Epilogue: Something Wicked

The helicopter was a black dot against the endless white, with only the occasional gnarled, husk of a tree interrupting the frozen wasteland. It travelled a straight course through a gentle snowfall, towards a great forest of frozen birches.

Onboard the helicopter, Professor Chekov sat uncomfortably between his two “guests”. The woman on the right was wrapped in a gray shawl and a heavy dress, the color of which had faded long, long ago. The old woman was impossibly shrivelled, like a fruit left out too long, so much so that her clothing threatened to swallow her whole. Baba Vanya’s eyes were like glass, almost opaque from cataracts.

She was like a spectre, yet still the demented woman was a far better travel companion than the man in the red, buttoned up suit who sat on the left. His eyes were worse. They were astoundingly clear, black as night, and always slightly wide--as if they were witnessing perpetual horror. His beard was long and wiry. The pale skinned leader of this damnable mission had a habit of stroking it every so often, in deep contemplation, which was almost always.

Baba Vanya smelled like mothballs and old gardenia perfume. Simeon Grigorivich, however, smelled unbathed and undead, masked with the scent of ambergris. Truly, it had been a challenging ride—in the olfactory sense—from Moscow to this remote stretch of Gorky Oblast.

Finally, Grigorivich pointed a long, bony finger at a break in the trees. “There,” he instructed the pilot.

Chekov, balding, bespectacled, brainy, swallowed. He felt Baba Vanya’s trembling hand touch his kneecap.

“My grandson,” the old woman croaked. “Is that you?”

Deeply uncomfortable with this—with all of this—the man in the white parka gently shook his head. “No, madame,” he said. It had been the third or fourth time since Moscow that he had to assure her of this. “I am afraid not.”

“Oh,” the old woman said, lost in her own fog again. “When may I see him again?”

“Soon enough,” Chekov answered. Working for the Black Library for more than a decade now should numbed him to this dubious work, but he couldn’t deny seeing some of his own grandmother in Vanya’s pruned face. It didn’t matter if they were gentle with her or not. Not in the end anyway. Yet still, he was compelled to take her by the arm, to give her balance and match his pace with hers. It was hard for him to imagine this frail dowager having once been the most powerful magi in Russia, but when he touched her, he felt a flicker of immense power—a hot ember in the ruins of a dampened fire pit. Yes, there was still magick there, and powerful magick at that.

The helicopter landed, kicking up a plume of freshly laid snowfall. To Chekov's surprise, Grigorivich patiently helped the old woman alight from the helicopter. He was gentle with her, which didn't sit right with the Library scientist. After signalling to the pilot and instructing him to wait, the trio moved on into the thick of the white woodlands. 

Chekov had worked with Grigorivich before. He had heard stories of…altercations between the ‘Red Magi’ and the Library’s other agents. Fortunately, the man had never once chastised him, or had given him a dark look—mostly because Chekov was precise in carrying out orders. That aside, there was no denying a magnetism about the man—how he carried himself with long strides, or the slow, calm way in which he spoke. He was engaging when he wanted to be. He asked questions, though seldom returned answers.

And now, coming around the bend of a withered, skeletal tree, he stopped. Chekov’s eyes travelled between Grigorivich—motionless, yet keen eyed—and Baba Vanya, who may as well have been standing somewhere else entirely. It was here that Chekov once again noted how inadequately dressed the man was for such a climate. Chekov’s own parka could barely keep out the cold, yet Grigorivich wore no gloves or heavy coat. His glyph, likely, was the explanation—yet still, there was always just one thing off about him that troubled the otherwise unflappable scientist.

The man finally spoke, calm, assured. “Surely this is the Path of Batu.”

Chekov looked around the snow covered woodland. It was beautiful in a way, but gray and grim. It reminded Chekov of the fairytale illustrations of Ivan Bilibin. “If you believe the legends, sir,” he said. He chose his neutral answers carefully.

Slowly, very slowly, the red magi grinned. It was not a reassuring smile. “Oh, dear Chekov, I assure you that I do.” With that, he took the lead again, deeper into the eternal forest.

The scientist—who possessed no magick of his own but could sniff it out just as well—shivered. Not from the cold. He heard the old woman give out a small noise, a grunt or sigh. It reminded him of a fussy child.

The scientist tried to soother her. “Come now, Madame Vanya.”

“Where are we going?” the old woman asked again, this time in a higher, more desperate register. Even after a gentle tug of the arm, she refused movement. “Where is my grandson?”

A lump formed in Chekov’s throat. If not for executive pressuring, he would have never agreed to this assignment. He tried to pull the old woman along, wary not to keep their commander waiting. She would not budge. Up ahead, about several paces or so, Grigorivich stopped. Chekov held his breath.

The magi, with his back towards them, raised a firm, long-fingered hand. “Tell the old woman we are taking her to see him.”

“S-sir, this woman can barely walk.”

“Which is why I am happy to take a leisurely place,” he said calmly. But there was still something beneath that austere demeanor that Chekov couldn’t shake. Grigorivich walked back to them. Twigs snapped beneath his footfalls.

He stood in front of the crone and observed her for an uncomfortable, long minute. At first, Chekov worried he might strike the woman. Instead, he placed his hand on her cheek, as soft and tender as a mother to a newborn.

His voice was soft. Fatherly. “Here.”

Chekov felt the air around them subtly grow warmer. Grigorivich had done something, but it was nigh imperceptible.

The woman blinked, ripped from a trance. “My husband. My husband is that you?” Her mind was foregone, but she spoked with a renewed energy.

Grigorivich leaned back and laughed at the remark. “Ah, perhaps once,” he said, jovial and earnest. He took the woman’s shrivelled hands inside his own, so large they covered hers entirely. “Hold still. I shall give you enough strength to complete this most vital of journeys.”

Again, the sensation. Chekov thought for a moment that the snowfall around them had parted by way of an invisible force, but if that were the case, then the natural state of the world returned almost instantly. Yet, when he looked back at the old woman, he noticed instant change—her eyes, once frosted white, were now sharp and blue and young. In contrast to her still ancient appearance, it was incredibly jarring.

“My legs,” she said, awoken from a long dream. “My mind. Where is this place? My grandson is not here—”

 “We are taking you to see him,” Grigorivich said before Chekov could even form thought. “But first, good madame, you must assist us with a great task.” He smiled without showing teeth. He did not let go of her hands.

If the woman feared him, she didn’t show it. She made a sour face, muttering, “The men in white suits are always asking me to do this and that. It is a burdensome for an old woman.”

Chekov felt the tension dialled down a notch or two. Grigorivich chuckled at the remark, let go of her hands, and extended his unnaturally long arms towards the forest. “We thought you might enjoy the fresh air. This is Lake Svetloyar, Mrs. Vanya.”

The woman gasped and clutched her shawl closer to her breast. She peered ahead, through the trees, at the breakage in the woodland up ahead.

Baba Vanya’s eyes glittered with familiarity. “Yes, I know it! Why, I used to play here on its shores.” Her voice was so clear and so distinct that Chekov almost wondered if the magi in red had cured her through some hither-to-unknown healing magic. Too soon, however, the fog of old age and years of scientific intrusion returned. “Oh, when was that? It could surely only be…” The old woman trailed off. “Where are we?”

“Come now, madame,” Grigorivich said, leading her by the hand, “We will be there soon.”

Whatever he did, whatever unspoken magics he'd wrought, appeared to do the trick. The woman followed, and at a brisker pace than before. In no time, the trees parted, giving way to the rugged coast surrounding a frozen lake. To Chekov, it looked like a single, great plain of frosted glass that extended as far back as the opposite edge of the forest in the distance.

“It is as smooth as pearl,” Grigorivich remarked. Chekov was surprised to hear him express any sentiment. There was a spring in his step. “A beautiful sight.” 

The odd trio drew closer to the edge of the lake, towards an outcropping of rock that hung five feet or more over the white surface. Onto this natural platform, Grigorivich ushered the old woman. Chekov hesitated, concerned the woman might fall and render moot the whole point of this already farfetched undertaking. He said nothing, and indeed, he heard nothing either. This place was strange. While the forest whispered with a low wind, out here was all stillness. No wind. No birdsong. The silence was deafening and unnatural.

But if that were the case, then the old woman had sharper ears than the upstart scientist. She opened her mouth with a start and looked towards Grigorivch. “Bells,” she exclaimed with great excitement.  “I hear church bells!” She looked out onto the lake, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Look. A city here.”

“What is she talking about?” Chekov asked the other agent. He was just about at wit’s end with this one!

As always, the man was dramatically cryptic. “What men without gifts cannot see nor here. There are senses reserved only for those who are blessed with the grace of magick.” He did not look at this reluctant assistant. “Do you know the stories about this place? Of Grand Kitezh?”

The sunken city, Chekov recalled from what he'd perused in the archives. “Supposedly founded by Grand Price Yuri II as major trading hub and religious center. It was stormed by the Mongol warlord Batu Khan, but its citizens prayed to the Goddess to spare them, and the city sunk beneath the waters.” He sniffed, weary of the cold. “Fairy tales.”

Grigorivich merely laughed under his breath. He shook his head in dismay. “In time, we all become fables, dear Chekov.”

The man who had once made Chekov uneasy now irked him instead. As far as Chekov was aware, he was mostly an entrepreneur for a low-brow bloodsport that the proletariat enjoyed. Chekov couldn’t fathom how he of all people had become a consultant for the Tsar’s black-op, magickal research unit. Besides, he reminded Chekov too much of the self-same Tsar’s former advisor, a mad mystic who the dearly departed Prince had rightfully assassinated (allegedly more than once) shortly before the curtailing of the attempted Bolshevik coup. 

Yet, supposedly Grigorivich's tireless (and tiresome) research into the Library’s older tomes uncovered the truth behind the city sleeping at the bottom of the lake. None of its denizens had survived the sinking, of course. The invasion was a bloodbath. Yet ruins did in fact remain..

Grigorivich looked as if he had come face-to-face with angels. He extended his palms to the greater lake, welcoming it into his arms. “Do you feel it, Madama Vanya?”

“Yes,” the old woman said, joining in the ecstasy. “I see it. Oh! Such a beautiful city. But there is a darkness here. Something foul. But those glittering spires and the tips of the churches…”

"Yes, madame. Twenty-one bells for twenty-one glyphs. And ah, the greatest bell of the lot--cast from orichalcum, the alloy of the gods---in its center. The twenty-second. That is the one..."

Chekov thought he was simply hallucinating the subtle vibration beneath his feet. Then, he heard the ice groan. Was it the helicopter? Had the pilot come to retrieve them?

“Raise it, Madame,” Grigorivich commanded. His voice was swallowed by the cold, quiet above the lake. “Raise it from the depths. It calls to you.”

This was maudlin. Absurd! An embarrassment! Though Chekov had no magick of his own, he had devoted his life to its study and the application of science. This mission, to confirm the existence of Kitezh for the satisfaction of an increasingly mad Tsar, was naught but folly.

Still, the trembling beneath Chekov’s feet became harder to ignore. The rock on which he stood was already shaking violently, so much so that he had to regain his footing. Concerned, he Chekov over at the woman. He gasped. The crone’s intense, blue eyes had grown even more icy. They shone now with a cold light. The woman’s frailty melted away, and Chekov—with fairy tales fresh on the brain—was suddenly filled with visions of powerful enchantresses.

“Yes…” the woman said, holding her arms out. Heat came off her body in waves. She steamed, the white smoke billowing upward as she conjured up invisible energies. She was in a trance, either of her own making, or placed upon her by Grigorivich’s secret magick.

“Yes, my grandson is there! In the city! Surely, he is. I can see his face. Oh, Pyotr. I can see your face. I am coming. Your grandmother is coming.”

It was difficult for Chekov to speak. He thought he heard a great crack. “Sir, her family was liquidated upon her capture. What is she talking about?” Sure enough, a fissure had formed in the ice—a huge split travelling across the frozen surface. “Sir, we should leave.”

The Red Magi whipped his head towards Chekov, his eyes full of fury. “Not when we stand at the threshold, fool!” He snarled. He loomed over the woman, goading her on. “Yes, that’s it, Madame Vanya. Raise it from beneath the depths.”

The ice cracked. It was full on tremor now. Chekov dropped to his knees, not out of fear or wonder, but to prevent himself from falling. He clung to the rock, adjusted his glasses, and looked out at the lake, which had fractured into several different ice floes. The cold water beneath the ice churned and churned by the force of an invisible storm. The waves started to rise, the ice breaking on shore. This was beyond dangerous.

“Oh, I can’t!” Vanya cried out. She faltered, swooned. “It is too much.”

Chekov spat out the ice water battering against his face. “Sir, there’s a risk—” But his warning was drowned out by the din of the lake coming alive.

Grigorivich leaned in and sunk his hands into Baba Vanya’s shoulders. “My gift, you see—one of them—is to grant people power. Take mine! Take all that you need! Let it fill you.”

The woman cried out, and the aura around her intensified. It was as if she was on fire. “No, it is far too much!”

Even if he wanted to now, there was nowhere for Chekov to run. The waves washed around him, soaking his parka to the bone. My Goddess, he’s going to kill us all!

“That’s it!” Grigorivich roared. “Keep going. You must keep going!”

It was hard for Chekov to see through the icy spray and the waves washing over him, but there were dark shapes emerging from the water, like the head of some monstrous, abyssal entity. Towers. Spires, in the architecture of long ago Rus, but rusted and decayed from years spent at the bottom of the lake. A city rose from the depths, displacing water and ice and sending great waves to the shore. And with it came the thunderous peel of bells, defeaning, and far from holy.

Chekov could no longer hold tight. A great wave rose and picked up his body, sending him tumbling painfully, head smashing against rocks, until he found himself on shore, flat on his back—wet, cold, but mercifully alive.

Silence, again. Chekov winced. His neck and head stung, yet still he raised his head, and his body followed. “Goddess…” he said, pulling back blood from his lips.

Torrents of water cascaded out of open windows, and the bells still rang with their momentum. A city, not large, but a city nonetheless, sat at the center of the lake. Fragments of a stone bridge dotted the surface of the water, where the city may have once connected with shore.

“Yes,” Grigorivich said, upright, some distance away. “Great Kitezh stands before us.”

Chekov got to his feet and walked the way towards the outcropping, yet his jaw remained slack the whole time. He stared at the ruins of Kitezh, and felt as if he had just witnessed something terrible irreversible. Then, his eyes fell from the looming city to a gray, motionless shape on the ground—Baba Vanya, cold and lifeless, with her face buried in the sand.

Grigorivich confirmed what Chekov already suspected. “She’s dead,” he said, off-handed. “But she did not die in vain.”

The scientist gave the woman a passing glance. Where to begin with all of this?

“Nor will you…”

The sound of bells stopped.

Unable to think clearly, Chekov removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. He blew on the lens and placed them on his face again. “We must report this to the Library,” he said, an attempt to regain control over this increasingly bizarre turn of events.

Grigorivich chuckled again. “No, my dear boy.”

The sound that came next was a quick, sharp crack. The sound of Chekov’s neck snapped clean. His body fell to the sand, his neck at an odd angle, and came to rest almost parallel to poor Baba Vanya.

Grigorivich gave the man’s corpse a flitting glance, before his attentions returned to his mighty city again. He smiled, yet he knew better than to get ahead of himself. The next few months would be vital. There were preparations to be made. Yet, soon enough, a great battle would take place here in the center of the dead city—and an old magick, the most powerful magic of all, would wake.

“Come, Chekov. Glory awaits.”

Next Chapter!