The Zharastvi (Chapter One)

  It began, on a day just like every other, in the beginning of fall, the month of Harvest Moon. Krina and I sat in the back room of the temple, talking, as we often did. Suddenly I heard a noise that sounded like someone coughing. I looked at Krina; she had heard it as well. The sound repeated, closer now.
  Krina took up her sword and quietly pulled it free of its sheath. I picked up my spear, and we went to the outer chamber. Krina pointed through the doorway, and I saw someone walking towards us through the trees.
  “It’s a trow,” I whispered.
  He stood close to five feet tall and had a stocky build, with light brown skin and wiry gray hair, and a beard that hung braided in three thick braids. He wore a green cloak over a brown tunic and breeches, and tough leather boots covered his broad feet. A satchel hung across his shoulder, and a sword lay strapped across his back. He headed right towards us.
  I thought immediately that he had come from Pilzstadt to arrest us as thieves and outlaws, for all the food we had stolen from his village. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that if he wanted me, he would have a fight on his hands.
Krina stepped through the doorway, sword in hand. I went to her side.
  “Good morrow, friend!” she called. “What news?”
  The trow stopped, his green eyes widening for a moment. He bowed his head and raised his hand.
  “Good morrow!” he said in a deep and expressive voice.
  “Surely,” said Krina. “What can we do for you?”
  He eyed us shrewdly, then reached up and tugged on one of his braids.
  “What can you do for me? Well, we’ll see, I guess. You can step aside and let me pass, for one thing. There’s something I need inside yonder building, and I don’t got time for yakking.”
  “There’s nothing in there, except our belongings.” My voice held an intentional edge. “And we will intend to keep those.”
  “Whatever you say, boy.”
  The trow stumped towards us in haste. I looked at Krina.
  She put a hand on my arm. “Let him pass.”
  We moved out of his way, then followed him enter the temple. He moved to the middle of the small room and stopped, eyeing the far wall, the one with the Pentacle etched into the stone. Then he grumbled and walked up to the altar. Unsheathing his sword, he touched the point to the stone and muttered some words in a foreign tongue. The altar began to melt, and I realized that it had turned into a block of mud that slowly sagged to the floor. Sheathing his blade, the trow dug into it with his hands, and pulled something out of the muck.
  “Well here we go! My hunch paid off!”
  He took a water skin and a rag from his satchel and began cleaning whatever he had found.
  “What are you doing?” I cried. “How did you do that? Did you do that?”
  “Do what?” the trow snapped as he whirled on us. “Oh, that? Yeah, sure did.      Easy enough for Zharastvi, eh? But I forget you peasants aren’t used to seeing the workings of magic.”
  “You are Zharastvi?” said Krina.
  “Didn’t I just tell you I was? Are you two dullards, or what?”
  I stared at him, not knowing what to say.
  “Oh, where are my manners today?” He wiped a muddy hand on his pants and extended it. “Benno Burkhardt, of Felsengarten.”
  “Vali Vanek.”
  “Krina Navratil.”
  We all shook hands, and Benno gave fixed Krina with a queer eye. “Navratil, eh?”
  “Yes, Navratil.” Her voice went cold. “Why do you ask?”
  The trow squinted and grinned. “Ahhh, for a moment there, you looked like a Konvalinka, eh?”
  She stifferned, and her face went pale. She glanced quickly at me, then back at Benno. “I don’t know what you are talking about. You are obviously mistaking me for someone else.”
  The trow considered this for a moment, tugging on his braid. “Guess you’re right, then, girl. Won’t happen again.”
  “What did you take from the altar?” I asked.
  Benno held the item up. It was a flat copper triangle, a foot across, graven with the image of an inverted triangle with a horizontal line running through its tip.
  “What is it?”
  “It is one of the pieces of the Seal of Zakladni. This is the Amulet of Earth.”
  Again, I could only stare at him.
  Just then, a roaring scream shattered the quiet of the wood, and I whirled, bringing my spear to bear. Just beyond the doorway stood a thing fresh out of a nightmare.
  It stood nine feet tall, with a scrawny body, red skin, clawed hands, and the wings of a bat. Its hideous face had slits where its ears and nose should have been. A single round eye that took up half its face blinked from under a long white horn protruding from the middle of its bald skull. It opened its mouth of tiny, razor teeth and screamed again, a grating, agonized shriek. I never heard a more horrible sound, and it overwhelmed me with terror.
  The creature brought its weapon to bear, a long spear with a cruelly barbed tip. Flapping its great wings, it crouched and charged into the temple.
  “Get out of the way!” Benno hollered, and Krina yanked me aside.
  The trow closed his eyes and pointed a finger at the monster, and it staggered through the doorway. Its single eye rolled and blinked, and its mouth gaped. For a moment, it seemed to struggle against an unseen force, then it dropped its spear and turned, stumbling away from the temple, as if drunk.
  “The spell won’t last long,” cried Benno. “Let’s move! Run!”
  He bolted out of the temple and through the trees, with Krina and I right on his heels. We had no time for questions. We ran for our very lives, expecting to hear the dreadful screech of the pursuing horror right behind us. I glanced back, and saw the temple receding in the distance, but no sign of the creature.  I didn’t have the courage to look again.
  We ran for three solid minutes, Krina and I easily outdistancing the trow. Ahead of us and to the right, through a break in the trees, loomed the stone walls of Pilzstadt.
  “Okay, we can stop now!” Benno huffed in extertion.
  “But that thing…” I cried.
  “It’s okay…we have time…let’s catch our breath…”
  The trow bent over, gasping for breath, hands on his knees. “I’m getting too old for this shit!”
  Krina stared back the way we had come. “That creature…what is it?”
  “Ah, we don’t have time for that right now, girl, but I promise you if we get out of this, I’ll answer all your questions. It ain’t safe for you to stick around here, so you’re going to have to come with me.”
  “Why?” I yelled. “What the frig is going on?”
  Benno regarded me with a stern eye. “You’re just going to have to trust me now, eh? You can’t stay here. Being seen with me is enough. Those creatures will kill you now. I am Zharastvi; I can protect you.”
  “Those creatures!” My voice reached a hysterical pitch, and tears started to well up in my eyes. I looked at Krina imploringly. She looked frightened too, but she remained in control.
  She turned to Benno. “We will trust you. You are Zharastvi. But, as Vali said, we would like to know ‘what the frig’ is going on.”
  “And you will, all in due time. But we can’t stand here lollygagging with the goddamn moroi out there, can we?”
  “Moroi…” Krina repeated. “Very well, Benno. Lead on.”
  We hurried on, passing by the village, and emerged onto the caravan trail. Benno made for the trees on the other side of the road.
  “Aren’t we going to hide in the village?”
  “No, Vali. I won’t put the trows in danger. We have what we need for the road.”
  “Where are we going?” asked Krina.
  “Radovan.”
  At the mention of the city, she seemed to wince.
  “Very well.” She ran a hand through her hair, and her eyes went hard. “We go.”
  “Aren’t we going to wrong way?” I asked.
  “We’re not taking to the moors,” said the trow. “There’s no cover. We can’t risk exposing ourselves. I dazzled that moroi’s mind, but it don’t last long. Once it recovers, it will be after us. And it may not be the only one.”
  “How are we going to cross the Siroky, then? The closest bridge is in Kourim, out on the moors!”
  “I have my ways, boy. Don’t you worry.”
  “This is unbelievable,” I muttered, as we hurried through the wood. I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed answers.
  “What did that thing want? Where did it come from? I’ve never heard of a moroi...”
  “No questions now, boy!” barked the trow. “Concentrate on where you’re going. If you trip on a root and break an ankle, I ain’t carrying you on my back!”
  Just then, a hideous shriek rent the air, coming from far behind us.
  “It’s on the move!” cried Benno. “But at least we got a good head start, and it don’t know where we are.”
  “For now!”
  A second scream rent the air, this one much closer. It came from behind us and to the left. We all stopped dead, turning around and crouching behind a tree.
  “Now what?”
  “Quiet! Just stay still.”
  We waited in silence. I clutched my spear with shaking hands, and realized that this could be the day of my death. I didn’t know what we had gotten ourselves into; I didn’t want to know.
  “How many are out there?” Krina whispered.
  “Dunno,” said the trow. “Hopefully not many.”
  The minutes dragged on, with the only sound the wind rustling in the trees.
  “There,” Benno whispered, pointing.
  I followed the trow’s finger, and saw something moving on the trail, towards the village.
  “That’s the same creature,” I whispered. “Or another one just like it.”
  The thing walked slowly down the road, its spear clenched at the ready, its wings flapping lazily as it scanned the trail and the surrounding forest. I realized with a shock that this hideous thing was intelligent, and that frightened me even more. It searched for us with a purpose, but what purpose I knew not.
  As we watched in fascinated revulsion, the thing trudged onwards, then suddenly flapped its wings and took to the air. In a second, it disappeared from view.
  “Is that the same one?” I whispered.
  “Nope,” said Benno.
  “What are we going to do?”
  “Well, boy, I don’t know about you, but I intend on making it back to Radovan, moroi or no moroi. So on we go. We should be safe enough if we’re careful and quiet and keep our wits about us. They can’t see us from the air through the trees, and they ain’t no trackers.”
  Benno slapped me on the back. “Don’t worry, boy, we’ll make it through this. I promise. We Burkhardts are a stubborn lot, even for trows. And Zharastvi are even stubborner! Har har!”
  We walked on, trying to make good speed but remain quiet. After an hour passed with no incident, we felt we could relax a bit, but we still stayed on our guard. I stumbled along on tired legs, my stomach grumbling for food, and I wondered how much further we had to travel that night.
  The sun went down, and soon we walked in darkness. A cool wind blew through the trees, and the crickets began their loud chorus all around us. Benno proved to be a sure guide; it was a known fact that trows could see better in the dark than humans.
  Another hour stretched by, and by this time I felt I could go no further. Finally, Benno called a halt, and we sank down next to an outcropping of rock that loomed out of the darkness ahead of us.
  “We done good,” said Benno, rummaging in his satchel. He took a pull from his water skin before handing it to me. After a long drink, I passed it off to Krina.
For dinner, the trow handed out some apples, cheese, bread, mushrooms, and strips of jerky. With my stomach full, I stretched out on the ground, trying to get comfortable.
  “Are you ready to tell us what is happening?” asked Krina. “We’ve followed you this far with no explanation…”
  “Ah yes, girl, of course. Benno promised you answers, and answers he’ll deliver.” The trow cleared his throat, and began.
  “Our story starts way back almost seven hundred years ago, in the kingdom of Brasov. Ever hear of it?”
  “Of course,” said Krina. “It was a kingdom on the eastern edge of the moors, at the feet of the Zlostny Mountains. It was destroyed long ago, by an army of undead warriors…”
  “Called the zvoleni, ‘the returned’,” said the trow. “The moroi created them.”
  A long silence passed.
  “What are the moroi?” Krina asked.
  “I’ll get to that part. But first, Brasov. The Enlightened Twelve, a council of Zharastvi, led by the powerful and wise Ekaterina Lazar, once ruled Brasov. But one among them, named Danut Kazaku, had begun to delve deep into the secrets of black magic and necromancy, in order to increase his knowledge and power. No one suspected that he had begun summoning and consorting with an ancient fiend named Groaza, a disciple of the cursed god Zlokinec. Over the course of many years, five of the other Zharastvi also became tainted by this fiend’s influence, and began practicing the dark rites.
  When the council discovered their heinous activities, they banished them from Brasov, and the necromancers fled east into the mountains. Groaza continued to poison their minds, though, ultimately convincing them to grant him and his five sons entry back into this world. This they did, and in return, Groaza taught them the secrets of necromancy. The necromancers then used this knowledge to create an unholy perversion of life. They had discovered an ancient graveyard high up in the mountains, and they dug up the bones and animated them, creating an army of skeletal warriors fueled by the hatred and malice of their creators.”
  “So this fiend Groaza and his sons,” said Krina, “these are the moroi?”
  “They are. It’s a Brasovian word that means ‘nightmare’. Thousands of years ago, the demigod Zlokinec, one of the sons of Matka, had become quite powerful. His cult was strong and his followers numerous. He was the god of power, of hedonism, of selfishness. He became so powerful that he revolted against his family, and tried to destroy his siblings and overthrow his mother. She rewarded him for his insolence by banishing him to an alternate dimension, along with all of his followers. Not only did she banish them, she also twisted and distorted their bodies, changing them into hideous and disgusting creatures designed to instill fear and terror in the hearts of the peoples of this world, if ever were they to break free of their banishment and find a way to return. Groaza was once the High Priest of the Cult of Zlokinec.”
  I sat up. “Why would the Zharastvi do such a horrible thing?”
  Benno rested his head back against the cool rock.
  “They did it because they felt they had been robbed of their right to rule Brasov. Such was the influence of the black magic. The anger and indignation they felt over their banishment grew and festered in their hearts and minds, until it caused them to swear their revenge. They created their horrible army, thousands strong, and marched on Brasov. You know what happened next.”
  “Yes,” said Krina. “Brasov was overrun and destroyed.”
  “Certainly was. How do you defeat an enemy that doesn’t eat or sleep, doesn’t get tired or feel pain, an enemy that cannot die? The Council managed to escape the destruction of the kingdom, and they fled into the forest to the north that we now call Steinbaum. They went to the Keep of Knowledge, the meeting place for all the Zharastvi. There they struggled to find a way to defeat the army of zvoleni so they could reclaim their lands. But the zvoleni, fueled by the hatred and malice of their creators, had utterly devastated the kingdom. Nothing remained for either group of Zharastvi to rule. So the necromancers marched on the Keep, intent on fulfilling their promise of revenge and destroying their former brethren.
  The Council pooled their powers and forged a link into the mind of Matka herself. From the Mother’s pool of infinite wisdom, they discovered the ways and the means to create a magical artifact that would banish the moroi and the zvoleni back to their alternate world. They based the design of their artifact on the Pentacle, which is the symbol of the Order of the Zharastvi, and they named it the Seal of Zakladni. They fashioned it in seven pieces: a lead disc, a pentagram, and five triangular amulets. Each amulet represented one of the Five Elements; air, fire, earth, water, and spirit. The pentagram and the amulets fit into niches carved into the surface of the disc, forming the Pentacle of Banishment.
  They finished the artifact just in time. The moroi and their army invaded the hallowed grounds of the Keep, and the Council stood on the top of the tallest tower as Ekaterina held aloft the Seal of Zakladni and unleashed its potent magic. A blinding and searing light exploded from the pentacle, engulfing the moroi and the zvoleni, banishing them back to their alternate dimension. When the light faded, all of the undead and the fiends had vanished, leaving only the necromancers alone on the field. The Zharastvi came down from their tower, and a great magical battle ensued among them. In the end, they all killed each other. Only Ekaterina Lazar survived.
  In order to ensure that no one would ever be able to open the Seal and release the zvoleni back into this world, Ekaterina took the pieces of the artifact and hid them inside stone temples that were built in various locations throughout the lands.”
  The trow cleared his throat, and took a long drink of water.
  “That’s a riveting story, Benno,” I said sleepily, “but what does it have to do with us?”
  “You’re daft, boy!” snarled the trow. “Living in the woods has made your brains soft! You were living in one of them goddamn temples, weren’t you?”
  “And what you took from the altar you called the Amulet of Earth,” Krina said. “One of the pieces of the Seal that banished the moroi and their undead army from this world.”
  “There, you see? Har! That girl’s got some schooling. If you hadn’t felt the need to interrupt me, I would have continued. Damn you kids these days, you got no patience!”
  “I’m sorry! Go on!”
  “A little more than a moon ago, I got a visit from my old friend Bogdan of Radovan.  He…”
  “Bogdan?” cried Krina.
  “You know him, girl?”
  “I…yes…I am Moravian…”
  “I know him too,” I said. “I’m from Radovan. He’s the king’s brother.”
  “That’s right!” Benno snapped his fingers. “You can be taught, like a good little doggie. Bogdan is the king’s brother and advisor, and he is also Zharastvi. As I was saying, he came to see me. I have never seen him in such a rage. He had been banished from Moravia.”
  “Banished?” Krina’s voice held an unusually harsh edge. “Why?”
  “Because of a book he had found in the monastery at Klid Zahrada. He showed it to me, and told me it was an instruction guide in fiend summoning and necromancy. I don’t know where the monks at the monastery found a book like that, or why they’d keep it, or how Bogdan managed to get his hands on it, but he did. I could tell by the way he ranted and raved and carried on that he had fallen under some sort of negative influence. Just the way the necromancers had started their descent into evil. He swore his revenge against King Radomir and the entire kingdom of Moravia, shouting how he would see the cities and the people utterly destroyed. I tried to talk some sense into him, tell him that using black magic and consorting with fiends had its dangers, but he wouldn’t listen. He bordered on lunacy. I was worried about him, and since he had nowhere else to go, so I let him stay with me.
  A few weeks passed, and his temper and his ravings grew worse. One night I woke from a sound sleep, overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding. I heard Bogdan, in my receiving room, speaking with someone, so I crept to the doorway and peeked into the room.
  A circle of black candles lit the room, set around a pentacle drawn on the floor in chalk. Within the pentacle stood a gigantic red fiend. I tell you, my eyes nearly popped out of my skull when I saw him. I only heard a bit of their talk before the fiend departed.
  ‘I agree to this,’ said Bogdan.
  ‘Then go to the Keep of Knowledge,’ said the fiend. ‘For there I sense the source of the Seal’s power. And there we will cross over.’
  I crept back to bed, knowing that some evil was afoot, and in the morning I would have to cast my old friend out of Felsengarten.”
  “Bogdan has fallen to evil…” mused Krina. “That is ill news indeed. Where is he now?”
  “The bastard has taken up with dogheads. When the king and I summoned him the next morning and told him he had to leave, he flew into a frothing rage, railing how all his family and friends had turned against him, and how they would all pay the price for their betrayal. He screamed that we would never destroy him, for he would know our every move against him beforehand. He came close to physically attacking us, but before it came to that he turned and stormed from the house, whirling in the doorway to hurl curses down upon our heads.”
  “And what of the varkolac?”
  “He’s incited them to war, damn it. The two races have been hostile to each other for centuries, of course, but it never came to this. Bogdan’s in league with those filthy dogs, and he led them in a secret raid against us. They caught us off guard, to say the least. A few nights ago, under the cover of darkness, he used elemental cantrips to fill in the moat around the city and to tunnel through the walls of both the city and the king’s manor. I was sound asleep in my house when it happened, but heard the account from my cousin Rodolf, who is the king’s fourth son and one of his knights. The varks broke into the manor house through the front door, which woke the king and his sons. They ran out into the hall, torches and weapons at the ready.”
  “This cannot be tolerated!” cried Krina. “Trows and varks at war…”
  “No, it can’t. That is why I began to look for answers. The trows caught Bogdan in the act of stealing a particular decoration that the king had hanging on his wall. It was a pentagram fashioned of electrum.
  If Bogdan had been alone, the trows would still have been hard-pressed to slay him, but he wasn’t alone. He had twelve varks with him, and he ordered them to attack, while he slipped away into the night with his prize. The trows fought valiantly, but they fell to overwhelming numbers. The varks murdered Knut and five of his sons. It’s slight consolation that they took most of the varks with them.”
  “This world is descending into madness,” said Krina.
  “You got that right, girl,” the trow growled. “So I decided to do something about it. I needed answers. I wondered why Bogdan had gone after that particular piece, when so many others, and more valuable, hung on the wall. I learned its history from Old Meinrad, the eldest of my clan, who is three hundred and fifty-one years old. He told me how King Karl, Knut’s grandfather, had found the pentagram in the ruins of the Keep of Knowledge, more than two hundred and fifty years ago. I found the connection between Bogdan and the Keep interesting. So I went to the monastery at Klid Zahrada, and searched the library. I found some documents detailing the fall of Brasov, and that led me to an ancient scroll that described the Seal of Zakladni. But I couldn’t find nothing on where the pieces are located, and there, the trail went cold.
  I went to bed, but my mind stayed up the whole night on its own, pondering. I woke up the middle of the night with an image in my mind of the temple along the road outside Pilzstadt, the very temple you two were using as a shelter. While I slept, my mind had dredged up an old memory of a snippet of conversation I had with my father many, many years ago, when I was but a young lad. We were passing by the temple on our way back home, and my dad pointed out the temple through the trees and mentioned that it must be a Zharastvi temple, since there was a pentacle carved into its wall.
  The temple was worth investigating, especially if it turned out to be one that housed an amulet.
  I set out for Pilzstadt early this morning. The rest you know. I didn’t know if I had found one of the amulet temples until I actually felt the amulet through the mud.”
  A long silence passed as we digested this information.
  “Now, Benno,” I asked, “you said that the Zharastvi banished all the moroi. How did they escape?”
  “It’s more than likely that Bogdan allowed them to cross over to this dimension, just as Danut Kazaku and the necromancers did. What I wonder is how those two found me at the temple. Bogdan is probably scrying on me…”
  “Scrying?”
  “He’s probably using a mind-power on me to see through my eyes from afar. He must have cast it on me in Felsengarten, when we banished him. He screamed that we could never destroy him, because he would know beforehand our every move against him. If he implanted a sense-link in my mind, then he can see exactly where we are, and could have a fiend gate in at any time.”
    “All right,” I said, “what is gating?”
  “You damn commoners! Gating is a power that Groaza possesses. He can transfer himself and others through the space-time weave that links our world with theirs…or to explain it to you simpletons; he can move them from one location to another, instantly.”
  “So here we are,” Krina sighed. “But I don’t see how any of this concerns us, just because we used that temple as a shelter.”
  “Are you people stupid? If Bogdan is truly searching for the Seal of Zakladni, and he gathers all the pieces, he will allow the army of undead to cross over and march on Moravia. Defending your homeland from an invading army doesn’t concern you? Mighty compassionate of you, girl!”
  “I don’t mean…”
  “Let me say this to you, Krina. I need your help in this endeavor. I am searching for a knight of Moravia, called Konvalinka.”
  “Konvalinka is dead,” she said slowly.
  “That remains to be seen. Will you help me find this knight? You are Moravian; you are from Ostrava. And so is Konvalinka.”
  “I don’t know Konvalinka, so I cannot help you. The knight is dead. You must find another.”
  “Will you at least come with me as far as Ostrava? If we discover that the knight is truly dead, then you can go on your way.”
  She hesitated for a long minute, as if agonizing over some internal conflict. She sighed, and her eyes went hard.
  “I will go with you to Moravia. Benno Burkhardt. Although I think you will find that Konvalinka has truly departed this world.”
  The trow bowed his head. “Thank you, lady. And you, boy? You running off with your tail between your legs, eh?”
  “No, I’m not. I’m going too. I want to go home.”
  I also wanted to be with Krina, wherever she went. She was my best friend, my only friend. I couldn’t leave her.
  “I am still confused,” said Krina. “Bogdan is searching for these amulets to bring the undead into this world. But why bother? Couldn’t he just raise another army of skeletons?”
  The trow fixed her with a shrewd eye. “Even if he has learned that power, you know as well as I do that after the destruction of Brasov, the custom of disposing of the dead changed from burying the body whole, to burning it and scattering the ashes and the bones. The skeletons that the necromancers animated were whole; in one piece.”
  “You’re right.” Krina shook her head, and her brow furrowed. “This is a lot of information to digest.”
  “Well, well!” Benno slapped his knee. “Then you can digest it while you sleep, eh? We’re going to have to take turns on guard, just in case.”
  “I will take the first watch,” said Krina.
  “All right, girl. If you hear or see anything, just wake me up. For now, I need to meditate for a moment, try to find out if Bogdan is poking around inside my brain.”
  The trow closed his eyes for a moment, then snapped them back open.
  “I don’t detect no intrusion, but that don’t mean there ain’t one. Bogdan’s always been good at messing around inside people’s minds, and hiding the fact that he’s even doing it.”
  The trow shut his eyes again and bowed his head for a moment.
  “There. I just cleansed my mind of any infiltration. If he was spying, he ain’t no more. We should be safe from the moroi, now, too. Bogdan can’t pinpoint our location now.”
  “Good,” said Krina.
  We said out goodnights, and Benno and I settled down on the forest floor. I tried to make myself comfortable, but I couldn’t, due to the hard and uneven ground, and the toll the stressful day that taken on my body and mind. Eventually I fell asleep, with the cricket song in my ears, but a little voice at the back of my mind kept worrying at the prospect of what might be in store for us.