"We can't cross back and we can't stay here long," Abivard said to Roshnani that evening as the unhappy army made camp. "That leaves us little choice."
"If we had a choice, which would be better?" she asked.
"Even if we had a choice, neither would be much good," Abivard answered. "Back on the western side of the Tutub, we'd face all the problems that led to our getting trapped here in the first place. And even if we had all the livestock and grain and fruit in the world at our fingertips here, so what? Being King of Kings for the land east of the Tutub is like being Mobedhan-mobhed for the Khamorth. Not enough of them worship the God to make them need a chief servant for him, and this land is about enough to rate a dihqan, but not a sovereign."
"You will have seen more of it than I, since I'm closed up here in this wagon," Roshnani said. Denak would have sounded furious at that; Roshnani just stated it matter-of-factly, to let Abivard draw what conclusions from it he would. She went on, "Your point is well made. Both choices you named seem evil. What if we went east, then?"
Abivard shook his head, a gesture full of patience, love, and the desire to be as gentle with her naivete as he could. "East of here is scrub country, about as bad as the land between oases back in the northwest. It's no place for us to stay and regather our strength. And east of that liesVidessos."
He spoke the name with a shudder; to him, as to any Makuraner warrior, Videssos was and could only be the enemy. But Roshnani pounced on it like a cat leaping after a mouse that appeared from a hole it hadn't noticed: "Why don't we fare into Videssos, then? Their Avtokratordo I rightly remember his name as Likinios?could hardly do worse by us than Smerdis Pimp of Pimps, could he?" She brought out the contemptuous soldierly title with a fine curl of her lip.
Abivard opened his mouth to begin an automatic condemnation of the idea, but stopped with it unuttered. Put that way, it could not be dismissed out of hand. What he did say was, "I don't see much point in throwing myself on a Videssian's mercy when he's not likely to treat me any better than Smerdis would, either."
Once she got a notion, Roshnani was not one to abandon it before she had taken it as far as it would go. She said, "Why wouldn't he treat Sharbaraz better? Likinios is a King of Kings, too, of sorts. Does he take kindly to having a cousin steal a throne that ought to belong to a son? If he does, one fine day he may find a cousin stealing his own throne."
"That's" Abivard started to say it was foolish and ridiculous, but it wasn't. If Smerdis had the gall to usurp the throne, why shouldn't a Videssian do likewise? By all accounts, Videssians were knavish and thieving by nature. If one of their Emperors left a throne lying around vacant, somebody to whom it didn't properly belong would try to abscond with it. "That's . . . not a bad idea," he finished in tones of wonder.
"My thought was simple: what have we to lose by going into Videssos?" Roshnani said.
While Abivard looked for an answer there, something else occurred to him: the third piece of Tanshar's prophecy. "Where am I likelier to find a narrow stretch of sea than in Videssos?" he said.
Roshnani's eyes got wide. "I hadn't thought of that," she said. "If the prophecy itself is urging us eastward"
Denak stuck her head through the cloth curtain that screened off Roshnani's cubicle. She nodded to her brother, then said, "Eastward? How can we think of going eastward? Not only would we be fleeing, but there's nothing in that direction but scrub and desert, anyhow."
"There's also Videssos, beyond the scrub," Roshnani answered, which made Denak's eyes widen in turn. Speaking alternate sentences, almost like characters out of a traveling play about one of the Prophets Four, she and Abivard explained their reasons for wanting to take refuge in the Empire and seek aid from the Avtokrator.
When they had finished, Denak stared from one of them to the other. "I thought we were in a box," she said. "So did Sharbaraz. So, no doubt, did Smerdishe has to be looking forward to finishing us off at his leisure. But if a box doesn't have to stay a box, if we can break down one of the sides and escape in a way no one imagined"
Abivard raised a warning hand. "We have no guarantees if we try this," he reminded his sister. "The Videssians may prove as wicked and treacherous as the tales say they are, or they may take us for enemies and attack no matter what we do to show them we're friends. Or, for that matter, some of the men here may prefer Smerdis' mercy to what they think they'll find in Videssos. We'll lose more than a handful to desertion, I fear."
Roshnani laughed. "Here we are, reckoning up the good points and the bad to this move when we have not the power to order it."
Abivard took a deep breath. "Here I am, to say that having women along on this campaign may prove its salvation. I tell you now, I never would have thought of using Videssos for refuge if I lived to be a thousand. If it succeeds, the credit goes to Roshnani."
"Thank you, my husband," Roshnani said quietly, and cast down her eyes to the carpeted floor of the wagon as if she were an ordinary, deferential Makuraner wife who had never imagined setting foot outside the women's quarters of her stronghold.
"Thank you, Abivard," Denak said, "for being open enough to see that and honest enough to say it."
He shrugged. "Father always relied on Mother's wisdomoh, not out in the open, but he made no great secret of it, either. And wasn't it you who said that if a woman's counsel was worth something back at the stronghold, it would be worth something on campaign, too?"
"I said it, yes," Denak answered. "Whether anyone listened to me is another matter. One of the things I found with Pradtak is that men often don't."
"Judging all men by Pradtak, I suspect, is like judging all women by Ardini," Abivard said, which made Denak frown angrily and Roshnani, after a moment's hesitation, nod. He went on, "Do you expect Sharbaraz to, ah, attend you this evening?"
Still frowning, Denak said, "No, not really. He's come here less often since things went wrong. He'd sooner brood than try to make himself feel better."
"You're probably right." Abivard got to his feet; the top of his head brushed the canvas canopy of the wagon. "I'll go and take the idea to him, then. If he says no and I can't get him to change his mind, I'll send him hither. I hope you won't think less of me for saying wives have ways to persuade a man that brothers-in-law can't use."
"Think less of you? No," Denak said. "But I wish you'd not reminded me of things I did that I'd sooner forget."
"I'm sorry," Abivard said, and left in a hurry.
Sharbaraz's tent had guards round it now, and one of the army's sorcerers stood watch outside. Abivard doubted the need for that; now that Smerdis was winning the war by ordinary means, why would he bother with sorcery? The sentries saluted as he came up to the tent.
Inside, Sharbaraz sat on his camp bed, his head in his hands. "What word, brother-in-law of mine?" he asked dully. By his demeanor, he cared nothing for the answer.
But Abivard gave him a word he had not looked for: "Videssos."
"What of Videssos?" Now Sharbaraz showed interest, if no enthusiasm. "Has Likinios decided to cast his lot with Smerdis and join in crushing me? He would be wise if he did; Smerdis won't trouble Videssos for as long as he lives."
"You misunderstand, Majesty," Abivard said, and went on to explain Roshnani's idea. The longer he talked, the more animated Sharbaraz's features became; by the time he was through, the rightful King of Kings seemed more nearly himself than he had at any time since his army was forced across the Tutub.
"It might work; by the God, it just might," he said at last. "As you say, it will cost us men who refuse to follow. It will cost more than that, too; without a doubt, any aid we get from Likinios will have a price attached to it. But even so"
"Aye, even so," Abivard said. Then he added, "I barely knew the Avtokrator's name before we set out on this campaign. I still know next to nothing about him. Has he sons of his own? If he wants to make sure the throne passes to one of them, he may be more inclined to take your side."
"He has four," Sharbaraz answered. "For a Videssian, that's a good numberthey take but one wife apiece. He's been fighting a war with Kubrat, up north and east of Videssos the city. I daresay that's why he tried to set the Khamorth against us: to keep us from invading his western provinces while he was busy on the other frontier."
"It worked," Abivard said sorrowfully.
The rightful King of Kings snorted. "Yes, didn't it just?" He bowed very low to Abivard. "I would violate custom if I told the lady Roshnani how much in her debt I am. Therefore I rely on you to pass on to her my gratitude. I shall also convey the same message to your sister." He headed toward the tent flap, plainly intending to go out.
"You mean to visit her now?" Abivard asked.
"Indeed I do," Sharbaraz said, and vanished into the night. Abivard left the royal tent a moment later. He did not head back toward the wagon from which he had just come. But if Sharbaraz was going to call on Denak when he had stayed away since things began going wrong, that was a powerful argument that hopeamong other thingshad revived in him.
Sharbaraz's army, or the two thirds or so of it that was left, descended on the oasis like a pack of wolves tearing to bits a single chicken. With water, a small ring of fields, and a grove of date palms, the place was ideal for caravans crossing the badlands between Makuran and Videssos. Sharbaraz's men ate everything in sight, and he had to post armed guards around the water hole to keep them from fouling it.
When they rode out again two days later, men and beasts refreshed and water skins all filled, Abivard said, "We'd war with the Videssians more often, I think, if we could get at them more easily."
"Most armies, theirs and ours both, go by way of Vaspurakan," Sharbaraz answered. "The passes through the mountains there are the best invasion routes. But with things going against us, we couldn't hope to get there and get through and still have an army left when we were done."
"I wonder what the Videssians will think when we show up on their border," Abivard said. "Maybe that we've started our own invasion." His smile held no humor. "One daybut not yet."
Abivard looked around. Even battered as it was from desertion and defeat, Sharbaraz's army numbered several thousand. If they threw themselves headlong against the Videssians and took mem by surprise, they could do a good deal of damage before they were overwhelmed. But, as he had said, that was not the plan . . . for now. If they were to regain Makuran, they needed Videssos' help.
Sharbaraz peered eastward. "If the charts and the guides don't lie, one more oasis, two days' ride from here, then a couple of more days of scrub, and then Serrhesa different Empire, a different world."
"Do you speak Videssian, Majesty?" Abivard asked. He could follow the Khamorth dialects after a fashion, but they were cousins to his own language. Of Videssian he knew nothing.
But Sharbaraz rattled off several sentences in a smooth, purring tongue that rather reminded Abivard of wine gurgling out of a jar: glug, glug, glug. To his relief, the rightful King of Kings dropped back into Makuraner. "I was tutored in it, aye; my father thought it something I needed to know. A fair number of nobles and merchants speak it, especially in the east and south of the realm. Some of the Videssian grandees know Makuraner, too."
"That's a relief," Abivard said. "I was afraid I'd be the same as a deaf-mute all the time we were there."
"No, you'll manage," Sharbaraz told him. "And Videssian isn't that hard to pick up, though some of the sounds are hard for us to pronounce." He lisped and hissed to show what he meant, then went on, "But Videssians can't say sh, so it evens out. The language is very good for putting across delicate shades of meaning. I don't know whether that's because they use it so much to quarrel about the exact nature of their god Phos, or whether they quarrel the way they do because Videssian lets them. Which came first, the sheep or the lamb?"
"I don't know," Abivard answered. "I wasn't cut out to be a wise man; whenever I start thinking about complicated things, my wits seize up like a water wheel clogged with mud."
Sharbaraz laughed. "Most of the time, simple is better," he agreed. "If things were simple, I'd have taken my father's throne and that would have been that. But things aren't simple that way, and so we have to face the complications of Videssos."
Abivard pointed to a cloud of dust ahead, just at the edge of visibility. "We may have to face them sooner than we expected. What's that?"
"I don't know," Sharbaraz said in a hollow voice, "but it looks like an army to me." He slammed a fist down on his armored thigh. "How could they have learned we were coming? We can't put up much of a fight against a foe that's ready for us, not now."
Scouts were already riding forward to take the measure of the new threat. After a few minutes, one of them came galloping back toward the main body of the army. Abivard was shocked to see him laughing fit to burst.
Sharbaraz saw that, too, and purpled in fury. "Have you gone mad?" he shouted at the scout. "They're going to beat us like carpets, and you laugh?"
"Majesty, I crave your pardon," the scout said, but he didn't stop laughing. Tears of mirth cut clean tracks through the dust and grime on his cheeks. "That's no army up ahead, Majesty, just a big herd of wild asses raising a cloud, same as if they were cavalry."
Sharbaraz gaped, then laughed himself, a high, shrill cackle that seemed made up of concentrated essence of relief. "Asses, you say? By the God, they made asses out of us."
"Let's make them pay for their presumption," Abivard exclaimed. "They're fresh meat, after all, and we haven't seen much of that for a while. Hunting them would be fitting punishment for frightening us out of our wits."
"So ordered!" Sharbaraz said. Archers pounded after the animals, which fled across the scrubby ground. Watching the asses gallop away in terror made Abivard wish all foes could be so easily overcome.
Abivard was never quite sure just when the army crossed into Videssian territory, one stretch of arid landscape looked much like another. When the soldiers came to a village, though, all possible doubt disappeared: along with the scattered stone houses stood a larger building with a wooden spire topped by a gilded domea temple to Phos, the Videssian god of good.
The people had disappeared along with the doubt; dust trails in the distance showed the direction in which they had fled. "Nice to know we still look like a conquering army to someone," Abivard remarked.
Zal, who was riding close by, clicked his tongue between his teeth a couple of times. "This from the trusting young lord who let the tax collector into his stronghold without even checking how sharp his fangs were? Going off to war has coarsened you, lad." He grinned to show he meant no harm by the words.
"You're probably right," Abivard answered. "Once you watch your hopes bounce up and down a few times, you're not as sure things will all turn out for the best as you used to be."
"Isn't that the truth?" Zal said. "It's too cursed bad, but it's so."
From then on, Sharbaraz ordered the scouts to carry shields of truce so the Videssians would learn as quickly as might be that he had come as a supplicant, not an invader. That forethought soon proved its worth. Early the next morning, a scout came back not with the report of a herd of wild asses, but with a Videssian officer in tow.
Like a lot of Sharbaraz's men, Abivard stared curiously at the first Videssian he had ever seen. The fellow was mounted on a medium-good horse, with a medium-good mailshirt worn above leather trousers. He had a bow ready to grab, a quiver on his back, and a curved sword at his belt.
His helmet was halfway between the standard Makuraner cone pattern and a smooth round dome. No veil or iron links descended from it, so Abivard got a good look at his features. His skin was slightly paler than that of most Makuraners, his nose on the thin side, and his face nearly triangular, sloping down from a wide forehead to a chin of almost feminine delicacy. A fringe of beard outlined that chin and his jaw.
"Do you speak my language?" Sharbaraz asked in Makuraner.
"Aye, a bit," the Videssian answered. "Few on this frontier don't." He used Makuraner well enough, though his accent sometimes made him hard to understand. One of his eyebrowsso thin and smoothly curved that Abivard wondered if he plucked it into shaperose. "But I ought to be the one asking the questions. For starters, who are you and what are you doing in my country with an army tagging along?" His quick, scornful glance up and down the line of riders said he saw better-looking armies every day of the week, and sometimes twice a day. He added, "Which side of your civil war were you on?"
"I am Sharbaraz, rightful King of Kings of Makuran, and I was on my own side," Sharbaraz proclaimed. Abivard had the satisfaction of watching the Videssian's mouth drop open like a toad's when it snapped at a fly. Sharbaraz went on, "I have come to Videssos to seek the Avtokrator Likinios' aid in restoring me to the throne that is properly mine. Surely he will understand the importance of preserving unbroken the legitimate line of succession."
The Videssian stayed silent for most of a minute before he replied. Later, when Abivard came to understand that Videssians rarely kept quiet for any reason, he would have a deeper appreciation of the depth of shock that conveyed. At last the fellow managed to put words together: "Uh, Lord Sarbaraz"
As Sharbaraz had said, Videssians couldn't make the sh sound. But the officer's accent was not what offended Abivard. "Say 'your Majesty,' as you would for your own Emperor," he growled.
"Your Majesty," the Videssian said at once. "Your Majesty, I'm not the man to treat with you; the lord with the great and good mind knows that's so." His laugh came rueful. "I'm not the man to stop you, either. When the villagers rode into Serrhes screaming that all the soldiers in the world were heading that way, the epoptesthe city governor, you'd sayfigured a pack of desert bandits had got bold; he sent me out to deal with them. I have fifty men back there, no more."
"Who will treat with me, then?" Sharbaraz asked. "Is this epoptes of yours a man of sufficient rank to discuss matters of state?"
"No," the Videssian said, then added, "your Majesty. But I hear tell Likinios' eldest son is traveling through the westlands, keeping things on an even keel here while the Avtokrator, Phos bless him, campaigns against the heathens of Kubrat. Hosios will be able to deal with you."
"Indeed." Sharbaraz regally inclined his head. "Will he come to the town of Serrhes? If so, when?"
"Drop me in the ice if I know," the officer said, apparently an oath but not one Abivard recognized. "If he wasn't planning to come there in his progress, though, I expect he'll change his mind when old Kalamossorry, your Majesty, that's the city governorsends a letter off to wherever he is now, telling him you've come into the Empire."
"I suspect you may be right," Sharbaraz said. He and the Videssian soldier both laughed at the understatement.
Serrhes struck Abivard as being halfway between a stronghold town and a real city. The whole perimeter was fortified, with a wall higher and thicker than Vek Rud stronghold boasted. Inside, on the highest ground in the place, stood a massive citadel where warriors could retreat in case the outer wall was breached.
"Pretty strong fortress to stick out in the middle of nowhere," he remarked to Sharbaraz.
The rightful King of Kings chuckled. "The only reason the Videssians would site a fortress here is to protect their land from us." Abivard thought about that, then nodded. Belonging to a people who could inspire such precautions made him proud.
By the smooth way in which the epoptes took over the provisioning of Sharbaraz's men, he might have had Makuraner armies dropping in for a visit every other month. Some of the grain came from the storerooms in the cellar of the citadel; soon pack animals were fetching more from farther east. The spring that made the town possible at all was barely adequate for the sudden influx. Videssian guards made sure no one took more than his fair share. They were stern but, Abivard had to admit, just.
Hosios arrived a bit more than two weeks after Sharbaraz's shrunken host came to Serrhes. The epoptes, a plump little man, went about his town in a transport of nervousness: if the protocol for the meeting between the Avtokrator's eldest son and the claimant to the title of King of Kings of Makuran broke down, the blame would all land on him, for both primary parties to the meeting were of rank too exalted for any to stick to them. Had Abivard been wearing Kalamos' boots, he would have been nervous, too.
As a matter of fact, he was nervous, and for reasons related to those of the city governor. Coming to Videssos had been Roshnani's idea, which he had sold to Sharbaraz; if it did not bring the results for which he had hoped, Sharbaraz would remember. Of course, if it didn't bring those results, Sharbaraz would not be powerful enough to make his displeasure felt.
The ceremony the epoptes devised was as elaborately formal as a wedding. Hosios rode out from the city, accompanied by Kalamos and a ceremonial guard of twenty men. At the same time, Sharbaraz advanced from the tent city that had sprung up outside Serrhes, along with Abivard and twenty men of his own.
"Ah," Sharbaraz murmured as the Avtokrator's eldest son drew near, "he wears the red boots. Do you see, Abivard?"
"I see they are red," Abivard answered. "Does that mean something special?"
Sharbaraz nodded. "The Videssians have ceremonial usages of their own, as complicated as ours. Only an Avtokrator may wear boots all of red, without black stripes or something of the sort. Hosios is junior Emperor in his own right, in other words. I am treating with an equal, at least in theory."
Abivard didn't need that explained to him. In practice, Likinios made the decisions. Abivard said, "I'm glad Hosios speaks Makuraner. Otherwise I'd be as useful here as a fifth leg on a horse."
Sharbaraz waved him to silence; Hosios was drawing close enough to hear. He was about Abivard's age, with a narrow-chinned Videssian face made distinctive by a sword scar on one cheek and by eyes that gave the strong impression of having seen everything at least once. He wore a golden circlet that did not quite hide the fact that his hairline had begun to recede.
Because Sharbaraz had entered Videssos, he spoke first. "I, Sharbaraz, King of Kings, good and pacific, fortunate and pious, to whom the God has given great fortune and a great realm, a man formed in the image of the God, greet you, Hosios Avtokrator, my brother."
Hosios inclined his head; evidently he knew not only the Makuraner language but also the flowery rhetoric that flourished in Sharbaraz's realm. He said, "In the name of Likinios, Avtokrator of the Videssians, viceregent of Phos on earth, I, Hosios Avtokrator, greet you, Sharbaraz by right of birth King of Kings, my brother."
He held out his hand. Sharbaraz urged his horse forward a pace or two and clasped it, without hesitation but also without joy. Abivard understood that. The Videssians had flowery ceremonial language of their own, but he had caught the implications of by right of birth King of Kings. It sounded well, but promised nothing. If at some future time Likinios saw wisdom in recognizing Smerdis, he could do so with a clear conscience, for having the birthright of a King of Kings was not the same as actually being one.
Sharbaraz released Hosios' hand and introduced Abivard to him. Abivard bowed in the saddle, saying, "Your Majesty"
"I am styled 'young Majesty,' to distinguish me from my father," Hosios broke in.
"Your pardon, young Majesty. I was about to say, I never expected to have the honor of meeting a Videssian Avtokrator, save perhaps on the battlefieldand then the introduction would have been edged with iron, not words."
"Ayesharper than the one of us or the other would have liked, that's certain." Hosios sized up Abivard with the knowing eyes that, along with his scar, said he had been on a few battlefields in his time: perhaps against the Kubratoi, whoever they were: to Abivard, at any rate, no more than a name.
Sharbaraz said, "You will understand, Hosios" With his rank, he was entitled to use the junior Avtokrator's name unadorned. "I would sooner meet you as foe and outright enemy myself. You would know I was lying if I said otherwise. But since fate compels me to come before you as a beggar, I own that is what I am." He bowed his proud head to Hosios.
The junior Avtokrator reached out to set a hand on his shoulder. "No harm will come to you and yours in Videssos, Sharbaraz: may Phos the lord with the great and good mind damn me to the eternal ice if I lie. Whatever else befalls, I promise you a mansion in Videssos the city and estates in the countryside, with appropriate lodging throughout the Empire for the men who have followed you here."
"You are generous," Sharbaraz said, again with something less than a whole heart. Again, Abivard had no trouble figuring out why: Hosios proposed to dissolve the Makuraner army like a small spoonful of salt poured into a great tun of water. After a moment's pause to show he also grasped that point, Sharbaraz resumed: "But I did not come here seeking a new home for me and mine. I came to beseech your aid that I might return to Makuran, where I already have a home."
"I know that," Hosios answered calmly. "Were it in my power, you would have what you ask for on the instant. But my power, though large, does not reach so far. You will have to wait on my father's will."
Sharbaraz inclined his head once more. "Your father is well served in you. The God grant he realize it."
"In such ways as you can in your distress, you are generous to me," Hosios said, smiling. "One would have to be a very bold man indeed to contemplate going against my father's will. As with my power, my boldness is large, but does not extend so far."
Beside him, Kalamos the epoptes nodded vigorously. He had a good and healthy respect for the Avtokrator's power. Abivard approved of that. He wished a certain mintmaster back in Mashiz had shown similar respect for the power of the King of Kings.
"May I ask a question, Majesty?" he murmured to Sharbaraz. When his sovereign nodded, he turned to Hosios and said, "If Likinios has such power and boldness as you describe, young Majesty, what could keep him from coming to our aid?"
He didn't know what sort of answer he had expected, but it was not the blunt reply Hosios gave him: "Two things spring to mind, eminent sir. One, your principal there may not offer concessions substantial enough to make it worth our while to restore him to the throne. And two, related to one, the war against the Kubratoi has caused a hemorrhage in the treasury. Videssos may simply lack the funds to do as you desire, however much we might want to."
"We in Makuran speak of Videssos as a nation of merchants," Sharbaraz said. "I regret to say it seems to be so."
Hosios had his own kind of pride, not the haughty arrogance a Makuraner noble would have displayed, but a certainty all the more impressive for being understated. "If we were but a nation of merchants, Makuran would have conquered us long since. I would be impolite to remind you who seeks whose aid, and so I would never presume to do such a thing."
"Of course," Sharbaraz said sourly. Hosios' not-reminder could scarcely have hit any harder had the junior Avtokrator held up a sign.
"We are friends here, or at least not enemies," Hosios said. "I bid you to a feast this evening, to be held in the residence of the noble epoptes here. Bring a score of your chiefest captains with you, or even half again as many. And, since I am told you and your brother-in-law have your wives accompanying you, bring them, as well. Many of the leading citizens of Serrhes will have their ladies with them. My own wife is back in Videssos the city, or I would do the same."
"This is not our custom." Sharbaraz's voice was stiff. Abivard nodded.
Hosios ignored both of them. He said, "We have a proverb: 'When in Videssos the city, eat fish.' If you come to the Videssian Empire, should you not accommodate yourselves to our usages?"
Sharbaraz hesitated. As soon as he did, Abivard knew another fight was lost. This time, he resolved to get ahead of the rightful King of Kings. "Thank you for the invitation, young Majesty," he said to Hosios. "Roshnani will be honored to attend, especially since it's you who command it."
Hosios beamed and turned to Sharbaraz. The rightful King of Kings gave Abivard a so-you've-had-your-revenge look, then yielded with as much grace as he could muster: "Where Abivard's wife may go, how can his sister be left behind? Denak, too, will conform to your customs this evening."
"Excellent!" The junior Avtokrator carefully refrained from sounding smug or triumphant. "I shall see you at sunset this evening, then."
"At sunset." Sharbaraz carefully refrained from sounding enthusiastic.
"I'm so excited!" Roshnani squeaked as she walked through the streets of Serrhes toward the epoptes' residence. She stared at the golden dome atop a temple to Phos. "I never imagined I would see a Videssian city from the inside."
"I hoped I would, after taking it in war," Abivard said, "but not this waynever as guest to the Avtokrator's son."
A couple of paces ahead, Denak strode along beside Sharbaraz. By the casual glances she cast this way and that, she might have been born in Serrhes and come back to it after a few months' absence: she appeared interested but a long way from fascinated. Unlike her sister-in-law, she took the invitation to Hosios' supper as no more than her due.
The officers who trailed after Sharbaraz and Abivard imitated Denak in one respect: just as she did her best to seem unimpressed with the Videssian city, so they tried to pretend that she and Roshnani were not with their party. Their idea of society was rigidly masculine, and they aimed to keep it that way.
Kalamos' residence and Serrhes' main temple to Phos looked at each across the market square below the hillock in which the citadel stood. The temple was impressive, with a large dome surmounting on pendentives walls thick enough to make another citadel in time of need. By contrast, the epoptes' residence was severely plain: whitewashed walls, slit windows, a red tile roof. If such a meager home was a perquisite of office, Abivard wondered how the Videssians managed to lure anyone into the job.
His perspective changed when he went inside. Videssians confined the loveliness of their homes to the interior, where only those so bidden could observe it. Mosaics of herding and hunting scenes brightened the floors, while tapestries made the walls seem to come alive. The residence was built around a courtyard. A fountain splashed there, in the middle of a formal garden. Torches did their brave best to turn evening to noontime.
Hosios and Kalamos greeted the Makuraner leaders as they arrived. Beside the epoptes stood his wife, a plump, pleasant-faced woman who seemed pleased to greet Roshnani and Denak and a trifle puzzledthough politeness masked most of thatthe rest of the guests had no women with them. Other officials, as Hosios had said, also had their wivesand sometimes, along with their sons, their young and pretty daughtersat the supper. They all took that utterly for granted, which bemused even Abivard, who thought of himself as a liberal in such matters.
"It's what you're used to, I suppose," Sharbaraz said after accepting greetings from yet another highborn Videssian lady. "But, by the God, I'll need a while to get used to this."
Not all the Videssians spoke Makuraner, nor did all the Makuraners know Videssian. Those who had both languages interpreted for those who did not. Some from each group hung back, resolutely unsociable, suspicious of their longtime foes, or both.
No one hung back from the wine. Servants circulated with trays of already-filled cups. Some of the wine had a strong taste of resin. A Makuraner-speaking Videssian explained to Abivard, "We use pitch to seal the wine jars and to keep the precious stuff inside from turning to vinegar. I hadn't noticed the flavor for years, till you reminded me of it."
"It's what you're used to," Abivard said, echoing his sovereign.
The main course for the banquet was a pair of roasted kids. As the second highest-ranking Makuraner, Abivard was seated by Kalamos. He turned to the epoptes and said, "I recognize garlic and cloves and the flavoring, but not the rest of the sauce."
"The oil is from the olive," Kalamos answered, "which I know is not common in Makuran. And the rest is garum, brought hither all the way from Videssos the city."
"Garum?" That was not a word Abivard knew. "What goes into it? It has a tang not quite like anything I've tasted." He smacked his lips, unsure whether he liked it or not.
"It's made from fish," the epoptes explained. If he had stopped there, everything would have been fine, but he went on, "They make it by salting down fish innards in pots open to the air. When the fish are fully ripe, a liquid forms above them, which is then drawn off and bottled. A great delicacy, don't you agree?"
Abivard needed a moment to realize that, when the helpful Videssian said ripe, he meant putrid. His stomach got the message before his head did. He gulped wine, hoping to quell the internal revolt before it was well begun. Then he shoved his plate away. "I find I'm full," he said.
"What was he saying about fish in the sauce?" asked Roshnani, who had been talking in very simple Makuraner with the epoptes' wife.
"Never mind," Abivard answered. "You don't want to know." He watched the Videssians downing their young goat with gusto, sauce and all. They really thought they were giving their guests the best they had. And in fact, the meal, while strange to his palate, hadn't tasted badbut after he found out what garum was, he couldn't bring himself to eat another bite of kid.
Fruit candied in honey and cheese made safer choices. Minstrels played pipes and pandouras and sang songs that struck the ear pleasantly, even if Abivard couldn't understand the words. The sweets and wine helped drown the memory of fermented fish sauce.
Sharbaraz and Hosios had spent the banquet in earnest conversation, sometimes in the language of one, sometimes in that of the other. They seemed to get on well, which Abivard thought an advantage. It would have been a bigger one, though, had Hosios had authority to do anything much without Likinios' leave.
Sharbaraz bowed to his host as he stood to go. Abivard and the rest of the Makuraners imitated their sovereign. As they headed out of the epoptes' residence, a Videssian woman let out a short shriek and then exclaimed volubly in her own language.
"Oh, by the God!" Sharbaraz clapped a hand to his forehead. "She says Bardiya stuck his hand between herwell, felt of her where he shouldn't have. Get that fool out of here, the rest of you."
As some of the Makuraner officers manhandled Bardiya out into the night, he howled, "What is she complaining about? She must be a whore, or she wouldn't show herself to other men like that. She" Somebody clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling whatever else he had to say.
"Forgive him, I beg you, kind lady, and you also, my generous hosts," Sharbaraz said rapidly. "He must have drunk too much wine, or he would not have been so rude and foolish." To Abivard, he muttered under his breath, "This is what comes of banquets run by customs other than our own."
Hosios said, "Perhaps it would be wiser if that man did not come into Serrhes again. One lapse is fairly easily forgiven. More than one"
Sharbaraz bowed. "It shall be as you say, of course. Thank you for your gracious understanding."
Torchbearers lighted the Makuraners' way back to their encampment. Once they were out of earshot of the epoptes' residence, Abivard said, "That idiot might have ruined everything."
"Don't I know it," Sharbaraz answered. "Lucky Bardiya didn't try to drag her back among the flowers. That would have been a pretty picture, wouldn't ita rape at a feast given us by our benefactors?"
"If he'd done that, he should have answered for it with his head," Denak said. "As it is, he ought to suffer more than just being hustled away in disgrace." Her voice had a brittle edge; Abivard remembered what she had endured from Sharbaraz's guards back at Nalgis Crag stronghold.
"What do you suggest?" Sharbaraz asked, though his tone gave no assurance he would heed what she said.
"Stripes, well laid on," Denak answered at once. "Use him to teach the lesson and it won't have to be taught again."
"Too harsh." Sharbaraz sounded like a man dickering over figs in the market square. "Here's what I'll do: come morning, I'll have him apologize to that lady as if she were Likinios' wife, right down to knocking his head on the floor. That may even humiliate him worse than a flogging, and it won't cost me as much goodwill in the army."
"It's not enough," Denak said darkly.
"It's better than nothing, and more than I expected you'd get," Roshnani said. Having her sister-in-law speak up for what Sharbaraz had proposed made Denak nod, too, a sharp, abrupt motion that showed consent without enthusiasm.
"We think of the Videssians as devious double-dealers," Sharbaraz said. "Like a coin that has two sides. In their poems and chronicles, they look on us as fierce and bloodthirsty. Most times, that's a good reputation for us to have. Now, though, we have to seem civilized enough by their standards to be worth helping. A formal apology should do the job."
"It's not enough," Denak repeated, but then she let the argument go.
Hosios conveyed his recommendations, whatever they were, to a courier to take to his father in the distant northeast of the Empire of Videssos. Not long after he did so, he, too, departed from Serrhes: he had other things to do besides attending to a ragtag band of Makuraners. After he was gone, the town seemed to shrink in on Abivard, as if the world outside had altogether forgotten him and his companions.
Summer turned to fall. The local farmers harvested their meager crops. Without the wagonloads of grain that came into Serrhes every day, its Makuraner guests would have starved.
Fall brought rain. Herdersmuch like their Makuraner counterpartsdrove their cattle and sheep to the fields that showed the most new green. Soon the winds from out of the westfrom Makuranwould bring snow instead of rain. The climate might be somewhere close to as harsh as that round Vek Rud stronghold . . . and tents were worse suited than castles to riding out winter blizzards.
Rain turned roads to mud. Even had Sharbaraz and his host wished to pull up stakes and go somewhere new, they would have been hard-pressed to move far or fast through the gluey, clinging ooze. Only when the first freeze turned the mud hard did travel cautiously begin again.
About a month after that first freeze, a courier came into Serrhes to report that the Avtokrator Likinios was little more than a day outside of town. The epoptes went into a cleaning fit, like a village woman who sees from her window her fussy mother-in-law approaching. As if by sorceryand Abivard wasn't altogether sure Kalamos hadn't resorted to magecraftwreaths and bunting appeared on the streets that led from the gates to the square below the citadel: just the streets Likinios was likeliest to travel.
Sharbaraz also did his best to bring order and cleanliness to his camp outside the wall. Even after that best was done, the camp still struck Abivard as a sad, ragged place: as if a broken dream had been badly animated and brought halfway to life. But he held his peace, for Likinios, should he choose, had the power to revitalize Sharbaraz's cause in full. Anything that might prompt him to do so was worth trying.
When Likinios did reach Serrhes, the ceremonial ordained for his meeting with Sharbaraz was similar to that which Hosios had employed. With Abivard and his honor guard, Sharbaraz rode out from his camp to greet the Avtokrator, who came forth from the city walls.
Abivard had looked for an older version of Hosios, just as Peroz, in both looks and style, had been an older version of Sharbaraz. But Likinios, although by his face he had plainly sired his eldest son, as plainly came from a different mold.
His features were individually like those of Hosios, but taken as a whole gave Abivard the impression that the Avtokrator was totting up how much the ceremony costand not caring for the answer he got. Likinios wore gilded armor, but on him it seemed more a costume than something he would don naturally.
"I welcome you to Videssos, your Majesty," he said in fair Makuraner. His voice was tightly controlled, not, Abivard thought, because he was using a language foreign to him but because that was the sort of man he was. The word that ran through Abivard's mind was calculator.
"I thank you for your kindness and generosity to me and my people, your Majesty," Sharbaraz replied.
"You have already dealt with the epoptes here, so I need not introduce him to you." Likinios sounded relieved at not having to spend any unnecessary words.
"Your Majesty, I have the honor to present to you my brother-in-law the lord Abivard, dihqan of Vek Rud domain," Sharbaraz said. Abivard bowed in the saddle to the Avtokrator.
Likinios grudged him a nod in return. "You're a long way from home, sir," he observed. Abivard stared at him. Could he know where in Makuran Vek Rud domain lay? Abivard would not have bet against it.
Sharbaraz said, "All my men in this your realm are a long way from home, your Majesty. With your gracious assistance, we shall return there one day in the not too distant future."
The Avtokrator studied him for a while before replying. Likinios' eyes didn't see just surfaces; Abivard had the feeling they measured like a cloth merchant checking the exact length of a boltand reckoned up cost with the same impersonal precision. At last Likinios said, "If you can show me how helping you is worth my while, I'll do it. Otherwise" He let the word hang in the air.
"Your son was more forthcoming on this, your Majesty," Sharbaraz said. He did not presume to call Likinios by name, as he had Hosios.
"My son, as yet, is young." The Avtokrator made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. "He has no trouble deciding what he wants, but he has not yet learned that everything has its price."
"Surely having a King of Kings in Mashiz who was grateful for your generosity would be worth a pretty price," Sharbaraz said.
"Gratitude is worth its weight in gold," Likinios said. Abivard thought the Videssian ruler was agreeing with Sharbaraz until he realized words had no weight.
Sharbaraz also needed a moment to catch that. When he did, he frowned and said, "Surely honor and justice are not words without meaning to a man who has held the imperial throne for more than twenty years."
"No indeed," Likinios answered. "But other words also have meaning to me: risk and cost and reward not least among them. Putting you back on your throne won't be easy or cheap. If I decide to do it, I expect to be rewarded with more than gratitude, your Majesty." The way he aimed the honorific at Sharbaraz only emphasized that the rightful King of Kings would not be truly entitled to it without Videssian aid.
"If you fail to help me now, and I reclaim the throne even so" Sharbaraz began.
"I'll take that chance," Likinios said, his voice flat.
Abivard leaned over to whisper to Sharbaraz: "Bluff and bluster will get you nowhere with this one, Majesty. All that's real to him is what he can see and touch and count. His son may be sentimentalhis son might not even make a bad Makuraner, if it comes to thatbut he's the cold-hearted Videssian in all our tales come to life."
"I fear you may be right," Sharbaraz whispered back. He raised his voice to address Likinios once more: "What could be more valuable to Videssos than quiet along your western frontier?"
"We have that now," the Avtokrator answered. "We're likely to keep it as long as Smerdis rules, too."
Sharbaraz grunted, as if kicked in the belly. Also as if kicked in the belly, he needed time to find the breath for a reply. "I had not looked for your Majesty to be so . . . blunt."
Likinios shrugged. "My father Hosios had me work in the treasury for a time before the throne came to me. Once you're around numbers for a while, you lose patience with twisting words around."
"That's not what Smerdis found," Sharbaraz said with a sour laugh. He pointed to Likinios. "You took the throne from your father, and you want your son to have it from you. But what if some treasury official not of your house takes courage from what Smerdis did in Mashiz and steals the throne that ought to belong to Hosios? If you encourage usurpers in Makuran, you encourage them in Videssos, too."
"There is the first argument of sense you've put forward," Likinios remarked. Abivard felt like hugging himself with glee. That wasn't Sharbaraz's argument, it was Roshnani's, at least in essence. How she would laughhow she would brag!when he told her what the Avtokrator of the Videssians had said about it.
"How much weight does it have?" Sharbaraz asked.
"By itself, not enough," Likinios said flatly. "Smerdis will give me peace in the west as well as you will. I need that peace for now, so I can properly deal with the Kubratoi once for all. Their horsemen raid all the way down to the suburbs of Videssos the city. A century and a half ago, the cursed savages forced their way south of the Istros River and set up their robbers' nest in land rightfully Videssian. I aim to take it back if it costs me every goldpiece in the treasury."
"This I understand, your Majesty," Abivard said. "We have our own trouble with nomads spilling south over the Degird." Videssos had subsidized those nomads, but he forbore to mention it. His sovereign needed Videssian aid.
Likinios' eyes swung away from Sharbaraz and onto him. They were red-tracked, pouchy, full of suspicion, but very wisemaybe dangerously wise. Had his father Godarz been filled with bitterness instead of calm, he might have had eyes like those. The Avtokrator said, "Then you will also understand why I say Videssos' aid has a price attached."
"And what price will you seek to extract from me?" Sharbaraz asked. "Whatever you ask of me, you may be fairly sure I will tell you aye. But you may also be sure I shall remember."
"And you, your Majesty, may be sure I am sure of both those things." Likinios' smile stretched his mouth wide but did not reach those disconcerting eyes. "A nice calculation, don't you think?how much to demand so that I show a profit from the arrangement and yet keep from enraging you afterward." He shrugged. "We need not decide the matter now. After all, we have the whole winter ahead of us."
"You look forward to the dicker," Abivard blurted. Imagining a Videssian Avtokrator as devious was easy. Imagining him as a merchant in the bazaar was something else again.
But Likinios nodded. "Of course I do."
Snow swirled through the streets as Sharbaraz and Abivard rode toward the epoptes' residence. Abivard was beginning to pick up some Videssian. He laughed after he and the rightful King of Kings went past a couple of locals chatting with each other. Sharbaraz gave him a curious look. "What's so funny?"
"Didn't I understand them?" Abivard said. "Weren't they complaining about what a hard winter this is?"
"Oh, I see." His sovereign managed a smile, but a thin one. "I would have said the same thing till I saw what you endured every year."
In front of Kalamos' home, a servitor took charge of the Makuraners' horses. Another servitor, bowing deeply, admitted them to the residence, then made haste to shut the door behind them. Abivard heartily approved of that; ducts under the floor carried heat from a central fire to keep the epoptes' residence if not warm, then at least not cold.
That second servant led them to the chamber where Likinios awaited. They could have found the room without his help; they had been here a good many times before. The servant turned to Abivard. "Shall I bring hot spiced wine, eminent sir?" he asked in Videssianhe knew Abivard was trying to learn his tongue.
"Yes, please, that be good," Abivard said. He wouldn't be writing Videssian poetry any time soon, but he was starting to be able to say things other people could follow.
Likinios bowed to Sharbaraz, then nodded to Abivard. When the formalities were done, the Avtokrator said, "Shall we go back to the map?"
He spoke of the square of parchment as Abivard might have of a fine horse, or Ganzak the smith of a well-made sword: it was his passion, the place where his interest centered. In most circumstances, Abivard would have judged that a spiritless thing to have as a controlling interest. But not now. In the duel Likinios waged with his Makuraner guests, maps were tools of war no less than horses and swords.
As he always did, Abivard admired the Videssians' lucid cartography. His own people didn't worry so much about portraying every inch of ground, perhaps because so much of the ground in Makuran held little worth portraying. But Likinios had detailed pictures of land Videssos didn't even ownyet.
"I knew we would come down to haggling over valleys in Vaspurakan," Sharbaraz said gloomily.
"You'd not have the wit to be King of Kings if you didn't know it," the Avtokrator retorted. He pointed to the map again. The mountain valleys of Vaspurakan ran east and west between Videssos and Makuran, up to the north of Serrhes. They offered the best trade routeswhich also meant the best invasion routesbetween the two lands. These days most of those routes lay in Makuraner hands.
Sharbaraz said, "Along with the lay of the land, Vaspurakan grows good fighting men. I hate even to think of giving them up."
"Caught between your realm and mine, they have to be good fighting men," Likinios said, which drew a startled chuckle from Abivard; he hadn't thought the Avtokrator a man to crack any jokes, even small ones. Likinios continued, "The Vaspurakaners also worship Phos. Videssos grieves to see them under the dominion of those who will spend eternity in Skotos' ice for their misbelief."
"I think Videssos grieves more over that than the Vaspurakaners do," Sharbaraz answered. "They think you worship your god the wrong way, and complain that you try to make them follow your errors."
"Our usages are not errors," Likinios said stiffly, "and no matter what they are, you, your Majesty, are in a poor position to point them out to me."
Sharbaraz sighed. "That's true, I fear." Reluctantly, he walked over to the map. "Show me again what you propose to wring from me in exchange for your aid."
Likinios ran his finger down a zigzagging line from north to south. He was not modest in his demands. At the moment, Makuran held about four fifths of Vaspurakan. Were Sharbaraz to accept what Likinios wanted, that holding would shrink to less than half the disputed country.
Abivard said, "Tell him no, your Majesty. What he asks is robbery, no other word for it."
"That is not true," Likinios said. "It is a price for a service rendered. If you do not wish the service, your Majesty, you need not pay the price."
"It is still too high a price," Sharbaraz said. "As I warned you when we first met, did I pay it, I should feel honor-bound to try to recover it when my strength allowed. I tell you this again, your Majesty, so you may be forewarned."
"You'd start that war of revenge for this, eh?" Likinios frowned and paced back and forth. "It could be so."
"It is so," Sharbaraz answered. "I pledge my word on it, and the word of a Makuraner nobleunless he be Smerdisis to be trusted. If you insist, I will pay this price, but we shall have war afterward."
"I cannot afford more war now," Likinios said irritably, spitting out afford as if it were a curse. "However much I should like a friendly King of Kings in Mashiz, you tempt me to think an ineffectual one will serve as well."
Abivard studied the map once more. He also listened again in his mind to the way Likinios had spoken. He pointed to a symbol in one of the valleys Likinios sought to claim. "These crossed picks represent a mine, not so?" Likinios nodded. Abivard continued, "What would your Majesty say to a boundary that marched more like this?" He drew his own zigzag line, this one taking in several valleys with mines but not the great stretch of territory to which the Avtokrator wanted to lay claim.
"It still gives away too much," Sharbaraz said.
At the same time Likinios said, "This is not enough."
The two men of royal blood looked at each other. Abivard took advantage of their hesitation: "Your Majesties, isn't a plan that leaves both of you less than happy better than one that satisfies Videssos too well and Makuran not at all, or the other way round?"
"Ah, but if I am not satisfied, I have only to withhold aid and my life goes on anyway, much as it would have without these talks," Likinios said.
"While that's true, your Majesty, if you don't give me aid, you lose the chance to put a King of Kings beholden to you on the throne in Mashiz, and you leave a usurper there as a temptation to every ambitious man in Videssos," Sharbaraz said. "And if you think Smerdis will be grateful to you for not backing me, remember how he treated me."
Likinios scowled and studied the map again. Encouraged because he did not reject the proposal out of hand, Abivard said, "If the precise border I suggested fails to please you, your Majesty, perhaps you will propose one along similar lines. Or perhaps my master the King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, might offer one of his own?"
"How do you speak of the realm's increasing in one breath and ask me to take away a great slice of Vaspurakan in the next?" Sharbaraz asked. But, to Abivard's relief, he did not sound angry. Instead, he walked over and gave the map a long, hard look himself.
Abivard thought serious talk, as opposed to posturing, began then between the King of Kings of Makuran and the Avtokrator of the Videssians. The next time he tried to suggest something to move the talks along, both men stared at him as if he were a drooling idiot. He felt humiliated, but not for long: two days later, they reached an agreement not very far from the one he had outlined on the map with his finger.
Tanshar bowed low to Abivard. "May it please you, lord," the fortune-teller said, "you are being spoken ofcomplimented, to make myself clearby our people and the Videssians alike." He bowed. "Always an honor to serve you, and doubly now. What is your wish?"
"Were I to suggest what I propose to you in aid of a King of Kings rather than an Avtokrator, I should be guilty of treason," Abivard answered.
The fortune-teller nodded, unsurprised. "You want me to learn what I can of the Videssian royal house?"
"Just so," Abivard said. "I want you to scry out, if you can, how long Likinios will remain on the throne and how long Hosios will rule after him."
"I shall try, lord, but I make no guarantees as to the results," Tanshar answered. "As you say, you would be committing treason if you sought to learn these things about the royal house of Makuran. Not only that, you would have a hard time learning them even if you had no fear of treason: the King of Kings will normally surround himself with spells that make divining his future as difficult as possible, in my judgment a sensible measure of self-preservation. I would be most surprised if the Avtokrator did not similarly ward himself."
"I hadn't thought of that," Abivard said unhappily, "but yes, you're likely to be right. Do your best all the same. Perhaps you will have better luck than a Videssian mage might, for I'd guess the Avtokrator would be best protected against the kind of sorcery usual in his own country."
"No doubt that's so, lord," Tanshar agreed, "but we, plainly, are the next greatest magical threat to the Avtokrator's well-being, so his future may be shielded against our magecraft, as well."
"I understand," Abivard said. "If you fail, we're no worse off than we would be otherwise. But if you succeed, we'll have learned something important about how far we can rely on the Videssians. Do the best you can; that's all I can say."
"Fair enough," Tanshar said. "I appreciate your not expecting the impossible of me. What I can do, I shall do. When do you want me to make the attempt?"
"As soon as may be."
"Of course, lord," Tanshar said, "although you may not find it exciting to watch. The charms involved have little drama to them, I confess, and I may have to go through several of them to find one that worksif, indeed, any of them succeeds. As I said, I have no assurance of success in this undertaking. But if you like, I will begin trying this evening after you return from the latest talks between his Majesty and the Avtokrator Likinios."
"That will be fine," Abivard said. Having haggled over what Sharbaraz would yield in exchange for aid, the two men were now dickering over how much aid he would get; Likinios would indeed have made a marvelous rug seller. In the end, Abivard suspected Sharbaraz would make most of the concessions once more. Having the royal blood without ruling Makuran ate at him.
When Abivard went back to Tanshar's tent, he found the fortune-teller waiting for him. "I have assembled a number of means for looking into what may be," Tanshar said. "The God willing, one will pierce not only the veil of future time, but whatever the Videssians may have thrown up around their Avtokrator."
He tried scrying with water, as he had when Abivard brought him Ardini's curse tablet. Since Abivard had touched and dealt with Likinios, Tanshar reckoned him an appropriate link to the Avtokrator of the Videssians. But no matter how still the water in the scrying bowl became, it never gave the fortune-teller and Abivard any picture of what Likinios was doing or how long he might go on doing it.
"I might have known," Tanshar said. "Scrying with water is the simplest way of looking into the future. If the Videssians warded against any of our styles of divination, that would be the one."
He tried again with a clear, faceted crystal in place of the bowl of water. The crystal turned foggy. Abivard did not need to ask anything of the fortune-teller to realize that meant his magical efforts were being blocked. Tanshar replaced the clear crystal with one of chalcedony. "This is a Videssian-style divination," he said. "Perhaps it will have more success."
But it didn't. As he had guessed, the Videssians warded the Avtokrator against their own methods of seeing what lay ahead, too. Next he tried a divination that was in large measure an invocation of the God. Abivard had high hopes for that one: surely the God was stronger than the false deities of good and evil in whom the Videssians believed.
The invocation, though, failed as utterly as had the earlier divinations. "How can that be?" Abivard demanded. "I will not imagine for a moment that the Videssians worship correctly and we do not."
"Nor need you imagine that," Tanshar answered. "The truth is more simple and less dismaying: while the God of course outstrips Phos and Skotos in power, so, also, must the Videssian wizards charged with protecting their ruler surpass me. Together, they and their gods" He curled his lip in scorn, "suffice to block my efforts. Had we a stronger Makuraner mage here"
"Like the one who tried to slay Sharbaraz?" Abivard broke in. "Thank you, but no. I'm sure you will use whatever you find in the service of the rightful King of Kings, not against him."
Tanshar bowed. "You are kind to an old man who never looked to be drawn into the quarrels of the great." His clouded eye but made the smile he donned more rueful. "I wish I could live up to the confidence you place in me."
"You shall. I have no doubt of it," Abivard declared.
"I wish I didn't." Tanshar rummaged in a leather pouch he wore on his belt and came up with a lump of coal that left black smears on his hands. "Perhaps divination by opposites will evade the Videssians' wards," he said. "Few things are more opaque than coal; Likinios' future, however, seems at the moment to be one of them."
He poured the water out of the scrying bowl and set the coal in its place. The dialect of Makuraner in which he murmured his summons to the God was so archaic, Abivard could hardly understand it. He wondered what would happen if the scrying succeeded. Would the lump of coal become transparent, as his clear crystal had grown murky?
With a snap! almost like a small bolt of lightning, the coal burst into flame. Tanshar jerked his head away just in time to keep his mustache and bushy eyebrows from getting singed. A pillar of greasy black smoke rose to the roof of his tent.
"Does that tell you anything?" Abivard asked.
"One thing, and that most clearly," Tanshar answered in a shaken voice. "I am not likely to learn how long Likinios will remain Avtokrator, not with any sorcery I have under my control."
Abivard bowed his head, accepting that. But he was the sort who, when thwarted in one direction, would turn to another to gain his ends. "All right, then," he said. "Let's see how long Hosios will reign once he succeeds his father."
Tanshar waited till the coal had burned out, then swept the ashes from the scrying bowl. He swung a small censer full of bitterly aromatic myrrh over the bowl. "I want to purify it before my next attempt," he explained. "No trace of that previous magic may remain."
He began anew with the simplest scrying tool: plain water in the bowl. Together he and Abivard waited for stillness, then touched the bowl and waited again.
Abivard had not placed much faith in this try. He gasped when the water roiled and bubbled, then gasped again when, instead of showing him a scene that would answer his question, it turned thick and red. "Blood!" he said, choking a little.
"You see that, too?" Tanshar said.
"Yes. What does it mean?"
"Unless I'm much mistaken," Tanshar said, sounding sure he was not, "it means Hosios shall not live to wear the Avtokrator's crown and red boots, for, by that conjuration, the blood was surely his."