"No." He laughed. "I only heard of it because Napoleon was supposedly born with one. I always thought it was selfish propaganda. The best leaders practice it, to mythologize themselves."
Neva raised a surprised eyebrow. "Yes, Napoleon is a caulbearer. It is known. It protects him from harm, gives him strength and surety of self. It's why they took him prisoner rather than kill him. It's difficult to kill a caulbearer unless they willingly give up their caul."
"Am I to retrieve Napoleon's caul?" I asked, letting out a breath.
"Not his, since it is not one of the five," said Neva. "In this world and others, there are many minor cauls. Veils made by lesser beings to provide a cloak of protection from the evils of the world. But not all cauls were made by lesser beings. Once, a great maker in a place that no longer exists made five extraordinary cauls from the fabric of the universe. These are the True Cauls. One such True Caul existed in your world for a time, bestowed on promising individuals to shape the world. Think of the greatest men and women in your history; it's possible they were a caulbearer of the True Caul."
"Alexander the Great?" I asked.
Neva nodded. "His immortality bothered him. In his confusion, he took off the caul when he was sick in his tent, thinking he would throw himself into the river, thus becoming a god in his followers' minds. But it does not work like that. Charlemagne was another, and the Christian figure they call Jesus. These few are called the High Caulbearers."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
Neva lifted her chin, holding a secret smile.
"Because you were the one to give it to them," said Voltaire.
Neva's eyes glittered with implications. She did not deny Voltaire's accusation.
"And now I want it back," she said. "I was the one to find it, bring it out of the darkness. It was mine by rights."
"But now someone else has it," I said.
"Mati-Syra-Zemlya," said Neva with considerable distaste. It was as if the name was made of feces and each syllable made her spit. "Others call her Mokosh, or Matka Ziema, or Mat Zemlya, but you might know her under a different name."
"Moist Mother Earth," I said.
"Yes, that's the one," said Neva. "An arrogant name, to claim the whole planet. She might have her powers, blessed women with fertility, and farmers with good crops, but she came here long after I did and stole my caul."
"You said there were five? Why not get one of the others?" I asked.
"Because this one is mine," she said, the words like a stomp of a boot. "And because the others are lost."
"This isn't a contest," I said, "but a shopping list."
A wicked smile formed on her lips, as wide and large as her nose. "I told you before I was a collector. This is my price. Retrieve the True Caul from that conniving bitch, Mat Zemlya."
I shared a flat glance with Voltaire. He sensed the same thing that I did. The second contest would not be fair, and it was entirely possible that none of us would return from it—the American or the Russian side.
Neva calmed her voice. "Her realm lies near yours, but we cannot go through that way. I'll leave you near her palace. Once every turn of the endless sky, she allows the poor and downtrodden of her realm to come into her palace to hold festival and receive her blessing, or make a request. You will enter with these others, though know that most have already joined the throngs inside. Your approach might not be as clandestine as you would hope."
"How will I get the caul? This sounds like an impossible task," I said.
"If it was impossible, I would not set you on this path. Remember, there are three contests. If you're dead, or otherwise disposed, I cannot make use of your talents," said Neva. "But Mat Zemlya's realm is not without dangers. While you figure out a way to acquire the True Caul, you cannot eat of her food or accept an article of clothing from that realm. If you do either of those items, you will not be allowed to leave."
"Is she to die of thirst while in that realm?" asked Voltaire.
"Katerina may partake of water, and only water, if it comes freely from a spring in the ground," said Neva.
"Can I take food or water with me?" I asked.
Neva shook her head.
"Anything else?" I asked. "Am I to bind my feet or only breathe through my left nostril? Anything else to make this task more difficult?"
"One more thing," said Neva, with a sudden smile. "You may not spill each other's blood."
This item was good news, at least. It meant my son could not enact his revenge during the contest.
"If there are no more questions," said Neva, stretching her arm out towards the front door, "you may begin."
"We've arrived?" I asked.
"Yes," said Neva. "I told you I would make haste. Now it is your turn. Hurry, if you don't make it inside before the Golden Doors have closed, then you've already lost."
Voltaire held his arms out wide. "What about me? What are my instructions?"
Neva nodded towards me. "You may assist her in this challenge, but know the same rules apply to you. Hurry, hurry now. The True Caul is waiting. Don't forget what I told you. Above everything else, remember these rules, and remember who you are. This is important. There is much danger in Moist Mother Earth's realm."
Chapter Fifteen
The sky was a deep brown and it bled into the horizon. The sight of it gave me a strange vertigo, like the feeling of being on a ship during a storm at night. It was only when I realized that we were in a vast cave that I could put the world to rights.
Voltaire muttered a curse so vile it made me blush. "Where are we?"
"This is strange to you while that shifting tower, the Shard of Time, was not?" I asked.
"It was so odd that I couldn't catch hold with my mind," he said. "So I just forgot it. But this seems so damned similar to our world, yet so different."
"It's like the Thornveld," I said, trying to calm Voltaire's unease.
On a distant green hilltop, a herd of cattle moved. Birds flew overhead, cawing in high-pitched screeches.
"But bigger," he said. "Much bigger. Colossal. What holds the sky up?"
"It's not a sky," I said.
Voltaire shivered.
Behind us, and the hut, was a cavern wall. A horizon wall. It was maybe a mile away, or ten, it was hard to tell. On the wall was an illuminated entrance with massive golden doors split wide. We started moving right away.
"I saw houses," said Voltaire as we climbed a grassy slope that could have been the hills of Ireland. "Which should make me feel better, yet I think we should perform our deeds quickly and depart. Something about this place puts a stone in my belly."
"Do you always state the obvious, or are you only afflicted in my presence?"
"Are you that thin-skinned that my words injure you?" he asked.
A response rose in my throat, but I choked it back and focused on the path. The trials ahead would be challenging in ways we couldn't expect.
A little while later, Voltaire tapped me on the shoulder as we walked. When I looked over, he was holding out his hand. A bean the size of a coin sat on his palm.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I nearly forgot about it," he said. "Djata gave it to me. Said if you submerge it in water, it'll expand until it's the size of a small steam carriage."
"What use is it?" I asked, staring skeptically at the bean.
Voltaire shrugged and placed it in my hand.
"He said to be careful once it's been submerged. The first experiment threw him across the room when it expanded," he said.
Nearer the golden doors, maybe twenty minutes after we left the hut, we found a road. Other petitioners were making their way towards it. They had the serene faces of pilgrims on a holy march.
We fell in behind them. I noted the patterns of their clothing. They were familiar, yet different, suggesting these people had interacted with the Mongolians of the eastern steppes in some distant past.
A tall man with a wispy mustache wore a brocade deel—a long robe—with a bright burgun
dy sash. His daughter, I assumed due to her height and similarly folded eyes, wore a silken patterned dress and a matching cap with golden tassels that hung down to her waist.
The daughter walked ahead of the father, throwing seeds onto the dirt road. I crouched down and examined a seed. It looked like black rice.
Other petitioners were behind us, but we stayed apart in case they didn't speak our language, since our dress probably marked us as foreigners.
The golden doors approached like the rising of the sun. The curls of the scrollwork were taller than two men.
The gently sloped road, which had turned to ochre brick, led further into this new cavern. Passages broke away from the main path, revealing massive chambers.
In one side cavern, a crowd cheered as a race was in full swing. The crowd encircled a stone path. Riding on slim cattle were men and women in festive attire decorated with silken banners flowing from their backs.
A chorus of voices met us at another cavern. Hundreds of festival goers were engaged in a free-for-all of song. The effect was both maddening and pleasing. I wanted to stay and listen, but Voltaire tugged me along, reminding me of our task.
Other passages came and went, but we stayed on what we thought was the main thoroughfare. No one approached us or kept us from continuing; the other travelers took to their destinations with decisiveness, as if they knew where they were going.
An ear-ringing gong stopped us somewhere past the fifteenth cavern. The Golden Door had been closed and no more revelers would be admitted.
The throngs gave a cheer, which thundered through the caverns like an earthquake. Afterwards, the mood quickened, as if the closing of the door made their efforts build up like steam in a pressure tank.
The main road diverged and we took the left passage. This happened a few more times and before long, we were irrevocably lost.
When we tired, we found a quiet spot along the wall and rested, as we'd seen other travelers do. The stone was soft and pliant, and not at all uncomfortable to lean against. With my eyes closed, a steady beat transmitted through the stone like a heartbeat.
If I dreamt, it was hard to tell, because this place had the quality of dreams. Each sight or sound was so odd, yet so familiar, that it couldn't be placed in any category. Later, in another cavern, we saw men in formal dresses shooting arrows at soft wooden targets perched on each other’s heads. The targets were made of wire scaffoldings. The men drank a dark liquid from golden goblets and shouted gaily at one another.
Voltaire and I spoke softly to each other at times, but we had nothing much to say. We were in the realm of Mat Zemlya to find the True Caul, but there had to be thousands of caverns and more people than I could count. We would expire of old age before we found it.
"My stomach protests this ill treatment," said Voltaire later that day, holding a flat palm against his belly.
"You heard Neva. No food," I said.
"Whenever I have a pinch of snuff, it reminds me that I'm hungry," he said.
"Then don't take the snuff," I replied.
He chuckled and tapped on his tin with a fingernail. "Logic is like a shield of paper to the desires of the heart."
I was about to reply when trumpet blasts startled us. A parade marched through the cavern. Men and women on stilts led it, followed by jugglers, tumblers, dancers, spinners. Taking up the rear was a wave of people as wide as the space between the two walls. The flood caught us, dragging us along, or we would be trampled.
Voltaire and I locked arms and flowed with the crowd. Like a rush of foamy, colorful water, we collected anything in our way, gently and with great laughter. The parade went on for miles. By the time we reached our destination, a massive circular cavern with a stage at the center, we had to number in the tens of thousands.
I was so enamored of the horn displayed on the stage that I didn't notice the heavy gentleman forcing his way between Voltaire and I until it was too late. Like two leaves in a stream hitting a rock, we went different directions. Nothing I did could bring me closer and before long, I was alone and surrounded by thousands.
While the parade filed in, horns blasted and people sang, tossing silken streamers into the air and generally having a good time. Despite losing Voltaire, I couldn't help but smile when every face was bursting with a grin and apple-red cheeks.
A few times, neighbors tried to shove mugs of foaming liquid into my hand, but I shook my head and politely waved away their offerings. They spoke a language I couldn't understand. It sounded like a distant cousin to the eastern languages of the Russian Empire. Every fifth word sounded tantalizingly familiar, but it wasn't enough to understand the context.
At the time I wondered when the procession would be finished, an ear-splitting whistle cut through the cavern. Everyone slammed their hands over their ears. In an instant, silence fell over the crowd.
Through a set of golden doors that I hadn't noticed before, similar to the ones outside, came a woman twice as tall as the nearest person, even taller than the men and women on stilts. She moved with a ponderous grace as she flowed through the crowd, steps as sure as the passage of the sun across the sky.
The crowd called her by her many names. Some, like Met Zemlya and Mati-Syra-Zemlya, I recognized. The most common was Matka, which meant "mother."
Her face was surprisingly plain, though it had that smooth quality of the seal hunters that lived in the ice-locked north. A smile was hidden in her eyes as she surveyed the crowd. When her gaze fell upon me, a surge of energy went through my chest, like the thrill of a first kiss.
She wore a simple tunic with a patterned vest suggesting geodes, and no jewelry, save a shimmering diadem affixed to the center of her forehead. The jewel was shy and faded unless I concentrated on it.
On the stage, Matka turned in a slow circle to quiet the murmuring that had settled on everyone's lips.
"Welcome, my children," said Matka in a warm tone.
Though her lips seemed to speak different words, they assembled in my head in recognizable form. Some magic, I assumed, which meant there were many different languages being spoken and she used her magic to communicate with us equally.
"Once every slow turn, we gather under my roof and celebrate the Festival of the Infinite Earth. And each festival, I offer boons to those that are worthy enough to earn them." She gestured towards the giant horn. "Today, I offer a challenge. To the first person who can blow the Horn of Plenty long and strong enough to make the runes glow from tip to bell, I will give my first boon."
As revelers rushed forward to be the first to try, I studied the Horn of Plenty. Both the tip and bell were made from ebony, while the long curved shaft that was supported by multiple iron rods was made of ivory. Along the length, golden runes glimmered in that sourceless illumination of the cavern. The whole horn had to be at least twenty feet long and two feet wide at the end.
The first man to reach the horn climbed onto the stage to the cheers of the crowd. He was broad chested with dark hair contained by a blue cord. He had a blacksmith's build and looked the part to defeat the Horn of Plenty on the first try, clasping his hands in victory over his head.
Matka leaned down and spoke with the first challenger once he was finished preening. He hesitated before responding, but she shook her head, and then after additional thought he spoke again. When she nodded, it left me curious to the exchange. I didn't have to wait long, as the goddess spoke to the crowd.
"The first challenger, Otgonbayar, wagers his desire for fornication to blow on the Horn of Plenty," said Matka in a booming voice, grabbing her crotch in mockery.
The crowd erupted in laughter, clapping hands and yelling out encouragement for Otgonbayar.
When he stepped to the horn, the cavern filled with anticipation as everyone leaned forward. Otgonbayar took a few deep breaths before placing his lips on the horn.
At first, nothing came out. I thought that maybe I couldn't hear it, but then a low moan came rushing out the end, reverberating into the wide spa
ce. The golden runes nearest Otgonbayar glowed fiercely in a white hot light. As he blew, the brightness traveled down the horn, making it to the first supporting rod, maybe a third of the length. I thought he might have a shot until the noise faltered, turning to a hoarse whisper that eventually ended in a squelch.
Otgonbayar pulled away from the end of the horn, while those nearest shouted jeers. Like a prisoner in chains, he trudged to Matka.
The crowd remained mostly silent until Matka placed her hand on Otgonbayar's groin. With a heat shimmer, an exchange of energy passed from the first challenger into the goddess. Otgonbayar left the stage, reduced by his failure.
Other challengers ascended the stone steps, made their bargain with Matka, and blew the horn. Some offered their ability to speak, others how to walk. One man was transformed into one of the slender cattle that I'd seen being ridden when we first came into the caverns.
No one came close to blowing the horn during that time, except for a slender girl barely old enough to have children, who I thought wouldn't even light the first rune. Matka never explained the girl's offering. The goddess' normally bright expression drew serious upon hearing the girl's whispers, and she motioned towards the horn when the girl was finished.
When the girl put her lips to the horn, it erupted with a rage that shook the very ground, giving the crowd hope that she might succeed. As each successive rune glowed, people cheered louder, until the whole cavern shook with expectation. She reached the third to the last rune before falling away from the mouthpiece, the horn's echo ending abruptly.
I was so busy watching the girl slump away from the stage that I didn't notice the next challenger until I heard Matka's melodic voice say his name.
"The next challenger, Voltaire, offers his eyesight!"
No!
I couldn't force my way through the crowd fast enough to stop him from putting his lips on the horn. Voltaire grabbed the horn with both hands and jammed his lips against the mouthpiece, puffed cheeks straining with effort.
A thunderous retort blew from the horn, rolling across the cavern in gravelly reverberation. The runes on the first third burst with light so suddenly, I thought he would make it. Rather than a long slow build, as the other challengers had tried to do, Voltaire was giving it everything he had right from the beginning.
Nightfell Games (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 5) Page 12