God Within Us

The fog that rose up from the surface of the Cherech clung to them all, damp and chilly beneath the sunless sky.

Austeja gave prayer to Mother-Earth - Vaal, perhaps - by the prow of the ship. Her voice sounded muffled and hushed in the shroud of the fog - and Vasilisa wondered whether the shaman’s words would even reach the halls of the gods. Demyan paced to and fro along the deck, his armor clinking softly with every restless step. Kirill and Oleg sat by the rudder, gently adjusting their course as the freeholders clawed the oars through waters that they could barely see beneath the hanging gray.

"I don't like this fog," muttered Demyan. The druzhinnik gripped the hilt of his sword, as if to remind himself it was there.

"Frightened?" came the pointed mockery from Kirill. "We're almost at the end now. If a little fog's all there is between us and tea, fresh meat, and proper beds that don't rock in the night, then we ought to count our blessings."

In truth, Vasilisa felt their blessings had been short in number the whole travel upriver. Once they had left the Varyazi wreck in the distance, they saw few signs of life all through the last two days - the spectre of terror lingered everywhere they passed. They passed by a half-dozen villages along their trip, but saw no villagers. An abandoned boat that drifted by them was the only sign of there once having been fishermen, though the catch smelled foul and rotten when Kirill retrieved it from the hold. The only hint of life they had spotted was an emaciated horse drinking its fill from the Cherech, though the beast had bolted the moment it heard their coming.

No, Demyan was right to fear the fog. There were ill tidings in the water, and something festered in the air even fouler than in the Gravemarsh.

There was a renewed crackle of reviving flames as Polynkin fed into the brazier a few scraps of wood. "This fog stinks of sorcery," declared the youngest druzhinnik with a confidence Vasilisa did not realize he possessed. "There are restless spirits in the air here - they are calling us back, shrouding the path ahead so we might give it up."

"Would you?" replied Kirill with disdain. "You sound like the bolotnitsa - maybe you should grow fins and swim back then, if these spirits make a fool out of you. As for me...we've seen worse than fog. If these restless spirits want to test us, we'll show them what we're made of."

"You are made only of blood, flesh, and bone," said Polynkin. "Nothing else."

"Enough, both of you!" hissed Demyan. The elder warrior stepped up to the prow of the ship as Austeja raised her head, cocking his head this way and that. "Do you hear that?"

At first, it sounded just barely above the lapping waters - the sound of a ringing bell carried on the festering air. Three tolls boomed out from beyond the fog, and for a moment, there was silence.

Only the call of one great bell could reach so far beyond the walls of the city, Vasilisa knew. The ringing sounded from the Belnopyl keep, and the bell itself was raised in the highest tower of the keep - she only heard its sound once before, when she and her father had returned from Gatchisk in search of a suitor for her hand to splendor and celebration.

Long ago then, the tolling of the bell sounded as a distant call to home; yet now the distant ringing only stirred up dread in her heart. Home lay beyond the fog now, she was so close, yet why did she feel this fear digging its claws deep into her soul?

"Three calls," whispered Kirill. "Do they mean to greet us-"

This time, the sound was unmistakable. Another trio of deep tolls boomed through the fog, and then the hanging gray itself seemed to fade - as if warded away by the sound of the bell. Shadows began to creep out from the fog - Vasilisa saw walls and towers rear out from the shroud, and then...

And then, the city at last.

No, not a city, a corpse. It had seemed so small in her dreams, yet now…

"Gods above..." whispered Oleg.

The seven gods of heaven and earth did not reign in Belnopyl. Not anymore. Not in the dread, broken land that stretched out before and above them. The retreating fog gave way first to the iron portcullis that once barred passage through the city by river, only now it was rusted and deformed as the hands of the gods had come down to twist apart the inch-thick bars into a gaping ruin. They passed silently beneath the shattered iron maw, and saw huge chunks of the outermost wall had been torn away, revealing the skeletal remains of rotting beams and crumbling battlements within. Yet, there were no corpses to be seen, only the damp and a whisper of fear that Vasilisa sensed etched into the stonework.

The freeholders ceased their rowing, for the waters beyond lay deathly still. Past the outer gate, through the thickness of the hanging fog, Vasilisa spotted the outlines of ruined houses with collapsed roofs jutting upwards towards the gray sky. Merchant halls, inns, and stores all drifted by - terraces, bowers, painted walls and hanging flowerbeds. But all of it was drowned now, half-submerged beneath the flooding Cherech river which had broken free from the riverbank and formed a thousand small canals through the lesser streets.

Ducks floated lazily along the Spinsters' Avenue, and silver-scaled fish glittered in the half-light as they swam up and down the Three Sisters' Lane. The water lapped against broken arches and crumbling facades, carrying with it flotsam and debris thick with the scent of stagnation.

The ruin was sad enough, but knowing what had once been was even worse. There had once been laughter and voices sounding from the drowned streets. There were once gardens and flowers kissed by the sun, and women selling trinkets to merchants and food to laborers. Down around the bend of the Three Sisters' Lane, she had once stolen away with Ilya to gape and awe at a spotted cat a traveling scholar had brought from the far south. Beneath the broken arch of an inn she had her first taste of ale, and danced with the guardsmen Stavr and Pyotr until her father's druzhina had burst in to drag them home. When she was a little girl, the lights that bloomed to beat back the darkness of evening had seemed as many as the stars in the sky.

Now, there remained only ghosts for Vasilisa of Belnopyl.

No, not just ghosts.

The bell tolled thrice once more, and in the distance Vasilisa could now spot the high hill and, frowning above the endless ruin, her father’s keep. Her keep. Surrounded by the devastation, it had never seemed so massive as it did now - the innermost wall stood intact and proud above the floodwaters, and behind them she could make out the remnants of the towers, the belltower rising highest above them all.

Yet the towers were no longer ones she could have recalled from her memory - for they were now alive. Vast growths like the roots of a tree, or vines, perhaps, clenched around each of the stone spires, and in some places they buried deep into stonework itself - pulsating with a sickly red sheen that gradually began to shine through the hanging fog. The roots sprouted all throughout the keep, shifting, twisting, and squeezing, it seemed - as if the earth meant to swallow whole the pride of Belnopyl.

Again the bell tolled, and Vasilisa tore her gaze away from the towers to the druzhinniks by her side. To a man they stood in silent awe, not daring to move or even breathe as they beheld the terror that consumed the keep. Eventually Demyan spoke, though his eyes did not flick away from the towers.

“My lady…” the druzhinnik whispered. “We…we must leave this place. I should have turned us back when we saw the gates - gods, why did we come so far?”

Vasilisa's gaze remained fixed upon the keep, her jaw set with determination. "There is yet one soul who calls this place home," she murmured, pointing to the lonesome belltower. One, at least. Gods, let there be others. "Whoever survived, they will have answers to this madness. We need answers, now more than ever - lest whoever broke Belnopyl repeat this sight a thousand times across the rest of this land.”

The warriors murmured amongst themselves, their faces etched with uncertainty. Kirill stepped forward, his gaze lowered. "That place is corrupted, forsaken by the gods, my lady," he cautioned. "We should leave this place - let Svetopolk and what other traitors remain crown themselves kings of the dead and the drowned. They will not last long - if they come with an army to this place they’ll have to beat their swords into fish hooks or starve holding onto their prize.”

Vasilisa turned to look at the druzhinnik, her silent heart burning with anger. "Are you not sworn to defend your lady, Kirill?" she snapped, her voice ringing clear and strong. "I have traveled too far and seen too much suffering to turn back now. I will not abandon my home, nor the memory of my family, nor my people to be ravaged by curses and Svetopolk.”

Kirill shook his head, and Vasilisa looked to the others. Oleg had removed his helmet in silent reverence to the terror that was consuming the keep; Polynkin's face had turned pale as milk, but his grip upon his sword was steady. Demyan slowly drew one finger down along the thunder-wheel tattooed upon his face with a wistful look as though the Lightning-Lord himself was whispering into his ear. Then, a smile came upon the face of the elder druzhinnik, and Vasilisa felt her heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance that fell upon her.

“You are Prince Igor's daughter, truly,” spoke Demyan. Then, turning to the others, he declared with his seasoned warrior's voice, “The blood of Raegnald and our Grand Prince is strong in this daughter of Belnopyl - who are we to turn to craven at her hour of greatest need?”

“We made a pact, didn't we?” Austeja spoke with a step forward and a sheepish look to Vasilisa. A small smile broke out across the shaman's face, more reassuring than any words that could be spoken. “This is the home of both our ancestors - yours above, mine below. I will go with you.”

“Aye, so shall we!” came the insistent voice of Marmun. Behind the freeholder those who had traveled by her since Yerkh, those who had put their faith in her before all others, stepped forward proudly to stand by Demyan and Austeja.

“We are yours, m'lady,” winced Doru. The mason drew open his shirt and placed a hand over the ugly, jagged scar that ran nearly from shoulder to navel - the mark left by a warrior's longaxe. “You've saved me - saved us all twice, thrice now over. We've no swords to swear to your name, but even poor folk like us can swear on our honor, can't we?”

Vasilisa felt a smile break out across her face. She took the mason's rough, calloused hand into her own scarred ones, and looked to the remaining druzhinniks. Whether by shame or newfound courage, even Kirill now stood firm. No objections arose now - no doubts as to the strength of their lady's word. Their lonesome boat turned and gently made a heading for the heights of the city, where the avenues along the approach to the keep still stood above the floodwaters. With lanterns and swords in hand - and the Kladenets slung across her back once more - they disembarked from the boat in utter silence. In the hanging fog they must have seemed like dark shadows, or perhaps like spirits themselves, walking down the deserted streets.

The broken husks of buildings around them leaned in towards the center of the city, as if drawn inexorably towards the high hill upon which the keep stood, their jagged edges reaching out like grasping fingers. As they slowly crawled through the ruined city she cast her eyes about the hollows of merchant halls and shops for any signs of life, but saw none along the streets they walked. The emptiness yawned about them everywhere they went, climbing steadily up the slope of the hill upon which her home sat.

They walked for little more than half an hour until the gates finally came into view. The stone walls remained as dizzyingly high as she recalled, but their smooth, masoned surface was now broken in a dozen places by the vines - the smallest of which seemed as thick as her arm, and the largest as wide as a wine-barrel, but all of them red and pulsing as if chock-full of blood. In and out of the walls they snaked and curled, and she heard the grinding of crushing stone beneath the grasp of the cursed earth.

The earth guarded its prize hungrily. The main entrance to the keep was enclosed by two doors, made of fine oak and reinforced with iron bands, yet now it was doubly-guarded by more vines which sprouted from the stonework, criss-crossing like a portcullis. She saw the vines seemed to be breathing, and constantly shifting about the surface of the doors like blind, groping fingers.

A huff came from Oleg, and she turned to see the druzhinnik unslinging a two-handed war-ax from his back before he stepped in front of her.

“Pagan magic,” he sniffed. “Allow me, my lady. Klyazmite iron once sundered the work of the pagan savages before - it should be all the easier with steel.”

The druzhinnik chopped at the thick vines, carving deep gouges into the surface of the doors themselves with each strike. The plants fell to earth, curling up and turning gray and withered, but before they hit the ground more vines grew in their wake, seeming to spread faster than the Klyazmite steel could cleave them. Oleg chopped for a while longer, but eventually the vines began to snake up along the blade of his ax, and he hurriedly pulled away before they could claim his prized possession.

He spat on the ground in front of the doors, bitter in defeat. “Goddamned black magic.”

Vasilisa caught a small smile from Austeja, and then the princess stepped forward, placing a hand on Oleg’s shoulder. “Let me try - you’ll sooner lose your ax or a hand than make a dent in those vines.”

Demyan reached out to caution her, but she ignored him, her curiosity piqued. The tolling of the bell pulled her forward slightly, until she found herself standing before She moved to touch the vines, and to her surprise, they shrank away from her touch. At first, she thought they were avoiding her, but then she realized they were retreating, sinking deeper into the stonework and allowing her passage.

"They're letting us through," she said, astonished.

Austeja whispered her suspicions under her breath, but she went with the rest of the druzhinniks and the freeholders, filing quickly in through the doors behind their princess. Not a moment after the last of their company passed through the entrance, the vines burrowed out from the stonework once more to block their passage and escape. Though perhaps the work of the vines was to keep things in, rather than people out.

They stepped into the courtyard, and Vasilisa’s breath caught in her throat as she beheld the ruinous, shattered beauty of the courtyard from another life. Now it too was transformed, and neither could have recognized the other. She saw the private gardens of her youth where she was schooled by Mariana in sewing, history, and song in the summertime - now the flowers which should have met her with their bright blooming colors were dead and wilted, and the hedges were uprooted by the twisting vines that burst out from the ground. Elsewhere about the courtyard there lay piles of debris where cobblestones were knocked loose as the vines erupted from the very foundations of the keep, green tendrils wrapping around dead trees, stonework, and the crumbling towers about them.

The earth is swallowing my home, my keep, my memories, she thought. All of them are being swallowed whole.

Then, amidst the sprawled blood-red plant life, she saw something else. A pallid hand, sticking out from underneath a crushing vine. She looked about the rest of the courtyard, and with a terrible chill that ran through her like a shock of ice, she saw the hidden bodies. There were many corpses scattered about the courtyard, all in various stages of an unnatural rot, as though they were being feasted upon by the plant life. The manner of their death however, was no doubt caused by men - all were horribly mangled, missing heads, limbs, or disemboweled, with gray entrails indiscernible from the stonework. She saw no signs of beasts about - not even flies hung over the dead.

The silver-masked ones, she thought with a shudder, recalling the butchery she had witnessed before.

The loud tolling from the belltower shook her from her thoughts, and she saw Doru and Marmun jump from the sudden break in the deathly silence.

“Give me a shot, and I’ll bring down that damned bell-ringer to make him a feast for the worms,” Kirill muttered darkly, his leather gloves creaking as he nervously tightened his grip about his longbow.

“Not before he tells us what’s become of this place,” Vasilisa reminded him.

She led their band through the courtyard, gingerly stepping around the dead where she saw them lying. Most were gaunt and desiccated, their skin drawn tight and turned gray by whatever curse hung over the keep. Others lay face down, or were missing their heads - and she wondered whether it was a blessing or a curse that she could recognize none of the dead. Vasilisa led them further on, past the barracks of the druzhina whose roof was pierced by a half-dozen red tendrils, and then past the training yard - the little wooden pen where the arms-master Stavr had dealt her first bruises in training with wooden swords. The memories were now just echoes, fading fast.

Is Stavr among the dead? she wondered, passing by another group of corpses pinned to the walls by the vines. They wore padded cloth jackets and beaten maille which still shone slightly in the half-light of the gray day, but their bodies had almost completely withered away, and the tendrils that surrounded them looked as though they were ready to burst with life essence. A terrible, terrible hunger had been awakened from the very earth itself - she wondered whether it might have awakened on its own time, if Chirlan had not darkened their doorstep.

At last, they found themselves before the entrance to the great hall. The doors there were also overgrown, but the tendrils parted before she even brought her hand near them. It almost seemed like an eagerness, an invitation on the part of the cursed land, welcoming her into her own home.

She brought a hand up to the double doors, and pushed - hard.

The doors to the great hall opened with a muted slam, flying open before her as she stepped into her home.

It was a home she recognized no longer.

She entered the great hall to find it utterly ruined. Many of the wooden pillars and beams had collapsed from the chaos, and with them fell parts of the roof, casting shafts of dim light into the room. Streamers and banners from an age past lay trampled and discolored, now decorations only for the piles of wood and tile debris strewn about the carpeted floors. The faces of the seven gods were defiled, their eyes smeared with blood and gore as if to blind them from the sacrilege that took place.

Before the throne of the Grand Prince, beneath the ascent to the belltower, she saw more bodies sprawled on the floor - boyars, merchants, and all the other members of her father’s court. Over them, dragging several of the limp bodies as if they were animals at an abattoir, were figures clad in armor - a dozen of them. As they turned to face her, she expected to see the silver-cast visages of cultists - instead, she locked eyes with her father's men. She knew them well - members of her father's own druzhina - yet they did not seem to know her.

Their eyes had turned into pools of molten gold, their gazes absent, glazed over as if they were dead. And in their gauntleted hands, swords covered to the hilts with gore.

The ringing of the bell tolled deafeningly in the hall. The golden-eyed druzhinniks approached, a dozen of Belnopyl’s armored pride.

She commanded them to stop, to stand down before allies and their princess, but her words fell upon deaf ears. She called upon the second, darker voice that rolled from her throat as a cacophony of shrieking glass and rumbling stone, but her orders were just as useless. Behind her, her own motley druzhina stirred - she felt Demyan’s hand clasp her arm as the elder druzhinnik lightly pulled her away towards the freeholders who stood behind her.

“It is like with the sleepers,” he shouted. “All of you, protect the princess! If these wretches will not be stopped by words, then stop them with steel!”

Kirill grinned, and loosed an arrow at one of the golden-eyed men - Jaromir, whose long braided beard trailed out from under his helm. The arrow found the senior druzhinnik’s chest, piercing deep through thick layers of maille and wool, but Jaromir’s advance continued without so much as a jerk of pain. They are dead…or close to it as men who yet breathe can be.

The other druzhinniks closed ranks in front of her, and with a cry they met the golden-eyed warriors head-on in a great clatter of maille and blades. Demyan hacked off the head of one druzhinnik with his longsword, and parried aside the strike of another before lopping off the man's sword hand - yet without so much as a cry of pain, the dismembered man simply tried to grasp for Demyan’s throat with his remaining hand, until Austeja buried a knife deep into one of his golden eyes. Oleg carved through another man’s shoulder with his ax, drilling the keen blade deep between the pauldron and gorget before kicking his foe to the ground.

Vasilisa recognized her father's men had fought with greater ferocity in life than half-death. The men they fought now were shadows of their former selves, swinging their blades more like peasants with their flails than trained men-at-arms. Still, her companions were half their number.

“Wait!” came the cry from Marmun - he made to grab for her, but when she slipped from his grip the freeholder did not have the courage to follow her into battle.

Vasilisa leapt into the fray of sword and ax, freeing the Kladenets from her back in a single smooth motion and smashing aside the sword of Klavdiy the Laugher, opening his guard to a well-placed thrust of Polynkin's spear that spilled the guts of the man who gifted her first dagger. Letting the force of her strike carry through, she spun around and struck a second warrior - Polkan, her father’s most trusted messenger. The Kladenets sent the druzhinnik flying from its impact, shattering his iron plate, and then shattering the wearer when he struck the wall, leaving a dark red stain on the stonework before sinking to the ground.

The fight continued, and Vasilisa lost herself in the rhythm of the battle - cut, parry, riposte, and dodge - dancing around swords and axes. With every deadly thrust, every killing strike, every final gasp of breath, the golden light left the eyes of the men they killed. She thought she saw a brief moment of recognition, of shame and terror, but she forced the thought from her mind as quickly as it came to her.

No, they are already dead. This is a mercy. A mercy.

Together, they cut them down - every last one of the faces she had seen hundreds of times by her father’s side, every last one of the memories. When it was over, she felt her lungs were on fire, and her arms could scarcely hold up the stone cleaver, now crusted with blood and bone. Looking around, she took stock of her companions - the new druzhina for the new princess of the city. She saw Oleg lying still with his face upon the ground - when Austeja turned him over, she saw he was dead, struck down by a sword thrust through his aventail. Demyan sat on the floor, exhausted and bleeding from a cut that sheared off half of the Lightning-Lord’s sigil from his face.

“Is it over?” croaked Polynkin, bracing himself upon the haft of his spear like an old man with his stick.

“No.”

Vasilisa staggered forth to the circled corpses, hobbling with the Kladenets as a crutch. All those weeks, far away and alone, she had pushed aside the thoughts of the dead, the missing. No longer - she needed to know, she needed to find them, whether dead or alive. She searched for signs of anyone from her old life among those butchered by the puppets that were her father’s loyal men - Mariana, Ilya, Stavr, Pyotr…

Her mother and her father were not among the dead. The corpses that were piled high were those of the servants, the merchants, the second sons of boyars who had come to treat with her father and the posol. But she did not count any of those she loved among the slain. Above her head the great bell now hung silent, swaying slightly. She did not wait for the druzhinniks to gather their wits about them - she made the climb alone, pounding down a side hall and up the stairs, rickety and narrow. As she made the ascent she stepped over more bodies - men in black cloaks, wearing silver helmets spattered with gore. Higher, higher, higher she climbed, and her legs trembled from the effort of the climb she had once made a hundred times over.

Then the cold, open air struck her. The top of the belltower was ruined, its stone walls crumbled and open to the dark, brooding sky. High above the city, the rest of Belnopyl seemed swallowed by a sea of gray, with only the bare roofs of the tallest husks visible.

Lying with his back against the crumbled stone, she saw her father. Igor of Belnopyl was broken - his princely robes were torn to tatters, covered in splotches of dried blood, and in one hand he held the shattered remnants of his sword. In his other hand he held the rope to the bell - wound so tightly around his palm that his hand was stripped and bleeding.

Hearing the creak of the floorboards, her father lifted his head. Vasilisa gasped as she saw his eyes - they were gouged out, leaving only a bloody, hollow mess where his stern, cold blue gaze had once been. He saw nothing, yet she saw his expression twist into one of relief and recognition.

“Vasilisa,” her father croaked, his voice barely a whisper. He coughed, the effort wracking his body, speckling his disheveled mustache with blood. Each breath seemed to take an eternity, his chest heaving with the struggle for air.

"Father," Vasilisa replied, holding back tears. "I've returned."

Prince Igor let his sword clatter to the ground. "As promised," he whispered, his voice a mere shadow of its former strength. "Finally I can end the damn ringing."

His fingers twitched weakly on the bell rope, the effort almost too much for him. Half-feverish, he sputtered, "The sorcerer told me the bell would call you back, call you home." His voice cracked, a note of desperate hope lingering in his words. "At least you were gone - gone from here, and this terrible madness. The realm…the entire realm is mad.”

"You are safe now, too," Vasilisa said desperately. “I have brought with me my own druzhina - and there are others coming. A Qarakesek prince - his name is Yesugei - he will surely come here as well. You are safe now…”

Igor chuckled weakly, a sound that was more a wheeze than laughter. "Safe to die at peace, perhaps." He looked at her, or seemed to, with the hollow remains of his eyes. The sightless gaze was unnerving, but she did not look away.

“Do not say that! I have powers," Vasilisa said, her voice trembling. "Powers to heal you." She moved closer, her hands reaching out, but suddenly, her father lunged forward, grasping her forearm with a final surge of desperate strength.

“No,” he rasped, his breath hot and ragged on her face. “You have already given too much. Save yourself, save the others - those who deserve to live, those who have not yet lived. Below, that is where you must go. Down, down below, where we once went, Khariija and I…”

Khariija? Again, that name. She wanted to ask more of her father - there the others went, where her mother had gone, but she felt his grip weakening, his strength fading fast.

Her father mumbled incoherently, his words slurring together as his consciousness began to slip away. His breathing caught for a moment, as if a sudden thought had come to him. "Gods of mine... water... water... the Mother's water..."

His chest fell once more, and did not rise again.

The tower fell silent.

For a long while, the silence remained. She could not bring herself to move. The silence - the loneliness - became unbearable, and then it gave way to tears - tears that she had not allowed herself to shed for too long.

Hours must have passed, days, perhaps. The silence and the gray skies showed no sign of time’s passage. Eventually though, someone else came up to the tower, heavy footsteps announcing with a loud creak of the floorboards every step of the ascent. Up and up came the footsteps, and she heard voices, many voices, raised in concern and fear, echoing up the tower. They were calling her name.

The Grand Princess of Belnopyl did not look up for a long while at the man who appeared in the tower, but when she did, the face was one she did not expect. His face was half-hidden by the iron bar of his nasal helm, but a familiar light returned to the druzhinnik's ragged visage when he saw Vasilisa.

Half-shaken by disbelief, young Stavr nearly dropped his clutched spear. “Vasilisa? You've…you're…”

Then his eyes fell upon the man she cradled in her arms. The shock of seeing her oldest friend alive felt like a blunted stab to her heart - blunted by grief, terrible, tearing grief of a kind she never knew existed in the hearts of men. Vasilisa said nothing, and slowly the druzhinnik, her oldest friend, sank to his knees, placing a maille-clad hand upon her shoulder.

Together they sat in silence, and did not rise for a long while.

Beneath them, below the fog of the Cherech, the city began to stir.