Nine Layers of Sky

by Liz Williams

  “Where exactly are we heading?”

  “Out onto the steppe. They’ll have taken her there, if they wanted her alive.”

  The Mechvor twisted to look at him. “I’m sure they won’t have harmed her,” she said anxiously. “Please try not to worry.”

  “I’ll try,” Ilya said. He could see that she meant to be kind.

  They crossed a river, and downstream he glimpsed the spines and curves of military gunships, as well as a wallowing hulk that looked like the remains of a sailing vessel.

  “Those are the naval yards,” the Mechvor said.

  “He can see that,” Anikova said, shortly.

  “But we want to make him feel at home,” the Mechvor said. Once more, her voice was filled with reproach. “After all, he is a guest, and guests are sent from God.”

  “I know, I know.” Anikova gave her companion an uneasy glance that Ilya was unable to interpret. He wondered what the relationship really was between these two, where the power truly lay.

  The road took them past a series of buildings that the Mechvor described as the state university. The complex was vast: three central polygons surrounded by low halls. The roofs were festooned with a tracery of satellite communication; he could see the dishes from the road. He tried that sideways glance again and found that there was simply nothing there, only a wasteland of grass. It was more comforting to look at it directly. The place was set in a parkland of manicured lawns and groves. The sight of the birches gave Ilya an unexpected pang of homesickness. Yet he was not sure whether it was for the world he had left behind, or for the one through which he was now traveling. He may not always have known what his role was, but he had known where he belonged, and now even that was slipping away from him. He leaned back in his seat for a moment and closed his eyes. Elena, he thought. I belong to Elena. But he did not even know if she was still alive. That thought returned him to the practicalities of the situation.

  “So it’s just you, me, and her?” he said to Anikova. “Against a horde?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re meeting my team at Bhalukishoy. I’m not going in there without armed personnel.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “You should know,” the Mechvor said gently, “it’s most unusual for the tribes to venture this far north. Usually they keep to the southern territories. So there is a great need to drive them back.”

  “This is just one clan,” Anikova said. “A raiding party. And they can’t be acting alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would a bunch of barbarians take it into their heads to get hold of a distorter coil? No, they’re working for someone. Somebody operating against the State has hired them—or more likely, persuaded them, since the tribes don’t use money—to get hold of this thing. So that leaves major questions. Who, and why?”

  “How resistant are the tribes to interrogation?” Ilya asked, surprising himself. He thought he had left KGB mode behind him long ago.

  Anikova gave a thin smile.

  “Good question, Muromyets. They can’t be interrogated without a great deal of trouble. They would simply rather die. Hunger strike, suicide … We’ve seen it all.”

  As he had surmised, the apparent perfection of this State, too, possessed darkness at its heart.

  “And they won’t talk? At all?”

  “No. But the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ has a local answer. Even here, we’re troubled by dissidents. They’re crazy, of course.”

  Again, Ilya thought he detected a faint unease in her face. It made him question the strength of Anikova’s convictions. It was disappointing to see that the old Soviet approach still had its hold: anyone who disagrees is simply mad; the truth is so self-evident, that to deny it is tantamount to a denial of reality itself. But what did that really mean in a world in which reality was so malleable and fluid?

  “What do they believe, these dissidents?” Anikova frowned and said nothing, so Ilya changed the subject.

  “The tribespeople, then. Where do they come from?”

  “Originally, from Earth. Before we did, long ago.”

  “Then one might say that this is their country?”

  “It is not. They have their own lands. This is our country.”

  Hearing the fierceness in her voice, Ilya thought: Do I sound like that when I speak of Russia? No doubt he did. But it was a familiar refrain: the necessity of being right, merely because one was powerful, and guilty.

  They were leaving the city now, heading up through scattered villages toward the heights. Ilya watched a Russian idyll passing by: the neat log izbas, the white froth of cherry and apple blossom, the new shoots in spring gardens. It would be so easy to stay here. He wondered how content they really were. But the contrast between this bucolic scenery and the barren, wild lands that they had entered, made him restless.

  “How long before we get to where we’re going?” he asked.

  “Another half hour, perhaps less.”

  “Why are we driving, anyway? I thought you people had aircraft?”

  “We do not want to be seen, and they may have weapons to bring down a plane. The dissidents have been arming them; we don’t know how far it’s gone.”

  “I’ve seen planes that look twice as sophisticated as the ones we have in Russia. Don’t you have the resources to bring down a handful of tribesmen?”

  Anikova gave a snort of frustration.

  “It depends on the terrain, not the equipment. And on the land itself. If they were out on the open steppe, it would be a different matter. Guerrilla warfare is always hard.”

  “True enough,” Ilya admitted, thinking of Afghanistan. “Might they have ground-to-air missiles? Rocket launchers?” If that was the case, then where were the dissidents getting their arms from?

  “They have weapons,” Anikova said. “But if they have the coil, they might be able to use it.”

  “How?”

  “There are people who can activate it with their minds alone,” Kitai said. She was watching him closely; Ilya did his best to empty his head of thought. “There is a possibility that the Golden Warrior is one of them.”

  “But you don’t know that.”

  “No.” The Mechvor’s gaze was hypnotic.

  “What manner of people are these, then?” Ilya asked, as casually as he could.

  “Ancient breeds, from the Byelovodyean long-ago. There are suspicions that the rusalki ran a genetic program before they eschewed technology. Or perhaps they are merely sports, dreamed up by the land itself.”

  The word bogatyr hung between them, unspoken. But Ilya was beginning to realize why they were taking so much trouble over him. In some way, he was of use to them. He could not help but ask himself where Manas fitted in. He glanced at the Mechvor and saw the trace of a smile upon her calm face.

  Ilya sat back in his seat, watching as the villages fell behind. They were out in the wild country now, on the steppe, covered in grass that rippled under the wind like water. Far along the horizon, he could see a dark line of forest. He recognized nothing of this countryside from their brief earlier foray. He wondered whether the landscape bore any relation to the former Soviet Union, or whether it was entirely other.

  Whatever the problems Anikova had mentioned might be, they did not manifest. Within half an hour, the road turned past a rocky outcrop and down into a shallow valley. Anikova’s people were waiting.

  Five

  BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

  Shortly after dawn, Elena was taken to see the Golden Warrior. She had managed to get a little sleep and the old woman had brought her water, slopping against the sides of a bronze basin. Elena put it on top of the stove and washed as best she could.

  “Jagdainiz kalai?”

  She thought that might mean, “How are you?” so she nodded vigorously and smiled. It seemed to satisfy the old woman, who held out an armful of clothes. Elena looked askance at the heavy skirts, the overtunic and boots, but it was better than the travel-stained stuff she had on.
She dressed under the approving eye of the old woman. The garments smelled of sage and horses, but they were clean and roughly the right size. Then the woman took her hand and drew her toward the door of the yurt.

  “Where are we going?” Elena asked, but the woman did not seem to understand. She stepped out into a clear morning, with the sun riding just above the edge of the mountains. The camp was already stirring into life, and to Elena’s dismay, it was clear that they were packing up. Three of the yurts were already folded and loaded onto horseback, and a fourth was in the process of being dismantled. Two men and a girl had reduced it to its slotted side screens, folding the lattice into narrow panels.

  “We’re leaving?” Elena asked. She could not remember the Kazakh. She pointed and raised her eyebrows, but the old woman said only, “Iye, iye”—yes, yes, as one might soothe a child—and pulled her forward. Guards stood outside the door of the Warrior’s yurt: gold gleamed at their belts and collars. They continued to gaze straight ahead as the woman propelled Elena through the flap of the door.

  The Warrior sat cross-legged on a pile of cushions. Its hands rested on its knees; the helmeted head did not move as Elena came in. A smaller person was sitting at its side. She could not tell, at first, whether this figure was male or female. It was dressed in a motley, indiscriminate collection of garments that could have belonged to either sex. A necklace of feathers and small bones was looped about its throat, and its hands were blue with tattoos. Its eyes were blank black ovals. Elena inclined her head in its direction. It was easier to simply ignore the Warrior.

  “You are from the other side?” the person asked, in reedy Russian. The voice was high, but male. She had read that shamans cross-dressed, or even that they were sometimes eunuchs. She did not greatly care; the relief at speaking her own language was overwhelming.

  “I am from another world,” Elena said. “Is that what you mean by the other side? Or are you talking about the mountains?”

  “Your world is not this one?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must come from the Motherland that is also Yelen Tengri, the Land of the Dead.”

  “It is a world of living people,” Elena said. The Warrior made a sudden convulsive movement, rattling its armor.

  “There is debate,” the shaman said, “whether it is this world that is real, or your own, or both. We know your world as Yelen Tengri, but that is just a name.”

  “Do you believe that we are ghosts?” Elena asked. “That you travel to my world when you die, or in dreams?”

  “What do you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is your work?” the shaman asked.

  “I am a scientist,” Elena said. “Do you know what that is?”

  The shaman’s ancient face creased into a smile. “Look,” he said. He rolled up a deerskin sleeve. A substantial watch was strapped around his tattooed wrist. “Would it surprise you to learn that I also have a university degree?”

  Trapped. “I’m sorry,” Elena said again, sincerely. “I should know not to make assumptions.”

  “Especially here. This is a world where assumptions are even more dangerous than they are in your own. Assumptions can create facts, where people struggle to control dreams, because dreams can manifest in reality.”

  “I have no understanding about the nature of this place,” Elena confessed.

  “That is a good point to start learning, then. What about this?” The shaman gestured to the silent figure of the Warrior. “What do you think this is?”

  Now that Elena had learned that the shaman was an educated person like herself, her view of the Warrior had also shifted. She found that she had, over the course of the last few minutes, started to view it less as an inimical supernatural phenomenon and more as some kind of artifact, a robot, perhaps, or a trick. From the amusement in the shaman’s dark eyes, her revised beliefs must be evident in her expression.

  “It is exactly what you see. It is a suit of Scythian armor, apparently empty, sometimes with faces glimpsed in the depths of that magnificent helmet, that moves of its own volition and occasionally speaks. Who do you think controls it?”

  “You?” Elena asked hesitantly.

  “No one,” the Warrior said, with such booming suddenness that Elena jumped.

  “The Warrior is under its own control,” the shaman said.

  “But what is it? I mean, what are you?” Elena said to the Warrior.

  “I am Chosen—the Warrior, my people’s champion.”

  Well, that was a lot of help, Elena thought, but this time she had the wit to keep silent.

  “You see, people seem to need him,” the shaman explained. “And so he is there, a kind of animated dream. Just like the rest of the bogatyri. ”

  “It’s a bogatyr?” She did not want to say that the Warrior seemed far less human than Ilya.

  “Of a kind. They vary in their natures and abilities. I imagine you’ve seen glimpses of a girl’s face underneath that helmet.” Elena confirmed that this was so. “If we had any use for money, I’d put good rubles on the possibility that your friend saw a man. The Warrior is, to some extent, subject to people’s expectations, not to mention their desires. I see it as male and choose my pronouns accordingly.”

  “But do you follow—it?”

  “The clans follow him. I am an advisor, but still an outsider, like yourself.”

  “What are you?”

  “Well, I am supernatural, too, I suppose. I am what the locals call a Mechvor, though that’s a title rather than a name. My kind don’t have a name for ourselves. There aren’t many of us and most work for Central Command. Among the tribes, we have the role of shaman. We are like the bogatyri: real but unnatural, human but not entirely.”

  “Mechvor means—‘dream-stealer’?”

  “Something like that. Witch doctor would do just as well. We have abilities, can see to a limited extent into other people’s minds, influence their behavior, that sort of thing. But don’t worry on your own account. I am bound by a strict code of conduct.”

  “You said you went to university,” Elena said. “Did you mean here, in this world?”

  “Yes. Byelovodye works in much the same way as your own, in some respects, but not in others. We become used to losing time, losing memory, our borders and boundaries shifting and changing. The processes of historical revision that took place in your own society are just as real here, though in a slightly different way. Byelovodye responds to changes in your world. Believe me, there are a host of research departments dedicated to finding out how this is so.”

  “And the bogatyri themselves? What are they? Where do they come from?”

  The Warrior, perhaps bored with the turn that the conversation was taking, rose abruptly and strode to the door.

  “We ride,” it said.

  The shaman looked ruefully at Elena.

  “Well, that’s that. When the Warrior speaks …”

  “It speaks Russian,” Elena hissed. “Why is that?”

  “It doesn’t, actually. Kazakh speakers hear Kazakh, Pashtuns hear Pashto. To me, it speaks in my own language of Evenk, which is originally a Siberian tongue. Only—occasionally—those who have married into the clan hear its voice in their second language. I like to think that it speaks the language of the heart.” He gave an apologetic smile. “Not very scientific, I’m afraid.”

  “Perhaps poetry is the best science to use here,” Elena said.

  “If you continue to think like that, you may come to understand Byelovodye itself,” the shaman said with approval.

  They followed the Warrior out into the camp. By now, the Warrior’s yurt was the only one that remained standing, and within minutes, it, too, had been dismantled.

  “Where are we going?” Elena asked the shaman.

  “Now that they have the device you’ve been so obligingly carrying around, they’ll head north.”

  “Is that where the tribal lands lie?”

  “No, their lands lie
in the south. But they have friends in the north. People who want the distorter coil.”

  “Listen, I can’t go with them,” Elena said urgently. “My friend—I have to find him.”

  “Forgive me, but he’s more than a friend, I think?”

  “Much more,” Elena whispered. Being without Ilya was like missing her own right arm, and yet a week ago, she had never even set eyes on him.

  “I’m truly sorry,” the shaman said. “But I don’t think you have a choice. The Warrior has been sent to find the coil and bring it back. He is relentless in pursuit. He even crossed over into your world, to find you, summoned though a rift that I think your friend Ilya must have opened.”

  “But why? If you have the distorter coil now, why do you need me?”

  “Because it isn’t just the coil that’s important. It’s Ilya. And you matter to him, don’t you?”

  Elena felt herself grow cold. After all that, she was nothing more than a lure, and she had walked right into the trap that the shaman had set only a few minutes before. He’s more than a friend, I think? “That doesn’t mean he’ll come for me.”

  The shaman smiled. “He’s a hero, Elena. That’s what they do. I think he’ll try to find the coil, certainly. Think of yourself as additional security.”

  “But why do you need him?”

  “I think you already know that he’s been able to establish a relationship with the coil. It is ancient quantum technology made by the rusalki when they were still at the flowering of their powers; it is close to sentient. It can be activated by him, by his dreams. It—”

  The shaman broke off as a group of warriors rode up. One of them was the girl with whom Elena had spoken on the previous evening. The shaman rose to speak to her, leaving Elena free for a moment to sit and think. And she brought into the light, with mingled exhilaration and dismay, a thought that had been brewing ever since the incident in the hotel room. It wasn’t just Ilya who could activate the coil. She must have done it herself.

  The Warrior was a distant, gleaming figure at the far edge of the camp. Its yurt was now a pile of panels and skins being loaded onto the back of a pony. She and Ilya weren’t the only ones who could influence the coil. The other person who had such abilities was the Warrior, and Ilya was competition. As long as Ilya was around, he was a danger to the Warrior, and so would Elena be if they realized this.