Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

The man's hands were clasped at his waist. "As I said, you aren't the first westerner to react this way. And it is often those who make their own attempts at such things who. are most affected."

Crispin blinked. He might feel humbled by what was on the dome, but "attempts at such things" was not acceptable.

"I am impressed by your sagacity. It is indeed a fine piece of work. After I attend to certain requests from the Emperor in Sarantium, I might be willing to return and supervise the needed repairs to the erratic groundwork done on the dome."

The cleric's turn to blink, pleasingly. "That work was done by holy men with a holy vision," he said indignantly.

"I have no doubt of it. One shame is that we don't know their names, to honour them, another is that they lacked technique equal to their vision. You do know that tiles have begun to dislodge towards the right side of the dome, as we face the altar. Parts of the god's cloak and left forearm appear to have recklessly chosen to detach themselves from the rest of his august form."

The cleric looked up, almost reluctantly.

"Of course you may have a parable or a liturgical explanation for this," Crispin added. In the oddest way, fencing with the man was restoring his equilibrium. Not necessarily a proper thing, he supposed, but he needed it just now.

"You would propose changing the figure of the god?" The man seemed genuinely aghast.

Crispin sighed. "It has been changed, good cleric. When your extremely pious artisans did this work centuries ago, Jad had a robe and a left arm." He pointed. "Not the remains of dried-out groundwork."

The cleric shook his head. His features had reddened. "What manner of man looks up at glory and speaks of daring to set his own hands upon it?" Crispin was quite calm now. "A descendant in the craft of those who did it in the first place. Lacking, perhaps, their piety, but with a better understanding of the technique of mosaic. I should add that the dome also appears near to losing some of its golden sun, to the left. I'd need to be up on a scaffold to be certain, but it seems some tesserae have dislodged there as well. If that goes, then the god's hair will soon begin to fall out, I fear. Are you prepared to have Jad come down upon you, not in a thunderous descent but in a dribble of glass and stone?"

"This is the most profane heresy!" the cleric snapped, making the sign of the disk.

Crispin sighed. "I am sorry you see it that way. I do not mean to provoke you. Or not only that. The setting bed on the dome was done in an old-fashioned way. One layer, and most likely with a mixture of materials we now understand to be less enduring than others. It is-as we all know-not holy Jad above us, but his rendering by mortal men. We worship the god, not the image, I understand." He paused. This was a matter of extreme contention in some quarters. The cleric opened his mouth as if to answer, but then closed it again.

Crispin went on. "Mortals have their limitations, and this, too, we all know. Sometimes new things are discovered. It is no criticism of those who achieved this dome to note such a truth. Lesser men may preserve the work of greater. With competent assistants I could probably ensure the restored image above us would remain for several hundred years to come. It would take a season of work. Perhaps a little less or more. But I can tell you that without such intervention those eyes and hands and hair will begin to litter the stones around us soon. I would be sorry to see it. This is a singular work."

"It is unmatched in the world!"

"I believe that."

The cleric hesitated. Kasia and Vargos, Crispin saw, were eyeing him with astonishment. It occurred to him-with a restorative amusement that neither of them had had any reason to believe he was good for anything to this point. A worker in mosaic had little enough chance to show his gifts or skill walking the emptiness of Sauradia.

In that moment, in an intervention Crispin could have called divine a tinkling sound was heard across the floor. Crispin repressed a smile and walked over. He knelt, looking carefully, and found a brownish tessera without difficulty. He turned it over. The backing was dry, brittle. It crumbled to powder as he brushed it with a finger. He rose and walked back to the other three, handing the mosaic piece to the cleric.

"A holy message?" he said dryly. "Or just a piece of dark stone from'- he looked up-'most likely the robe again, on the right side?"

The cleric opened his mouth and closed it, exactly as he had before. He was undoubtedly regretting, Crispin thought, that this had been his day to be awake in daylight and deal with visitors to the chapel. Crispin looked up again at the severe majesty overhead and regretted his bantering tone. Attempts at such things had rankled, but it hadn't been personal, and he ought to have been above such pettiness. Especially today, and here.

Men, he thought-perhaps especially this man, Caius Crispus of Varena — seemed to escape so rarely from the concerns and trivial umbrages that made up their daily lives. He ought to have been moved beyond them today, surely. Or perhaps-a sudden, quite different sort of thought-perhaps it was because he'd been taken so far beyond that he needed to find his way back in this manner?

He looked at the cleric, and then up again at the god. The god's image. It could be done, with skilful people. Probably close to half a year, however, realistically. He decided, abruptly, that they would stay the night here. He would speak to the leader of this holy order, make amends for irony and levity. If they could be made to understand what was happening on the dome, perhaps when Crispin reached the City bearing a letter from them, the Chancellor, or someone else-the Imperial Mosaicist? — might be enlisted in an attempt to preserve this splendour. He'd teased and been flippant, Crispin thought. Perhaps he'd make redress by an act of restoration, in memory of this day and perhaps of his own dead.

In the unfolding of events, of a man's life, so many things can intervene. Just as he was not to see his torch of Heladikos in the chapel outside Varena by glittering candlelight, so this, too, was a task Crispin was never to perform, though his intentions in that moment were deeply sincere and nearly pious. Nor did they, in fact, end up spending that night in the dormitory of the ancient sanctuary.

The cleric slipped the brown tessera into his robe. But before anyone could speak again, they heard a distant and then a growing thunder of horses from the road.

The cleric looked to the doors, startled. Crispin exchanged a sharp glance with Vargos. Then they heard, even through the doors and well back from the road, a loudly shouted command to halt. The hoofbeats stopped. There was a jingling, then boots on the path and the voices of men.

The doors burst open admitting a spearshaft of daylight and half a dozen cavalry soldiers. They strode forward, heavy steps on stone. None of them looked up at the dome. Their leader, a burly, black-haired, very tall man, carrying his helmet under one arm, stopped before the four of them. He nodded to the cleric, stared at Crispin.

"Carullus, tribune of the Fourth Sauradian. My respects. Saw the mule. We are looking for someone on this road. Would you be named Martinian of Varena, by any chance?"

Crispin, unable to think of any adequate reason to do otherwise, nodded his head in agreement. He was, in fact, speechless.

Carullus of the Fourth's formal expression gave way on the instant to mingled disdain and triumph-a remarkable conjunction, in fact, a challenge ever to render in tesserae. He levelled a thick, indicting finger at Crispin. "Where the fuck have you been, you shit-smeared Rhodian slug? Sticking it into every poxed whore on the road? What are you doing on the road instead of at sea? You've been awaited in the fucking City for weeks now by his thrice-exalted Majesty, His Imperial Magnificence, the fucking Emperor Valerius II himself. You turd."