They had wandered down from the north, through fen and forest, selling deception. His so-called father taught him seiðr-magic, and seeing its power, he had learned it well. He was a quick-minded boy. Quicker than his master, to be sure. And he grew strong of limb, broad of shoulder, a fine-looking youngster. But the seiðman was too blinded by wickedness to notice. Then one night, after the wicked old goat had visited his bed and then drunk himself into a stupor, the boy had drawn his little knife and slashed open his grizzled throat. He left the corpse for the wolves.

For a time guilt weighed on his heart but he soon learned to bear the burden. He drifted south, drawn by the sun, his only friend. His body became lean and hard, his hair grew long and dark, though he always looked a beggar. He came to the great Danube river. There, he started to sell his skills for scraps of food. Trivial things, at first: he’d tell folk’s fortunes, work illusions of magic, carve runes, weave spiteful curses to stoke housewives’ petty feuding. But in this foolery, he began to see dark things, to discover that his words carried the power to bind. In one village, a boy threw a stone at him. He answered the blow with a curse. The boy died almost on the instant; the branch he was sitting on snapped and he smashed his skull on the ground. There was an outcry. He fled. The men of the village hunted him deep into the forest where he was forced to accept protection from a band of worthless men. It was mere days before they betrayed him too, selling him to one of the Bulgar clan chiefs.

Katāros glided down the staircase towards the Boukoleon Harbour, shielding his eyes from the sun, recalling the chain of humiliating transactions that had followed. He was sold down the river lands to the port of Varna and from there slung in the hold of a ship and didn’t see the light of day again till he was dragged onto the block in Byzantium. The Queen of Cities.

Aye, he thought in disgust, if the queen were a pox addled whore. Everywhere, he saw this fetish for a figure they called the Mother of God, and with her the Christ, and above him one God. The One True God, they claimed. Although they knew nothing of the dark powers he had seen.