‘It is quite fragile,’ said the Patriarch, almost as if he had opened a window into Mar’s mind. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the massive pier at the end of the arcade, one of four that thrust up the soaring central dome. ‘If you focus through the light, you can see how it is inclined backwards.’ Mar squinted; the pier indeed tilted noticeably, as if the weight of the presumably incorporeal gold dome were crushing down on it. ‘When I walk in here each morning,’ said Alexius, ‘I am in awe that God has permitted the dome to stand through another day.’ Alexius looked about the enormous golden shell with an unexpected warmth and familiarity, as if he were watching a small child he would some day have to send off to life, war, love, disappointment, death.
After a moment the Patriarch turned to Mar, the beasts in his dark eyes finally unleashed. ‘This is my fortress,’ he said, his voice even but now much deeper in resonance, almost supernaturally compelling. ‘It is the most powerful structure on earth. Its strength is not in the mass of its walls but in their fragility, the fashion in which they are transformed by the light of day into the pure light of God’s Eternal Being. Some day men, perhaps with means we cannot dream of today, will defeat the walls of this city. But how can anything defeat the light in which the Pantocrator reveals himself to men?’
The dragon of Nidafell, thought Mar. The last dragon will consume even the light of the Pantocrator.
Alexius’s eyes retreated. ‘I see I have failed to move you with talk of God. Let us then talk of Rome, and what we must render to, if not our Caesar then to the powers that have given us a Caesar.’
Mar looked up into the golden carapace that seemed more an opening than an enclosure. Perhaps there was a power to this light. It enabled the Patriarch to speak with the direct tongue of a Norseman instead of the oily mendacity of the Roman courtier. Do not disappoint him. ‘We will not accept the continued intervention of the Orphanotrophus Joannes in the affairs of the Empire.’
Alexius raised both wiry eyebrows. ‘And who are we, Hetairarch?’
‘The Varangians of the Grand and Middle Hetairia.’
Alexius nodded his head. ‘That is no small thing. One thousand warriors of proven, and more importantly, feared ability. And even more importantly, already quartered inside the palace gates, indeed surrounding the person of the Emperor. But do the Scholae, Excubitores and Hyknatoi of the Imperial Taghmata’ – these were all elite palace regiments – ‘share your resolution? If not, they would certainly deter the swiftness of your thrust. Perhaps with fatal consequences for all involved.’
‘Of course you are correct in your reservations,’ answered Mar. ‘If we had to defeat the Imperial Taghmata,’ he said, slightly smirking with the boast, ‘the endeavour might take us several days. By then the people would have become aroused and could possibly create a situation that would force us to accept any candidate they proposed. However earnest the intentions of the simple folk, we might be left with another unsuitable candidate. But if the Imperial Taghmata were convinced that both the people and other . . . powers were resolute in their wishes, they would acquiesce to our coup.’
‘An artful hypothesis, Hetairarch. But you fail to calculate the most significant of Rome’s many powers, if only because in that power is the will of the Pantocrator manifest in human form. I mean the purple-born. And is not the purple-born currently an author of our predicament?’
‘Indeed the older sister is. Fortunately she is not the last purple-born Macedonian.’ Mar paused for effect. ‘The Varangian Guards would defend your client Theodora to the last drop of our blood if she were to ascend to the Imperial Throne. We would, of course, hope to consult on the choice of her consort and Emperor.’
Alexius clasped his hands beatifically. ‘Well said, Hetairarch! I applaud the economy of expression you Varangians are noted for.’ The eyes suddenly leapt at Mar, for a moment literally stifling his breath. ‘In matters according to God, I am undisputed on this earth. In matters that pertain to Caesar, my concerns are manifold. I govern a state within a state, with all the predictable difficulties of such administration. Fractious Metropolitans, incompetent bishops, rebellious priests in far-flung sees. Like a state, I have my enemies. Internally the growth of the monastic establishments independent of Patriarchal jurisdiction has become an epidemic that leeches the church of its vital resources. Externally I must contend with malignant impudence of the see of old Rome, which threatens every soul in my state. And let us not forget my mandatory allegiance to the Emperor, Basileus and Autocrator of the Romans. I am crowned by him, and can in theory be deposed by him.’
‘This Emperor will depose no one.’
Alexius made the sign of the cross, praying that the Emperor would be able to complete in Purgatory the penance he had begun here on earth. ‘Yes. It is the Caesar we must concern ourselves with.’
‘The Caesar is in Neorion.’ Mar caught the surprise, and new respect, in Alexius’s cat-quick eyes. ‘Four days now. He is still alive. My presumption is that he was overly assertive and Joannes intends to knead him into a more pliable state. All the more reason that the succession to this Caesar be initiated.’
Alexius looked again into the golden vault. ‘I had intended to convert you, and I see that instead you have begun to persuade me.’ Alexius turned away from the immense cavern of light. ‘God’s patience is infinite. But as He endlessly cautions us to observe, our time here is short.’
The centipede was as long as a man’s hand, and when it crawled over Michael Kalaphates’s thigh, it seemed to wrap his bare limb like a many-legged serpent. He began to scream hysterically and retreated to the corner of his cell, the slime wet and cold against his naked back. He could see nothing. He panted and tried to make his body pull in on itself, disappear, so that the beasts could not recognize him. But the screams reached in, sliding beneath the cracks in the door that even the light could not enter; he could see the screams, they were the only thing he could see, they were sharp, hot vines that curled around him and then grew huge red thorns that pierced right through his flesh.
On the fourth day the locusts came up from the shaft of the abyss, cloaked in armour and smoke. Their light was blinding. They flogged him with screams and led him into the abyss, driving him forward with thorns and brands. The fiery lakes burned on every side, and sulphur poisoned his lungs. The locusts would not let him retch the screams out of his intestines, where the thorns had planted their seed. And then they set him before the serpent, and the serpent spat thunder.
‘Nephew.’
The serpent touched him. It had the face of a man. The screams died and left only hard little pods that rattled in his bowels. Soon the warm liquid dissolved them.
‘Nephew, do you know where you are?’
Yes. Yes. I would tell you but man can no longer hear me. I talk to demons in their own language. Yes.
‘Neorion. Remember Neorion, Nephew.’
Then there were dreams, and in them the armies of Gog and Magog marched upon the earth. The Pantocrator spoke to him, from a mountain far away. He spread out his hands and revealed the kingdoms of the world, all little cities seen from a great distance. And then Michael slept, alone; the demons could not discover him beneath a cloud.
‘Nephew.’
He awoke with a start, the recognition like the sun on a hot sea. Neorion. I have been in Neorion. How long?
‘Do you know where you are, Nephew?’
Michael looked up and blinked. ‘Neorion.’
‘Yes. Five days. Your collapse was more complete than I had intended. ‘Joannes held out a silver goblet; Michael could smell the wine. He took a deep, desperate draught. ‘I am quite confounded as to what to do with you,’ Joannes said. ‘I had hoped you might make the acquaintance of some of your fellow guests, perhaps attend them in their time of travail among us.’ He waved his hand around the dimly lit, forbidding chamber, and the wine surged back up Michael’s gullet even though the racks and instruments Joannes indicated were not in use. ‘Now I feel that such a recourse would destroy your mind.’ Joannes picked up a pair of tongs and distractedly inspected them, clicking the jaws together. ‘You are so weak.’ He paused, as if this phrase were a matter of great philosophical interest to him. ‘You are so weak that I consider you too valuable to destroy. Yes. Consider it as I did. I am not unaware that the greatest prodigies of the sculptor are those in which the shape is first moulded in some malleable substance such as wax or clay, and then fixed in eternal bronze by the foundry master’s art. Because you can be shaped with such ease, you will be the substance in which I create works of astonishing complexity and endurance.’