Krispos the Emperor

by Harry Turtledove

  He jerked on the reins; his horse snorted indignantly as he pulled its head away from that of Krispos' mount. But conceding his father a point always annoyed him. By riding away from Krispos, he wouldn't have to concede anything, either to his father or to himself.

  By the end of the day, the imperial army had moved far enough inland to make sunset a spectacle very different from what Phostis was used to. Having land all around seemed suddenly confining, as if he were closed off from the infinite possibilities for travel available at Videssos the city. Even the sounds were strange: night birds unknown in the imperial capital announced their presence with trills and strange drumming noises.

  Krispos' tent, however, did its best to recreate the splendor of the imperial palaces, using canvas rather than stone. Torches and bonfires held night at bay; officers going in and out took the place of the usual run of petitioners. Some emerged glum, others pleased, again as it would have been back in the city.

  As in the capital, Phostis had no choice but to establish his own lodging uncomfortably close to that of his father. Also as in Videssos the city, he did choose to stay as far from Krispos as he could. The servitors who raised his tent carefully did not raise their eyebrows when he ordered them to place it to the rear and off to one side of Krispos' larger, grander shelter.

  Phostis ate from the cookpot the Halogai set up in front of Krispos' pavilion. He ran no risk of bumping into his father there; by all accounts, Krispos' habit on campaign was to share the rations of his common soldiers, so he was probably off somewhere standing in line with a bowl and a spoon like any cavalry trooper.

  Had he sampled his own guards' stew that evening, he would not have been happy with it. It had a sharp, bitter undertaste that made Phostis' tongue want to shrivel up. The Halogai liked it no better than he, and were less restrained in suggesting appropriate redress.

  "Maybe if so bad next time, we cut up cook and mingle his meat with the mush," one of them said. The rest of the northerners nodded so soberly that Phostis, who had at first smiled, began to wonder if the Haloga was joking.

  He'd hardly finished supper when his guts knotted and cramped. He made for the latrines at a dead run and barely managed to hike up his robes and squat over a slit trench before he was noisomely ill. Wrinkling his nose at the stench, he got painfully to his feet. A Haloga crouched a few feet away. Another came hurrying up a moment later. Before he could tear down his breeches, he cried in deep disgust, "Oh, by the gods of the north, I've gone and shit myself!"

  Phostis made several more trips out to the slit trenches as the night wore on. He began to count himself lucky that he hadn't had to echo the Haloga's melancholy wail. More often than not, several guardsmen were at the latrine with him.

  Finally, some time past midnight, he found himself alone in the darkness out there. He'd gone a good ways away from his tent in the hope of finding untrodden, unbefouled ground. Just as he started to squat, someone called from beyond the slit trenches: "Young Majesty!"

  His head went up in alarm—it was a woman's voice. But what he had to do was more urgent than any embarrassment. When he'd finished, he wiped sick sweat from his forehead and started slowly back toward his tent.

  "Young Majesty!" The call came again.

  This time he recognized the voice: it was Olyvria's. "What do you want with me?" he growled. "Haven't you seen me mortified enough, here and back in the city?"

  "You misunderstand, young Majesty," she said in injured tones. She held up something; in the dark, he couldn't tell what it was. "I have here a decoction of the wild plum and black pepper that will help relieve your distress."

  Had she offered him her body, he would have laughed at her. He'd already declined that when he was feeling perfectly fine. But at the moment, he would have crowned her Empress for something that stopped his insides from turning inside out.

  He hurried over to her, skipping across slit trenches as he went. She held a small glass vial out to him; distant torchlight reflected faintly from it. He yanked off the stopper, raised the vial to his lips, and drank.

  "Thank you," he said—or started to. For some reason, his mouth didn't want to work right. He stared at the vial he still held in his hand. All at once, it seemed very far away, and receding quickly. Agonizingly slow, a thought trickled across his brain: I've been tricked. He turned and tried to run, but felt himself falling instead. I've been— Unconsciousness seized him before he could find the word stupid.

  IV

  "LET'S GET MOVING," KRISPOS SAID IRRITABLY. "WHERE'S Phostis taken himself off to, anyhow? If he thinks I'll hold up the whole army for his sake, he's wrong."

  "Maybe he's fallen into the latrine," Evripos said. Bad food was a risk on campaign; plenty of Halogai had been running back and forth in the night. The gibe might have been funny had Evripos sounded less hopeful it was true.

  Krispos said, "I haven't time for anyone's nonsense today, son—his or yours." He turned to one of his guardsmen. "Skalla, stick your head into his tent and rout him out."

  "Aye, Majesty." Like a lot of his fellows, Skalla looked even fairer—paler was probably a better word—than usual this morning. He strode off to do Krispos' bidding, but returned to the imperial pavilion a moment later with a puzzled expression on his face. "Majesty, he is not there. The coverlet is thrown back as if he'd got out of his cot. but he is not there."

  "Well, the ice take it, where is he, then?" Krispos snapped. What Evripos had said sparked a thought. He told Skalla, "Pick a squad of guards and go up and down the slit trenches in a hurry, to make sure he wasn't taken ill there."

  "Aye, Majesty." Skalla's voice was doleful. For one thing, now that morning had come, the latrines were busy. Anyone who spotted Phostis there would have raised an uproar. For another ...

  "Pick men the flux missed," Krispos said. "I wouldn't want the stink to make them sick all over again."

  "I thank you, Majesty." The Halogai were not what one would call a cheerful folk, but Skalla seemed more pleased with the world.

  That did not mean he and the squad of guardsmen had any luck turning up Phostis. When he came back to report failure to Krispos, the Avtokrator said, "I'm not going to wait for him, by the good god. Let's get everyone moving. He'll turn up— where else is he going to go? And when he does, I shall have a word or two with him—a pungent word or two."

  Skalla nodded; from everything Krispos had gleaned of how life worked in Halogaland, sons there knew better than to give already grizzled fathers more gray hair. He let out a mordant chuckle—it sounded too good to be true.

  The imperial army did not get moving as fast as he would have wanted; it was newly mustered and still shaking down. He'd been sure Phostis would appear before the troops really started heading south and west. But his eldest did not appear. Evripos opened his mouth to say something that surely would have proved ill-advised. Krispos' glare made certain it never crossed the barrier of his son's lips.

  By the time the army had been an hour on the road, Krispos' anger melted into worry. He sent couriers to each regiment to summon Phostis by name. The couriers returned to him. Phostis did not. Krispos turned to Evripos. "Fetch me Zaidas, at once." Evripos did not argue.

  The wizard, not surprisingly, had a good notion of why he'd been summoned. He came straight to the point. "When was the young man last seen?"

  "I've been trying to find out," Krispos answered. "He seems to have been taken with the same flux that seized a fair number of the Halogai last night. Several of them saw him once, or more than once, squatting over a latrine trench. No one, though, has any clear memory of spotting him there after about the seventh hour of the night."

  "An hour or so past midnight, then? Hmm." Zaidas' eyes went far away, into a place Krispos could not follow. Despite that, though, he was a thoroughly practical man. 'The first thing to determine, your Majesty, is whether he be alive or dead."

  "You're right, of course." Krispos bit his lip. For all his quarrels with his eldest, for all his doubts as to w
hether Phostis

  was his eldest, he discovered he feared for Phostis' life as might any father, true or adoptive. "Can you do that at once, eminent and sorcerous sir?"

  "A hedge wizard could do as much, your Majesty, with the abundance of Phostis' effects present here," the mage answered, smiling. "An elementary use of the law of contagion: these effects, once handled by the young Majesty, retain an affinity for him and will demonstrate it under sorcerous prodding ... assuming, of course, that he yet remains among the living."

  "Aye, assuming," Krispos said harshly. "Find out at once, then, if we can go on making that assumption."

  "Of course, your Majesty. Have you some artifact of your son's that I might use?"

  Krispos pointed. "There's his bedding, slung over the back of the horse he should be riding. Will that do?"

  "Excellently." Zaidas rode over to the animal at which Krispos had pointed and pulled a coverlet from the lump of cinched-down bedding. 'This is a very basic spell, your Majesty, one that requires no apparatus, merely a concentration of my will to increase the strength of the link between the blanket here and the young Majesty."

  "Just get on with it," Krispos said.

  "As you say." Zaidas laid the blanket across his knees, as he switched the reins to his left hand. He chanted briefly in the archaic dialect of Videssian most often used in the liturgy for Phos' Temple, at the same time moving his right hand in small, swift passes above the coverlet.

  The square of soft wool rippled gently, like the surface of the sea when stirred by a soft breeze. "Phostis is alive," Zaidas declared in a voice that brooked no contradiction. "Had he left mankind, the coverlet would have lain quiescent, as it did before I completed the incantation."

  "Thank you, eminent and sorcerous sir," Krispos said. Some of the great weight of worry he'd borne rolled off his shoulders—some, but far from all. The next question followed like one winter storm rolling into Videssos the city hard on the heels of another: "Having found that he is among the living, can you now learn among which living folk he is at the moment?"

  Zaidas nodded, not in answer, Krispos thought, but to show he'd expected the Avtokrator would ask that. "Yes, your Majesty, I can do so," he said. "It's not quite so simple a spell as the one I just used, but like it springs from the workings of the law of contagion."

  "I don't care if it springs from the ground when you pour pig manure around the place where you planted it," Krispos answered. "If you can work your magic while we move, so much the better. If not, I'll give you all the guards you need for as long as you need them."

  "That shouldn't be necessary," Zaidas said. "I think I have with me all I shall require." He drew from a saddlebag a short, thin stick and a small silver cup. From his canteen, he poured wine into the cup until it was nearly full, then passed it to Krispos. "Hold this a moment, your Majesty, if you would be so kind." As soon as he had both hands free, he teased a fuzzy length of wool loose from Phostis' blanket, then wrapped it around the stick.

  He held out a hand for the silver cup, which Krispos returned to him. When he had it back, he dropped in the stick so it floated on the wine. "This spell may also be accomplished with water, your Majesty, but I am of the opinion that the spirituous component of the wine improves its efficacy."

  "However you think best," Krispos said. Listening to Zaidas cheerfully explain how he did what he did helped the Emperor not think about all the things that could have happened to Phostis.

  The wizard said, "Once I have chanted, the little stick here, by virtue of its connection to the wool that was once connected to your son, will turn in the cup to reveal the direction in which he lies."

  This spell, as Zaidas had said, was more intricate than the first one he'd used. He needed both hands for the passes, and he guided his horse by the pressure of his knees. At the climax of the incantation, he stabbed down at the floating stick with a rigid forefinger, crying out at the same time in a loud, commanding voice.

  Krispos waited for the stick to quiver and point like a well-trained hunting dog. Instead, it spun wildly in the cup, splashing wine up over the edge and then sinking out of sight in the rich ruby liquid. Krispos stared. "What does that mean?"

  "Your Majesty, if I knew, I would tell you." Zaidas sounded even more surprised than the Avtokrator had. He paused for a moment to think, then went on, "It might mean this blanket was in fact never in direct contact with Phostis. But no—" He shook his head. "That cannot be. either. Had the blanket no affinity for your son, it would not have responded to the spell that showed us he is alive."

  "Yes, I follow your reasoning," Krispos said. "What other choices have we?"

  "Next most likely, or so it seems to me, is that my sorcerous efforts are somehow being blocked, to keep me from learning where the young Majesty is," Zaidas said.

  "But you are a master mage, one of the leaders of the Sorcerers' Collegium," Krispos protested. "How can anyone keep vou from working what you wish?"

  "Several ways, your Majesty. I am not the only sorcerer of my grade within the Empire of Videssos. Another master, or perhaps even a team of lesser wizards, may be working to keep the truth from me. Notice the spell did not send us off in a direction that later proved false, but merely prevented us from learning the true one. That is an easier magic."

  "I see," Krispos said slowly. "You named one way, or possibly even two, in which you could be deceived. Are there others?"

  "Yes," Zaidas answered. "I am a master in wizardry based on our faith in Phos and rejection of his dark foe Skotos." The mage paused to spit. "This is, you might say, a two-poled system of magic. The Halogai with their many gods, or the Khamorth of the steppe with their belief in supernatural powers animating each rock or stream or sheep or blade of grass, view the world from such a different perspective that their sorcery is more difficult for a mage of my school to detect or counter. The same applies in lesser degree to the Makuraners, who filter the power of what they term the God through the intermediary of the Prophets Four."

  "Assuming this blocking magic is from some school other than ours, can you fight through it?" Krispos asked.

  "Your Majesty, there I am imperfectly certain. In theory, since ours is the only true faith, magic developed from it will in the end prove mightier than that based on any other system. In practice, man's creations being the makeshifts they are, a great deal depends on the strength and skill of the mages involved, regardless of the school to which they belong. I can try my utmost, but I cannot guarantee success."

  "Do your utmost," Krispos said. "I suppose you will need to halt for your more complicated spells. I'll leave you a courier; send word the moment you have results of any sort."

  "I shall, your Majesty," Zaidas promised. He looked as if he wanted to say something more. Krispos waved for him to go on. He did: "I pray you forgive me, your Majesty, but you might also be wise to send out riders to beat the countryside."

  "I'll do that," Krispos said with a sinking feeling. Zaidas was warning him not to expect success in a huny, if at all.

  The squads of horsemen clattered forth, some ahead of the army, some back toward Nakoleia, others out to either side of the track. No encouraging word came from them by sundown. Krispos and the main body of his force rode on, leaving Zaidas behind to set up his search magic. A company stayed with him to protect him from Thanasioi or simple robbers. Krispos waited and waited for the courier to return. At last, just as weariness was about to drive him to his cot, the fellow rode into the encampment. Seeing the question in the Emperor's eyes, he just shook his head.

  "No luck?" Krispos said, for the sake of being sure.

  "No luck," the courier answered. "I'm sorry, your Majesty. The wizard's magic failed again: more than once, from what he told me."

  Grimacing, Krispos thanked the man and sent him to his own rest. He hadn't really believed Zaidas would stay baffled. He lay down on the cot as he'd intended, but found sleep a long time coming.

  Stupid. The word slid sluggishly through Phost
is' mind. Because he saw only darkness, he thought for a confused moment that he was still back at the latrines. Then he realized a bandage covered his eyes. He reached up to pull it off, only to discover his hands had been efficiently tied behind his back, his legs at knees and ankles.

  He groaned. The sound came out muffled—he was also gagged. He groaned again anyhow. His head felt like an anvil on which a smith about as tall as the top of the High Temple's dome was hammering out a complicated piece of ironwork. He was lying on something hard—boards, he found out when a splinter dug into the thin strip of flesh between blindfold and gag.

  Adding to the pounding agony behind his eyes were squeaks and jolts. I'm in a wagon, or maybe a cart, he thought, amazed and impressed that his poor benighted brain functioned at all. He groaned one more time.

  "He's coming around," said somebody—a man—above and in front of him. The fellow laughed, loudly and raucously. "It's took him long enough, it has, it has."

  "Shall we let him see where he's going?" another voice, a woman's, asked. After a moment, Phostis recognized it: Olyvria's. He ground his teeth in helpless fury; he felt he'd already used up all the groans in him.

  The man—the driver?—said, "Nah, our orders was to bring him the first stage of the way to Livanios without him knowin' nothin' about it. That's what your pa done said, and that's what we does. So don't go untyin' him, either, you hear me?"

  "I hear you, Syagrios," Olyvria answered. "It's too bad. We'd all be happier if we could get him cleaned up a bit."

  "I've smelled worse, out in the fields at manuring time," Syagrios said. "The stink won't kill him, and it won't kill you, neither."