was the mildest return he could expect. More likely was some sort of mortification of his flesh. Though he had increasing respect for the asceticism of the gleaming path, his flesh had lately suffered enough mortification to suit him.
Besides, Syagrios would make a eunuch of him—and enjoy doing it—if he got himself into trouble of that sort.
The ruffian broke off his disputation with Olyvria, saying, 'However you care to have it, my lady. You know more about this business than me, that's for sure. All I know now is that this here poor old smashed nose of mine is going to freeze off if I don't get to somewheres with a fire.'
'There I cannot disagree with you,' Olyvria said.
'Let's us head back to the keep, then,' Syagrios suggested. 'It'll be warm—well, warmer—in there. 'Sides, I can dump his Majestyhood here back in his room and get me a chance to relax a bit.'
The narrow, muddy lanes of Etchmiadzin were almost pre-ternaturally dark. Night travel in Videssos the city was undertaken with torchbearers and guards, if for any legitimate purpose. Only footpads there cherished the black of night. But no one in Etchmiadzin tonight carried a light or seemed concerned over becoming a robber's victim. Cries rose into the dark sky, but they were only the lamentations the priest had commanded of his congregants.
The bulk of the fortress and the stars it obscured helped mark the path back from the temple. Even the torches above the gates were out. Livanios went that far in adhering to the tenets of the Thanasioi.
Syagrios grumbled under his breath. 'Don't like that,' he said. 'Just anybody could come wandering in, and who'd be the wiser till too late?'
'Who's in the town save our own folk and a few Vaspurakaners?' Olyvria said. 'They have their own rites and leave ours alone.'
'They'd better,' Syagrios replied. 'More of us than there is of them.'
Only inside the keep did light return. Livanios' caftan-wearing advisor sat at a table gnawing the leg of a roasted fowl and whistling a cheery tune Phostis did not know. If he'd heard the order for fasting and lamentation, he was doing a good job of ignoring it.
Syagrios lit a candle from a torch set in a soot-blackened sconce. With it in one hand and his knife in the other, he urged Phostis up the spiral stairway. 'Back to your room now,' he said. Phostis barely had time to nod to Olyvria before the twist of the stairs made her disappear.
The corridor that led to his little chamber was midnight black. He turned to Syagrios, pointing at the candle. 'May I light a lamp in my room from that?'
'Not tonight,' Syagrios said. 'I got to watch you instead of roisterin', so you get no more enjoyment than me.'
Once inside, Phostis drew off his cloak and put it over the blanket on his pallet. He did not take off his tunic as he got
under them both and huddled up in a ball to try to warm himself as fast as he could. He looked back toward the door, beyond which Syagrios surely lurked. 'Roistering, is it?' he whispered. He might be a poor Thanasiot himself, but he knew a worse one.
VII
The man's eyes twitched back and forth in their sockets. It was like no motion Phostis had ever seen before; watching made him queasy. Voice calm but weak, the man said, 'I can't see you, not really, but that's all right. It goes away in a few days, I'm told by those who have come this way before me.'
'That's g-good.' Phostis knew he sounded shaky. It shamed him, but he couldn't help it.
'Fear not,' the man said. He'd been introduced to Phostis as Strabon. He smiled radiantly. 'Soon, I know, I shall join the lord with the great and good mind and cast aside this flesh that has too long weighed me down.'
Strabon had, Phostis thought, already cast aside almost all of his flesh. His face was a skull covered with skin; his neck seemed hardly thicker than a torch. Withered branches might have done for his arms, and claws for his hands. Not only had he no fat left on his bones, he had no muscle, either. He was bone and tendon and skin, nothing more. No, one more thing: the joy that lit his blind eyes.
'Soon,' he repeated. 'It's been six weeks, a few days over, since last I polluted my soul with aliment. Only a man who was fat to begin with will last much above eight, and never was I in the habit of glutting myself. Soon I shall fare beyond the sun and look on Phos face to face. Soon.'
'Does—does it hurt?' Phostis asked. Beside him, Olyvria sat calmly. She'd seen these human skeletons before, often enough so now she was easy with the husk of Strabon.
Syagrios had not come into the hut; Phostis heard him pacing around outside the door.
Strabon said, 'No, boy, no; as I told you, fear not. Oh, my belly panged in the early days, I'll not deny, as Skotos' part of me realized I had determined to cut my essential self free of it. But no, I feel no pain, only longing to be free.' He smiled again. Save for the faintest tinge of pink, his lips were invisible.
'But to linger so—' Phostis shook his head, though he knew Strabon could not see that. Then he blurted, 'Could you not also have refused water, and so made a quicker end of it?'
The corners of Strabon's gash of a mouth turned down. 'Some of those who are most holy do as you say. Sinner that I am, I had not the fortitude for it.'
Phostis stared at him. Never in his comfortable life back at the palaces had he dreamed he'd be talking with a man in the last stages of deliberately starving himself to death. Even if he had dreamed that, could he have imagined the man would reproach himself for lack of fortitude? No; impossible.
The lids fell over Strabon's twitching eyes; he seemed to doze. 'Is he not a miracle of piety?' Olyvria whispered.
