God Within Us

In the mists of the Gravemarsh, Vasilisa could see little beyond the hull of the riverboat as they made their way north. A handful of times she saw the vague outlines of hanging reeds, and in the black depths she occasionally saw a flash of silver fish scales, but otherwise all there was to see was endless, monotonous gray, and all there was to hear was the gentle creaking of the boat, and the steady huff of the freeholders as they rowed.

While the other druzhinniks quickly settled into an uneasy and quiet calm - some like Kirill and Polynkin even nodding off to sleep - Austeja remained wide-eyed and alert. As they drifted along the marsh, the tribeswoman's eyes were constantly flicking to and fro across the gray expanse as though she could see something the others could not.

On occasion, Austeja would hastily jerk the rudder one way or the other to steer them off some unseen danger, though only once did Vasilisa see some hint of what she had been trying to avoid when their boat passed narrowly by the floating shadow of a felled tree. But on all other turns and corrections, she saw naught. Perhaps that was the mark of a truly skilled navigator, Vasilisa thought, one who could make a journey fraught with perils seem so uneventful it was almost boring.

At length, their passage through the Gravemarsh grew steadier, and eventually Austeja locked the rudder in place and allowed herself to lean back over the edge. There was little speech anywhere along the boat. Each member of their company seemed lost in their own thoughts, and shared little with others. Eventually Vasilisa felt either curiosity or boredom get the better of her, and she slowly went from the prow of the riverboat to sit by Austeja, who jerked upright in the presence of the Grand Princess.

"You wish to speak with me, my lady?"

"I do," admitted Vasilisa as she studied the Vorodzhi tribeswoman. She had imagined the bog-dwellers to have seemed more...alien, perhaps. But with her shirt of scales and her helmet laid aside, Austeja looked no different from the Klyazmites she shared the journey with. The only difference seemed to be her blue eyes which, at a turn of the head, looked speckled with gold.

She realized she was staring at Austeja, and averted her gaze. "I have heard a great many things about the Vorodzhi tribe, though I don't think I've ever seen you in my father's court."

"We are a shy folk, my lady," admitted Austeja with a sigh. "If we do not want to be seen, it shall be so. But I had seen you once, though it was only a glance."

Vasilisa looked back to Austeja with surprise as she continued. "It was some time ago, during the year of the high floods. Your father held a great gathering of boyars to the north in the summer, and he counted even my people's chieftains among those invited. I saw you during the melée, by your mother's side."

Austeja smiled at the distant memory, and then laughed. "Not all the things your people say of the Vorodzhi are entirely untrue - for one, we are not as wealthy as our northern cousins, my lady, nor have we ever tried to make great castles and cities. When I arrived with my father, it was the first time in my life I had seen such high walls, and seen such wealth as your nobles clad themselves in. Gold, silver, gemstones I never knew even existed - so much opulence, but all I remembered thinking back then was 'now, how could these folk ever hope to swim in such unwieldy garb?'"

A smile came to Vasilisa's face as well. She tried to imagine herself floating in one of the dresses Mariana had brought to her, and chuckled at the sight. But even as she laughed, the memory dealt a sudden pang of sorrow to her heart. She felt her soul longing for home - for the windowsill where the birds sang just outside her chambers, whistling in the branches of the Elder Tree. Austeja frowned, noticing her sadness, but Vasilisa brushed it aside as she turned to face the tribeswoman again.

"Perhaps you'll get to see those high walls again," she said with a smile. "But what about your home? Why were you at the Gravemarsh Keep with the druzhina? Are you not a chieftain's daughter?"

The tribeswoman gave a grim smile. "The boyars of the north have always taken the eldest sons of our chieftains as druzhinniks - to show them the civilized way of living and butchery in the name of the princes. My father has no sons, and so when the time came, he sent me instead."

Austeja leaned down in her seat and displayed her sword - a short iron blade nestled in a worn leather scabbard, whose only decoration was a carved ivory pommel carved in the shape of a roaring bear. "This was the blade my father had sent me out with - the sword our ancestors received when we swore our oaths to serve the masters of Belnopyl. Though in our language, we call your city the Sacred Hollow."

"Why so?" Vasilisa asked.

Austeja raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Do you not know of the hollows that run beneath your city?"

"Do you mean the tunnels, the catacombs?"

“No,” said Austeja, her voice dropping to a low hush as she leaned in closer to Vasilisa. “The tunnels of men beneath the city reek of death. I mean the hollows that run truly deep beneath the earth, the ones that have known a time before men strode upon the hill and raised walls and towns.”

Austeja paused, quickly looking to her side for eavesdroppers. When she was satisfied no one was listening, her eyes glinted with delight, and she leaned in so closely Vasilisa could see her own reflection in the tribeswoman's eyes. "My lady...the hollows I speak of were not carved by mortal hands. They run deeper than the roots of the oldest trees, or the deepest shafts carved by men. They are the veins of the earth, the lifeblood that pulses beneath your city's streets, and the sacred womb of our world, where a goddess once resided.”

Vasilisa leaned forward, her eyes wide with anticipation, urging Austeja to continue.

"Some say," Austeja continued, her words measured and deliberate, "that the goddess herself formed the hollows, carving them for her children. Others believe that the hollows were her chosen dwelling place, a sanctuary where she could weave her tapestry of life."

"You Klyazmites, the blood of Raegnald and the invaders from beyond the sea, call this goddess by a foreign name - Mokosh," Austeja explained, a hint of disdain tainting her voice. “But only the old tribes of this land know her true name: Vaal.”

The name carried a strange power as it left the tribeswoman's lips in a soft whisper - it sounded with the undercurrent of a thousand other voices, as though all who had uttered the name across time were whispering it in unison. Vasilisa felt the crystals in her chest grow warm at the sound of the name, and thrum with the change that came over the air. All prayers to the Earth-Mother she had made and heard a thousand times over seemed suddenly empty - a mockery, even. Within the name Mokosh, there was ceremony and ritual - within the name Vaal, even just the name, the very air became charged with unseen dread.

Austeja's gaze turned away from Vasilisa, and she stared down at the black waters as if she were peering into those earthen depths themselves. Her eyes glowed with a strange fervor Vasilisa had not seen before - as though some power within was roused with the memories. "It was within the darkness of those sacred hollows that Vaal breathed the First Breath into the world, and from those hollows, the legends say the first flowers bloomed and the first beasts emerged. Vaal breathed life into the world, and it spread by her will, unending and pure.

"Yet," Austeja continued, her voice tinged with sudden sorrow, "Even as Vaal loved her creations, they could never love her in return in the same way. Not even men, whom she gifted with higher thought in the hope that they might understand her love.”

Austeja's voice trailed off, and for a long while there was silence, suffocatingly heavy. Vasilisa felt sorrow weigh on her own silent heart, and she wondered how it must have felt - watching ever far away, watching from above, always at a distance. The dizzying heights of the stars and godhood might almost seem a curse, she wondered, to be so far, so distant, and so alone - unable to die, but unable to truly live.

“And so,” Austeja spoke at length. “Knowing she would never be truly understood or loved, Vaal departed from the plane she had sown with life. And in her departure, the cycle was complete—for in leaving, the endless font of life left the world as well, and so the final gift bestowed upon us all by Vaal…was the gift of death.”

The waters lapped quietly against the side of the riverboat. Austeja's eyes met Vasilisa's, and the princess saw that within them, the speckles of gold seemed to be glowing, each tiny point a shining pinprick like a star in the night sky. Vasilisa took a shaking breath and, realizing how close they sat, Austeja's face grew flushed as she turned away, grasping the rudder for support.

“That is why we hold you and yours so high, my lady,” Austeja spoke stiffly, remembering the titles and courtesies of nobility. “Your father and mother…they understand that they are the stewards of an ancient legacy. Once, our people have been known to make pilgrimage to the Sacred Hollows - but it has been an age since, and only stories of where the Hollows might be found remain.”

Vasilisa took Austeja's hand in hers, and fixed her with a determined stare. “When we make it to Belnopyl, we could search for these Hollows,” she said with a smile. “Things are changing in this world - the dead rise from their graves, men turn into beasts, and spirits roam the land. If these could happen, why couldn't the Hollows be found by a woman wise in the lore and legends of her people?”

Austeja beamed, and as they sat in the silence of the drifting boat, the mists of the Gravemarsh soon receded, giving way to the full sight of the water-logged plains. The druzhinniks sensed the passing of the mists as well, and Demyan drew out from the covered hold with the rest of the warriors to hold the perils of the marsh in awe. Towering above forests of reeds like the mountains with grasses at their feet, they beheld the other corpses that gave the Gravemarsh its name. The rotted hulks of a dozen trade ships dotted the marshes where they ran aground against hidden muddy islets and sank into the muck. Some vessels looked to have fallen victim to the marshes decades ago and were claimed by vines and moss, while other wrecks seemed more recent, with their trade banners still holding on to some faint hints of color.

With the passing of the mists, Vasilisa also saw the sun was well past its zenith - the cleared skies were a bright canvas of deep red and violet, but already the light was grasping, and giving way to the darkness of night. They had floated for almost half a day, and in utter peace where many others met a watery, muddy grave.

The wrecked ships passed them by like ghosts, and eventually the land about them began to change - the muddy ground began to grow firmer, and soon trees started to appear on either side of them, their branches weighed down by long-hanging lichens. They were approaching the edges of the Gravemarsh, and by the coming of the new morning, Vasilisa judged they would be free of its muddy grasp entirely.

“Good work, bolotnitsa,” grunted Demyan with a low tone of respect. “It would seem your people know the tricks of their land well indeed - or the gods smile upon you with their luck.”

Austeja did not reply. The other druzhinniks however, were less reluctant to give their praise to the Vorodzhi tribeswoman. They moved to chatter with their fellow warrior as they continued to float ever freer of the Gravemarshes' domain, and soon laughter and talk sprang to life aboard the riverboat once more in the wake of the mists.

Demyan however remained dour, keeping his armor and weapons at the ready. Vasilisa knew his worry - the danger of their passage through the Gravemarshes was of suckholes, hidden mudbanks, and the concealing mists. Soon they would be entering the open plains and forests of the principality and there, they would face even worse danger - men, whether brigands or rebels, fighting over what scraps of the royal domain they could claim. They would be crossing into a land of starving wolves and uncertain allies - and Belnopyl’s walls remained ever far from their reach.

As they continued to drift gently along the Cherech, Vasilisa sat and listened to the faint lapping and gurgling of the waters against the boat and gnarled tree-roots that jutted out on either side of the banks. Eventually, she felt herself nodding, and then she fell into an uneasy sleep - dreaming of forgotten hollows and unloved, undying gods.