This is the 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.
Under the Holy Mountain, there floated a woman.
Currents writhed slowly around her. Fumes rose from a three-legged burner on the edge of the underground pool, mixing the scent of sulfur with sheep fat, pine pitch, and mint. Drops of condensation formed and fell with a sound like tiny clocks. Their echoes scattered and rebounded across the six faces carved into the ceiling.
The Maiden's own face was slack. The surface slid up and down her sides, warm and cold. Her eyes were open, but could see nothing in the darkness. Behind those eyes: more darkness.
Her people called themselves the Good. All of them but their spies lived around and under their Holy Mountain. They herded sheep, robbed travelers, delved the Sacred Depths, and used the gold they found to twist the game of empires toward the will of their Wealthgiver.
Hot waves followed cold, down from the crown of Kori's head, around her cheeks and throat. Her heart beat.
A drop struck the water and clarity spread in every direction.
Echoes defined a shape to the south: a new nation, hungry for land. To the north, another birthed itself, while empires to the East and West fractured along their own lines of language and history. Squeezed between them all, the Holy Mountain ran with rivers of red.
Kori named the fear and it passed, revealing a sense below her of a great and sacred depth.
"How can I protect my people?"
Kori's prayer hung between the water and the stone. Another drop fell from the nose of a graven face. Her heart beat and glowing spots flashed before her eyes. Glints of gold, she thought. The sheen of sunrise off gun barrels. She could guess whose hands held them. She could guess what she had to do. But.
"But what if I am wrong?"
The darkness around and within Kori did not answer in words. She simply knew: the opposite of growth is death.
Whose growth? Whose death? Whose wealth and war? Kori's hands lifted invisibly, pushing the rest of her body deeper into the water. "Yours, Master."
The echo of the last word returned like confirmation.
Kori swashed her legs around and found the floor with her toes. Wringing out her hair, she waded toward the door. Some of the images were already fading, but she held on to the red mountain and the glitter that ringed it. The interpretation of those symbols would be clear enough. After ten years of practice, the rhyme and scansion would come when she needed them.
Her ears twitched. The priest waiting on the other side of the door was breathing too rapidly.
"Elder brother," Kori called. "Nikolai. What worries you?"
The breathing caught. A door opened in the darkness and a curtain parted. The tacks on a man's slippers clicked on the stone floor.
"The Maiden hears much." The words were in the Good language, the pronunciation impeccable. From their sound, the high priest stood far back from the pool, facing away from her.
Nikolai had been Kori's one girlish rebellion: an attempt to convert someone to the worship of the Wealthgiver. To turn a Fool into one of the Good. She had succeeded terribly.
"My Maiden," he said. "What were you shown?"
"You first." She climbed the steps out of the pool. "What news?"
"News? No, I would not contaminate the Fruit-Bringer's prophesy."
Kori's ears pricked at the disgust and anger in his voice. The worry. Nikolai sounded the way he did when someone spilled soup on the books, or forgot to put lye in his chamber pot. Something had worried him, and Nikolai had rushed, not to the library or a washroom, but to her.
Kori clicked her tongue, illuminating the walls around them in harsh sound. She caught his flinch. "Nikolai, has something happened in San Stefano?"
"My Maiden."
That was relief. Kori couldn't bully the other priests like this, but Nikolai was special. He was hers.
The high priest cleared his throat. "Count Ignatyev and Saffet Pasha have signed the treaty."
Kori capped the incense burner and picked up her robe. "Ignatyev stabbed Austria-Hungary and Germany in the back?"
"As we knew he would." A smile in his voice. "He has put us within this so-called Principality of Bulgaria."
And so the world intruded, exactly as Nikolai had warned. Kori held on to the memories of her vision and cinched her robe tight. "The western Powers will step in, with diplomats if not soldiers. We might find ourselves back in the Ottoman Empire, in Greece, or split down the middle by a new border."
The old priests said it didn't matter where Fools drew lines on their maps, but they were wrong. Census-takers roamed the mountains now, ethnographers, recruiters from revolutionary committees. The Good could no longer tell the Turks they were Sarakatsans, the Greeks they were Pomaks, the Bulgarians that they were Aromanians. Whatever new nation found itself in possession of Kori's Mountain, it would demand to know what language its citizens spoke and what gods they worshiped.
Metal and blood. Armies surrounded her, and behind her rose the shadow of Death.
Kori inhaled as the poetry snapped into place.
Kōgaió ió pódes xénai. Dymó
("On Holy Mountain foreign Feet.")
Dóubous tous me Iérous phlēsté.
("You make Sacred Depths with smoke replete.")
It was more like reciting lines than composing them.
Porostreiýn iáes ápaes tḗs rhódaes
("Rivers ruddy stream around")
Pephlón iēn tóus sélkanthas se strátous."
("the armies tugging at her gown.")
"My Maiden." His voice swung past Kori as the priest turned. "The signs are clear." He turned again. "The Good stand poised at the peak of another war." He was pacing now, muttering to himself. "Assassination and bribery will not save us again. As I told them. The next international council might come together before the end of the year. We shall have to speed our preparations."
"Wait," Kori said. "Why 'might?' Don't you know when the Powers will meet? What reaction from the Western ambassadors? What else did our spy tell you?"
Nikolai stood at the curtain, hand on the door beyond. "He doesn't know, My Maiden. He didn't stay long enough in San Stefano to find out, but rode west immediately to bring us the news. He arrived only a little before this Russian soldier."
"What Russian soldier?" asked Kori.
"Oh." Kori's mind was clear enough to detect the tremble in her high priest's voice. "A Fool on the mountain. We watch him from the scopes even now."
"Who is he?"
"Some lost wanderer, My Maiden, whom the shepherds failed to turn away. Nothing."
Something. Something more important than the Treaty of San Stefano, or at least in Nikolai felt it so. Otherwise his breath would not catch like this. His teeth would not grind. What was he hiding? Why was this stranger important?
Kori opened her mouth to ask, and a word came to her in the ancient language. Another followed it, and she found her prophesy had been incomplete.
Xēthópeti pós iá,
("With Master at hand,")
Stas zýn Xēthópaniâ.
(The Mistress will stand.")
Nikolai whirled toward her. "But," he said. "My Maiden. I know that prophesy. It was mine!"
Kori let the words continue.
Zēltón ze gríssma tón
("If gold and debt")
No êan désyme xinón.
("With welcome's met.")
"There's more?" Nikolai's voice tossed with confusion. "And in the context of what you have already revealed. Gold? What gold? Does this change—never mind. The gold is ours, of course. The debt that the Fools owe to us." His tone firmed. "If they but welcome their obligation to bow, yes. To bow their necks to our yoke, My Maiden!" He bowed, trembling with fervor. "Praise the Wealthgiver! Praise his bride!"
Kori's breath leaked from her throat. A weight pulled on the belly. Here was the love that Nikolai gave her. Furious, barren worship.
Like water rushing down the mountain, the pang of disappointment passed. Kori's thoughts became calm. Cold dark, and deep as they must be, for so much depended on her. Armies tugged at her skirts, Death stood behind her, and Fool climbed her Mountain.
"Nikolai," Kori ordered. "Take me to the scopes."
Nothing like a subterranean hot tub to clarify the mind.