God Within Us

The town was as dark as pitch by the time everyone fell back to the boyar’s towerhouse to report their findings.

“Entire place is empty,” said Gastya as he and Marmun sat in the empty hall of the tower. “Not even any mice left scurrying about. ‘S like everyone and everything just up and left. They still left their silver n’ other such things behind…”

“The big boats are all gone,” Khavel reported despondently. He and his cousin must have taken a dip in the water, because the two masons were dripping wet and shivering when they arrived.

“All’s left is a river skiff, down in one of the workshops on the pier,” Doru followed. “Looked like they were mending a patch in the hull and left it half-finished. I didn’t see any problems, but I dunno if it’s good for the waters if they didn’t bother to take it…”

“We can take a look at it come morning,” said Vratislav, seated at the boyar’s table alongside Vasilisa, Nesha, and Yesugei. “Valishin…you helped repair a fishing boat once, didn’t you?”

The young farmer woke up from his dozing with a start. “Wha-? Y-yes, my lord. Was my cousin’s before-”

“Good. Come morning you can take the others and see if you can’t get that boat sail-worthy. We either get to Gatchisk by boat, or not at all.”

The burning of the countryside meant there would be no shelter to be found along the roads - or if there was, their occupants’ willingness to host eleven travelers pathetically short of coin would be sorely lacking. And at their sluggish pace of travel towards Gatchisk, two days would easily turn into four - four days and nights sleeping in forests or plains, exposed to the cold nights and hard, rough ground.

Yesugei almost wondered whether it would be easier to leave behind the peasants - now that they were within the safety of the walls and well-provisioned, it wouldn’t be abandoning them if he and Vasilisa were to take off on their own. It would be easy to simply take their share of the supplies and head out - some of the peasants might object, but none seemed like they would try to stop them from leaving.

He gave Vasilisa a sidelong glance as she listened to Vratislav speaking. He had noticed Vasilisa’s growing attachment and sense of duty to the peasants even over their short travel to Balai, but something had changed in her demeanor after they descended from the tower’s roof. It was in her eyes - she no longer looked upon the peasants as merely subjects, but as companions - people to whom she owed loyalty, whether out of duty or out of honor as their liege lady.

Here’s hoping this new honor won’t get us killed, he thought as he studied Vasilisa’s thoughtful expression. Remember what’s at stake, Vasilisa.

The memory of the Apostle’s leering, empty-eyed visage still haunted him, as did the strange visions that were not his own of the blindingly-bright spirit whose whispers shook the earth and brought him nearly to tears. The two creatures could not have been farther from one another - yet were they both Apostles, or two different spirits, equally-malevolent in their nature?

The disappearance of the townsfolk did not seem like the work of a helpful, kind entity - a strange sense of menace hung over the air in Balai, desperate whispers and smothered fear drenched the paved streets and walls of every building.

If Tseren were still alive, he could have communed with the spirits of the land, or raised one of the western tengri for advice. But Teseren is dead, Yesugei thought as he caught himself. Tseren is dead, and there is nothing you can do about it. Move on, and push on.

The conversation in the great hall turned to the topic of the coming night. The gates to the town were sealed solidly, but there were far too few of them to man the walls along their entire length, much less keep a rotating watch throughout the night. Instead, Vratislav had advised them to hole up and guard only the towerhouse, whose ten-foot high stone walls were short enough for two people to keep watch over the town from all directions. There was a single heavy gate to the east - reinforced by iron brackets like the outer walls - as well as a smaller postern door to the south hidden by foliage that opened to a dirt path leading to the pier.

Yesugei took charge of planning the watches for the night, setting Valishin, Marmun, Gastya, and Khavel to take two-man shifts. One man would always keep the horn close by to warn the others of danger, though Yesugei wondered what would come to pass if anyone did show up.

None of the peasants looked to be of fighting spirit, besides Rudin, and they still only had enough weapons to arm half of their number. Although it was easy to conclude that standing and fighting would give the whole group better odds of survival than routing, in practice few men were able to override their primal desires and terrors - especially if faced by trained killers while half of them wielded farming tools.

Still, the towerhouse was well-prepared to withstand a small siege if need be - an exploration of the battlements and barracks turned up piles of heavy stones, a large pot for pouring boiling water onto attackers, and several more arrows which sat forgotten in barrels along the wooden catwalks.

As they talked and Yesugei put together a small map to show the four watchmen where they ought to patrol, Rudin, Nesha, and Valka set about preparing the food they had gathered and poached for a late supper. The kitchens were blessedly left half-stocked, and so soon the smell of roasted goose and vegetable stew drifted up into the great hall. Yesugei felt his own stomach grumble from hunger, and he saw the prospect of a good meal had stolen away his men’s attention.

When the food was finally ready and carried up, the peasants all looked like starved puppies as the roasted goose passed them by. Rudin set the goose before Vasilisa first, before passing it along the boyar’s table and only then to the peasants. The fat bird was more than enough for everyone to get a piece - even so, Yesugei saw Vasilisa gingerly take only a small cut of meat for herself when the goose was presented.

Her appetite remained astoundingly little, but she didn’t relent even when both Vratislav and Nesha encouraged her to eat her fill to meet the day ahead. No-one else talked as much as they all ate, and Yesugei knew that even Vratislav and Nesha’s fussing was more a way for them to put off thinking about their own fates and futures than any sycophantry.

Everyone set off on their own separate ways once they all finished - Valishin and Marmun to the walls, Vratislav, Nesha, and Vasilisa to the upper chambers, and the rest of the peasants to the lower commons where the servants slept. Yesugei lingered alone for a little longer, savoring the greasy taste of the gooseflesh and the hearty stew before heading to the upper chambers.

When he poked his head inside, he saw Vratislav and Nesha already sound asleep. Unburdened from the stresses of the waking world, the boyar and his wife looked almost ten years younger, though they had both looked fifty during the march through the woods. Within the clean walls of the towerhouse, Yesugei felt his skin crawl at his own filthiness, and resolved to find a tub of water, anything to clean himself before resigning to sleep.

When he found the tub inside a bathhouse off to the side of the bedchambers, he saw Vasilisa was of similar mind to him - she was halfway through setting a fire beneath the heating stones when he stepped inside, nearly knocking over the wrapped cleaver she propped up against the wall next to the door. Her face reddened when she turned to see him standing in the doorway.

“I’m setting a bath, do you mind?” Vasilisa said indignantly. “Wait your turn.”

“By the time you’re done that water will be black - I’m not bathing in your filth.”

“Neither am I!” huffed Vasilisa, and she turned back to continue lighting the fire. “And you’re much filthier than me - you should go last.”

As Vasilisa spoke, Yesugei slowly slipped out of his boots and kicked them silently off to one side. By the time she realized what was happening, he was already knee-deep in the cool, refreshing water - robe and all. The mud caked onto his robe instantly began to cloud the bath, followed by swirls of crimson blood. Vasilisa’s quiet objections and mutterings slowly tuned out as Yesugei gingerly immersed himself up to the chin in the water, feeling his legs grow slack and his head spin from the sensation of soothing water on his dry, bruised skin.

Yesugei closed his eyes, and savored the feeling of gradual cleanliness. Then he felt the water rise and splash, followed by a sigh from Vasilisa as she crawled into the large tub herself with a shiver, and a baleful glare at him.

“You’re an ass, you know that?” the Grand Princess muttered as she pulled her knees up to her chest in the tub. The dust and dirt of the road slowly dissolved off her silk dress, and their combined filth and suffering mixed until it was indistinguishable. Blood and blood, dirt and dirt, grief and grief washed away bodily.

For a while - a long while - the two of them sat in total silence until even the slowly lapping surface of the bathwater stilled.

“What are we doing here?”

Yesugei’s question came softly as he stared up at the plain wooden ceiling of the bathhouse, slowly rapping his wrinkled fingers along the edge of the tub.

“What do you mean?”

“This…this whole damned mess.” He gestured with one hand about them, splattering several droplets of water onto the heating stones which gave a hiss. “How did we get here? Why us? Why you?”

“You know as well as I that I don’t know.” Vasilisa said. She curled herself up even tighter, causing her knees to pop up from the surface of the water like two small islands. “I-I don’t know. None of this should be happening, none of it.”

“Before all of this…” Vasilisa caught herself, and gave a small, rueful smile. “Ah…before all of this…I was afraid my parents were going to marry me off to some steppe khan. Maybe one of your brothers? Maybe even you.”

Yesugei stifled a chortle, not wanting to wake the boyar and his wife just outside. “Even me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” said Vasilisa, staring innocently off to the side at the heating stones. “Just…couldn’t ever imagine myself being married off like that. My father pushed for it once, my mother didn’t care for it - perhaps she didn’t appreciate her own father giving her away, even if she did end up loving Igor of Belnopyl.”

“Your mother’s father…” Yesugei slowly mused. “Jirghadai. He was my own father’s blood-brother once, you know?”

“I heard the story only one time from my mother, long ago. Your father and Jirghadai fought…didn’t they?”

Yesugei snorted. “They fought for nearly twenty years. I was only a little boy when it started, and I was a man when the feud ended - my first kill in battle was one of Jirghadai’s noyans.”

“Must have been an honor.”

“It…” Yesugei wanted to say it was an honor, to tell her of the great riches he plundered from the noyan’s tent, to tell her of the ferocious duel between himself and the grizzled warrior, but the memories felt hollow, blurred six years on.

The only thing he remembered was the face of an old, bearded man twisted in agony as he struggled to hold together his insides - and the final cry of “Wait!” before he was finished, pleading for mercy and life even when he was utterly doomed.

“It…it was a struggle.”

In truth, by the time he had come of age to lead his own men the Quanli were nearly finished. The soldiers he and Kaveh had ridden down were not the seasoned veterans of Jirghadai’s southern conquests, but ragged conscripts exhausted and dying of thirst from days of forced marches across the White Pinch - a dreadful expanse of bleached stones and cracked earth. He had never learned why the noyan had taken his men on such a deadly journey, only that he had done so on Jirghadai-khan’s own orders, and acted as a loyal noyan should. Then he died.

“I always thought blood-bonds between the Khormchaks were for life…” Vasilisa said, her tone gentle. “What would make blood-brothers fight for twenty years?”

“Bonds for life are only in the stories,” Yesugei replied. “My father and Jirghadai both came from nothing - second sons from middling tribes, with hardly any cattle or horses. Back then, there were no riches flowing through the steppe - you took only what you could steal from your neighbors, and kept only what you could protect. Khormchaks sold their own kin out on the steppe to the Yllahanans or Tanh Ninh, and kingdoms like the Klyazmites had their tendrils in every other tribe to keep us squabbling and disunited.

“Jirghadai and my father…the Modkhai shamans of the northern woods had predicted they would both unite the tribes of the steppes into a single great ulus as twin khans. But the Modkhai were still foreigners to our ways - they didn’t know that for the Khormchaks, there would sooner be two suns in the sky than two khans sharing power. My father made his blood-pact with Jirghadai when they were both young men, young and stupid - they never thought back then they’d actually get as far as they did. They supported one another, rode against the same tribes, split their plunder between themselves. Genuine alliances were rare in the steppe - every other tribe only fended for itself, and took bites out of other tribes, even their own ‘allies’, whenever they sensed weakness.”

“The Suan, the Qara-Isyqs, Qyzylkurans…if they all banded together, they could have wiped us out with ease. But instead, whenever one rode against us the other two would attack and raid the first. And so they ignored the Qarakesek and Quanli until they could no longer, when my father drew the lesser tribes to his banner with his promises of a better future for their children, and Jirghadai brought dissenters to heel with his sword.

“They rode and they conquered the other Great Tribes one by one, taking more and more banners to their ulus…until the only ones remaining were each other. I think they both thought the other would just submit at the end of the day, when it was all over. But my father wanted us to grow wealthy from trade and tribute, to nurture what we had gained. Jirghadai though…he only wanted war, more war, to unite not just the tribes of the steppe, but the entire world beneath a single ulus, a single Gur-Khan to rule the universe at the tip of a sword.

“With such ambitions…” Yesugei fell silent for a moment, wondering how it must have felt like - to call one’s blood-brother an enemy. He tried to imagine himself and Kaveh standing opposite one another at the holy Khurvan mountains just as his father and Jirghadai had. Did his father feel any regret, any sorrow? He must have.

“With such ambitions, you could only bring men like that to kneel when they’re utterly destroyed. My father took everything from Jirghadai in their war: his seven sons, his lands, his riches, his honor.”

“But he didn’t take his life,” said Vasilisa. “Why did he leave him alive?”

“Because in the end, Jirghadai gave up…he just broke. He and my father were both left hollowed, and their war had spilled more of their own people’s blood than the last three centuries of tribal squabbles. If they kept on fighting, there would have been no Khormchaks left to form the great ulus they both so desired.”

Now we do have a great ulus, a great horde. Yesugei thought, but a deep bitterness in his silent heart also spoke.

“Yes…now we do have a great horde, a great empire…but my brother is still dead, my friends are still dead, and old enemies of my tribe still lurk in every corner while new nightmares crawl out of the earth itself. What cruel gods ravage this world with one disaster after another, and use the ambitions of men to hold them as pawns?”

Suddenly, the waters felt too much - and the crystal in his chest began to ache, as if reminding him of the agony of the past. The pain and sorrow he had been holding in his heart seemed to spill out all at once into his mind, and he felt his head begin to spin from the mind-bending horror. He saw Kaveh’s face contorted in agony, the flesh melting off his bones from the heat of black fire. He saw his own body, his own corpse, laid out on foreign plains - eaten alive by a hateful curse.

“And me…what am I now? Am I even still me? Or was I born again, out in the Klyazmite plains?”

The pain of the crystal in his chest grew too much to bear - the water felt like it was beginning to boil him from the inside out. He lurched to his feet and stood up from the tub, his tattered robes instantly clinging tight to his body. Then suddenly, a wave of lethargy struck him, and he sank back down into the waters beneath Vasilisa’s concerned gaze.

“I think…I think the water’s…” His words came out slurred, and a terrible hissing noise erupted from the inside of his skull as he felt himself sinking lower and lower.

“Va…si…li…sa…”

***

“Yesugei!”

Vasilisa shifted in the tub, grabbing Yesugei’s clammy arms before his head could sink any deeper into the filthy water. As she pulled him out she saw the nomad’s eyes were rolled up into his head - unconscious. His breathing was low and shallow, and his wounds did not appear to have reopened or taken infection. She breathed a sigh of relief - it seemed the nomad had simply succumbed to the exhaustion of the last few days, not any curse or wounds.

As she rested the nomad’s arms against the edge of the tub, Vasilisa saw something shift in the corner of her vision - a shadow playing out across the floor. When she turned to get a better look, she saw it wasn’t a shadow, but a serpent wriggling across the wooden floors of the bathhouse.

“You’ve grown bigger since we last met.”

The serpent had grown to nearly quadruple its length and width since she had last spoken to it - it now lay as large as her arm, and its iridescent scales seemed to have grown brighter and more vibrant with age. She detected the faintest flicker of recognition and sympathy in its eyes from its otherwise expressionless face as the serpent slowly rose up to glance at her. Somehow, despite Yesugei’s collapse, she felt at ease seeing an old, if brief, friend.

“I have been eating my fill of late. Gorging even, I’m afraid.” Said the serpent in its soft voice, its tongue flicking in and out as it tasted the air. “It seems the predators of this land hunt not serpents, but their own kind. Lowly serpents slither by unnoticed, while the great beasts of the world partake in their great clashes.”

Vasilisa gave the serpent a grim smile as she propped up Yesugei’s unconscious body against the tub, then extended her right arm out for the serpent to wrap around. The serpent was surprisingly heavy, and she struggled to lift it to match her gaze as it sat wrapped tightly around her forearm.

“What do I call you now? You can hardly fit on my arm now - somehow ‘little serpent’ seems no longer apt.”

“You could always just call me ‘serpent’, I suppose.” The serpent slowly crawled around her arm, brushing its cool scales along her skin. The iridescent scales seemed to sparkle as they shifted in color and hue with the flickering light of the bathhouse fire. “We lowly serpents do not usually keep names - our kind rarely care enough to give one another titles.”

“That seems a sad existence, not having anyone to care for you enough to give you a name.”

“Most serpents have none who care for them. But I…I had a name, once.” The serpent’s head rested in the open palm of her hand, and Vasilisa carefully stroked the top of its smooth, sleek head with her scarred thumb. The serpent gave a relaxed sigh.

“You did?” she asked curiously. “What made you lose it?”

“The only one who called me by it disappeared,” replied the serpent, its eyes closed as Vasilisa continued to stroke its head.

Vasilisa let her finger smoothly play across the serpent’s head for a little while longer before asking, “I could call you by your name. It only seems fair - you call me ‘Vasilisa’, not ‘human’. What is your name?”

The serpent’s eyes opened slowly, and it turned its head to meet her gaze. “I think you might already know.”

Up close, she realized the serpent’s eyes were a deep black-and-purple color, tinged with veins of gold that reminded her of the twisting roots of a tree. Golden eyes…golden eyes…

She found herself sinking into the black and purple void, memories drifting by her as she saw the long-haired Chirlan’s eerie smile, his singer’s voice, his golden claws sinking into her heart. She remembered his soft voice whispering through the darkness as she faded away, whispering his quiet prayer. But strangely, the memory persisted in her mind - and a different prayer escaped from the sorcerer’s lips…

“In the quiet corridors of sacrifice you’ll tread,” Chirlan’s voice rolled off her tongue. Her chest felt tight, as though she were being crushed bodily by an invisible hand as she whispered the sorcerer’s parting words. “My crown of sorrows on your head…”

The pressure on her chest released suddenly, and Vasilisa gave a gasp as her mind shot back into her own sopping wet body. She scrambled to pull herself up out of the filthy tub. As she regained her bearings, she saw both Yesugei and the serpent were missing - she stood alone in the bathhouse.

She felt a word - no, a name - tumbling around in her confused, groggy mind as she dried her dress off the best she could and placed her trembling fingers close to the fire of the heating stones.

In the flickering flames of the fire, the serpent’s name came into focus.

“Vraactan…” She whispered, her only audience the crackling flames.

One of the logs split apart, releasing a hiss as the fire spread over its two halves to consume it whole.

The silence of the bathhouse was interrupted when she heard heavy, rushed footsteps coming from outside. The door to the bathhouse burst open, and Vasilisa spun around to see Yesugei standing in the doorframe, his bow and quiver in hand.

“Something’s wrong, someone’s coming. I warned the others but we need to move-”

Before he could say more, a sound came shuddering through the towerhouse. It was one of the peasant watchmen blowing on the hunting horn, sounding intruders. Sounding danger.

“Get up! We need to move, now!”

Vasilisa hurried to her feet after Yesugei, and snatched the giant Apostle’s cleaver from the wall as she trailed after the nomad. Chirlan’s voice echoed in her mind.

My crown of sorrows on your head…