Read Krispos the Emperor for Free Online

it. He frowned. "I can feel the wickedness we face here," he said, his voice tight and tense. "Now to learn whether it comes from one parchment or both."
    He took the stirring rod and let a couple of drops of the mixture in the bowl fall on a corner of the letter from the archives, the one Harvas had written. The liquid flared bright red, just the color of fresh-spilled blood.
    Zaidas drew back a pace. Though he was a layman, he drew the sun-circle again, even so. "By the good god," he murmured, now sounding shocked and shaken. "I never imagined a response as intense as that. Green, even perhaps yellow, but—" He broke off, staring at Harvas' letter as if it were displaying its fangs.
    "I take it you expect the petition from Taronites to do the same if Harvas has a hand in turning the Thanasioi loose on us," Krispos said.
    "I sincerely hope the solution does not turn crimson, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "That would in effect mean Harvas lurked just outside the temple wherein Taronites was writing. But the change of color will indicate the degree of relationship between Harvas and these new heretics."
    More cautiously than he had before, the wizard daubed some of the liquid onto Taronites' letter. Krispos leaned forward, waiting to see what color the stuff turned. He did not know whether it would go red, but he expected some change, and probably not a small one. By Zaidas' choice of words, so did he.
    But the liquid stayed blue.
    Both men stared at it; for that matter, so did the bodyguard. Krispos asked, "How long must we wait for the change to take place?"
    "Your Majesty, if it was going to occur, it would have done so by now," Zaidas answered. Then he checked himself. "I must always bear in mind that Harvas is a master of concealment and obfuscation. Being such, he might be able to evade this test, porpoise heart or no. But there is a cross check I do not think he can escape, try as he might."
    The wizard picked up the two parchments, touched the damp spots on them together. "Being directly present in the one letter, Harvas' essence cannot fail to draw forth from the other any lingering trace of him." He held the two parchments against each other long enough to let a man draw five or six breaths, then separated them.
    The blue smear on Taronites' petition remained blue, not green, yellow, orange, red, or even pink. Zaidas looked astonished. Krispos was not only astonished but also profoundly suspicious. He said, "Are you saying this means Harvas has nothing whatever to do with the Thanasioi? I find that hard to believe."
    "So do I, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "If you ask what I say, I say the connection between the two is all too likely. My magic, however, seems to be saying something else again."
    "But is your magic right, or have you just been deceived?" Krispos demanded. "Can you tell me for certain, one way or the other? I know you understand how important this is, not just to me but to Videssos now and in the future."
    "Yes, your Majesty. Having faced Harvas once, having seen the evils he worked and those to which he inspired his followers, I know you want to be as positive as possible as to whether you—and we—confront him yet again."
    "That is well put," Krispos said. He doubted he could have been so judicious himself. Truth was, as soon as he'd seen Taronites' letter, the fear of Harvas rose up in his mind like a ghost in one of the romances that the booksellers hawked in the plaza of Palamas. No matter what Zaidas' magical tests said about the Thanasioi, his own terror spoke louder to him. So he went on, "Excellent sir, have you any other sorceries you might use to find out whether this one is mistaken?"
    "Let me think," Zaidas said, and proceeded to do just that for the next several minutes, standing still as a statue in the center of his study. Suddenly he brightened. "I know something which may serve." He hurried over to a cabinet set against one wall and began opening its small drawers and rummaging through