*
In the darkness of the Warehouse, legends and treasures wither and die in the flames. Thousands of books turn to curling ash. Paintings are eaten by flame from the inside out. Wax pools on the floor, running down from the many candles stacked across the shelves, and makes a twisted rainbow across the wooden slats. In some of the deeper shadows, invisible voices sob in grief.
Yet not all the items meet destruction.
A large clay jug sits on a shelf, bathing in heat. Upon its glazed surface are many delicate black brushstrokes: sigils of power, of containment, of tethering.
In the raging heat, the ink bubbles, cracks, and fades. The wax seal around its cork runs and drips down its side.
Something within the bottle begins growling, slowly realizing its prison is fading away.
The jug begins to tip back and forth. It plummets off its shelf to shatter on the ground.
The jug erupts in darkness. Its contents expand rapidly, sending shelves toppling like dominos. The jug’s prisoner keeps growing until its top nearly touches the ceiling of the Warehouse.
One yellow eye takes in the flames, the smoke, the burning shelves.
A high-pitched voice shrieks in victorious rage: Free! Free at last! Free at last!
I am gentle with you, my children, for I love you.
But love and gentleness do not breed purity: purity is earned through hardship and punishment and edification. So I have made these holy beings to help you find your way, and teach you the lessons I cannot bear to:
Ukma, sky-strider and wall-walker, watcher and whisperer. He will see the weaknesses in you that you cannot, and he will make you fight them until you rise above yourself.
Usina, traveler and wanderer, window-creeper and ash-woman. Beware the poor wretch you mistreat, for it may be Usina, and her vengeance is long and painful.
And for those who cannot be purified, who will not repent, who will not know the shame that lives in all our hearts, there is Urav, sea-beast and river-swimmer, he of many teeth and the one bright eye, dweller of dark places. For those sinners who are blind to light, they will spend eternity within his belly, burning under his scornful gaze, until they understand and know my righteousness, my forgiveness, and my love.
—The Kolkashtava, Book Three
You Will Know Pain
Vod Drinsky sits on the banks of the Solda and tries to convince himself he is not as drunk as he feels. He has had most of a jug of plum wine, and he tells himself that if he was quite drunk then the wine would start to taste thick and sour, but so far the wine continues to taste quite terribly beautiful and sweet to his tongue. And he needs the wine to survive in the cold—why, look at how his breath frosts! Look at the huge ice floes in the Solda, the way the black water bubbles against the spots as thin and clear as glass! A cold night this is, so he thinks he should be forgiven his indulgence, yes?
He looks east, toward the walls of Bulikov, huge white cliffs glimmering in the moonlight. He glowers at them and says, “I should!” A belch. “I should be forgiven.”
As he watches, he realizes there is a queer, flickering orange light up the hill behind him.
A fire. One of the warehouses in the complex up there is burning, it seems.
“Oh, dear.” He scratches his head. Should he call someone? That seems, at the moment, to be a difficult prospect, so he takes another swig of wine, and sighs and says again, “Oh, dear.”
A dark shadow appears at the chain link fence around the warehouse complex. Something low and huge.
A long, stridulous shriek. The dark shape surges against the chain link fence; the woven wires stretch and snap like harp strings.
Something big comes rushing down the hillside. Vod assumes it is a bear. It must be a bear, because only a bear could be so big, so loud, panting and growling. … Yet it sounds much, much larger than a bear.
It comes to the treeline and leaps.
Vod’s drunken eyes only see it for an instant. It is smoking—perhaps an escapee of the fire above. But through the smoke, he thinks he sees something thick and bulbous, something with many claws and tendrils gleaming in the moonlight.
It strikes the river ice with a huge crack and plummets through into the dark waters below. Vod sees something shifting under the ice: now the thing looks long and flowing, like a beautiful, mossy flower blossom. With a graceful pump, it propels itself against the river current and toward the white walls of Bulikov. As it turns over, he sees a soft yellow light burning on its surface, a gentle phosphorescence that deeply disturbs him.
The creature disappears downriver. He looks at the broken ice: it is at least two feet thick. Suggesting, then, that whatever leaped in was quite, quite heavy. …
Vod lifts his jug, sniffs at it, and peers into its mouth, unsure if he wishes to buy this brand again.