Krispos the Emperor

was reminded others fought the dark with him. He needed that reminder. Never in all his years of worshiping at the High Temple had he known such fear of the dark god.

The priest said, 'With fasting and lamentation we may yet show Phos that, despite our failings, despite the corruption that springs from the bodies in which we dwell, we remain worthy of the sign of his light for yet another year, that we may advance farther down the gleaming path praised by the holy Thanasios. Pray now, and let the lord with the great and good mind know what is in your hearts!'

If before the temple had echoed to the shouts of the congregation, now, even louder, it was filled with the worshipers' prayers. Phostis' went up with the rest. In the riches and light of the High Temple it was easy to believe, along with the ecumenical patriarch and his plump, contented votaries, that Phos would surely vanquish Skotos at the end of days. Such sublime confidence was harder to maintain in the dark of a chilly temple with a priest preaching of light draining out of the world like water from a tub.

At first, all Phostis heard was the din of people at noisy prayer. Then, little by little, he noticed individual voices in the din. Some repeated Phos' creed over and over: Videssos' universal prayer prevailed among Thanasioi and their foes alike. Others sent up simple requests: 'Give us light.' 'Bless my wife with a son this year, O Phos.' 'Make me more pious and less lustful!' 'Heal my mother's sores, which no salve has aided!'

Prayers like those would not have seemed out of place back in the High Temple. Others, though, had a different ring to them. 'Destroy everything that stands in our way!' 'To the ice with those who will not walk the gleaming path!' 'O Phos, grant me the courage to cast aside the body that befouls my soul!' 'Wreck them all, wreck them all, wreck them all!'

He did not care for those; they might have come from the throats of baying wolves rather than men. But before he could do more than notice them, the priest at the altar raised a hand. Any motion within his candle's tiny circle of light was as-toundingly noticeable. The congregation fell silent at once, and with it Phostis' concerns.

The priest said, 'Prayer alone does not suffice. We do not walk the gleaming path with our tongues; the road that leads beyond the sun is paved with deeds, not words. Go forth now and live as Thanasios would have had you live. Seek Phos' blessings in hunger and want, not the luxuries of this world that are but a single beat of a gnat's wings against the judgment yet to come. Go forth! This liturgy is ended.'

No sooner had he spoken than acolytes bearing torches came into the worship area from the narthex to light the congregants' way out. Phostis blinked; his eyes filled with tears at what seemed the savage glare, though a moment later he realized it was not so bright after all.

He'd dropped Olyvria's hand the instant the acolytes entered—or perhaps she'd dropped his. In more light than a single candle flame, he dared not risk angering Syagrios ... and, even more to the point, angering Livanios.

Then palace calculation surged forward unbidden in his mind. Would Livanios throw his daughter at the heir apparent to the throne? Did he seek influence through the marriage bed? Phostis filed that away for future consideration. But no matter what Livanios intended, the feel of Olyvria's hand in his had been the only warmth he'd known, physical or spiritual, through the Thanasiot service.

He'd thought the temple's interior cold, and so it had been. But there, at least, some hundreds of people crowded together had given a measure, albeit a small one, of animal warmth.

Out on the night-black streets of Etchmiadzin, with the wind whipping knifelike down from the hills, Phostis rediscovered what true cold meant.

The heavy wool cloak he wore might have been made of lace, for all the good it did to keep off the wind. Even Syagrios hissed as the blast struck him. 'By the good god,' he muttered, 'I'd not mind jumping over a bonfire tonight, or even into one, just so as I could get warm.'

'You're right.' The words were out of Phostis' mouth before he remembered to be surprised at agreeing with Syagrios about anything.

'Fires and displays are not the way of the gleaming path,' Olyvria said. 'I remember them. too. from the days before my father accepted Thanasios' way. He says it's better to make your soul safe than to worry about what happens to your body.'

The priest in the temple had said the same. From him, it sank deep into Phostis' heart. From Livanios, even through Olyvria as intermediary, the words did not mean as much. The heresiarch mouthed Thanasiot slogans, but did he live by them? As far as Phostis could see, he remained sleek, well fed, and worldly.

Hypocrite. The word tolled like a warning bell on a rocky coast. Hypocrisy was the crime of which Phostis had in his mind convicted his father, most of the capital's nobles, the ecumenical patriarch, and most of the clergy, as well. The quest for unvarnished truth was what had drawn him to the Thanasioi in the first place. Finding Livanios anything but unvarnished made him doubt the perfection of the gleaming path.

He said, 'I wouldn't mind seeing the time of the sun-turning as one of rejoicing as well as sorrow. After all, it does ensure life for another year.'

'But life in the world means life in things which are Skotos,' Olyvria said. 'Where's to rejoice over that?'

'If it weren't for material things, life would come to an end, and so would mankind,' Phostis countered. 'Is that what you want: to fade away and vanish?'

'Not for myself.' Olyvria's shiver, like Phostis' back in the temple, had little to do with the weather. 'But there are those who do want exactly that. You'll see some of them soon, I think.'

'They're daft, if you ask me,' Syagrios said, though his voice lacked its usual biting edge. 'We live in this world along with the next one.'

Olyvria argued that. If there was one thing Videssians would do at any excuse or none, it was argue theology. Phostis kept out of the argument, not least because he inclined to Syagrios' side of it and did not want to offend Olyvria by saying so out loud.

The memory of her hand remained printed in his mind. It called up that other memory he had of her, the one from the chamber off the passageway under Digenis' temple back in the city. That latter memory was suited for Midwinter's Day, at least as he'd known it before. It was a time of festival, even of license. As the proverb put it, 'Anything can happen on Midwinter's Day.'

Had this been a holiday of the sort with which he was familiar, he might—somewhere down deep in him, in a place below words, he knew he would—have tried to get her off by herself. And he suspected, she would have gone with him, even if only for the one night.

But here in Etchmiadzin, seeking sensual pleasure on Midwinter's Day did not bear thinking about. Rejection