Chapter 8

8

T he winter cold chilled Roman's face. He opened his eyes and shrugged, getting the harness situated across his chest.

"My friend!" Farhang floated into his field of vision. "I waited as promised."

The snow crunched, and Andora and Finn materialized on the path. Finn's shepherd puppy jumped around in the snow and frolicked, hopping up and down.

"And you've brought companions." Farhang smiled softly. "After such long solitude, this is an embarrassment of riches."

Andora glanced at Farhang. "Who is he?"

"A magav who offended his ahura."

"He tried to kill us," Finn supplied.

Farhang raised his hands. "My body did. I assure you, I'm not a threat."

Andora looked at Roman.

"He isn't," Roman agreed. "Andora, you know what is coming, so Finn and Farhang, this is mostly for you. Kid, this is the Winter Cathedral, your goddess' domain. Here she rules supreme. In the center of the Cathedral is the Ice Terem, the palace where Morena and Chernobog spend Koliada. With me so far?"

Finn nodded.

"Morena doesn't care for human visitors. To get to the palace, we must pass through her trials, the last of which are the Glades of Remembrance."

"They make you relive your worst memories," Andora said.

"If you end up serving Morena, this will be your home turf," Roman said. "You will get to skip all this and go straight to the terem. Unless you piss her off."

"Have you done it?" Finn asked.

"Oh, yes."

"More than once?"

Roman nodded. There was a reason why he was off for Koliada. Of the five times he'd had to visit the terem during the holidays at Chernobog's summons, Morena had relented only once. The other four times he'd had to go through the Glades.

"Is it the same every time?"

"Yes. Unless something even more fucked up happens, and then that will take precedence. Farhang, last chance to back out."

The magav squared his shoulders. "It's a reckoning I deserve."

Well said. Roman nodded. "Let's get this over with."

He started forward, dragging the tree across the snow.

"But what's the point of the tree?" Finn asked behind him.

"Morena and Chernobog had a spat," Roman explained. "He tried to fix it on his own, but it didn't work, so now I'm bringing her a present."

"But couldn't he just make the tree appear or get it himself?"

"No," Andora said. "The tree is not the point."

"It's the act of the dragging," Farhang said.

"I don't understand," Finn muttered.

"You need the context." Roman shifted the harness, situating it better on his shoulders. "Chernobog and Morena have a solid marriage, but occasionally, like right now, they quarrel."

"Why?" Finn asked.

"For various reasons. This time they fought because Morena wanted to kill one of Svarog's volhvs."

"Svarog is the Sky Father, the Fair Judge, the Craftsman," Andora explained. "He is the one parents pray to when they are having issues with their children, which is ironic as hell when you consider his record on parenting. He is Morena's father. Long ago, Skiper-Zmei, the Void Dragon, kidnapped Morena and her two sisters, transformed them into monsters, and forced them to commit atrocities."

Finn blinked.

"Eventually their brother Perun, the Thunderer, put together a divine squad and rescued his sisters," Roman continued. "But the gods took their sweet time getting around to it. The sisters suffered. Morena never forgave her family for abandoning her. That wail you borrowed is the sound of the anguish she felt. Her sisters, Spring and Summer, returned home, but she held a grudge, so she went into Nav, met Chernobog, they fell in love, and she married him. Your goddess has a temper. There are times when she loses it, and her husband has to…"

He eyed the woods in case they decided to turn angry, but the snow lay placid.

"Talk her off a cliff," Andora finished for him. "A week ago, one of Svarog's volhvs made a speech during the early Koliada rites, went off on a tangent about children and parents, and called Morena ungrateful."

"She isn't ungrateful. She was abandoned," Finn growled.

"True," Roman agreed. "Svarog's volhv has issues with his son. I don't know what Alexander did this time to piss his father off, but his old man apparently decided to get some things off his chest and used Morena to do it. It was unwise. Your goddess wanted to remind them exactly where they stood. Chernobog kept her from doing something rash. Now he is hoping to calm the winter storm with a gift. But it can't be any old gift. It has to be something special."

"So, the tree is special?"

"No, but I am," Roman said.

"And so humble." Andora looked to the sky.

"For the first five years I served Chernobog, Morena found some reason for me to be summoned to the Ice Terem during Koliada. I've gone through the Glades four times. In my sixth year I did my god a great service."

"What was it?" Finn asked.

"I killed a Void monster in his name. His power got a big boost, and he granted me a boon," Roman said. "I'm not to be called upon during Koliada. Especially not on this day. He broke his promise to me to show his wife that he treasures her so much he would rather fight with me than with her. This tree is proof of his devotion and my obeisance."

"What if you don't do it?" Finn asked. "What if you just stop?"

"I can't. The tree is the price of invoking Chernobog's name. He lent me his crown, his bow, and his power. In return, I will drag this fir all the way to the Ice Terem, and I will not complain. I have many faults, Finn, but I am a man of my word."

Roman grinned and pulled harder.

* * *

The woods had lost their grimness. A godfire sunrise played across the sky, glowing with pink, then lavender, then a gentle purple with gossamer trails of turquoise brilliance stretching across like shimmering veils. It was neither night nor day, but a magical time in between, and the farther they went, the brighter the sky grew. Morena was in a better mood. He was bringing her a pretty tree, and her new priest was coming home.

They kept walking. Farhang and Finn had fallen slightly behind, Farhang trying to explain Zoroastrianism and a magav's powers. Andora caught up with him and kept pace through the snow.

"Cold?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"About those two with the wheel and the weird magic," he said. "Do you know where they came from?"

Andora shook her head again. "Never came across anything like that."

Another mystery to add to his to-do list.

They strode side by side. Now was as good a time as any.

"Look, about the whole snake thing…"

She raised her eyebrows at him. The woman could cut with a look like nobody he'd ever met.

"It's my fault," he said. "I did it. I just want to clarify that it wasn't intentional bullying."

"Then what was it?"

"Proximity and lack of control."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, I can't wait to hear this."

He gathered himself.

"Well?"

"Hang on. I stuffed all my feelings down like a proper man, and it takes some effort to bring them back up."

"Take your time."

Roman sighed. "I was a really unhappy twelve-year-old."

"You said that part."

"My parents were separating. They'd separated a couple of times before, but this time it felt different. Final."

His parents had never married, although his mother introduced herself as Mrs. Tihomirov to this day when the occasion called for it. Now, after years of watching them clash and make up, he was sure they would never leave each other. Age had mellowed them both enough to live in the same house most of the time, and their fights had lost much of their former viciousness. But back then, it was chaos.

"My sisters were panicking. It felt like the family was collapsing. Mom and Dad had tried to shield us from their problems as much as they could, but they were angry with each other. My brother was…"

"A shithead."

"Perfect. He was perfect. He was seven years older, and he was good at everything. He was at the top of every class. Theoretical, practical, didn't matter. Top three with a spear, number one with a bow. He was a sniper. When he went hunting, even if everyone else came back empty-handed, he would always bring home game. I never had patience for the bow."

"You seemed to do fine half an hour ago," she said.

"Years of practice. To my brother, it came naturally. I once asked him how he did it, and he told me to stop thinking. Make myself empty. Don't be bored, don't be worried. Just be empty, and wait."

She sighed.

"My brother never got in trouble. No matter what the task was, he would do it properly every time, exceeding expectations, while I couldn't put a foot right. I came from a prominent magical family. I had to uphold our reputation. Great things were expected of me, and somehow everything I touched turned to shit."

"Ah yes, the poor little pagan prince," Andora said, but her words didn't have any bite to them.

"In my first semester of the fifth grade, I ended up in the principal's office more times than my brother had ever been in his entire twelve years at the Academy. It had gotten to the point where, when I got in trouble, they would call him for the parent-teacher talk. He never got angry. He never berated. He just looked at me like I was a maggot. Like he had expected me to amount to nothing, so there was no point in being disappointed."

"That's a lot of feelings," Andora said. "Are you going to be alright?"

"No worries, after this is done, I will put them back where they belong, and we won't talk about this again. Ever."

"Well, at least you have a plan." Her tone told him his plan was stupid.

He really didn't want to keep going, but he was doing this, in part, to atone. If a member of the faith had come to him for spiritual guidance in this matter, he would have advised them to talk to the injured party and to unburden themself. There was a cost to that, because to do it properly meant to lay himself bare. Forgiveness would come or it would not, but, as Farhang had said, this was the reckoning he deserved.

Although right now it didn't feel like unburdening would help much.

"Anyway, it was decided early on that my brother would become the Black Volhv after my father. My parents always said it was his right as the firstborn."

"But there is no such rule, is there?" she asked softly.

"No." He scrounged for the right words. "Men make plans, but gods pull the strings of fate. I was a soft-hearted kid. When I was about five, our cat got hit by a car, and I found him on the side of the road, dead."

He could still vividly remember the ice-cold rush when he saw the mangled body.

"I cried for a really long time, to the point where they took me to a therapist to see if there was something wrong."

"What did the therapist say?"

"She said I was sad. Gods become attached to a particular bloodline. It's familiar, and they are creatures of habit. It was clear that Chernobog would choose his priest from our family, and neither of my parents thought I could handle it. They thought I was too soft, and that serving Chernobog would kill me. That I would end up like some of the others who tried to be Black Volhvs and, as my dad once put it years later, be found hanging from some branch with a vacuum cord around my neck. If anyone could carry that burden, it would be my brother, who had his shit together. He was...colder. Less affected by things. Better suited to our particular brand of priesthood. And he wanted it. It felt like the best decision for everyone, and they were determined to stick to it."

"Parents mean well," Andora said.

"They do." Roman shrugged, the tree a steady weight behind him. "My earliest memory is from Nav."

She glanced at him.

"I don't know how old I was. Young. Maybe three. I was outside. It was dark, but there was this big fire burning. A giant man sat by the fire. He was cooking meat on skewers, and he gave me one. It was so delicious. It was too hot to touch, but I couldn't eat it fast enough. The man watched me and chuckled."

Andora's eyes went wide. "You made—"

"Shhh," he told her.

"You made him laugh?" she murmured.

He'd gotten more than one chuckle out of Chernobog, but it wasn't something to talk about.

"After that, I didn't visit for a long time. I had convinced myself that I'd imagined it, and then I turned ten and the dreams started. By that point I knew enough to put two and two together. Like it or not, I was wandering through Nav at night. Eventually I told my dad, and he lost it. Looking back on it, I think it scared him, and he was trying to protect me, but what I got out of it was that I, an epic screw-up, was trying to steal my perfect brother's glorious destiny."

"Ugh." She shook her head. "The guilt."

"Yeah. I couldn't stop dreaming no matter how hard I tried. By twelve, I had run around Nav so much, it was like coming home. I was getting weird powers, and my magic was erratic. My parents' separation put a cherry on top of that cake. I started failing my classes. It felt like I kept falling into a hole and couldn't get out of it."

They were almost out of the forest. Another half mile and the Glades would begin. He had to get to the point.

"I would sit around and brood. The more I brooded, the darker things seemed, the more my magic bucked against it. The first time the snakes happened, I had failed a quiz. My brother had warned me just that morning not to do anything that would aggravate Mom or Dad. So I sat there, trying to think of some way to hide the bad grade and the more I thought, the angrier I got, and the harder it was to keep a hold of my magic, until it exploded."

"Aha. It just happened. Of course. It couldn't possibly be your fault."

"It was my fault, but it wasn't targeted at you. It was omnidirectional. I sat in the last row, in the corner. There was nobody to my left or behind me. Dabrowski sat in front of me. Daciana sat to my right. You sat in front of Daciana. Dabrowski has a natural resistance to Nav- and Prav-based magic. Something to do with his nature-based powers. They peg him as neutral and fail to notice he is there."

"Mhm."

"Daciana always carried so many protective charms, her belt was like one of those baby mobiles. You didn't have anything. It makes sense now, looking at it as an adult, but at the time I had no clue. When your pencils turned into snakes, I didn't even know what I did. I couldn't undo it, I tried. I told them I didn't mean to, but nobody believed me, since I had a school rap sheet a mile long."

She gave him a skeptical glance.

"My parents were called. It was a big deal. The second time, I realized what happened as it was happening, so I looked down to try to contain it. I ended up looking at your shoes. And then you had shoelace snakes, and I went back to the office. My mother talked to me, my father talked to me, everyone talked to me. Everyone explained how I couldn't keep doing this crap. My father put a bone charm on a cord and told me to always wear it around my neck."

"Mhm. And the third time?"

"The third time was…intentional. Again, not targeted at you specifically, but intentional." He could still recall the splash of boiling hot anger that overtook him.

"What happened? Something must've happened."

"It wasn't good."

"You've come this far, Roman. Let's have all of it."

There was no escape. He sighed.

"The night before, Lena, one of my sisters, was doing her homework. She was always a good artist, and she was drawing portraits of Nav's gods. She gave Chernobog a longbow. I told her that wasn't what the bow looked like. I had seen it up close. I'd held it and fired it, although I kept that part to myself. She didn't believe me. I had a teenage moment. You know when you're twelve, and you are absolutely certain that you're right and the world is trying to wrong you? I dragged her to my brother, all indignant, because I knew my father had taken him to see Chernobog, too, and, as the future Black Volhv, he would settle this."

"And?"

"I didn't know it at the time, but when my father and brother had gone before Chernobog, he'd looked at my brother, said two words, and sent them back out."

"And what were they?" she prompted.

"‘Wrong boy.'"

Andora let out a short laugh.

"My brother knew me really well. He'd watched me get in trouble with the school enough times, and he could tell I wasn't lying. He realized that I must've seen the bow. A light bulb went off in his head."

"He'd figured out the right boy."

"He did. He looked at me, and there was hatred in his eyes. I saw it. It was like a physical thing. He'd said, ‘Aren't you tired of being a fuck-up? Every day you shame our family. Nobody wants to hear anything that comes out of your mouth. Learn to be silent. That's the best thing for you.'"

He remembered it word for word.

"Wow."

They had reached the end of the woods. The Glades waited ahead, a wide opening, wrapped in a wall of forest. Roman stopped. Andora stopped, too.

"I didn't sleep that night. I just got angrier and angrier. In the morning, I went to school, and I don't remember most of the day. I sat at my desk and stewed in my rage. I was so pissed off, it felt like I went blind. I hadn't asked for any of this. I was tired of trying my best. They thought I was a fuck-up, so I would be a fuck-up." He took a deep breath. "I let go. Because that's what fuck-ups do. I didn't care if anybody got hurt. I just pushed it all out. All the hate, all the anger. All the bad feelings. My dad's bone charm turned red, burned through my clothes, and broke. And then you had a viper instead of hair. I felt terrible. I still feel terrible."

"You never apologized."

"I'm sorry."

"No, Roman. Back then, when we were kids. You never apologized."

"I punched Kovalyev when he was laughing about it."

She stared at him. "Punching an unrelated third party doesn't count as an apology."

"They moved you out of our class. I was told to not come within fifty feet of you."

"You could've found a way." Her voice was merciless.

"I could've," he admitted. "I didn't know what to say. That's why I left chocolate in your desk."

She blinked. "That was you? I thought it was Lisa."

"Lisa would've left you gummy bears."

"True."

"Again, the blame is mine. I just want to be clear that it wasn't personal in any way. Ask Dabrowski when we get back to my house. That last one made him sick as a dog. He vomited for like an hour, and Daciana passed out. So I wasn't picking on you. I wasn't trying to get your attention. I didn't derive any happiness from tormenting you. I had so much of my own shit going on, I barely registered the fact that you existed."

"Ouch." She laughed a little.

"I'm digging this hole deeper, aren't I?"

"Oh yes. What kind of chocolate was it?"

"Ferrero Rocher," he said. "With hazelnuts. Golden wrappers. Sixteen in a pack."

Chocolate was expensive in the Post-Shift world. He had spent everything he'd had on it.

She sighed.

"Were they good?"

Andora nodded. "They were. But it doesn't make up for the hair."

"Tell me what I can do," he said.

She glanced at him.

"I'm serious. Whatever I can do to say I'm sorry, I'll do it."

"Mmm, it's so lovely."

"What?"

"The sound of your groveling." She grinned at him. "I'm quite enjoying this."

He didn't know what to say to that.

"I have something in mind. Let's get through this first." She closed her mouth, then changed her mind. "Did they punish you? Your parents?"

"They didn't have to," he said. "I was miserable enough already. My sister had spilled the beans about the bow, too. Within a week, they got a place for my brother, and he moved out on his own. The school never called my brother again. I didn't get in as much trouble from that point on, but when something did happen, my dad would come in his black robes to glare at the principal."

He chuckled softly at the memory.

"My dad talked to me for a while and told me I wasn't worthless and that what happened was his fault for not paying attention. My uncle, the White Volhv, made a warding circle out of gold and hung it on the wall by my bed. It cost our family an arm and a leg, but the Nav dreams stopped after that."

"And that's how your father betrayed his god," she murmured.

He nodded.

An ancient conflict existed between Chernobog and Belobog. They were brothers and rivals. His father had done the unforgivable. He wasn't the one who'd gone to the White Volhv for help—it was his mother. But he had allowed the warding circle that was made with Belobog's magic to be hung in Roman's bedroom to sever the connection between Chernobog and his future chosen.

"Why do you think he did it?" she asked.

"My father seems arrogant and abrasive."

"Yes, I've met the man." She made a face.

"'Seems' is the key word here. There is a reason my mother can't quit him. He is a lot like my brother but a lot like me, too. We both got something from him. So, when it came to the circle, some of it was out of love. He honestly believed that doing Chernobog's bidding would kill me. And some of it was stubbornness."

Andora sighed. "You don't say."

"There are many Black Volhvs. We're not unique like Vasylisas. When a pagan community gets large enough, it gets one. But of all of the Black Volhvs serving Chernobog across the world, my father was his favorite. He wielded a lot of power, and he'd done things in his god's name that haunt him still. In his mind, he'd asked for very little. Chernobog wanted one of my father's sons to serve him. Fine. He obliged, chose a son he thought was best suited, and offered him to his god. The least his god could do was to respect my father's choice. And when Chernobog didn't, my father dug his heels in."

His father had served faithfully for many decades, so Chernobog hadn't killed him. He had simply stopped speaking to him. If a Black Volhv managed to survive to a ripe old age, they gracefully retired, letting their successors do more and more of the work, but they never lost their connection to their god. They were honored and feared, up to the moment of their death. Instead, his brother had been forced to take over everything at once, and then it all went sideways.

Nobody outside the family knew what really happened. Except, apparently, for Andora, who had a direct line to Morena and probably to Chernobog as well. Even Roman himself hadn't known for years that his father had been cut off. He'd learned about it during that desperate late-night phone call that had ended his military career and brought him back to Atlanta for good. This was a secret he was determined to keep. Grigorii Semionovich Tihomirov would live the rest of his life as the Black Volhv, if in name only.

"There is not much left to the story," Roman said. "I kept my head down, made it through school with half decent grades, and then enlisted as soon as I could. The next… Well, you know what happened next."

Ahead, the snow sheathing the Glades glittered like diamonds. Thin wisps of magic swirled just above the ground, picking up stray snowflakes and spinning them into miniature tornados. No escape.

"This is going to be hell," she said.

"Nah." He grinned. "Hell is for Christians and the Norse. For us, it's just another day in Nav."

Roman squared his shoulders and pulled the tree into the open.

* * *

The wisps of magic sparkled with brilliant light, like glitter caught in a sunbeam. Roman watched them, mentally bracing himself. They'd been walking through the Glades for about thirty seconds. You never knew when the magic would hit. Sometimes it barely let him take a couple of steps, and sometimes he was almost to the line of trees at the other end and thinking he was in the clear when it dragged him back in.

On the left, a couple of tiny tornadoes merged and fell apart. A shape began to coalesce on the snow.

Farhang paled.

The shape came into focus. A young woman of unforgettable beauty, with big brown eyes and a waterfall of long slender dark braids. She wore a flowing dress, and her face was heartbreakingly sad.

Farhang's feet hit the ground, and he walked toward her through the snow like a man possessed.

Here we go.

She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. "Help us, Farhang."

"I'm here," he said.

Her braids looked like something Uzbek women wore. The patterns on her dress might have come from that region too, a modern take on an ikat. The original conversation probably wasn't in English, but it didn't matter. The language of Morena's illusion was universal.

Two more shapes materialized, born from snowflakes and magic, two young girls, one a teenager and the other maybe ten. Their faces echoed that of the first woman. She was too young to be their mother, so she must've been their sister.

"You will keep us safe, won't you?"

"I will," Farhang promised.

His mouth shaped the words, but his eyes filled with pain. The real Farhang, the one inside, knew it was a memory and was breaking down as the magic compelled him to repeat the words he'd said in the past.

That was the bitter, twisted nature of the Glades' magic. It pulled your memories out and compelled you to reenact them, over and over, like some sort of nightmarish play.

"We don't have anyone. Nobody can help us, except you. Your powers are so strong, Farhang."

"Please protect us," the teenage girl said.

"I swear on my life that I will kill the spawn of Ahriman before he claims you," Farhang said. "Let Mithra witness my vow. Should I break this covenant, let my very being be torn asunder."

And so it was. Mithra was the deity of covenants, contracts, and justice. A vow in his name would be enforced.

"But you failed, didn't you, Farhang?" the youngest child said. "You failed."

"You promised," the teenager said.

"You bragged," the young woman said. "You swore and postured."

"I'm so sorry, Mohira," Farhang said, his voice brimming with pain. "I'm so sorry."

"Not enough. Look what your hubris wrought. Look at what's become of us."

Mohira's mouth opened and kept opening, splitting her head nearly in half. Her human teeth fell out. Long triangular fangs sprouted from her gums.

Grief contorted Farhang's face.

Her clothes tore. For a moment she was nude and human, and then her limbs stretched, growing longer, thinner. Her hands became clawed paws. Her stomach collapsed inward, her human hips shifted, her neck elongated, carrying the head up. Scales sheathed her flanks, splattered with blobs of eye-pain-inducing orange and ultramarine and striped with deep black, the kind of colors usually found on poisonous frogs and venomous snakes. A second pair of eyes opened on the sides of her head, next to the first ones.

The nightmarish creature landed on the snow on all fours. Its build, lean and designed for speed, reminded Roman of a cheetah, but there was something reptilian about her, besides the scales—something that set off an instinctual alarm at the base of his neck.

The two younger girls metamorphosed in unison.

The Mohira-monster licked her fangs with a long lizard tongue, dripping with foul spit. A shrill voice issued from her maw, like nails on a chalkboard.

" I hate you! "

Farhang took a step back.

" I will kill you! I will rip you apart! I want you to hurt and suffer! I will make you suffer! "

Finn raised his hands.

Roman grabbed him by the shoulder. "No."

"But…"

"No. This is not your fight."

"He's right," Andora said. "Don't interfere."

The monsters launched themselves at Farhang. Magic flared around his hands, a radiant corona of fire. He screamed as if cut, and a jet of flames tore from him. The creatures darted around him, too fast, as his fire struck again and again, missing them by inches.

Farhang's fire looked hot enough to melt the world, but the blanket of snow sheathing the Glades remained pristine and unbothered.

The teenager was the first to fall. She'd gotten too cocky, and the fire caught her right flank. The flames burned a hole in her side, exposing pale ribs. The stench of cooked flesh spread through the clearing. Finn gagged.

The injured monster fell onto the snow, screaming. The other two screeched in unison.

It took a long time. Ten minutes, maybe twelve. An eternity in a fight. Farhang fought as hard as he could, his magic a firestorm, then a purifying shower, as he tried and failed to purge the corrupting magic from their dying bodies. And then he wept.

They waited for the shudders to die down. Finally, he got up and walked over to them on unsteady legs, looking like a risen corpse. He took his place next to Finn, and they resumed their trek.

They managed to take less than a dozen steps when Andora strode away from them into the snow, toward a magic whirlwind. A group of people appeared in the open. On one side, a woman in her late twenties held a boy, maybe two or three years old. She clutched the boy to her as if afraid someone would rip him out of her arms. Across from her, a group of six people waited, their faces grim.

Among the six, an older woman wore a gray robe with Troyan's symbol on it, one triangle on the bottom, three on top. Troyan was the Healer, a Nav god who ruled over disease. His devotees healed the sick. Next to the healer, a young woman wore an amulet with Makosh's twisted spiral—a seer, possibly an oracle.

"You must kill the child," Troyan's priestess intoned.

The mother of the boy hugged him tighter to herself. He had big blue eyes, chubby cheeks, and a head of reddish-blond hair. He almost looked like a bewildered kitten that was snatched off the floor in the middle of playing and now had no idea what was going on.

"He is barely three years old," Andora said.

"He will be the death of all of us. The entire town will die," Troyan's priestess said.

"The child is innocent. At this point, he hasn't done anything," Andora repeated. "You're asking me to take a life because of something you think might happen."

"Will happen!" Troyan's priestess pointed toward Makosh's seer.

"It will come to pass," the seer said.

"Last year your uncle, Sergei Ivanovich, predicted that the winter would be so cold, birds would freeze in flight," Andora said. "Instead, you had record warm temperatures. Three years ago, you predicted that Red Rock Bridge would collapse. It is still standing."

"This is different," the seer said.

"Please!" The mother's voice shook. "He's just a little boy!"

"Their whole family are Lihoradka's worshippers," a man called out. "We should burn them all."

Andora unsheathed her sword. "There will be no witch hunts."

The man stepped back.

She turned to the mother clutching at her son. "I won't let anyone hurt him, or you. Go home."

The woman fled and vanished.

Andora faced the gathering. "I don't care what you foresaw. This is America. We do not punish people because they might do something. You are presumed innocent until you're proven guilty. I'm telling you right now, if anyone touches a hair on that child's head, I will come back and make you regret it. Do not test me."

Magic and snow swirled. A field of corpses filled the Glade. They slumped on the ground in contorted poses, their lips gone, their teeth exposed. Holes peppered their faces as if something had taken bites out of their flesh. Sores filled with pus split the remaining skin.

In the center of it all, a child sat on a heap of bodies. He had grown. He was maybe five or six now. His hair had turned lighter and more blond, and he had lost the chubby cheeks, but the eyes were the same, round and blue. He saw Andora and cackled.

"Do you like it?"

She didn't say anything.

"I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for you. Oooh, poor baby me. So cute and adorable. And you, so fierce. ‘Nobody will touch the child, or I will come back and punish you.' You stupid, stupid bitch."

He grinned and kicked the nearest corpse, whose symbol of Troyan was still visible despite the pus and bodily fluids.

"Thirty-seven. That's how many I killed. Thirty-seven. And you will be the thirty-eighth. But I'll kill your soul first. Thank you so much for all your help."

The boy raised his hand. A larger phantom hand overlaid his, its fingers long and bony, its claws dripping grayish slime. Lihoradka's hand.

Behind him, bodies shifted. Corpses rose, their eyes glowing with greenish fire, like foul swamp lights.

Andora plunged her sword into the ground. He didn't hear the incantation, but he knew whom she reached out to for help. Before you eradicated disease you had to contain it, and who better than a goddess who already held a grudge against the culprit?

Finn gaped at the iceberg sheathing the clearing. The ice was clear as glass, and within it, the boy hung unmoving, caught in mid-leap as he'd tried to escape. His frozen blue eyes brimmed with fear.

"This is how to do it properly," Roman told Finn. "See, she freezes and holds. You need to work on the holding part."

The iceberg melted, and fire spun through the glade, turning bodies into candles.

Andora returned. Her eyes were red. She didn't say anything. She just stared straight ahead.

The tiny magic whirlwinds danced across the snow.

Roman unbuckled his harness and stepped away from the tree.

"Don't," Andora said. "Maybe she will let you pass."

"She won't. Might as well get it over with."

He walked into the snow and waited.

The snowflakes swirled. He was seeing it for the fifth time, and he caught the precise moment they snapped into the familiar shape. He walked across the snow, tall, slender, his face grim, his dark hair expertly cut. He was exactly as Roman remembered, down to his black robes with its embroidered hem. Roman had a set just like it, except his embroidery was silver, not glowing with deep, raging purple.

"Why can't I get away from you?" Rodion asked. "You came into this world screaming, a loud, obnoxious thing, smelling of piss and shit. Everyone was showing you off, and I looked at you and thought, ‘It would only take a pinch to smother you.' I could just reach out and squeeze. I should've drowned you when you were a baby."

This was the part when he would ask, "Why didn't you?" and Rodion would say, "I would get caught, stupid." Except, for some odd reason, Roman didn't feel compelled to follow the script.

"What going on?" Finn asked behind him.

"Roman's brother was a psychopath," Andora said. "He only cared about power, and when he became the Black Volhv, the dark magic seduced him. There are things in Nav and on the border with the Void that feed on human desires. If you let them, they will claim you."

"You are the reason Mom and Dad separated," Rodion said. "I never chose sides. I let them handle their own problems, but you, no, you had to wedge your way between them with your opinions on what was fair and not fair."

The words just didn't have that vicious bite they'd always had. The tone was the same, the hatred on Rodion's face was the same, but somehow it didn't hurt like it used to.

The evil thing that was Rodion waited for him to respond.

"What happened?" Finn asked.

"Rodion started passing judgements. He killed some people, and he would summon dark things to do his bidding," Andora said. "The Black Volhv is supposed to intercede on people's behalf. Instead, he terrorized them."

"What about Chernobog?"

"He let it happen," she said.

It was punishment. For their father and for the entire congregation. Chernobog had made his wishes known, and they were ignored. So, he let things take their natural course. He didn't feed Rodion's rampage, but he did not restrain it.

"You're the reason Alyona died—"

"Their father tried to stop Rodion and got hurt. Rodion withdrew to Nav."

Defiance required penance.

"—you're like a fucking cockroach that's too stupid to die—"

"The family called Roman. On this day, twelve years ago, Roman went into Nav and killed his brother."

The torrent of verbal venom Rodion had leveled at him was still washing over him, but the guilt was no longer there. He still remembered this confrontation in excruciating detail, the fight, the vicious dark magic tainted with the Void that had boiled out of his brother and torn at him with phantom teeth, the black blade that had appeared in his own hand, the hiss it made as it slid into Rodion's chest, and Chernobog's voice, which sounded like the end of the world as he said an ancient greeting that was recognition, announcement, and acknowledgement rolled into one.

"GOI ESI, ROMAN, MOY VOLHV."

Alive you are, Roman, my volhv.

There was no guilt anymore. No pain. Just acceptance. It took five tries, but he finally got the point.

Ha.

"—you were always a shit smear on the family's name and now you think that by coming here you can do—"

"Look, dickhead," Roman interrupted. "I'd like to stay and chat, but I have a tree to drag."

He turned around and walked away.

A wail of rage screeched behind him. He felt the furious darkness streak to him, ready to rip him to pieces. But he was the Black Volhv. Roman waved his hand, not bothering to face the threat. It vanished, snuffed out of existence. The Glades became bright and empty.

He walked over to the fir, slipped the harness back on, and started toward the distant woods. The tree felt so light, it was as if it were floating behind him.