself and the nearby barn might almost have been snowdrifts themselves. No smoke rose from the hole in the roof. The buildings seemed intact, though. The plainsmen hadn't burned them.
"I wonder if anyone else has taken shelter here," Rhavas said.
They'd drawn to within fifty yards of the farmhouse when a low rumble filled the air and the ground began to shake beneath Rhavas' feet. Earthquake, he thought—he'd been through several of them in Videssos the city, though he couldn't remember any since coming to Skopentzana. Half a heartbeat later, he thought, This is a big earthquake.
Half a heartbeat after that, the quake knocked him and Ingegerd off their feet and into the snow. He knew he cried out. He thought Ingegerd must have screamed. But he couldn't hear his voice, let alone hers, through the great bass roar that surrounded them.
While it was going on, the earthquake seemed to last forever. Afterward, he supposed it couldn't have shaken for more than a minute or two. That was plenty. That was, indeed, excessive. He wondered if the ground would open and swallow him up. He had heard that sometimes happened. It didn't happen here. Sullenly, the shaking subsided.
Rhavas scrambled to his feet. Ingegerd was already upright, but her face was gray with shock. She said something in the Haloga language, as if forgetting that he didn't understand it. Only little by little did reason return to her eyes. "That was . . . very bad," she choked out.
"Yes." Rhavas had to force the word past his lips, too. Then he screamed again, and so did Ingegerd, for another earthquake started. This one was smaller than the monster they had just survived. It didn't knock them off their feet, and he could hear their cries of terror.
"Phos!" Ingegerd exclaimed when the second round of shaking eased. She sketched the sun-sign over her heart.
"It will do that," Rhavas said. "After a good-sized quake, the smaller ones will go on for months. After one like this . . ." He shuddered. "After one like this, they'll go on for years."
Ingegerd looked as if he could have said nothing more horrible. Some of the aftershocks from a quake like this would be big enough to shake down things that had survived the first jolt. They would do more damage. They would kill more people.
Rhavas stared at the farmhouse and barn he and Ingegerd had been approaching. Both had fallen into rubble. The house, which was built all of stone, was only a heap of stones now. If they'd sheltered there before the earthquake struck, the collapse would have crushed them.
The barn had been stone up to about the height of a man's shoulder, with planking above that. It had come through better than the farmhouse. It too was wrecked, but not so badly. Taking refuge in what was left of it might help shelter the fugitives. And . . . Rhavas started to laugh. Ingegerd stared at him as if he'd lost his mind.
He pointed to the timbers, some of which had been scattered like jackstraws. "We won't lack for firewood," he said.
"Oh." She managed a nod of sorts. "Yes, very holy sir, that is true. And no one will think anything special of fires now—not after that."
Another aftershock rocked them. Rhavas thought this one was stronger than the first. He didn't shout this time, though. Maybe all the terror had been knocked out of him. Ingegerd also stayed silent—grimly silent, if her expression was any guide. After a few heartbeats, the shaking and the roaring stopped—until they decided to start again.
Only after that did the prelate's stunned wits begin to work again, at least after a fashion. Of itself, his hand shaped Phos' sun-sign. "By the lord with the great and good mind!" he burst out. "What's happened to Skopentzana?"
He couldn't see well. Even though the earthquake had knocked the snow off the branches of the trees in the apple orchard, they still blocked his view. He went back the way he and Ingegerd had come to get a better look. She followed.
"Phos!" Rhavas whispered once he had it. The walls of Skopentzana had fallen to the ground, all except for a few stretches that stuck up like teeth in an almost empty jaw. Through the smoke and the cloud of dust the quake had shaken into the sky, the great gaps in the wall let him see how many buildings had fallen down. The bulk of the temple, which had dominated Skopentzana's skyline, stood no more. That felt like a knife in his heart.
He had to look away. If he stared at the place where the temple had been, he would start to weep. In this weather, the tears would freeze on his face and freeze his eyelids together.
It was, perhaps, not surprising that his gaze settled on Ingegerd's face. What did surprise him was that she was staring not at the ruination of Skopentzana but at him.
As he had a moment before, she whispered, "Phos!" With her, though, it was not a sound of horror or dread but one of awe. She went right on staring. "Truly, very holy sir, you do have the power to curse," she went on. "Look at what you just visited on the Khamorth!"
"Nonsense," Rhavas said. He'd said the same thing when Voilas accused him of causing Toxaras' death with his curse. Now, though, he sounded more uneasy than he had then. Dismissing two unlikely sets of coincidence was much more than twice as hard as dismissing one.