The good god's creed and liturgy, though, remained the same regardless of setting. Phostis followed this priest as easily as he had the ecumenical patriarch. The only difference was that this ecclesiastic spoke with an upcountry accent even stronger than that of Krispos, who had worked hard to shed his peasant intonation. The priest came from the west, Phostis judged, not from the north like his father.
When the required prayers were over, the priest surveyed his congregants. 'I rejoice that the lord with the great and good mind has brought you back to me once more, friends,' he said. His eyes fixed on Phostis and the Haloga guards as he uttered that last word, as if he wondered whether they deserved to come under it.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, he continued: 'Friends, we have not been cursed with much in the way of material abundance.' Again he gave Phostis a measuring stare. 'I praise the lord with the great and good mind for that, for we have not much to give away before we come to be judged in front of his holy throne.'
Phostis blinked; this was not the sort of theological reasoning he was used to hearing. This priest took off from the point at which Oxeites had halted. But he, unlike the patriarch, lacked hypocrisy. He was plainly as poor as his temple and his congregation. That in and of itself inclined Phostis to take him seriously.
He went on, 'How can we hope to rise to the heavens while weighted down with gold in our belt pouches? I will not say it cannot be, friends, but I say that few of the rich live lives sufficiently saintly to rise above the dross they value more than their souls.'
'That's right, holy sir!' a woman exclaimed. Someone else, a man this time, added, 'Tell the truth!'
The priest picked that up and set it into his sermon as neatly as a mason taking a brick from a new pile. 'Tell the truth I shall, friends. The truth is that everything the foolish rich run after is but a snare from Skotos, a lure to drag them down to his eternal ice. If Phos is the patron of our souls, as we know him to be, then how can material things be his concern? The answer is simple, friends: they cannot. The material world is Skotos' plaything. Rejoice if you have but little share therein; would it were true for all of us. The greatest service we can render to one who knows not this truth is to deprive him of that which ties him to Skotos, thereby liberating his soul to contemplate the higher good.'
'Yes,' a woman cried, her voice high and breathy, as if in ecstasy. 'Oh, yes!'
The butcher who had spoken to Phostis still sounded solid and matter-of-fact. 'I pray that you guide us in our renunciation of the material, holy sir.'
'Let your own knowledge of moving toward Phos' holy light be your guide, friend,' the priest answered. 'What you renounce is yours only in this world at best. Will you risk an eternity in Skotos' ice for its sake? Only a fool would act so.'
'We're no fools,' the butcher said. 'We know—' He broke off to give Phostis yet another measuring stare; by this time,
Phostis was sick of them. Whatever he had been about to My, he reconsidered, starting again after a barely noticeable pause: 'We know what we know, by the good god.'
The rest of the people in the shabby temple knew whatever it was the butcher knew. They called out in agreement, some loudly, some softly, all with more belief and piety in their voices than Phostis had ever heard from the prominent folk who most often prayed in the High Temple. His brief anger at being excluded from whatever they knew soon faded. He wished he could find something to believe in with as much force as these people gave to their faith.
The priest raised his hands to the heavens, then spat between Ills feet in ritual rejection of Skotos. He led the worshipers in Phos' creed one last time, then announced the end of the liturgy. As Phostis turned and left the temple, once more bracketed fore and aft by his bodyguards, he felt a sense of loss and regret on returning to the mundane world that he'd never known when departing from the superficially more awesome setting of the High Temple. An impious comparison crossed his mind: it was almost as if he were returning to himself after the piercing pleasure of the act of love.
He shook his head. As the priest had said, what were those thrashings and moanings, what were any earthly delights, if they imperiled his soul?
'Excuse me,' someone said from behind him: the butcher. Phostis turned. So did the Halogai with him. The axes twitched In their hands, as if hungry for blood. The butcher ignored them; he spoke to Phostis as if they were not there: 'Friend, you seem to have thought well of what you heard in the temple. That's just a hunch of mine, mind you—if I'm wrong, you tell me and I'll go my way.'
'No, good sir, you're not wrong.' Phostis wished he'd thought to say 'friend,' too. Well, too late now. He continued, 'Your priest there preaches well, and has a fiery heart like few i've heard. What good is wealth if it hides in a hoard or is wantonly wasted when so many stand in need?'
'What good is wealth?' the butcher said, and let it go at that. If his eye flicked over the fine robe Phostis wore, they did so too fast for the younger man to notice. The butcher went on, 'Maybe you would like to hear more of what the holy sir—his name's Digenis, by the way—has to say, and hear it in a more private setting?'
Phostis thought about that. 'Maybe I would,' he said at last, for he did want to hear the priest again.
Had the butcher smiled or shown triumph, his court-sharpened suspicions would have kindled. But the fellow only gave a sober nod. That convinced Phostis of his sincerity, if nothing more. He decided he would indeed try to have that more private audience with Digenis. He'd found this morning that shaking off his bodyguards was anything but easy. Still, there might be ways ...
Katakolon stood in the doorway to the study, waiting until Krispos chanced to look up from the tax register he was examining. Eventually Krispos did. He put down his pen. 'What is it, son? Come in if you have something on your mind.'
By the nervous way in which Katakolon approached his desk, Krispos could make a pretty good guess as to what 'it' might be. His youngest son confirmed that guess when he said, 'May it please you, Father, I should like to request another advance on my allowance.' His smile, usually so sunny, had the hangdog air it assumed whenever he had to beg money from his father.
Krispos rolled his eyes. '
'An amber-and-emerald bracelet for Nitria,' Katakolon said sheepishly.
'Who's Nitria?' Krispos asked. 'I thought you were sleeping with Varina these days.'
'Oh, I still am. Father,' Katakolon assured him. 'The other one's new. That's why I got her something special.'
