The two big eunuchs flanked Haraldr and each firmly but decorously took an elbow. The hallway eventually turned into a large, sun-flooded arcade. Haraldr squinted out over a blazing expanse of white marble. He could see patches of peacock-blue sea framing a massive temple-like structure several hundred ells away. Then he turned to his left. He gasped and knew for certain where he was.
Spread out over a gentle slope was a glittering jewel box that was an entire city. Fantastic, multicoloured buildings stood on verdant terraces laced with neat rows of flowering trees, shimmering azure ponds and pools, and beds of vermilion blossoms. Scores of domes, held aloft by columns of brilliant jade-green marble or deep plum-coloured porphyry, forming swirling patterns so deft and intricate that they seemed to have been painted against the backdrop of the sea and sky. Here in a magical city within the Great City was the home of the Emperor.
The eunuchs tightened their grip and led Haraldr towards the prodigious building straight ahead; six white columns, so huge in girth that were they hollow a man could build a comfortable cottage within them, thrust up to a marble roof at a dizzying height. Beneath the portico, two-storey silver double doors, embossed with fierce-visaged, armoured eagles, were surrounded by a perfect, motionless semicircle of powerful, dark-eyed men in burnished steel breastplates and steel helms. Haraldr observed the guards’ dusky, foreign features with a sharpness in his breast; these men were Khazars, from Serah’s homeland. The armoured arc split momentarily to allow Haraldr and his escort to pass. The enormous doors slid open as silently as those in the bath.
Paradise. It was not simply the vastness of the hall; a bowman could not have shot the length of the jewelled cavern and the ceiling, coffered with elaborate gold beams flecked with silver medallions, soaring like a fantastic sky. It was the supernatural sumptuousness: pearl-white marble columns topped with plum-coloured capitals wreathed with carved vines and flower buds, candelabra that looked like lacy silver clouds dotted with glinting ice crystals, curtains of braided ivy, garlands of pink roses, hanging tapestries stitched with lustrous flowers.
The entire back of the hall was cloaked with a vast purple curtain damasked with hundreds of huge eagles embroidered in gold. Forming a sort of funnel beneath the hangings were two ranks of soldiers in golden armour, bearing standards topped with golden eagles and dragons. A single figure stood at the very end of the funnel, in front of a now-visible seam where the two halves of the curtain met. Haraldr’s heart leapt to his throat.
This man was as tall and broad as Hakon. He wore a golden breastplate and a plumed golden helmet with metal cheek pieces folded over his entire face, concealing all save glints of blue behind the eye slits. A Varangian Guard, certainly, and very likely Mar Hunrodarson himself. I would not have expected this Paradise to end at the executioner’s block, thought Haraldr with a groin-stabbing renewal of his fear. But I am told that the Griks rarely do the expected.
The Varangian stood perfectly motionless, an immense silver-bladed broad-axe inlaid with elaborate gold niello pressed to his chest. Like a rodent mesmerized by a snake, Haraldr was drawn to the eerie glimmer of life visible within the eye slits, expecting some evidence of malice or recognition. But the guarded irises were so still, they might have been bits of glass.
The curtain drew aside slightly and the eunuchs led Haraldr past the rigid Varangian. The rest came like a fantastic dream. He was in a vast, rose-scented, many-domed hall echoing with an unsettling, powerfully sonorous music that pulsed within his very bones. The hail was filled with a living rainbow, hundreds of utterly motionless, silk-sheathed, bejewelled figures arrayed in perfectly concentric semicircles, each ring a different dazzling hue. The rainbow was broken in the middle by a great massing of incandescent gold: a throne the size of a small building flanked by two large trees with leaves of delicate gold; gem-bright birds perched in the gilt branches. As Haraldr approached, the birds tittered and called in a supernatural melody, cocking their brilliant heads and flapping their wings. Haraldr came to the terrifying realization that the birds were in fact jewels, creatures of enamelled gold to which somehow the Griks had given the power of both movement and voice. Then the beasts came to life from behind the trees and the blood drained from Haraldr’s face and his knees buckled. Lions! Creatures of the gods! The great beasts rushed forward to devour him, tails pounding the ground and huge jaws gaping. They roared like the trumpets of doom, and Haraldr reflexively felt for the pommel of the sword that he had been forced to leave back in the barracks.
The lions halted as if the gods themselves had turned them to stone. Reason tried to command Haraldr’s whirling senses. Not stone but metal. The lions were incredible metal creatures, just like the birds. But this deduction did nothing to assuage fear. What wizardry, or, more frighteningly, what knowledge did this Emperor possess?
The huge throne was covered with a purple satin canopy and encrusted with gemstones and iridescent white pearls. The giant god who might have occupied this grandiose furnishing was not present. Instead, a mechanical man sat to one side of the vast cushion. His body was metal. No, he was swathed in a full-length tunic of stiff purple brocade covered with mazelike courses of gems and precious spangles and flocking eagles of flickering gold thread. He wore a jewelled, helmet-like cap, and no winter sky was as thick with stars as this cap was with gemstones; they spilled from the crown in sparkling runnels that streamed down the mechanical man’s eerily human cheeks. The device’s eyes were agates polished to a watery sheen. Kristr! Not agates. These eyes moved! They were wet with life. This was a living man! No, not a man. A god. Perhaps all-conquering Kristr himself.
The two eunuchs threw Haraldr to the floor and prostrated themselves alongside him; this ritual of obeisance was repeated three times. Then the eunuchs raised Haraldr to his feet. He looked for the throne and moaned with awe. The entire gold edifice floated high overhead, the purple canopy seemingly grazing the gold-flecked dome. Kristr – He could be no other – looked down on him from his rightful position above all mortals.
His head craned back, dully gaping, Haraldr tried to focus his entire will on reason’s moribund whispers, and for a moment he found a certain mental equilibrium. Metal dragons and lions and birds and fire that burns on water and now this. The rest are the creations of men, and so this must be as well.
He clung to that thought even as his terrified awe rushed him off, as savagely as the currents of the Dnieper, on the dark river of ignorance and superstition. No, no, reason struggled, all the works of men. But if this is the Emperor, does it matter that he is not immortal Kristr? He is a man made a god, with the power of the gods.
An elderly eunuch in a gold-hemmed robe approached slowly and deliberately; age spots covered his bald head. He looked directly at Haraldr, his steady gaze a startling contrast to the condescending evasion practised by the lesser officials. The eunuch’s pale grey eyes were sad, weary and ancient, as if he had seen the cares of a dozen lives. He motioned Haraldr to bring his head down.
‘Your father, the Lord of the Entire World, Emperor, Basileus and Autocrator of the Romans, greets you, his son,’ the eunuch whispered next to Haraldr’s ear; his Norse was fluent. ‘His Imperial Majesty has taken a personal interest in the matter of the death of the Manglavite.’ Haraldr’s entire body quaked as if he were bewitched. ‘After ordering officers of the court to take depositions in the matter, and advised of their findings, he has instructed the Logothete of the Praetorium to release his files concerning the incident of the third of June, fifth year of the indication, year of the Creation six thousand five hundred and thirty-three. Your father the Emperor offers you probationary conditions, subject to summary revocation. You may remain past the winter, but you are not to be readmitted to the palace, nor will you or your men be offered service under the Imperial standards until your files have been readmitted to the Logothete of the Praetorium.’ The eunuch paused and furrowed the thin, veined skin of his brow. That will be in approximately eight months, before the spring campaigns. You may re-enter the city during this period only under conditions of private employ approved by the Logothete of the Symponus.’