The Tale of Krispos (106 page)

Some nobles kept little enclosures where they hand-raised deer and boar until the animals grew tame as pets. Then they’d shoot them. Phostis had never seen the sport in that, or in bedding girls who either didn’t dare say no or else turned sleeping with him into as cold-blooded a calculation as any Krispos made in the agelong struggle between Videssos and Makuran.

He’d tried explaining that to his brothers once, not long after Katakolon, then fourteen, seduced—or was seduced by—one of the women who did the palace laundry. Exalted by his own youthful prowess, he’d paid no heed whatever to Phostis. As for Evripos, he’d said only, “Do you want to don the blue robe and live out your life as a monk? Suit yourself, big brother, but it’s not the life for me.”

Had he wanted a monastic life, it would have been easy to arrange. But the sole reason he’d ever considered it was to get away from his father. He lacked both a monkish vocation and a monkish temperament. It wasn’t that he sought to mortify his flesh, but rather that he—usually—found loveless or mercenary coupling more mortifying than none.

He often wondered how he would do when Krispos decided to marry him off. He was just glad that day had not yet arrived. When it did, he was sure his father would pick him a bride with more of an eye toward advantage for the imperial house than toward his happiness. Sometimes marriages of that sort worked as well as any others. Sometimes—

He turned to Vatatzes. “My friend, you know not how fortunate you are, coming from a family of but middling rank. All too often, I feel my birth more as a cage or a curse than as something in which to rejoice.”

“Ah, Your Majesty, you’ve drunk yourself sad, that’s all it is.” Vatatzes turned to the panpiper and pandoura player who made soft music as a background against which to talk. He snapped his fingers and raised his voice. “Here, you fellows, give us something lively now, to lift the young Majesty’s spirits.”

The musicians put their heads together for a moment. The man with the panpipes set them down and picked up a kettle-shaped drum. Heads came up all through the Hall of the Nineteen Couches as his hands evoked thunder from the drumhead. The pandoura player struck a ringing, fiery chord. Phostis recognized the Vaspurakaner dance they played, but it failed to gladden him.

Before long, almost all the feasters snaked along in a dance line, clapping their hands and shouting in time to the tune. Phostis sat in his place even when Vatatzes tugged at the sleeve of his robe. Finally, with a shrug, Vatatzes gave up and joined the dance.
He prescribed for me the medicine that works for him,
Phostis thought. He didn’t want to be joyous, though. Discontent suited him.

When he got to his feet, the dancers cheered. But he did not join their line. He walked through the open bronze doors of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, down the low, broad marble stairs. He looked up at the sky, gauging the time by how high the waning gibbous moon had risen. Somewhere in the fifth hour of the night, he judged—not far from midnight.

He lowered his eyes. The imperial residence was separated from the rest of the buildings of the palace compound and screened off by a grove of cherry trees, to give the Avtokrator and his family at least the illusion of privacy. Through the trees, Phostis saw one window brightly lit by candles or lamps. He nodded to himself. Yes, Krispos was at work there. With peasant persistence, his father kept on fighting against the immensity of the Empire he ruled.

As Phostis watched, the window went dark. Even Krispos occasionally yielded to sleep, though Phostis was sure he would have evaded it if he could.

Somebody stuck his head out through one of the Hall’s many big windows. “Come on back, Your Majesty,” he called, voice blurry with wine. “It’s just starting to get bouncy in here.”

“Go on without me,” Phostis said. He wished he’d never gathered the feasters together. The ease with which they enjoyed themselves only made his own unhappiness seem worse by comparison.

He absently swatted at a mosquito; there weren’t as many out here, away from the lights. With the last lamps extinguished in the imperial residence, it fell into invisibility behind the cherry grove. He started walking slowly in that direction; he didn’t want to get there until he was sure his father had gone to bed.

Haloga guardsmen stood outside the doorway. The big blond northerners raised their axes in salute as they recognized Phostis. Had he been a miscreant, the axes would have gone up, too, but not as a gesture of respect.

As always, one of the palace eunuchs waited just inside the entrance. “Good evening, young Majesty,” he said, bowing politely to Phostis.

“Good evening, Mystakon,” Phostis answered. Of all the eunuch chamberlains, Mystakon was closest to his own age and hence the one he thought most likely to understand and sympathize with him. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how Mystakon felt, going through what should have been ripe young manhood already withered on the vine, so to speak. “Is my father asleep?”

“He is in bed, yes,” Mystakon answered with the peculiarly toneless voice eunuchs could affect to communicate subtle double meanings.

Phostis, however, noticed no subtleties tonight. All he felt was a surge of relief at having got through another day without having to confront his father—or having his father confront him. “I will go to bed, too, prominent sir,” he said, using Mystakon’s special title in the eunuch hierarchy.

“Everything is in readiness for you, young Majesty,” Mystakon said, a tautology: Phostis would have been shocked were his chamber not ready whenever he needed it. “If you would be so kind as to accompany me—”

Phostis let the chamberlain guide him down the hallways he could have navigated blindfolded. In the torchlight, the souvenirs of long centuries of imperial triumph seemed somehow faded, indistinct. The conical helmet that had once belonged to a King of Kings of Makuran was just a lump of iron, the painting of Videssian troops pouring over the walls of Mashiz was a daub that could have depicted any squabble. Phostis shook his head. Was he merely tired, or was the light playing tricks on his eyes?

His bedchamber lay as far from Krispos’ as it could, in a tucked-away corner of the imperial residence. It had stood empty for years, maybe centuries, until he chose it as a refuge from his father not long after his beard began to sprout.

The door to the chamber stood ajar. Butter-yellow light trickling through the opening said a lamp had been kindled. “Do you require anything further, young Majesty?” Mystakon asked. “Some wine, perhaps, or some bread and cheese? Or I could inquire if any mutton is left from that which was served to your father.”

“No, don’t bother,” Phostis said, more sharply than he’d intended. He tried to soften his voice. “I’m content, thank you. I just want to get some rest.”

“As you say, young Majesty.” Mystakon glided away. Like many eunuchs, he was soft and plump. He walked in soft slippers, silently and with little mincing steps. With his robes swirling around him as he moved, he reminded Phostis of a beamy merchant ship under full sail.

Phostis closed and barred the door behind him. He took off his robe and got out of his sandals. They were all-red, like his father’s—about the only imperial prerogative he shared with Krispos, he thought bitterly. He threw himself down on the bed and blew out the lamp. The bedchamber plunged into blackness, and Phostis into sleep.

He dreamed. He’d always been given to vivid dreams, and this one was more so than most. In it he found himself pacing, naked and fat, through a small enclosure. Food was everywhere—mutton, bread and cheese, jar upon jar of wine.

His father peered at him from over the top of a wooden fence. Phostis watched Krispos nod in sober satisfaction…and reach for a hunting bow.

Next thing he knew, he was awake, his heart pounding, his body bathed with cold sweat. For a moment, he thought the darkness that filled his sight meant death. Then full awareness returned. He sketched Phos’ sun-circle above his chest in thanks as he realized his nightmare was not truth.

That helped calm him, until he thought of his place at court. He shivered. Maybe the dream held some reality after all.

Z
AIDAS WENT DOWN ON HIS KNEES BEFORE KRISPOS, THEN TO
his belly, letting his forehead knock against the bright tesserae of the mosaic floor in full proskynesis. “Up, up,” Krispos said impatiently. “You know I have no great use for ceremonial.”

The wizard rose as smoothly as he had prostrated himself. “Yes, Your Majesty, but
you
know the respect a mage will show to ritual. Without ritual, our art would fall to nothing.”

“So you’ve said, many times these past many years,” Krispos answered. “Now the ritual is over. Sit, relax; let us talk.” He waved Zaidas to a chair in the chamber where he’d been working the night before.

Barsymes came in with a jar of wine and two crystal goblets. The vestiarios poured for Emperor and mage, then bowed himself out. Zaidas savored his wine’s bouquet for a moment before he sipped. He smiled. “That’s a fine vintage, Your Majesty.”

Krispos drank, too. “Aye, it is pleasant. I fear I’ll never make a proper connoisseur, though. It’s all so much better than what I grew up drinking that I have trouble telling what’s just good from the best.”

Zaidas took another, longer, pull at his goblet. “What we have here, your Majestry, is among the best, let me assure you.” The mage was a tall, slim man, about a dozen years younger than Krispos—the first white threads were appearing in the dark fabric of his beard. Krispos remembered him as a skinny, excitable youth, already full of talent. It had not shrunk with his maturity.

Barsymes returned, now with a tureen and two bowls. “Porridge with salted anchovies to break your fast, Your Majesty, excellent sir.”

The porridge was of wheat, silky smooth, and rich with cream. The anchovies added piquancy. Krispos knew that if he asked his cook for plain, lumpy barley porridge, the man would quit in disgust. As with the wine, he knew this was better, but sometimes he craved the tastes with which he’d grown up.

When his bowl was about half empty, he said to Zaidas, “The reason I asked you here today was a report I’ve had from the westlands about a new heresy that seems to have arisen there. By this account, it’s an unpleasant one.” He passed the mage the letter from the priest Taronites.

Zaidas read it through, his brow furrowing in concentration. When he was done, he looked up at Krispos. “Yes, Your Majesty, if the holy sir’s tale is to be fully credited, these Thanasioi seem most unpleasant heretics indeed. But while there is some considerable connection between religion and sorcery, I’d have thought you’d go first to the ecclesiastical authorities rather than to a layman like me.”

“In most cases, I would have. In fact, I’ve already directed the ecumenical patriarch to send priests to Pityos. But these heretics sound so vile—if, as you say, Taronites is to be believed—that I wondered if they have any connection to our old friend Harvas.”

Zaidas pursed his lips, then let air hiss out between. Harvas—or perhaps his proper name was Rhavas—had dealt the Empire fierce blows in the north and east in the first years of Krispos’ reign. He was, or seemed to be, a renegade priest of Phos who had gone over to the dark god Skotos and thus prolonged his own wicked life more than two centuries beyond its natural terms. With help from Zaidas, among others, Videssian forces had vanquished the Halogai that Harvas led at Pliskavos in Kubrat; his own power was brought to nothing there. But he had not been taken, alive or dead.

“What precisely do you wish me to do, Your Majesty?” Zaidas asked.

“You head the Sorcerers’ Collegium these days, my friend, and you were always sensitive to Harvas’ style of magic. If anyone can tell through sorcery whether Harvas is the one behind these Thanasioi, I expect you’re the man. Is such a thing possible, what with the little we have to go on here?” Krispos tapped Taronites’ letter with a forefinger.

“An interesting question.” Zaidas looked through rather than at Krispos as he considered. At last he said, “Perhaps it may be done, Your Majesty, though the sorcery required will be most delicate. A basic magical principle is the law of similarity, which is to say, like causes yield like effects. Most effective in this case, I believe, would be an inversion of the law in an effort to determine whether like effects—the disruption and devastation of the Empire now and from Harvas’ past depredations—spring from like causes.”

“You know your business best,” Krispos said. He’d never tried to learn magical theory himself; what mattered to him were the results he might attain through sorcery.

Zaidas, however, kept right on explaining, perhaps to fix his ideas in his own mind. “The law of contagion might also prove relevant. If Harvas was in physical contact with any of these Thanasioi who then came into contact with the priest Taronites, directly or indirectly, such a trace might appear on the parchment here. Under normal circumstances, two or three intermediate contacts would blur the originator beyond hope of detection. Such was Harvas’ power, however, and such was our comprehension of the nature of that power, that it ought to be detectable at several more removes.”

“Just as you say,” Krispos answered agreeably. Perhaps because of his lectures at the Sorcerers’ Collegium, Zaidas had a knack for expounding magecraft so clearly that it made sense to the Avtokrator, even if he lacked both ability and interest in practicing it himself. He asked, “How long before you will be ready to try your sorcery?”

That faraway look returned to Zaidas’ eyes. “I shall of course require the parchment here. Then the research required to frame the precise terms of the spell to be employed and the gathering of the necessary materials…not that those can’t proceed concurrently, of course. Your Majesty, were it war, I could try tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight. I would be more confident of the results obtained, though, if I had another couple of days to refine my original formulation.”

“Take the time you need to be right,” Krispos said. “If Harvas is at the bottom of this, we must know it. And if he appears not to be, we must be certain he’s not concealing himself through his own magic.”