"No, thanks," the guard said. "I'll take my chances with the whole rest of the world, I will." He laughed.
He thought he was a wit. Rhavas thought he overestimated by a factor of two. "The more fool you," Rhavas said.
"I'm not the one getting anathematized. I'm not the one getting excommunicated," the guard replied. "You cursed well are, and cursed you will be. Now get moving, not very holy sir, or we'll bloody well drag you."
He had nerve, if not much in the way of brains. Rhavas didn't fear curses from the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What the priests and the wizards would do to him after the formal condemnation was liable to be a different story. Admiring the guard's cheek, he accompanied the man without any more argument.
When he came up, it was evening. That surprised him; he'd been looking to see sunlight one more time. But night was falling, with the nearly full moon in the east casting a pale glow across Videssos the city. A few birds sang the last sleepy songs of day. As more and more stars came out, the birds fell silent.
The vast bulk of the High Temple blotted out a good many stars. It covered more of the sky than the Paristrian Mountains had till Rhavas drew quite close to them. Men with torches moved ahead of him and behind him, so that he never got out of the light.
"Keep moving, you!" the guard told him, again as if he were a dangerous beast that might turn and bite if it got the chance. And so I might, too, he thought, not without pride.
Torches and fat, perfumed candles and innumerable olive-oil lamps made the High Temple's narthex almost as bright as day. Almost. During the day, the light came from one source: the sun. Here, with all these lamps and candles and torches blazing, a million shadows danced and jiggled and swooped and competed. The light was bright, but daylight it was not.
"Keep moving!" The command came again. Rhavas obeyed it. Walking from the narthex into the High Temple itself was passing from light into near-darkness. Half a dozen great beeswax candles burned near the altar; here and there, they raised ghostly golden twinkles from the tesserae in the dome mosaic. But half a dozen candles, no matter how large, could not begin to illuminate the vast space under that dome.
Here and there, the candlelight also raised golden echoes from the ecumenical patriarch's rich robes. Sozomenos still sounded sad when he called the session to order: He did not want to condemn Rhavas. But where what he wanted and what he judged his duty conflicted, he would do his duty.
"We are met this evening in the matter of the very holy Rhavas, formerly a priest of Videssos the city, formerly prelate of Skopentzana, who has refused to put aside beliefs declared heretical by the synod recently convened," Sozomenos said. "Very holy sir, will you not renounce your misbelief and return to the bosom of the true and orthodox faith?"
"I do not believe it to be misbelief, and I will not renounce it," Rhavas said firmly. He also did not think renouncing it would do him any good. If he did, the assembled ecclesiastics would rejoice for his soul—and turn him over to Stylianos, so the secular authorities could dispose of him for his crimes against imperial law.
A sigh rose from the priests and prelates and monks and abbots in the High Temple. The ecumenical patriarch gestured to someone Rhavas could not see. That worthy stepped forward and used a bronze snuffer to put out one of the tall candles. Sozomenos gestured again. A chorus invisible in the gloom sang out: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"
The beautiful rendition contrasted chillingly with the dreadful words. Hardened as Rhavas thought himself to be, he couldn't help shivering. The condemnation sent him . . . Where I already am, he thought, and made his back stiffen.
"Will you not renounce your mischievous belief that the power of Phos has receded in this world, while that of Skotos has advanced?" Sozomenos inquired.
"I do not believe it to be misbelief, and I will not renounce it," Rhavas replied. He knew how this ceremony would go. He knew how it would end—or rather, how it was supposed to end. He had in mind a dénouement somewhat different from the one the patriarch envisioned.
Another sigh rose from the almost invisible ecclesiastics in the High Temple. Was it a sad sigh or a hungry one, an anticipatory one? Rhavas knew what his opinion was. Sozomenos' gesture, though, was beyond question sorrowful. The priest with the snuffer extinguished another candle. The chorus sang out again: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"
Three more times Sozomenos asked Rhavas to return to orthodoxy and renounce his newfound faith in Skotos. Three more times Rhavas refused. The snuffer put out three more candles. The chorus sang of Rhavas' condemnation three more times.
Only one candle remained alight in the High Temple. Sozomenos asked one more ritual question. Rhavas did not answer right away. When he didn't, the patriarch said, "Very holy sir?" with fresh hope in his voice. Maybe even at this last instant Rhavas' soul might be saved.
Rhavas still did not think his soul needed saving, not from the likes of the ecclesiastics assembled in the High Temple. He had been otherwise occupied, watchful beforehand (he smiled at the conceit) that they would not have the chance to lay their hands on it, so to speak. Sozomenos' final ritual question interrupted him.
When he reached a place where he could speak again, he said, "My apologies, most holy sir. I do not believe my doctrine to be misbelief, and, for the last time, I will not renounce it."
"For the last time, indeed," Sozomenos said sadly. Sadly, he gestured for the last time to the priest with the candle snuffer. For the last time, the priest used it, and the High Temple plunged into darkness. For the last time, the chorus sang out: "Anathema to the heretic! Let him be excommunicated! Let him be cast into the outer darkness! So may it be!"
There in the darkness, Rhavas was not idle. He had begun a spell while one candle still burned, and was in the middle of it when Sozomenos asked him that last question. He'd had to wait till he finished a softly murmured stanza before he could speak again. Once he'd refused to admit he was in error, he raced through the rest of the spell. Only a heartbeat after the last candle died, he muttered, "Let it be accomplished!"
As it had at the inn in the town east of Videssos the city, darkness flowed from his fingers. This was true darkness, darkness as the enemy of light rather than just its absence. It was the darkness you got when you called on Skotos in place of Phos. It swallowed sight, swallowed the very idea of sight. Back at that inn, Rhavas had cast that spell by way of experiment, to discover what it would do. Now he knew, and had practiced with as many variations as he could dream up. He sent it forth with all his strength—and, maybe, with the dark god's strength flowing through him as well.
After the ceremony of excommunication was complete, priests and acolytes should have raced through the High Temple lighting lamps and torches and candles, bathing the interior of the great building with light to show the condemned man what he would have to do without forevermore. Perhaps they started, but how could they go on when blackness drowned even the tapers they carried? Their cries of alarm were the first ones to ring out inside the Temple.
Theirs were the first, but far from the last. "Light! Where is the light?" someone called urgently.
The light has failed! Rhavas exulted. He almost shouted it aloud, but swallowed the words at the last instant. Why give his foes a clue about where he was and what he was doing?
"Sorcery?" someone with a shrill voice shouted. Someone else cried, "Skotos is loose in the High Temple!"—and that, in the Videssian phrase, spilled the perfume into the soup.