This is the eighteenth 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.
"Am I doing this right?"
Andrei's voice fled across the surface of the water and vanished.
With no echoes to define its borders, the Moss Pool seemed to stretch infinitely up and out, a stone sky over a gently steaming sea.
"Zída an na drapótat?" Bogdan spoke in Good, although Andrei's question had been in Russian. That meant something about the three-legged stool on which Andrei was sitting.
"Néi?" He hazarded.
"Bass. Ia fáza!" Good. So breathe!
Andrei had received instructions on that, too. He inhaled deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, feeling is belly rise and fall. There was a little poem he was supposed to recite in his head each time he did that. Something about three goats negotiating with a dragon. This training was usually done with children.
Andrei couldn't remember the poem past the first two lines, so he just counted off syllables to himself. Na-na-na. Na-a-na-na. Na-na-na na-a-na-na.
Brother Bogdan spoke. "Ení pa ení, ménzaet táe pranín."
Andrei was supposed to let his thoughts "pass" him. Andrei imagined them as little ducks, floating in a line.
You're trapped with cultists. Who gave you work to do. And secret plans. A beautiful priestess. A homicidal insane priest. Plans to run away with her.
The air pressed like boiled carpets on Andrei's face. Moldy boiled carpets.
But running didn't work last time. Did it even work before? Running from the army brought you here.
Something brushed his calf.
"Yai!" Andrei jerked his legs out of the water and Bogdan chuckled.
"Madí ta dría. Népa zuvédzae in iadíse."
Which meant "Do not something. There are no somethings in the pool.' No what? No fish? No snakes? Drowned witches?
As Andrei's breathing continued to fail to slow, Bodgan spoke in impatient Russian. "I say you are safe. Novitiate, your mind will be easier when you surrender to trust."
"Trust?" said Andrei. "Three of you priests tried to kill me just now."
"Since then, you have given us a reason to let you live. Trust that reason." A grunt. "And I would not kill a man by so inelegant a means as a crocodile."
"I was thinking more of witches."
"I know only a little about the handling of magical women, and that you must learn for yourself. Enough of your childish fears."
After an embarrassingly intense mental battle, Andrei put his feet back into the water. A moment of senseless warmth while it sloshed around his goose-pimpled calves, then…
Another brush. Not fins or claws or fingers. Not anything solid at all.
There were currents in the water. It wasn't just warm, but a braid of hot and cold. Threads of temperature fluxed over his skin, leaving impressions like the concentric rings and trails of Turkish paper marbling.
"Novitiate, close your eyes."
Andrei did, but it made no difference.
"Feel the air between you and the ceiling. Know that there is infinitely more rock below you. The support of that rock stops the ceiling from falling. The same is true for the sky."
Andrei pictured it: a man in a cavern. A cavern in a mountain. The mountain in a country. A country in the vast and overpowering flood of history.
"We owe our lives to the Earth every day," said Brother Bogdan. "Da, déla ni."
Andrei let the Moss Pool feel its way across his skin and listened to the air going in and out of his nostrils. His carotid arteries pulsed against the corners of his jaw in currents of their own.
Andrei's stomach gurgled. His heart pumped faithfully between his lungs. Tides of air swelled and receded up his throat. And in the cavern of Andrei's skull, his brain sat in its own warm pool, considering itself.
A smile tugged on his mouth. What a beautiful thing the body was. How miraculous that it worked from moment to moment. The brain in the skull, the man in the cave. The cave in the mountain. The mountain rising up from the troubled and uncertain land.
"Earth, protect me."
The prayer moved Andrei's lips, escaped his mouth, swept over the water. Returned an echo.
Protect me.
That was just an echo. Who in this darkness needed protection but Andrei? And Kori. She was at the mercy of these cultists, who pulled her down into ancient superstition even as she rose into the modern era.
He'd first seen her standing halfway out the Mountain, the moonlight stretched across her face and a narcissus at her hip. Andrei's hands reached out as if to pluck that flower. Take it with him and keep it safe.
They had a way to communicate now. All he needed was a way to get within arm's reach of her. And a way to survive this upcoming ritual with all its organizers bent on killing him. Earth, he thought, protect us both!
Protect us.
Water splashed.
"Fála Bessíka," grunted Bogdan. "Tse zída."
Speak Good, he'd said. And sit.
Andrei looked down and saw nothing. He was standing. When had he jumped to his feet? What had that sound been? Just another echo. Not an order.
Ripples of hot and cold ran up Andrei's back. He thought of the Batak Massacre. The Tamrash Uprising. The Pomaks. Pomaks, Gypsies, Armenicans, Jews, and the sickle-wielding, Hades-worshiping Cave-Thracians.
So what? What if the Good did need protection? Who was he to give it?
Who are you, Doctor, to refuse?
"No." Hands pressed to his face, Andrei bent toward the surface of the pool, as if to drink. "No, no."
"Ist an?" The old man sounded amused.
Andrei waded away from his stool. Where the devil were the guide-grooves on the floor?
"Batsí stáia? Batsí ma vu kóba?"
Why something. Why do you not bathe? Andrei knew that word.
"Vas em…" he tried to say, "Vas…" But he didn't know how to say "I'm leaving" in Good. He didn't know how to say "I'm hearing voices, and I refuse to obey them. Even if I did make a deal on the Mountain the night I first saw Kori, it was a deal with nothing and nobody. I repudiate it! I don't care what sort of war you people have ahead of you or how many of you will be blown up or chopped into pieces, or starve. I care about Kori. I'll take her!"
He bounced off a wall.
His backside splashed through knee-high water and struck the stone floor of the pool. It hurt, but Andrei's face and hands didn't. He'd struck something soft.
He reached out, and his hand sank into soggy fibers.
The Moss Pool, they called it. Although here in the darkness, there couldn't be anything green on these walls. Some kind of fungus? That would explain the echo-less illusion of infinite space. And the smell.
"Petráda an káfa gat?" came Bodgan's voice. From context, that probably meant 'Have you found the wall?'
Andrei stood, feeling stupid. "Néi." He brushed the furry wall. "What is it?"
"Fála Bessíka!
"Uh, Tsi ésta?"
"Ésta bleáss miss."
"Bleáss miss," Andrei repeated. His fingers dislodged a snail.
"Neláhe, indésa!"
Andrei jerked his hand back. That was what Nikolai said before he smacked Andrei on the head.
"Tamssáta te vu nabrásst." The darkness something you. Echoed you?
Andrei shook his head in annoyance. The humid air weighed him down. "Ma vrása," he said again. I don't understand.
The old man sighed and he switched again to French. "The darkness answered you."
Andrei turned toward the voice. "I still don't understand."
"A Fool might say 'you experienced a vision.'"
He stared at the place where he thought Bogdan might be sitting. "I…no. There was no vision. I only heard something."
"Just so." Bogdan switched from perfect French to accented Russian. "You said, 'Earth protect me'. Were you only speaking to yourself?"
No.
"Yes," Andrei said. "Yes. I was talking to myself. It's a bad habit. Help me find the door." God almighty, Andrei said something and the priest interpreted it as a prophesy?
That, Doctor, is exactly what Kori wants.
"Novitiate, how did the darkness answer?"
If Andrei were clever, he would take the opportunity to start a new sect of Plutonianism. Something about how mystical and holy it was to let Russian doctors steal priestesses and go off to live happily somewhere far, far away.
But all he wanted was to leave this pool. To get these illusory snakes off his skin and these whispers out of his ears. To breathe air that didn't feel as if he were sucking it out of a mushroom-hunter's smock.
"Protect us," he said, and his voice echoed again.
***
Nikolai had not yet finished his tea when his door scraped open.
"Brother Bogdan and Novitiate Andrei." He recognized their treads. "You're early."
"We have bathed," said Brother Bogdan. And in a lower voice, still in Good: "The Novitiate was answered by the darkness."
Nikolai's mind was calm enough now that he could observe his own response, like a pattern of stones on the bottom of a pool. He was not shocked or even surprised. Instead, Nikolai took the news of Andrei's vision as he had that of the Treaty of San Stefano. The time had come. It was a time, momentous and awful, but great in possibility.
He did not ask Brother Bogdan about the vision. He would hear the words undistorted from the mouth of the…prophet himself. "Enter, Novitiate."
"Um," came Andrei's response in Good. "Hello?"
"I said 'enter,'" said Nikolai in Russian.
"His Good is bad," Brother Bogdan grunted. "Elder Brother, I worry. My mind is as noisy as if I haven't bathed at all."
"Drink some valerian tea," Nikolai advised, sipping his own.
Andrei butted in. "I could use something to drink. And breakfast. Or is it lunch?"
Nikolai clicked to pinpoint his pupil. How much of their conversation had he understood?
"I offer you a deal," he said in Russian. "Learn how to say, 'I would eat gruel and drink valerian tea,' in Good and you will have it."
"How about 'meat and cheese'?" asked Andrei. "How about wine?"
Nikolai's lip curled. "Do not joke, Fool. You are a twisted vessel. A malarial sump of polluted water. You have brought madness into the Mountain and I will either purify you or else things will become simpler." He did not wait for a clever return jibe. "Now, you will tell me what the darkness said to you."
"It wasn't a vision." Andrei's voice was uncharacteristically fast and breathless. Nikolai wasn't sure he'd ever heard the man sound so uncertain.
"The darkness answered you," he said gently, and supplied the relevant word in Good. "An answer. One might equally translate it 'a resounding,' or 'an echoing back.' The gods spoke to you."
Andrei's robes rustled as he put a hand to his face. "Or I'm going mad."
"An easy blasphemy to disprove." Nikolai straightened, brushing the hair back over his ears. "The voice of the Unseen cannot be mistaken for the voice of the Pursuer. The Host of Many is deep and cool and slow. It speaks in dark places. Was it such a voice that you heard?"
Andrei answered quietly in Good. "'Protect us.'"
Nikolai took care to heed his own advice. Cool and slow.
A struggling breath from Andrei. "It was just an echo. It came after Brother Bogdan recited that prayer of yours. Earth, protect us."
Nikolai stretched his neck, pointing his face toward the invisible ceiling. "But this echo did not address the Earth, you say. It consisted of two words only: verb in the singular imperative followed by the pronoun." He dipped his chin until it rested on his steepled fingers. "First person plural dative."
"What?" said Andrei. "What are you talking about?"
"The Master and the Mistress," said Nikolai. "They spoke together, as 'us,' to you, Andrei Trifonovich."
"The gods want me to protect them?"
Nikolai spread his hands. "The verb has nuances of meaning. It is related to Russian delítʹ and carries the meaning of dividing or dealing out shares. Dealing with someone fairly and with even hand. The gods in this way give every man his fair portion. That is their protection. A man deals with the gods by doing his duty, playing his part."
"And you think my part is avatar of the god of death."
"Avatar," said Nikolai, and smiled to himself, remembering his conversation with Kori in the graveyard, so many years ago. He had almost kissed her before he understood what she was. This man, he had almost killed.
Nikolai named his envy, his jealousy, lust, yes, and the anger of a scorned little boy. He had called this novitiate a twisted vessel, but what of Nikolai's own imperfections? How could he purify this man if he was, himself, polluted?
"Like any mortals," he said, "we stumble, distracted across ground strewn with smoking pits and cutting stones."
The Maiden needed him. She needed her nation and a nation needed its king.
"Nikolai Igorevich." Andrei's voice drew closer, as if he was leaning forward, eager for guidance. "Elder Brother, what should I do?"
Welcome me, My Master. As before in the cemetery, he surrendered, gladly, to his worship.
"There are words you must know, Andrei Trifonovich," he said. "Many more words."
Next: Chapter 19: The Truest Face