Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

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 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 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 broken, as well, thanks to Tanilis. Krispos shook his head, wishing for the thousandth time the price of the latter breaking had not been so high.

But he knew that Tanilis had willingly paid the price, and that she would not have wanted him to grieve in victory. The knowledge helped—some. He swung himself up onto Progress and twitched the reins. The horse turned till Krispos felt the warmth of the burning palace on his back. He touched Progress' flanks with his heels and rode away.

With a hand shading his eyes to ease the glare, Krispos peered across the Astris. Tiny in the distance, the last of Harvas' Halogai trudged away from the northern back of the river. "This land is ours now," Krispos said, slightly embarrassed to hear slight surprise in his voice. "Ours again," he amended, Mammianos was also watching the Halogai go. "A very neat campaign, your Majesty," he said. "The provincial levies will be back on their farms in time to help with the harvest. Very neat indeed."

"So they will." Krispos turned to the fat general. "And what of you, Mammianos? Shall I send you back to your province, too, to govern the coastal lowlands for me?"

"This for the coastal lowlands." Mammianos yawned a slow, deliberate, scornful yawn. "The only reason I was there is that Petronas sent me to the most insignificant place he could think of." The yawn gave way to a smug expression. "Turned out not to be so insignificant after all, the way things worked out, eh, your Majesty?"

"You're right about that," Krispos said. Mammianos had given him the opening he'd hoped for. "If you're bored with the lowlands, eminent sir, will you serve as my governor here, as the first governor of the new province of Kubrat?"

"Ah. That job wouldn't soon grow dull, now would it?" Mammianos didn't sound surprised, but then Mammianos was no one's fool. His voice turned musing. "Let's see, what all would I be doing? Keeping the nomads on their side of the Astris, and the Halogai, too, if they think about getting frisky again—"

"Cleaning up the Haloga settlements that got started here, like the one that gave Sarkis so much trouble," Krispos put in.