Brush rustled. The massive creature slid behind me, circling the rim of the bog. Peachy. Just peachy.
I turned to follow its movement. A large bird sat on a thick tree branch above me and to the left. Her long feathers draped down into a silky plumage that shifted between indigo, blue, and black. Her head was human with a shockingly beautiful face framed by a mane of blue hair. A gold crown sat on her head. Her chest was human too, with perfectly formed breasts.
Sirin.
I stood perfectly still.
Of all the mythological birds in the Slavic legends, Sirin was the most dangerous. Like Veles, the god who was her father, she was born from magic and the very essence of nature and life, the arterial blood of existence, unbridled, uncontrollable, and as unpredictable as the weather. Sirin, burevestnik, the storm bringer. And seeing her always meant one thing: many people would die.
She looked at me with big blue eyes.
“Hello, burevestnik,” I said. “Will there be a natural disaster or a battle in my future?”
She laughed, raising her wings, and peeked at me through the gap. “A battle. A bloody battle.”
The dark thing behind her slithered forward. A huge black beak came into the light, followed by a reptilian face the size of a car, its obsidian scales gleaming slightly. Two tentacles streamed from above its beak, like the mustache of its Chinese counterpart.
Aspid. One of Chernobog’s dragons. His tail was still lost in the woods somewhere behind me. He had to be hundreds of feet long. All of my skill with the sword wouldn’t be able to stop it. This was the old magic. The type of magic that existed when my father was young.
Aspid stared at me with big golden eyes, his head rising. Massive paws with claws as big as me sank into the black mud of the bog. I saw the beginnings of folded wings draped over his shoulders, the array of emerald, sapphire, and diamond scales on their surface catching what little light there was.
Sirin smiled, fluttering her wings. Veles must’ve lent his bird-daughter to Chernobog. They were related by marriage.
“Why did you come?” Sirin asked.
Honesty was usually the best policy. “Because my friend was in trouble.”
“You’re still human enough to have friends,” Sirin said. “Perhaps we will bargain with you after all.”
“What do I have to do to get the flaming sword back and walk out of these woods with Thanatos and Roman unharmed?”
“Roman has nothing to fear here,” Sirin said.
I kept my mouth shut. I had already asked my question. The less I spoke, the better it was for my health.
“Will you bargain with us, Daughter of Nimrod?” Sirin asked.
Bargain with the God of Destruction and Absolute Evil or the giant dragon eats you. No pressure. “I’ll hear you out.”
The darkness binding the trees parted. Magic swelled, like a cold black wave about to drown me. Roman emerged from the bog and moved toward me. The staff in his hand turned into a huge black sword. His eyes glowed with white, so bright his irises were invisible in the whiteness. A dark crown rested on his brow; its tall spikes, shaped like razor-sharp blades, stretched a foot above Roman’s head.
The volhv stopped before me.
Whatever made Roman himself was no longer there. The creature that stood in front of me wasn’t Roman. It wasn’t even human.
Chernobog didn’t manifest. He possessed and his priest was his willing vessel.
Someone had to speak first. Clearly, he wasn’t going to.
“Why am I here?”
Aspid slithered forward and coiled around me.
“You will fight a battle,” Roman-Chernobog said in a voice that was at once deep and sibilant, the kind of voice that should’ve belonged to Aspid, who was twisting his enormous body around me. The magic in that voice chilled me to the bone. “Let the slaughter be in my name and I will return the sword and the Greek to you.”
Careful. That way lay dragons. Literally. “What benefit would you derive from this?”
“Power.”
Okay. “Could you be more specific?”
Aspid’s coils drew tighter, bumping my back. I pushed at the massive scales with my hand. “Stop. I’m trying to speak to your father. I’m not going to agree to anything until I understand the nature of the bargain.”
“People worship lighter gods because of the gifts they hope to receive,” Sirin said from her perch. “They worship darker gods because of fear. For that fear to stay alive there must be punishment when respect is lacking. But one cannot punish when one’s followers are few. There is an imbalance.”
Now it made sense. Roman had complained before that he wasn’t invited to any namings, births, or weddings, but the volhvs of Belobog and other lighter gods were. Gods like Chernobog and Veles were getting the shorter end of the stick. That created an imbalance, one that Chernobog felt pressure to correct.
In ancient times Chernobog wasn’t so much worshipped as appeased, because if the ancient Slavs forgot the appeasement, he would remind them. Atlanta was a hub and it drew people from all over the South, but even so, the population of Slavic pagans was too small for any effective punishment. If he decimated them, it would take even longer for the balance of power to be restored. He’d be shooting himself in the foot.
But if the battle was dedicated to him, each death would boost his power. That was a hell of a thing to promise.
“Do you understand, human?” Sirin asked.
“Yes. I’m thinking. Do the souls of the dead killed in Chernobog’s name belong to him?”
“I lay no claim to the souls,” Roman-Chernobog said.
“How would this dedication take place?”
“My volhv will consecrate the field to me.”
I looked at Sirin. “What is Veles’s role in this?”
“Veles lays no claim to the field or lives lost on it. For now.”
I faced Roman-Chernobog. “If we consecrate the field to you, every death upon it becomes a human sacrifice.”
Sirin snapped her wings. Aspid opened his beak, his golden eyes staring at me. Apparently, the fact that I wasn’t a complete idiot was really surprising.
There was no way out. If I declined the bargain, neither I nor Teddy Jo would get out of this swamp. If I died, my father would take the city and crush it.
If I took the bargain, I’d be making a business arrangement with the God of Evil. No good ever came from making deals like that. No good ever came from making deals with gods, period. Especially when what he was asking for wasn’t mine to grant.
What should I do? How do I make the best of this mess? I wished I could’ve asked Roman for advice, but I highly doubted Chernobog would let me do that and even if he did, there was a pretty obvious conflict of interest.
“What if there is no battle?”
“There will be a battle,” Sirin said. “First, you will fight for your lover. If you win, you will fight for your heir. You will not survive. One of these battles will end you.”
“Maybe I’ll patch things up with my father.”
“You will not,” Sirin said. “Beware, Daughter of Nimrod. I have seen your death and it is a horror you cannot imagine.”
Awesome.