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pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment. "Fellow brought this here for you."
"Thanks." Rhavas took it. The image stamped on the seal was a good copy of the
portrait of Phos in the
High Temple.
Sozomenos
, Rhavas thought. He broke the seal he took a peculiar pleasure in breaking
the seal, in fact and unrolled the parchment.
The ecumenical patriarch's handwriting was thin and spidery, but clear enough
to be easy to read. You would do well to think of disappearing, Sozomenos
wrote. The synod will surely condemn you, and you will as surely face the most
severe punishment. Is it not better to be refuted while absent than to subject
yourself to the rigors of the new regime?
Walking over to the hearth, Rhavas tossed the note into the fire. The
parchment charred and crumpled and burst into flame. In no more than a handful
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of heartbeats, it was gone. Its memory, though . . . That lingered. Sozomenos
opposed Rhavas with all his heart with all his soul, in fact. Even so, the
patriarch did not seem to want to see him dead.
That sort of magnanimity . . . made no sense to Rhavas. Were he ecumenical
patriarch and Sozomenos his theological rival, he would have done everything
he could to destroy the other man. Did Stylianos'
soldiers have orders to arrest any priest caught trying to sneak out of the
city? Rhavas wouldn't have been surprised.
"What was it, holy sir?" Lardys asked. "What was that all about?"
"Nothing," Rhavas answered. "Nothing at all."
* * *
In due course, the synod reconvened. The soldiers outside the High Temple eyed
Rhavas with mixed scorn and caution. The caution won: none of them had the
nerve to mock. The story of what had happened to Arkadios plainly had lost
nothing in the telling. Who would want to take a chance that the same thing
might happen to him?
Priests and prelates drew aside from Rhavas when he walked into the High
Temple. Yes, he might have been carrying some loathsome disease.
And so I am
, he thought.
The truth. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear
. And, now, he also carried the wrong blood in his veins, which only made
things worse.
Sozomenos stood there talking with a couple of ecclesiastics. He broke away
from them as soon as he saw Rhavas. "Very holy sir!" the patriarch called,
hurrying toward him. "Did you not get my letter?" His face was a mask of
distress.
"I got it," Rhavas said coolly.
"Then why did you not heed it?"
Rhavas looked at him looked through him. "I think that should be plain enough,
most holy sir."
"No." Sozomenos shook his head. "No, it is not plain at all. Unless " He broke
off, bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up
again, tears glinted in his eyes. "I did not I
truly did not believe the dark god had taken up residence in your heart, to
make you mistrust those who would be your friend even if they think you
mistaken." When he spat in rejection of Skotos, it was with obvious sorrow.
Of all the things in the world Rhavas could not stand, being pitied stood
perhaps highest on the list.
"Curse you, Sozomenos," he snarled, his voice clotted with hate. "Curse you to
death."
And nothing happened.
Astonished, Rhavas stared at the ecumenical patriarch. He'd felt no resistance
to the curse, as he had with Koubatzes and the mages who rode with Himerios.
It simply . . . had not touched Sozomenos and for the life of him, Rhavas
could not understand why not.
"I will pray for you, very holy sir," the patriarch said quietly. "Those who
are lost are not always lost forever." He gathered himself. "Since you are
here, we shall have to proceed with this whole unfortunate business. If you
will excuse me . . ."
"Wait," Rhavas said, and Sozomenos did. "Curse you, why don't you fall?"
There. He'd said it again, and meant it with all his being.
Sozomenos gave him a sad little shrug. "You, it seems, have your god, in whose
powers you trust. Can you not see I have mine as well?"
He walked off toward the pulpit. Had Rhavas been less steeped in the certainty
of his own rightness . . .
But he was what he was. He was sure he understood why the world worked as it
did. And anything that happened to contradict that? He did not he would
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not see it.
As courteously as if Rhavas had not tried to kill him, Sozomenos gave him the
floor and let him do his best to persuade the assembled ecclesiastics of his
new doctrine. He did his best, piling more and more graphic examples and more
quotations from Phos' holy scriptures atop the introduction he had given in
the synod's earlier session. He alarmed them. He horrified them. He persuaded
them . . . not at all.
Some of their counterarguments also came from the scriptures. Others were more
pragmatic. "What will the Avtokrator Stylianos give us if we fall into this
black heresy?" a plump abbot asked rhetorically. "He'll give us the sword,
that's what, and put all our heads on the Milestone. If the very holy sir
wants his head there, that's his business. If he wants ours up there with his,
that's a different story."
"Even if Phos did rule the world, as you mistakenly believe, your cowardice
would be plenty to send you to the ice," Rhavas sneered. "And it's a pity the
ice is not fire, for you would burn very well."
"That will be enough, both of you." Sozomenos might have been reproving a
couple of small boys, not two of the most powerful clerics in the Empire of
Videssos.
The abbot, his face brick red, gobbled and sputtered but no doubt luckily for
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