But it didn't. As he had guessed, the Videssians warded the Avtokrator against their own methods of seeing what lay ahead, too. Next he tried a divination that was in large measure an invocation of the God. Abivard had high hopes for that one: surely the God was stronger than the false deities of good and evil in whom the Videssians believed.
The invocation, though, failed as utterly as had the earlier divinations. "How can that be?" Abivard demanded. "I will not imagine for a moment that the Videssians worship correctly and we do not."
"Nor need you imagine that," Tanshar answered. "The truth is more simple and less dismaying: while the God of course outstrips Phos and Skotos in power, so, also, must the Videssian wizards charged with protecting their ruler surpass me. Together, they and their gods-" He curled his lip in scorn, "-suffice to block my efforts. Had we a stronger Makuraner mage here-"
"Like the one who tried to slay Sharbaraz?" Abivard broke in. "Thank you, but no. I'm sure you will use whatever you find in the service of the rightful King of Kings, not against him."
Tanshar bowed. "You are kind to an old man who never looked to be drawn into the quarrels of the great." His clouded eye but made the smile he donned more rueful. "I wish I could live up to the confidence you place in me."
"You shall. I have no doubt of it," Abivard declared.
"I wish I didn't." Tanshar rummaged in a leather pouch he wore on his belt and came up with a lump of coal that left black smears on his hands. "Perhaps divination by opposites will evade the Videssians' wards," he said. "Few things are more opaque than coal; Likinios' future, however, seems at the moment to be one of them."
He poured the water out of the scrying bowl and set the coal in its place. The dialect of Makuraner in which he murmured his summons to the God was so archaic, Abivard could hardly understand it. He wondered what would happen if the scrying succeeded. Would the lump of coal become transparent, as his clear crystal had grown murky?
With a snap! almost like a small bolt of lightning, the coal burst into flame. Tanshar jerked his head away just in time to keep his mustache and bushy eyebrows from getting singed. A pillar of greasy black smoke rose to the roof of his tent.
"Does that tell you anything?" Abivard asked.
"One thing, and that most clearly," Tanshar answered in a shaken voice. "I am not likely to learn how long Likinios will remain Avtokrator, not with any sorcery I have under my control."
Abivard bowed his head, accepting that. But he was the sort who, when thwarted in one direction, would turn to another to gain his ends. "All right, then," he said. "Let's see how long Hosios will reign once he succeeds his father." Tanshar waited till the coal had burned out, then swept the ashes from the scrying bowl. He swung a small censer full of bitterly aromatic myrrh over the bowl. "I want to purify it before my next attempt," he explained. "No trace of that previous magic may remain."
He began anew with the simplest scrying tooclass="underline" plain water in the bowl.
Together he and Abivard waited for stillness, then touched the bowl and waited again.
Abivard had not placed much faith in this try. He gasped when the water roiled and bubbled, then gasped again when, instead of showing him a scene that would answer his question, it turned thick and red. "Blood!" he said, choking a little.
"You see that, too?" Tanshar said.
"Yes. What does it mean?"
"Unless I'm much mistaken," Tanshar said, sounding sure he was not, "it means Hosios shall not live to wear the Avtokrator's crown and red boots, for, by that conjuration, the blood was surely his."
Spring came to Serrhes a couple of weeks earlier than it would have in Vek Rud domain. By the time rain replaced snow and closed the roads for a spell, though, Likinios had brought in a good-sized force of cavalry to join Sharbaraz's men against Smerdis.
At the head of the cavalry regiments was a general who reminded Abivard of a fatter version of Zaclass="underline" a tough fellow in his fifties, not long on polish but liable to be very good in the field. His name was Maniakes. In spite of that, he didn't look like a Videssian; he was blocky, square-featured, with a truly impressive fleshy promontory of a nose and a tangled gray beard that hung halfway down the front of his mail shirt.
"I'm Videssian enough, thanks," he answered when Abivard asked him about it, "even if all four of my grandparents came out of Vaspurakan."
"But-" Abivard scratched his head. "Don't you worship differently from the Videssians?"
"I do, aye, but my son was raised in Videssos' faith," the officer answered.
"From what my grandfathers said, that's a smaller change to make than worshiping the God whom you Makuraners were trying to ram down the throat of Vaspurakan."
"Oh." Abivard wondered if the Makuraner overlords of Vaspurakan still behaved as they had in the days of Maniakes' grandfather. He hoped not. If they did, the folk of that land might be more ready to welcome Videssos than Sharbaraz thought.
With the cavalry came a regiment of engineers with wagons full of carefully sawn timbers and lengths of thick rope and fittings of iron and bronze. The men seemed more like mechanics than soldiers. They practiced assembling engines and putting together bridges much more than they went out with bow and spear. In his campaign against Smerdis the year before, Sharbaraz had enjoyed no such aid. That had cost him in the maneuverings between the Tutub and the Tib. It would not cost him this time.
"When do we move out?" Abivard asked the rightful King of Kings after a morning of mock cavalry charges.
"We're ready. The Videssians are ready-and so is their Vaspurakaner general." Sharbaraz made a sour face. He had found out about Maniakes, then. "The trouble is, the Tutub and the Tib aren't ready. This is their flood time. The engineers don't want everything swept away if the flood proves worse than usual-and there's no way to gauge that till it happens."
"The Vek Rud and the Degird wouldn't come into flood so soon," Abivard said. After a moment he went on musingly, "Of course, the snow wouldn't be melting so early in the season up in my part of the world, either." He shrugged, prepared to make the best of it. "More time to spend with Roshnani."
Sharbaraz laughed at him. "Having but one wife along has turned you uxorious. What will the rest of your women think when you go back to your stronghold?"
"They knew she was my favorite before she set out on campaign with us," Abivard said. "I do begin to understand now, as I didn't before, how the Videssians, even the grandees among 'em, make do with but one wife each."
"Some truth to that," Sharbaraz agreed. "Having the wife in question be as clever and lovely as the lady your sister does add to the compensation, I must say."
"You are gracious, Majesty."
"I'm yearning to return to my country," Sharbaraz said. "I wonder what Smerdis is expecting. He'll know we fled to Videssos, of course, and he'll know some of what's been going on here from caravans and single traders. But whether he knows we'll have an imperial army with us when we head west again-that we'll have to find out."
"If he does, he'll be using it to whip up hatred against you," Abivard said.
"He'll be calling you things like traitor and renegade."
"All he can call himself is thief and usurper," Sharbaraz answered. "Next to that, he can't do much of a job with the tar brush on me. But you're right-he'll try. Let him." The rightful King of Kings folded his hands into fists. "I'm looking forward to renewing our acquaintance."