"If he is here at all," Krispos added.
"Aye, your Majesty, if he is here at all."
In a park in the heart of Pliskavos stood an ornately carved wooden palace, the former residence of the khagans of Kubrat.
A new carving was set above the doorway: twin three-pronged lightning flashes. Zaidas' finger stabbed toward them. "That is Skotos' mark!" He sketched Phos' sun-circle.
So did Krispos. "Harvas laired here, then?" he asked.
"Harvas once laired here," Zaidas agreed. "Be thankful you cannot feel the effluvium of his past power." He grew thoughtful. "I wonder if now he seeks to hide there, hoping no one will notice his present small bad odor in the great stench of the past. We must closely examine that building."
One of the other Videssian mages, a stout, middle-age man named Gepas, stirred in the saddle and said, "Do pray remember we're not your servants, Zaidas."
"Are you the Empire's servants, Gepas?" Krispos asked sharply. The wizard stared, startled. His eyes fell. He nodded. "Good," Krispos said. "For a moment there, I wondered. Do you deny that Zaidas speaks good sense, or do you just wish you'd spoken before he did? Does Harvas' palace need looking at, or not?"
"It does, your Majesty," Gepas admitted.
"Then let's look at it." Krispos urged Progress forward and tied the horse at the rail in front of the palace.
Neither his guards nor the mages would hear of his going in first. He'd wondered if the doors would be locked, but they opened at the guards' touch. Zaidas turned to Gepas. With unaffected politeness, the young wizard asked, "Sir, would it please you to stand guard here at the doorway, to ensure that Harvas cannot sneak past you?"
"Better, youngling." Gepas puffed out his chest and pulled in his belly. His voice got deeper. "Aye, I'll do that. He shan't escape by this road."
"Good." Zaidas' face was perfectly straight. Krispos had to work to keep his the same way. He wondered whether Zaidas was a natural innocent or a schemer subtle beyond his years. Either way, he got results.
Wizards fanned out through the wooden palace. Krispos stayed with Zaidas. The guards, naturally, stayed with him. Together they made their way into the hall that was, Krispos supposed, the equivalent of the Grand Courtroom back at the capital. He pointed to the white throne that stood out against the gloom at the far end. "Is that ivory, like the patriarch's throne?"
Zaidas studied it, murmuring briefly to himself. His large larynx worked. "It's—bone," he said at last. Just then Krispos saw Skotos' symbol on the wall above the high seat. He decided not to ask what sort of bone.
The hall held a sour, metallic smell. Without much enthusiasm, Krispos walked down the hard dirt aisleway toward the throne. A few feet in front of it, his boot heels sank into a soggy spot. The smell got worse. "That's blood," he said, hoping Zaidas would contradict him.
Zaidas didn't. He said, "We already knew Harvas practiced abominations. We also know now that he is not in this hall, which was our purpose in coming here. Let's go on to see where he may be."
"Yes, let's," Krispos said in a small voice, admiring the young mage's ability to stay calm in the face of horror.
To the left of the bone throne was a door. In the twilight that filled the hall with all torches dark, its outline was invisible until one came right up to it. Again, Krispos' guards would not let him go in first. One of them tugged at the latch. The door did not open. The guardsman used his axe with a will.
Moments later he tried the door again. This time he easily palled it open. When he did, he and everyone else in the hall drew back a pace, or more than a pace, for darkness seemed to well out toward them. Krispos' hand shaped the sun-circle. Loudly and clearly Zaidas declared, "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."
The spreading darkness faded. Krispos wondered if it had really been there. Even after it was gone, the open doorway remained black and forbidding. He glanced toward Zaidas. The young wizard licked his lips and seemed to gather his courage. Then he strode into the room. Remembering Trokoundos, Krispos started to shout for him to come back.
But Zaidas said, "Ah, as I thought," with such scholarly satisfaction that Krispos knew he'd come to no harm. The mage went on, "It is a shrine dedicated to Skotos. They speak of them at the Sorcerers' Collegium, but I'd never seen one before."
Krispos had never seen one, either, or wanted to see one. But his pride would not let him stay back while Zaidas was inside. He was glad to have his guardsmen form up around him. They went into the small room together.
The hall of the throne had been dark. Even so, his eyes needed a minute or so to adapt to the deeper shadow inside. As the eye went to the altar in one of Phos' temples, so it did here. Indeed, this altar at first glance resembled one from a temple—not surprising, Krispos supposed, since Harvas the evil mage, the apostate, had in his earlier days been Rhavas the prelate of Skopentzana. But no altar dedicated to Phos would have had knives lying on it.
One of Phos' temples would have been full of icons, holy images of the good god and his work in the world. As Krispos' vision adapted to the gloom, he saw icons on the wall above the altar here, too. He saw the dark god, wreathed in blackness, fighting Phos, driving him, and slaying him. He saw other things, as well, things he thought no man could have dreamed of taking brush to panel to portray. He saw things that made the forest of stakes outside Imbros seem a mercy. One of his guardsmen, a warrior who delighted in battle like most Halogai, lurched out into the great hall and was noisily sick there.
"This is what he would have brought to Videssos the city," Zaidas said quietly.
"I know," Krispos said. But knowing and seeing were not the same. He'd found that out in a different context when he'd got word of Evripos' birth while Tanilis was in his bed. He looked at the icons again, and at the altar. He saw small bones among the knives. His little sister Kosta would have had bones about that size, a couple of years before cholera killed her. For a moment he thought he would be sick himself.
"A pity the flames from the wall didn't reach here," he said. "We'll just have to fire this building ourselves." More than anything else, he wanted Phos' icons to burn.
One of the guardsmen clapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. Zaidas said, "Excellent, your Majesty. Fire and its light are gifts from Phos, and will cleanse the evil that has put its roots down here. May something better arise from the ashes. And," he added, his voice suddenly hopeful, "if Harvas has managed to elude us here, fire will cleanse the world of him as well."
"So may it be," Krispos said. After that, he was not ashamed to leave the dark chapel. Zaidas followed close on his heels. The young mage carefully closed the splintered door behind him, as if to make sure what dwelt inside stayed there.
All the wizards gathered by the entrance that Gepas still guarded. They'd not found Harvas, nor had any of the rest of them stumbled onto anything as black as Skotos' altar. Not one, however, offered a word of protest at what Krispos proposed to do to the palace.
He unhitched Progress and led the gelding well away from the wooden building. The mages still kept a close watch on it, as if they could sense even at a distance the evil Harvas had brought into it. Very likely they could, Krispos thought. Most of his guardsmen stayed by him, but one hurried back to the imperial camp.
The guard returned fairly soon. He was carrying a jar of lamp oil and a smoking torch. He handed Krispos the torch, unstoppered the jar, and splashed oil on the palace wall. "Light it, Majesty," he urged.