The Tale of Krispos (54 page)

“You look lovely,” he said as he took her right hand with his left. She smiled up at him. A light breeze played with her hair; like him, she wore no golden crown today. Her gown, though, was of dark gold silk that complemented her olive complexion. Fine lace decorated cuffs and bodice; the gown, cinched tight at the waist, displayed her fine figure.

“Forward!” Barsymes called again, and the newly united wedding party advanced into the plaza. The palace quarter had been empty. The plaza was packed with people. They cheered when they saw Krispos and his companions, and surged toward them. Only twin rows of streamers—and Halogai posted every ten feet or so along them—kept the way open.

Instead of his sword, Krispos wore a large leather sack on the right side of his belt. He reached into it, dug out a handful of goldpieces, and threw them into the crowd. The cheers got louder and more frantic. All his groomsmen were similarly equipped; they also flung largess far and wide. So did a dozen servants, who carried even larger bags of coins.

“Thou conquerest, Krispos!” people shouted. “Many years!” “The Avtokrator!” “Many sons!” “Hurrah for the Empress Dara!” “Happiness!” They also shouted other things: “More money!” “Throw it this way!” “Over here!” And someone yelled, “A joyous year to the Emperor and Empress for each goldpiece I get!”

“What an ingenious combination of flattery and greed,” Iakovitzes said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

The fellow was close; Krispos saw him waving like a madman. He pulled on a servant’s sleeve. “Give him a hundred goldpieces.”

The man screamed with delight when the servant poured gold first into his hands, then into a pocket that looked hastily sewn onto his robe—he’d come ready for any good that might happen to him. “That was kindly done, Krispos,” Dara said, “but however much we wish it, we won’t have a hundred years.”

“I’ll bet that chap won’t have a hundred goldpieces by the time he gets out of the plaza, either,” Krispos answered. “But may he do well with those he manages to keep, and may we do well with so many years.”

The wedding party pushed out of the plaza of Palamas onto Middle Street. Long colonnades shielded the throngs there from the sun. More servants—these accompanied by an escort of armored Halogai—brought up fresh bags of goldpieces. Krispos dug deep and threw coins as far as he could.

As he had when visiting Gnatios, he turned north off Middle Street with his companions. This time they bypassed the patriarchal mansion with its small dome of red brick for the High Temple close by. Mavros tapped Krispos on the shoulder. “Remember the last time we saw the forecourt here so packed with people?”

“I should hope so,” Krispos said. That had been the day he’d taken the throne, the day Gnatios had set the crown on his head in the doorway to the High Temple.

Dara sighed. “I wish I could have been here to see you crowned.”

“So do I,” Krispos said. They both knew that would not have looked good, though, not when he was replacing the man to whom she’d been wed. Even this ceremony would stir gossip in every tavern and sewing circle in the city. But Dara was right—with a child in her belly, they could not afford to wait.

More Halogai stood on the steps of the High Temple, facing outward to protect Krispos and his comrades as they had when he’d been crowned. At the top of the steps, Gnatios stood waiting. The patriarch looked almost imperially splendid in his blue boots and pearl-encrusted robe of cloth-of-gold and blue. Mere priests in less magnificent raiment swung thuribles on either side of him; Krispos’ nose twitched as he caught a whiff of the sweet smoke that wafted from them.

When he and Dara started to climb the low, broad stairs, he held her hand tightly. He wanted not the slightest risk of her falling, not when she was pregnant. The wedding party followed. Behind them, servants flung the last handsful of gold coins into the crowd.

Gnatios bowed when Krispos reached the top step but did not prostrate himself. The temple was, after all, his primary domain. Krispos returned the bow, but less deeply, to show he in fact held superior rank even here. Gnatios said, “Allow me to lead you within, Your Majesty.” He and his acolytes turned to enter the narthex. The last time Krispos had gone in there, it was for Barsymes to robe him in the coronation regalia.

“A moment,” he said now, holding up a hand.

Gnatios stopped and turned back, a small frown on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all. I just want to speak to the people before we go on.”

The ecumenical patriarch’s frown grew deeper. “Your doing so is not a planned part of the ceremony, Your Majesty.”

“No, eh? That didn’t bother you when you asked me to speak before you would crown me.” Krispos kept his tone light, but he was sure he was glaring at Gnatios. The patriarch had tried to ruin him then, to make him sound like a bumbler in front of the people of the city, the most critical and fickle audience in the world.

Now Gnatios could only bow in acquiescence. “What pleases the Avtokrator has the force of law,” he murmured.

Krispos looked out to the packed forecourt and held up his hands. “People of Videssos,” he called, then again, “People of Videssos!” Little by little they gave him quiet. He waited until it had grown still enough for everyone to hear. “People of Videssos, this is a happy day for two reasons. Not only am I to be wed today—”

Cheers and applause drowned him out. He smiled and let them run their course. When they were through, he resumed, “Not only that, but today before you all I can also name my new Sevastos.”

The crowd remained quiet, but suddenly the quiet became alert, electric. A new high minister was serious business, the more with a new, as yet little-known, and childless Emperor on the throne. Into that expectant hush, Krispos said, “I give you as Sevastos my foster brother, the noble Mavros.”

“May his Highness be merciful!” the people called, as if with one voice. Krispos blinked; he hadn’t thought there would be a special cry for the proclamation of a Sevastos. He was beginning to suspect Videssian ceremonial had a special cry or ritual for everything.

Grinning enormously, Mavros waved to show himself to the crowd. Krispos nudged him. “Say something,” he whispered.

“Who, me?” Mavros whispered back. At Krispos’ nod, the new Sevastos waved again, this time for quiet. When he got it, or at least enough of it to speak through, he said, “The good god willing, I will do as well in my office as our new Avtokrator does in his. Thank you all.” As the crowd cheered, Mavros lowered his voice and told Krispos, “Now it’s on your shoulders, Your Majesty. If you start going astray, I have every excuse to do the same thing.”

“Oh, to the ice with you,” Krispos said. He dipped his head to Gnatios. “Shall we get on with it?”

“Certainly, Your Majesty. By all means.” Gnatios’ expression reminded Krispos the delay had not been his idea in the first place. Without another word, he strode into the High Temple.

As Krispos followed him into the narthex, his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dimmer light. The antechamber was the least splendid portion of the High Temple; it was merely magnificent. On the far wall, a mosaic depicted Phos as a beardless youth, a shepherd guarding his flock against wolves that fled, tails between their legs, back to their dark-robed master Skotos. The evil god’s face was full of chilling hate.

Other mosaics set into the ceiling showed those whom Skotos’ blandishments had seduced. The souls of the lost stood frozen into eternal ice. Demons with outstretched black wings and mouths full of horrid fangs tormented the damned in ingenious ways.

Not an inch of the High Temple was without its ornament. Even the marble lintel of the doorway into the narthex was covered with reliefs. Phos’ sun stood in the center, its rays nourishing a whole forest of broad-toothed pointed leaves that had been carved in intricate repeating interlaced patterns.

Krispos paused to glance over to a spot not far from the doors. There by torchlight Barsymes had invested him with the leggings and kilt, the tunic and cape, and the red boots that were all part of the imperial coronation regalia. The boots had been tight; Anthimos’ feet turned out to be smaller than Krispos’. Krispos was still wearing tight boots, though the cordwainers promised him pairs cut to his measure any day now.

Gnatios took a couple of steps before he noticed Krispos had stopped. The patriarch turned back and asked, “Shall we get on with it?” He did such an exquisite job of keeping irony from his voice that it was all the more ironic for being less so.

Unable to take offense no matter how much he wanted to, Krispos followed Gnatios out of the narthex and into the main chamber of the High Temple. Seated within were the high secular lords and soldiers of Videssos and their ladies, as well as the leading prelates and abbots of the city. They all rose to salute the Avtokrator and patriarch.

The nobles’ rich robes, brightly dyed, shot through with gold and silver thread, and encrusted with gems hardly less glittering than those that adorned the soft flesh and sparkled in the hair of their wives and consorts, would irresistibly have drawn the eye to them in any other setting in the world. Within the High Temple, they did not dominate. They had to struggle to be noticed.

Even the benches from which the lords and ladies rose were works of art in themselves. They were blond oak, waxed to shine almost as brightly as the sun, and inset with ebony and red, red sandalwood; with semiprecious stones; and with mother-of-pearl that caught and brightened every ray of light.

Indeed, the huge interior of the High Temple seemed awash with light, as was only fitting for a building dedicated to Phos. “Here,” Krispos had read in a chronicle that dealt in part with the raising of the Temple, “the immaterial became material.” Had he seen the phrase in some provincial town far from the capital, he never would have understood it. In Videssos the city, the example lay before him.

Silver foil and gold leaf worked together with the mother-of-pearl to reflect light softly into every corner of the High Temple, illuminating with an almost shadowless light the moss-agate–faced columns that supported the building’s four wings. Looking down, Krispos could see himself reflected in the polished golden marble of the floor.

More marble, this white as snow, gleamed on the interior walls of the Temple. Together with sheets of turquoise and, low in the east and west, rose quartz and ruddy sardonyx, it reproduced indoors the brilliance and beauty of Phos’ sky.

Viewing the sky led the eye imperceptibly upward, to the twin semidomes where mosaics commemorated holy men who had been great in the service of Phos. And from those semidomes, it was impossible not to look farther yet, up and up and up into the great central dome overhead, from which Phos himself surveyed his worshipers.

The base of the dome was pierced by dozens of windows. Sunlight streamed through them and coruscated off the walls below; the beams seemed to separate the dome from the rest of the Temple below. The first time Krispos saw it, he’d wondered if it really was linked to the building it surmounted or if, as felt more likely, it floated up there by itself, suspended, perhaps, from a chain that led straight up into the heavens.

Down from the heavens, then, through the shifting sunbeams, Phos gazed upon the mere mortals who had gathered in his temple. The Phos portrayed in the dome was no smiling youth. He was mature, bearded, his long face stern and somber, his eyes…The first time Krispos had gone into the High Temple to worship, not long after he came to Videssos the city, he had almost cringed from those eyes. Large and omniscient, they seemed to see straight through him.

That was proper, for the Phos in the dome was judge rather than shepherd. In the long, spidery fingers of his left hand, he held to his chest a bound volume wherein all of good and evil was inscribed. A man could but hope that good outweighed the other. If not, eternity in the ice awaited, for while this Phos was just, Krispos could not imagine him merciful.

The tesserae that surrounded the god’s head and shoulders in the dome were glass filmed with gold, and set at slightly varying angles. Whenever the light shifted, or whenever an observer below moved, different tiny tiles gleamed forth, adding to the spiritual solemnity of the depiction.

As it always did, tearing his eyes away from Phos’ face cost Krispos a distinct effort of will. Temples throughout the Empire of Videssos held in their central domes images modeled on the one in the High Temple. Krispos had seen several. None held a fraction of the brooding majesty, the severe nobility, of this archetype. Here the god had truly inspired those who portrayed him.

Even after Krispos looked to the great silver slab of the altar that stood below the center of the dome, he felt Phos’ gaze pressing down on him with almost physical force. Not even sight of the patriarchal throne of carven ivory behind the altar, a breathtaking work of art in its own right, could bring Krispos fully back to himself, not while everyone stood in silent awe, waiting for the ceremony to proceed.

Then Gnatios raised his hands to the god in the dome and to the god beyond the dome and beyond the sky. “We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind,” he intoned, “by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

Krispos repeated Phos’ creed along with the ecumenical patriarch. So did everyone else in the High Temple; beside him he heard Dara’s clear soprano. His hand tightened on hers. She squeezed back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her smile.

Gnatios lowered his hands. The assembled grandees seated themselves. Krispos felt their gaze on him, too, but in a way different from Phos’. They were still wondering what sort of Avtokrator he would make. The good god already knew, but left to Krispos the working out of his fate.

Gnatios waited for quiet, then said what had been in Krispos’ thoughts: “The eyes of all the city are on us today. Today we see joined in marriage the Avtokrator Krispos and the Empress Dara. May Phos bless their union and make it long, happy, and fruitful.”

The patriarch began to pray again, now and then pausing for responses from Krispos and Dara. Krispos had memorized some of his replies, for the long-set language of the liturgy was growing apart from the tongue spoken in the streets of the city.