"Not here, by Phaos!" a man from the crowd said in a wine-blurred voice. Tryphon nodded emphatic agreement.
"No, not here." Rhavas' exquisite bow was also exquisite in its irony. "Podandos of course being the one great and true center of life in the Empire of Videssos, and all the campaigns of the Khamorth having been completed."
Several people smiled and preened, thinking him serious. They were fools, of no account. Rhavas paid attention to the ones who growled and muttered, the ones who knew sarcasm when they heard it. Again, Tryphon was one of their number. "What are you driving at?" he barked, his voice tense.
"Videssos is riven by civil strife," Rhavas repeated. "Skopentzana is fallen—Skopentzana is destroyed. Lykandos, not far north of here at all, is likewise but a corpse. Who can say how many other cities and towns have been ravaged? You will know for yourselves that the nomads are busy laying the countryside waste. What will the harvest be come fall? Will there be a harvest come fall? What will you eat, with no grain in the storerooms? Your dogs and cats? Each other? Is the great test of life being decided in your favor?"
Silence answered him. He'd touched the deepest secret fears of the folk in the taproom. Even the man behind the bar, a bruiser with a scarred, surly face, signed himself with Phos' holy sun, and he was far from the only person who did. Slowly, very slowly, Tryphon again asked, "What are you saying?"
"I am not saying anything in particular," Rhavas answered. "But I am asking a question I think needs asking."
"You are asking whether Phaos or Skotos is the stronger god." Tryphon spat on the rammed-earth floor.
Rhavas did, too. No, this would not be easy. He said, "Don't you think the question needs asking these days?"
Tryphon glowered at him, smiling and cheerful no more. "I think asking that question is heresy. By the good god, I think even thinking that question is heresy."
Heads bobbed up and down all over the taproom. Rhavas said, "Don't you think the most important thing about doctrine is that it should be true?"
"I think our holy and orthodox faith is true, just as the synods have defined it over the years," Tryphon said. "Will you deny that? If you do, you will show you are no true priest, but a heretic indeed, and deserving what any heretic deserves." He got more nods for that.
"How many Videssians have slaughtered one another? How many more have the plainsmen maimed and raped and murdered?" Rhavas asked. He'd done his own raping and murdering, but he did not speak of that. "Could this have happened if our holy doctrine were correct? Is Phos watchful beforehand that the great test of life will be answered in our favor? I ask you that, holy sir. I ask all of you the same thing. If he is, how do you know? All the evidence seems to point against it."
"Not all the evidence." Tryphon struck a proud pose. "If Skotos is the greatest power in this world"—he spat again—"may he strike me dead this instant."
Rhavas did not need to point when he knew exactly who his target was. He did not need to speak aloud, either, not when the curse all but formed itself in his mind. He just looked at Tryphon, and that only for an instant.
The other priest groaned. His eyes slid shut; his mouth dropped open. He crumpled to the ground. The barmaid and another woman screamed. A man standing by him knelt and grabbed his wrist. After a little while, the fellow let it fall. It did, limply. "He's dead," the man said, fearful wonder in his voice.
More screams and cries of dismay filled the taproom. Someone pointed at Rhavas. "It's your fault. You did this!"
"Me?" Rhavas shook his head. "I just stood here. You all saw me. I did nothing. I didn't touch him, I worked no spell. . . . He called a challenge, and perhaps it was answered."
"I think maybe you'd better get out of here, stranger," the tapman said slowly. "I don't want you dropping dead on the floor yourself, or anybody else, either. Tryphon was a good man. We'll all miss him. I don't suppose anyone would miss you, though, not even a little bit. You ought to go while the going's still good."
"All I did was ask some questions and try to find the truth," Rhavas said. "Where is the harm in that?"
"I don't know, and I don't care." The tapman reached under the counter and took out a stout bludgeon. "All I know is, we liked Tryphon, and now he's dead. We don't like you. The more we see you, the less we like you, too."
"Think on what you saw. Think on what it means." Rhavas set silver on the bar. "Here. This for my supper."
"No, thanks." The tapman shoved the coin back at him. He didn't touch it; he used a rag to keep from touching it. "On the house."
"You don't want my money?" Rhavas was amazed. He'd never known anyone in an inn who didn't want everything he—or she—could get.
Stolidly, the tapman shook his head. "Might bring bad luck. Never can tell." He turned away from Rhavas and toward the silently staring customers. "Come on, friends. We've got to get poor Tryphon out of here. What happens if a stranger walks in and sees him?"
"A stranger did walk in." One of the men pointed to Rhavas. "Look what came of that, curse him."
His curse was useless, harmless, as most men's were. Rhavas knew his was not. He also knew the crowd might nerve itself to mob him. If it did, he would show everyone what his curse could do. But all he said now was, "I wanted no trouble when I came in here. I still want none."
They let him leave. They let him reclaim his horse and the packhorse. Some of them followed him, though, till he rode out of Podandos. "Don't come back, either," one of them called from the gateway.
He almost cursed the whole town. That would teach them a lesson. But they would not be in a position to appreciate what they'd learned. He refrained. With luck, some of them would draw the proper conclusions from Tryphon's untimely demise. They might not only draw them but pass them on to other people. Rhavas wanted them to. He did indeed have the missionary instinct.
What he didn't have was anywhere to spend the night. It would be cold—but he wasn't so afraid of cold as he had been before breaking out of falling Skopentzana. One way or another, he expected to get by.
And he did. He found a place where a storm had toppled two or three trees onto one another, creating not only a windbreak but something almost like a lean-to. He tried to start a fire by ordinary means, but had no luck. Then he tried a word of command stolen from Koubatzes' grimoire. In no way was it a proper sort of spell. That didn't mean it didn't work, for the flames crackled to life.
Shelter. Warmth. He hadn't been orthodox in getting them, but so what? He had them. And he hadn't been orthodox coming at the way the world worked—but, again, so what? I know what I know, he thought, there alone in the woods.
VIII
After Podandos, Rhavas did no more preaching for a while. He did not care for the reception he'd got there. Yes, backwoods bumpkins, sure enough, and a priest who'd thought he knew it all. Better to save the truth he'd found for those who could best appreciate it. Rhavas went on toward Videssos the city.
He kept hoping he would outdistance the Khamorth and their irruption into the Empire. He kept hoping, and he kept being disappointed. Wherever he went, he found the barbarians there ahead of him. They'd sacked and plundered farms and villages and small towns and a few more cities. They hadn't gone back to the Pardrayan steppe afterward, either. They'd come into Videssos to stay. Their flocks and herds wandered across land that should have had wheat and barley springing up from it after the spring thaw came.