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A flash of gilt hair distracted him from the long-winded fur trader. That was
probably lucky for the merchant, who was drifting so close to out-and-out
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heresy that Rhavas had an ever harder time holding his tongue. Videssians were
a swarthy folk, almost all of them brunets. Ingegerd always stood out among
them.
"Excuse me, if you'd be so kind," Rhavas told the trader, and stepped away
before the man had a chance to answer. He nodded to Himerios' wife. "I hope
the sermon pleased you."
"As always, you speak well," Ingegerd answered seriously. "I still find it
strange to have the good god's ways and powers spoken of so openly. In
Halogaland, the gods are the gods. Everyone knows what they can do, but no one
talks about it very much."
"This is not Halogaland, I am glad to say," Rhavas told her. "We want to know
Phos' will as well as we can. This lets us precisely follow it."
"So you say. But I sometimes think you Videssians spend so much time arguing
about the lord with the great and good mind for no better reason than that you
like to argue." Ingegerd's smile took most of the
sting from her words most, but not all.
Rhavas might have got angry at her if he hadn't had the same thought himself
while listening to the fur trader. "We will argue about almost anything," he
admitted, "but some things are more important than others." He paused for a
moment. "I hope you are doing well?"
"As well as I can be, with Himerios away," she answered. Those startling blue
eyes darkened, as if a shadow had crossed across the sun. "But I have no word
of him. All I can do is wait and worry."
"And pray," Rhavas said stiffly.
"And pray," Ingegerd agreed. "But so many prayers go up to Phos. Who can say
whether he will have time to bother with mine? Will you pray for Himerios,
too, please? You are a very holy man, very holy sir, so the good god is
likelier to listen to you than he is to me."
Is she mocking me?
Rhavas wondered. The playful way she used his title suggested that she was.
She sounded serious, though. He wanted to scratch his head. He didn't
understand her. He didn't understand women generally, but he also didn't
understand how thoroughly he didn't understand. With her, unlike the general
case, his incomprehension was clear to him. Voice gruff, he said, "I will pray
for him."
Ingegerd dropped a curtsy. "I thank you, very holy sir." She swept away,
majestic as a ship under full sail.
As Rhavas watched her go, behind him the fur trader grumbled out loud to a
friend or perhaps to his wife: "Calls himself a holy man expects other people
to call him a holy man, by the good god but he'd sooner talk to that foreign
chippy than he would to me. Oh, yes! I'll bet he would! And that's not all
he'd sooner do to her, either, or I miss my guess."
Slowly, Rhavas turned. He remembered the mosaicwork image of Phos stern in
judgment in the great dome of the High Temple. No mere mortal could rest easy
under that magnificent, unforgiving gaze. At the moment, he himself might have
been its incarnation. Under his eyes, blood drained from the fur trader's
face, leaving it corpse-pale. "Did you say something that had to do with me?"
Rhavas inquired into sudden, vast silence.
He waited, clinically curious: how much nerve did the trader have? Enough to
challenge him to his face?
He didn't think so, and he proved right. Still pale and frightened, the man
shook his head, muttering, "No, very holy sir, not me. You, uh, you must have
heard wrong."
"Must I?" Rhavas gravely considered the notion. "Well, I suppose it is
possible. Not likely, mind you, but possible."
He didn't quite call the fur trader a liar, but he didn't miss by much,
either. The man scuttled out of the narthex, scuttled out of the temple.
Rhavas would have been amazed if he ever came here to worship again. The
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prelate dared hope the man would go to some other temple to offer up praises
to Phos.
Rhavas didn't want to swing the trader's soul toward Skotos.
After starting to spit in rejection of the dark god, Rhavas arrested the
gesture. The rest of the people watching him would think he used it to condemn
the fur trader. Rhavas didn't want that; the man had done a perfectly good job
of condemning himself.
Later much later Rhavas would wonder whether that moment hadn't been an odd
sort of watershed.
He would search his memory to see if he hadn't felt some small premonition.
And, search as he would, he would come up empty again and again. He hadn't
known. He hadn't even suspected. What sort of man could see into the future? A
soothsayer? Yes . . . and no. Rhavas remembered too well what had happened to
Eladas. If the man hadn't frightened himself to death . . .
For some reason, no one else that morning had much in the way of queries for
Rhavas. The narthex, in fact, emptied with startling speed. A priest smiled at
the prelate and said, "You should put the fear of
Phos in them more often, very holy sir. We'd have more time to ourselves that
way."
Rhavas looked through him, as he'd looked through the fur trader. "You tend to
your business, Oriphas.
I will tend to the temple's business."
Where the trader had turned white, Oriphas turned red. That showed a bit more
spirit, anyhow. The priest's chin lifted in pride. "I meant no harm, very holy
sir," he said. "Just a bit of a joke, you might say."
"
You might say so, perhaps," Rhavas replied, and Oriphas went redder yet. The
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