heard all the Thanasiot platitudes he could stomach, and Digenis refused to yield the truths he wanted to learn.
He was shocked at how the priest had wasted away. In his peasant days, he'd seen men and women lean with hunger after a bad harvest, but Digenis was long past leanness: everything between his skeleton and his skin seemed to have disappeared. His eyes shifted when Krispos came into his cell, but did not catch fire as they had before.
'He is very weak, your Majesty; his will at last begins to fail,' Zaidas said quietly. 'Otherwise I doubt even now I could have found a way to coax answers from him.'
'What have you done?' Krispos asked. 'I see no apparatus for the two-mirror test.'
'No.' By his expression, Zaidas would have been glad never to try the two-mirror test again. 'This is half magic, half healing art. I laced the water he drinks with a decoction of henbane, having first used sorcery to remove the taste so he would notice nothing out of the ordinary.'
'Well done.' After a moment, Krispos added, 'I do hope the technique for that is not so simple as to be available to any poisoner who happens to take a dislike to his neighbor—or to me.
'No, your Majesty,' Zaidas said, smiling. 'In any case, the spell, because it goes against nature, is easy to detect by sorcery. Digenis, of course, was not in a position to do so.'
'And a good thing, too,' Krispos said. 'All right, let's see if he'll give forth the truth now. What questions have you put to him thus far?'
'None of major import. As soon as I saw he was at last receptive, I sent for you at once. I suggest you keep your questions as simple as you can. The henbane frees his mind, but also clouds it—both far more strongly than wine.'
'As you say, sorcerous sir.' Krispos raised his voice. 'Digenis! Do you hear me, Digenis?'
'Aye, I hear you.' Digenis' voice was not only weak from weeks of self-imposed starvation but also dreamy and far away.
'Where's Phostis—my son? The son of the Avtokrator Krispos,' Krispos added, in case the priest did not realize who was talking to him.
Digenis answered, 'He walks the golden path to true piety, striding ever farther from the perverse materialistic heresy that afflicts too many soulblind folk throughout the Empire.' The priest held his convictions all the way down to his heart, not merely on the surface of his mind. Krispos had already been sure of that.
He tried again: 'Where is Phostis physically?'
'The physical is unimportant,' Digenis declared. Krispos glanced over at Zaidas, who bared his teeth in an agony of frustration. But Digenis went on, 'If all went as was planned, Phostis is now with Livanios.'
Krispos had thought as much, but hearing the plan had been kidnap rather than murder lifted fear from his heart. Phostis could easily have been dumped in some rocky ravine with his throat cut; only the wolves and ravens would have been likely to discover him. The Avtokrator said, 'What does Livanios hope to do with him? Use him as a weapon against me?'
'Phostis has a hope of assuming true piety,' Digenis said. Krispos wondered if he'd confused him by asking two questions at once. After a few heartbeats, the priest resumed, 'For a youth, Phostis resists carnality well. To my surprise, he declined the body of Livanios' daughter, which she offered to see if he could be tempted from the gleaming path. He could not. He may yet prove suitable for an imminent union with the good god rather than revolting and corruptible flesh.'
'An imminent union?' All faiths used words in special ways. Krispos wanted to be sure he understood what Digenis was talking about. 'What's an imminent union?'
'That which I am approaching now,' Digenis answered. 'The voluntary abandonment of the flesh to free the spirit to fly to Phos.'
'You mean starving yourself to death,' Krispos said. Somehow Digenis used his emaciated neck for a nod. Slow horror trickled through Krispos as he imagined Phostis wasting away like the Thanasiot priest. No matter that he and the young man quarreled, no matter even that Phostis might not be his by blood: he would not have wished such a fate on him.
Digenis began to whisper a Thanasiot hymn. Seeking to rock him out of the holy smugness he maintained even in the face of approaching death, Krispos said, 'Did you know Livanios uses magic of the school of the Prophets Four to hide Phostis' whereabouts?'
'He is cursed with ambition,' Digenis answered. 'I knew the spoor, I recognized the stench. He prates of the golden path, but Skotos has filled his heart with greed for power.'
'You worked with him, knowing he was evil by your reckoning?' That surprised Krispos; he'd expected the renegade priest to have sterner standards for himself. 'And you still claim you walk Thanasios' gleaming path? Are you not a hypocrite?'
'No, for Livanios' ambition furthers the advance of the holy Thanasios' doctrines, whereas yours leads only to the further aggrandizement of Skotos,' Digenis declared. 'Thus evil is transmuted into good and the dark god confounded.'
'Thus sincerity turns to expedience,' Krispos said. He'd already gained the impression that Livanios cared more for Livanios than for the gleaming path. In a way, that made the heresiarch more dangerous, for he was liable to be more flexible than an out-and-out fanatic. But in another way, it weakened Livanios: fanatics, by the strength of their beliefs, could sometimes make their followers transcend difficulties from which an ordinary thoughtful man would flinch.
Krispos thought for a while, but could not come up with any more questions about Phostis or the rebels in the field. Turning to Zaidas, he said, 'Squeeze all you can from him about the riots and the city and those involved. And then—' He paused.
'Yes, what then, your Majesty?' the mage asked. 'Shall we let him continue his decline until he stops breathing one day before long?'
'I'd sooner strike off his head and put it up on the Milestone,' Krispos said grimly. 'But if I did that now, with him looking as he does, all the Thanasioi in the city would have themselves a new martyr. I'd just as soon do
