The image of Voran standing on his knees as the hag danced around him flashed in Mirnían’s memory. A rush of hatred rose up with his gorge, and he nearly vomited from its fury.
“My pleasure, Zmei,” he said, and a savage excitement took him by the throat until he laughed from the sheer thrill of it. “It is the duty of any future Dar to ensure all traitors receive their just reward. Lead on, Zmei. I will follow you to the very edge of the world.”
The giant rumbled in laughter. “As a matter of fact, that is exactly where we are going.”
The fire licking around his edges consumed him until he was a nearly circular ball of red flames, dark as blood. Something seethed within the circle, and it resolved into a sinuous neck attached to a scaly body with a humped back, the legs long like a horse’s and covered in piebald scales. It had horse-like hooves and tufted ears that were too big for its head, a strange amalgam of a lizard and a horse, but not in the least awkward-looking. Its mane and tail were flame, and yet they were solid things that you could hold.
“Mount,” said Zmei, “if you have the stomach for it.”
The world spun in all directions, with Zmei as the eye in a storm. When Mirnían closed his eyes, he felt no movement, but as soon as he opened them, he felt sick. Mountains formed around him like piles of newly-churned butter, craggy ridges of hard grey-brown rock with hardly any plant life. As they hardened and ceased their strange, undulating dance, Mirnían breathed in, and felt the sparseness of the air. It left him giddy.
The giant stood next to him, looking over the dips and rises of the crags. They stood before a tall conical peak, probably the highest point of the ridge.
“There it is,” said Zmei, pointing at the tip of the peak.
Mirnían saw nothing of importance. “What am I looking at?”
Zmei sighed. “I had thought that maybe…” He shook his head. “The weeping tree is on the tip of that conical rock. You cannot see it; neither can I. But it is there. Just not in this Realm; it is in the Mids of Aer. Very soon Voran will find a way to it. We will help him find it.”
“Why can you not find it yourself, if your power is so great?” Mirnían was beginning to doubt his strange new friend.
“You have much to learn about the world, young pup,” said Zmei, no longer smiling. “Try to pay attention.”
With that, he spun into his serpent-horse form again and disappeared in a storm of fire and thunder. Mirnían sat down in the sparse shelter of a twisted pine, and closed his eyes to sleep.
There will come a time when the glory that is Vasyllia will fade. Much knowledge will be lost. Much wisdom. Much beauty. But we, the Warriors of the Word, will preserve it. In time, one will come who will have to restore it all.
-A private letter from Vohin Elían to Dar Martinían, year 643 of the Covenant
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Black Turnips
Voran faced Sabíana, but she refused to look at him. For all his desire, he could not approach her. She sat at the edge of a still, oval pool, ringed on all sides by holly trees and osiers, their silver bark luminescent. She sang, and she and the song were somehow one. As her fingers plaited her black hair, they seemed to be plaiting music as well, the melody intertwining in and out of itself. Then she looked at him, and her eyes were all wrong. They were blue and cold, and too narrowly set together. Then her nose shifted slightly in her face, and green sprouted in her hair like fast-growing moss. She smiled, and her canines were long and sharp. The ground gaped at Voran’s feet, and he fell awake.
The terror was a foreign thing in his chest, a parasite feeding on him from within. Just a dream, he reminded himself. Just a dream.
This was the third night that the drowned girl, one of the three Alkonist who ruled in his favor against the hag, intruded on his dreams of Sabíana. Now, Voran no longer doubted she had done it intentionally. Every night, she seemed to be digging deeper into him, provoking, and today the unpleasant stir of lust for her was intense, yearning for release.
He threw aside his wool coverlet, stale with sweat, and ran out into the winter night with no shirt or boots. The biting cold, quickly turning to fire on his skin, was effective at purging the desire that she kept feeding him at night.
“You must be dying here, Voran,” said a girl’s voice, husky in a sultry way. The drowned girl, naked in spite of the cold, sat in the branches of a nearby oak. Her hair still waved as if she were underwater. The darkness did more than enough to hide the details of her nakedness, but Voran still squirmed. The unpleasant stirring was not going away this time.
“Why do you torture me?” he whispered, not wanting to awake his master. “I want no part of your games. I remember very well what you wanted to do with me. Tickling, was it?”
“Oh, it would have been such fun, I promise.” Her laugh was lunatic. As if to taunt him, the moon decided to pick that moment to show its nearly full face.
“For you, I have no doubt. But I imagine I know what happens to the men whom you… tickle.”
“Really, Voran, you are so morbid. Not everything in the world is out to kill you or eat you, you know. I can’t help it if I am desirable to such as you.”
He guffawed, though his stomach still churned from the thoughts he was trying to beat back from his conscious mind—images of white flesh and red lips.
“What do you want?” He spat in her direction. The spittle froze before it reached the ground.
“I want what you want. The right thing to happen. I want you to go on your quest, to find the weeping tree, to heal Vasyllia, and to live happily ever after.”
“No, you do not. You want something else.”
“Why do you men always think every woman desires them? Could I not want something simply because it is the right thing to do?”
She sounded sincere enough, but the moon did not provide enough light to test the truth of her eyes.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“I am a bearer through the levels, like the white stag. I can take you to the weeping tree in a heartbeat.”
“How?”
“Well,” she looked away like a demure maid, and he thought she blushed, “I am not a beast you can simply ride. I am a creature of love and passion. You would have to bed me, properly. That is my only way of passage.”
Voran laughed. “I knew there would be a fee.”
She slapped the branch like a petulant three-year-old. “It’s not my fault. I’m a rusalka. It’s what I am. I merely give you a choice to fulfill your vocation.”
“You offer me a way back to my love by taking it from me?”
She tossed her hair back in a parody of an elegant lady’s gesture. “I am basically a goddess, anyway, Voran. Your princess can’t hold it against you if you are bedded by a goddess.”
He shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. He didn’t like to admit it, but it was a tempting offer.
“Go away,” he said. “If I need you, I will call for you.”
“That is really all I wanted from you, dear little thing. Was that so hard?”
She was gone, and the place where she had been was nothing more than an oddly shaped branch illumined by the moon into the semblance of human shape. Had he dreamed it all? He returned to bed and was asleep again in moments, this time dreamless.
“Up, up, you ass!”
The daily wakeup call was more joyful this morning, to Voran’s surprise. Gold dust was suspended above his head, caught by the sun’s ray, turning softly as if dancing to an unheard tune.
“Come, Raven Son. Look what you’ve done!”
Normally, Voran would have cringed at his words, expecting a fresh round of pointless work. But the joy in them—a child’s undiluted outpouring—was obvious. Voran heard thumping outside. It seemed Tarin was dancing in the snow.
Then Voran saw the reason for Tarin’s excitement, and all tiredness fell from him like molting skin. The field—despite the snow, despite the cold, despite the stones—was covered in strong,
green shoots reaching up to Tarin’s knees. Turnips. Voran laughed, and Tarin laughed with him.
For the first time since they arrived almost a month ago, Voran had a day of rest. Tarin himself harvested the black turnips—each as big as a melon—and stored them in the third shack. He sang and screeched a litany of birdcalls and growls and whines and whistles, as if practicing his varied knowledge of animal languages.
Then he fell silent for hours, a silence almost impossible to bear. Not that it was empty. On the contrary, there was too much uncomfortable presence in the silence, as though Tarin was bracing for something wonderful or terrible that would happen very soon. Voran hoped that meant they would be leaving soon. He had no desire to force the issue with Tarin, especially since his only way of leaving the Lows seemed to be a half-crazy drowned girl with improper designs on him.
That evening, the smoke rising from Tarin’s small roof-hole was scented with pine. Voran’s heart gamboled like a child. They were having tea again. Perhaps this was a sign of important conversations to come. The invitation came as soon as the sun went down.
Tarin’s table was laden with two old radishes and a black turnip, still steaming from the boil—a veritable feast. The same two earthenware bowls were already filled with resin-thick black tea. Voran’s mouth watered.
“A good day today, Raven Son. An occasion. And we have been working hard. A bit of a chat will do us both some good. Don’t let the bow get too stretched, you know? It might crack, and then what good would all the arrows be?”
Voran chuckled. It was exactly the kind of thing Dar Antomír used to say in the old days.
“But I can answer your first question even before you ask it. No, it is not yet time for us to seek the weeping tree.”
Voran’s heart sank, along with all the pleasant sensations of the previous moments. The turnip turned hard; the radish was peppery; the tea faded to ash in his mouth. A storm threatened somewhere in the back of his head, but it was still distant enough for him to remain calm. For now.
“There was something that made me wonder,” said Voran. “The Alkonist. They are higher beings than both humans and Sirin, yes? But they seem just as susceptible to vice. If they are higher, should they not be also… more virtuous?”
Tarin’s expression soured, as though his tea was too tart. “That is a very simple way of imaging the world, Raven Son. It sounds like you see the hierarchy of the world’s levels as a great ladder, the earth on the bottom and the Heights of Aer on top, with Adonais’s throne somewhere in the clouds.”
Voran wisely kept silent, though the invitation to comment was there. Tarin looked pleased.
“The world is not like that, Voran. It is difficult to find a good analogy, but I imagine it is something like this. When you peel an onion, eventually you reach the smallest layer and the golden middle, yes? Well, imagine that instead of getting smaller, the onion gets bigger every time you peal a layer.”
“The middle would be infinitely great,” said Voran, unable to contain his eagerness. Tarin looked as though he were considering boxing his ears.
“Yes, precisely. The earth is the outer layer of the onion, and only to the external appearance is it the largest layer. Every deeper layer is more complex and greater. But it does not end there. Each layer is not whole, but porous, like a good cheese, and the layers of reality in those places fold in on each other.”
“That is why there are doorways to the other levels, such as the Lows, yes?”
Tarin nodded. “As for the Alkonist and the Lows of Aer, although technically speaking the Lows are higher up, that only means that there are fewer places for evil to hide. Earth is a realm of shadow. Evil hides better here than in the Lows, but that does not mean there is less evil in the Lows. Does that answer your question?”
Voran nodded. “But inspires new ones, of course.” He smiled sheepishly, and Tarin laughed, giving Voran enough encouragement to ask again.
“When I walked with the Pilgrim, I was able to cover great distances of space and, I think, time, by crossing the boundary between the earth and the Lows on the white stag. Is it possible to cross the boundary when the bearer is on the same side as you are?”
“Crossing the layers on a bearer is extremely dangerous, Voran. Effectively, you are ripping a new hole in the barrier between the worlds. Every time you do that, you give access to the evil things that seek the shelter of earth’s shadows. Even the most powerful use such means only sparingly. And no, bearing only works if the two are on opposite sides of reality. I do not know why. I think it is a natural defense mechanism, something to discourage easy passage to and fro.”
Voran was amazed at his master’s volubility. He hurried to press his advantage. Who knew when he would be so chatty again?
“The Raven,” said Voran. “I want to know what his power is. Why is he so dangerous?”
Tarin harrumphed with a rueful smile. “If only more would ask that question, Voran. Things would be much better in the world. Recall the story of the bear cub that I told the children. The hunger for killing that seemed to possess it, turning it into a monster? That is an effective illustration of the Raven’s power. He is endless, ravenous hunger—for self-ness, for acquisition of power over others, for pleasures. He eats everything in his path. If there were nothing left in the world, he would end up eating himself.
“Do you remember when I mentioned transfiguration?”
Voran nodded.
“I told you only a part of the story. It is true that humans and Sirin can ascend all the way to the Heights of Aer through the seven baptisms of fire. The other orders of creation also have that privilege. Through every baptism, they transfigure, losing more and more of the old, and becoming gradually something new. But true transfiguration is a painful process that can take entire lifetimes.”
He stopped, then began to whisper, his eyes screwed up in concentration, as he had a silent conversation with himself. After coming to a decision—punctuated by a vigorous nodding of his head and a hard slap on his knee—he hugged himself, crossed one leg over another, and looked at a point somewhere to the right and above Voran’s head.
“Have you heard of the concept of universal harmony? No? No, I don’t suppose philosophy is much taught in the seminary these days. Pity. Anyway…” he coughed twice and breathed sharply in through the nose. “The world, as intended by the Lord of the Realms, is like music. Every voice—that is, every reasoning creature—must sing its assigned part for the song to sound well. That may sound limiting, as though the notes that determine the fate of the world have already been written, but that is not quite the truth. There is a great deal of room for improvisation, as long as harmony is maintained throughout. Thus, the low voices must not break the flow of the high, so that each moment is a beautiful chord. Do you understand so far?”
“Yes, and I think I can see where you are going with this.”
“I doubt that,” said Tarin, grinning widely before assuming his previous faraway expression. “Try to imagine that one of the voices improvised wildly, beyond the scope of the harmony. What would result?”
“The music would be jarring and ugly.”
“Precisely. Now, what if not one voice, but many would simultaneously break the harmony to seek their own melodies.”
“The noise would be horrible.”
“Perhaps. Or, if they were very talented and attuned to each other, they could make a new, strange, different music. Do you see?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, something like this happened. Transfiguration is a gift given from the Heights to those who ascend. But some creatures were weary of waiting, and tried to ascend themselves. They found ways of changing their physical form, thereby gaining some of the higher realms by stealth, not by virtue.”
“Like the changers of Nebesti lore, yes? The stone I saw turn into a wolf-man in the forest.”
“You encountered one of those and lived to tell the tale? You are strangely lucky, Voran. Yes, the c
hangers are lower orders of such creatures. Their masters were originally High Beings who willingly combined their natures into a single being, shedding their personal existence to become an amalgamated High Being of tremendous power. This chimaera then stormed the Heights of Aer with an army of changers, intending to seize control of the Realms.”
“The Raven,” Voran whispered, his skin prickly and cold.
“Yes, that is one of its names. This abomination appeared lordly and beautiful, and many other beings were tempted to follow him. But the Heights’ retribution was swift and terrible. The changers and the Raven were stripped of their original forms, which they had shed so lightly, and they were left as beings of pure will. The now formless ones realized the agony of being formless, the agony of infinite desire, infinite will without the power of fulfilling infinite desire, of bringing that will into action.
“They wandered as their hunger increased. The Raven gathered them to himself, having found a way to allay the hunger temporarily. Whenever a creature of the lower orders—human, Sirin, Alkonist, Mujestva, Vila, Serpent, or many others—was tempted to follow the Raven and his horde, the formless ones found a way to possess their forms. But their hunger was so great that they quickly devoured every form they assumed, and still their hunger grew. That is the Raven’s power.”
“But what would possibly tempt anyone to follow such a monster?”
“His cunning is old, and he lies very well. He is a master of gathering power to himself, and he often allows his allies the fulfillment of their most cherished desires and dreams before he devours them. And he is a chimaera. He enjoys wearing the form of a creature of Light. It is his most effective weapon. He can afford to give much to his followers, even things that are initially good, because he inevitably devours all his children.”
The Song of the Sirin (Raven Son Book 1) Page 27
