Hematites

Theodore blinked.

"Up there?!" he craned his neck till it popped. "What are we, goats?! I'm not crawling there!"

"You are," said Grigori, eyes on the steep slopes, clad in snow from the foot to the spear-like cusps, "have you dragged yourself here for nothing? Care to tell His Majesty you rode all the way to the Nebesk Pass to take a nice look at the scenery and bid it farewell?"

"Care to tell His Majesty that believing in fairytales past the age of five is considered a sign of madness in most human societies".

Grigori grabbed him by the fur of his collar and shook, and since God saw it fit to give his hands more power than it would seem reasonable for a man of such short stature, Theodore's head twitched violently back. Fear pooled in his eyes.

"One more word," Grigori said to that fear, knowing that it would listen better than reason, "and I will knock you senseless and throw you down the nearest ravine. I will then return home and tell His Majesty that a horde of barbaric savages skinned you and feasted on your scrawny meat and all I could do was hide and protect the hematite. Because what are those who speak ill of His Majesty called? Traitors. And what happens to traitors? They die. Do you understand me?" 

Theodore was young, and his youth hadn't yet learned how to tame a hungry imagination. He was shivering, his brows arched like those of a frightened child. Grigori's daughters would make the same face when caught red-handed. Theodore nodded. 

"Why are you here?" Grigori asked him.

"For the hematite," to his honor, the boy wouldn't stutter even half-strangled.

"And why is that?"

"Because the king… Wants it. For what the myths say."

"Because the king wants it, and that's all. And I would say a man has the right to believe in anything for the sake of-“

Something creaked behind the turn of the narrow mountain path, and immediately Grigori’s hand was at the hilt of his dagger. A squat figure then showed itself, shorter even than he was, dark as a lump of coal against the virgin snow, burdened with two heavy leather sacks on each shoulder. He shook his head and let go of both the dagger and the boy.

"Speaking of barbarians," Grigori straightened up and frowned, "Does it really take an eternity to unsaddle two wretched horses? Theo, ask him, ask again. About the paths ."

He turned to face the mountains again, squinting at the sharp cut of their whiteness. He searched for the flask behind the lapel of the heavy, foul-smelling goatskin that he bought at the tanner’s in the last village they had to rest in. The flask was from there too, a rough peasant artwork with the King’s crest minted into its side. A relic from the war, a spoil, never would these savage mongrels put the royal crest on their own junk. He should’ve cut the one who sold him the flask, one looter less it would be… 

Grigori drank his cordial and thought of hematites gleaming in the snow…

"D’you hear me?!", Theodore pulled at his sleeve, flushed and still sour from the chastisement he received, "He said if we go right now, and their mountain gods are merciful, we might reach it just by sunrise. I say we start climbing".

And so they did. 

***

"Tired?" Grigori smiled at him from the makeshift bed of pelts that he had arranged between the fire and the stone wall, "Cheer up, it is almost over. For better or for worse... Wretched frozen wasteland, nothing here except stones that don't exist..."

He rolled over on his side and soon filled the cave with the raspy snorting of an old hound, leaving Theodore alone in his deafening exhaustion.

He licked the remains of grease off his fingers and agreed, silently, that the end of this frenzy would bring him great joy no matter if successful or not. He wasn't just tired, he was on the verge of refusing to ever again leave their shelter, treason or not. This halt was bigger mercy to his misery than a communion. After six hours of hiking their guide had finally brought them to a dry grotto nestled among stones — just before Theodore began suspecting that the man was simply leading them in circles to their frozen death — and they could eat a proper supper of warmed stew that Grigori plundered from the inn at the village, packed in funny square wood cases with eagle engravings. Theodore had only seen this manner of depicting animals at the frontiers — the former frontiers, naturally — where he got stuck with his father right before the Conquest was over. He was not surprised to encounter them again this far north. 

Outside, the wind howled and promised death, and the fire could only give so much warmth, urging him to dig deeper into the furs and the pelts. He turned his head to watch the dance of flame shadows on rough stone and flinched — the eyes of the savage were staring at him from the distance of an arm’s stretch. 

Paralyzing eyes those were. Slanted and black and barely blinking, vile according to Grigori’s disdain, but secretly mesmerizing in Theodore’s own vision. 

"Shouldn't you sleep?" he asked quietly, timidly even, in a way he would never speak to a barbarian in Grigori’s presence. 

There was some silence, spiced with fire creak. They had wood and paper and rags brought from the village; the mountain man had carried the bags on himself through the entire ascend. They've paid him well to do that. 

Finally, he said:

"I keep vigil. In case wolverines come."

"Wolverines?!" Theodore flinched under the heaviness of the furs. "Why do I only now hear that there are wolverines in these cursed mountains?!?"

"They dislike fire and only show themselves near humans if there are cubs to save from the cold," the man said calmly, stirring the coals with a stick, "But now it is not their mating season, so why bother you for nothing.”

There was some more silence, resentful on Theodore’s side and serene on the side of the barbarian. Quite a vision he was. Old enough to be Theodore’s grandfather, but with limpid young eyes, short of stature, robust like a stone sculpture. Black stripes stretched from his eyelids down to the corners of his mouth, as if he’d been crying in coal. A cord with an edged bone hung on his neck, above the fur-lined collar. It was impossible to seat near such a creature and not feel drawn to him. Theodore tried again. 

"So is it just a tale, then? Speak freely, I will not punish you if that's what it is. Although you should have told us before this hell of a ride, I reckon."

"What exactly? That wolverines are not yet in their mating season?"

"No," he was too exhausted to take offense for this mockery. “About the hematite. And Nebesk. Is it true?"

For the first time since they’d left the village, the man showed a hint of a smile.

"This is not the name of the city you are looking for. Not what we call it. But — ask me, and I will tell you if something is true."

"It is two thousand years old indeed?" Theodore hugged his knees and cocked his head, like a child listening to a nurse’s tale. 

"Older."

"Then how come none of our people have seen it?"

"Why, some have," the man flashed his strikingly white teeth, "Only most have decided to remain in it”. 

"Is it true that you resurrect people? That you are all shapeshifters? That you have hematites and they turn the blood of whoever eats one black and makes them an all-powerful beast?"

The man threw his head back and laughed, and so did his shadow on the wall. Theodore bit his tongue. He was tired, he didn't think before speaking, and it was to late to take it back.

"Is that what your king sent you here for?" The barbarian looked at him with amusement almost as humiliating as the one he would often receive from Grigori.  "For a slice of beastliness? Being a bedtime scary story for our children is not enough anymore, he wants to become a real monster? He wants shapeshifting to - what, tear the throats of his rebel generals himself before his hangmen get to it? Isn't this kind of magic what he accuses us all of and kills us for, anyways?"

He laughed again, quieter this time. 

"If all that were true, do you think I would have spent my last sunsets down there, at that rathole that plucks clueless travelers like chicken? Would I drag you through ice for a handful of coppers? We are, of course, not shapeshifters or magicians. We are people and we need to eat and sleep somewhere warm. It has become difficult lately, I must admit."

Theodore swallowed his bitter disappointment and lowered his eyes. His cheeks burned. His dagger was too far to grab it and slice the heathen’s throat for the blasphemy he dared to speak against His Majesty. 

"It wasn’t us who started the war. You should have... You should have submitted to us at once and offered us your loyalty."

And your hematites, for they were the only thing worth craving in these unwelcoming lands. Dark, of course, and diabolic, and rotten, and it was only their king who could possess such power and use it wisely...

The barbarian smiled again.

"Sleep," he said, and Theodore's heavy eyelids obliged. 

***

…They dragged him out of the cave. He opened his eyes to the bite of the cold on his face, sudden and painful and so different from the soothing warmth of the cave. It hurt. His back hurt, dragged across sharp stones, his eyes watered, whipped by the wind. Among streams of stingy tears, he could see the dome of the night sky, freckled with huge stars that hung low above the mountains, caressing their peaks. How beautiful it was, how he wept at the sight of it, absorbed by starlight and a desperate urge to be alive. 

Something heavy was being dragged beyond his vision, he guessed it was Grigori’s body. They must have pierced their coats with hiking hooks, and they must have drugged both of them with something because Theodore tried to open his mouth to scream in pain every time his shoulder blades plowed the rocks  — and he couldn’t.

It lasted and lasted until he felt wet and hot at the back of his head. The sky buzzed before his eyes, the stars doubled and tripled, he remembered an old mountain song that he had once heard at the frontiers — we shall not meet again until the stars dance in the sky… 

They hauled him up. They tied his hands above his head, then strapped his waist to a wooden pole so he couldn’t flinch. Two silent barbarians with bloody smears on their faces blocked the view, but then they stepped back, and what he saw was — Nebesk. 

And it was indeed made of hematite. 

He recognized it at once, although he had never seen it before but in heretical alchemist almanacs.

Rows upon rows of houses stretched under the sky, carved into the mountains in square shapes. Some were narrow and tall, some were sturdy and spread across the slopes, and they rose and rose above each other, endless windowed shapes that were born out of the mountain flesh. And all over… All over where he could see… Black polished stones shone brighter than stars. They lined the rooftops of every house, they hung in bunches in every window, swaying in the wind and clinking against each other. The stars reflected in them, and it was hard to tell them apart from each other. If you swallow it, you become damned... If you swallow it, you become invincible... 

One of the men ripped the coat open at Theodore’s chest. He heard a grunt and the snap of seams at his right and guessed that the same had been done to Grigori. His head throbbed harder now and shapes blurred in his eyes until all he could see was starlight. 

"Hematite is called that because it is related to blood, true enough," a voice told him, and the pale face of the mountain guide shadowed the impossible brightness of the stars, "But it does not turn a human into a monster, as some think. It doesn't gift sacred blood to murderers and tyrants. It doesn’t change blood at all. It is simply made of it."

He opened his wolverine muzzle and white crooked fangs snapped in the dark. So they are shapeshifters, Theodore thought in a burst of blurred joy. 

Somewhere beyond the reach of his ailing eyes, a loud squishy sound ripped the night, and when he lowered his head, he saw a sharpened bone stick out of his chest. Blood trickled down his body and warmed it up, soaking the clothes and steaming in the cold. The mountain man bent down and placed a basket of dark stone lumps under Theodore's feet. Blood dripped into the basket, first shy like spring's eavesdrops, then growing thicker.

Theodore watched as the stones in the basket began lighting up, one by one, with faint sparks of inner starlight, and thought - God. 

What beauty.