"He is very weak, your Majesty; his will at last begins to fail," Zaidas said quietly. "Otherwise I doubt even now I could have found a way to coax answers from him."
"What have you done?" Krispos asked. "I see no apparatus for the two-mirror test."
"No." By his expression, Zaidas would have been glad never to try the two-mirror test again. "This is half magic, half healing art. I laced the water he drinks with a decoction of henbane, having first used sorcery to remove the taste so he would notice nothing out of the ordinary."
"Well done." After a moment, Krispos added, "I do hope the technique for that is not so simple as to be available to any poisoner who happens to take a dislike to his neighbor—or to me.
"No, your Majesty," Zaidas said, smiling. "In any case, the spell, because it goes against nature, is easy to detect by sorcery. Digenis, of course, was not in a position to do so."
"And a good thing, too," Krispos said. "All right, let's see if he'll give forth the truth now. What questions have you put to him thus far?"
"None of major import. As soon as I saw he was at last receptive, I sent for you at once. I suggest you keep your questions as simple as you can. The henbane frees his mind, but also clouds it—both far more strongly than wine."
"As you say, sorcerous sir." Krispos raised his voice. "Digenis! Do you hear me, Digenis?"
"Aye, I hear you." Digenis' voice was not only weak from weeks of self-imposed starvation but also dreamy and far away.
"Where's Phostis—my son? The son of the Avtokrator Krispos," Krispos added, in case the priest did not realize who was talking to him.
Digenis answered, "He walks the golden path to true piety, striding ever farther from the perverse materialistic heresy that afflicts too many soulblind folk throughout the Empire." The priest held his convictions all the way down to his heart, not merely on the surface of his mind. Krispos had already been sure of that.
He tried again: "Where is Phostis physically?"
"The physical is unimportant," Digenis declared. Krispos glanced over at Zaidas, who bared his teeth in an agony of frustration. But Digenis went on, "If all went as was planned, Phostis is now with Livanios."
Krispos had thought as much, but hearing the plan had been kidnap rather than murder lifted fear from his heart. Phostis could easily have been dumped in some rocky ravine with his throat cut; only the wolves and ravens would have been likely to discover him. The Avtokrator said, "What does Livanios hope to do with him? Use him as a weapon against me?"
"Phostis has a hope of assuming true piety," Digenis said. Krispos wondered if he'd confused him by asking two questions at once. After a few heartbeats, the priest resumed, "For a youth, Phostis resists carnality well. To my surprise, he declined the body of Livanios' daughter, which she offered to see if he could be tempted from the gleaming path. He could not. He may yet prove suitable for an imminent union with the good god rather than revolting and corruptible flesh."
"An imminent union?" All faiths used words in special ways. Krispos wanted to be sure he understood what Digenis was talking about. "What's an imminent union?"
"That which I am approaching now," Digenis answered. "The voluntary abandonment of the flesh to free the spirit to fly to Phos."
"You mean starving yourself to death," Krispos said. Somehow Digenis used his emaciated neck for a nod. Slow horror trickled through Krispos as he imagined Phostis wasting away like the Thanasiot priest. No matter that he and the young man quarreled, no matter even that Phostis might not be his by blood: he would not have wished such a fate on him.
Digenis began to whisper a Thanasiot hymn. Seeking to rock him out of the holy smugness he maintained even in the face of approaching death, Krispos said, "Did you know Livanios uses magic of the school of the Prophets Four to hide Phostis' whereabouts?"
"He is cursed with ambition," Digenis answered. "I knew the spoor, I recognized the stench. He prates of the golden path, but Skotos has filled his heart with greed for power."
"You worked with him, knowing he was evil by your reckoning?" That surprised Krispos; he'd expected the renegade priest to have sterner standards for himself. "And you still claim you walk Thanasios' gleaming path? Are you not a hypocrite?"
"No, for Livanios' ambition furthers the advance of the holy Thanasios' doctrines, whereas yours leads only to the further aggrandizement of Skotos," Digenis declared. "Thus evil is transmuted into good and the dark god confounded."
"Thus sincerity turns to expedience," Krispos said. He'd already gained the impression that Livanios cared more for Livanios than for the gleaming path. In a way, that made the heresiarch more dangerous, for he was liable to be more flexible than an out-and-out fanatic. But in another way, it weakened Livanios: fanatics, by the strength of their beliefs, could sometimes make their followers transcend difficulties from which an ordinary thoughtful man would flinch.
Krispos thought for a while, but could not come up with any more questions about Phostis or the rebels in the field. Turning to Zaidas, he said, "Squeeze all you can from him about the riots and the city and those involved. And then—" He paused.
"Yes, what then, your Majesty?" the mage asked. "Shall we let him continue his decline until he stops breathing one day before long?"
"I'd sooner strike off his head and put it up on the Milestone," Krispos said grimly. "But if I did that now, with him looking as he does, all the Thanasioi in the city would have themselves a new martyr. I'd just as soon do without that, if I could. Better to let him die in quiet and disappear: the good god willing, folk will just forget about him."
"You are wise and cruel," Digenis said. "Skotos speaks through your lips."
"If I thought that were so, I'd step down from the throne and cast off my crown this instant," Krispos said. "My task is to rule the Empire as well as I can devise, and pass it on to my heir so he may do likewise. Having Videssos torn apart in religious strife doesn't seem to me to be part of that bargain."
"Yield to the truth and there will be no strife." Digenis began whispering hymns again in his dusty voice.
"This talk has no point," Krispos said. "I'd sooner build than destroy, and you Thanasioi feel the opposite. I don't want the land burned over, nor do I want it vacant of Videssians who slew themselves for piety's sake. Other folk would simply steal what we've spent centuries building. I will not have that, not while I live."
Digenis said, "The lord with the great and good mind willing, Phostis will prove a man of better sense and truer piety."
Krispos thought about that. Suppose he got his son back, but as a full-fledged fanatical Thanasiot? What then? If that's so, he told himself, it's as well I had three boys, not one. If Phostis came back a Thanasiot, he'd live out his days in a monastery, whether he went there of his own free will of not. Krispos promised himself that: he wouldn't turn the Empire over to someone more interesting in wrecking than maintaining it.
Time enough to worry about that if he ever saw Phostis again, though. He turned to Zaidas. "You've done well, sorcerous sir. Knowing what you've learned now, you should have a better chance of pinpointing Phostis' whereabouts."
"I'll bend every effort toward that end," the mage promised.
Nodding, Krispos stepped out of Digenis' cell. The head gaoler came up to him and said, "A question, your Majesty?" Krispos raised an eyebrow and waited. The gaoler said, "That priest in there, he's getting on toward the end. What happens if he decides he doesn't care to starve himself to death and wants to start eating again?"
"I don't think that's likely to happen." If nothing else, Krispos respected Digenis' sense of purpose. "If it does, though, by all means let him eat; this refusal to take food is his affair, not mine. But notify me immediately."