Nine Layers of Sky (24 page)

Part Nine

One

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

The day wore on toward noon. They were having to rest more frequently now, and not only on Ilya’s behalf. Elena could see the pinched lines of fatigue in his face, but she could also feel them in her own. Her feet hurt and they had long since run out of the food she had brought for the bus ride. Moreover, the burial poles had awoken within her an atavistic fear, a sense of something cold and ancient, that she had thought long dead. Rationally, she knew this to be nonsense. Why shouldn’t the locals bury their dead in the manner of their choosing? They were entitled to their customs, after all. But somehow she could not help thinking of Tamerlane’s horse hordes, sweeping across the country almost as far as the Dneiper and the Don, inspiring an old terror.

As she had reminded her sister, she was not even a native Russian. The land of the horse clans was where she had been born; it was her country. And yet she knew that was not quite true. The old refrain:
My country was the Soviet Union, and they abolished it.
The familiar sense of not belonging swept over her. But if she felt this way, how must Ilya feel? Or had he seen so many changes that it was all the same to him in the end? Slightly breathless from an uphill climb, she asked him. He looked at her askance.

“This is not my kind of country,” he said, with finality. “Russia is my country.”

“But where does Russia begin and end? Borders change, you know.” Elena found herself mildly put out, as though he had disowned her.

“Russia—real Russia—is the land where I grew up: Siberia, the North. Birch trees, black earth, ice on the water in the morning, white cranes that are said to dance. I can’t leave it for long, I know this. I could have traveled the world these past years.” He smiled. “I’ve often cursed the fate that keeps me here. Why couldn’t I have been born a Hawaiian hero, I ask myself? But the country pulls me.
Your
Russia—” He stopped, turned her to face him, and put a gentle hand across her heart. “Maybe that’s in here. Whatever it is.”

A typical Slavic gesture, she thought: sentimental, sincere. She replied in kind. “Then that means you, Ilya.”

He bent to kiss her, then his head went up. She saw it in his eyes before he spoke. He said,
“No.”
She did not have to ask him what he meant; she could hear the hoofbeats herself, coming too fast.

“Quickly,” Ilya said and pulled her toward the trees. They raced over the stony ground, gaining the illusory shelter of an apricot grove just as the horsemen swept around the curve in the road. Elena ducked beneath foaming blossoms. The horsemen halted, milling alongside the road. She could see the Golden Warrior among them: straight-backed, on a mare as white as the apricot flowers. There were perhaps twenty of them; too many to outfight or run.

“Keep still,” Ilya murmured in her ear. She did not need to be told. She thought:
One man I might be able to
handle, but I can do nothing about so many. And Ilya isn’t
well.
She felt icy cold. Her heart lumped along in her chest. Somewhere, a bird was singing: a lark, high in the pale air. The Golden Warrior was riding swiftly around the perimeter of the horde, gathering them together. The sunlight glittered over the scales of armor. One of the men slid down from his horse. He threw a handful of red dust to the ground, then prostrated himself on hands and knees. He smelled the earth like a dog and raised his head, crying something in a harsh language. He pointed in the direction of the apricot grove. Ilya’s arm grew tight around Elena’s waist.

“Elena, when I tell you,
go.
”

“Where to? There’s nowhere—”

“Up in the rocks behind the grove. I’ll be right behind you.”

The horsemen, tightly grouped, were riding toward the grove. As they approached, they fanned out.

“Now,” Ilya hissed. “As quietly as you can.”

They glided back through the grove, breaking out into open ground.

“Run.”

But the horsemen had seen them. There was a shout from behind and the sudden rattle of hooves on stone. Elena was already bolting toward the rocks: high slabs, with a crack running vertically between them. Ilya pushed her against the rock and stood between her and the horsemen. The white mare outstripped the flanking riders and galloped up the slope. The Warrior’s golden armor flashed in the light, blinding Elena. The mare reared above them and she saw directly into the shining helm. She saw a girl’s face, fierce and cold, then the visage of a Mongol rider. Then there was nothing, only a blank and cloudy oval. Ilya struck out with the sword. The mare danced back. Elena saw the Warrior’s head turn from side to side. The Warrior kicked the mare forward; Ilya went down under its hooves.

Elena was seized around the waist and dragged up, to be slung across the Warrior’s saddlebow. She saw the flash of a knife as it sliced through the shoulder strap of her bag and then the bag, containing the object, was flying through the air as the Warrior threw it to a waiting horseman. But she was more worried about Ilya than the bag. She struggled in the Warrior’s grip, kicking and punching, but the Warrior wheeled the mare around and galloped toward the trees. She heard Ilya’s voice, calling her name, and went slack with relief. At least he was still alive.

She turned her head as the Warrior’s grip slackened. It plucked an arrow from the quiver at its shoulder and slotted it into a bow as Ilya ran forward.

“No!” Elena shouted. She slid over the mare’s shoulder, half-falling to the ground. The bow came up. There was a whirring hiss past her ear, but the Warrior had not yet loosed the arrow. It took Elena a moment to realize that the attack had come from behind. A bullet glanced off the golden armor and ricocheted into the rocks. The mare screamed and wheeled around, hooves sliding in the dust. The Warrior cried out, grasped Elena by the arm, and dragged her back over the saddle. The horsemen, moving like a tide, turned and headed for the road.

Elena looked back. Ilya was picking himself up from the earth. Someone was standing on the rocks above them, lowering some kind of gun. Elena saw a visored helmet, booted feet, and a khaki uniform. The figure was visibly female. As Elena opened her mouth to speak, the woman raised her hands and took off the helmet. Elena recognized her immediately: Colonel Anikova. She saw the gun come up again, the woman aiming down the sight, but the mare was into the trees and away. The ground flew past until all Elena could see was a cloud of dust, and then nothing at all.

Two

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

Ilya was sitting on a bench with his head in his hands.

“I’ll ask you once again,” the woman said in her curiously accented Russian. “What’s your connection with the horse clan? Why did you go to them?”

“I’ll tell you again,” Ilya said wearily. He had managed to resist giving her his name: a petty triumph, even though she probably knew it already. He had been forced to hand over the sword; that was enough. He wondered how far, if at all, she might be connected with the
volkh.
“We did not go to the horse clan; they came to us. They found us along the road and attacked us. As you saw, my friend has been captured. I have to find her.”

The woman smiled. “I remember reading of the old days in the Kazakh and Kyrgyz lands, how a girl might be snatched up over the saddle of a horse and galloped away to be married.”

Ilya looked at her. If she was trying to bait him, she was doing an excellent job of it.

“A barbaric custom, or so it seems. But often, I read, the girl would collude in her own abduction, entice a young man to carry her away so that she could tell her family it was none of her doing, and it would be too late for them to do anything about it.”

“Elena’s not Kazakh. Are you suggesting that whole scenario was a setup?”

“Why didn’t they take you?”

“I’m not as pretty?”

The woman gave him a contemptuous glance and abandoned the game.

“They took her because she has something they want. Something in the bag she was carrying.”

“Look,” Ilya said. “Of course she had something in her bag. It was some kind of device that came into her possession entirely by accident. I understand people like you. I know how you think; I know what games you expect to play, and I’m sick of it. I got sick of it eighty years ago, so you can imagine how I feel about it now. Just let me explain and give me the fucking truth.”

The woman appeared taken aback by this outburst. “Very well, why don’t you tell me what you know?”

“If you’ll let me have a cigarette, I will.” He did not think she would comply, but after a moment she reached into her pocket and took out a packet. He did not recognize the brand: a white box with a red star embossed across it. She took one for herself, then lit his own. It tasted ordinary and wonderful.

“So,” she prompted him.

“So. In the early nineteen twenties—” he glanced up, unsure whether she would understand the date, but she nodded.

“I know,” she said. “Go on.”

“I was involved with the secret police just after the Russian Revolution—the Cheka, under a man named Dzerzhinsky. They sent me to kill someone, a scientist named Tsilibayev. They told me he had invented a time machine, which probably sounds less ridiculous to you and me than to most of the Russian population, and he was going to turn it over to the Germans. I did not manage to kill him, but I destroyed his equipment and his laboratory. As far as I understand, the thing that fell into Elena’s hands is an original piece of technology, a device that Tsilibayev copied. I understand also that it is a kind of key, to open a gate between worlds.” But he did not want to tell her that he seemed able to activate it, that it spoke to him and that he believed it had sought him out.

The woman was looking at him, her expression unreadable. “Tell me something. If you had known what the equipment was, that it opens a way through into this world of Byelovodye, and if you had seen a little of this world, would you still have destroyed the laboratory?”

“I don’t know.”

“An honest answer, if a weak one.”

“I don’t believe in simple solutions. I’ve seen where they lead.”

“What happened after you destroyed the lab?”

“I was sent to Siberia, to one of the camps. Later, in Stalin’s day, twenty thousand died in that region, in Kolyma and other
Gulags.
The Trans-Siberian Railway is built on their bones. That is why I no longer believe in simple solutions.”

“We have nothing like that here,” the woman said. She stubbed out the cigarette, as if for emphasis.

“That’s what I would have said about Russia, once.”

“But
this
is a better world. Byelovodye is the sum of Russia’s lessons.” She leaned forward and he could see the belief in her eyes. It was, he realized, a long time since he had been witness to that particular brand of faith, perhaps not since the advent of
Perestroika.
But unless he was greatly mistaken, there was still a trace of doubt behind her eyes, like a pike in a pool.

“That’s what I would have said about Russia,” he echoed.

“Byelovodye—the Secret Republic—is Russia’s heart. How can I make you understand?”

He understood well enough, he thought, but he could not yet believe, however much he wanted to.

“You can help me find my lover,” Ilya told her. “That’s the only convincing I’ll need.”

“I will see what can be done,” she said very grudgingly. Ilya recognized her reluctance. Their goals might coincide, but she did not want to appear to be giving him any quarter. As she reached the door, she turned and said, “Anikova. Colonel, to you.”

“Ilya Vladimirievitch,” Ilya said in the old manner. He was not admitting to heroic status, not just yet. He saw a twitch of annoyance in her face, then she went through the door.

Three

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

They had carried her up into the hills above the apricot groves. The land was stony and cold, still fringed with snow. Elena’s head was ringing with the ride and with the discomfort and indignity of being held upside down.

A collection of yurts rose like growths out of the hard ground, from which children ran to meet the horde. The horsemen greeted their fellows with triumphant cries, shrill as wolf pups. There were many women as well as men; all wore pointed caps and carried bows. The Golden Warrior slid down from the saddle as soon as they arrived, and stalked into a yurt. Elena was hauled from the white mare’s back like a sack of potatoes and dumped unceremoniously before a narrow strip of fire dug deep into the earth. The horsemen left her there, and went to tend to their mounts. She stank of horses and sweat. She held close the knowledge that Ilya was not badly hurt; she had seen him rise.

Something roared overhead. She saw a slender craft like an arrow, starred with lights. Then it was gone, down over the horizon. The horsemen gave derisory laughs; someone spat into the coals with a hiss. Elena stayed where she was. If she tried to make a run for it, she would be caught and dragged back. If by some chance she managed to escape, she would freeze. She longed for Ilya, with an ache that alarmed her, and longed also for his sword. She should, she thought, have followed her instincts and bought a gun on the black market. But superior weapons had not prevented her abduction.

An old woman thrust a plate in front of her. Elena looked down at something frosted and bloody, cut into strips.

“Eat, eat,” the woman said, in fractured Russian. Elena picked up a sliver and tasted it gingerly. It was horse liver. It might be all she was going to get and besides, this stuff was a delicacy back in Kazakhstan. The realization that she was being treated well warmed her more than the fire. She smiled up at the woman, intending to try out her paltry Kazakh vocabulary and see how that went down.

“Rakhmat.”
The old woman gave a beaming smile, which vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

“Eat,” she said again, and went back into one of the yurts. She was wearing stout Russian boots beneath her woolen skirts. So much for ethnic purity, Elena thought, even here. She could do with a pair of those boots herself. She forced down the rest of the liver, then accepted a flat round of
lepeshka
bread and a cup, a fragile thing made of birch-bark, containing herb tea sweetened with honey. At least she would not go hungry.

When she had finished, she rose to her feet and looked around her. It was now quite dark. A sheaf of stars was scattered across the sky, and Elena looked eagerly upward, but to her dismay, there were no constellations that she recognized. She stared and stared, willing the heavens to take on their familiar configuration, but the stars burned distant and unknown. A great rim of moonlight was spreading just above the ledge of the mountains. The moon looked closer, somehow, and brighter.

The horsemen were milling around, seeing to tack and food. No one looked at her directly, but she had the feeling that all eyes were upon her. Slowly, making it plain that she had no plans for escape, she made her way toward the yurt into which the old woman had disappeared.

As soon as she reached the flap of skin that formed its door, a warrior stepped in front of her: a girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, with a fierce dark face.

“Joq, joq. Marhamet—oturunguz.”
Then she paused, adding carefully,
“Nyet.”
But Elena’s Kazakh, though basic, was good enough. “No, no. Please. Sit down.”

“I want to speak to the old lady,” Elena said in Russian, racking her brain for the correct words. The last thing she wanted to do was cause inadvertent offense.
“Quaise jerde apam?”
Was that the word for mother or father? She couldn’t remember. The girl frowned.
“Apam?”
She pointed across the fire pit, to where a tall woman in her thirties was standing.

“Joq. Keshiringiz, echtem et.”
Never mind.

“Apam? Mama? Ili babushka?”
But the girl was catching on.

“Yes, the grandmother.” Elena gestured to the yurt. The girl put her head around the flap and spoke.
“Minute.”

“Rakhmat,”
Elena said.
“Rakhmat.”
Perhaps if she repeated her scattering of words often enough, she would start making sense. But at that point, two of the horsemen strode across. They clasped Elena’s arms, repeating,
“Joq, joq,”
and laughing as they did so, as if she were a naughty child. Elena tried to pull away, but their strength was intimidating. Their hands encircled her wrists like steel bands; they smelled strongly of horses and earth and meat.

“All right, all right,” she said, sagging in their grip, and let them lead her to a nearby yurt. They pushed her through the door, not roughly, but with implacable firmness, and she heard the straps of the door being knotted behind her.

The yurt contained only a carpet patterned with birds and beasts, some cushions, and a stove. Elena made a thorough investigation, but there was no gap between the edges of the yurt and the ground; it was like being imprisoned in a drum. The dim red light from the stove flickered across the walls of the yurt. Outside, the shadows of the horsemen were reduced to striding ghosts. Elena curled up on the cushions next to the stove, grateful for its warmth. She could think about nothing but Ilya.