A boy, perhaps the owner's son, took the pony he rode and the other one he'd led. He gave the lad a copper, and got back a bow and a polite, plainly memorized speech of thanks.
When he opened the door, warmth from a great fire blazing on the hearth greeted him. He hurried inside and closed the door behind him so none of the lovely heat could escape. Before even speaking to the innkeeper, he went over to stand in front of those crackling flames.
"Very holy sir!" called someone sitting at a table not far away.
Rhavas turned; he didn't want to draw away from the fire. "Koubatzes!" he said, and nodded to the mage. "Good to see you. Good to see anyone from Skopentzana. I had not known you got away."
"By the good god, very holy sir, I hadn't known you did, either," Koubatzes replied. The opening phrase was in a Videssian's mouth a dozen times a day. Hearing it, though, felt strange to Rhavas now. It was as if the wizard were telling him a clever lie. Koubatzes went on, "I almost didn't get away. A house fell in on me when that cursed earthquake hit us. If I hadn't jumped under a table, the roof would have smashed me flat."
That cursed earthquake. Koubatzes was righter than he knew. "I am glad you are safe," Rhavas said.
Koubatzes looked bleak. "I don't believe anyone is safe, not these days," he said. "I'm still breathing, though, and that puts me ahead of a lot of people." He tapped a stool by the one on which he perched. "Sit down with me and have a cup of wine. You look like you've earned it."
"Let me get a little warmer first," Rhavas said. Koubatzes grinned and nodded. The prelate turned to warm his back, then his front again, and then his back once more. He kept turning till he stopped feeling like a cold man and started feeling like a joint of meat on a spit. Then he did go over and sit down by the mage.
A barmaid walked up to him and asked, "What can I bring you, holy sir?"
Rhavas didn't bother correcting her about his rank. "Red wine," he answered. She went back to get it, swinging her hips. Rhavas' eyes followed her.
Koubatzes noticed him noticing her. "Must be hard to look all the time and never touch," he remarked.
That made Rhavas remember Ingegerd, Ingegerd whom he'd taken against her will, Ingegerd who lay dead north of Kybistra because of him. "Temptation is bad," he said seriously. "Yielding to temptation can be worse."
"I suppose so. Sometimes, though, it's fun," Koubatzes said.
Before Rhavas could reply, the barmaid brought him his wine in a cheap earthenware cup. "Here you are, holy sir." Did the smile she gave him say she wouldn't care about his vows if he didn't? That was how it looked to him. When he didn't respond, she swayed away.
Automatically, Rhavas went through the ritual every Videssian used before drinking. He spat on the ground in rejection of Skotos, then raised his eyes and his hands to the heavens. Most of the time, he hardly noticed what he did when he followed the ritual. Now . . . Is the lord with the great and good mind really heeding me? he wondered uneasily.
Shrugging, he drank. The wine ran strong and sweet down his throat. Koubatzes said, "You must have had some narrow escapes yourself, eh, very holy sir?"
"Anyone from Skopentzana who still lives has had narrow escapes," the prelate answered.
"Phos! That's the truth!" Koubatzes emptied his winecup and waved to the barmaid for a refill. She waved back to show she saw. Koubatzes continued, "Me, I almost died half a dozen times the first couple of days. Things seem a little better down here anyway, don't they?"
"Maybe a little." Rhavas didn't want to talk about it.
Koubatzes plainly did. He told Rhavas a couple of stories that showed how clever he was, and one that also showed what a good wizard he was. "Hadn't been for the confusion spell, they would have had me," he finished.
"A good thing you got away," Rhavas said.
"Well, I think so." Did Koubatzes sound complacent? To Rhavas' possibly jaundiced ear, he did. He went on, "How about you, very holy sir? You had no magic to ward you. How did you manage to stay free?"
"I managed," Rhavas answered, thinking Koubatzes wasn't so smart as he thought he was. Rhavas drank from his cup of wine. The less he had to say about what had happened to him since the Khamorth got into Skopentzana, the better he would like it.
But Koubatzes didn't want to leave it alone. "What happened to that blond woman, the officer's wife?" he asked. "You were sort of her guardian after he went off to fight in the civil war, weren't you?"
Rhavas silently cursed the Videssian penchant for gossiping about everything under the sun. How much of Skopentzana had known Himerios asked him to watch over Ingegerd? Too much of it, that was plain. He had to answer. He did, as briefly as he could: "She's dead."
"Pity," Koubatzes said. "She was a striking woman—and a good one, too, by all I ever heard. The two don't always go together, but they did with her. The barbarians got to her before you could, did they?"
"There was nothing I could do," Rhavas said, which, while not quite the lie direct, was not the truth, either. He wished Himerios hadn't half entrusted Ingegerd to him. Then he wouldn't have had to become more closely acquainted with women and their temptations than he was before.
If not for the civil war, it wouldn't have happened. Stylianos was the rebel, but Maleinos was the one who'd pulled garrisons out of the cities to go against him. Then Stylianos stripped the frontier forts, and then the Khamorth came in. Which claimant was the greater villain? Rhavas only shrugged, there on his stool. They both had so much to answer for.
"Pity," Koubatzes said again. "That must have made you sad. I know you're a man who takes his duty seriously."
The prelate nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Oh, yes, hadn't he just taken his duty with Ingegerd seriously! Seriously enough that he'd taken her, seriously enough that he'd left her dead on the farmhouse floor! Well, she would have left him dead there if she could.
He finished his wine at a gulp and waved to the barmaid as Koubatzes had done. She fluttered her fingers when she waved back. Slut, he thought. Do you think I'll throw my vows over the side so easily? But then, what vows hadn't he thrown away when he came down from Skopentzana? What difference did how he behaved now make? Hadn't the good god already turned away from him in disgust?
The girl brought him a fresh cup. "Happy to serve you, holy sir," she purred. How did she mean that? Was she so glad to fetch him wine? Or did she want to serve him some other way?
In his mind's eye, he saw Phos sternly staring down at him. The good god had the face he did in the mosaic in the dome of the High Temple in Videssos the city: a long, somber face made for judgment and always ready to condemn the transgressor. That Phos held a book in which all a man's deeds, good and ill, were recorded. Rhavas shuddered to think what the book said of him right now.
That shudder must have been more visible than he thought, for Koubatzes asked, "Are you all right, very holy sir? Are you well?"
How can I answer, Rhavas wondered, when the good god has turned his back on me, when I am surely damned to the eternal ice? But then he stiffened. His own back straightened. Wasn't everything he'd been through—wasn't everything Videssos had been through—lately a demonstration that the Empire's theologians had been getting things wrong, getting them backward, for hundreds of years? Wasn't it a demonstration that Skotos truly was stronger in the world and more likely to prevail at the end of time than Phos?
There. That was the thought he'd been shying away from for all this time. That was the thought he'd been afraid to face. And now he'd faced it—and nothing had happened to him. Phos hadn't slain him in a fit of fury. Did Phos really have the power to do any such thing? That wasn't how it looked to Rhavas.