Wealthgiver I: Darkness is now available for pre-order! Order the first part of Wealthgiver here.
This is the thirty-third chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
The mountains closed around Kori like a jealous fist.
On each side of the road they rose: gray trees and sheer, pale stone. At times, there was so little room between the western wall and the stream running down the center of this defile that they had to dismount and lead their horses. They could never ride abreast, which Kori took as comfort. As much as she wanted to talk to Andrei, she was afraid of what might drip from her mouth when she did.
Rila Mountain to the west and the Rhodopes to the east. One meaning "little river" and the other "red waters."
Kori found herself remembering Switzerland. Those long afternoons sitting at a table in the library, looking out the window on the mountains across the lake.
How good it was to look at mountains and not know their real names. To hear "there it is, Peak So-And-So," and not think "it was once The Such-And-Such. It was once ours."
Kori's people had never owned the Alps. She didn't have to care about whether someone was Catholic or Protestant or whether they spoke French, German, or Romansh. She could refrain from taking sides, because she had no claim on anything there.
Now, both Rila and the Rhodopes might be hers. The Chepinska river, brown and rushing on her left, might run through the middle of the Hadean Empire, or it might form the western border of the Republic of Bessia. Chepinska, named for the fortress and town Tsepina. "Hoped for."
The defile twisted on. A curtain of rock would block their view until the road turned to expose another short segment of their future: bright sky, pale hillside, red river.
Andrei turned and looked past her at Cenk. "What do you think will be his next move, General?"
"Nikolai, My Master?" said Cenk.
Kori closed her eyes, but the thought was still there. We can never be safe.
"Perhaps a purge." Cenk spoke as if musing on an upcoming supper. "An atrocity would make our recruitment drive easier."
Kori stared steadily ahead, remembering the atrocities that had ravaged the towns ahead of them. After Tsepina, they would have no choice but to pass through Batak.
"We can't count on such luck," said Andrei. "Nikolai is clever enough to understand that he isn't a dictator. He's a high priest. He'll send letters. Give sermons. He'll make it generally known what a hideous fellow I am and how and when to kill me."
"They will wait for us," said Kori.
Andrei refocused on her. "Oh, undoubtedly. Every settlement between here and Peshtera will have a sickle-wielding zealot waiting for us. The question is: how do we treat them?"
"As guests, or as a disease?" asked Cenk.
"An even better question."
"You are the Master and the Mistress. You have converted men to our cause before." Cenk coughed and his tone turned from blustering to shy. "Even men, ah, inclined to do you violence."
"Yes. We are recruiting," said Andrei. "And we were just talking about how a purge would be a mistake. Our mission is to welcome the zealots."
"My Master, you are the Host of Many." Cenk sounded relieved.
Kori recognized the temptation to feel relief as well and resisted it. She could entertain no greater foolishness than optimism.
"How were you recruited?" Cenk asked. "How did your monarch convince you to fight his enemies?"
Kori noticed the absence of "Master" in the question. Cenk was asking the man, not the vessel of the god.
A smile came into Andrei's voice. "You're thinking I should ride past the boys, flourishing my saber like General Skobelev?"
"The White General," said Cenk. "I've seen him, though only through a telescope. He was quite easy to find on the battlefield."
You mean he made himself insanely visible to every rifleman in Pleven." Andrei's left hand tugged at his beard. "God how we loved him."
"Is that why you joined up? Following a charismatic leader?"
Andrei walked silently for a while, guiding his horse over a muddy patch on the road. "In the medical tent, you learn not to answer that question, 'why.' You say, 'so you'll live,' but that's just one of your lies that is the deeper truth. So you'll live so you can fight again. So you can die for something more important than yourself. I started my work before the patient has had time to think any farther."
Kori listened to Cenk's disturbed breathing. He would be remembering his own experiences in the medical tent. But the soldier had his mission. "Do you mean to tell me you joined the army so you could serve something more important than your life?"
Andrei laughed. "I joined because my brothers were both military men. I joined because all the other students could talk of nothing else. I joined for many causes, and no good reason. I knew this sudden fervor for the plight of our fellow Slavs was all very convenient for one faction of the court as it gained advantage over another, but I felt this…" he bowed his head and put one hand over his face, "…relief. For once what a count or prince wanted was also what was right. Ha. Or so I thought. A Fool indeed, eh?"
Cenk raised his voice. "If so, My Master, I am as well."
"You were blinded by causes," said Kori. "You drowned in Madness."
Andrei turned to smile at her. "Until someone pulled me out."
He turned to Kori, as if to say something. But he caught her expression and closed his mouth. Poor man. He had forgotten for a moment that Kori was broken.
What must she look like to him? Were her eyes pits? Was her mouth cracked, her skin hardened? Rage had baked Kori's sense of humor out of her, and she had only one thing left to say.
Kori could not smile back. Andrei would try to pull her out of her own Madness. But into what? The Light blinded, and the Darkness was no longer safe.
"There is a saying… " She stopped herself. "I cannot speak the words to you."
"Tell me now. I love your Bessian sayings. And I love your language lessons, too. Now would be a good time—"
"No." She struggled to find a reason. "Not under the Sun."
"But you spoke Bessian to that spy who shot my assassin. You shouted it."
Screamed. "It was a mistake," Kori said. "A sin. A blasphemy."
Kori hoped the pause that followed would end the conversation. She should have known better. The doctor was only looking for a better place to cut.
"Kori, we've talked about this language superstition before. We must end it. We will have to stand in front of a crowd and speak Bessian to them."
Kori wanted to order him to drop the subject, give her a better answer, hold her. She wanted to, weep, attack, burst into flame. Instead she led her horse after his. Eventually, her lungs fell back into rhythm with the thoughtless gait of the animals. She was again calm, and it helped not at all.
"Kori, I'm sorry," Andrei said. "I shouldn't push you. Not in the state you're in."
Oh, the idiot. Of course, Kori had been referring to the schism within her religion and the civil war on top of the normal sort of Great Game war that threatened her people with complete extinction. Of course, Andrei would think she was talking about her pregnancy.
"Look around you," she ordered him. "Look ahead! We march into the blades of our enemies. You know that. You know there will be more attempts on your life, and their chance of success will only increase. You know that once I am a widow I will turn my wrath on the Mountain and rake furrows of blood up its slopes."
Infuriatingly, Andrei chuckled. "If our army has the power to do that, it can also organize an effective siege."
"A hundred secret tunnels lead in and out of the Depths. There can be no siege of the Holy Mountain, but there will be a desecration," said Kori. "I will place latrines over the springs and light smoking fires around the air intakes. I will take hostage the families of the priests and priestesses and butcher them over the entrance. My enemies will have to pass upward through the blood of their loved ones and into my hands."
She met Andrei's stare with her own.
"I see what you're doing," he said. "You're living in the future. You're imagining the worst thing that might happen and then the worst after that. You told me to look around. Take your own advice." He swept out a hand. "Are the mountains on fire and weeping blood? Have I been killed, or am I still here, alive in front of you?"
"Don't be stupid. I'm making a prediction. I am a prophetess."
"You're not prophesying. You're cursing yourself. Cursing us. Do you want me to be killed?"
Kori felt trapped. Besieged. On fire and weeping blood. She would not surrender, she would not say "no."
In smoldering silence, they marched on, and into the next trap.
Continue on Patreon, where $10 patrons are up to chapter 40.
Next: Chapter 34: May Battle Bloom! (5/29/2025)