God Within Us

THE host from Chernogorsk that came down from the God-Spine mountains seemed like a glittering stream as the fading daylight danced upon iron scales and rings of maille. In their company of riders were the armored druzhinniks from loyal lords’ household guards, a handful of freeriders with long lances and boiled leather armor, and even a few herdsmen from the western plains who rode, dressed, and fought in the Khormchak style, yet spoke the Klyazmite tongue. And trailing at the end of their column, riding atop a black gelding, rode the Apostle of the God-Spine - Unukalhai, whose chain swung lightly to and fro by their side.

They went down along the Ashenmark Road, following the trail as it turned and curved a path down towards the foothills, and then at last onto flat, even ground once more. The monstrous ridges of the God-Spine loomed behind them, but the heavy pall it cast over their company grew less and less as the peaks fell behind into the distance.

The host went on through the flat and sparsely-forested Klayzmite plains that lay behind the shield of the God-Spine - their thundering hooves sounding well ahead of their advance. It did not matter - their race for the city mattered more than the need for stealth, more than their need for rest. Yesugei relished the hard pace they set - the single-mindedness of the pursuit, the rush, the thundering of their dash across open fields. This was what Heaven had made him and all Khormchaks for since the dawn days of their kin.

He kept to the front of their formation with Tuyaara and Ilya, and peered far out over the yawning lands ahead. Fifty miles as the crow flies were between them and the Leaden Fork - where their band of fifty would swell with Pyotr’s recruits - and from there, another fifty miles until the walls of the White City could be reached.

Soon, night closed about them. They had ridden hard for some eight hours beneath the sunless sky, yet the Leaden Fork remained too far to be reached by the day’s end. Their company camped in a hastily-assembled circle of tents and lean-tos by the edge of a small wood in the plains, letting their horses graze and rest in the open. Scouts went further on, and with them went Unukalhai, disappearing into the fold of the lands like a shadow until the night was well and truly deep. Without tidings or alarm through the night, Yesugei found quiet and fitless sleep - and at the crack of dawn, the horns sounded and their company went on.

“I smell something terrible in the air,” Tuyaara said once their company set back out onto the trail, wrinkling her nose. “It stings my eyes - there is something in the air to the west. Death.”

The second day of their ride for the Leaden Fork went on beneath the low-hanging gray canopy of the clouds. Around them the scattered woods and hills seemed to watch their march across the plains with curious eyes, and within the shade of the trees Yesugei imagined shadows leaping to and fro. They were crossing nearby the town of Torch, whose outskirts lay somewhere beyond the southern horizon, and now they went along their path slowly, with the outriders doubling to scan the land all about them for signs of ambush or marching armies. Soon, a smell came to Yesugei’s nose as well - nauseating and putrid, and carrying an odor like sulfur. The smell of burning hair and flesh.

Here and there as they drew closer to the Leaden Fork, bodies littered a bloody trail made by a stampede of retreating men. Gray-feathered shafts jutted out from exposed backs, and throats. Those who threw aside helms and armor to hasten their flight were cut to graying, rotting ribbons of flesh who could only be told apart from savaged animal carcasses by the bloodied emblems worn on torn clothes - the white bear of Belnopyl. Dozens of the emblems marked the trail to the west.

By the banks of the Leaden Fork they saw the place where the final stand was made - and where the great burning of the fallen was done. Even in the cold of the sunless day, the ashes were still hot and smoking - and the smell caused Yesugei’s eyes to water even a hundred yards on from where he looked. The dead were burnt beyond recognition - a featureless, faceless pile of charred, blackened meat broken only by yellowed skulls and bones which jutted out from the heap. An eyeless glare fell upon their company as they assembled by the site of the slaughter - a skull mounted mockingly onto the end of a pike asked of them, why did you not save us? Why did you not come?

Most of the men turned away from the smell, but Ilya remained turned towards it - forcing himself to look on as he clenched the reins of his steed in a death grip. Yesugei studied the outskirts of the burning and the slaughter for signs of where the killers made their departure, but the ground around the Leaden Fork was a trampled mess of foot and hoofprints - with no signs here nor there of which sets of tracks belonged to the retreating army, nor any survivors.

“We can do nothing out here,” he called to Ilya and the gathered warriors. “The dead are burned, and Belnopyl still lies far away. At the least, these men held your enemy in battle for a day - if their sacrifice is not to be in vain, then we should keep going for the city. Leave these men to be mourned some other day, when we return with victory.”

Ilya nodded, but then there came up a cry in the distance. One of the scouts who had gone into the night returned, and with him rode two others: one was the towering figure of Unukalhai, and the other who rode double with the scout was a ragged figure. As they drew closer, Yesugei saw the ragged man wore a dinted iron helm, and sewn to his rags was the emblem of the white bear. The survivor of the massacre slipped roughly from the saddle as the scout drew them up before Ilya, and for a while he lay there, hardly stirring.

At length, Ilya barked to the wounded warrior, “I see your mark, but from where do you hail, soldier?”

“Olyhov,” gasped the warrior, bringing himself up on all fours as he looked up at Ilya. “Boyar Potap bid me and twelve others from his druzhina to ride with Pyotr of Belnopyl. We were a hundred men horsed and three hundred on foot when they fell on us. There were thousands, my lord - they smashed into us when we crossed the Rurov to the west, and many died there at the crossing. Then at night, they sent men in boats across the river and surrounded our camp. They butchered us like sheep - I saw a few men break out from the cauldron and ride hard for the south, but I do not know where they’ve scattered.”

“What of Pyotr?” asked Ilya, though the tone of his voice betrayed the answers the warrior knew, and yet dreaded.

“I do not know,” sighed the warrior, shaking his head sorrowfully. “I last saw him trying to break out with the footmen, but they were being pressed hard against the Leaden Fork, and it was black as pitch.”

“Yet you were able to escape. And some others as well. This is good.” Ilya sighed. Then, turning to the gathered column, he commanded, “Give this brave a fresh horse! His mission shall be as important as ours!

“You, warrior, you say Pyotr’s men have ridden for the south?” Ilya asked. A nod came in response. “Then you shall bring them back to us. Two of my men will ride with you for the south, and rally whoever remains willing to fight, but do not tarry for long! Bring whoever you can find down along the Ashenmark Road, and you will find our host on foot coming down from the God-Spine - warn them of what has come to pass, and tell the one named Kargasha they must march at double-pace for Belnopyl, or not at all!”

As Ilya’s men helped the warrior onto a new steed, Ilya turned to face the rest of the mounted company. “Our mission is unchanged! It is as the Khormchak says - these men will have died for nothing if Belnopyl falls! Fall in! We ride through the night!”

Their host turned away from the site of battle and went on, crossing the Leaden Fork at its shallows where the bodies of Pyotr’s fallen nearly choked closed the flowing waters. Bending their course south and then westwards once more, soon night once more fell around them as a shroud, yet on they rode, with some in the company finding uneasy rest in the saddle. Eventually, the tall pines of the Latchwood jutted out and rose up over the horizon - tens of thousands of dark spires stabbing towards the clear night sky, a great host of pines and oaks beyond which lay Belnopyl. The moon’s light shone a path to the edge of the wood, but where the treeline marked the border between the forest and the plains, the light seemed to fail. It seemed to be no trick of the light - the dark trees were menacing as they ever could be in the night, but what strangled the light of the moon was a thick fog that crept into view through the woods - shrouding the path even when one of Ilya’s men lit a lantern and dared a few steps into the forest.

Their company came to a stop at the edge of the wood, and neither men nor horse dared to enter any deeper. Yesugei reached down to stroke the muscled neck of his own steed, but no words nor spurs could bring the horse to go any further. Behind him, he saw the rest of the horses were frightened much the same, as were their owners - the herdsmen from the western plains who turned and looked darkly upon the forest.

“This is an unnatural darkness,” declared Tuyaara plainly, looking to Ilya who stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “I suspect a trick of my kin, the Modkhai…or perhaps something altogether worse.”

The shaman gave a sidelong glance to Unukalhai, but received no reply. The Apostle remained still, and their face inscrutable as stone as they too studied the wood.

Ilya shook his head, taking the lit lantern from his man and raising it high to the edge to the woods. “To go around the Latchwood would mean to follow the Silent Brook - that is another day of hard riding, and the path there bends too close to Denev for my liking. Yet to go through now…even without this fog, the Latchwood commands respect from all who should ride through it, lest you be taken by its roots and pitfalls.”

“Never mind the pitfalls!” called one of the herdsmen, a rough-shaved man clad in furs. The rider spat to the side, and pointed to the woods. “It is known the Latchwood be the realm of spirits, dark ones! If the spirits shroud the path ahead, then we should go by their will, Denev be damned!”

“Unless Denev is wholly emptied of men, they will catch us in the rear on our march to Belnopyl,” sounded one of the freeriders. “And we’ll join Pyotr’s bunch in paradise ere we reach the city.”

“Is a bit of fog enough to unman the plainsfolk?” sneered one of Ilya’s men, a druzhinnik with a red spear emblazoned on his shield. “Petty tricks of pagan forest-folk have not stopped Klyazmite iron and horse for an age - we should force this passage, prove ourselves before the real gods of this land.”

One of the herdsmen raised his voice against the druzhinniks, and another voice rose against him in turn. Yesugei caught talk of gods and spirits in the commotion before the voices all fell into one long, angry tirade. The herdsmen spoke of spirits and the need for cunning, the druzhinniks - ever hungry for battle and haste - loudly shouted of cravens, heretics, and panic-mongers in their midst, and the freeriders fell between the two. Ilya’s booming voice that might have once shaken the men into order only seemed to add to the confusion and anger that took hold.

Yesugei felt a small, wry smile come to his face, hidden by the darkness of night. They had gathered a great host of men, armed and armored, trained to fight and ride since their little years…

And now they argue like peasants. It was Yerkh all over again, only this time the blood of the men here ran hotter, and their attitudes even more pig-headed and obstinate than the villagers. Each man was trained to fight and ride since their little years, and judged himself the wisest on what path to take. The squabbling of princes had been the death of the Klyazmites some twenty long years past - and little seemed to have changed in those long years.

“Hm…yes, little indeed has changed,” came the voice at his side. Yesugei turned to see Unukalhai seated tall in the saddle just to his right - the Apostle had stolen up as quiet as the grave beside him. “The squabbles of mortal men - and our answers grow farther the longer they tarry.”

“This magic is of your kind,” spoke Yesugei through gritted teeth. “Can you see through this shroud?”

“I can,” said Unukalhai. “But I cannot light the way. This is an ancient, hungering darkness that was left behind - and only like fire can beat it back.”

The Apostle turned to face him. “There is only one who can call on the fire of Gandroth - that first flame to bring light into the world.”

Yesugei stirred in his saddle, and thought for a moment on the Apostle’s words. No, how?

“You ask me to master powers that I myself do not know,” he replied, clenching his gloved hand into a fist. His claws had grown longer - they now pressed hard against the soft lambskin. How had he spoken with the voice of the stars? How had he brought their fire to his arrows? “I cannot even bring it under my own will-”

“Then learn faster,” spoke Unukalhai, and Yesugei thought he heard a hint of a smile in the Apostle’s voice. “Make Alnayyir’s strength your own, else you will die long before you will have your answers. Focus, and then push - you need to look beyond yourself, your frail, mortal self. The Dream is where our magic resides - our power - you have been there before, drawn on its power even, but only a little.”

The Apostle’s hand moved with a frightening swiftness, taking Yesugei’s gloved hand into their own. The urge to pull away reared its head, but the softness of the Apostle’s grasp set him at ease as Unukalhai stripped off his leather glove, gently stroking the cracked and blackened flesh. Before the nomad princeling could understand the Apostle’s intentions, a black claw suddenly pierced the hardened flesh of his palm. A dull coldness spread through his hand, but no pain - the Apostle dragged their finger along his hand, and Yesugei saw a pale line tracing in the claw’s wake.

“Those of Vraactan’s grace are masters of the divine sigils,” spoke Unukalhai softly as their claw carved the glowing symbol into Yesugei’s hand. His breathing became shallow and quick as he felt a thousand prickling needles running up along his arm. The Apostle’s voice echoed in his ears as though they were in a very small room, far away from the noise of the rest of the world. “You have seen the symbol of Gandroth - the mark of fire, and of the soul, and of the breaking of all things. But where there is destruction…there must also be creation. I give you the mark of spirit, and the union of all things.”

Unukalhai's claw lifted from his palm, and then the coolness of the Apostle’s piercing claw faded just as quickly as it appeared. When he looked down, Yesugei caught a brief glimpse of the brand carved into his palm. It was a curious mark - a short cross, but with a mark like a horned bull’s head at the apex. The pale light lingered for only a moment, and when it faded away Yesugei saw that his palm was left unmarked, unblemished by any wound.

“Close your eyes,” spoke Unukalhai, their voice barely rising above a whisper. Yesugei did not realize how close the Apostle had drawn - their stone lips were nearly at his ear, whispering with the voice of the stars, as near as a lover’s embrace. “Close your eyes, and look. Beyond.”

At the Apostle's command, his eyes shut. And then they were opened to the Dream. The voices of the warriors and Tuyaara were like whispers now, sounding muffled as if behind a heavy curtain. When he looked to the gathered Klyazmites and Ilya, he saw their bodies had transformed into like of dreadful wraiths - all white, and with shimmering outlines, as though the flames of their souls were fighting against the form given to them by flesh and bone.

And next to him, sitting tall and proud in the saddle, was a great spirit of dark purple, blue, and golden hues, shaped from the colors of the black heavens. The colors of its form seemed to bleed and swirl together into the center of Unukalhai’s bosom, where a small, pale light flickered feebly. The Apostle’s eyes were now two spheres of darkness - and their gaze threatened to pull Yesugei into a warmth and comfort from which he would never wish to emerge. The scent upon the Apostle’s form was a heady, sweet smell like late-summer flowers. Unukalhai’s hair remained a deep black shade, but now it seemed to float once more as if it were in water, and within every silken strand Yesugei saw small, winking lights.

His breath faltered; Unukalhai was so beautiful.

The Apostle raised an ethereal, coiling finger, and pointed towards the woods. The darkness of the night was chased away by a great sea of white light that took the world, and the form of the Latchwood became a forest of lashing pale tongues of fire. Every branch ended in a flick of flame, and every trunk was a great pillar of light, burning with life and power. Darkness still hung about the forest - not the dark of night, but the shrouding fog, only now its form was clear and separate from the shadows as a massive black cloud. It wrapped around the trunks and boughs of the ancient trees to form a long, thick wall - and it hissed at him as if given some life and malice by its summoner.

Yesugei slipped past Unukalhai, and he rode atop his flaming steed towards the woods. When he neared the edge of the great wall of cloud, he sensed the roiling darkness snapping out at him and his horse - and he knew now that it was the sense of the darkness their steeds feared. On instinct and electrifying power, he raised his wounded hand up against the cloud, and saw that his arm was now flickering red, like a great ember.

He whispered into the cloud, and felt the mark on his hand burn with strength. “Spirit.”

Another bright light bloomed into life, erupting from his hand as the sigil burst with its power. Yesugei felt a sharp, agonizing pain wrack down his arm like a lightning bolt, and he saw the cloud begin to twist and swirl. The hanging darkness gathered into a giant twister, and then it began to pull itself into his open palm, squirming like a giant parasite seeking entry into an open wound. Along his burning arm Yesugei saw giant black tendrils appear as the terrible power, the terrible dread plaguing the Latchwood, was pulled into his hand.

With a last, great effort, Yesugei struggled to close his fingers around the howling, snapping beast of dark cloud, tightening the trap of his hand around it. The cloud was stuck fast to the mark upon his palm, but it hissed and snapped as it strained to free itself until at last his fingers were shut, muffling the noise. Driven by a sense of instinct Yesugei brought his other hand over his closed fist, and over it he traced the mark of flame and soul.

A terrible wail exploded from the cloud, the dying scream of the fragment of a hateful and poisonous soul. He felt the life fade away within his closed fist as the summoned flame burned scorchingly hot, and when he sensed no lingering presence in his hand he unclenched his fist. A great flame sprouted from his hand, burning so brightly it blinded Yesugei in the world of dream and souls. He reflexively tried to close his eyes against the blaring light, but realized his eyes were already shut. He took a deep breath, and opened his eyes to the mortal realm once more.

The world violently rocked back into focus, the world of the living, and the muffled voices sharpened more into cries of astonishment from all around. He realized the Klyazmites were cheering, for the shadows of the Latchwood had fallen away to reveal the road through the woods. In his open hand there still lay sat the great roiling flame, pale as the moon, and where its light shone night was turned into day.

Ilya shook his head warily, but before he could speak Tuyaara put her heels to her horse and rode up to Yesugei's side, arm outstretched to the flame in his palm.

“Look upon this miracle!” The shaman cried, turning to the awestruck warriors. Her voice rang high and clear from behind her beaded veil, whose faded colors seemed to shine with renewed life. “The gods have given us the light of the very sun itself to guide our path!”

A ragged cheer went up from the druzhinniks, and then the herdsmen, and last the freeriders. Yesugei lifted the flame high above his head, flooding the Latchwood with the pale light. With his other hand he snapped the reins of his horse, and his steed went on without fear, crossing past the boundary of the treeline. The clinking of mail and the snorting of horses sounded behind him as the warriors moved to follow, and then Yesugei turned back to give a cry.

“Who would say now that the gods are not with us? Who can stand against us, with the flame of the gods to guide us? Ride swiftly, ride hard, and with the gods’ will on our side, we cannot lose! Forward, onward!”

With a great shout, their column plunged deep into the heart of the Latchwood, following the light of the white sun on its path to the city

***

As the thin rays of the morning light streamed through the windows of her new chambers, Vasilisa woke up and gave a loud yawn. Austeja, who dozed in a small cot nearby, heard her stir and rose sleepily to fetch her clothes.

But without the tolling of the bell, the silence that reigned over the city became a deafening noise of its own. In the late summer at least, there was still some color in the trees and orchards - come winter, Belnopyl would be truly gray and dead.

Vasilisa slipped into a blue woolen robe - decorated with a wide cloth-of-gold hem - and belted it about her waist. Over her shoulders went the white Solarian cloak, and with a soft click Austeja fastened it with a new pin: a golden bear whose claws held fast the cloak to her robe. As she stepped out from her quarters in the great keep of her ancestors, the bell of the distant keep tolled thrice - the first tolls of the day, but now they carried with them a promise of hope.

The memories soaked into her father’s chambers made sleep difficult, but it was a far sight greater than any other place she had rested in since madness took the world. She had a private bedroom and toilet of her own, and her father’s room remained filled with rugs, tapestries, and all the finery taken as gifts and bribes from merchants over twenty years of rule. The worked stone floors felt cold beneath her feet, even with leather boots, but the view that the room’s balcony afforded made her forget all discomfort for a moment.

The eastern facing of her father’s room revealed a view of the distant God-Spine mountains, and the great old peaks of the Latchwood pines, which were all hazy in the gray morning.

And somewhere, out in that vast domain, there lurked foes and friends alike. Ilya, Pyotr, Yesugei…and the self-proclaimed council of lords, seeking to take everything she knew and loved away. What did she know of the boyars who rose against her, truly? She racked her brain for answers, names, sigils, blood-ties and oathoods.

Down below beyond the keep, the calls of soldiers and laborers sounded loud and clear in the crisp morning air as a flurry of activity went on ahead of the siege to come. The riverine pass was blocked the day before by collapsing a great pile of debris from the walls, but the troops that manned the pass, like everyone else, were weary and ever-hungry. The food they had brought from Rovetshi was hardly enough to feed a dozen families, and all were growing weaker and weaker as their supplies went thin. Everything that could be looted from the half-submerged houses was either already eaten or fouled by rot and mud, and the fish were too few and too clever by half to be caught in enough numbers to feed the some three hundred families that remained. Soon, fights for food would begin to break out - real fights, not the incessant, petty squabbles that were easily broken by her men.

It will come, all in due time, Vasilisa thought to herself, looking into the distance at a crew of spearmen as they wrestled barrels of heavy rocks up onto the ramparts. Good men, strong men, and brave men - but hunger would kill them all the same. But at least the usurpers will starve as well, if they hope to live off the land while holding us at siege.

The Klyazmite way of war was much like that of most armies - to live off the land, to forage and pillage what food was needed. But the countryside was stripped bare - the fields were either flooded by the liberated Cherech, or left barren by their farmers who harvested what grain was ready before fleeing for safer parts. It would serve them well in the siege to come, but what then? Even if they did triumph and hold Belnopyl, what of the hunger that threatened to kill them all anyways? In earlier times when famine seemed close at hand, her father was always able to call upon Gatchisk for relief, for the fields of the southrons were ever-bountiful.

Yet now Gatchisk was also at war, and even if old Gvozden were to squash his rebellious lords in turn, who was to say he would abide by her summons? For the last two days of preparation and her druzhinniks’ counsel, it had become despairingly clear to her eyes how tenuous the White Bear’s rule over the north had been in truth. Without the blessing of the Great Khan and the implied threat of defiance, what strength and loyalty could Belnopyl truly count upon, save that of its immediate cadet houses and druzhina?

In the times before the Khormchak yoke, Pemil had always been the richest of the three northern cities - growing wealthy from amber, furs, honey, and iron - while Gatchisk’s harvests, short winters, and nearness to Albina-Suzdal provided like wealth and protection from famine. Belnopyl, meanwhile, had little - its boyars were not particularly warlike, its land was not so bountiful, and before the Khormchaks carved their western merchant roads through the city, neither had it been rich from trade.

Ironically, much of their power and prestige had come from the Khormchaks, but now that power was gone - and what allies remained were either hopelessly far, or hopelessly outnumbered by the threats all around. One man who had worked the messenger posts before the collapse of the city had managed to save a dozen pigeons in their cages, and with them she sent letters to whoever she could think of for aid: boyars in Gorkiy, Tosont, and half a dozen lesser holds, magisters in Albina-Suzdal, and even distant relations such as the Grand Duke of Merensk - a fourth cousin, if her memory served well. None of the birds had yet returned, if they even made it to their destinations.

She fell back to her usual habit of studying the recovered maps of the principality and the lands beyond. How small Belnopyl seemed when cast in ink upon weathered paper - a small principality among many other principalities, and all of them trapped between giants of the east and the west. She traced a finger about the marked roads leading out from Belnopyl, wondering where the ones closest to her might be. As she studied the map anew, she noticed a dark spot slowly meandering about the aged parchment. An ant - an ant queen - was crawling along the map, making its way from Denev to Vodubruisk.

The ant must have flown in through the open window which looked out over the dead Elder Tree - her wings marked her a new queen, setting out to cast her own colony. Vasilisa dreaded the thought of an ant infestation in her new chambers - the prospect of a thousand, or perhaps tens of thousands, of dark crawlers creeping underneath her sheets to bite her had been a silly fear she let herself carry from childhood. But try as she might, she could not bring herself to crush the hapless ant under her thumb. Why? Why couldn't she?

"I've killed men, you know," she spoke to the ant, checking to be sure Austeja had left for the ramparts. "I've killed an Apostle, even. You're just a mindless insect, one of millions, crawling out of some fetid egg to make more of yourself."

And now this queen was crawling along her table, no doubt dreaming of finding some dark corner she could turn as fetid and vile as the colony from which she emerged. Vasilisa wondered whether the ant even heard her - it gave no sign of changing its course, nor did it flee from the booming voice of the giant that towered above her. A giant, yes...

"You probably think I'm just a very big ant, don't you?" she sighed, lowering herself into a crouch until she was eye-to-eye with the queen. "You don't even know you've landed in the tower of the Grand Princess of Belnopyl."

She paused, thinking. "No, you probably don't even know what a tower or a city is. How could you know? Your world is simply too small, and mine too vast, too impossible for you to grasp. You aren't stupid...you simply cannot understand it. And you never will."

The queen made her way to Vodubruisk, then stopped to probe the parchment around her for a while before crawling to the God-Spine, the borders of the principality. "And I've crawled across the land while you're crawling along this damn paper, only you want to make new life - I'm trying to save what's left, those who are still left. Those who I love..."

Yesugei. Where are you?

The queen was nearly free from the lands of Belnopyl - she traversed across the ink-strokes of the mountain peaks in a dozen tiny steps, then descended into the Hungry Steppe, a vast and empty expanse of blank parchment broken only by a few brush strokes of grass and the Khormchak nomads’ holy mountains: the Khurvan.

"But this world, it feels like it's crumbling apart all around me, and everything I do just feels like it is pulling it apart ever more," Vasilisa mumbled, her thoughts spilling free in the emptiness of the room, her only audience a fellow royal. "And meanwhile, I sense things...someone else is talking to me, Vraactan, Chirlan, I do not know…and I cannot fathom what they want from me. The darkness...the dreams...why me?"

Why me?

Why?

The ant queen was nearly at the edge of the paper, on the verge of tumbling into the abyss that was the space between the table and the floor. But still she trundled on, unknowing - or perhaps uncaring of the plunge. Would she spread her wings in time to avoid the fall?

Vasilisa gave a sigh and picked up the map, scooping the ant queen. She crossed over to the windowsill, and shook the ant out, causing her to take flight.

Were it only that I had wings as well.

"Go, leave this place. Find somewhere else to make your nest - someplace kinder."

The ant queen flew further and further away, growing smaller and smaller in her vision until it disappeared into the gray skies, the gray morning, and the gray ruins.

Then suddenly, there came the long, loud blast of a horn to shake her from her thoughts. Footsteps sounded by the door to her chambers, and then it creaked open. Oleg’s scarred face peeked inside, and Vasilisa saw he was already dressed for battle.

“Banners, my lady!” the druzhinnik called. “That was Kirill’s boys sounding the call!”

In an instant, she was rushing down from the keep with Oleg pacing by her side. They arrived quickly to the gates of the Golden Pass, and she saw Austeja shouting orders to the archers and spearmen as they formed ranks. Shortly after she ascended to the ramparts, there came a second blast from the Night’s Gate. In the distance, she saw Demyan shepherding his defenders to the front. The surge of troops all around them was dizzying - archers nocking arrows, crossbowmen winding back metal bowstrings, and peasants helping to raise up heavy, rounded rocks to hurl at any who would pass below. She saw Austeja climbing up onto one of the stone turrets, a great silver-banded horn in hand. The shaman gave a deafening blast that shook Vasilisa’s bones, and filled her heart with dread. Looking to the south, she saw a banner come over the horizon, silhouetted against the glow of the morning sun that rose behind it.

The sun? The sun does not rise from the south.

A moment later there emerged a lone rider over the crest of the land - and she saw in his hand was the pale false sun. Even from afar, she saw his clothes were not of Klyazmite fashion, but of the Khormchak style.

No…no…it cannot be.

The rider spurred his horse on through the level plains of the south, the false sun raised high above his head, leaving a thin trail of light across the land. Past the low hills, war trumpets sounded, and then in the rider’s wake there poured forth a shimmering stream of armored horsemen. A dozen different heraldic charges flapped and waved in the wind, but the greatest and highest of them all was the white bear, its jaws parted in a mighty roar as if to announce the riders’ return to the city.

As the false sun and its bearer neared the walls of the city, Vasilisa leaned over the ramparts to give a cry.

“YESUGEI!” she shouted, her voice sounding high and clear over the plains. “YESUGEI!”

The nomad princeling halted his horse before the Golden Pass. His face was scarred and weathered, and she saw the arm that held up the false sun was blackened and charred, as if scorched by flames. But the smile that beamed back at her was still his, and dread gave way to singing hope.

How foolish it was to hope. How foolish, and how beautiful it was.