Though his cloak caught fire and his chest was pierced again and again, Petyr would not let go. He died that day, but so did the demon. The lake was freed and the villagers could frequent its shores without fear, though its waters always felt colder than they had before.
Sankt Petyr is known as the patron saint of archers.
SANKTA YERYIN OF THE MILL
In the Shu capital of Ahmrat Jen, the palaces of noble families line the boulevards, grander and more elegant than any city in the world. Every spring, these nobles throw open the doors of their homes to their wealthy neighbors, festoon the pathways with peonies and apricot blossoms, and compete with one another to see who can serve the most delicious and elaborately decorated custard cakes.
Long ago, a nobleman invited friends from far and wide to celebrate with him. He intended to host a decadent banquet, imagining table after table laid with sweet fried cakes. But when he went to his storehouses, he found that the shelves were nearly empty and only one bag of flour remained, barely enough to make dough for a dozen guests.
The nobleman cursed and called for his miller. But the miller reminded him that over the year, the nobleman had given away all his flour to his rich friends in an attempt to impress them. Though there was plenty of wheat, there was no way to grind it into flour in time for the party.
In a rage, the nobleman denied this and accused his miller of being a thief. The miller’s daughter, Yeryin, begged him to spare her father’s life and promised that the next day, if the Saints were kind, the storehouse would be full of finely milled flour. Though the nobleman agreed to stay the miller’s execution, he locked Yeryin inside the mill and posted his soldiers outside, for he suspected the girl was as dishonest as her father.
At dawn the next morning, the nobleman arrived with his many finely dressed friends. If he could not offer them a feast, he would at least provide them the spectacle of a hanging. But when he opened the doors to the storehouse, he saw flour bags stacked to the ceiling and a very tired Yeryin snoozing on the floor.
The nobleman kicked her with his boot. “Where did you get all this flour? You could not have ground it all in a single night.”
“The Saints made me able,” said Yeryin.
“Surely it will be coarse and unusable,” he declared. But each bag was full of the finest, whitest flour ever seen.
You would think that the nobleman would have been happy, but he was convinced that Yeryin and her father had somehow managed to steal the flour and make a fool of him. Since his soldiers claimed Yeryin had never left the mill, he concluded that she must have dug a tunnel. He sent for shovels and picks and a cask of wine and he and his friends tore up the ground, making a merry game of it. They dug so deep and so far that eventually, no one could hear their voices or the sound of their pickaxes.
The miller opened the storehouses and invited all his and his daughter’s friends to help themselves to flour. Then the servants of the vanished nobles sat down to a great feast and toasted Yeryin many times over.
She is the patron saint of hospitality.
SANKT FELIKS AMONG THE BOUGHS
When Ravka was still a young country, less a nation than a squabbling band of noblemen and soldiers unified beneath the young King Yarowmir’s banner, a terrible winter came. It was not that this winter was any colder than those before it, only that spring did not arrive when it was meant to. The clouds did not part to let the sun warm the tree branches and turn them green. No thaw came to melt the snow. Throughout the countryside, pastures remained barren and frozen.
Yet in the Tula Valley, beneath a hard gray sky, the orchards somehow bloomed. Those trees were cared for by a man named Feliks, said to be a warrior monk who had once taken the shape of a hawk to fight for King Yarowmir. Each night, the people of the valley claimed they saw visions near the orchards. Some saw a red sun that floated overhead, some a wall of burning thorns, others a black horse with a mane of fire and hooves that sparked when they struck the ground, igniting rivers of blue flame.
In the mornings, they would argue about what they’d seen, each tale taller than the last. All they knew for certain was that the orchards did not succumb to frost. New flowers sprouted on the trees, blossoms white as stars that turned pink, then red, then vanished as the boughs filled with hard green nubs of new fruit.
As the cold sat stubborn over the rest of Ravka, the Tula Valley flourished, and eventually, those who suffered without a harvest grew jealous of the valley’s bounty. They came with torches and swords to accuse Feliks of witchcraft, despite his reputation as a holy man.
The people of the valley had been well fed throughout the cold months. Their limbs were strong, their children healthy, their livestock sturdy. When they saw the light from the torches, they could have banded together to protect Feliks. Instead, they huddled in their homes, their gratitude withered by terror as a bud is withered by frost. They feared the mob would turn on them and did not want to lose all they had, even if that meant forgetting the man who had given it to them. So they let the outsiders put Feliks to the pyre.
The mob skewered Feliks on the slender, thorny trunk of a young apple tree and hung him like a side of mutton over a bed of hot coals, demanding that he confess to being
