"Aye, your Majesty." Zaidas' voice was low and troubled. "The good god willing, others from the Sorcerers' Collegium will have more success than I at smashing through his protective shell of fanaticism."
Accompanied by his bodyguards, Krispos left the cell and the subterranean jail. About halfway up the stairs to the entrance hall, one of the Halogai said, "Forgive me. Majesty, but may I ask if I heard the blue-robe aright? Did he not blame you there for failing to flay him?"
"Aye, that's just what he did, Frovin," Krispos answered.
The northerner's blue eyes mirrored his confusion. "Majesty, I do not understand. I do not fear hurt and gore; that were unmanly. But neither do I run forth and embrace them like man clasping maid."
"Nor do I," Krispos said. "A streak of martyrdom runs through some of the pious in Videssos, though. Me, I'd sooner live for the good god than die for him."
"Spoken like a man of sense," Frovin said. The other bodyguards rumbled approval, down deep in their chests.
When he went outside, the gray light of winter dawn was building. The air smelled of smoke, but with stoves, fireplaces, and braziers by the tens of thousands, the air of Videssos the city always had a smoky tang to it. No great curtains of black billowed up into the lightening sky. If the Thanasioi had thought to burn down the city, thus far they'd failed.
Back in the plaza of Palamas, Evripos still slept. To Krispos' surprise, he found Katakolon in earnest conversation with Thokyodes the fire captain. "If you're sure everything's out in that district, why don't you get some rest?" his youngest son was saying. "You won't do us or the city any good if you're too worn to answer the next summons."
"Aye, that's good advice, young Majesty," Thokyodes answered, saluting. "We'll kip right out here, if that suits—and if you can find us some blankets."
"Barsymes!" Katakolon called. Krispos nodded approvingly—Katakolon might not know where things were, but he knew who would. His son spotted him. "Hello, Father. Just holding things together as best I could; Barsymes told me you were busy with that madman of a priest."
"So I was. I thank you for the help. Do we have the upper hand?"
"We seem to," Katakolon said, more caution in his voice than Krispos was used to hearing there.
"Good enough," Krispos said. "Now let's see if we can keep it."
Toward midmorning, riot flared again in the quarter south of Middle Street. The soldiers Krispos had sent in the night before stayed loyal, much to his relief. Better still, the wind stayed calm, which gave Thokyodes' crew a fighting chance against the blazes set by the heretics and rioters—not identical groups; some of the brawlers arrested were out for what they reckoned piety, others just for loot.
When messengers reported that spasm spent, Krispos raised cups of wine with both Katakolon and Evripos, convinced the worst was past. Then another messenger arrived, this one a jailer from under the government office building. "What now?" Krispos asked.
"It concerns the matter of the prisoner Digenis the priest," the fellow answered.
"Well, what about him?" Krispos said, wishing the goaler wouldn't talk like what he was now that he'd come away from the cells and into the sun.
"Your Majesty, he has refused alimentation," the man declared. Krispos' upraised eyebrow warned him he'd better talk straighter than that. He did try: "Your Majesty, he won't eat his victuals. He declares his intention to starve himself to death."
For the first time since he grew old enough to jump over a bonfire instead of falling into one, Phostis did no leaping on Midwinter's Day. Whatever ill-luck he'd accumulated over the past year remained unburned. He wasn't mewed up in his monklike cell in the keep of Etchmiadzin; he'd been allowed out and about for some weeks. But no fires blazed on street corners anywhere in the town.
Dark streets on Midwinter's Day struck him as unnatural, even while he accompanied Olyvria and—inevitably— Syagrios to one of Etchmiadzin's temples. The service was timed for sunset, which came early not only became this was the shortest day of the year but also because the sun, instead of descending to a smooth horizon, disappeared behind the mountains to the west.
Night came down like an avalanche. Inside the temple, whose strong, blocky architecture spoke of Vaspurakaner builders, darkness seemed absolute; the Thanasio: unlike the orthodox, did not celebrate the light on Midwinter's Day but rather confronted their fear of the dark. Not a torch, not a candle burned inside the temple.
Standing there in the midst of blackness, Phostis peered about, trying to see something, anything. For all the good his eyes did, he might as well have been blindfolded again. His shiver had nothing to do with the cold that filled the temple along with night. Never had the menace of Skotos seemed so real, so close.
Seeking assurance where sight gave none, he reached out and clasped Olyvria's hand in his own. She squeezed back hard; he wondered if this eerie, silent ritual was as hard on her, on all the Thanasioi, as it was on him.
"Someone will start screaming soon," he whispered, not least to keep himself from becoming that someone. His breathless voice seemed to echo through the temple, though he knew even Olyvria could hardly hear him.
"Yes," she whispered back. "It happens sometimes. I remember when—"
He didn't find out what she remembered. Her words were lost in a great exhalation of relief from the whole congregation. A priest carrying a single candle strode up the aisle toward the altar. Every eye swung toward that glowing point as if drawn by a lodestone.
"We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind," the priest intoned, and everyone in the temple joined in the creed with greater fervor than Phostis had ever known, "by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."
The congregation's amens came echoing back from the conical dome that surmounted the altar. Often, to Phostis, Phos' creed had become mere words to be quickly gabbled through
without thinking on what they meant. Not now. In the cold and frightening dark, they, like the tiny flame from the candle the priest held on high, took on new meaning, new importance. If they were not, if light was not—what then? Only black, only ice. Phostis shivered again.
The priest moved the candle to and fro and said, "Here is the soul, adrift in a creation not its own, the sole light floating on an ocean of darkness. It moves here, it moves there, always surrounded by—things." Coming out of the gloom that prevailed even at the altar, the word had a frightening power.
"But the soul is not a—thing," the priest went on. "The soul is a spark from the infinite torch of Phos, trapped in a world made by the foe of sparks and the greater foe of greater sparks. The things that surround us distract us from the pursuit of goodness, holiness, and piety, which are all that truly matter.
"For our souls endure forever, and will be judged forever. Shall we then turn toward that which does not endure? Food turns to dung, fire to ash, fine raiment to rags, our bodies to stench and bones and then to dust. What boots it, then, whether we gorge on sweetmeats, toast our homes till we sweat in the midst of winter, drape ourselves with silks and furs, or twitch to the brief deluded passions—miscalled pleasures—that spring from the organs we better use to void ourselves of dross?"
Contemplating infinite judgment, contemplating infinite punishment for the sins he, like any mortal, had surely committed, made Phostis want to tear his grip free from Olyvria's. Anything involving base matter in any way was surely evil, surely sufficient to cast him down to the ice forevermore.
But Olyvria clung to him harder than she had before. Maybe, he told himself, she needed comfort and reassurance. Granting her that spiritual boon might outweigh his guilt for noticing how warm and smooth her skin was. He did not let go of her hand.