The Golden Horn (15 page)

“Yes,” Alf answered. Off to the side a courtier
drooped against his fellow, limp with ennui.

“Cherish your eyes, little one. So beautiful they are,
so clever to take in the light.” Isaac Angelos trailed off. For an
instant he seemed to subside into a torpor; abruptly he drew himself up in his
seat. His fists clenched on the arms. “You,” he said in a new
voice, a strong one. “They call you Theo. What is the rest of it?
Theophilos? Theodoros? Theophylaktos?”

“Only Theo, Sire.”

Above the bandage the Emperor’s brow clouded. “No
man has but half a name.”

One of the sorcerers made his way to the Emperor’s
side. He was a prince of his kind, a turbaned Moor with a smooth ageless face
the color of ebony and a fixed, serpent’s stare.

“Your Sacred Majesty,” he said softly in perfect
Greek, “no man may have so little of a name. But is he a man?”

Michael Doukas stirred beside Alf, as languid as ever. “A
boy, then. A youth, in courtesy, and quite likely to become a man. Of that,
learned master, I can assure you.”

No one quite ventured to smile. Skeptical of the Moor’s
magics they might be, but they knew enough to fear his influence.

He did not deign to reveal anger. “I questioned not
his gender but his species. Look, sacred Eyes. Is that the face of a mortal
man?”

“He is very fair,” sang the dwarf, “like
to the old gods.”

The sorcerer bent, speaking in the Emperor’s ear. “Your
Majesty, his name, his face, hint at great mysteries. The tales you have heard,
the marvels of which your servants have told you—”

“Marvels,” Isaac Angeles echoed him. “Magic.
Mysteries. An angel in the fire. It burned, my City, like old Rome. But nobody
sang its fall to the lyre. He was working miracles. A house fell down and he
walked out of it, no scratch or burn, and in his arms a man of twice his bulk.
He laid on his hands and men healed. He healed them. He heals them. Come here, child,
and lay your hands on me.”

Alf spoke gently, with compassion. “Sire, if I have a
gift or a skill, it is of God’s giving. But He has granted me no power to
restore what is gone. I cannot give you back your eyes.”

The Moor was a basilisk, the courtiers carrion birds, circling,
waiting for their prey to fall. None yawned now or wished for release.

The Emperor turned his head from side to side as if to scan the
audience. “No healing? No recompense? A throne—how easy after all
to win it back. But I would rather have my eyes.”

He leaned forward. “They said there would be a
miracle. They said one would come. It was in the stars, and in the crystal, and
in the fires.”

“Aye,” intoned the Moor. “The time will
come, beloved of God, when you will see again. You will have your eyes, your youth
and strength, your empire in all its glory. You shall rule the world.”

Alf stooped and lifted the orb. Its fall had dented it,
shaken loose a jewel or two, bent askew the cross that crowned it.

The courtiers had taken up the sorcerer’s
proclamation, an interchange of verse and response, caught up short as Alf
raised the sphere of gold. Suddenly he was weary of all this, the ritual, the
tarnished splendor, the Emperor whose mind wandered on the paths of madness.
They had made him so, these fawning servants, ruled by men who boasted of power
and magic.

Charlatans, all of them. Liars, sycophants, parasites.

The Moor, who had more knowledge than most if no wisdom,
drew back a step. In his eyes Alf saw himself, a frail figure in a great weight
of soiled silk, grown suddenly terrible.

“Sire,” Alf said quietly in silence thick enough
to touch, “your empire has fallen from your hand.”

“Then,” said Isaac Angelos, reasonably, “give
it back to me.”

“I cannot.”

“I am the Emperor. I command you.”

“I cannot,” Alf repeated. “It has gone the
way of your eyes. There is no healing for you, Lord of the Angeloi. Your eyes
are gone. Your empire is gone. Your city will fall, because you have not ruled
it but have sat upon your throne dreaming of miracles, paying heed to these
false prophets who gather like jackals about you.”

“Lies!” thundered the Moor. “Who has sent
you, O liar without power? The Doge? Marquis Boniface? Or,” he added with
a venomous glance at Alf’s guide, “our own Doukas?”

Alf regarded the sorcerer calmly. “His Majesty
summoned me, as you know well who brought my name to him. What was it that you
wished for? That I add my voice to yours, echo your feigned foreseeings,
strengthen your lies with mine? Or that I speak the truth as all my kind are
bound to do, and perish for it, thus removing the threat of my presence? For
true power must not endure if smooth words and conjurers’ tricks are to
prevail.”

The Moor’s lip curled. “A poisonous serpent, you
are, bloated with lies and twisted prophecies.”

With a sudden movement the Emperor smote the arm of his throne.
“Prophesy, boy. Prophesy!”

“No one commands my power,” Alf said softly, “not
even His Sacred Majesty.”

“Command it yourself, then,” snapped Isaac
Angelos.

Alf did not quite smile. “Very well, Sire. What would
you know?”

That took even the Emperor aback. “What? There are no incantations?
No fires or crystals or arcane instruments?”

“I am not a sorcerer, Sire. My power comes from
within. Ask and I will answer.”

The Emperor paused for a long while, stroking his beard. At last
he spoke. “Where is my gold sandal?”

In the breaking of tension, one or two of the courtiers laughed.

Alf betrayed neither scorn nor fear. “You asked me to prophesy,
Sire, not to find what you have lost. Your sandal,” he added coolly, “lies
with its mate in the dragon chest that came from Chin, under your robe of
crimson silk embroidered with pearls.”

The Emperor’s fingers knotted in his beard. “Prophesy,”
he said. “Prophesy!”

Alf looked up into the haggard blinded face, with the orb a dead
weight in his hands. The crowd of courtiers waited, minds and faces set for
mockery. He drew a long breath and loosed the bonds of his seeing.

This must be how one felt after love: this glorious release,
this utter lassitude. Alf’s power, sated, returned docilely to its cage;
he turned from it to the outer world, sighing a little, suddenly aware of his
body’s weariness.

Rough hands seized him. Voices roared in his ears, shaping slowly
into words. “Liar! Impostor! Latin spy!”

The hall was in an uproar. Even the Emperor was on his feet,
howling like a beast. “Kill him!
Kill him
!”

The hands began to drag him away. They belonged to Varanrgians,
he realized. Even yet he was too numb and spent to be afraid. The last thing he
saw before a scarlet darkness enfolded him was the Emperor’s mad rage,
and beyond it the Moor’s wide white smile.

As the tumult receded, Alf struggled free of the Guardsman’s
cloak that had wrapped him about. They half dragged, half carried him down a
long glittering corridor, marble-cold and deserted.

Alf fought to walk; after a step or two they let him,
keeping still a firm grip on his arms. “Where are you taking me?”
he asked them.

Neither replied. Nor did their faces tell him anything. The eyes
of both were blue and hard.

The palace was a labyrinth, their passage through it
tortuous and interminable. Once they passed from building to building under the
sodden sky. Alf’s feet ached; he might have laughed at himself, the
tireless pilgrim, grown too soft from his months in the City to walk any proper
distance.

Abruptly the Guards halted. A door opened; they thrust him through
it and slammed it behind him.

He had fallen to one knee. He straightened slowly, shaking back
his hair. This was no prison cell. A reception room, he thought, furnished with
a chair or two, a wine table, a divan beside a glowing brazier. The walls
shimmered with mosaics, beasts and birds in a garden, a golden fish leaping
high out of a fountain spray.

His eyes returned from the wall to the divan. On it reclined
a languid smiling figure. “Greetings,” said Michael Doukas.

There was a chair nearby; Alf took it.

“No doubt of it,” observed his host, “you
have style. Courage, too, or should I call it folly? To prophesy so calmly, in such
exquisite detail, and to his own face, the downfall of an emperor.”

“He asked for it,” Alf said.

“He asked for a web of soothing lies. It’s well
for you, sir prophet, that he never asked your true name or nation, and that his
sorcerer knows you only as the healer of Saint Basil’s.”

Alf’s entrails knotted. Michael Doukas smiled, arching
a delicate brow. “So, Alfred of Saint Ruan’s, is your courage not absolute?
Or do you fear for your friends in House Akestas?”

Alf clamped his jaw, but the other read the question in his eyes.

“I have my spies. The Doge admires you, I understand,
though you’ve never performed for him as you have for us. We’re enormously
flattered, if somewhat disconcerted. Has anyone ever called you Cassandra?”

“Yes.”

“Indeed?” Michael Doukas was interested. “Someday
you’ll have to tell me the tale. I plan to survive this, you see. The others
will tell themselves that you lied, that all your dooms were simply empty
words. I shall build upon them.”

“Can you be sure that I tell the truth?”

“How not? I’ve read a book, and I’ve heard
a tale or two. I know what you are, Master Alfred. Alf—Theo—who
named you so wisely and so well?”

“A monk in Anglia and the Master of Saint Basil’s.”
Alf raised his chin. “You aren’t alone in your wisdom, sir. The Moor
too knows what I am.”

“What. Not precisely who. Or,” added Michael
Doukas, “where.”

“So,” Alf said. “What will you do with me?”

The dark eyes glinted upon him. “I have you in my
power, don’t I? It’s not often I have to deal with one quite so
good to look on. More than good, if truth be told. What is it like to look in
the mirror and see what you see?”

He expected an answer. Alf gave it, shortly. “Maddening.”

Michael Doukas laughed. “Indeed! You’re behind
it and can’t enjoy it. There’s a tragedy for old Euripides.”

“Aristophanes,” Alf muttered.

Again that sweet, sexless laughter. “Such wit! You
have an alarming array of talents, master seer. And very little patience to
spare for me. I play with you, you think, like a cat amusing itself before the
kill. No doubt you expect me to keep you here until I tire of you, then hand
you over to His Majesty’s torturers.”

“You don’t serve the Angeloi,” Alf said. “You
only seem to. Are you going to make me prophesy for your black-browed cousin?”

“No,” answered Michael Doukas, “of course
not. My handsome kinsman has no use for a seer. I serve myself, Master Alfred,
and perhaps the City. If what you foretell comes to pass, there will be great
need of a man with wit and intelligence and a thorough knowledge of the empire’s
workings. Rulers may change with dismaying regularity, but a competent administrator
is worth more than a hundred kings.”

“And I, who know all of this, am in your hands. In all
senses. The Emperor has decreed my death. You know all there is to know of me;
most particularly that while I have no dread of my own death, I feel quite
otherwise about the deaths of my friends. Again I ask you. What will you do
with me?”

“I like you, Master Alfred. Yes,” Michael Doukas
said, “I like you very much indeed. Brave as only a Latin can be,
clever—almost—as a Greek, and completely unafraid to tell the truth.
Would you enter my service?”

“What would I be? Your prophet? Your bedmate? Your fool?”

“Fools are a Frankish affectation. A prophet you’ve
already been. The other …you are heartbreakingly beautiful. But you are
also quite obviously, and quite tiresomely, the sort of young man who cares
only for women.”

Alf’s face was stony. Michael Doukas smiled. “No,
I want you for other things. To look at, perhaps. To tell me the truth.”

“Then you should find yourself a slave. Or an
intelligent lapdog.”

“And not a Latin wanderer who tries to pass as a
Greek? Rather successfully, I might add. Your accent could merely be provincial.”

“I’ve refused to serve the Franks, who after all
are my own people. Should I turn traitor?”

”Some might say you already have. You’re here,
are you not?”

“Not of my own accord.”

“No one forced you to come to the City.”

“I came as a pilgrim. I remain as a healer. To which occupation
I would like very much to return.”

“Well then, you shall be my physician.”

Alf regarded him with a clear pale stare. “You are in
excellent health and likely to live to a great age if your intrigues do not
bring you to a sudden end. You have no need of my services, Michael Doukas.”

“How proud you are! Lucifer before his fall.”
Michael Doukas rose and smoothed his robes. “You are adamant?”

“Yes.”

“So.” The eunuch raised his voice. “Guards!”

They came at once, filling the room with their presence, no longer
the Emperor’s Varangians but those who had accompanied the chamberlain to
Saint Basil’s. He indicated Alf with a languid hand. “If the
Emperor should ask, this man is dead. He died in most exquisite agony, as
befits a spy and a traitor. Upon his death, in the way of sorcerers, his body
shriveled and fell to dust.”

“And if the Moor asks?” Alf inquired.

“If the Moor asks, we cut you up and fed you to the menagerie.”
Michael Doukas paused, half smiling. “You had better not appear at Saint
Basil’s for a time.”

“Until His Majesty is well distracted?”

“You know your own prophecy.” He beckoned. “Take
him away.”

Alf stood in their hands, eyes upon the eunuch. “Why?”
he asked.

Michael Doukas shrugged. “I like you. And,” he
said, “you might be of use to me later. Remember what I know, and what I
have not done.”