«However you would have it.» When Abivard shrugged, his corselet made small rattling and clinking sounds. «I await him here, then.»
Tatul strode into the temple. When he returned shortly afterward, the black-robed priest he brought with him was a surprise. Abivard had looked for a doddering, white-bearded elder. But the marvelously holy Hmayeak was in his vigorous middle years, his thick black beard only lightly threaded with gray. His shoulders would have done a smith credit
He spoke to Tatul in the throaty Vaspurakaner language. The nakharar translated for Abivard: «The holy priest says to tell you he does not speak your tongue. He asks if you would rather I interpret or if you prefer to use Videssian, which he does know.»
«We can speak Videssian if you like,» Abivard said directly to Hmayeak. He suspected that the priest was trying to annoy him by denying knowledge of the Makuraner tongue and declined to give him satisfaction by showing irk.
«Yes, very well. Let us do that.» Hmayeak spoke slowly and deliberately, maybe to help Abivard understand him, maybe because he was none too fluent in Videssian himself. «Phos has taken for his own the holy martyrs you men of Makuran have created.» He sketched the sun-circle that was his sign of piety for the good god, going in the opposite direction from the one a Videssian would have used. «How now will you make amends for your viciousness, your savagery, your brutality?»
«They were not mine. They were not those of Mikhran marzban. They were those of Vshnasp marzban, who is dead.» Abivard was conscious of how much he wasn't saying. The policy of which Hmayeak complained had been Vshnasp's, true, but it also had been-and still was-Sharbaraz'. And Vshnasp was not merely dead but slain by the Vaspurakaners. For Abivard to overlook that was as much as to admit that the marzban had had it coming.
«How will you make amends?» Hmayeak repeated. He sounded cautious; he might not have expected Abivard to yield so much so soon. To him Vaspurakan was not just the center of the universe but the whole universe.
To Abivard it was but one section of a larger mosaic. He answered, «Marvelously holy sir, I cannot bring the dead back to life, neither your people who died for your faith nor Vshnasp marzban.» If you push me too hard, you'll make me remember how Vshnasp died. Could Hmayeak read between the lines?
«Phos has the power to raise the dead,» Hmayeak said in his deliberate Videssian, «but he chooses not to use it, so that we do not come to expect it of him. If Phos does not use this power, how can I expect a mere man to do so?»
«What do you expect of me?» Abivard asked. Hmayeak looked at him from under thick, bushy bristling brows. His gaze was very keen yet almost childlike in its straightforward simplicity. Maybe he deserved to be called marvelously holy; he did not seem half priest, half politician, as so many Videssian prelates did.
«You have come to me,» he replied. «This is brave, true, but it also shows you know your people have done wrong. It is for you to tell me what you will do, for me to say what is enough.»
Almost, Abivard warned him aloud against pushing too hard. But Hmayeak sounded not like a man who was pushing but like one stating what he saw as a truth. Abivard decided to accept that and see what sprang from it «Here is what I will do,» he said. «I will let you worship in your own way so long as you pledge to remain loyal to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase. If you for your priesthood make this pledge and if the nakharars and warriors of Vaspurakan abide by it, the rebellion here shall be as if it had never been.»
«You will seek no reprisals against the leaders of the revolt?» That was not Hmayeak speaking, but Tatul.
«I will not,» Abivard said. «Mikhran marzban will not. But all must go back to being as it was before the revolt. Where you have driven Makuraner garrisons from towns and fortresses, you must let them return.»
«You ask us to put on once more the chains of slavery we have broken,» Tatul protested.
«If it comes to war between Vaspurakan and Makuran, you will lose,» Abivard said bluntly. «You lived contentedly under the arrangement you had before, so why not go back to it?»
«Who will win in a war among Vaspurakan and Makuran-and Videssos?» Tatul shot back. «Maniakes, I hear, is not Genesios-he is not altogether hopeless at war. And Videssos follows Phos, as we do. The Empire might be glad to aid us against your false faith.»
Abivard scowled for a moment before replying. Tatul, unlike Hmayeak, could see beyond the borders of his mountainous native land. If the past offered any standard for judgment, he was liable to be right, too-if Videssos had the strength to act as he hoped. «Before you dream such dreams, Tatul,» Abivard said slowly, «remember how far from Vaspurakan any Videssian soldiers are.»
«Videssos may be far.» Tatul pointed toward the northeast «The Videssian Sea is close.»
That made Abivard scowl again. The Videssian Sea, like all the seas bordering the Empire, had only Videssian ships upon it. If Maniakes wanted badly enough to send an army to Vaspurakan, he could do so without fighting his way across the Makuraner-held westlands.
Hmayeak held up his right hand. The middle finger was stained with ink. The priest said, «Let us have peace. If we are allowed to worship as we please, it is enough. Videssos as our master would try to force what it calls orthodoxy upon us, just as the Makuraners try to make us follow the God and the Prophets Four. You know this, Tatul; it has happened before.»
Grudgingly, the nakharar nodded. But then he said, «It might not happen this time. Maniakes is of the princes' blood, after all.»
«He is not of our creed,» Hmayeak said. «The Videssians could never stomach an Avtokrator who acknowledged Vaspur the Firstborn. If he comes to drive away the men of Makuran, be sure he will be doing it for himself and for Videssos, not for us. Let us have peace.»
Tatul muttered under his breath. Then he rounded on Abivard again. «Will the King of Kings agree to the arrangement you propose?»
If he has a drop of sense in his head or concealed anywhere else about his person. But Abivard could not say that. «If I make the arrangement, he will agree to it,» he said, and hoped he was not lying.
«Let it be as he says,» Hmayeak told Tatul. «Vshnasp excepted, the Makuraners seldom lie, and he has made a good name for himself in the wars against Videssos. I do not think he is deceiving us.» He spoke in Videssian so that Abivard could understand.
«I shall do as I say,» Abivard declared. «May the Prophets Four turn their backs on me and may the God drop me into the Void if I lie.»
«I believe you will do as you say,» Tatul answered. «I do not need the marvelously holy Hmayeak to tell me you are honorable; by your words today you have convinced me. Would Vshnasp have misted himself among us? It is to laugh. No, you have honor, brother-in-law to the King of Kings. But has Sharbaraz honor?»
«He is the King of Kings,» Abivard declared. «He is the font of honor.»
«Phos grant it be so,» Tatul said, and sketched his god's sun-sign above his heart.
Roshnani stood, hands on hips, outside the wagon in which she had traveled so many farsangs through the Videssian westlands and Vaspurakan. Facing her might have been harder than entering Shahapivan. «Husband of mine,» she said sweetly, «you are a fool.»
«Suppose I say something like No doubt you're right, but I got away with it?» Abivard answered. «If I do that, can we take the argument as already over? If I tell you I won't take such chances again-»
«You'll be lying,» Roshnani interrupted. «You've come back, so we can argue. That takes a lot of cattle away from the stampede, if you know what I mean. But if you hadn't come back, we would have had a furious fight, let me tell you that.»
«If I hadn't come back-» Abivard was tired. He got a quarter of the way through that before realizing it made no logical sense.