The world spun in all directions, with Zmei as the eye in a storm. When Mirnían closed his eyes, he felt no movement, but as soon as he opened them, he felt sick. Mountains formed around him like piles of newly-churned butter, craggy ridges of hard grey-brown rock with hardly any plant life. As they hardened and ceased their strange, undulating dance, Mirnían breathed in, and felt the sparseness of the air. It left him giddy.
The giant stood next to him, looking over the dips and rises of the crags. They stood before a tall conical peak, probably the highest point of the ridge.
“There it is,” said Zmei, pointing at the tip of the peak.
Mirnían saw nothing of importance. “What am I looking at?”
Zmei sighed. “I had thought that maybe…” He shook his head. “The weeping tree is on the tip of that conical rock. You cannot see it; neither can I. But it is there. Just not in this Realm; it is in the Mids of Aer. Very soon Voran will find a way to it. We will help him find it.”
“Why can you not find it yourself, if your power is so great?” Mirnían was beginning to doubt his strange new friend.
“You have much to learn about the world, young pup,” said Zmei, no longer smiling. “Try to pay attention.”
With that, he spun into his serpent-horse form again and disappeared in a storm of fire and thunder. Mirnían sat down in the sparse shelter of a twisted pine, and closed his eyes to sleep.
There will come a time when the glory that is Vasyllia will fade. Much knowledge will be lost. Much wisdom. Much beauty. But we, the Warriors of the Word, will preserve it. In time, one will come who will have to restore it all.
A private letter from Vohin Elían to Dar Martinían, year 643 of the Covenant
Chapter 27
Black Turnips
Voran faced Sabíana, but she refused to look at him. For all his desire, he could not approach her. She sat at the edge of a still, oval pool, ringed on all sides by holly trees and osiers, their silver bark luminescent. She sang, and she and the song were somehow one. As her fingers plaited her black hair, they seemed to be plaiting music as well, the melody intertwining in and out of itself. Then she looked at him, and her eyes were all wrong. They were blue and cold, and too narrowly set together. Then her nose shifted slightly in her face, and green sprouted in her hair like fast-growing moss. She smiled, and her canines were long and sharp. The ground gaped at Voran’s feet, and he fell awake.
The terror was a foreign thing in his chest, a parasite feeding on him from within. Just a dream, he reminded himself. Just a dream.
This was the third night that the drowned girl, one of the three Alkonist who ruled in his favor against the hag, intruded on his dreams of Sabíana. Now, Voran no longer doubted she had done it intentionally. Every night, she seemed to be digging deeper into him, provoking, and today the unpleasant stir of lust for her was intense, yearning for release.
He threw aside his wool coverlet, stale with sweat, and ran out into the winter night with no shirt or boots. The biting cold, quickly turning to fire on his skin, was effective at purging the desire that she kept feeding him at night.
“You must be dying here, Voran,” said a girl’s voice, husky in a sultry way. The drowned girl, naked in spite of the cold, sat in the branches of a nearby oak. Her hair still waved as if she were underwater. The darkness did more than enough to hide the details of her nakedness, but Voran still squirmed. The unpleasant stirring was not going away this time.
“Why do you torture me?” he whispered, not wanting to awake his master. “I want no part of your games. I remember very well what you wanted to do with me. Tickling, was it?”
“Oh, it would have been such fun, I promise.” Her laugh was lunatic. As if to taunt him, the moon decided to pick that moment to show its nearly full face.
“For you, I have no doubt. But I imagine I know what happens to the men whom you… tickle.”
“Really, Voran, you are so morbid. Not everything in the world is out to kill you or eat you, you know. I can’t help it if I am desirable to such as you.”
He guffawed, though his stomach still churned from the thoughts he was trying to beat back from his conscious mind—images of white flesh and red lips.
“What do you want?” He spat in her direction. The spittle froze before it reached the ground.
“I want what you want. The right thing to happen. I want you to go on your quest, to find the weeping tree, to heal Vasyllia, and to live happily ever after.”
“No, you do not. You want something else.”
“Why do you men always think every woman desires them? Could I not want something simply because it is the right thing to do?”
She sounded sincere enough, but the moon did not provide enough light to test the truth of her eyes.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“I am a bearer through the levels, like the white stag. I can take you to the weeping tree in a heartbeat.”
“How?”
“Well,” she looked away like a demure maid, and he thought she blushed, “I am not a beast you can simply ride. I am a creature of love and passion. You would have to bed me, properly. That is my only way of passage.”
Voran laughed. “I knew there would be a fee.”
She slapped the branch like a petulant three-year-old. “It’s not my fault. I’m a rusalka. It’s what I am. I merely give you a choice to fulfill your vocation.”
“You offer me a way back to my love by taking it from me?”
She tossed her hair back in a parody of an elegant lady’s gesture. “I am basically a goddess, anyway, Voran. Your princess can’t hold it against you if you are bedded by a goddess.”
He shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. He didn’t like to admit it, but it was a tempting offer.
“Go away,” he said. “If I need you, I will call for you.”
“That is really all I wanted from you, dear little thing. Was that so hard?”
She was gone, and the place where she had been was nothing more than an oddly shaped branch illumined by the moon into the semblance of human shape. Had he dreamed it all? He returned to bed and was asleep again in moments, this time dreamless.
