Bridge of the Separator
Harry Turtledove
Copyright © 2005 by Harry Turtledove
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0918-9 ISBN-10: 1-4165-0918-6
Cover art by Tom Kidd
First printing, December 2005
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0918-9
ISBN-10: 1-4165-0918-6
I
When a synod in Videssos the city named Rhavas prelate of Skopentzana, the priest thought he was being sent into exile. Not only that, he thought it an insult to the imperial family, for wasn't his grandmother sister to the grandfather of Maleinos II, Avtokrator of the Videssians? To put it mildly, he didn't want to leave the imperial capital for the city in the far northeast of the Empire of Videssos.
Old Neboulos, the ecumenical patriarch of Videssos, finally had to take him aside and talk sense into him. Gorgeous in a cloth-of-gold robe with Phos' sun picked out in shining blue silk on the left breast, Neboulos sat Rhavas down in the study of the patriarchal residence, close by the High Temple. The patriarch's long, bushy white beard wagged as he poured wine for both of them with his own hand.
"This is not exile," Neboulos insisted. "It is not—I swear it by the lord with the great and good mind. It is opportunity."
"Easy for you to say," Rhavas insisted. "You don't have to go." He was in his mid-twenties then, but remained unintimidated by Neboulos' rank and by his years. Rhavas was tall and thin, with a long, narrow axe blade of a face, a dagger of a nose, and brilliant black eyes under elegant, aristocratic eyebrows. His tonsure only made his forehead seem even higher than it would have anyway. He was one of the most brilliant clerics, maybe the most brilliant, of his generation, and he knew it very well.
So did Neboulos, who made a placating gesture before lifting his silver goblet. "Drink, drink," the patriarch urged.
With an angry gesture, Rhavas took hold of his goblet, which matched the other. Both were decorated with reliefs of Phos, the god of light and goodness, triumphant over his eternal rival Skotos, who dwelt in eternal ice and darkness and worked evil. Rhavas and Neboulos raised their hands in reverence and intoned the good god's creed: "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."
Together, they spat in ritual rejection of Skotos. Only then could Rhavas drink. Not even his ferocious temper kept him from noting that Neboulos had served him very fine wine. He wants to soften me, to butter me up, the younger man thought savagely. Well, to the ice with me if I aim to let him.
"Opportunity?" Rhavas laced the word with scorn. "Where is there ever opportunity outside Videssos the city?"
"By the good god, Rhavas, opportunity is where you find it." Neboulos sketched Phos' sun-circle above his heart to show he was serious. "You were born here in the capital; perhaps this is not so plain to you. But I come from Resaina, in the westlands. I rose there. Had I not risen there, I would not sit here now." He ran a hand down his glittering patriarchal vestments, which seemed out of place in the comfortably shabby, scroll-filled study.
"Yes, yes," Rhavas said, still full of rage and impatience. "But I am here. I can rise here. Does Skopentzana have a decent library? Does it have a library at all? How am I supposed to study the good god and his glory without the tools of scholarship?"
"Skopentzana will have books. Skopentzana is rich, rich in many things," Neboulos answered. "Among the things it is rich in is the chance for you to administer a major temple. You will not find that chance so easy to come by here in the capital, no matter how high your blood is."
"Oh." Rhavas was suddenly thoughtful. Now he had to fight to hold on to his anger. And fight he did.
"Running a temple never did seem all that exciting to me. I'd sooner follow Phos than lead men."
"But, my dear . . ." For a moment, Neboulos seemed at a loss how to go on. He stroked his unkempt white beard. That seemed to give him whatever he needed, for he went on, "As you see, I am old. I shall not be patriarch much longer."
"Most holy sir, may you live a hundred and twenty years!" Rhavas exclaimed.
"You are kind to say such a thing. Believe me, I am grateful, but I shall not live a hundred and twenty years. At my age, one does not commence a long exegesis on Phos' holy scriptures. I do not know who will succeed me; that is for the synod and the Avtokrator to decide. But I have a good notion of who may succeed my successor."
"You do? How?" To Rhavas, the patriarch's speech was as opaque as if he'd suddenly started using the language of the sea-roving Haloga barbarians who dwelt beyond even distant Skopentzana.
Rhavas always remembered how Neboulos smiled at his naïveté. "Who? Why, you, of course." The ecumenical patriarch's right forefinger was bent with age, but not too bent to point straight at Rhavas' chest.
"Me?" Rhavas' voice rose to a startled squeak. "I never wanted to be patriarch. I never thought to be patriarch. Why me?"
"Your modesty does you credit, holy sir." Neboulos chuckled rheumily. "Why you? You are a learned man. You are a wise man. If you will forgive an old man's observation, you are wiser and more learned than you have any business being at your age. That is one side of the goldpiece. The other side is, you have a connection to the imperial family. The Avtokrator is likely to want a man who can run the temples well and is not inclined to quarrel with him."
"He may not get what he wants." Rhavas had a prickly sense of honor and an even pricklier sense of duty. "I will do what I find right and what I find proper, come what may."
"I understand," Neboulos said. "Blood calls to blood even so. My guess is, you will be patriarch—provided you do what you need to do before you don the golden robe. You must be watchful beforehand that the great test is decided in your favor." He smiled at using the words of the creed in a new context.
By contrast, Rhavas frowned. He suspected frivolity there. No matter what he suspected, he didn't let it deter him from his main point: "Why send me to Skopentzana, then?"
"How can you hope to run all the temples if you have not shown you can run at least one?" Neboulos replied. "There is the reason behind it—to let you run a temple and to teach you to run one. Having proved you can do that, you will, I doubt not, be recalled to Videssos the city before too long. Someday, you will plop your fundament onto this ratty old couch. When you do, I pray you, think of me every once in a while."
For some little while, Rhavas didn't know what to say to that. At last, softly, he asked, "You believe in your heart I should do this thing?"
Neboulos sketched the sun-circle once more. "By the lord with the great and good mind, my son, I do. Videssos will have need of you in years to come. The faith will have need of you as well. I could command you. However proud you may be, I am still your superior in matters ecclesiastical. But I do not command here. I beg."
Rhavas bent his head. "So be it, then. Let the good god's will be done."
Fifteen years went by. After a few of them, Neboulos passed from this world, his spirit walking the narrow Bridge of the Separator to see whether it gained Phos' heaven or fell down, down, down to Skotos' eternal ice. His successor, a certain Kameniates, was translated to Videssos the city from the westlands town of Amorion, where he had been prelate.
So far as Rhavas knew, Kameniates remained in good health. That perturbed the prelate of Skopentzana much less than it would have when he first came to the far northeast of the Empire. He had made his peace with this, his new hometown. It was not Videssos the city. Nothing else in the Empire, nothing else in the world—not even Mashiz, the capital of Videssos' western rival, Makuran—came close to Videssos the city.