Chapter 18 – Polovtsian Dances
Dear song of ours, take flight
On the wings of time to our homeland
Where we in life could sing you
Where we in liberty could sing you!
Under the cold and heavy sky
Through air as thick as tar
There to the fog on the lake
The cloud-tipped mountains gaze with disdain
Until the sun cuts through its mask
And shaves the mountains clean
Where grasses patch the orange valleys
And owls sing praises to the moon
And fruits in consonant harmony reply
To there, dear song, to there you go
To there, my song, to Kalinovo
A kingdom that once flowered is lost
A paradise is shuffled off
A kingdom for a cry left hoarse
As royal blood must run its course
Usurper or successor then
Must occupy the marble throne
The house's path forever wending
Down its dry yet bloodsoaked road
Dear song of ours, take flight
On the wings of time to our homeland
Where it in life could hear you
Where it in liberty could enjoy you
Under the muddy purple sky
Through air as clear as pitch
There with fog in his eyes
The jaded monarch gazes with disdain
Until the knife cuts through his mask
And shaves the country clean
Where flowers patch a whitewashed tomb
And crows sing praises to the moon
And veiled faces in consonant harmony reply
To there, dear song, to there you go
To there, my song, to Kalinovo
When reared to his full height, Egmont of Kalinovo stood a head taller than Chrono. Almost unconsciously, Chrono took a step backwards when confronted with the sheer mass of the knightly figure before him. He had confronted knights before, but of those he had known at length, only one projected anything like the air of authority and confidence radiated from Egmont, and even he had done so through force of character rather than his small, amphibian stature.
Paem, too, appeared to marvel at the newcomer, though Coppelia seemed as unflappable as always. Paem took a moment to offer her hand to Egmont in greeting; he returned the gesture and added a slight bow to the end.
"Sir Egmont of Kalinovo," Chrono said, "I am Chrono, and my companions are called Coppelia and Paem."
Egmont turned to Chrono. "What brings you, young master, to the heart of this parched and aching land? You have the look of a warrior about you. Are you, then, of a mind to assist in the defense efforts?"
"Defense efforts?" Chrono echoed. "Has the invasion begun already?"
"Then you know of it," said Egmont, suddenly on edge. "Be warned that I am prepared to strike you down if you show any sign of aiding the hostiles."
Chrono took a step backward and waved his hands out in front of his body. "Whoa there! I think there is a misunderstanding. We're trying to help Qilin in defending against the invaders. We only heard of the attack when another force made an attack on lord Kuei."
Egmont's posture softened. "Very well then, young master. One sent by lord Kuei is one with whom I have no qualms joining in alliance against our common foe. Mayhap we might assist each other in passage across this wretched desert."
"Excellent idea, Sir Egmont," said Paem. "I surmise that you are aiding lady Qilin, yet I do not recognize you, and you do not recognize me.
"Should I?" said Egmont.
Paem stared directly into Egmont's face, mouth clasped shut in a frown of disapproval. "I serve directly under lord Kuei. Any valued lieutenant in this land would know of me, and most know my face."
"I offer my aid here on my own terms and for my own reasons," said Egmont. "I owe no fealty to lord or lady of this place as long as my erstwhile task remains unfulfilled. Until that time, I am a wanderer."
"Wanderers appear to be the rule rather than the exception these days," said Paem. "This bodes ill."
"And yet I intend no harm to those who have themselves done no harm."
Paem sniffed. "That's not what I meant. You don't seem particularly bad, at least as far as I can tell, but that you are here at all, at the same time as these other outlanders, strikes me as either an odd coincidence or something more sinister. Do you mind telling us why you are here and why you wish to aid lady Qilin?"
Egmont motioned for the entire party to sit down in a circle, and Chrono and Paem complied. Coppelia, for whatever reason, stood a half dozen feet away from the circle and made no attempt to appear interested in anything Egmont had to say, but Egmont ignored her and addressed Chrono and Paem.
"I come to this land I know not how." Egmont's voice adopted a low, wistful tone, as if it were painting his story rather than merely telling it. "Indeed, I know neither precisely where I am nor how I might return, if return to Kalinovo proves possible. For the time being, such as time can be in this place, I am no more than a wanderer ejected from his home and tasked with fulfilling a vengeance upon one known to haunt these lands, one whose malevolence once wrought the ruin of a kingdom.
"The one called Galitsky is my quarry, though I have not seen hide nor hair of him since the beginning of my journey. He is guilty of regicide, of a most foul and contemptible murder, and one from which the fair land of Kalinovo might never recover.
"But we must start at the beginning. Kalinovo was in the midst of a feud of succession. The king had no heirs, and each noble house sought to win for itself the favor of the crown so as to position itself before the others when illness or war finally took the old king. Those days were complete chaos. Hardly a day passed when one nobleman or another did not vie for the king's attention with sweetly poisoned words or gifts, all the while the noble houses fought amonsts themselves and spilled each other's blood in a manner fit more for savages than for those pretending at civilization. The only man keeping the whole of the kingdom from fracturing and falling in upon itself was the king.
"Long had I served in the royal court when this incident occurred. My loyalty to Kalinovo was as unwavering as the earth's slow circuit of the sun, as deep as the deepest trench in the basement of the sea, and as rich as the soil of the world's most splendid garden. The fall of my homeland cut me deeper than any wound ever inflicted by a sword, for I was there when it happened. I witnessed the murder of the king, and yet my old bones could not summon the strength to save him. One evening, one deceptively quiet evening, an assassin stole into the king's chambers, and before I could end him, he drew his blade and beheaded our monarch. And yet, he was no base man, this assassin. Little time had I to size up the situation, but there can be no doubt that it was Galitsky, himself a contender for succession to the throne, that cut down the king that night.
"The sound of the alarm brought the whole of the castle guard down upon him, but he somehow managed to escape through a portal to this realm, and where he went from there I intend to discover. I myself followed him out of a desire to avenge the headless kingdom.
"As for my present errand, I heard a rumor that someone very much like Galitsky might be found among the invasion force. If this proves true, then I might quench Kalinovo's bloodlust within the week. If it does not, then I will continue to search wherever I must until I accomplish my task. That is my story."
"A sad tale it is," said Paem. "Our ruling council has not known such treachery within its ranks, and for that I am grateful."
Chrono stood up. "If your goal is in line with ours, then we should make haste to meet with Qilin. We haven't mentioned this yet, but we, too, are interested in the invasion force. Coppelia believes her friend Orchid might be among them, though why a friend of hers would join the invaders is beyond me."
"Actually," Paem noted as she stood up to join Chrono, "we don't know why any of them are attacking. The why of it all is what I need to find out for myself, by order of lord Kuei. And, to be honest, I need to satisfy my own curiosity."
Egmont stood up last and most slowly, whether because of his age or his armor. "It is settled, then. At once, we must go."
XXX
Mile after mile of barren desert passed beneath Chrono's feet as he and the rest of his party trekked slowly but surely in the direction of Qilin's castle. Eventually, and to everyone's relief, the sand grew thinner, revealing hints of a foundation of solid red clay. Not long after that, the party came across a raised path made of similar material, running off over the horizon to the northeast and southwest.
Here the wind picked up, streaming more and more particles of sand into Chrono's face as he trudged doggedly onward. The winds howl was only broken by the cry of a far off bird, a scavenger whooping with joy while stripping bare a set of bones that once belonged to whatever animals hid out this far into the desert.
None of Chrono's companions said a word, but Coppelia had seemed especially quiet ever since they had come across Egmont. Something about the man must have left her uneasy, whether it was his sheer size, his formal dialect, or his exotic helmet. Reflecting on this matter left Chrono with a twinge of discomfort; while he sensed no ill will in the newest member of the party, he still preferred seeing the faces of those with whom he spoke, and Egmont had yet to remove his helmet for even a brief moment. Chrono thought about just how hot and stuffy the inside must have been, especially in the heat of the day in the middle of the desert, and winced.
The first real landmark Chrono encountered on this leg of the journey was a split in the clay path. Part of the road continued on in a generally southwest direction, while a branch bent directly south. Both disappeared over distant hills without revealing their destinations, and to Chrono's chagrin, no signpost offered a clue as to which fork to take. Chrono glanced over at Paem.
"I'm actually not sure which way is better," she replied. "I mean, I know what lies in each direction, but I don't know where we should be headed. Lady Qilin could be at either location."
"What are our choices, then?" Chrono wondered.
"The left fork leads to a city called God's Hand, the seat of the government here. It's a fairly nice place to be, with places to rest and water and everything, but if the invasion has already begun, then I fear we might be better off continuing along the right fork to the Yellow River Fortress. Likely lady Qilin would have moved there in event of war."
Chrono smiled. "Then our choice is clear. We should take the right fork, unless anyone else has a compelling reason not to. Anyone?"
Coppelia spoke for the first time in hours. "I believe, Mister Chrono, that we should go left."
"Why is that?"
Instead of answering, Coppelia merely gazed down the path at the horizon and prompted the others to do so as well. Their gaze was met by a faint wavering in the yellow-orange pattern of the sky that might have been some sort of smoke. The longer Chrono looked at it, the clearer the sight became.
"What is that?" he asked no one in particular.
"Sand," Coppelia replied. "Something is moving under the sand."
"I thought the sand had thinned out," said Chrono.
Paem knelt low to the ground and poked around her feet with her staff, leaving a light divot in behind. She poked harder and dug deeper. "The clay is only on the surface. Not only is the path here artificial, so is the rest of the ground. At one point this place was nothing but an ocean of sand until lady Qilin had something firmer installed over it."
Coppelia shuffled her feet and cocked her head, apparently listening to something. "Why, then, did the sand not bury the path even deeper?"
"Good question," said Paem. "In fact, it should have, but the clay surface is not as solid as it appears here. There are places for the sand to drain out if it builds up too high, emptying back into the sand reserves below. It's quite the engineering marvel, I say."
"Then something is forcing the underground sand up through one of those drains?" said Chrono. "It's like a sand geyser. This I want to see."
Chrono started off down the path in the direction of the cloud of sand, and Coppelia followed after him. Both began at a brisk walk but quickly settled into a run, eager to see what could cause so much of a disturbance below the ground. For a brief moment, an image of something else, something in a different time and a far away place, bursting through from underground and tossing chunks of earth up high into the air flickered through Chrono's mind, but with a shudder he forced the image away. Nothing like Lavos could exist in a place like this, could it? Besides, Lavos was dead. If not a gigantic subterranean monster, though, what could it be?
Chrono found his answer as he made his way to the top of the next hill. Looking down ahead of himself, he could see a hole in the ground surrounded by a swirling vortex of sand a hundred yards in diameter. From the hole Chrono could hear a sound like rushing water, as well as a deep rumbling from the belly of the earth. He could feel the ground beneath his feet reverberating.
As the vortex swirled around, sand fed into the center like a glass of water being chugged into a thirsty mouth. Bits of sand flew from the side of the circular flow, but most of the airborne particles came from the hole in the ground. Every few seconds, the opening in the earth belched up a cloud of granules much finer than those at the surface and also slightly lighter in color. The flying sand drifted out in all directions before falling back to the ground, most of it in the middle of nowhere but some of it on top of Chrono's head. He found himself brushing most of this away, but the gesture was futile.
Chrono felt a hand on his shoulder as Coppelia caught up with him, staring wide-eyed at the spectacle below. Soon Egmont and Paem joined them, and the sight of the whirling pool of sand enraptured the entire party for what felt like hours but was really only a matter of minutes.
Then the whirlpool collapsed on itself with a crash as loud as anything Chrono had every heard. Shards of clay mixed with the sand in the air, pelting him from the front and from above. Waves of sand rushed outward from the center of the crash, most of them breaking at the foot of the hill but some of them coming dangerously close to engulfing him and dragging him down to his doom. Several more crashes sounded out, each louder than the first, and shockwaves emanating from the epicenter shook Chrono's entire body, pushing him backwards onto the ground. As he struggled to his feet, he braced himself for more.
When the crashing noises finally appeared to die down, Chrono managed to regain a fully upright stance. Instinctively, he drew his sword. And then the rest of the ground in front of him caved in all at once, leaving an even larger hole. But not an empty hole.
A massive gray dome of what looked like animal skin breached the surface of the sand where the whirlpool had been, throwing more sand and clay into the air. The dome rose higher and higher, and when it reached the height of a two story building, a small, round head rose up from what Chrono guessed was the front, beady red eyes peering out from an elongated, dark recess below the forehead, sitting over a mouth filled with small, white, sharp teeth. From the creature's cheeks jutted two enormous tusks, like those of an elephant but much larger. To Chrono's utmost relief, the head stared off to the east, apparently oblivious of his party.
The monster rose nearly all of the way out of the sand, and then it began to move with a slow but incredibly noisy crunching sound, shoving its way through the land's clay shell, completely destroying the path to the city, and letting loose a roar that Chrono could feel deep inside his body. As Chrono tightened his grip on the handle of his sword, he felt Coppelia's fingers dig into his shoulder.
"We must follow," she said. "This is part of the invasion."
Chrono nodded but said nothing.