foot. The knight gave a shriek of pain and surprise, goggled his eyes. “How you did it?”
“Not me,” Oleg muttered. “Breaking grass! It’s Pagan.”
Thomas hesitated whether to accept help from Pagan magic potion for just a moment until his hands, as though they had own will, gripped the lid, his feet took a firmer stand, and the bronze slab was lifted with no screech.
Thomas rose on tiptoe, the orange reflection from inside the chest fell on his face. The knight’s eyes widened, brows flew up. “Impossible…” he said in astonishment. “Who could gather that much?”
Oleg scooped a handful of gold coins. Their edges were uneven, he could only see a stern hook-nosed profile on the face side and a big
Oleg went dark. He felt a heartache at recalling the men in black clothes who burnt books and writings on birch bark, destroyed the manuscripts written in lines and cuts, rubbed the local script and local culture off the face of Slavic lands in a hurry to set the other culture instead… “Saw enough of it?” Oleg asked harshly. “Let’s go!” Without waiting for the knight, he went to the exit of the cave quickly.
Thomas opened his mouth to protest, but the wonderer’s back was seen at the other end of the cave and something about his pace, his raised shoulders gave the knight a hint that if he did not hurry he’d have to search the way out by himself. Oleg was furious, as he happened to be very seldom. Whether Thomas was guilty or not, it was better for him to keep off the heat of the moment.
At breakneck pace, Thomas dashed after his friend, without even slamming the lid shut. Oleg had vanished from sight. Thomas hurried, his soul pounded with fear. He swore not to let Satan entice him with either gold or gems, as it is shame for a Christian to yield where a benighted Pagan resisted…
The great hall opened at once: Thomas had just darted from under the arch. His legs gave way. He felt crushed by the magnificence. The cave shone with green malachite. One of the walls was vertical, a great radiant throne towered near it. Three marble stairs led to the throne, and a huge golden
Thomas walked by the wonderer’s side, half a step behind. His heart thumped very fast. His feet stepped on the dented stairs, time-worn and scratched by sharp claws of all the ants who ran there for thousands of years.
The closer they came to the throne, the bigger it seemed. It must have been made for a man twenty or thirty feet tall if human at all. Thomas gasped, nudged Oleg gently. On the right of the throne, a broad sword, three times as tall as a man, hung on a wall hook. The pendants on its wide handle were the size of a knight’s shield, the smallest of gems were as large as Thomas’s fist. “Were they giants,” Thomas asked, for some strange reason, in a whisper, “or heroes?”
Oleg looked around vacantly, waved aside. “Forget it. We need charms, no golden trinkets!”
Suddenly. Thomas saw huge logs at the other end of the hall. It took him some time to grasp those were clean-picked bones: human — if any man could be that tall — bones and skulls, as though the last guards of the underground palace stayed remained forever! “Were that ants?” Thomas whispered even more apprehensively. “They gobbled them?”
“Sir Thomas, stop getting rubbish in your head!” Oleg replied with annoyance. “Killed by ants, by each other, or something else — why should we care? We need
“I see, I see,” Thomas said hastily and nodded with such ardor that it caused a dangerous crunch in his neck. “Once I got my finger trapped in the door. At that moment, I didn’t care if all the world goes to ruin…”
Oleg darted past the throne, into the dark passage that definitely had once been secret. Thomas rushed after him.
Chapter 35
Thomas lost count of caves, passages, slopes, as well as bruises, when Oleg suddenly increased his pace, muttered something, turned into a side tunnel at once. Thomas followed, like a she-goat on a short tie, as the tunnel turned often, other holes crossed it and the wonderer, carried away, was unlikely to look back if even Thomas yelled at the top of his voice or howled like a wolf.
Suddenly the wonderer broke into run. “Charms!” he cried hoarsely. “I feel charms!”
Thomas clenched his teeth, felt his gums bleeding, ran, darted into a colossal cave. The wonderer was barely visible far ahead. Cursing, Thomas rushed after him, jumped over the scattered breastplates and pieces of armor of strange forms. Many had human bones sticking out of them, skulls cracked and crumbled to dust under Thomas’s iron heels. He could see no floor under the heaps of weapons that belonged to all times and nations, shields, even some catapults, fierce curves of swords, strange spears that also combined axes and even cleavers in themselves.
The wonderer was already climbing up a pile of treasures, arms, broken fragments of golden chariots, statues of precious metals, broken chests and trunks, decayed saddle bags with gold coins pouring out of their holes at every touch. At last, the wonderer gave a triumphant roar and all but fell down, along with the unsteady top of treasure heap. Thomas’s heart froze in fright: among the chests and chariots below, there were some darts and swords pointed up. The wonderer held out by miracle, pointed to the side where the ill-fated necklace could barely be seen. “That’s it! That’s where they took it, underground devils!”
He ran down, jumping deftly on breastplates, shields, and trunks. His face shone. On his go, he put the charms on his neck.
Thomas yelled at the top of his voice. “Look out, fool!”
Oleg leapt aside, all but cut himself on the long sickle looking out from under the wheels of strange chariot. A heavy mass of chests and shields thundered down past him. One trunk burst, gold coins poured out with ringing sound. Thomas sighed: the coins covered all the immense cave up to his ankles.
The wonderer jumped down to him. “That’s all! Had a rest in cool place, now get in the sun again.”
“Do you really think I want to stay?”
“Why are you sitting then? Let’s go. I’ve found charms. There still are gods on earth!”
“Pagan,” Thomas muttered. “There’s only one God, the rest are demons. Our Lady in her unfathomable mercy has not knocked you off like a fly, as she hopes you to turn into the true faith. Do you know the way?”
“Of course I do,” the wonderer said with surprise. “That’s really simple!”
“Then I know why she saved your life up to now. Lead the way, you underground man.”
While they climbed out of the treasure cave through the low dark passage, moving on their fours in places, Thomas prayed the Holy Virgin. He felt the stone mountain pressing on his shoulders. Stones above cracked, shifted under that monstrous weight. In places, earth and small pebbles rained down.
At the very first opportunity. Thomas straightened his tired back up — and stopped in surprise. Ahead, there was a giant forest of strange translucent trees. Their trunks were three or four girths broad but only as tall as three or four man. They had swollen excruciations instead of branches and no leaves at all. Dark streams moved slowly within the trees, exfoliated, twisted into caudated rings.
Among the strange trees, there were slowly rambling ants, strange the same: slow, translucent, their inside seen through. Their small sharp jaws had a dim glitter. Ants used them to cut the trunks. A whitish layer of viscous sap came out from notches. An ant would fell down to the cut, drain all of it, and walk away slowly, his swollen belly dragged on the ground.
Unknown animals darted sometimes among the ghostly trees. So monstrous those creatures were that poor Thomas had his hair stand on ends of the insoluble question: could God have created such abomination himself? Devil definitely could do it but, as far as Thomas knew, the Almighty created all the world himself, no part left to Devil…
“Keep up,” Oleg said through gritted teeth. “You get stuck as though on the fair!”
