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

by G. D. Falksen

  Olga tumbled to the ground and was still for a moment. Then, as Basileios came toward her, she lifted her head and tried to get up. While her arms and upper body still obeyed her, her legs responded only poorly to her attempts to stand, and she fell back into the dirt.

  Iosef expected Basileios to come at her then, to finish the fight while he had what appeared to be the clear advantage, but it seemed that the very sight of Olga struggling to rise again was enough to give Basileios pause. He tested the weight on his leg again and found that, though stronger, it was still not healed. He looked at Iosef and then at Olga, and finally he glanced away further along the shore, perhaps contemplating escape before Olga’s shattered back could mend.

  “What is the matter, Basileios?” Olga demanded, slowly crawling toward him. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  Basileios looked at her and laughed, dismissing such a suggestion, but he withdrew a pace all the same.

  “I grow tired of this,” he said. “You have been a diversion, Valdemar, but I must attend to my business.”

  “You are afraid,” said Olga, her tone mocking. Then suddenly it took on the tone of helplessness, an affectation that still could not fully conceal the fury hidden behind it. “But surely there is no cause for fear, Basileios. I am crippled! What has a whole man to fear from one who is crippled?”

  At this, Basileios hesitated again, weighed Olga’s words, and then withdrew another pace to keep his distance.

  Olga tried again: “I am a barbarian, Basileios. What has a Greek to fear from a barbarian?”

  Again the statement resonated with some prejudice in Basileios’s mind, and again he hesitated before withdrawing, his face contorted with anger and uncertainty, ashamed to flee but unwilling to continue the fight.

  Olga tried a third time, her tone reaching such a fevered pitch that she could no longer hide the rage and disgust in her tone:

  “I am a woman, Basileios! What has a man to fear from a woman? Now face me!”

  Basileios drew away again and stroked his beard with his fingertips.

  “No, Valdemar, I think not,” he said. “I am tired, and while killing you and the boy would please me, my loyal followers await me.”

  “You will never reach the valley, Basileios,” Olga said, still crawling toward him. “I sensed your corruption from as far away as the Indus. And if I did, the others will as well. They might ignore you in the world, but if you approach the valley, we shall converge on you and tear you apart. And besides, old as you are, you cannot hope to take the castle on your own. Even without Sophio, the Living there would in time wear you down and break you.”

  “The way has been prepared for me!” Basileios shouted, still backing away. “They will welcome me with open arms as their true lord!”

  Olga spat at him and said, “Come to me, Basileios. I will welcome you with open arms as well!”

  Basileios laughed bitterly and continued his retreat.

  “When we meet again, Valdemar, I will be whole and fed. And then you shall die by my hand.”

  Olga roared in frustration as Basileios continued to retreat, gaining greater and greater distance until it became clear that there was no chance of her catching him until her back had healed.

  “You know you cannot beat me, Basileios!” she shouted after him. “Not in the days before and certainly not now! I will find you, and I will destroy you!”

  But Basileios had hobbled away, and he paid her no mind, focused only on the thought of escape. Roaring again, Olga collapsed onto the ground and lay there in silence. Iosef pulled his robes around himself and slowly approached her as she rolled onto her side and sat up slightly.

  “Ah, young Iosef,” she said. “Come, sit by me. Sit with an old woman as she contemplates the birds.”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Iosef replied hesitantly. He slowly sat beside her, trying to come to terms with what he had just seen and heard. Sophio was dead. Basileios was alive. Valdemar was a woman. The last point was of no great concern, but it stood contrary to what Iosef had assumed for two centuries, and this lesser confusion somehow compounded itself with the greater horror of loss and revelation.

  Olga sighed and stared out at the sea, and silence descended upon them while they waited—Olga for healing, Iosef for instruction. Presently, Iosef spoke.

  “You are Valdemar?” he asked.

  “I was called by that name once, yes,” Olga replied.

  There was a long silence and then Iosef said, “I always thought that you were a man.”

  He expected Olga to take offense at this mistake, but instead she laughed.

  “When I first came among the Slavs seeking fortune and glory, they thought me a man as well,” Olga said. “They called me Vladimir, and the name pleased me.”

  “And when they learned that you were a woman?” Iosef asked.

  Olga smiled. “Then they called me the ‘She Wolf’, and I liked that even better.” She paused and her smile fell. “But not now, I think. Now I am simply Olga, a wanderer.”

  Iosef stared at the sea, his shoulders hunched over and his face downcast. In each cresting wave, he fancied that he saw Sophio’s face looking back at him. The wind that blew hard against him carried whispers of her name.

  “I cannot believe she is gone,” he said.

  Olga nodded and said, “I know.”

  “I wish to weep,” Iosef confessed, “but I have forgotten how.”

  “That is...common among us,” Olga assured him.

  “It is torment.”

  “Tears may come in time,” Olga said, “or in time you will learn to do without them. To weep is a luxury that the Living must eventually do without.”

  Iosef hugged himself, remembering the power and the softness of Sophio’s touch, the scent of her hair, the delight in her eyes each time she saw him.

  “How are we to go on without her?” he asked.

  How am I to go on without her? he wondered silently, but did not say.

  “Find the next eldest who may be trusted,” Olga said, though she sighed in understanding of the quandary. “Make him or her Vicar of Shashava until Shashava’s return.”

  “I sometimes wonder if Shashava ever will return,” Iosef confessed. It felt strange saying such things to someone he barely knew, but at the same time, it was liberating. There was no preconception of judgment to hold back his words.

  “Over that we have no power,” Olga replied. “Merely faith and hope.”

  “My hope is stretched thin,” Iosef said, frowning.

  “Hope is not hope if it is not tested,” Olga said. She sat up fully and flexed her feet as her legs began to respond to her again.

  “What are we to do when Basileios reaches the valley?” Iosef asked. He could not imagine standing against him, and even the elders of the Order would be hard pressed to manage it. And if what Basileios said was true.... “Do you believe that he has spies? That his agents now control the House?”

  Olga considered the questions for a little while, gazing into the sea as the wind blew through her hair. Presently she answered:

  “I believe that he has spies. I do not believe that they are in control. The Shashavani are too strong to fall to such treachery.”

  “Sophio was lured out here to die,” Iosef said, his voice quivering with the realization. “I brought her to her death.”

  “She brought herself here,” Olga told him, her tone admonishing for the guilt she sensed in him. “And Basileios killed her. You were the cause of neither.” She looked down at her hands as they slowly closed into fists. “But I cannot believe that he would murder her so willingly. She was a child when she came to us. She was our child, with five mothers and five fathers and Shashava. Her death was filicide just as surely as if Basileios had sired her himself.”

  “She joined the Order when she was a child?” Iosef asked, startle
d by the revelation. He had always assumed that Sophio had been a grown woman, as was customary.

  “We waited until she had grown before giving her the cup,” Olga explained, “but yes, she arrived as a little girl, alone and of her own accord. She had come following the stories of Shashava the miracle worker. I never knew who her people were or why she had left them.” Olga sighed sadly. “And I suppose now I never shall.”

  “Nor shall I,” said Iosef. “I do not know how I shall go on without her. Better perhaps to give myself to the sun, here in this place, that she and I might be together in eternity.”

  Olga turned and looked at him, her eyes alight with anger at his words. She grabbed Iosef’s shoulder and held it hard enough to be painful.

  “I know that you are yet young,” she said, “but that talk is foolish, and I will not hear of it. Life is precious, and in a world that seeks to take it at every turn, you must not surrender it willingly. Sophio died to save you, and I daresay she would have done so again and again until the end of time were it in her power. Do not cast aside her sacrifice so eagerly. You must live, if only for her memory.”

  Iosef shuddered and looked away, but he nodded and said, “You are right. Basileios did not kill me. I will not do his work for him.”

  “Good,” Olga said. She studied Iosef a few moments more to be sure of his sincerity and then released him. “Besides,” she added, “you must return to the valley and warn them that Basileios lives. They must root out his spies and make ready in case he does attempt an attack.”

  “I...?” Iosef asked. “Surely...we....”

  “I will not be going with you,” Olga replied. She flexed her legs, and finding them whole and responsive again, she stood and stretched her newly mended back.

  “Why not?” Iosef asked, also standing. “Surely you must return to us to bring order. If one of the Companions were to become Vicar—”

  “It would be disaster,” Olga replied. She looked at Iosef and saw the confusion in his eyes. Taking him by the arm, she led the way back to the tomb where she had left her staff. “Do you know why Konstantine, Mordechai, and I remained so long after Shashava and the other Companions had departed?”

  “No, I do not,” Iosef confessed.

  “In our folly, we allowed Basileios to reign as vicar,” Olga said, “but even had he been trustworthy at his post, it would have been a mistake to leave one Companion within the House while all the others departed. For surely you know, young Iosef, that each of us, each Companion to Shashava, favored certain principles and philosophies over all others. Medicine or war or theology. Our students and our students’ students, and all those who have come after us, each descend from one such school of thought, every new member adding his or her own insights and research to an ever-expanding philosophy. All except Sophio, of course. She was her own, belonging to all of us and none of us save Shashava, and so she existed outside our traditions and our schools, as do you.”

  Reaching the tomb, Olga took her walking stick and leaned upon it, the signs of fatigue, starvation, and injury showing upon her face.

  “If I were to return on my own,” she said, “without any other of the Companions, it would signal to the Shashavani that my school of thought was greater and more worthy than the others, for I had returned when the others had not. And though I would try to rule wisely and impartially, my own prejudices would find a way to seep through. I would favor matters of governance and war, questions of politics, the nature of society, and other practical concerns. I would not mean to do it, but it would happen. And in so doing, it would signal to the others that those subjects were more worthy than matters of faith or thought or natural philosophy. At first it would be harmless, merely an inclination, but eventually it would become academic dogma. And dogma is death to the intellect.

  “So you see, I cannot return home until I have either found the other Companions and convinced them to join me or until Shashava returns to guide us all.”

  Iosef exhaled and looked away. “I suppose I see the wisdom in that,” he said, “though things would be easier were it not so.”

  “All things would be easier were the world not the world,” Olga told him. “Besides, I must hunt Basileios for a time. He will sense me following him, and through that, I may force him to avoid the valley long enough for you to bring warning that he lives.”

  “And what am I to tell them?” Iosef asked.

  Olga considered the question and replied, “Tell them the truth. Basileios is alive, he has spies among the House of Shashava who lured Sophio to this place, Sophio fought Basileios and was slain, and you were left to die in the sun. Only you did not die. You escaped and returned to bring them warning.”

  “And you?”

  “No,” Olga said. “No, you must not tell them about me. Let all the Companions remain a distant memory for now. Otherwise, they might select the next Vicar of Shashava with me in mind, whether favoring or disfavoring those of my tradition. Such an appointment must be unbiased or else it is no good.”

  “What if they think I was somehow complicit with Basileios?” Iosef asked. “When word came of the tomb’s discovery, I was the one who suggested that we examine it. Sophio wished to but she hesitated.”

  He fell silent as another twinge of guilt struck him. It was his fault. If not for him, Sophio would never have come there....

  “Basileios knew that the mystery of Arslan Khan would be enough to tempt Sophio to this place,” Olga said. “You may have suggested it, but she wished it, and she decided to do it. If it had not been you, she would still have been induced by one of Basileios’s agents. Basileios is no fool. He would not have waited here for so long unless he was confident that Sophio would eventually arrive.”

  “But if they think that I helped kill her...” Iosef began.

  Olga laid a hand on his arm and said, “Foolish boy. I traveled with the two of you for only a few weeks, and it was plain enough for me to see the sincerity of your affections. No one who has lived alongside you for decades could possibly imagine that you would do her harm, and only a fool would think that you even could.”

  “That is true enough,” Iosef said softly.

  Olga touched his cheek and smiled sadly at him.

  “I must go,” she said. “Basileios flees, and I must run him to ground before he can make further mischief.”

  “Will you be able to...to manage him unaided?” Iosef asked hesitantly. He certainly did not want to offend Olga with the question, but he did not relish the thought of anyone facing Basileios the Accursed alone. The tales of Basileios’s violence and malice had so elevated the very thought of him that Iosef instinctively assumed he would be the most dangerous of all the Companions: he the general and they merely scholars.

  Valdemar laughed aloud at the question, but she did not seem insulted.

  “Oh, do not fear for me, young one,” she said. “Of us two, I was always the stronger fighter.” She smiled slightly. “And the better king. I think he hated me for that. Though sometimes he seemed to harbor other sentiments as well.” She shrugged, dismissing the question, and placed a hand on Iosef’s shoulder. “Now then, my boy, return home with all speed, and do not let thoughts of destruction misguide you. Sophio lives on in you, and for that you must live as well.”

  And with that, Olga turned and began walking along the shore in the direction of the steppe, following the route that Basileios had taken. When she had gone, Iosef gazed at the sea for a time, still hearing Sophio in the whispers of the wind and the waves. Then, forcing his resolve, he cast one last look into the tomb that had become his beloved’s final resting place and took his walking stick from the door. Despairing at the thought of leaving Sophio’s remains exposed to wind and weather, Iosef set his shoulder against the boulder and, with much effort, rolled it back into place, sealing the tomb.

  “Sleep, my love,” he whispered to the wind. “Sleep, a
nd may we be together again in our dreams.”

  Iosef set his back against the sun and began the long, forlorn walk home with the wind his only companion, softly whispering in his ear:

  “Sophio, Sophio, Sophio.”

  Chapter Thirty

  •

  Two months later

  Svaneti, Georgia

  The day found Varanus and Ekaterine out on the snow-covered plain beyond the river, riding through the frozen pasture on horseback. They both wore warm fur coats with high collars over their dresses, though only Ekaterine had reason to fear the cold. Varanus was covered similarly to her friend to ward off the sun, and her fur hat was wide-brimmed and supplemented with dark glasses and a veil.

  In the time that followed the retaking of the castle, Varanus often found it necessary to escape out-of-doors, to be away from the stifling confines of a place that had witnessed so much bloodshed and such betrayal. It was all but impossible to go a day without passing at least one person who had sworn allegiance to Margaret, and while Varanus supposed it was just as well that so many had been pardoned, the sight of them made her think of Vaclav’s death, and that made her hate them.

  They had outnumbered Margaret’s followers, and yet they had accepted her rule out of fear. It had simply been easier for them to go along with it all, and Varanus had no patience for such a thing. So, whenever she could no longer bear the voices whispering in her thoughts that this person or that person was secretly plotting against them, she took Ekaterine for a ride to calm her nerves. And in truth, it was getting to be almost a daily habit.

  They went armed, of course, with sword, pistol, and rifle. “To hunt rabbits”, Varanus always claimed, but really it was to be ready for when the next great betrayal came. Indeed, she simply could not shake the feeling that there was still treachery afoot in the House of Shashava, and she did not intend to be caught unprepared.