"Unholy Trinity" | |
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Author | Harry Turtledove |
First Appearance | Amazing |
Collected | Agent of Byzantium |
Series | Agent of Byzantium |
Publication date | July, 1985 |
Preceded by | "Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire" |
Followed by | "Archetypes" |
"Unholy Trinity" (also known as "Etos Kosmou 6824") is a short story by Harry Turtledove (as Eric Iverson), first published in Amazing, July, 1985. It is a story set in the Agent of Byzantium series, and was reprinted in the fix-up novel of the same name in 1987.
The story takes place in 1315, in the Pyrenees Mountains and eastward to the Monastary of St. Gall, along the borders of the Roman Empire. The barbarous Franco-Saxons had developed a new, devastating weapon of hellpowder which threatened the Empire to which Basil Argyros was assigned to investigate.
The "Unholy Trinity" of the title refers to the monks associating each of the three components which went into making hellpowder with one of the persons of the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It was a convenient mnemonic device for the monks, but eventually it gave the spying Argyros the hint he needed in order to decipher the monks' secret and take it back to Constantinople.
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