clothes-gray moire cloth with green brocade vest and bright yellow ostrich-skin boots and gloves-would have been flawless for a city gathering, but here in the country they were a touch too formal. The other men wore wider collars and softer cravats than his. Their trousers were cut looser, presumably to provide more ease of movement for the strenuous entertainments of the countryside. Arkady’s trousers, by contrast, were very tight indeed. He blushed to reflect on how much more revealing they were.
Luckily, the others were clustered at the tiled edge of the pond cheering and cursing, and paid him no more than a quick glance-and-a-nod as he was introduced around. Several of the men had canvas water-bags at their feet. Now one untied the top of his and poured something into the pond. Bright ribbons of red and orange and yellow and green energetically looped and swirled beneath the surface.
Arkady leaned over the pond to get a closer look.
“Look out!” Yevgeny shouted as a needle-toothed goblin’s head burst from the water, viciously snapping at his face. Had not Yevgeny wrapped his arms about Arkady’s chest and hauled him back, he might well have lost his nose.
“What in heaven’s name was that?” Arkady gasped.
“Her name is Lulu,” one of the men said. He reached a canvas-gloved hand into the water and pulled out a red-and-orange eel which wrapped itself briefly about his arm before being stuffed back in its bucket. A blue eel with yellow stripes floated dead and ripped open on the surface of the water. Turning to his comrade, he said, “And I believe you owe me some money, Borya.”
“Do you eel, Arkady?” Yevgeny asked.
“No.”
“What a pity. Tell you what, let me know as soon as you’ve found an appropriate eeling pond, and I’ll send over my trainer with a bucket of elvers.” There was a sudden thrashing in the water and Yevgeny turned eagerly back to the fight. “Oh, well done!”
At dinner, Arkady managed to negotiate the soup course without incident. However, he had barely tackled his salad when the baronessa leaned over to whisper, “You mustn’t start with the outermost fork, silly. ‘Big spoon, little fork, tiny silver tongs. A fork for Sylvia, a skewer for her date, then little brother Pierre comes and cleans the plate.’ That’s how you remember.” Then a line of green-clad waiters whose bright stares identified them as serviles entered the dining room carrying platters and began serving out pink cuts of meat. Avdotya tapped on a water glass with her spoon: “Everybody, I want you to pay attention! I’m quite proud of the next course, and it’s a mark of the regard in which I hold you all that I’m serving it to you this afternoon.”
“Well, don’t be a tease, Dunyasha,” Yevgeny said good-humoredly. “What is it?”
“Why it’s me! I had my own flesh cloned for you today. That’s how highly I think of my friends.”
“That’s all very nice for the men,” a pretty young thing mock-pouted. “But I’d much rather have a taste of the baron. After all, if he can’t be here in person…”
A mischievous look came over the baronessa’s face. “Why, who do you think went into the consomme?”
Roars of merriment and applause lofted to the rafters.
Arkady stared down at his cutlet in horror.
At last the dinner was over. The women drifted to the back lawn to oversee the setting-up of lanterns, while the men retired to the veranda for cigars. There, Leonid Nikitovich Pravda-Interfax, who had genially introduced himself as a professional wastrel (but who, according to Yevgeny, was actually highly placed in the Ministry of Roads and Canals), said, “Irina tells me that you have a drug. One that,” he lowered his voice in a comically conspiratorial manner, “improves one’s performance in the saddle?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. But the sexual dimensions of the rasputin’s power are the least of it,” Arkady said, on familiar ground at last. “Spiritually…well, there are some who have taken it and literally seen God in all His glory.”
“Yes, yes, God is all well and good,” Leonid said. “But given the choice I’d far rather see Tatiana’s titties.”
“Or Anastasia’s ass,” one of his pals said to top him. “Or Jennicah’s je ne sais quois,” said another, making it a game.
His companions snorted and guffawed.
Arkady flushed again, unaccountably embarrassed. These superficial and well-meaning young men were none of them trying to humiliate him, he realized. But simply by their being who they were and he being himself, the humiliation was inevitable. Which, in its way, made the experience all the more painful.
Mercifully, the baronessa reappeared. “Put out those foul-smelling things, and join the ladies outside,” she said. “We’re going to play lawn polo.”
Leonid came up to Arkady with a friendly grin. “You do know how to play, don’t you, Arkady? Well, then, we’ll simply have to teach you. I can lend you a pony, a lantern, and a trident.”
So it was that an hour later, Arkady found himself hiding in a guest bedroom while one of the baronessa’s servants sewed up the trousers he had split falling from his horse as he tried to spear a boar-shoat that had burst out of the shrubbery without warning.
Oh, when would it grow late enough for the orgy to begin?
When the operation was complete, the Pale Folk undid the straps holding the woman down on the gurney. She sat up. Then she stood. She did not rub at the crude sutures on her newly shaved head. One of the Pale Folk walked unhurriedly toward an archway at the far side of the room, and she followed it without question.
She was one of them now.
Two more of the Pale Folk entered the room carrying another prisoner slung from a pole, this one bald as a mushroom and scrawny as an orphan. His mouth was gagged, but his eyes darted wildly about, and when he was dumped on the floor and his hands and feet untied, he strove to escape so vigorously that it took a dozen of the Pale Folk to subdue him and strap him down onto the gurney.
Koschei had watched the dehumanizing process with somber interest. Now he asked, “Where do the raw materials for this operation come from?”
“They are tribute from various of the underworld tribes,” Chernobog said. “People who were caught thieving, or strangers who trespassed into their territories. The tribes rid themselves of a difficulty and receive five packs of cigarettes for their trouble. The underlords increase their army of obedient slaves by one. And the world is relieved of the presence of another scoundrel. Everyone benefits.”
Svarozic nodded toward the doorway, and their guide led them onward.
They were taken to a high-ceilinged oval hall, bright with lantern-sconces. Its walls were covered with tremendous panels on which faded painted schematic maps of all the continents of the world. Beneath, tables had been set up circling the room, where the Pale Folk worked tirelessly and without passion, their motions smooth and unhurried. One would open a crate of cigarettes and dump its contents on the tabletop. Those standing there carefully opened and unfolded each package and passed the packaging to the left and the cigarettes to the right. Those to the right tore open the cigarettes one by one, letting the tobacco fall onto shallow trays that were whisked to the right and replaced when they grew full. The shredded papers fell to their feet like snow. At the next group of tables, first one and then another powder was sprinkled upon the tobacco by ashen-skinned figures wearing cloth masks over their mouths and noses. Beyond them, yet more Pale Folk poured the mixture into bowls. The bowls were passed on to further workers, who were given fresh papers and proceeded to roll new cigarettes. These were given to others who grouped them in bunches of twenty and then-the circle having reached its beginning-folded the packages around them again.
A crate of the re-rolled cigarettes was hammered shut. The new recruit joined in with several other Pale Folk, to carry it out the same door through which the crate had originally entered.
“Is this not the human condition?” Koschei asked. “An endless circle of meaningless labor joylessly performed deep underground, as far from the eye of God as it is possible to be. These lost souls are fortunate they are no longer self-aware.”
Svarozic nodded and piously rubbed the side of his head, where ancient scars commemorated an operation not entirely unrelated to the one just now performed by the Pale Folk. “Oblivion is preferable to awareness without God,” Chernobog agreed. “Yet I do not envy them their fate.”
“Nor should you, nor do I, nor would any man capable of better. By being so sinful as to get themselves in such a fix, however, these poor dead souls proved themselves worthy of nothing better.” Koschei turned away, dismissing their memory. “I believe it is time that I met these underlords.”
