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saving grace of being funny. Had he had a basket of rotten apples at his feet,
he would have pelted most of the mimes. As it was, he took the mockery as best
he could.
People filed out of the Amphitheater, off to revel through the rest of the
short day and the long night. Maniakes walked back to the imperial residence
beside Niphone's litter; this time, the Empress stayed inside. That relieved
him as much as having the mime shows end.
No sooner had he returned to the residence, though, than Kameas came up to him
and said, "Your Majesty, the wizard Alvinos waits at the southern entrance. He
would have speech with you, if you care to receive him."
For a moment, Maniakes failed to recognize the Videssian-sounding name
Bagdasares sometimes used. When he did, he said, "Thank you, esteemed sir.
Yes, I'll see him. Perhaps he's had some success with his magic after all.
That would be a pleasant change."
Bagdasares prostrated himself before Maniakes. The Avtokrator hadn't always
made him bother with a full proskynesis, but did today: he was less than
pleased with the mage, and wanted him to know it. Bagdasares did; when
Maniakes finally gave him leave to rise, he said, "Your Majesty, I apologize
for the long delay in learning what you required of me "
"Quite all right, magical sir," Maniakes answered. "No doubt you had a more
important client with more pressing business."
Bagdasares stared, then chuckled uneasily. "Your Majesty is pleased to jest
with me."
"I do wish I'd heard more from you sooner, and that's a fact," Maniakes said.
"Here it is Midwinter's Day, by the good god, and I set you the problem a few
days after I met with Abivard. When I told you to take your time, I own I
didn't expect you to take all of it."
"Your Majesty, sometimes seeing the problem is easier than seeing the answer
to it," Bagdasares replied. "I'm still not sure I have that answer, only a way
toward it. But this is Midwinter's Day, as you said. If you have it in mind to
revel rather than worry about such things, tell me and I shall return
tomorrow."
"No, no, never mind that," Maniakes said impatiently. He could see all the
problems Genesios had left him, but, as Bagdasares had said, seeing how to
surmount them was another matter. "It's possible I owe you an apology. Say on,
sorcerous sir."
"Learning why someone does something is always tricky, your Majesty," the
wizard said. "Sometimes even he does not know, and sometimes the reasons he
thinks he has are not the ones truly in his heart. Finding those reasons is
like listening to the howl of yesterday's wind."
"As you say," Maniakes answered. "And have you managed to capture the sound of
yesterday's wind for today's ears?"
"I shall make the attempt to capture it, at any rate," Bagdasares said. "I
have tried this before, with uniform lack of success, but in my previous
conjurations I always assumed Abivard's question arose from some connection
with Sharbaraz King of Kings or with some mage from Mashiz or both. Failure
has forced me to abandon this belief, however."
Maniakes wondered if Bagdasares was wrong or merely lacked the strength and
skill to prove himself right. He did not say that; making a mage question his
own ability weakened him further. Instead he asked, "What assumption do you
set in its place, then?"
"That Abivard acquired this concern independently of the King of Kings,
perhaps in opposition to him would it not be fine to see Mashiz rather than
Videssos engulfed in civil strife? or perhaps from before the time when he
made Sharbaraz's acquaintance."
"Mm, it could be so," Maniakes admitted. "If it is, how do you go about
demonstrating it?"
"You have indeed set your finger on the problem, your Majesty," Bagdasares
said, bowing. "Recapturing ephemera, especially long-vanished ephemera, is
difficult in the extreme, not least because the application of the laws of
similarity and contagion often seems irrelevant."
"Seems irrelevant, you say?" Maniakes' ear had been sensitized to subtle
shades of meaning by more than a year on the throne. "You want me to
understand that you have found a way around this difficulty."
"I think I have, at any rate," Bagdasares said. "I've not yet tested it; I
thought you might care to be present."
"So I can see how clever you've been, you mean," Maniakes said. Bagdasares
looked injured, but the Avtokrator spoke without much malice. He went on, "By
all means, sorcerous sir, dazzle me with your brilliance."
"If I can but give satisfaction, your Majesty, that will be enough and to
spare," the mage answered. He was not usually so self-effacing, but he didn't
usually keep the Avtokrator waiting a couple of months for a response, either.
Now he was all briskness. "If I may proceed, your Majesty?"
Without waiting for Maniakes' consent, he drew from his carpetbag a lamp, a
clay jar at the moment tightly stoppered and a silver disk about as wide as
the palm of his hand. A rawhide cord ran from one side of the disk to the
other, to symbolize the support by which a soldier carried a shield.
Bagdasares worked the stopper from the jar and poured water in a narrow stream
on a tabletop. "This is seawater, taken from the Cattle Crossing," he said. He
set the silver disk close by it, then made a few quick passes over the lamp.
Not only did it light, but with a flame far more brilliant than the usual, so
that Maniakes had to squint and shield his eyes against it.
"It's as if you brought the summer sun into the imperial residence," he said.
"The effect does not last long, but will be useful here," Bagdasares answered.
He picked up the disk and used it to reflect the sorcerously enhanced light
into Maniakes' face. The Avtokrator blinked and squinted again. Nodding in
satisfaction, Bagdasares said, "Here we have a silver shield shining across a
narrow sea, not so?"
"Exactly so," Maniakes agreed.
"Now to uncover the origins of the phrase," Bagdasares said, and began to
chant not in Videssian but in the throaty Vaspurakaner language. After a
moment, Maniakes recognized what he was chanting: the story of how Phos had
created Vaspur, firstborn of all mankind Between verses, the mage murmured,
"Thus do we approach the problem of origins." Then he was chanting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]