He even began to alter and improve the spells Koubatzes had devised. The mage, he slowly started to realize, hadn't been such a clever fellow after all. The grimoire might as well have been a cookbook; Koubatzes had his recipes, but he'd rarely got playful with them.
By contrast, Rhavas enjoyed variations on a theme. He not only used the dead mage's spell to rout cockroaches from his room, he improved it so that the bugs left marching in formation, as Maleinos' soldiers had when they tramped along Middle Street on the way to war against Stylianos.
Of course, Maleinos' soldiers had marched down Middle Street only once. Rhavas had to expel the bugs from his room again and again. Even when he worked another spell to keep roaches expelled once from returning, enough new ones got in to keep him busy repeating the cantrip.
He also used the conjuration that filled a room with darkness rather than light to persuade moths and flies and other insects fonder of illumination than was the most pious priest to go elsewhere. As with the other one, he had to repeat that charm again and again. He minded less than he might have; he knew he could use practice with his sorcery.
A few at a time, ecclesiastics did come into the capital. Most traveled in from the westlands, where the civil war burned less fiercely, or from the countryside close to the capital, which still lay in Maleinos' hands. A few priests and prelates did reach Videssos the city from towns that Stylianos held. Maybe they'd sneaked out in spite of the rebel's garrisons—or maybe his men had let them go to make sure the Empire stayed religiously united even while politically split. Did Stylianos and his officers have that much sense? Rhavas could hope so without being convinced or certain.
He wondered whether Arotras would come to the capital for the synod. He didn't see why the priest shouldn't. Arotras' temple was in a town not far away, and Rhavas' former seminary colleague had also had his doubts about Phos' ultimate triumph. Wouldn't he try to see that the temples' theology reflected his own? Rhavas dared hope so, anyhow.
Along with the priests and prelates, monks started coming into Videssos the city. Rhavas had never had much use for monks or monasteries. To his way of thinking, monks didn't pull their weight. They withdrew from the world without devoting enough of themselves to the divine. Their scholarship, when they had scholarship, struck him as narrow.
When they had scholarship, indeed. Monks didn't always reason their way toward the truth. Sometimes—often—they decided what it was and then thumped everyone who presumed to disagree with them. That had happened at more than a few synods.
It didn't look unlikely here, either. A swarm of monks paraded up Middle Street toward the High Temple. Some of them brandished bludgeons. Others held up jars of wine. Quite a few were drunk. They all bawled out hymns proclaiming Phos' glory. Some of them yelled curses aimed at anyone who might have another idea.
"Anathema to the accursed heretics!" they shouted. "Anathema! Anathema! Let them be anathema! Dig up their bones! Curse them all to Skotos' ice!" People cheered as they went by, whether from agreement or in relief at having them gone, Rhavas could not have said.
A monk who reeked of wine glared at him out of eyes as bloodshot as a boar's. "You're not one of these accurshed—accursed—heretics, are you, holy sir?" the man demanded blearily.
"What if I were?" Rhavas asked in mild tones.
"Well, in that case, pal, to the ice with you." The monk, a stout—even beefy—man, raised his club as if to send Rhavas there on the instant. "In that case, pal, curse you and everybody who thinks like you."
Rhavas looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying any special attention to the monk or to him. Why should people in Videssos the city notice one monk or one priest more or less? Why, indeed? Still mildly, Rhavas said, "No, curse you, pal."
Outrage started to form on the monk's face. Then surprise replaced it. And then his features went blank. The club slipped from his hand. It landed on his foot, which should have made him jump and swear and hop . . . if he weren't already a dead man. Rhavas waited to see if anyone would pay attention to his collapse. But no one did. If anyone saw the fall, it was doubtless taken for just another drunken monk going down.
Whistling, Rhavas went on his way. He wondered what would happen if he had to do something like that at the synod to get his point across. Would the assembled priests and prelates, monks and abbots, pay attention to him then? Would they decide his theology had something behind it after all?
He whistled some more. If they didn't, they'd be sorry.
Soldiers kept laymen away from the High Temple. "Phos!" one of the pikemen complained. "This is liable to be more dangerous than going out and fighting Stylianos' boys. Leastways you know what you're up against with them."
The soldiers did not keep club-swinging monks from crossing their line. Rhavas hadn't expected them to. The monks belonged in the synod. So they were convinced, anyway.
When Rhavas walked into the High Temple, he found priests and monks arguing with one another. Here a priest wagged a finger under a prelate's nose. There an angry monk brandished his bludgeon. The priest at whom he shook it told him it would have an unlikely final resting place if he presumed to swing it. The monk expressed a certain amount of disbelief.
The commotion made Rhavas smile. For one thing, this was what synods were supposed to be like. And, for another, the mere fact of at least some disagreement encouraged him. He'd wondered if everyone would automatically oppose him. It didn't seem that way, anyhow.
Behind the pulpit stood Sozomenos. He watched the assembled ecclesiastics, and listened to them. He did not try to bring them to order, not just then. Maybe he couldn't. Maybe he simply didn't want to. Rhavas wasn't sure which the answer was, though he hoped for the former.
More and more priests and prelates and monks and abbots came in. Sozomenos waited and watched. At last, for no reason Rhavas could see, the ecumenical patriarch raised both hands in a gesture of benediction, and also—not incidentally—one that brought every eye to himself. An imperial commissioner heading up an important assemblage would have had a gavel with which to control his group. Sozomenos had only the strength of his will. As things turned out, that was more than enough.
"We are ready to begin," Sozomenos said. They hadn't been. They hadn't been anywhere close. Suddenly, though, they were, for no better reason than that the patriarch said they were. In spite of himself, Rhavas was impressed.
Another small group of ecclesiastics walked into the High Temple. Seeing everyone in front of them quiet and orderly, they ducked into pews not too far from the altar and sat ready for whatever would come next. They might have been schoolboys not quite late but not anxious to draw the master's eye even so, lest he reach for a switch.
Sozomenos had no switch, any more than he had a gavel. Plainly, he did not need one, either. "I thank all of you for your presence here this morning," he said. "One of our brethren had called upon my illustrious predecessor, the most holy Kameniates, to convene this synod to examine our faith and its most fundamental workings. That is his privilege, and, Kameniates no longer being among men, I have the honor of conducting this resulting assemblage. On your prayers, on your belief, and on your reasoning rest our direction for years if not centuries to come. I am confident you are up to the job."
He said nothing about what Rhavas' challenge really meant. He also said nothing about his own view of Rhavas' belief. Again, Rhavas was impressed. Sozomenos presented at least the appearance of scrupulous fairness. He would, no doubt, find some way to make his views felt—but then, so would every other ecclesiastic at the synod. That was what synods were for.