Rhavas' temper began to fray. "I told you, I am not a healer-priest. Please go away and leave me alone."
"But my leg . . ." the man whimpered.
He seemed spry enough to Rhavas. But he went on whining and fussing. He wouldn't take a hint and go away. At last, Rhavas lost patience altogether. "All right," he said, exhaling angrily. "All right. Come in the alley with me, and I'll give you what you deserve."
"Took you long enough," said the man with the sore on his shin, not noticing the way Rhavas put that. Into the alley he went, limping only a little if at all. "Here. Bend down and you can see it."
Rhavas did bend down. The alley was narrow and dark. Moss and something slimier than moss grew on the bricks of the houses to either side. Middle Street had cobbles, but the alley was all dirt and mud. Flies buzzed. The city stench seemed stronger here than on the main boulevard.
"See?" the man said. That was the last word that ever passed his lips. He let out a soft sound of surprise and then fell over dead. Rhavas did not even bother to rifle his belt pouch. He left it there to surprise and please some scavenger who would stumble across it.
On the way back to his inn, he found himself whistling. He had a marvelous talent there in the ability to curse. And if he couldn't use it every now and again to rid himself—and the world—of an annoying nuisance, what good was it, anyway?
In due course, Sozomenos was installed as ecumenical patriarch. Rhavas went to the High Temple to watch his investiture. Sozomenos hardly seemed to have changed since Rhavas left for Skopentzana. He'd been an old man then, his face lined, his beard long and tangled and white as snow. He looked just the same now.
The patriarchal robes were heavy with cloth of gold and their encrustations of semiprecious and precious stones. Sozomenos' shoulders, already stooped, had trouble bearing the weight. He looked out at the crowd in the Temple.
When he spoke from the pulpit, his voice was clear and strong despite his years: "My friends, I never expected or wanted the honor his Majesty has chosen to bestow upon me. I would rather contemplate the lord with the great and good mind than seek to govern unruly men. But, this having been asked of me, I shall bear the burden to the best of my ability."
He looked out over the crowd. Rhavas remembered his gaze as being almost as penetrating as that of the image of Phos in the dome above him. So it still seemed now. "We live in troubled times," Sozomenos continued. "Some would say the times are troubled because the dark god puts forth his strength to make them so. Even some respected ecclesiastics have been heard to make such claims. They will have their chance to prove them—if they can."
Did he know Rhavas was in the High Temple? Rhavas had no trouble recognizing him, but would he know Rhavas after so long? The new patriarch did know Kameniates had had to order a synod convened, and did not seem to object to it. That was all to the good, as far as Rhavas was concerned.
"Myself, I have no truck with such newfangled notions," Sozomenos said. "I believe in the faith I learned at my mother's knee a lot of years ago. I trust in that faith. It has held me up through thick and thin. I think it always will."
He smiled then. Light didn't radiate from him, the way it did from the windows set into the base of the dome. It didn't, but it might as well have. He was not lying when he spoke of his faith. It shone on his face.
Smiling still, he said, "I could be wrong. I admit I could be wrong. If the synod decides I am . . . I expect I will lay this burden down, and gladly." Did he mean he would resign the patriarchate? Or did he mean he would quietly die? With a man of his years and his obvious determination, either seemed possible.
Rhavas wanted to persuade him. He called on the patriarchal residence the next day, and was admitted in due course. After bowing to Sozomenos and congratulating him on his accession, he said, "Most holy sir, I was lucky enough to escape the fall and the sack of Skopentzana. What I saw there, and what I saw afterward . . . You don't know how lucky you are to live in Videssos the city. Much of the evil in the world has passed this city by—so far."
"There is a struggle. I would not deny it. How could I, when the faith ordains it?" Sozomenos seemed content with the world as he found it. "But the faith also ordains that goodness and light shall triumph at the end of days, and darkness be cast down. This I still believe."
"Even after our own evil allowed the Khamorth to enter the Empire and work their outrages?" Rhavas demanded.
"Even then," the patriarch said placidly. "Men can be knaves and fools. Men often are knaves and fools. But even knaves and fools have Phos' light within them. It raises them above brute beasts."
"Does it?" Rhavas told Sozomenos some of the things he'd seen. He almost told him some of the things he'd done, but held back at the last minute. Not even holy Sozomenos needed to hear that. Rhavas finished, "If you ask me, these things do show us to be separated from the beasts. We are below them. They act as they must, but we act as we choose."
"Yes, as we choose. And we can choose the light. We must choose the light." Sozomenos sent a gesture of benediction toward Rhavas. "You must choose the light, very holy sir. It is there, for you as for anyone. That you have known hard times should not make you shove your faith aside."
"The world knows hard times," Rhavas insisted. "Times are so hard, Phos cannot hope to triumph. The idea that he could is a snare and a delusion."
Sozomenos sadly sketched the sun-sign over his breast. "I will pray for you. I will pray for you with all the strength in me. May the lord with the great and good mind grant you peace in the end."
Rhavas almost cursed him where he sat, just for being so secure and comfortable in what was obviously—but, it was clear, not obviously enough—an outworn creed. But no; it would not do. Sozomenos was an old, old man. His passing would not astonish anyone . . . most of the time. If two ecumenical patriarchs died within days of each other and within hours of quarreling with Rhavas, though, eyebrows would be raised. And rumors from the north had already reached the capital. So far, not even Maleinos connected those rumors to his cousin. Two dead patriarchs, however, and plenty of people might start making that connection.
Rising, Rhavas bowed to the white-bearded man who seemed so out of place in his gaudy robes. "Most holy sir, I will see you at the synod. The assembled ecclesiastics will be there."
"So they will," Sozomenos agreed. "But I hope to see you before that. I hope you will come and worship at the High Temple and pray for your faith to be restored. Sometimes sitting under the eye of that marvelous mosaic Phos will work a miracle of its own."
"Perhaps you will see me there." Rhavas did not care to refuse or insult Sozomenos to his face—such was the personal power the patriarch had. With another bow, the younger man strode out of the patriarchal residence.
A secretary of some sort was waiting for an audience with Sozomenos. "Holy sir," he murmured politely as Rhavas walked past him.
Rhavas nodded back. The pen pusher knew only that he was a priest, not that his beliefs were at odds with everything the temples taught. Somewhere out there, though, couriers were riding through the Empire (or that part of it not lost to the Khamorth, or maybe just that part of it not lost to the Khamorth and to Stylianos). They were summoning priests and prelates, monks and abbots to the city for this synod. After it was done, Rhavas told himself, things would be different.
But what if they weren't different? What if the synod just ratified the faith as it stood now? Bright sunlight made Rhavas blink. He scowled up into the sky—Phos might have been telling him he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. Phos might have been, but he didn't think Phos was.