They carried souls from the mortal realm of the living through the echoing chambers of the sea to the realms of the Dead, and judgement. So the Ancients had believed in Trakesia long ago-and in Rhodias before Jad’s teachings came. Dolphins had served the many-named god of the Afterworld, conduits of the spirits of the dead, traversing the blurred space between life and what came after.
And some of that old, enduring paganism had crossed-through a different sort of blurred space-into the faith of Jad, and his son Heladikos, who died in his chariot bringing fire to men. When Heladikos’s chariot plunged, burning like a torch, into the sea-so the dark tale ran-it was the dolphins who came and bore his ruined beauty upon their backs. Making of themselves a living bier, they carried it to the ends of the uttermost sea of the world to meet his father, sinking low at dusk. And Jad had claimed the body of his child and taken it into his own chariot, and carried it down-as every night-into the dark. A deeper, colder dark that night, for Heladikos had died.
And so the dolphins were said to be the last creatures of the riving world to see and touch beloved Heladikos, and for their service to him they were holy in the teachings of those who believed in Jad’s mortal son.
One might choose one’s deadly sacrilege. The dolphins carried souls to the dark god of Death in the pagans’ ancient pantheon, or they bore the body of the one god’s only son in a now-forbidden heresy.
Either way, either meaning, an artisan who placed dolphins on a ceiling or wall was inviting mortal consequences from an increasingly vigilant clergy. There had been dolphins once in the Hippodrome, diving to number the laps run. They were gone, melted down. Sea-horses counted the running now.
It was this Emperor, Valerius II, who had urged the joint Pronouncement of Athan, the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and Zakarios, the Eastern one here in the City. Valerius had worked very hard to achieve that rare agreement. Two hundred years of bitter, deadly dispute in the schismatic faith of Jad had been papered over with that document, but the price for whatever gains an ambitious Emperor and superficially united clergy might enjoy had been the casting of all Heladikians into heresy: at risk of denunciation, ritual cursing in chapels and sanctuaries, fire. It was rare to be executed in Valerius’s Empire for breaking the laws of man, but men were burned for heresy.
And it was Valerius’s Empress who was asking him now, scented and gleaming in red and threaded gold by late-night candlelight, for dolphins in her rooms.
He felt much too drained by all that had happened tonight to properly sort through this. He temporized, carefully. ‘They are handsome creatures, indeed, especially when they leap from the waves.’
Alixana smiled at him. ‘Of course they are.’ Her smile deepened. ‘They are also the bearers of Heladikos to the place where sea meets sky at twilight.’
So much for temporizing. At least he knew which sin he might be burned for committing.
She was making it easier for him, however. He met her eyes, which had not left his face. ‘Both Patriarchs have banned such teachings, Empress. The Emperor swore an oath in the old Sanctuary of Jad’s Wisdom to uphold their will in this.’
‘You heard of that? Even in Batiara? Under the Antae?’
‘Of course we did. The High Patriarch is in Rhodias, my lady.’
‘And did the king of the Antae … or his daughter after . . . swear a similar oath to uphold?’
A stunningly dangerous woman. ‘You know they did not, my lady. The Antae came to Jad by way of the Heladikian teachings.’
‘And have not changed their doctrines, alas.’
Crispin spun around.
The Empress merely turned her head and smiled at the man who had entered-as silently as she had-and had just spoken from the farthest door of the room.
For the second time, his heart racing, Crispin set down his wine and bowed to conceal a mounting unease. Valerius had changed neither his clothing nor his manner. He crossed to the wall himself and poured his own cup of wine. The three of them were alone, no servants in the room.