The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery Page 6

  “Interesting perhaps, but I shan’t be doing it a fourth time,” Ekaterine said firmly. “I don’t think it’s at all fair for one thing. And waters of life are clearly not intended for those of the rodent persuasion.”

  “Quite right,” Varanus agreed. The mice had been something of a failure, though their autopsies had been equally intriguing. Most had died from apparent nervous shock, but a few had displayed the disintegration of their internal structures. “Perhaps a dog next time.”

  “No,” Ekaterine said.

  “No?”

  “No,” Ekaterine repeated. “Doctor, I’m not superstitious, but I do believe that the waters of life are special. There is a reason why only humans are able to ingest them and live, and I think that is ample reason to leave them be where test subjects are concerned. Inspect the water under a microscope all you like, but by God please stop administering it to living creatures just to see the results.”

  Varanus was only half listening, and she said aloud, “I wonder if it is related to body mass. What about a horse—”

  “Doctor!” Ekaterine cried.

  “Yes, yes, all right,” Varanus said quickly. “No more test subjects, word of honor. It really is a shame, though. I would very much like to study a body continuously from the moment the water is administered until it either wakes up immortal or dies in its sleep. I wonder if anyone has ever done that before.”

  Ekaterine sighed loudly and shook her head.

  “If anyone has, it will have been Konstantine. But I should hope not. This is water that grants immortality. There should be a reverence surrounding it. That is to say, I certainly don’t believe that we’re chosen by God to become immortal, long-lived, or to die, but there is something going on. Some manner of test, surely.”

  “Ekaterine,” Varanus said, taking Ekaterine’s hand and looking at her very seriously, “I simply cannot accept that. We are not judged when we drink that water. Our worthiness is not weighed by it. If that were the case, it would be a most unreliable judge of character. Consider the Basilisks, who are surely among the most unworthy, and yet they did not die when they were being tested.”

  “I suppose—”

  “And you, my dear Ekaterine, are without a doubt the most worthy of all the Shashavani,” Varanus said, making Ekaterine giggle a little, embarrassed and amused at the compliment. “And yet, you still walk in the Shadow of Death. If this water is a judge of us, it is a most unreliable one.”

  “Flattery,” Ekaterine protested.

  “No,” Varanus insisted. “This water, however spectacular, interacts with the body in a purely physical manner and produces a quantifiable result, and I am going to discern how and why it does it.”

  Ekaterine put her hands on her hips and frowned at Varanus for a few moments, trying not to smile. Presently, she said:

  “Well, if anyone has written down observations on those sleeping from the water, it will be in the archives, and it will likely have been Konstantine. More than that will require the assistance of a librarian.”

  Varanus sighed and said, “Back to the cacophony of books, I suppose.”

  She put on her coat—the better to hide newly borrowed reading material—and made for the door.

  “Oh, and Ekaterine,” she said, “there are some skin samples on the desk ready to be exposed to the sun. I have numbered them and noted the length of exposure of each. Do be a dear and take notes on them while I’m out.”

  “Skin samples?” Ekaterine asked. She shuffled some papers around until she found the case that held them, and she gasped at the quantity. “Whose skin?” she demanded, sounding more than a little horrified.

  “Mine, of course,” Varanus answered.

  * * * *

  It was late afternoon. Varanus did not even realize what time it was until she reached one of the outer corridors and saw the orange glow of dusk filtering in past the curtains. While the entire castle was sealed against the light during daytime, the exterior halls were never as secure as the private rooms. There were enough paths that were wholly sheltered from the light that the young could get about without much danger, and the old enjoyed a touch of sunlight from time to time. Varanus enjoyed the light as well; she simply could not allow it to touch her, so she walked along the wall away from the windows, skirting the rays of the dying sun that crept in through the cracks.

  In a broad, high-ceiling hall where several corridors converged, she encountered Lord Iosef approaching from an adjoining passage. He was simply dressed as was his custom, and the somberness of his black chokha made Varanus’s rather plain European dress seem extravagant by comparison.

  Iosef nodded at her and gave the barest hint of a smile.

  “Good evening Varanus,” he said. “It has been some days since last we spoke. How have you been keeping?”

  Varanus almost laughed. “Some days.” It had been nearly two weeks by her count since their paths had crossed. But for a Shashavani who counted life in centuries, not decades, that was perhaps akin to a handful of hours.

  “Indeed, My Lord,” Varanus replied. “I am well. And yourself?”

  “My studies have kept me busy,” Iosef answered, “with long hours and little rest, which is to say that I am very well and quite pleased by it.”

  Varanus shook her head at him, though it was subtle so as not to be rude. There was that slight smile of his. She could not tell if he was making a joke or being quite serious, and in all honesty, either was possible.

  “Where are you bound?” Iosef asked.

  “To the library,” Varanus said, motioning toward the corridor in question.

  “Ah, returning books I presume,” Iosef said.

  “Certainly not, My Lord,” Varanus replied. “To be honest, I can’t imagine why people keep asking me that.”

  “Why indeed.” Iosef folded his hands. “I have been searching for an original copy of Soslan’s Third Treatise. You wouldn’t perchance know where I could find one, would you?”

  Varanus felt her mouth tighten at this, but she kept smiling pleasantly. He was teasing, surely, but with such seriousness that it almost seemed an innocent question.

  “If I find one, you shall be the first to know,” she told him.

  As they conversed, Varanus saw a man enter the hall from the direction of one of the gates. He was short and willowy, with dark hair and a thick beard, and his chokha and boots were severely worn. He must have been a traveler just returned from some great sojourn; the Shashavani who did so often forgot to tend to the upkeep of their clothes, since their bodies were all but immune to the elements.

  Iosef raised a hand to greet the man and called to him:

  “Good day to you, Brother Teimuraz. Finally returned to us?”

  “Hail and well met, Iosef,” Teimuraz answered, bowing his head to him.

  He nodded politely to Varanus but otherwise paid her no mind, which caused Varanus to bristle slightly. She knew that it was not an intended slight—being so young, she was simply dismissed as a novice, a situation that was not likely to change until she had lived past her first century—but she found it quite irritating.

  “What news from Turkestan?” Iosef asked.

  “Mmm,” Teimuraz answered. “Developments. Many developments. But before I make my report, I must speak to Lady Sophio and the Council.”

  “Is something amiss?” Though his tone was level, there was something in Iosef’s countenance that suggested concern.

  “Not amiss, no,” Teimuraz said. He paused and then spoke softly, as if concerned that they might be overheard—though whether it was meant to include or exclude Varanus, she could not tell. “I have found the tomb of Arslan Khan.”

  Iosef was silent for a moment. His eyes widened ever so slightly as to suggest astonishment, but his expression remained placid.

  “You are certain of this?” he asked.

/>   “As certain as one can be,” Teimuraz said. “On my journey home, I passed a tomb built of stones and earth upon the shores of the Aral Sea, isolated and unmolested, and the tomb untouched by robbers. It was a place that was shunned. Even the birds would not fly above it.”

  “That is as the legends state,” Iosef agreed. “Did you enter it?”

  For a moment a shadow fell over Teimuraz’s countenance and he answered, “No, no I did not. I felt...a presence. I did not feel it safe to tarry.”

  “A presence?” Iosef asked. As Teimuraz began to draw away, Iosef caught his arm. “What do you mean by that?”

  “As I say, I must report to the Council.”

  He and Iosef fell silent as a newcomer—one of the elders named Iese of Kartli—approached them from the opposite end of the hall. Varanus did not know the man personally, but she was aware that he was counted among Sophio’s advisors.

  “Did I hear mention of the Council?” he asked.

  “My Lord,” Iosef said, bowing his head to Iese. Varanus quickly did the same.

  “Iosef.” Iese turned to Teimuraz and nodded to him in greeting. “Welcome back, Brother Teimuraz. We were unsure when you would rejoin us. How is the outer world?”

  “Turkestan,” Varanus added helpfully.

  Iese and Teimuraz both glanced at her with what might have been irritation—it was so damned difficult to read emotion on the faces of the Shashavani—but Varanus swore that she saw the corner of Iosef’s mouth turn up into a smile at her words.

  “Thank you,” Iese said.

  “The outer world is the outer world,” Teimuraz said. “It will not improve itself merely for our convenience. And I daresay that it will be a bitter winter, but at least there should be a warm spring to follow.”

  “Amen to that,” Iese said. “But you spoke of the Council?”

  “I must speak to the Eristavi at once,” Teimuraz answered. “I have—” again he lowered his voice “—discovered the tomb of Arslan Khan.”

  Iese was momentarily silent.

  “A development indeed,” he finally said. “Come, I will have someone bring you fresh clothes and...a bath. And I will ask that the Council be called to order that you may make your report.”

  Teimuraz seemed puzzled, clearly no longer recognizing the smell of the road that hung about him.

  “Why would I need a bath?”

  Iosef cleared his throat softly and said, “We shall leave you to your business, My Lords.”

  Taking Varanus by the arm, he led her in the direction of the library. Varanus went without complaint, and she was silent until they had departed the hall.

  “Who is Arslan Khan?” she asked.

  Iosef chuckled and replied, “He is the man who very nearly conquered the world.”

  “Ah, I take it he was French then,” Varanus quipped.

  “No,” Iosef said.

  “English?”

  Iosef gave another one of his slight smiles.

  “Tell me Varanus, are you familiar with the Kara Keçi? The so-called Black Goat Turks?”

  “I am not,” Varanus said. “Am I to presume from the name that they raised black goats?”

  “A logical enough guess, but no,” Iosef answered. “The Black Goat Turks were a steppe tribe that more or less dominated the lower Volga during the Middle Ages, terrorizing their sedentary neighbors and exacting tribute from the other nomadic tribes that occupied the region. According to the Arab scholar Ibn Fadlan, they took their name from a demonic figure called the Black Goat, which they worshipped as a god. Ibn Fadlan tells us that the Volga Bulgars—who were his primary source of information on the subject—lived in terror of the Kara Keçi, who would raid them mercilessly in order to take captives for sacrifice to the Black Goat.”

  “Chilling,” Varanus said. “It’s like something from one of Ekaterine’s Gothic novels.”

  “That is certainly true,” Iosef agreed. “We have similar accounts from the Rus, the Khazars, the Bulgarians, even the Byzantines and the Persians, all of whom suffered Kara Keçi raids at one point or another. We are told that the captives would be taken out to some desolate place on the steppe—a place ‘shunned by all living things’ if one believes such a tale. The Bulgars claimed that the victims were then washed in ashes and sacrificed like cattle to the head of a goat that was freshly cut off and placed upon an altar. And then, it is said, the Black Goat itself would appear to them and speak to them through the head. And through the head, the Black Goat would give them commands and signs of its favor.”

  Varanus paused and blinked at this. After a moment she said:

  “I take it back. It’s not a novel at all. It’s a farce.”

  “Absurd, yes,” Iosef agreed. “Certainly we can assume that the Black Goat did not actually appear to them, and the head did not actually speak. But such beliefs were a matter of great seriousness to them, and their countless victims were all too real.”

  “Of course,” Varanus said.

  “There are certain similarities between the Black Goat faith and the Cult of the so-called Dark Faun that was so powerful during the decadence of Imperial Rome,” Iosef continued, “but I find the parallel unlikely at best.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Simply put, the Kara Keçi were reported to be practicing their faith well before Ibn Fadlan arrived among the Bulgars in the early tenth century, but they did not begin raiding the Balkans or Byzantium—the furthest points north and east that the Roman cult is known to have spread—until a century later. So I maintain that the one could not have informed the other. It is perhaps the only great matter on which Sophio and I vehemently disagree.”

  “Sophio?” Varanus asked. “Why would she care about such a thing, My Lord?”

  Iosef seemed momentarily surprised by the question.

  “Why, because Sophio is one of our foremost experts on the Cults of the Black Goat, as she puts it, though I disagree with her use of the plural. Like me, she is profoundly curious about the question of mythology made manifest: how mundane events lead to the invention of gods.”

  “Ah, of course,” Varanus said.

  She had always assumed that Sophio was too blinded by madness and politics to care about real studies, but perhaps that had been a foolish conclusion. After all, even lunatics and government ministers needed hobbies.

  “Sophio studied the Kara Keçi quite extensively in her younger days,” Iosef continued. He frowned slightly. “She recalls only certain details clearly now, but her writings on the subject are in the archives...somewhere.”

  “I am certain they make for a fascinating read,” Varanus said, her tone more dry than intended.

  “I would not know,” Iosef replied. “Most of them were lost before my time. But I have supplemented what remain with Sophio’s current recollection and with the other accounts that we have until such time as her memory becomes...clearer.”

  Iosef’s expression clouded slightly at the acknowledgement of Sophio’s madness. Varanus was troubled at so rare a display of distress in her mentor, and she quickly prompted him with another question.

  “What were they like, these Turks of the Black Goat?” she asked.

  “Aptly named,” Iosef replied. “It seems that the Kara Keçi took great pains to emulate their ‘goat god’. We are told, mostly by Russian sources, that they wore headpieces with horns and goatskin trousers, leather coats trimmed with black fur, and even boots shod with iron in such a way that they resembled hooves. And the men wore their beards long and narrow, like a goat’s. The monk Kyrill of Ryazan claims that they rode under the standard of a goat’s head placed upon a spear and describes them appearing from all directions in packs like wolves. The few Shashavani accounts that we have do seem to confirm this, though certain observations are...inconsistent. And the Kara Keçi appear to have had an unusually egalitarian society for t
he time and place: it seems that women held positions of authority and raided in almost equal numbers to men.”

  “Very sensible of them, but I wonder why that is,” Varanus mused.

  “Perhaps because any who may serve the Black Goat, must serve,” Iosef suggested. Though spoken humorlessly, the statement was clearly a joke.

  “It’s gone back to being a Gothic novel all of a sudden,” Varanus said. She quickly returned to the original subject: “And who is Arslan Khan? One of these Black Goat Turks, I assume.”

  “Indeed,” Iosef answered. “At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Kara Keçi had spread throughout the steppe, apparently intermingling with the Cumans and Kipchaks who dominated the grasslands north of the Black Sea. We are told by Persian sources that a great warrior named Arslan Khan arose on the steppe between the Black and Aral Seas and that he issued a call to the other Black Goat Turks, summoning them to him. How the message could have reached them so quickly and why they would have obeyed him, the sources do not say, but they are confident that it happened.

  “The Kara Keçi came together from the four corners of the steppe and united into a great host. Sophio herself confirms as much: she was studying them firsthand at the time, attempting to record parallels between the Black Goat and the Antlered Maiden of Yugra. By about 1215 the Kara Keçi had carved out a vast territory for themselves. They had pushed the Cuman-Kipchaks westward at least as far as the Volga, possibly to the Don; they had reduced the Khitans to a virtual tributary state; and they were raiding along the Silk Road with impunity.”

  “You say that he ‘very nearly conquered the world’?” Varanus asked.

  They turned into a portrait-lined gallery as they continued on their way. For a moment, Varanus felt like they were being watched from the shadows, which of course was silly. It was just her mind playing tricks on her while she was being told stories of ghosts and phantasms.

  “Surely you are familiar with Temüjin and what he was doing at about this same time,” Iosef said.

  “Genghis Khan,” Varanus replied. “And he was uniting the tribes of Mongolia.”

  “When the Kara Keçi subjugated the Khitans,” Iosef explained, “the Khitan throne had just been usurped by Kuchlug, a prince of the Naimans who had fled to the Khitan court after his people were defeated by Temüjin. The Kara Keçi invasion was very swift, we are told, and it seems that the Khitan armies were largely spared destruction. Their forces were shattered and encircled, causing them to surrender with minimal loss of life, and it seems Arslan Khan was content to leave the Khitans powerful enough to secure his eastern border while he raided the rich lands of Persia to the south.