The Grail of Sir Thomas

Chapter 31

  In a strange dream, he saw himself lying on the riverbank. Waves lap two steps from his head, a fish jumps out to catch low-flying gnats. Watching that fat fish, he feels desperate hunger; not for gnats but for the silly fat fish.

  He struggled his heavy eyelids up. He was lying on the bank of a river; its waves lap two steps away. The light is dim red, strangely diffused, the sky all covered with low clouds.

  Oleg felt his body with a sluggish surprise; half-naked, ribs protruding like bones on a picked corpse, his belly all but stuck to his back. His swollen tongue was scratching against the palate, but once Oleg stirred, he felt a desperate hunger. No thirst, though his mouth was dry, but hunger. He would like a big fat fish.

  He heard a moan nearby. Thomas lay there with his eyes closed. He was emaciated, his eyes sunken, his cheeks covered with two-week bristle. His gaunt body was naked to the waist, bones protruding on his broad chest, ribs about to break through the tightly stretched skin.

  Oleg shook Thomas by the shoulder. His own arm was moving dead, Oleg felt surprised at its being so thin. The knight heaved a sigh, his eyes opened. His look was perplexed, but then his pale lips curved in a feeble smile. “Sir wonderer… I thought we parted… As your place is in Hell, I’d have to sing alone with harp in hands… But the Virgin remembers men’s friendship, so she placed us together…” He turned his head with effort, looked with surprise at the strange reddish clouds that hung straight over their heads.

  Oleg sat up. He had a dull headache and saw double. The water was purling two steps away, a big stream rather than a river, but strangely, Oleg could barely see the opposite bank. Was something wrong with his eyes? He had never seen such a reddish dusk – or dawn? – before, though in his long life he’d been to many corners of the wide world created by immortal Rod.

  He heard a perplexed voice. “Is it Hell or Heaven? If Heaven, then I should have a harp in hands, be seated on a cloud and sing praises to the Almighty… Or the Lord knows I have less of an ear for music than any bear in Britain and my voice makes crows drop as they fly? And I’ve never played harp. I played dice, thirty-one, twenty-one and vampire, I played joker but harp… er… But if that’s Hell, where are those creatures with tails whom I saw after every carouse that lasted more than a week?”

  There was a quiet rumble overhead, then a loud splash in the river. Oleg felt creepy all over with an indistinct fear. His fingers found the necklace of charms, counting them convulsively.

  “But what if it is Purgatory?” the knight continued in a thoughtful voice. “A place neither for you nor for me? No way for you to our Heaven. Neither for me, a devout Christian, to your Pagan paradise, as your shameless orgies are forbidden to the warriors of Christ… unless one was drunk or couldn’t control his feelings, but then he should confess to the army chaplain. Our gods could arrange it; to put both of us, in order not to separate us, into the Purgatory. That’s a place between Heaven and Hell. Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, as we put it. Not a thing, neither one way nor the other…”

  They heard steps. Oleg alerted. Thomas raised up a bit, peering into the reddish semi-dark, gave a moan of weakness but kept his body rested on his arms, thin as splinters. Oleg observed the reddish dusk as closely as he could. Some vague spots, which could easily be taken for horned mugs or sharp-toothed jaws, floated before his strained eyes. Thomas slapped on the bare ground, groping for his sword, muttered a curse and bit his tongue with caution; he did not know whether one was allowed to swear in purgatory or if he would be transferred to hell for that. He had no fear of the boiling tar but a fear to part with his true friend.

  A woman turned up from the semi-dark. There was nothing a moment before, she seemed to emerge out of thin air; slender and lithe, with a paunchy jug in her hands. Oleg smelled a befuddling fragrance but kept his eyes on the woman, not the jug. She was naked to the waist, with beautiful high bosoms, in a long skirt. However, both friends were naked to the waist too.

  “We are in the Mahometan paradise!” Thomas whispered anxiously, but his eyes were glued on the beautiful woman. “I have Saracen boots on, they could confuse.”

  The young girl put the jug down between Thomas and Oleg, took two silver cups off her belt. Her moves were graceful; she kept smiling. Thomas blushed but couldn’t take his eyes off her maidenly snow-white bosoms, with pointed teats that seemed to be made of pink granite.

  “Is it paradise?” Thomas asked in Saracen. “Are you a houri? And where are the other twenty thousand?”

  She bared her pointed white teeth in a smile, answered in a strange language, which Oleg hadn’t heard for ages but, strangely, he could still understand it easily. He gave a start of amazement, felt his back shivery. “Where are we?” he said slowly, choosing the words of the Agathyrsian language with effort.

  The girl’s eyebrows flew up high, her eyes opened as wide as they could. She backed up, said hastily, “The elder will come and explain. And now you drink mountain mead.” Oleg felt creepy with fear again, as he watched her vanish at once.

  Thomas followed her with shiny eyes. “What a jump! She did not expect anyone to know her language.”

  Oleg tilted the jug carefully over the silver cup. From the narrow mouth, a strange dark liquid streamed out, with no splash. The smell was pungent. “She was right,” he replied.

  “But you…”

  Oleg brought the cup to his lips, took a cautious sip, listened to himself, drained the rest of the strange mead with more confidence. It made his stomach heavier, his body liven up, his heart beat with more force.

  Thomas drank his part. “Mountain mead?” he said with perplexity. “It feels like liquid meat… Sir wonderer, I think we are in your Pagan hell!”

  “Slavs have no hell,” Oleg reminded. “Hell was invented by Christians.”

  “Or your Pagan heaven. No difference. Our Heaven is for fleshless souls, and here I feel a stitch, a thirst, and other things. I’m sure we can fight here too and our wounds will heal at midday.”

  “That belongs to Valhalla,” Oleg explained patiently. “The paradise of Scandinavians. Rus’ lies to the south of them and to the north of Eastern Roman Empire.” He lay down, satiety spread over his body, his eyelids became heavy, he couldn’t help closing his eyes.

  “Is Rus’ between Aleman and Pole?”

  “Closer to the Steppes… Sir knight, abandon your vain hopes. We are in no hell, no paradise, not even purgatory. We shall hear the godly music some other time.”

  Thomas touched himself with amazement. “That’s why I feel so alive!” he said with surprise. “But you promised we’d die!”

  “Promises are like piecrust. I can’t fathom myself what could hamper it. By chance it will come right…”

  “That mysterious ‘by chance’ again!”

  For the second time Oleg woke up with hunger. He saw a new jug, a bigger and broad-mouthed one, on a flat stone. Thomas was asleep, his arms outstretched, the reddish dusk curled behind him. Clouds hung overhead. Oleg felt something wrong; in the time it took him to have sleep and get hungry, no cloud had moved or changed its shape.

  Voices and laughter came from the left, a crackle of coals, a smell of birch firewood. He heard horses neigh nearby and a strange many-voiced echo repeat after them but, as close as Oleg peered, he could see no people, no fire, no horses. Feeling weak and ill, he struggled up, walked toward the voices. He staggered, the world before his eyes went dark at times, at other times he saw a flash of reddish stars.

  The fire was revealed suddenly, as though a tent curtain was opened before Oleg. Men and women are sitting by the fire. Everyone is small, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, their faces as white as mealworms. They have elaborate clothes on, as though for a celebration, but sit on stones, lie on the bare ground. Thin slices of meat, separated from each other with fragrant leaves, hang on willow twigs over the coals. As fat drips down on the coals, bluish smoke flies up.

  “Good day,” Oleg said in the language of Aga
thyrsians. He stopped three steps from the fire. “Or evening?”

  Young boys jumped up in haste, making room by the fire for him. Oleg saw ghostly pallid faces with blue lips turned to him from every side. Everyone had strangely big eyes, the color of ripe acorns, that seemed goggled in surprise. They watched him with astonishment. When Oleg sat down by the fire, the boy who looked the eldest told him with caution, “We have eternal twilight here, stranger.”

  Oleg nodded, his watchfulness and anxiety still with him. He felt something strange about those people but could not fathom what it was. His charms seemed to have run wild; they stuck in his fingers all at once. “Twilight… Why?”

  “You don’t know? That’s strange… We are in the lower world.”

  Oleg took in their serious faces at a glance, looked around. The lower world was what Slavic sorcerers called the place for the souls of dead people. Ordinary people, not heroes. Heroes, ascetics, and righteous men went to paradise, while the rest got here. There was no lower world in the past, when the souls of dead people stayed on earth to incarnate into animals, birds, fish, even bugs and trees. So there used to be a soul cycle. People could understand the tongues of animals and birds, though with effort. Soon after, that common kinship was only known to sorcerers, but the world remained integral – till gods created paradise and the lower world… And far to the south, in hot India where Arpoksai brought his tribe from the Upper Dnieper, they still have neither paradise nor the lower world. The souls of their dead still get into animals to return, after many incarnations, into a human body again.

  “When did you die?” Oleg asked.

  People around the fire stiffened, widened their eyes at him. He felt something wrong again. “Die?” the eldest one asked back.

  “Die,” Oleg said again. “How else could you get here?”

  People exchanged glances. Finally, a young-looking man with deathly pale face told him, also with great caution, “Our forefathers came here. But they came alive… as we are.”

  Oleg felt his charms, glanced the strained faces over quickly. The people also felt nervous, that gave him some comfort. Thoughts darted about his head fervently; Oleg ran over the options, threw some of them away. “We seem to have the same name for different things,” he said at last.

  Annoyed, he reminded himself that in the times when Agathyrs led his tribe away from the banks of Dnieper, after he had lost to Scyth the contest in drawing the bow of their grandfather, there was still a soul circle. No need of the underground world, so it did not exist. The need arose when humans received the obligation to remain human even after death. To achieve it, people started to bury their dead straightened. And if the body was burnt, the pot to collect ashes was either made in the shape of human figure or had a human face painted on it. Agathyrs could not get into the lower world. It simply did not exist then!19

  “Does everyone know this world is underground?” he asked.

  They watched him closely. Shivering in his soul, Oleg noticed all of them had sharp, penetrating eyes. Their sights touched his mind like invisible delicate fingers, but Oleg was used to keeping his thoughts and feelings hidden behind a solid fence.

  “You are smart,” the eldest one said. His voice was flat, with no hint of feelings. “Very quick at it… No, the tribe knows not. Many generations changed since the day when Agathyrs led the last of his people into a deep cave to save them from enemies who were coming upon… Only we, initiated sorcerers, know the truth: we and our herds roam about great caves!”

  Oleg did not falter. He felt tenacious eyes on him. His brain worked quickly, thoughts replaced each other like flames.

  “Do you know the way out?” he asked.

  “Now we do,” the eldest one replied. “But that time the entrance collapsed behind Agathyrs and his people. The earthquake all but ruined the tribe… Many died, the rest had a hard time. They explored the cave, using their torches, found a way deep inside, through a whole succession of colossal caves, some big enough to house ten such tribes! They had to cross underground rivers, round the lakes. Huge blind creatures lived in their depths, white and huge like serpents…”

  Oleg closed his eyes, listening to the dull monotonous voice, and imagined all that terror when people ran out of their torches on the third day, started to burn clothes and broken fragments of carts. Then the wood was also over, leaving them in the creepy dark… It was pitch-dark when a big animal attacked women, killed two and injured five. Men managed to kill it despite the dark, though several of them were injured by swords and spears in that terrible night battle. The tribe made lamps from the fat of the dead animal. Then they would kill other cave animals, eat their meat, make bow-strings of their sinews and lamps of their fat…

  Many people died, unable to stand the life without sun, but those who survived gave rise to a new tribe. Agathyrs and his sons would always go ahead of the main party to explore every crack, every way down. In the four hundredth year of cave life, after many generations had changed, one of the walls burst with a crash and opened a cave so large that others, which saw the life and death of those generations, seemed small forest glades as against it. In that cave, connected with some others, big and small, strange grass grew, amazing animals lived, and blind fish never seen before splashed in lakes and rivers.

  By that time, only Agathyrs and two of his sons, one of whom was a sorcerer, remained of the eldest generation. Others had long lives, several times as long as a common man’s, but they had less sunny blood of gods in their veins, so they got old and died… a few of them, as the rest perished before, in fierce fighting with cave monsters. Agathyrs dreamed of the return above. He even prepared arms to revenge the offenders, but not long ago, he was also reached by doom; he perished in a campaign, fighting a monster that attacked his party suddenly. Agathyrs was the last living man of those who had seen the sun. His sons were born underground, the two of them who still live are decrepit old men…

  “But how did we get here?” Oleg inquired tensely. “If you saw no sun…”

  “No sun, but surface,” the elder one replied. “Every six hundred years, as entrusted by Agathyrs, two or three men of the most initiated sorcerers make a long, exhausting way above. They climb for two or three months. Once it took half a year. Then we wait for a rainy night, when the night sky is covered with clouds. Last time it was me, Taras and Nazar who made the ascent. My name is Ostap. Straight out of the crevice, we found you. We did not know people above could still gorge on the overcome grass! In our tribe, even a child would not eat a blade more than he needs, so we had no antidote with us, which is, definitely, unforgivable for sorcerers. We should be ready for any case, shouldn’t we?”

  Oleg felt searching looks at him. “The overcome grass is extinct above. They tell tales of it, but no one knows what it looks like. I found it by chance.”

  “But you knew it was overcome grass?”

  “I knew but people had forgotten. I’m a sorcerer, so I know more than others.”

  They ate meat in silence. Ostap told Oleg there were big serpents in the caves and beasts much bigger and scarier than serpents; they would hunt serpents as wolves hunt hares, kill and eat them. Also they hunted huge slow animals that looked like turtles, but each one was the size of a hill, its bone plates as thick as a log. When those animals fought, their roar rent the air, made big stones fall from walls and the invisible sky, killing and injuring people and cattle. Once Agathyrsians suffered very much of those monsters, dying without number, till their warriors, under the guidance of sorcerers and Agathyrs himself, made traps for the beasts. Since that, people were safe, then started to press on the monsters, bit by bit, winning new caves from them.

  They heard steps. Thomas came out of the thick air suddenly. As he saw Oleg, his face lit up, he gave a polite bow to everyone around the fire. Ostap pointed at the place near Oleg, gave the knight a twig with stringed slices of roast meat.

  “He doesn’t know our tongue,” Oleg explained. “He’s from another tribe
.” They looked with disbelief. Someone tried to speak to the knight, Thomas smiled guiltily and made helpless gestures.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Oleg said again. “Out there, many things have changed. You came underground when the world was young and all the tribes and nations spoke the same tongue. Or almost the same… at least they could understand each other. One pronounced ‘a’ where another said ‘o’, the third spoke with a twang, but it was understandable. However, changes are fast there above. The nations you left… no trace of them anymore! Even their names are forgotten. Brave Agathyrs forged his swords in vain. He would have found no one to revenge, no one to burn in a slow fire, no one to skin.”

  Oleg started to retell the conversation to Thomas. The knight stopped him with a talk-now-and-retell-later gesture.

  “Shall we see your tribe?” Oleg asked.

  Ostap looked aside. “If you are ready to stay with us, you can do it now. But if you want to go back to the Upper World, then it is up to the Council of Elder Sorcerers to decide. If they decide to let you go, then you will see nothing. Every tribe has its secrets. Please don’t take it as offense.”

  “All our life is war,” Oleg told him sadly. “When shall we see the Elders?”

  “Life here is a slow stream,” Ostap replied. “But you have good luck. The Council will meet in three days.”

  Their life streamed, as far as Thomas understood it, with no division into day and night, in the eternal twilight. The walls were inhabited by glowing moss, and luminous mold grew in places, but that was a faint light even for an accustomed eye. Human sight could reach no farther than ten or twenty steps, that’s why people seemed to appear out of thin air and vanish in it. But there was a good point too - the invisibility of walls made the world look endless.

  As far as he understood, the earth is cracking continuously, like a ball of clay in the hot sun; old cracks get deeper and new ones emerge. The caves are huge, and new ones are added. Once the nomads in their roaming came back to some old caves after three thousand years and failed to recognize them; the caves were three times as broad, their walls had long cracks leading into strange spaces where invisible water splashed and strange animals roared scarily.

  On the second day Thomas, looking around suspiciously, whispered to Oleg. “Sir wonderer, it’s a bad place. These people are wizards!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I managed to approach a wall… and there I saw a thing that made my hair stand on end! An old man came out of solid stone, walked a bit along a stream and, following it, went into the stone wall again!”

  “Couldn’t it have seemed that way to you?” Oleg asked anxiously.

  “I’m no fool, sir wonderer! I crossed myself at once, then also said a prayer… as far as I could remember the words. But the old man did not vanish. Moreover, I touched his footprints on the sand and I can stake my life that he’s no older than forty-eight, a bit lame, has joints in his left leg aching…”

  “I believe you!” Oleg interrupted hastily. “I forgot how skillful a warrior you are, sir knight. That makes a difference. If this is the weapon Agathyrs prepared, they can make dangerous enemies. And what if they have something else?”

  On the next day, Ostap came for them, examined both critically and told them to follow him. They went along the wall. Oleg understood that the rest of the young sorcerers were dispersed ahead on their way to prevent common people from seeing the strangers. Let them live in happy ignorance of another world.

  Ostap led the guests into a small cave and stopped in the narrow entrance, blocking it. Three people in white robes were waiting inside. All had the same silvery-grey hair falling on their shoulders, so it took Thomas some time to see that only two of the old sorcerers were men, while the third was an ancient crone. Her face, covered with small wrinkles like a baked apple, was as colorless as the faces of all Agathyrsians. She had alert, unfriendly eyes.

  The two old men exchanged glances. One made the guests a gesture to sit down. “My name is Boryan, this is my brother Boris and my sister Borunia. We are children to Boreas and grandchildren to Bor. We are the eldest sorcerers of the tribe…”

  “And where’s the son of Agathyrs?” Oleg interrupted. “I’d like to see him. His name is Taurus, isn’t it?”

  The old men exchanged glances again. “How do you know his name?” Borunia asked harshly.

  Oleg paused, looked at the shimmering stones in the walls of the cave. “Of all the sons of Agathyrs, Taurus was the only thinker. The rest were warriors who despised him. They only wanted to gallop across the steppes on fast horses, to chase a deer or, even better, to clash face to face with enemies in mortal combat…”

  The crone watched him with disbelief. Boris gave a cough. “Why do you need Taurus?” he asked with mistrust. “He is too old to be disturbed. He is with the tribe, while we here are only a vanguard.”

  They looked with expectation. Thomas also kept his eyes on the wonderer. Oleg smiled, lifted his hands. “I would just love to see him. And I’m sure he will be glad to see me!”

  After a long pause, Boris said warily, “You speak as Agathyrs spoke, as his sons spoke, as Taurus speaks still. Now it is the sacred language of sorcerers. Our small folk, and our princes too, speak differently. How do you know this tongue?”

  Oleg grinned, pointed at Thomas with his sight. “You could have guessed already.” He sounded almost merry.

  The three sorcerers gasped and goggled at him.

  Oleg waved his hand, his face darkened, his voice turned sad. “You are right about not coming above. Blood runs in rivers there. People kill each other so fiercely that the most savage wolfs and hyenas look innocent lambs against them! Whole tribes are butchered, with women and children. Nations fight nations, tribes fight tribes, clans fight clans, families fight families, brother fights brother. Even a single man fights himself to the bitter end, as he’s lost sight of Truth and Falsehood!”

  The three of them were silent, their eyes attentive. The strangers had too much mystery in them, and sorcerers are the ones able to watch and listen, while hasty decisions belong to green youth.

  “Probably,” Oleg told them very sadly, “gods keep you here as seeds. People above may all destroy each other. It seems more and more likely to occur. And then you will come out, to populate the upper spaces with kind, peaceful people. You are far cry from those beasts who once ran into these caves to escape other beasts, even more savage…”

  The crone squirmed with discontent. “We have never been beasts!” she interrupted peevishly.

  Oleg shook his head, his eyes full of sympathy. “You have. What shame in that? You should be proud of your having turned human from beasts! Sadly, it’s usually the other way round. You left childish pugnacity to children.”

  He glanced slantwise at Thomas, and the three sorcerers followed his sight. Thomas sat on a broken fragment of rock. Arrogant and haughty, he looked solemnly over the heads of the elders. He was manly and handsome, a head taller than the sorcerers and twice as broad in the shoulders as any of them, his chest broad and prominent, his belly in bolster-like muscle as flat as a bug’s.

  Boris sighed, cast a reproachful look at Oleg. “But you are not a pugnacious beast, are you?”

  “I’m a sorcerer,” Oleg reminded. “But the world is not all sorcerers.”

  They were silent for a while, immersed in their thoughts. Oleg watched their clean mild faces with sorrow. Since the Great Exodus, unknown to the tribe, there were no wars against each other. Agathyrsians had conflicts and murders of jealousy or envy but no bloody battles of two human parties. They had too much of the exhausting war with underground monsters to think about killing each other in addition. No place above for their sort. Even sparrows will dominate them.

  Suddenly Boris flinched, as though woken up rudely, asked hastily, “Do you want to return above?”

  “I must,” Oleg replied sadly. “While one plows, another has to fight. The world is still cruel.”

 
Boris looked aside at Borunia. She reared up, her eyes blazed. “We cannot let you go! People above should not know of our tribe. What if the cruel upper nations came rushing here? Everything here will perish. You are right; we forgot war long ago. Though we have some… But one cannot spend all their life hiding. And we have no skill in killing people.”

  Oleg alerted. Thomas reached, involuntarily, for his absent bag. “People above are violent,” Oleg replied carefully, thorough in his choice of words. “But no one will come here. They are afraid of darkness, even as adults. Scared of dark sheds, of night forests… And they have no reason to come here while there are many rich lands above! You are only rich with your wisdom, but it’s not a thing to be carried away in bags. You have none of what conquerors value.”

  Thomas watched the senile sorcerers with pity. All countries above are open to plunder. What madman would go into these creepy caves instead, to rob beggars of copper coins?

  The five of them sat in silence, even Thomas made hardly a move. The cave’s air was thick and heavy. It made Thomas feel relaxed and sleepy, like in the warm water.

  Oleg kept an alert eye on the faces of the sorcerers. He handed his bag to Boris. “You are the eldest one here, wise man. Please help me to crack this nut.”

  “A nut?” Boris said in perplexity, without touching the bag. “You have a copper cup there. It was forged seven thousand years ago. As large as a fist, some Aramaic writing on its lip, its stem a bit crumpled…”

  With a sigh, Boris took the bag, felt the cup through the thick fabric. Thomas watched him with great respect. The elder listened, then his head jerked up, he cast a sharp look in Oleg’s eyes. Oleg nodded. The old sorcerer, keeping an intent eye on him, put his hand into the bag, found the cup by feeling, and stiffened.

  Boryan and Borunia glanced at their elder brother with anxiety: his face was too strange. They also looked sideways at fascinated Thomas who even rose a bit to look into the bag.

  “I feel strange power,” Boris spoke very slowly. His face was otherworldly, as though his eyes reached far behind the stone walls. “This cup contains great power… but I cannot understand it.”

  “How great?” Oleg asked tensely.

  Boris still had a vacant look, his voice was remote. “It is hard for a mortal man to judge. And we, though Great Sorcerers, are just mortals… Taurus would have put it better. He has the blood of gods… And Agathyrs the Immortal would have told even more of it…”

  Oleg heaved a sigh. Thomas shot a quick glance in his dark face and understood that Agathyrs would have said nothing too. And if Agathyrs even told it, he, Oleg the wonderer, would have told the same before.

  Suddenly Boris’s eyes opened wide. His hand in the bag began to twitch, as though trying to clasp the cup around. His eyes, full of infinite astonishment, were fixed on Oleg. The wonderer gave a reluctant nod of agreement with something important that the old sorcerer got to know due to the Holy Grail. With the next nod, Oleg pointed at Thomas’s mighty figure, then shook his head.

  With obvious reluctance, Boris took his hand out, handed the bag back to Oleg who, in turn, gave it to Thomas.

  “The Secret Seven, our mortal enemies, started a real chase for this cup,” Oleg told Boris insistently. “It is a miracle we still have it. But they have never come themselves – only their servants! Why? What value do they see in it?”

  Boris chewed his flabby colorless lips. “Why won’t you look in the future yourself, the Wise?” he asked suddenly.

  Oleg glanced askance at Thomas who was adjusting the cup carefully in the depth of the bag, replied hastily, “All the land we’ve crossed is enclosed with an invisible fence. Two score steps away from the cup, I still felt that screen. And a longer distance away… Either no time for that, or too dangerous. When I parted with the cup last time, I could afford no look into the future – we were too busy saving our skins!”

  Borunia, after being silent for a long while, spoke in an angry, shrewish voice. “These caves are impenetrable to the power of the Secret Seven!”

  In the face of Boryan, they could see anxious doubt clearly.

  “I don’t think they know anything of the nation of Agathyrs,” Oleg comforted them, “the brother of Scyth. When you come out in due time, it shall be a disaster to them!”

  Thomas shifted his gaze between the sorcerers and his friend. At last, he dared to break the silence with his strong manly voice that clanged with steel, as though a huge hammer beating on a cooling blade. “Is that prophecy about you? A mighty nation come from the North… Gog and Magog… Is that you?”

  They gave no reply, rigid and immersed in something unknown to Thomas. Some mysterious thing retained by ancient nations who had no blessing of communion with the faith of Christ.

  Ostap emerged near the cave entrance several times, shot anxious glances. Nazar and Taras came and brought pieces of strange meat, very fragrant. Thomas looked at it with hungry eyes but refused firmly; one of the young sorcerers had explained to him before that it was the meat of a frog animal, and Thomas barely kept from vomiting. After that, during all three days, he refused to eat the meat of frogs. No matter that those cave frogs were as large as camels and attacked people.

  A jug of mountain mead was put before Thomas. They had dinner. Then Boris looked silently at his siblings, they nodded sulkily in turn. The eldest sorcerer told the guests sadly, “Our young will take you up there.”