Koubatzes. Rhavas muttered to himself. He wondered whether he should rein in. The mage would catch him whether he did or not, so he did. He tried not to seem too surly as he raised a hand and said, "Hail."
"Hail." Koubatzes rode a Videssian horse, a beast two or three hands taller than a steppe pony. That let him look down on Rhavas. By his expression, he was looking down on the prelate metaphorically as well as literally. Pointing an accusing forefinger at Rhavas, he said, "You lied to me, very holy sir."
"In Phos' holy name, I did not." Even more easily than he had back at the inn, Rhavas brought out the lie with the force of truth.
Koubatzes sadly shook his head. "You lied, and you swore—and still swear—falsely in the good god's name. I thought long and hard on what you said last night, and on what you said this morning, and on what Arsenios told me. You lied, and I fear something truly evil has befallen the Haloga woman."
"Do you?" Rhavas' voice was silky with danger.
If Koubatzes heard that danger, he gave no sign. He persisted, "Yes, by Phos, I do. Will you make a clean breast of it and tell me the truth? It may win you mercy in the next world, if not in this one."
Rhavas laughed in his face. "You know nothing of this world or the next, wizard—nothing at all."
"I know what any Videssian may know. My belief is orthodox." Koubatzes sketched the sun-sign. His eyebrows leaped when Rhavas failed to imitate the gesture. Voice heavy with sarcasm, the sorcerer said, "You will tell me you know better?"
You will tell me you have fallen into heresy? was what he meant. Rhavas had fallen further—lower—than heresy. He not only knew it, he took pride in it. "Yes, I will tell you I know better," he said, and proceeded to explain exactly what he knew. Koubatzes was an intelligent man; Rhavas expected him to see the truth once it was set forth for him.
When the prelate finished, Koubatzes stared at him in what could only be horror. The wizard drew the sun-sign again, this time with great care. "Either you seek to lure me into misbelief, very holy sir, or you have gone mad," Koubatzes said. "Only you can say for certain what you've done with the woman. But I can say for certain that doctrine like this will send you to the flames. Nothing less could cleanse you of it."
"I give you the truth, and this is how you reward me?" Rhavas had realized there was a chance Koubatzes would not be persuaded. But that the mage would dare call him a madman, dare suggest he ought to go to the stake . . . Well, Koubatzes would pay the price for his folly. Rhavas pointed a finger at him. "I will show you who is right and who is wrong."
"You will not, nor can you, for you have already condemned yourself out of your own mouth," Koubatzes said.
Outrage tingled through Rhavas. He did not need it to do what he did, not anymore, but feeling it remained reassuring. "Curse you, Koubatzes," he said, and waited for the wizard to fall off his horse.
Koubatzes' eyes opened very wide. He breathed out a foggy plume of vapor. His face twisted in pain. But, to Rhavas' horrified dismay, he remained very much alive. "Phos!" the mage whispered. "That was as rude a stroke as the Khamorth shamans gave me."
Something close to panic struck Rhavas. He'd had a curse fail once before, but never like this. This curse had struck, and done what it could do—but what it could do turned out not to be enough.
"What did you do to the Haloga woman?" Koubatzes demanded, and then shook his head. "No don't waste my time with more lies. Whatever it was, it must have been very bad, or maybe worse than that. What you've done to me, or tried to do to me, will be plenty to see you dead."
Rhavas' heart raced in fear. Phos help me, he thought. But no—Phos would not help him, not now. That the idea had flashed through his mind was only a measure of how he'd thought for so long, how he'd thought before he knew better. If Phos would not help him, though, who would? No sooner had the question occurred to him than the answer formed in his mind. Skotos help me, he thought, for the first time deliberately calling on the dark god.
Did new strength come to him? How could he know till he tried to find out? "Curse you, Koubatzes," he said again. "Death be your portion."
Koubatzes' eyes widened again. Maybe he thought he'd withstood everything Rhavas could throw at him. If he did, now he discovered he was wrong. A groan escaped him. "You . . . can't . . . do . . . this," he ground out.
"I can. I am. I will," Rhavas retorted. "Curse you—curse you to death."
The sorcerer tried to make the sun-sign once more, tried and failed. He started some sort of counterspell aimed at Rhavas. He started it, but he never finished. Instead, his eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp and slid off his horse into the snow. The horse snorted, sidestepping nervously.
"I can, you see," Rhavas said. "Oh, yes, indeed." He dismounted and knelt by Koubatzes. His fingers found the wizard's wrist. He felt no pulse. The mage's chest did not rise and fall. Rhavas nodded to himself. He had cursed Koubatzes to death, and dead Koubatzes was.
Before getting back on his steppe pony, Rhavas went through the saddlebags Koubatzes' horse carried. He took food and a carefully copied grimoire and a large leather wallet full of sorcerous paraphernalia. Koubatzes would not need any of that again, and Rhavas' packhorse would have no trouble carrying it.
When Rhavas rode south, he felt oddly liberated. He had finally succeeded in leaving behind everything in and from Skopentzana: Ingegerd, Koubatzes, his temple . . . and his god.
"I am free!" Rhavas said. "Free of everything that held me back! Free to tell the truth I've found!"
He rode on. He still had a long way to go before he came to Videssos the city. When he got there, though, he would have a lot to say. And people there would listen to him. They wouldn't be officious, sanctimonious fools like Koubatzes.
"Or if they are, they'll be sorry." The horse's ears twitched as Rhavas spoke. Rhavas booted it forward. The capital might still be distant, but he was on his way.
He stopped for the night at a farmer's house that was anything but deserted. The man, a plump, middle-aged fellow named Illos, said, "Yes, we've heard there's trouble around. Uncommon lot of folks on the road, that's certain sure. But we've seen not a one of these barbarians, and we don't aim to worry about it till we do."
"That's a fact," agreed Marozia, his wife. But for lacking a bushy gray beard, she looked a lot like him. "Come on in, holy sir, and I'll feed you." She nodded briskly. "I'll feed you, all right. I'll feed you till you can't hardly walk."
"I can pay," Rhavas said. "I'd be glad to pay."
"Don't you worry about that," Marozia said. "Maybe you'll pray over the livestock before you ride on, something like that."
Rhavas nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Of course peasants still believed Phos hearkened to their worthless, futile prayers. Such stubborn, stupid folk would never listen if he tried to give them what he saw as the truth. All he could do was go through the motions they expected, no matter what he thought of them.
Illos and Marozia had a swarm of children, ranging down from a couple of boys with beards of their own beginning to sprout to a girl just starting to toddle around. Large families were often hungry. Not here, though. Marozia gave Rhavas a stack of barley cakes, a bowl of chicken stew thick with meat and peas and beans and chunks of turnip, and a mug of fruit-sweet blackberry wine. "Eat up," she commanded. "Plenty more where that came from." She might have been defying him to eat more than she could provide.
Eat he did, till he was groaningly full. "May I read by your fire for a little while before I sleep?" he asked.
"Go right ahead. We've got plenty of wood," Illos told him. "Nobody here has his letters, but if you want to study the holy scriptures, you go right ahead. I know that's what priests do."