Somebody reached for Rhavas. He thought it was one of the wizards who'd come up with him from the prison under the patriarchal residence—or it might have been one of the guards. Whoever it was, the fellow missed Rhavas, blundering past him in the darkness impenetrable and seizing someone else. "Ha! Got you!" the mage or guardsman exclaimed. A scuffle broke out.
Not far away, another sorcerer began a low-voiced counterspell. That was the last thing Rhavas wanted; it might strip his protection from him. He pointed toward the sound of the quick, quiet chant. "Curse you, mage!" he whispered fiercely. "Curse you to death!" The chanting stopped. The mage groaned. Rhavas heard the sound of a body falling. Whatever wards the man had had, they weren't enough, not now.
Yes, the light has failed! Again, he wanted to shout it. Again, he made himself hold back. And, even if he no longer believed in the power of the light, he still needed it, or a little of it, to make good his escape. He murmured another charm, a new one, to lift the absolute blackness from his own eyes but no one else's. He was still not an accomplished mage. He couldn't be sure how a spell would go till he tried it.
This one accomplished everything he wanted from it. Even to him, it remained dim inside the High Temple. The lamplighters had got to only a couple of fixtures before realizing something was dreadfully wrong. But he could see again. And it was very clear that all the other assembled ecclesiastics—and all the soldiers and wizards as well—remained blind.
"Where is he? Catch him!" somebody yelled.
They tried. He watched them try. If he hadn't been so busy getting away, he would have giggled as he watched them. They staggered this way and that. Whenever two of them bumped together, they both shouted, "Here he is!" and tried to tackle each other. It reminded him of the best Midwinter's Day mime skit of all time.
Someone bumped into him, shouted, "Here he is!" and tried to tackle him.
"No, you idiot!" Rhavas said, wrestling free. "He's over there, closer by the altar."
"Oh. Sorry, holy sir," his would-be captor said, and let him go. The man blundered away and wrapped his arms around someone else a few heartbeats later. "Here he is!"
When Rhavas neared the narthex, he paused. He wasn't sure the darkness he'd sent forth reached so far. He worked his spell again, this time aiming it in that direction. Startled shouts from the antechamber said the light there had suddenly died. Rhavas worked the other spell again, too, the one that let him see in spite of the sorcerous darkness.
The narthex, to his relief, wasn't nearly so crowded as the floor of the High Temple. Before Rhavas went out the door, he again sent darkness out ahead of him. Some of the soldiers posted outside the High Temple might recognize him. They would surely wonder how and why he was walking out of his own condemnation. They wouldn't worry about that, though, if instead they were wondering why they'd suddenly been struck blind.
They were rubbing at their eyes and shouting—sometimes screaming—as he strode past them. "Wizardry!" one of them cried. "Wicked wizardry!" Rhavas laughed under his breath. It wasn't as if the man was wrong.
When he saw people running toward the High Temple, he realized he'd passed out of the region where his sorcery was effective. "Is there a fire inside, holy sir?" one of them asked.
For a moment, he was puzzled. Then he understood they had to be seeing his darkness as thick black smoke. "Yes," he answered, doing his best to let out a convincing gasp. "It's—it's terrible in there!" He lurched and hacked and coughed, as if he'd breathed in too much smoke.
Crying out in horror, they hurried past him. They cried out again when they ran into the darkness. One of them said it smelled like smoke. That was the man's imagination working overtime, nothing more, but in an instant all the rest were yelling the same thing.
Quite forgotten, Rhavas walked out into the plaza of Palamas. He wondered how long the darkness he'd created would last. Sooner or later, it would have to dissipate as the energy that powered the spell wore off, even if the mages in the High Temple didn't manage to disperse it sooner.
Meanwhile, though, he was free. His darkness had done all he'd hoped it would, and more besides. The market square was quiet in the natural darkness of night. A few food stands stayed open under torches. A few trulls slipped from shadow to shadow, calling invitations to the men they saw. One of them called an invitation to Rhavas. He ignored her. She swore, more from force of habit than from real anger, and walked on.
Rhavas own anger was real, and growing by the moment. He turned back toward the High Temple, and toward the ecclesiastics assembled within. Refuse to hear him, would they? Condemn him, would they? Cling to their defeated god, would they? They deserved to stay blind forever, not just until his darkness broke up.
They deserved worse than that. Videssos the city deserved worse than that. Rhavas gathered himself. "I curse this city!" he cried in a great voice. "I curse it in the name of Skotos, the dark god triumphant!"
And the earth moved beneath him, roared beneath him.
Unlike Skopentzana, Videssos the city was prone to earthquakes. At Skopentzana, Rhavas had still been fighting to believe in Phos, and hadn't wanted to think his curse touched off a temblor. Here in the capital, he wanted nothing more. He cried out again, this time in wordless delight, altogether certain what he'd done.
That dreadful roar went on and on. It seemed to go on forever, though in fact it couldn't have lasted even a minute. Rhavas was knocked off his feet—was, in fact, knocked out of one sandal. He kept on shouting joyfully, though not even he could hear himself through the deep bass rumble of the very earth in torment.
What he did hear through that rumble were the lesser roars and crashes of buildings crumbling and falling. Much, even most, of Videssos the city was built of brick and stone, and bricks and stones shook themselves apart from one another when the ground shook beneath them.
Rhavas, who had had the sense to stand in the open before cursing the capital, hoped with all his heart he would bring the High Temple down on the heads of the ecclesiastics assembled within. That struck him as justice sweeter and stronger than the merely poetic. But when the trembling finally eased, the Temple remained intact, though the patriarchal residence next to it had fallen into ruin. Swearing under his breath, he wondered if he could lay another curse specifically on the Temple. When he reached inside himself, though, he found nothing left. What power he had, he had used, and for the moment used up.
Time to get away, then. If the men who condemned him had a chance to think, they would decide the earthquake on the heels of his sorcerously aided escape from the High Temple was no coincidence. The hunt would be on as soon as they did. And, depleted as he was, he would have a hard time resisting them. That being so, best not to linger till they gathered their wits.
An aftershock staggered him as he trotted toward Middle Street. He heard fresh screams after that, and fresh crashes as well. Moans and groans and cries of pain seemed more or less constant. How many people suffered, buried in rubble? How many more were beyond suffering?
Someone not far enough away shouted, "Fire!" That was one of the great perils in an earthquake. Fortunately for the shattered imperial city, there was no more than the barest hint of breeze to fan the flames.
Rubble clogged even Middle Street, the broadest thoroughfare in the city. Some of the roofed colonnades had collapsed. So had some of the buildings along the avenue. Rhavas spared a moment, but no more than a moment, to hope Lardys and his inn still survived.
Men and women ran here and there. Many of them shouted other people's names, trying to find relatives and friends. Others, like Rhavas, made for the Silver Gate—and, no doubt, other gates as well. Each new aftershock that rattled the city sent more folk fleeing. Spending a night in the open would have been a hardship during the winter. On a warm summer night, it seemed far better than spending that same night under a roof that might come down.