Podstrony
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the far end. "Is that ivory, like the patriarch's throne?"
Zaidas studied it, murmuring briefly to himself. His large larynx worked.
"It's bone," he said at last. Just then Krispos saw Skotos' symbol on the wall
above the high seat. He decided not to ask what sort of bone.
The hall held a sour, metallic smell. Without much enthusiasm, Krispos walked
down the hard dirt aisleway toward the throne. A few feet in front of it, his
boot heels sank into a soggy spot. The smell got worse. "That's blood," he
said, hoping Zaidas would contradict him.
Zaidas didn't. He said, "We already knew Harvas practiced abominations. We
also know now that he is not in this hall, which was our purpose in coming
here. Let's go on to see where he may be."
"Yes, let's," Krispos said in a small voice, admiring the young mage's ability
to stay calm in the face of horror.
To the left of the bone throne was a door. In the twilight that filled the
hall with all torches dark, its outline was invisible until one came right up
to it. Again, Krispos' guards would not let him go in first. One of them
Page 201
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
tugged at the latch. The door did not open. The guardsman used his axe with a
will.
Moments later he tried the door again. This time he easily palled it open.
When he did, he and everyone else in the hall drew back a pace, or more than a
pace, for darkness seemed to well out toward them.
Krispos' hand shaped the sun-circle. Loudly and clearly Zaidas declared, "We
bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, watchful beforehand that
the great test of life may be decided in our favor."
The spreading darkness faded. Krispos wondered if it had really been there.
Even after it was gone, the open doorway remained black and forbidding. He
glanced toward Zaidas. The young wizard licked his lips and seemed to gather
his courage. Then he strode into the room. Remembering Trokoundos, Krispos
started to shout for him to come back.
But Zaidas said, "Ah, as I thought," with such scholarly satisfaction that
Krispos knew he'd come to no harm. The mage went on, "It is a shrine dedicated
to Skotos. They speak of them at the Sorcerers'
Collegium, but I'd never seen one before."
Krispos had never seen one, either, or wanted to see one. But his pride would
not let him stay back
while Zaidas was inside. He was glad to have his guardsmen form up around him.
They went into the small room together.
The hall of the throne had been dark. Even so, his eyes needed a minute or so
to adapt to the deeper shadow inside. As the eye went to the altar in one of
Phos' temples, so it did here. Indeed, this altar at first glance resembled
one from a temple not surprising, Krispos supposed, since Harvas the evil
mage, the apostate, had in his earlier days been Rhavas the prelate of
Skopentzana. But no altar dedicated to
Phos would have had knives lying on it.
One of Phos' temples would have been full of icons, holy images of the good
god and his work in the world. As Krispos' vision adapted to the gloom, he saw
icons on the wall above the altar here, too. He saw the dark god, wreathed in
blackness, fighting Phos, driving him, and slaying him. He saw other things,
as well, things he thought no man could have dreamed of taking brush to panel
to portray. He saw things that made the forest of stakes outside Imbros seem a
mercy. One of his guardsmen, a warrior who delighted in battle like most
Halogai, lurched out into the great hall and was noisily sick there.
"This is what he would have brought to Videssos the city," Zaidas said
quietly.
"I know," Krispos said. But knowing and seeing were not the same. He'd found
that out in a different context when he'd got word of Evripos' birth while
Tanilis was in his bed. He looked at the icons again, and at the altar. He saw
small bones among the knives. His little sister Kosta would have had bones
about that size, a couple of years before cholera killed her. For a moment he
thought he would be sick himself.
"A pity the flames from the wall didn't reach here," he said. "We'll just have
to fire this building ourselves."
More than anything else, he wanted Phos' icons to burn.
One of the guardsmen clapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him.
Zaidas said, "Excellent, your Majesty. Fire and its light are gifts from Phos,
and will cleanse the evil that has put its roots down here. May something
better arise from the ashes. And," he added, his voice suddenly hopeful, "if
Harvas has managed to elude us here, fire will cleanse the world of him as
well."
"So may it be," Krispos said. After that, he was not ashamed to leave the dark
chapel. Zaidas followed close on his heels. The young mage carefully closed
the splintered door behind him, as if to make sure what dwelt inside stayed
there.
All the wizards gathered by the entrance that Gepas still guarded. They'd not
Page 202
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
found Harvas, nor had any of the rest of them stumbled onto anything as black
as Skotos' altar. Not one, however, offered a word of protest at what Krispos
proposed to do to the palace.
He unhitched Progress and led the gelding well away from the wooden building.
The mages still kept a close watch on it, as if they could sense even at a
distance the evil Harvas had brought into it. Very likely they could, Krispos
thought. Most of his guardsmen stayed by him, but one hurried back to the
imperial camp.
The guard returned fairly soon. He was carrying a jar of lamp oil and a
smoking torch. He handed
Krispos the torch, unstoppered the jar, and splashed oil on the palace wall.
"Light it, Majesty," he urged.
As Krispos touched the torch to the oil, he reflected that the dromons'
incendiary mix would have served even better. But the lamp oil did the job.
Flames walked across the weathered surface of the wooden wall, crept into
cracks, climbed over carvings. Before long the wood caught, too. No hearth
logs could have been better seasoned than the old timbers of the palace. They
burned quick and hard and hot. A
pillar of smoke rose to the sky.
Imperials ran and rode up in alarm, fearing the blaze had broken out on its
own. Krispos kept some of them close by, to help fight the fire in case it
spread. But the palace was set apart from Pliskavos' other buildings, as if to
give the khagans of Kubrat the sense of space they might have enjoyed on the
steppe. It had plenty of room in which to burn safely.
Krispos watched the fire for a while. He wished he could know whether Harvas
was burning with those flames. Whether or not, though, the power he had forged
to strike at Videssos was broken; those of his raiders who lived were boarding
rafts under the eyes and arrows of imperial troops. And Harvas' own power was
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkskarol.keep.pl
|
