Nine Layers of Sky (20 page)

Three

KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

Karakol had changed little from Elena’s childhood. Here were the apple orchards, faint with the first haze of leaf, and the tall poplars overlooking gingerbread-carved houses. Some of the roofs bore sculpted dragons, a reminder of how far east they had come. After the concrete monotony of Bishkek, the town looked welcoming, in a shabby kind of way, and the air was fresh.

The military installation lay some distance beyond the town; it was unlikely to be signposted, but anyone would know where it was. It had been shut down some years before, and there had been talk of selling it to a Canadian company for development into a leisure complex. She did not think anything had come of this.

They found a room in a sanatorium, not far from the center. There was no sign that anyone was following, but that meant nothing. They had no reason to trust Manas. He could have set up the whole thing, spun a plot to lure them here. Perhaps it was a way of flushing them out, to draw Ilya into a situation where he would reveal whether or not he possessed the object. There could be a dozen people on their trail, all unseen. There were plenty of folk in Russia who had the opportunity of a great deal of practice over the years. She felt exposed and raw until she was inside the illusory sanctuary of the room.

At first, Elena meant to do necessary, responsible things: wash her hair, go out and buy bread and a toothbrush. But after the long journey and two cramped buses, she found herself edgy and impatient. She did not know how much that related to the prospect awaiting them or the enforced proximity to Ilya, but as soon as they were through the door of the room, she reached for the packet of condoms. He did not need to take the lead. She made love to him with a relentlessness that afterward alarmed her, as though she had been possessed. It had not been like this with Yuri. It had not been like this with anyone.

After, she looked at the needle tracks along his veins and wondered about the nature of addiction. He was holding her too tightly, as if he could not bear to let her go, but after a while she found it hard to breathe.

“Ilya?”

He murmured something in reply. He sounded half-asleep.

“We ought to think about finding the place.”

He sighed, releasing her into a tangle of sheets. “I know. Do you know where it is?”

“I think so. It’s near an old fort of the Scyths, but it’s not close. It’s up on the hillside at the western edge of the lake, perhaps twenty kilometers or so.”

Ilya peered at the bedside clock. “If we set off now and hitch a lift, we’ll make it before dark. I want to take a look at this place we’ve been invited to walk into. I do not want to take you into a trap. I don’t want to walk into one myself.”

“I wish we had a gun,” Elena said.

He squinted down at her. “What, me and my sword aren’t good enough?” It was a moment before she realized he was teasing.

“No! I trust you, Ilya.” She did not want to deal with hurt masculine pride, and besides, it was true. It was not from these situations of uncertainty and danger that she wanted a man to protect her, it was from
trudnosti byta,
the tough scramble of everyday life, and then they just didn’t seem to want to stick around. She added, “I’d like a weapon of my own.”

“It should be easy enough to get hold of a gun,” Ilya said. “But we don’t have time. You’ll have to rely on me for now. And on your own wits.”

Thanks for the concession,
Elena thought. But he went on, “Elena, please don’t think I’m being condescending. I know how strong women can be. I’ve seen them in war, in famine, in times of great change, and they are always the strong ones. Men just don’t want to admit it. But now—I don’t know what we’re dealing with. I know how much I can take, but if anything happened to you . . .” His voice was muffled in her hair.

She said, “Nothing’s going to happen to either of us,” and wished she could believe it.

They found a car in the central square and asked to be taken to the village nearest to the installation. The driver was Tungan, not Kyrgyz, and he spoke of the lake by its Chinese name, Ze Hai. He seemed un-surprised to be asked to ferry two strangers to such a remote spot, but Elena chattered on anyway, talking about how they were to meet her sister at one of the sanatoria around the lake edge. She did not know the name of the place, she said; she would recognize it when she saw it. Ilya was watching the road. When he touched her hand, she waited until they came to the nearest sanatorium and told the driver to stop. They stood at the entrance until he drove away.

The wind that blew down from the mountains was piercing, and the sky was deepening into green. Ilya and Elena made their way through apricot groves to the lakeshore.

“Where’s the fort?” Elena asked.

“I saw the ruins from the road. There’s not much left of it now. The installation lies behind it, in a little valley. I’ll keep an ear out. If Manas is here, I don’t want to be seen.”

“
Do
you think it’s a trap?”

“It’s possible.”

They made their way along the shore of the lake, their shadows thickening in the last of the light. Elena could hear water running and bubbling over the rocks. She crouched for a moment and dipped her hand into the lake. It was tepid, heated by deep thermal springs. She knew that the lake never froze, but it gave her hope, somehow, that winter was really over. Something cried high in the heavens and she looked up to see an arrowhead of wild geese arcing toward Karakol. The sound made her shiver, but Ilya was striding ahead toward the ruin of the fort.

When he reached the little grove of firs that lay just below the fort, he stopped.

“Can you see anyone?” Elena whispered.

“No. I can’t hear anything, either.” There was the gleam of metal in the twilight. She had not seen him draw the sword.

“Elena,” he began.

“Don’t tell me to wait here. I’m going with you.” Even in the growing dark, she saw him smile. “I was about to say, watch your footing, that’s all.”

“I’ll be careful.”

The fort was no more than a jumble of stones. Elena tried to imagine it as it must have been in its heyday: a round tower, perhaps with a scarlet banner snapping from its turrets, surrounded by harebells and the brittle grass. And below, the long line of the lake, a wound in the mountains, as deep and silent as a captured sea. She looked back. The sun had long since fallen behind the western peaks, but the lake still shone, reflecting the sky. Lights were scattered along the shore: sanatoria or local dachas. They seemed a world away from the old stones of the fort.
We should
never have come here, we Russians. We should have left
this place to the ghosts and the geese and the silence.
Yet she had always believed in the dream of Soviet progress, the steady march of civilization. It seemed that the tide was drawing back, and taking her heart with it.

There was no sign of movement around the fort, and a person would have found it difficult to hide among the scattered rocks. Elena followed Ilya up under the ridge. Far to the east, the summit of Khan Tengri, Lord of Spirits, glowed rose-red, catching the last of the sun. But the rest of the world lay in shadow as far as the Chinese border.

Something rustled in the grass. Ilya swung around.

A man was standing at the edge of the fort, among the stones.

“Where did he come from?” Elena whispered. It was as though the figure had sprung out of the ground.

The man held out empty hands, calling, “Come down. I’m not armed. I just want to talk to you.” It was not Manas.

“Who are you?” Ilya called.

The man stepped forward. Elena discerned a thin, humorous face with a wisp of beard.

“I am an
akyn.
And you must be Elena Irinovna and Ilya Muromyets,
bogatyr.
”

“How do you know that?”

“We’ve been keeping track of you,” the
akyn
said. He reached out and touched Ilya’s arm, as if reassuring himself that Ilya was real. With the flat of the sword, Ilya moved the
akyn
’s arm aside. “It’s only been in the last couple of days that we found you.
What a wonder.
I thought this when I first learned of Manas. The greatest legend of the Kyrgyz people, alive and strolling about in the modern day. Who would ever have thought such a thing? And yourself, too—though you’re a Russian myth, of course, and therefore not quite so interesting.”

“Thank you,” Ilya said dryly. “You don’t seem surprised to see us.”

“I am aware of your remarkable powers of hearing. If I had been in your shoes, I would have followed Manas, listened to what he had to say. I know about the meeting with the politician, you see. I was the one who set it up. I know you and Manas have been foes in the past; if he had simply asked you to come here, would you have done?”

“I do not know. Probably not.”

“It was partly a setup. But you can trust him, you know. He fights for a just cause.” The
akyn
pointed toward the ruined installation. “Do you know why Manas has such an interest in this place? Do you know what that used to be?”

“Some kind of military base,” Elena said.

“And do you know why someone would put such a base there, in this remote spot?”

“Strategic considerations,” Elena said. “We’re close to the borders of China and Tajikistan, and that means anyone who’s interested in Afghanistan has an interest in this region, too.” She steeled herself for the usual response: the jocular put-down of the Soviet male, about how she was clearly more than just a pretty face.

But the
akyn
said only, “Like so much of our history, this place, too, is a combination of reality and illusion. It was a guard post, true, but not only of the obvious borders.”

Turning, he began to walk down the slope toward the installation. Elena, with a doubtful glance at Ilya, followed. He had shifted the sword; she could see the faint gleam of its hilt above his shoulder.

“You’re talking of Byelovodye?” Ilya said.

“You’ve had at least a glimpse of this other land, haven’t you? You’ve both seen it?”

“Yes.” Elena was cautious.

“What do you think it is? Where do you think it lies?”

“I do not know. But I know that it is Russia. The air smells of home.”

The
akyn
snorted. “A typically Russian thing to say. It belongs to all of us. The Russians have tried to claim it, as they have claimed everywhere else. I should have met you in Manas Park, not Gorky Park as they call it now.”

“Maxim Gorky was a great writer,” Ilya said, stung into national defense.

“And Manas is a great man. What I am trying to tell you, my fine Soviet hero, is that there are many dreams and visions, not just Russian ones. And that other world, of which we receive such tantalizing glimpses, is where all those dreams lie.”

“Dreams? Like the
rusalki
?” Ilya asked.

“The
rusalki
are its guardians. Your
volkh
and his colleagues, on the other hand, want to control the gates between the worlds, bleed off our dreams drop by drop. Typical of the secret police everywhere. You look skeptical,” the
akyn
added, turning to Elena.

“I am skeptical. I’m a scientist, after all. And I don’t know who to believe.”

“I suppose that is natural,” the
akyn
remarked, blandly. “Why should you believe a know-nothing, goat-herding Kyrgyz poet?”

“What’s your agenda, then?” Elena asked.

“Byelovodye needs rescuing; it’s beginning to atrophy. And this world needs rescuing, too. We need to get our dreams back.”

“And that?” Ilya pointed to the installation.

“I have something to show you.”

“A gate?”

The
akyn
turned to face him. “I don’t expect you to tell me immediately whether or not you have a key. I know I must earn your trust. See what I have to show you and then you can decide.”

The remains of the installation huddled in the valley below, dimly visible as a collection of domes and cubes behind bare branches, surrounding the central polygon. They made their way slowly down, skirting the perimeter and keeping to the trees. Finally, they came to a line of bushes and then barbed wire, rusting and ancient, decorated with warning signs.

“We’ll have to go under,” the
akyn
murmured.

It’s a trap. I don’t want to go in there,
Elena thought. But the
akyn
was already ducking under the wire and she did not want to stay out here in the darkness. Besides, she was curious. Cautiously, she followed. The wire snagged on her coat and she pulled free, expecting the sudden shrill of alarms, but the installation was quiet and dead, almost as much a ruin as the fort had been.
Graveyards,
she thought,
monuments to dead
dreams.
The polygon looked like the dome of a cathedral: new faith replacing the old. She waited as the
akyn
peered through the broken window of one of the perimeter buildings.

“Can you see anything?” she asked.

Ilya tried the door, but it had rusted shut.

“We can get through the other side of the dome,” the
akyn
said.

The second entrance of the polygon had once been padlocked, but now the lock had been twisted off and the door swung open on its hinges. The
akyn
paused for a moment, then stepped through. A torch flickered into life. Elena and Ilya followed.

The dome was huge, an expanse the size of an aircraft hangar, but little remained inside. Either the installation had been cleaned out when the military left or locals had looted the place, for the only things remaining were a set of iron girders stacked against the wall.

“What are we looking for?” Elena hissed.

The
akyn
led them to a metal plate in the concrete. A ring was set into it. Ilya reached down and tugged with both hands. The plate shifted, but did not rise.