"You have made yourself out to be a villain. I merely report your deeds." Seides spread his arms to the assembled ecclesiastics. "Holy sirs, I speak with regret, but I also speak with certainty. This Rhavas has shown himself to be not only an infamous heretic worthy of our condemnation but also a common, vicious murderer deserving the full penalties of the law. Shall the synod now call the question on his misguided and pernicious doctrines?"
"Yes! Let us call the question!" That shout came echoing back from the dome, as if straight from Phos' lips.
"The question shall be called." Sozomenos did not sound exultant at the prospect of seeing Rhavas defeated. Instead, he seemed sad things had come so far. But he pressed ahead nonetheless: "Let those who agree with the doctrines propounded by the very holy Rhavas so signify by a show of hands."
Defiantly, Rhavas raised his own right hand. He wondered whether any other ecclesiastics would have the nerve to do likewise. To his surprise and pleasure, a few more hands did go up, all around the High Temple. A few, yes, but not nearly enough.
"Will the patriarchal secretary please inform me when he has completed his count?" Sozomenos said. A priest came up and whispered in his ear. "Thank you," the patriarch told him, and then raised his voice once more: "Let those who oppose the doctrines propounded by the very holy Rhavas so signify by a show of hands."
A forest might have suddenly sprung up, there inside the High Temple. Arms in blue sleeves, arms in cloth-of-gold sleeves, arms in sleeves that had fallen down . . . Arms by the hundreds rose. Sozomenos' was one of them.
"Will the patriarchal secretary please inform me when he has completed his count?" the old man repeated. The priest needed longer this time; he had many more arms to count. At last, he approached Sozomenos once more. The ecumenical patriarch bent to hear his whisper, then nodded. "The very holy Rhavas' doctrinal innovations having failed to win a majority, the true and orthodox faith remains defined as it was before this synod was convened."
A storm of cheers rose from the assembled ecclesiastics' throats. With the cheers were jeers: "Anathema to Rhavas!" "Rhavas the heretic!" "Dig up Rhavas' bones!" "To the ice with Rhavas!" Rhavas stood there calmly, listening to his foes exult. Let them yap, he thought. They have no power to do anything else, while I . . .
Sozomenos raised both hands in the air. Little by little, silence returned to the High Temple. "Calm yourselves, holy sirs," the patriarch said. "Those who have been found to be in error shall still have the chance to restore themselves to the fold. You priests and prelates, you monks and abbots who voted for the doctrines found not to be acceptable, will you not recant your errors and do penance for them?"
"I recant!" someone called.
"And I!" someone else added. One by one, other ecclesiastics abjured what they'd favored only minutes before. Rhavas knew what drove them: fear. If they persisted in what had been ruled heresy, they would suffer for it. If he persisted, the assembled ecclesiastics would do their best to make him suffer, too.
At last, it seemed that every cleric but Rhavas himself had renounced the view that Skotos was or could be more powerful than Phos. Sozomenos looked out to him from the pulpit. "Very holy sir, I appeal to you: return to the true and orthodox faith," the ecumenical patriarch said, stretching out his hands in supplication. "Return to the light, which is your true home. I beg of you, bend your proud neck and agree with the ecclesiastics assembled here."
Bending his proud neck was the last thing Rhavas cared to do. If anything, he was prouder in defeat than he had been while still hoping for triumph. "The light has failed," he said. "Darkness covers the face of the world. You who will not see it, you are the eyeless ones."
"Anathema!" "Heresy!" "Excommunicate him!" The cries rose up again, like the baying of a pack of wolves.
Again, Sozomenos raised both hands. Again, he needed some little while to win quiet. Once he had it, he spoke in somber, even sorrowful, tones: "Those who will not recant must be condemned. You do understand that, very holy sir?"
Rhavas laughed a laugh with knives in it. "This synod has not the power to condemn me," he said. "You are yourselves condemned as madmen, blind men, and fools. Those who will not see the truth in this life will surely learn of it in the next, and I wish you joy of it."
The rising roar of rage was music to his ears. He pointed at the thickest crowd of clerics, intending to send as many of them as he could to the next life right away. If Arkadios hadn't driven home the lesson, this would.
But it didn't. He never got the chance to use his curse. During the long, dangerous ride down to Videssos the city, he'd thought several times about monks who decided synods with bludgeons. He'd paid no particular attention to the monk standing behind him: just one more blind man among a great swarm of them. But the man was not blind; he could see more than well enough to swing.
Stars exploded against the side of Rhavas' head. He groaned, or thought he did. Then the stars went out and everything spiraled down into blackness.
This wasn't the Bridge of the Separator. At first, that was all Rhavas knew for sure. He thought he was dead, but he wasn't so sure about that. Wherever this place was, it was dark, and it was freezing cold.
"Ah, my friend, my disciple. Welcome. I did not expect to see you so soon." The voice was deep and slow. If a voice could be dark and freezing cold, then this voice was.
"Where . . . where am I?" Thinking about the ice in the abstract was one thing. Living it, experiencing it, knowing it—that was something else again. But why, if he was in Skotos' hell, couldn't he remember falling off the Bridge? Surely he would have had to go through that before meeting . . . this.
"Where do you think you are?" Had the voice known how, it would have sounded coy.
"This . . . has to be the ice," Rhavas said with such courage as he could muster. Being brave was cold comfort indeed.
"Well, if it does, are you ready to make the most of it?" the voice asked.
"Make the most of it?" Rhavas wondered if he'd heard right. How could he or anyone else make the most of an eternity of torment, of punishment?
"You are still of the world, if not precisely in it," the voice said. "Go back, if you care to, to work for me. You can serve me well, and win time for yourself beyond any mortal's dreams. Or you need not leave this domain at all, ever again. The choice is yours, and yours alone."
Already, the dark and the cold were shriveling Rhavas' soul. He wondered if there was another choice: to leave them behind for light and warmth. No sooner had that thought begun to form than laughter rolled around him, rolled through him. There was something the voice found truly funny—and Rhavas' soul shriveled even more. The answer to his question seemed only too clear.
"I'll go back!" he gasped.
"Why am I not surprised?" Oh, yes, that struck the voice funny, too, not that Rhavas was in any position to appreciate the mirth. Its laughter made the most terrible peals that had ever burst from his or any other merely human throat seem cries of delight absolute and unrestrained. "Very well, then. You may . . . wake up!"
"Wake up!" Someone threw a bucket of water in Rhavas' face. The water was stale, almost stagnant. He coughed and spluttered, half-drowned. "Wake up!" the voice shouted again.
Rhavas did, and wished he hadn't. His head felt as if a boulder had fallen on it and driven him into the ground up to his neck. But the shout came from a merely human throat, not from . . . anything else. He frowned, trying to remember. Had that been only a dream? He wasn't sure. He wondered if he ever would be.