Placing a fingertip to his lips, he turned to a squat earthen jar employed to hold a number of scrolls. Selecting one of these, he unrolled it and held it before him for a moment. He glanced at me, frowned, threw the scroll aside and selected another. "Aedan," he said, pronouncing my name like a Greek.
The second scroll apparently met with his approval, for he smiled and said, "You did not tell me you were a seer, Aedan."
"But I am not a seer!" I protested. Even so, the shock of recognition coursed through me.
"The stars never lie," he scolded. "Perhaps you are a seer, but have not yet discovered this gift." Retrieving the first scroll, he studied it once more, only to discard it again in favour of a third which he withdrew from the baked earth jar. "Strange," he said, "to find a lord who is also a slave. Wisdom leads me to doubt this, but experience has taught me that truth does often run contrary to wisdom."
"I was a prince of my tribe," I told him, "but I put aside nobility long ago to become a servant of God. I was a priest for many years."
"Ah, I see! A servant of the Most High, Allah be praised! Servant and slave, yes. This is important." He lay aside the scroll and folded his hands in his lap. "Now I must meditate on this matter. Farewell, my friend."
"I am to leave?"
"Leave me now, yes. But return tomorrow and we will talk again, God willing."
"Very well," I agreed, rising to my feet. "Good day to you, Amet."
"God go with you, Aedan, my friend." He touched his forehead with his fingertips and, closing his eyes, arranged himself in an attitude of meditation, legs crossed, hands resting on his knees.
I left him like that, a small island of calm in the midst of the swirling eddies of the busy market. On my way back to the eparch's residence, however, I debated within myself whether to go back to him, for I had begun to doubt whether any good could come of knowing whatever Amet might tell me. By the time I reached the eparch's door, I had decided that my own premonitions of the future were confusing enough; it would be better for me not to know any more than I knew already.
This I told myself a hundred times over, and resolved to stay away. But the heart is desperately wicked, and men often fail to do what is best for them. Alas! My once solid resolve had dwindled to such a weak, enfeebled thing, that the next day I crept from the eparch's house and hurried with hasty steps to the magus's stall.
The Bishop of Trebizond did not approve of the fair; indeed, he abhorred it entirely, by reason of the fact that it led God's most vulnerable children into doubt and error. He particularly disliked the potion sellers who preyed on the childless, the crippled, and the easily confused. "Worse than poison!" was his judgement on the concoctions they dispensed. "Dogs' piss and vinegar would do a body more good," he concluded, "and that you can get for nothing! They sell their vile concoctions at exorbitant rates to those least able to afford them, and then give their poor victims pernicious lies to swallow along with their foul elixirs. Soothsayers! Diviners! Magicians! I condemn them all."
Despite the bishop's censure, the people flocked to the fair, and most seemed to enjoy it-especially the farmers and village folk, many of whom brought their animals to the city for sale and trade. I respectfully submitted to the bishop that they could hardly be held to blame who had no priests to teach them or offer a better example.
"I have no qualm or sympathy for the pagani," Bishop Arius asserted with some vigour. He had come to the eparch's residence to pay his respects to the imperial envoy and, seeing that I was a monk-for so he perceived me-inquired after me while waiting for Nicephorus to receive him. We fell into discussion of the crowded conditions in the city, and one subject led onto another, as they will. "Unbelievers are none of my concern; they can do what they please. But Christians should not be seen supporting such confabulations. The wickedness proceeding from these fairs cannot be exaggerated."
"Indeed," I allowed, "yet there are Christians among the astrologers and seers. I was always taught that such practices were an abomination."
"Then you were well taught," replied the bishop tartly. "All such devilry is an abomination in the sight of God. Those are no true Christians you saw holding forth with the seers and soothsayers."
"Are they not?"
"Be not deceived, son. They are Paulicians." He said the word as if it were the name of a particularly hideous disease.
I had never heard of this sect, and told Arius so.
"Would that no one had ever heard of them," he said pointedly. "Forewarned is forearmed, so know this: they are members of a heretical sect which promulgates the instruction of a misguided apostate-a man who styled himself a teacher, yet whose teaching was far, far removed from that of his blessed namesake."
