He would have to find a bride immediately, make the alliance Zoya had pushed so hard for. Marriage to a stranger. A performance of civility without true companionship. He would be acting for the rest of his life. He sighed. This place was making him morose.
Nikolai sat up straight. He’d heard a noise outside, a soft snuffling. When he opened the door, he saw nothing—until he looked down: A bear cub was tugging gently at his trousers with shiny little claws. His fur was thick and glossy, and where his back legs should have been, he had two wheels, the spokes of which looked distinctly like finger bones. The effect was both enchanting and bizarre.
The cub tugged again, and Nikolai followed, stepping into the central chamber. It was only then that he saw Grigori, his massive, shifting body huddled against the wall.
“Forgive me,” Grigori said, three mouths talking this time, appearing in vague faces and then dissolving. “We have been alone a long time here, and I cannot be comfortable in enclosed spaces.”
Nikolai gestured to the gray sand walls. “Couldn’t you just change them?”
“They are your rooms now. That seems … rude.”
The snuffling bear wheeled around the perimeter, bumping against the doors to Zoya’s and Yuri’s chambers.
“Your minion is charming.”
“I find creation soothing, and I know how much easier it is for otkazat’sya to witness the monstrous in particular forms.”
Nikolai paused, unsure of what protocol was expected around a Saint. “Is that why you’re huddling in the corner?”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t do so on my account. Rumor has it I have a gift for the monstrous myself.”
Grigori’s many heads chuckled softly, a jury of laughing Grigoris. “I can no longer control the form I take. I was once just myself and the bear, but now a thought enters my mind and my body races ahead to meet it. It is exhausting.”
Grigori shrank, and for a moment, Nikolai glimpsed the shape of a man with gentle eyes and dark curly hair. He wore the skins of a bear around his shoulders, and the bear’s head as a mantle … but then the bear moved, and it was as if man and animal were one, standing together.
“I don’t know whether I should mention this,” said Nikolai. “But I’ve been told the pelt of the bear that killed you is in the vault of the royal chapel in Os Alta. I wore it at my coronation.”
“I’m afraid your priests have been sold a counterfeit,” said Grigori, the image of the mantle flickering over his shoulders again. “That bear never died, much as I never truly died.”
“It became your amplifier?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” said Grigori as he split once again into a larger body, a tide of legs and arms.
“I think I remember your story. You were a healer.” A young healer, renowned for his cures of the most hopeless cases. He had healed the son of a nobleman afflicted with some plague, and the nobleman’s doctor, most likely afraid he was about to be out of a job, had accused Grigori of trafficking in dark magic. Grigori had been sent into the woods to be torn apart by beasts, but he had fashioned a lyre from the bones of those who had trespassed in the wood before and played a song so soothing, the bears of the forest had lain down at his feet. The next day, when Grigori emerged from the woods unharmed, the nobleman’s soldiers bound his hands and sent him back into the forest. Unable to play his lyre, Grigori was savaged by the very bears who had slept at his feet the night before. Bloody reading for a young prince. It was a wonder Nikolai had slept at all as a child.
“I was a healer,” Grigori said, and his many legs bent at the knee as if he might rest many chins on them. “But I did things that perhaps I should not have. I made babies for mothers who had none. I made brides for men who desired them. I made a great soldier, twelve feet tall with fists like boulders, to protect a count’s castle.”
“The stuff of children’s stories,” Nikolai said, remembering his nannies’ tales of witches and gingerbread golems.
“Now, yes. Then … I had no care for the boundaries that governed my power. Merzost was too great a lure. I thought little of whether I should do a thing but only if I could.”
“That kind of power is unpredictable,” said Nikolai, quoting David.
Grigori chuckled again, the sound rueful and murmuring as a crop of new heads clustered together, their expressions mournful.
“Death is easy. But birth? Resurrection? The work of creation belongs to the First Maker alone. I trafficked in merzost and lost control of my own form. So I became a hermit, at least for a time. Eventually, of course, people sought me out, eager to learn my secrets regardless of how disturbed they were by the way I looked. We are always drawn to the lure of power, no matter the cost. They called me the Bodymaker, and I took on hundreds of students over time. I taught them how to use their gifts for healing and for combat. They went out into the world and they all bore my name, or a form of it.”
“Grisha,” Nikolai said in surprise. Grigori had trained the first Healers and Heartrenders, the first Corporalki. “That was where it all began?”
“Maybe,” said Grigori. “Or maybe that’s just another story. It was all so long ago.” His entire form seemed to slump, a sleeping bear, a weary man, the burden of his imprisonment settling over him. “You will not see much of me in your tenure here. I do not like to be looked at, and I find it hard to bend my hermit’s ways. But if there is anything you need, please do not hesitate to come to my tower. I know it is not a welcoming place, but I assure you, you are welcome.”
“Thank you,” Nikolai said, though he could concede that he had little desire to enter a tower made of bone and gristle.
“Elizaveta can be a harsh teacher, but I hope you will not be swayed from your goal. There is a great deal at stake in your success. For all of us.”
“What will you do when you are free of the Fold?”
“You’re so certain you will endure the trial?”
“I like to bet on myself whenever I can. But usually with other people’s money.”
Grigori’s dejected form seemed to regain some of its structure, sprouting into a curved spine and a series of folded arms. He looked like a strange tree, tilting toward the sun. “When my power is gone, when I become mortal, I will once again take on a steady form. Or perhaps I will die. Either way, I will be free.”
“Then I will do my best for all of us.”
Now Grigori leaned forward, a chorus of human heads with dark eyes, jaws like muzzles full of pointed animal teeth. Nikolai had to force himself not to step back.
“You must, my friend. Everything is connected. The world is changing, and so is Grisha power. If the Fold continues to exist, it will not remain the same either.”
Nikolai had felt it too, this rush toward change. Borders were shifting; weapons were evolving. It was impossible to know what might come next. “Yuri claims we’re about to enter an Age of Saints.”
Grigori sighed, and the sound gusted through the chamber. “Do you know why the monster inside you woke? Why the Darkling’s power was able to emerge after all of this time? It began with the drug parem. It made things possible that never should be. It altered the bounds of Grisha power.”