“You are, as far as I can see, an unremarkable little Saypuri,” he says. “You are small, dirt brown—perhaps clay brown would be a fitting term, earthy, musky, an unsightly, not at all flesh-like darkness—with the characteristic weak chin and hooked nose. Your wrists, as is common in your sort, are terribly thin and fragile, and your arms hirsute and unlovely, as is the rest of your body, I imagine—I expect you would have to shave quite frequently to even compare to the body of any woman of the Holy Lands. Your breasts are not the dangling, ponderous piles I see so often among your breed, but neither are they particularly becoming—in fact, they hardly exist at all. And your eyes, my dear … Look at those glasses. Do your eyes function at all? I wonder—what must it be like to be such a runty, unintended little creature? How sad your life must be, to be a creature of the ash lands, a person made of clay. …” He shakes his head, smiling. It is a horrible perversion of Vohannes’s smile: where Vo’s is full of boundless, eager charm, this man’s smile suggests barely contained rage. “But the true nature of your crime—the true infraction you commit, as all your kind does, is that you refuse to acknowledge it. You refuse to acknowledge your own failings—your miserable, unsightly failings! You know no shame! You do not hide your flesh and body! You do not cower at our feet! You do not recognize that you, untouched by the Divine, bereft of blessings, deprived of enlightenment, are unneeded, unintended, superfluous at worst and servile at best! Your kind holds such lofty pretenses—and that is your true sin, if creatures such as yourself are even capable of sin.”
He is so much like Vohannes, in so many ways: many of his gestures and much of his bearing are Vo’s. Yet there is something strangely more decayed and yet delicate about this man: something in the way he cocks his hips, the way he crosses his arms. … She remembers the mhovost, and its effeminate walk back and forth, mimicking someone she hadn’t yet glimpsed.
Shara swallows and asks, “Who … ?”
“If I were to break you open,” says the stranger, “on the inside, you would be empty. … A clay shell of a person, remarkable only in your semblance of self. What did you see in her, Vohannes?”
The stranger looks to the corner of the room.
Sitting on the floor in the corner, his arms wrapped around his knees, is Vohannes: his face has been horribly beaten, one eye swollen and the color of frog skin, his upper lip rusty from old blood.
“Vo … ,” whispers Shara.
“I had hoped that she would at least offer some temptation of the flesh,” says the stranger. “Then you could perhaps excuse your dalliance. But there is so little flesh on her to tempt you with. I honestly cannot identify any trait you found desirable in this creature. I really can’t, little brother.”
Shara blinks.
Brother?
She says, “V … V …”
The stranger slowly turns to her and cocks an eyebrow.
Vohannes’s voice echoes back to her: He joined up with a group of pilgrims when he was fifteen and went on a trek to the icy north to try and find some damn temple.
“V … Volka?” she says. “Volka Votrov?”
He smiles. “Ah! So. You know my name, little clay child.”
She tries to corral her drunken thoughts. “I … I thought you were dead. …”
He shakes his head, beaming. “Death,” he says, “is for the weak.”
*
“ ‘For those who wish to know me,’ ” quotes Volka, “ ‘for those who wish to be seen by my eye, and to be loved, there can be no pain too great, no trial too terrible, no punishment too small for you to pass through. For you are my children, and you must suffer to be great.’ ”
Volka smiles indulgently at Vohannes, but it’s Shara who speaks up: “The Kolkashtava.”
Volka’s smile dims, and he watches her coldly.
“Book Two, I believe,” says Shara. “His writs to Saint Mornvieva, upon why Mornvieva’s nephew was crushed in an avalanche.”
“And Mornvieva was so shamed,” says Volka, “that he had asked Father Kolkan why this had happened, and questioned him in such a manner—”
“—that he struck off his own right hand,” says Shara, “and his right foot, blinded his right eye, and removed his right testicle.”
Volka grins. “It is so strange to hear a creature like you say such things! It’s like seeing a bird talk.”
“Are you suggesting,” Shara asks, “that by torturing us, you will better us?”
“I will not torture you. At least, not any more than I’ve had done to my little brother here. But it would better you, yes. You would know shame. It would remove that prideful gleam from your eye. Do you even know what you speak of?”
“I am willing to bet you think Kolkan is alive,” says Shara.
Volka’s smile is completely gone now.
“Where have you been, Mr. Votrov?” she asks. “How did you survive? I was told you died.”
“Oh, but I did die, little ash girl,” says Volka. “I died upon a mountain, far to the north. And was reborn anew.”
He turns his hand over: the inside of his palm flickers with candlelight, though Shara can see no flame. “The old miracles still live, in me.” He clutches the invisible flame, and the light dies. “It was a trial of spirit. Yet that is why we went to the monastery of Kovashta in the first place: to try ourselves. Everyone else died during our pilgrimage. All the men, much older than me. More experienced. Stronger. They starved to death or froze to death or fell ill and perished. Only I trudged on. Only I was worthy. Only I fought through the wind and the snow and the teeth of the mountains to find that place, Kovashta, the last monastery, the forgotten dwelling place of our Father Kolkan, where he dreamt up his holy edicts and set the world to rights. I spent almost three decades of my life there, alone in those walls, living off of scraps, drinking melting snow … and reading. I learned many things.” He reaches out with his index finger and touches something: it is as if there’s a pane of glass in the doorway, and he runs his finger down its middle, the tip of his index white and flat, pressed against an invisible barrier. “The Butterfly’s Bell. One of Kolkan’s oldest miracles. It was originally used to force people to confess their sins—air, you see, cannot get in or out, and only on the brink of death are we ever really truthful. … But don’t be concerned. That is not your fate.” He looks at Shara. “You failed, do you know? You and your people.”
Shara is silent.
“Do you know?”