Rhavas shrugged yet again. What difference did it make, really? Videssos had lived a lie for hundreds of years. If the Empire was dead in these parts, maybe the barbarians would do a better job of things here. Why shouldn't they? However rude they were, they had some feel for where power truly lay.
The prelate laughed. "Maybe I ought to preach to them, not to the blind fools in blue robes," he said. But then he shook his head. He was a Videssian himself, after all. His own people deserved the first look at everything he'd found. If they turned away from it . . . But they wouldn't. They mustn't. "Curse them if they do," Rhavas muttered. "I'll fight them forever." He kept riding.
Smoke rose from Podandos, but it was a cheerful kind of smoke: smoke from hearths and cookfires and forges and torches and lamps. Lykandos was dead—had been murdered. Podandos still lived. Podandos, by all appearances, still thrived.
A militiaman on top of the wall shouted, "Who comes?" to Rhavas as he neared the north gate.
He gave his name and that of slaughtered Skopentzana and flipped back his hood so the guard could see his head had been shaved. He hadn't been able to tend to that lately. It didn't worry him much, either, though by all the rules it should have.
"Come on in, holy sir. You're welcome, by the lord with the great and good mind," the guard said. He called down to the gate crew: "Open up there, you lazy buggers! This fellow's safe as houses." The men who tended the gate shouted back. The wall muffled their reply, but Rhavas doubted it was a compliment. The man up on top of the wall just laughed.
As Rhavas rode in through the gate, he asked, "Have the Khamorth troubled you here?"
"They tried to break in, holy sir," one of the gate crew answered. "They tried, but we ran 'em off. This for 'em." He spat on the ground, as if rejecting Skotos.
"Good for you." Rhavas had to struggle to get the words out. The gate guard's casual, unthinking gesture reminded him how hard persuading his fellow Videssians might be.
That, though, was a worry for another day. For now, he needed a place to spend the night. He wanted an inn, a tavern, not a temple. He needed to talk to educated, thoughtful clerics, not to some backwoods bumpkin of a priest.
He found an inn without much trouble. After a stable boy led away his horses, he went into the taproom to buy supper and drink some wine and get a room for the night. He wasn't even thinking of luring a barmaid into his bed. No matter which god ruled the world, no matter how that god wanted and expected people to behave, a man could just get tired.
But as Rhavas asked the man behind the bar for a cup of red wine and some bread and cheese, a cheery voice called out, "The blessings of the good god upon you, my friend. You're a colleague, unless I miss my guess."
Rhavas turned his head. He hadn't even noticed the plump priest till the man spoke up. If that didn't prove how tired he was . . . He made himself nod. "That's right," he said.
"Pleased to meet you," the other priest said. "My name's Tryphon. Who are you, holy sir, and where are you from?"
Before Rhavas could answer, the tapman gave him what he asked for. That let him go through ritual—the ritual he no longer believed in—before saying, "I'm called Rhavas. I was lucky enough to get out of Skopentzana."
"Were you?" Tryphon's eyebrows rose. "In Phos' holy name"—he actually said, In Phaos' holy name, proving himself a backwoods bumpkin—"you're a lucky man. Not many got out, by what I've heard."
"Yes, I'm afraid that's so," Rhavas agreed. He paused to eat some of the bread and cheese. When he paused, Tryphon was still waiting expectantly. Rhavas felt he had to add, "Between the Khamorth and the earthquake, I fear Skopentzana will never be the same again."
"Too bad. That's too bad." Tryphon swigged from his own cup of wine. By his red cheeks and redder nose, he knew wine well—maybe a little too well. "We felt the earthquake here, too. Things fell off shelves. Some walls cracked. It was worse farther north?"
"You might say so," Rhavas replied. "Yes, you just might say so." He sipped instead of swigging. With the wine the taverner had given him, it didn't much matter. Nothing could make the stuff tasty.
"A terrible business. Everything that's happened lately is a terrible business." Tryphon drank again, then said, "My mug's gone dry. That's a terrible business, too, by Phaos." He set the cup on the counter. The tapman reached into a wine jar with a dipper and filled the cup again. After spitting in ritual rejection of Skotos and raising his hands to the heavens, Tryphon took another swig. "It makes you wonder what everything means, it really does."
"Well, I won't tell you you're wrong," Rhavas murmured, wishing the other priest would shut up and go away.
Tryphon did nothing of the kind, of course. Obnoxious people never had the faintest idea they were obnoxious. The local man said, "I think I know what's behind it all."
Rhavas realized he had to pay attention. "Tell me," he urged, wondering whether the bumpkin had by some accident hit upon the same truth as he'd found himself.
"Don't mind if I do," Tryphon said. "I always like to talk shop when I get the chance. Don't you?"
"When I get the chance," Rhavas answered, doubting this would be one of those times.
Tryphon leaned forward confidentially. "I think the lord with the great and good mind is testing us," he said.
"Testing us? In what way?" Rhavas inquired. Several people in the taproom came closer so they could hear better. Others craned their necks to listen in. Layfolk in Videssos enjoyed hearing their priests argue theology. They often weren't shy about jumping in themselves, either.
"Why, to see whether we stay loyal to him in adversity," Tryphon said. "Here in Podandos, we have." He sketched the sun-sign above his heart. So did most of the audience, including the tapman and a nearby barmaid.
Rhavas drew the sun-circle, too. People would have . . . wondered about him if he, a priest, had not. But all the same, he said, "I'm not so sure, holy sir, meaning no offense to you or your town."
"No? How not?" Tryphon sounded belligerent. Rhavas wondered how long it had been since anyone told him, even politely, that he was wrong.
"Think of Phos' creed," Rhavas replied, warming to the disputation. "Does it not say the good god is 'watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor?'"
"It does. It does indeed. Of course it does." Tryphon made the sun-circle again. "Which proves my point, I would say. Is this not the great test of our lives? Is our faith in the good god not being tested?" He smiled out at the men and women in the taproom—men and women who had surely heard his arguments before.
"You tell him, holy sir!" one of them called, which only made the local priest's smile broader and more confident.
"Very ingenious." By the way Rhavas said it, he plainly meant very obvious. Realizing as much, Tryphon bristled. Ostensibly ignoring that but in fact enjoying it, Rhavas went on, "I am afraid you have not taken all the creed into account. Consider the phrase 'that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.'" He stressed the last three words.
"Well? What about it?" Yes, Tryphon was all but snorting and pawing at the ground, ready to charge with head lowered and horns aimed straight ahead.
"What about it? Look around you." Rhavas waved. "Is the great test of life being decided in our favor? It doesn't seem so to me. Civil war is tearing Videssos to pieces. Can you deny that? Because of the civil war, the barbarians have come over the border and are settling where and as they please. Can you deny that?"