The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 32: THE SECRET OF THE CAVES

The rough timbers of the monastery wall were aged and warped, and there were numerous gaps and holes in the wood. Covered in pitch, they were a poor defensive barrier, if they had ever been intended as such. Cnán and Finn approached the wood cautiously and dared to peek through the gaps.

Whereupon they discovered the source of the stench.

As they had climbed the rough path, the smell had gotten worse, as if they were climbing through veritable layers of stink. What little breeze there had been had fled, and now, in the torpid stillness of the afternoon, the smell clung to them. It seeped through the seams in her clothing and beneath her hair. Earlier, with the assistance of Yasper’s mint tincture, she had kept her stomach in order, but now… Steeling herself against a dangerous loss of her self-control, she leaned toward the stained and warped wall again and put her eye up to a spy hole.

Animal carcasses—so many she couldn’t bear to count them—littered the ground as though tossed there by the hands of some immense, thoughtless child. Most had been stripped of their hides and left to rot in the summer heat. Some of the bodies appeared to squirm and twitch, and she refused to let herself imagine that some of those bloody and flayed bodies might be alive… No, those were maggots and ants at work inside their ribcages.

“Hide workers,” Finn muttered, shaking his shaggy head. “Lazy and wasteful.” Waddling sideways, he gestured for her to follow him.

She crept along in his wake, breathing through her mouth.

Inside the wall, the one-storied buildings were arranged around a rectangular common. They were simple structures, and there was little art in their construction. One each for sleeping, eating, and praying, she thought, counting them. And one more for their grisly work… In the open courtyard, there was another structure, a narrow stone well house with a worn wooden door.

Of the Livonians and the ragmen, there was no sign.

“Where…?” Cnán hissed at Finn, who only shrugged in return. She moved a few feet farther along the wall, choosing a different gap to spy through. She squinted, shifting her body from side to side in an effort to see more of the courtyard. But it made no difference. The monastery was deserted.

“Where did they go?” she wondered aloud. It was possible they were inside one of the buildings, but she couldn’t fathom an explanation as to why. The gate had been opened readily enough, which meant they had been invited inside and were not—as Feronantus had mistakenly said—chasing the ragged hide workers. But what was so important in these buildings that they ran away from us? she wondered.

Finn tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at the top of the wall. He mimed climbing and held out his hands for her to use as a brace. “Oh no,” she shook her head, “I’m not touching that wall.”

“Would you prefer the front gate?” he asked.

“I would prefer not—”

A clank of metal against stone interrupted her, and they both returned their attention to the monastery.

Two Livonians had suddenly appeared and were standing next to the well house. One had put his shield down, leaning it against the wall. It was the sound of the metal rim scraping against the stone that had alerted them. The Livonians were sullen and angry—not with each other, she realized, but rather with an order they had been given.

“The two who fainted,” Finn whispered. “Guard duty.”

“Guarding what?”

As if in response to her question, the well house door creaked open to disgorge one of the raggedy monks. The Livonians kept their distance, and the monk jabbered animatedly at them in Ruthenian, stopping only when one of the knights put his hand on his sword hilt. Cackling like a diseased crow—and looking not unlike one as well—the rag-covered man scampered away, ducking into the nearest building.

Cnán eyed the well house. The hut was tiny, and while it might hold all three of the men and the well, she couldn’t imagine the Livonians tolerating the presence of the foul monk for longer than a heartbeat.

With the monk gone, the Livonians had no one to torment, and their attentiveness gave way to lethargy and boredom. The shieldless one began to cast about, his attention on the nearby ground. Looking for a place to sit down, Cnán thought, and she couldn’t blame his reticence.

“Caves,” Finn said.

“What?”

“Caves,” he repeated. “Under this hill.” He grabbed her shoulder, pulling her away from the wall. “We must tell Feronantus.”

“I was surprised when Illarion showed no interest in coming down here,” Roger muttered to Raphael. “Now I wish I had thought a little harder about what it signified.”

He was a voice from the darkness. During the first part of the expedition—a descent into cellars, subcellars, and crypts of the priory—Vera had lit their way with a torch. The depredations of the Mongols had left fine oils in short supply, and so this consisted of a rag on a stick, soaked in rendered animal fat that was available for purposes of illumination only because it had gone rancid. This had stunk even before she had ignited it and had produced a spreading plume of thick, greasy smoke that they could have followed with their noses even had they not been able to see its fitful yellow light.

After a series of descents into ever deeper, moister, and darker parts of the substructure, they had reached a place where the ceiling had become so low and the ventilation so poor that Vera had been obliged to douse the torch—though not before using it to ignite a pair of crude candles, consisting of the pith of some plant soaked in tallow. By the light of these they crawled through a low opening and thus entered into something that was clearly a natural cave. Chisel marks on the wall proved that it had been widened, and mortared ashlars provided level footing, at least for the first few dozen paces.

Roger’s comment was probably a reference to the way the place smelled. It was not well ventilated. Certain notes in the aroma made it obvious that these caves must communicate somewhere with all the gutters of Kiev. That, in and of itself, was hardly unusual. One could not go anywhere near a human habitation without smelling what ran in its gutters. The musty spoor of an uncontrolled rodent population was mixed with it. Too, though, Raphael’s nose was detecting an unmistakable smell of dead flesh. Not the unbearable, nausea-inducing ripeness of something that had died recently, but rather the product of a slow decay that had been going on for a long time.

“It is remarkable,” Raphael said, “that cities can be so very different in their buildings, their peoples, and their customs—but the catacombs are always the same.”

Vera and Percival were several paces ahead of them; the Shield-Maiden knew the way and moved nimbly through the passages, which were becoming rougher and more twisted the deeper they penetrated into the heart of the hill. Percival was carrying their candle and casting a long shadow on the floor in his wake, which Raphael tried to fill in with the feeble light of his own candle. But he was dazzled by the flame directly before his face. The floor was becoming more uneven—the masons had not ventured into this part of the catacombs to lay down pavers. Roger edged in front so that the candle flame would not be shining into his eyes, and Raphael held the candle high to shine the light over Roger’s shoulder, to let him find the way and warn him of any hazards.

Raphael’s attention wandered. He took note of several niches that had been chiseled into the walls. Some of these were occupied by corpses wrapped up in shrouds. Others were vacant except for jumbled blankets and ragged, dirty furs.

Roger noticed the same thing and turned back, his face incredulous. “People sleep down here?”

Raphael made an effort not to laugh. Vera would hear it and be offended. “Perhaps during the worst days of the Mongol siege,” he suggested. “But I cannot believe that the good sisters would make a habit of it.”

The passage forked from time to time, and whenever it did, Vera led them into what she deemed the correct path, while making some comment to Percival about what exhibits they might have found if they had chosen to go the other way. In most cases, these were holy wonders and relics of various descriptions, but it seemed that some tunnels led off in the direction of churches and monasteries elsewhere in the city.

“Every godly building in this town,” he muttered to Roger, “is, it seems, connected by this subterranean network.”

“Good thing for them the Mongols never found that out,” Roger remarked.

Raphael shuddered. “I doubt they would venture into a place such as this one. No victory would be worth it.”

“Which leads to the question…” Roger began, then stifled himself.

“What the hell are we doing here? Going on a quest, of course.”

Raphael got the sense that they were approaching some crisis, for the passage had become quite difficult to negotiate, being nothing more than a series of air pockets of varying sizes and shapes, joined by openings that had to be crawled through or climbed up to, with only a few chisel strokes in the slick stone to serve as footholds. Vera had to stop and think for a disturbingly long time at some of the turning points. But then, noting a concentration of scorch marks left by the torches and tapers of pilgrims who had gone before, she finally led them around the curve of a boulder and through a crevice that was invisible until almost the moment they passed through it. They entered into a flat-floored chamber large enough for the four of them to stand comfortably and look about.

The contents of the room were not as interesting, to Raphael, as the faces of his companions: Vera, whose sense of duty and hospitality could not fully hide her impatience; Roger, incredulous that he was down in a place like this when he was supposed to be riding east to kill the Great Khan; both of them looking curiously at Percival, whose face was alert, curious, and avid.

Clearly the chamber was a place of importance. Set into the rock all round were wrought torch brackets, currently vacant; smudges on the stone above them proved that they had once been used to illuminate holy rites of some description. The fainter glow of their candles illuminated carvings along the walls, here visible and there hidden by shadow—painted effigies of figures that Raphael assumed were famed to the place’s history. A tall and terrible figure sat in a rigid, dignified posture upon a throne, defied by three figures upon horseback, gleaming swords wavering behind the sheen of hazy torchlight.

“Koschei the Deathless,” Vera said, following Raphael’s stare. “An evil spirit, a tyrant tsar, vanquished long ago. You stand in the tomb of the one who led his brothers to slay him.” She turned to where a marker, chiseled in stone, was set into the wall. The words were nearer Greek than Ruthenian.

“Saint Ilya’s grave,” Raphael murmured upon deciphering the name on the stone.

“He has held vigil in this place for years uncounted since vanquishing our land’s enemies,” Vera said, reverently touching the stone. Then she turned to look Raphael in the eye. “There is no safer place for secrets than here.”

After a moment, Percival knelt before the marker and crossed himself. “I thank you for your trust in showing us this, Sister Vera. To pay homage at the tomb of such a one is an honor few men receive.”

“They called him Chobotok,” Vera said. “It means ‘boot.’ For he fought off numerous foes with only his shoe as a weapon.”

Raphael’s eyes darted to the face of Roger, who was about to burst out into open laughter. He lashed out with his free hand and laid it on Roger’s shoulder, giving him a little shake. Startled, Roger spun away and met his eye. Raphael shook his head minutely, then glanced toward Percival, who was still kneeling and mumbling a Latin prayer.

“Is Saint Ilya speaking to you, Brother?” Raphael asked gently. “For there must be some reason why God has led us to this place.”

After a long and agonizing silence, Percival spoke. “Saint Ilya is silent on the matter,” he admitted.

Trying to catch her breath from the headlong run down the slope—not to mention calm her pounding heart—Cnán let Finn tell Feronantus and the others what they had seen. He seemed annoyed at being asked to speak at length, but after a few sentences, he fell into a surprising loquaciousness.

When they had first departed from Legnica, the hunter’s rough version of Latin had been almost incomprehensible to her, but now, after being in his company for nearly two months, she found she could understand him.

“What could they hope to find in these caves?” Feronantus asked when Finn finished.

The hunter shrugged. “There is nothing of value within those walls. What the Livonians want lies elsewhere, but they have to go through the caves to get it. Otherwise they would have brought their horses.”

“A raiding party,” Eleázar spat.

“But raiding what?” Yasper asked, stroking his beard. He looked at the church on the other hill, the onion-topped domes peeking over the top of the crumbling walls. “The cathedral?”

“Percival…” The name was out of Cnán’s mouth before she could stop it, and she mentally kicked herself for the slip of her tongue. It was her heart, she fumed, still beating so hard from the run downhill that had betrayed her.

“Yasper,” Feronantus ordered, “stay with Finn and Cnán. Keep a watch on the monastery. If the Livonians return, follow them.” He gathered up his reins and snapped them, getting his horse’s attention. “The rest of us will ride for the cathedral, to warn our brothers.”

Istvan chortled, kicking his horse in the ribs. Clearly the Hungarian was eager for another opportunity to cross paths with the Livonians. His horse sprang forward, and he led the party as they galloped along the road, heading around the hill.

Yasper waved away the dust kicked up by their departing companions, and then he hooked a leg over his saddle and slid to the ground. “Well…” he started, rustling around in his saddlebags, gathering a few oddments and trinkets. “I guess we’d better get started.” He grabbed one of the two jugs he had found earlier and forced it and the rest of the items he had selected into a large satchel he hung around his waist.

“Started…?” Cnán asked.

Yasper squinted up at the monastery. “Uh-huh.”

“Feronantus said we were to wait and see if they returned. He didn’t say anything about going up there.”

Yasper shrugged. “He didn’t say we shouldn’t, either.” He toyed with the small vial of mint oil. “Did it really smell that bad?”

Cnán snatched the vial from his hands. “Worse than you can imagine,” she said. She smeared the ointment liberally on several fingers and slathered her nose before returning the bottle to the alchemist. “We’re just going to keep an eye on them,” she said. “From outside the walls.”

“Of course,” Yasper said nonchalantly, as if she had just commented on the weather or the color of his tunic. He rubbed the ointment into his mustache, twirling the long strands idly with his oily fingers. “Only two?” he asked.

Finn nodded, a wide grin spreading across his face.

Yasper turned his attention to the decrepit wall around the monastery. “Should I bring some rope…?” he offered.

“You think too much,” Finn snorted. “Door is weak. Go up, knock it down, fight Livonians.”

“I would have thought you a subtler man, Finn.” Yasper chuckled.

Finn raised an eyebrow at the alchemist and hefted his boar spear. “Subtlety is for when you are stalking fleet prey. It has no purpose otherwise.”

A slow smile spread across Yasper’s face as he turned to address Cnán. “How many of those ragged…monks…did you see?”

“Just one, but there must be more,” Cnán reluctantly replied. “Unless they went with the Livonians.”

What Yasper was suggesting seemed like madness, but she could see some virtue to his plan. They had given no thought to the Livonians’ purpose previously, and the raiders had managed to disappear from under their very noses. If they were to follow the Livonians, there might be no other way to catch up to them quickly enough to discern their purpose. “The hide workers,” she pointed out, “they skin the animals up there, so I presume they have some tools…”

“Lead us,” Yasper said, exchanging a glance with Finn that was half mad excitement, half fear.

Cnán felt the same emotions rising from the pit of her stomach. Was this the infectious spirit of her companions driving her into like-minded madness?

“If Saint Ilya offers you no guidance, Brother, then perhaps what…we…seek is not down in these caverns, and we should allow Sister Vera to resume her normal duties above,” Raphael suggested. “Unless you can supply some meager hint as to what the object of your quest might be.”

“Hints, perhaps. I have seen little and been illuminated as to its meaning less,” Percival said, getting to his feet. “There is a relic guarded ardently in a secret place. A chalice—searched for by many, protected by the worthy—I had hoped that perhaps it might be found here.”

At this, there was silence. Raphael recalled a conversation he’d overheard between Percival and Taran, wherein the late oplo had been questioned at length by Percival about cauldron myths from his native Ireland. They’d talked late into the night as Raphael had tossed and turned, wishing they’d shut up. Raphael had thought naught of their conversation until now.

Percival sought the Grail, and he had hoped to find it in Kiev.

“We have protected many things over the march of years,” Vera replied. “But the Holy Grail is not amongst them.”

Percival gave a respectful nod, though he could not hide the look of disappointment that flashed briefly across his face. “But you do protect something.”

Vera said nothing.

“We will help you regardless of whether you divulge your secrets,” Percival said quietly. “Know that.”

A look of consternation—or was it well-hidden exasperation?—flashed over Vera’s face. She had said moments ago that this was a good place to speak of secrets. Clearly—to Raphael, at least—she had been urging Percival to divulge his secret. But he had taken it the other way and leapt to the assumption that Vera had something to reveal.

She considered his words in silence, the only sound the faint hissing of the melting tallow in the rushlight that illuminated her face. She looked next at each of them and finally relented. “I will tell you the closest thing we have to a holy secret in this place. According to legend, the grave of Saint Ilya guards the Egg of Koschei the Deathless.”

Percival did not try to hide his interest. “Tell us more of this sacred egg.”

Roger, unable to contain himself, turned his back on them, stalked to the nearest wall, and pressed his forehead against the cool stone.

“It is not sacred,” Vera said. “Rather the opposite—it contains the soul of the evil spirit Koschei, and whoever has it in his possession has Koschei in his power.”

“Is it perhaps contained in a sacred relic—something shaped like a goblet or chalice?”

Vera was now looking at Percival very oddly indeed and seemed unwilling to speak plainly for once.

Roger turned to face the center of the chamber and stepped slowly toward Percival. “My brother!” he exclaimed. “How can you not understand her words? It is not here. We have come all this way to hear a fairy story about a hobgoblin who keeps his soul in a fucking egg! Whatever purpose led you to steer our path toward Kiev had some other end in mind—some end that is going ignored and untended to while we stand in this sewer prating about Koschei the Deathless.”

Another man might have been offended. But no anger was on Percival’s face as he locked eyes with Roger. Long was the silence that followed.

It stretched out even longer as first Vera, then Roger, then Percival, and finally Raphael began to glance toward the chamber’s exit, distracted by approaching sounds that could not possibly have been made by rats. At first these were human voices, echoing distantly along the intestine twists and bends of the cavern’s walls. But as they listened, they began to hear too the metallic clank and jingle of steel—steel worn on the body as armor and steel carried in the hand.

“We are not alone down here,” Raphael said.