Iosef shook his head to clear the cloud of pain. He looked down at the spear shaft as it protruded from his body. He looked back at his beloved Sophio, who now stood torn between fighting Basileios and rescuing her husband. And he looked at the sun as it began to rise over the sea with a creeping tide of light that would soon flood the tomb with pain and death.
With determination and desperation, Iosef grabbed the spear and tried to pull himself off it, but it had landed on a high diagonal, and his arms were weak from fatigue. The spear was soon slick with his blood, and every time Iosef pulled himself a little further forward, he slipped back again. He grabbed for his cowl to cover his face from the light, but it had fallen back out of reach.
Panic began to fill Iosef as he struggled, and he saw that same panic in Sophio as she looked at him. She tried to run to him, to save him, but Basileios leapt upon her and forced her to turn back to the fight.
“Leave him out of this, Basileios!” Sophio cried. “This quarrel is ours, not his!”
“He is of you!” Basileios replied. “And so he will die with you. Know that his last living memory will be the sight of your death.”
Sophio ducked away from Basileios’s next attack and struck him in the ribs with the heel of her palm. “You are mistaken, Basileios. He will see you die by my hand, and he shall have an eternity to delight in the memory of it!”
Basileios fell back a step and grabbed the nearest of the many swords. With it, he deflected Sophio’s next blow, the blade cutting into her arm and making it bleed. Then he reversed the sword in his hand and drove it into Sophio’s side. Sophio cried out and stumbled, and Basileios kicked her leg out from under her, knocking her to the ground.
“I have planned this for so long, little one,” Basileios said, kneeling over Sophio. “I have savored the thought of my revenge for centuries. And I shall enjoy it. It is not by chance that you came to be here. I knew it would take something so tantalizing as this place to prick your curiosity and draw you out, so I sent my spies to plant a whisper of it and lure you to your doom.”
“And Edith?” Sophio asked, lying limply beneath him. Iosef could not imagine why she did not struggle, why she did not free herself from Basileios’s grasp, and he cried out to her, begging her to fight.
Both Sophio and Basileios ignored him.
“Edith?” Basileios asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Edith the Saxon? Why should you ask of her? She is in Rome, doing great works.”
“Not here?”
“Why would she be here?” Basileios replied. “My revenge is for me alone. I would not sully the delight with accomplices.”
“That is all I wished to know,” Sophio said.
As Basileios leaned over her, his triumph now measured by confusion at Sophio’s words, Sophio grabbed him by the hair and drove her forehead into his face. Basileios reeled away, spitting blood, and Sophio punched him in the throat and threw him off her. She stood, swaying dizzily, and drew the sword from her side. She looked at it and dropped it to the ground.
“I am not so easily taken, Basileios,” Sophio said. “And now that I know that you did not send Olga to find us, I need simply wait until she returns, and together we shall kill you. Time is against you now, not against me.”
Basileios wiped the blood from his mouth and smiled. He pointed toward Iosef, who remained trapped by the spear, as the first rays of sunlight began to creep into the mouth of the tomb.
“Oh?” he asked. “Are you so sure of that? Will you stop the sun, like Joshua?”
A look of distress crossed Sophio’s face. She turned to rescue Iosef, but Basileios would not allow her to withdraw. He advanced on her with a torrent of blows and forced Sophio to face him again. And so the fight resumed, with each of them punching and kicking with the force of hammers against stone.
Iosef continued working his way up the spear, but it was an agonizing struggle. Time and again, Sophio glanced back toward him, her eyes pleading for him to try harder, to free himself, to hide from the sun; and each time Sophio looked at Iosef, Basileios seized the opening and landed a heavy blow, forcing Sophio’s attention back to him.
Finally, as the sunlight reached the midpoint of the tomb, Basileios let out a sigh and shouted, “Enough!”
“Tiring, Basileios?” Sophio asked, lunging at him again.
Basileios laughed and grabbed Sophio’s wrists, holding her back. She struggled to free herself, but he did not relent.
“You surprise me, Sophio,” he said. “You put up a better fight than I believed. You are not the child I once knew.”
Sophio’s eyes flashed as she said, “I was not the child you once knew the first time I killed you.”
The corner of Basileios’s mouth twisted in a snarl.
“Let me tell you a secret,” he said. “I said that there is only one way to kill our kind. Do you wish to know what it is?”
“What?” Sophio asked.
Basileios’s snarl became a smile as he said:
“The only way to truly kill us...is with fire.”
He released Sophio’s arms and spread his fingers. A haze appeared about his hands like mist upon water. Something blue-colored sparked upon his fingertips, and suddenly his hands were wrapped in flame, in a burning halo that seemed not to touch his flesh.
“What?” Sophio gasped, drawing back in shock. “How is this possible? What sorcery—”
Basileios lunged at her and grabbed her by the shoulders, laughing with delight.
“There is much you do not know about us,” Basileios said, digging his burning hands into the folds of Sophio’s robe, “and much that you will never know.” He pulled Sophio in close. “But I want you to die knowing that your pet will soon follow you and that you cannot save him.”
“No!” Sophio shouted, fighting against Basileios.
But she could not fight the flames, which coiled around her and threaded themselves into her clothes. Basileios thrust Sophio away, and she stumbled backward, trying frantically to brush away the fire. The flames caught hold of her hair, and in a few moments her flesh too had begun to burn.
Sophio fell to her knees, screaming in anger and pain and fury, struggling to grab Basileios and make him burn with her. But Basileios backed away, holding his fire-wreathed hands high in triumph.
“Burn, child!” he cried. “Burn!”
Sophio collapsed in a heap and rolled toward Iosef. Now the strength had left her, and she did not even fight as the fire boiled her flesh and charred her bones. She looked at Iosef as the fire closed in around her face and mouthed the words:
“I am sorry, my love. Forgive me.”
“No! No! No!” Iosef screamed, struggling to pull himself free from the spear and dragging himself hand-over-hand toward her. But it was not enough.
The flames burned with an unnatural heat, devouring Sophio’s flesh and bones until nothing remained but ashes. Then there was silence as the fire died away, its work done.
“That was...very pleasant,” Basileios mused, gazing into the fire that still flickered around his fingertips.
“You fiend!” Iosef shouted. “I will kill you! I will kill you!”
“Mmm, I think not,” Basileios replied. He stepped over the ashes, which began to dance about in a sort of haze from the wind of his passing. “No, I think I will kill you before you can annoy me with any more empty threats.”
Basileios held one hand out toward Iosef as he approached, but within a few paces, the flames began to flicker and burn low like a candle almost out of wick. Basileios frowned and looked at his other hand, where the flames were dying as well. Within moments, the fire had died altogether. Basileios shook one hand in the air as if trying to induce another conflagration, but it did not come.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “that is an inconvenience. I suppose I could simply tear your head from your body, but....”
He smiled at Iosef. “But you are her whelp, so I think burning is the only proper death for you. Still,” he added, looking down at the floor and the creeping light of the sun, “only a few minutes more, and the dawn will do it for me.”
“Mark me!” Iosef said, gasping as he pulled himself further along the spear, only to slide back again on his own blood. “I will not rest until you are dead and your soul burns in Hell for what you have done!”
Basileios chuckled almost wistfully. “Ah, I remember what it was to be young and to make idle threats. But now I am old, and I make only real ones.” He folded his arms and looked at Iosef. “Much as I would like to watch your death, I fear I must be on my way. My agent Margaret is busy preparing the way for me in the valley.”
“Margaret...the Hebridean?” Iosef gasped. Surely not! How could a member of the Council be party to such treason?
“Indeed,” said Basileios. “She expects me by the spring, and it would be rudeness to arrive late.” He paused and held up a finger. “There is one thing I would like to ask you before I leave and you die. Who is Olga?”
“I am,” called a voice from the doorway.
Basileios turned to face the new arrival, and in doing so he cleared Iosef’s view. Iosef saw Olga standing at the entrance of the tomb, wreathed by the dawn, which shone about her hair in a golden halo. Her eyes fell upon Basileios, and a flicker of astonishment crossed her face, but it was soon replaced by anger.
“You!” she growled. “You live!”
“I do,” Basileios said.
“That will soon be corrected.”
Olga advanced into the tomb to where Basileios could see her face more clearly. Now it was Basileios’s turn to look surprised.
“Well, well,” he said. “Little Valdemar.”
Olga drew herself up until she stood at her full height, half a foot taller than Basileios. She grinned at him with utter hatred and replied:
“Oh Basileios.... That a Greek should ever call a Rus ‘little’.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
•
As Olga moved further into the tomb, she looked around in the dim light. A frown crossed her lips.
“Where is Sophio?” she asked.
As she spoke, the wind began blowing hard from behind her, tearing at her robes and hair, and causing the ashes upon the ground to whip up and writhe about her feet. Coincidence, surely, but an unnerving one. And as Olga looked down and saw the quantity of ashes, her eyes widened with understanding.
“No...” she gasped.
“I fear that Sophio is no longer among the Living,” Basileios replied, chuckling.
“How could you do this, Basileios?” Olga demanded. “She came to us as a child! She was a daughter to all of us!”
Basileios sneered and said, “She was no child when she cut off my head. She thought she had murdered me. I repaid her in kind.”
“You are a fiend, Basileios,” Olga snapped, pointing an accusing finger at him.
“And you are more sentimental than I recall, Northling.” Basileios picked up the bloodied sword from the ground and pointed with it as he spoke. “I killed Sophio; now I will kill her apprentice, and then I will kill you.”
Olga looked at Iosef for a moment, pondering something. Then she dropped her staff and took a spear from the wall.
“Come, Basileios,” she said. “Leave the boy. Face me.”
She beckoned with one finger and slowly backed toward the entrance. Basileios tilted his head and hesitated as if sensing a trap. He glanced at Iosef and said:
“By the time I kill her, boy, you will already be burning. I wish that I could stay and watch as the sun takes you, but.... Dear Valdemar and I have a long history that I am eager to cut short.”
He patted Iosef on the cheek dismissively. Iosef grabbed for the hand, but Basileios swatted him away as easily as if Iosef had been a child. Basileios turned and departed the tomb, shouting for Olga to make ready for her death.
As Basileios walked away, Iosef grabbed at the spear impaling him and struggled all the harder to pull himself free. His hands slipped against the blood-slick wood of the spear, and his own weight pulled him back, but he did not relent. As the sunlight crept ever closer, his vigor intensified with the strength of desperation. As Iosef struggled, the wind continued to howl, flooding the tomb and blowing hard against him as if it wished to hold him back to allow the sun to take him.
Finally, amid agony and terror, Iosef reached the far end of the spear. Beneath his weight, the spear finally tipped downward, breaking free of the statue. Iosef fell onto the ground and pulled what remained of the weapon from his back. He gasped and coughed, blood spilling over his lips and onto the sunlit floor. The blood boiled in the light, hissing and withering into vapor.
Iosef pulled his cowl over his face and wrapped his cloak around himself to shield against the sun. He lay there in silence for a few moments to regain his strength. Then, with renewed resolve, he rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled to the place where Sophio had died. Much of the ash had already blown away, but some remained, woven across the stone floor by the wind. Iosef reached out and touched the ashes with his fingertips, feeling his body shudder with anguish.
Sophio was dead. Sophio, who had been the cornerstone of his life for almost two hundred years, was dead. She was dead, and she would never return. A part of Iosef had been torn from him, and it lay now in those ashes, forever lost.
Something tumbled from the folds of Iosef’s clothes and landed upon the floor, scattering the ashes and sending them away on the wind. It was the amulet. In a daze, Iosef reached down and picked it up again, clutching it in his hand as if it were Sophio herself.
Iosef stood and slowly walked to the entrance, holding his cowl down to protect his face from the sun. Outside, he saw Olga and Basileios upon the shore, trading blows back and forth by the light of morning. Olga’s spear had been broken in half, and now she wielded it like a rapier, thrusting it one-handed. She deflected most of Basileios’s blows and repaid him with deep wounds of her own.
As Basileios came in for another attack, Olga caught his sword and forced it downward until the point struck the ground. Pinning it there, Olga brought her foot down against the sword’s blade, snapping it in half with a single stomp. Basileios snarled and drove his shoulder into her, pushing her back. Then, looking at the shattered sword in his hand, he threw it away into the sea. Having disarmed her enemy, Olga took what remained of her spear and did the same.
Unarmed, they came at each other again, kicking and punching, rending and tearing, inflicting wounds as grievous as if they had been made with weapons. Each tear of the flesh and each broken bone soon healed, but as the minutes wore on, the healing process began to slow. Injuries that ought to have vanished quickly now remained, only gradually closing. Their blood was everywhere, boiling where it flowed together and burning their wounds. Had either of them been much younger, the blood alone would have done them serious injury. Only the resilience of age protected them from each other’s poison, and even age could not prevent the pain.
“You are looking tired, Basileios,” Olga said, throwing him to the ground and withdrawing a pace. Given some breathing room, she pulled hard on her arm to reset a shoulder that had been dislocated in the fighting. “I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Basileios stood, staggering a little as he tried to support himself on a broken leg that stubbornly refused to mend. He laughed away Olga’s comment, but he did indeed sound tired, and there was a half-starved look in his eyes.
“How long have you waited here, in this place of desolation?” Olga mused. “Weeks? Months? A year? Long enough for hunger to set in, even at our age. The flesh does not mend so easily when we have not fed, does it?”
“The same is true for you, Little Valdemar,” Basileios said. “You look as starved as I.”
Olga stretc
hed and slowly approached Basileios, who tensed and readied himself to meet her.
“It is not the same,” Olga said. “I have made myself accustomed to fatigue and starvation. I hear they are good for the soul.”
Basileios laughed at this.
“I expect you indulge yourself at every turn, don’t you, Basileios?” Olga asked him. “There is strength in gluttony, I will grant you, but it comes at a cost. Even now, your body cries out for blood, and it does not know how to respond when its lusts are not indulged. You have fattened yourself on luxury and corruption, Basileios, and look at how your excess is repaid.”
“My excess has made me powerful,” Basileios snapped. He shifted his weight and hobbled toward Olga, but his broken leg still could only half support him, and he stumbled as he moved.
“Leg giving you trouble?” Olga asked in a mocking tone.
“It is well enough for my purposes.”
“If you had fresh blood in you, it would already be mended,” Olga said. “But in starvation, your body has used its stores of vitality greedily, while mine has done so sparingly.” She rolled the shoulder of the arm that she had just put back into place, and she stretched her neck to ease the tension in the muscles. “I need not even defeat you, Basileios. If I force you to keep fighting for an hour, you will collapse of your own accord. And then I will kill you.”
“I think not.”
Basileios tensed as Olga drew near. At first he seemed to shy away, crouching to keep his distance as he held his weight upon his good leg. But it was a ruse and one that Olga seemed to expect. Metal flashed in the sunlight as Basileios drew a dagger from inside his sleeve and lunged at Olga. She met him with outstretched arms, and again they collapsed into a chaotic mess of blows and bloodshed.
Unable to gain the upper hand, Basileios drove the dagger into his own flesh, coating it with his blood. Then, as Olga struck him in the chest, Basileios turned the dagger and stabbed Olga viciously with it. The wound sizzled with the poison, and Olga slouched over, crying out. But however painful, even the poisoning would not stop her for long, and Basileios knew it. Instead, he struck Olga in the face to stun her and then lifted her into the air and threw her toward the tomb. Olga’s lower back struck the edge of one of the great rocks, and Iosef heard the crack of bone.
The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery Page 31